Return Of The Frigate

Louis R wrote:this rumour is neither confirmed nor denied

Yup. We really need the next book NOW!!!

Tenshinai wrote:bring up their defences and retaliate, because once they KNOW where to start looking, big ships without wedges are going to be relatively easy to track.

Gotta love hyperbole. "relatively easy to track" is a monster whopper. The only thing in the Honorverse "relatively easy to track" is a ship/missile/RD with a wedge.

MALIGN cannot even track their own Ghosts at a mere 300,000km with the spider drive up and running, let alone when it is acting as a "hole" in space. A ghost is roughly 50,000-70,000ton. I could foresee a tonnage as high as 100,000ton for a first production scout ship. Lets stick with 50,000-70,000.

Lets look at the drive signal return shall we? Lets do a KISS assumption. Signal return scales with tonnage. Compare Ghost to Shark to start with:

Ghost 300,000km untrackable ~50,000/70,000 ton
***If signal return doubles is it seen?***
***What extra distance will this entail?***

Physics constraint: Signal drops off by the cube.

Lets do a tiny rule of scale... Tonnage is a cubic function. So, double the signal Ghost = 400,000-560,00tons.
Double to ~Shark = 3.5-4.5Mton

So, if Stealth spider Signal is directly linear with physical 3d dimensions, then a Shark returns 4X signal than a Ghost scout ship.

So, if the Det's are 8 times as large as a Shark, they would have twice the signal return. So, a 32Mton ship is required for twice the signal return of a shark, or 8 times that of a Ghost scout ship. So, a DET, will be BARELY trackable by the best sensors out there at 600,000km.

So, lovely, a Det, with best sensors is trackable under stealth by RMN drones. Of course you have to be barmy to believe the MALIGN will not have RD's of their own out patrolling looking for enemy RD's to localize and kill. But lets assume can track Dets while some of your RD's remain recognizable as something other than space debris.

Last I checked, missiles do not have the "best sensors out there". How much worse are they than an RD? Remember the Sollies think RMN RD's are returning CA quality. This was uncut "footage" Henke sent of Byng. Now did they degrade it some before sending? We do not know. Sure would think so, but the Sollies on the other hand did not think so. Still pretty darned good stuff.

Shall we assume missiles sensors also scale with tonnage? Well, no, as a sensor is usually a flat"ish" surface so it should roughly scale linearly. A CA is roughly 500m on a broadside. The front end of a MDM is ~2m. Or roughly, 250:1 So, a missile collects 250 times less signal than a CA. Let us assume from above calcs said CA can likewise see a DET at 600,000km and a Ghost at 300,000km. A missile with 250X less signal to work with and the exact same S/N ratio(Absurd notion, but hey this is fiction )will be able to see a DET at ~6 times less distance. Or -~100,000km. A missiles laser warheads starts its deployment out beyond this distance. A missiles attack range is 50,000km. So, a missile has 0.8c(240,000/50,000) = ~0.2s to deploy, align, and fire.

Lets just say, a Det does not really have to worry much about missile fire even with an RD sitting off its port bow. It is beyond hopeless to anyone without FTL. With FTL it is possible. I will let you do that simple calculation.

PS. I suppose RFC can always retcon his 300,000km range sensor detection limit by simply writing god like sensors for the RMN and friends and completely upsetting the applecart of my simple KISS calcs above. Somehow I can't believe MALIGN sensors are so far behind RMN sensors to make much if any of a difference. That ol' cubic function bites on in der arse quite quickly. Twice detection range would require MALIGN to have 8X worse sensors as their "best".

Oyster Bay as actually done was to take Manticore (and Grayson) out of the fight, destroy their capablity (and anyone to take over that capability to copy and use it) and let Haven take apart Manticore.

Haven itself was/is a much more potent force on a ship-by-ship basis that the SLN and could be expected to carve up the SLN when (not if) they came to blows.

IF Manticore had been allowed to continue production after defeating Haven at 1st Manticore, the Apollo systems and the MDMs would have left Manticore massively ahead of Haven (which it was as Honor's Mission to Haven made clear) and Manticore was clearly going to be a much tougher net to crack. Possibley even to the point that it MIGHT become an actual rallying point for the SL.

The Alignment went with a smaller total strike against just two systems. Haven would have required a much more massive effort primarily because they DO have so many scattered military shipyards and production capacity through the former PRH space even with various systems being alowed to leave, though probably they would have been stripped of the military yards. Manticore and Grayson represented a major threat to the formation and success in the mission of the RF.

One line of thought is that one or two Lenny Dets could handle Manticore and Grayson each with INTERNAL magazines (vs the hull mounted hardpoints of the Sharks) and get to the targets without needing to be dropped from fighters. I believe that one reason to use the freighters was that the Spider Drive is slower than standard impeller drives and it would have taken the Sharks much longer to get to their two targets.
The Sharks were supposed to be training ships for the crew of the Lenny Dets. They were proving the ships would operate as expected and be used to cycle through many sets of crew to provide the numbers to man the Lenny Dets - at whatever numbers of the LDs and whatever the total number of LDs are suppoed to be.

The spider drive LDs would and still should be so far beyond the capability of the SLN to detect and engage as well as most systems to even discover they were there there until the destruction came smashing into the infrastructure of target systems. Recall that Manticore had one of the most sensitive, powerful and largest system tac nets and had FTL capability to collect and send tactical data based on the data and analysis.

NIT alert: Sharks did not deploy via freighters. Only their Ghost scout ships did. Sharks via their hypergenerators coming across the alpha wall in a very slow tight formation.

Relax wrote:So, if the Det's are 8 times as large as a Shark, they would have twice the signal return. So, a 32Mton ship is required for twice the signal return of a shark, or 8 times that of a Ghost scout ship. So, a DET, will be BARELY trackable by the best sensors out there at 600,000km.

Which, incidentally, is inside graser range.

Relax wrote:NIT alert: Sharks did not deploy via freighters. Only their Ghost scout ships did. Sharks via their hypergenerators coming across the alpha wall in a very slow tight formation.

There was also an interesting note by David that those huge sensors don't work close to the hyperlimit. Iirc, a few light hours. So if an attacker can pull off a barely detectable transit there you have to rely on some sort of different detection system. I wonder what that is, and whether manticore really understands how hard to detect these ships will be.

kzt wrote:

Relax wrote:So, if the Det's are 8 times as large as a Shark, they would have twice the signal return. So, a 32Mton ship is required for twice the signal return of a shark, or 8 times that of a Ghost scout ship. So, a DET, will be BARELY trackable by the best sensors out there at 600,000km.

Which, incidentally, is inside graser range.

Relax wrote:MALIGN cannot even track their own Ghosts at a mere 300,000km with the spider drive up and running, let alone when it is acting as a "hole" in space.

There is a huge difference between detect and track. And AFAIK, that statement was in regards to detection, not tracking.

Relax wrote:Lets look at the drive signal return shall we? Lets do a KISS assumption. Signal return scales with tonnage. Compare Ghost to Shark to start with:

Ghost 300,000km untrackable ~50,000/70,000 ton
***If signal return doubles is it seen?***
***What extra distance will this entail?***

Physics constraint: Signal drops off by the cube.

Lets do a tiny rule of scale... Tonnage is a cubic function. So, double the signal Ghost = 400,000-560,00tons.
Double to ~Shark = 3.5-4.5Mton

Seeing at least 2 failed assumptions there. Most blatant one being the fact that ship tonnage to size is not a direct cubic function, due to shape.

That´s before taking into account that spider drive ships have additional specific shape requirements that penalises it.

Honorverse ships have a lot in common with wetnavy ships in shaping, and there, sensor visibility based on tonnage is more of a squared function than cubed.

Then comes the part where the MA bigwigs themselves state that nothing like OB is likely to be repeatable, because once ~"they´re looking for it", risks are too great of detection.

Then there´s the issue that you base that statement of detection on existing common sensors, sensors NOT made for detecting spider drive ships. That´s not going to last long, no matter how unknown or not the spider drive remains. Which of course is part of why the MA does not believe another covert deep strike is realistic.

Relax wrote:Physics constraint: Signal drops off by the cube.

That´s already true for the original sensor return. If you double the size of a RCS, you are going to get more than a 25% increase in detection range.

And it also assumes radarstyle active detection, which is unlikely to say the least!

And even if it is, it also assumes that "defenders" will not simply increase their sensor output everywhere. That´s actually one of the easier ways to defeat stealth.

Relax wrote:So, if Stealth spider Signal is directly linear with physical 3d dimensions, then a Shark returns 4X signal than a Ghost scout ship.

So, if the Det's are 8 times as large as a Shark, they would have twice the signal return. So, a 32Mton ship is required for twice the signal return of a shark, or 8 times that of a Ghost scout ship. So, a DET, will be BARELY trackable by the best sensors out there at 600,000km.

Taking previous changes of math into account, a Shark would have more like 8x the sensor return of a Ghost.
And a 32MT ship would have four times that of a ~4MT Shark.

Or 32 times that of a Ghost. Which IIRC, should raise minimum detection by something like 4 times or a bit more. However, it raises maximum and EXPECTED detection by a whole lot more. Again IIRC, expected becomes around 8 times and maximum around 16 times. Though i have the equations for radar detection on my older computer and several years since i used them so i wont guarantee totally correct estimates.

Shouldn´t be too far off though.

So, expect a Lennie Det to normally be seen at at least around 5M km.

Not nice, but eminently possible to deal with.



HOWEVER... All this is still before we look at the fact that Honorverse datalinks and recon drone usage is VERY nice, with computer assistance vastly above what exists in the real world here and now.

Because the combination of those points mean that you can make use of alternate passive detection to an exceptional degree, and for this, while detection ability is overall low, size matters more directly, and there is no return signal strength to bother with.

This is where the reality of the difference between detecting and tracking comes in seriously.

As i said before, once a Lennie starts shooting, trying to disappear again, once everyone knows where to look for it, is going to be ridiculously hard. The problem of finding something in a random location is no longer there, as everyone already knows where to look for it, and can put extreme focus in that area, and with above alternate passive detection, this means it will likely be possible to track a detected stealth Lennie at a considerable range.

And whenever you have enough sensors deployed, the probability for a passive detection at long range goes up, a lot.

Relax wrote:Shall we assume missiles sensors also scale with tonnage? Well, no, as a sensor is usually a flat"ish" surface so it should roughly scale linearly. A CA is roughly 500m on a broadside. The front end of a MDM is ~2m. Or roughly, 250:1 So, a missile collects 250 times less signal than a CA.

Now you just ran headfirst into a brickwall of logic fail. CA quality does not equate RDs the size of CAs. If that was true, then i would love to hear your dissertation on just how DDs can carry multiple, potentially even many RDs.

Relax wrote:Last I checked, missiles do not have the "best sensors out there". How much worse are they than an RD?

That´s actually not a valid question. Missiles are not going to try to DETECT a stealth ship, they will be given quite excellent instructions on how to get close to it by the launching ship.

And once it is close enough, a ship without sidewalls and wedges means that it is completely open to sensors NOT relying on detecting the wedge. At long range, those sensors wouldn´t have much chance of finding the target ship, but that´s not relevant because the missiles are not going to try doing THAT job, that´s up to RDs and ships.

Missiles are going to be tracking once they´re getting up close and preparing for attack runs. And at that point, they´re close enough that "lack of wedge stealth" isn´t going to be enough. And the lack of wedge also means the missile electronics isn´t going to have to guess about exact location of the ship, there will be no such uncertainty due to the wedge if it isn´t there, and as such, missiles will have a far higher hitrate.

Which of course is why we´ve now been told that the Lennies are going to be hybrid drive ships. Use sneak to try to get in a nasty first strike and then raise wedges ASAP to avoid getting nailed to the floor themselves.

Relax wrote:PS. I suppose RFC can always retcon his 300,000km range sensor detection limit by simply writing god like sensors for the RMN and friends and completely upsetting the applecart of my simple KISS calcs above.

He doesn´t need to as your calculations are effectively incorrect, as they are based on bad assumptions and incomplete understanding of the parts involved.

And please, the 250:1 statement is outright ridiculous and you should have realised that.

Relax wrote:That ol' cubic function bites on in der arse quite quickly. Twice detection range would require MALIGN to have 8X worse sensors as their "best".

You need to recheck how signal strength and size are actually affected. A "physical constraint" is not by default relevant just because it is true.

Otherwise, in reality, doubling signal OUTPUT strength of radars would only yield a 1/64th increase in signal return strength.

This is clearly nowhere near reality.

0) Yes, I was saying track as it made my life easier than detect. Tracking distance is always much greater than actual detection distance, so I was purposefully being CONSERVATIVE. A point you then gleefully ignore.

Is this opposite Wednesdays?

1) If you had ever designed something, you would know that SHAPE has zero, nada, zilch to do with the physical cubing of density/mass other than to INCREASE this constraint as the dense parts(structure increases). So, the triangular spider drive shape, would INCREASE the structural mass required as its physical mass increases. Not DECREASE. You will note a warship's mass scales directly with tonnage. Why? It is trying to be as small as possible with all of its systems crammed in. It is not a FREIGHTER where most internal space is nothing but a giant empty void that may or may not be filled with cargo!

If you are building nothing but a box freighter and are not counting its physical cargo as part of the tonnage like an embicle, what warship is hollow ??? then the ships structural mass, not counting systems, to cargo mass will go up by the factor of mass^3/h^2. Just because your structural mass to cargo mass ratio decreased with a larger freighter, its overall density DID NOT CHANGE. The structural weight savings on much larger freighters allows them to carry more TEU's!!! So, not only is it cheaper to purchase/TEU, but also carries more TEU/power used to transport! Ai Carumba. Touch reality someday huh?

2) One does not have to "look up" RADAR equations on a computer to figure it out. It is basic physics for signal return. After that it is algorithms used to process the noise from the passive signal. Noise unique to the signal collecting system. Noise generated by the physical constraints of reality compared to the theoretical maximum. These physical constraints are unique to each sensor type.

3) Linear Baseline array, why the broadside of a CA is comparable. It establishes the theoretical quality increase possible before anyone even bothers with "tricks". AKA massaging the signal, or perhaps taking a reading, and then jinking over a KM or so, taking another reading and then massaging with computers obtaining an overall higher resolution, or using 2 RD's or mores signals combined obtaining a better resolution. Obviously an RD uses said "tricks" to equate its vastly smaller size to compare with the vastly larger linear dimensions of a CA. RD's are PASSIVE not ACTIVE unless they wish to throw away their stealth. Per Honorverse this is a bad thing. (Though I do not see why as they can dart back into stealth before a CM can arrive and kill them.) You cannot willy-nilly violate basic physics where PHYSICAL linear size is all important. All tricks an RD can do, a CA can do, but better as it has better signal processing. All inventions in 2000 years regarding sensors packed on an RD can be packed on the linear dimensions of a CA just as well.

The major input in favor of the RD's is the their ability to create multiple vectors of guesswork. Via statistics, this narrows the possible location immensely. A single CA cannot create the multiple vectors. Rather it creates a possible line with a giant error band. Even a squadron of CA's cannot create this as their angles at extreme distances will nix each other out unless the squadron is spread wide and far.

What do we see time after time in the books? Missiles are limited by their PROCESSING of their SIGNALS compared to RD's let alone SHIPS! They are myopic. CM's are even worse as their sensors AND their processing are worse than MDM's. What is the overall theme? Physical Mass. AKA, SIZE, AKA, LINEAR dimensions which, oh-by-the-way also aligns with REALITY!

What else is an Honorverse ism? Missiles do not share information to create their own base line array as RD's can do via the processing power of a mothership. Via Apollo they now ***can***, but cannot talk apollo bird to apollo bird for a much larger baseline array. Who knows why. Would think that a couple groups of 9 missiles separated by many kilometers should be able to wipe the floor with a singular RD for S/N ratio. But alas, no that is not the case in the Honorverse.

Next you dribble into: Now a missile designed to effectively use its GRAVITIC sensors exclusively for knowing where to go in regards to coming close to hitting a target and locking a target up is now supposed to use its RADAR! We know for a fact, all light spectrum signals fall off by the cube of distance. How do gravitic signals decrease with distance? I see no reason it would not be cubic. So, equating Gravitic to EMS seems rule of thumbish. Gravitic wedge signals are very hard to stealth. RADAR/LIDAR returns from ships on the other hand are completely eliminated by and large in the Honorverse. So, the missile designer is now faced with the disappearance of a VERY large signal to an infinitesimal signal dropping the S/N ratio into the crapper. Thus their tracking range to abysmally low levels.

One of the Honorverses "stupidisms". A missile has to remain locked on target or it decides, for some "pathetic logical reason only known to RFC", to wander off like some 4 year old child instead of the computer it is. So, if relying on its RADAR for lock, it will never even have a lock at all until within my calculated ~100,000km. Simply detecting "something" is there in some giant error band does not help this moron Honorvese ism. You have to track it, otherwise you are sending in the missiles effectively autonomous.(not that I agree) As I wrote in my previous post. A missile, by the time it actually has a target lock, does not even have the time at 0.8c closing speed to deploy its own laser rods, align, and fire before it is past.

4) The only valid point you did bring up is that without a sidewall, once a ship IS detected a missile does not have to "guess" which part of the "blob" is truly the ship.

Of course MALIGN is not dumb they will have decoys.

5) Your last point on doubling power of active RADAR.

Lets put this into Kindergarten mode. You bring 3 apples in for lunch, but 2 apples have to be "given" to appease the bully signal to noise ratio gang kids who sit in adjacent desks around you in order to keep your last apple. After doing this for a week, all of a sudden you get the bright idea of bringing in 6 apples so as to keep more of your apples to eat for lunch.

Of course this assumes you can bring 6 apples to lunch in your physically constrained lunch pail instead of 3. You start crying as you realize your lunch pail did not magically increase in size because of your desires. You also notice your lunch box was designed specifically for 3 apples, not 6. You also realize you already bought the densest power caloric apples in the universe to put in your lunchpail as you know the bully Signal gang will steal most of your apples. The only option to increase total caloric intake is to eat more dense apples instead of finding denser apples as you already BOUGHT the densest apples known to man.

That would require purchasing an all new lunch pail. You also notice your pockets are to let, so purchasing a new lunchbox is a long time away. In fact, purchasing a new lunchpail will probably also require buying a new bicycle to hold this now much larger lunchpail. At a minimum will require a new bicycle basket rack meaning you now will displace other bicycle racks limiting the number of show and tell items you brought for the nice kids and the nasty surprises you brought along to teach the Bully Kids a lesson in manners.

You buy a new much larger lunchbox several years later. The bully kids notice, and demand a slightly higher "insurance fee" leaving you with 3 apples for lunch as they are mostly content. Your lunch quantity increases by 300%. In the interim you are stuck with your 3 apple lunch pail. Dreams are nice. They are not reality.

Relax wrote:1) If you had ever designed something, you would know that SHAPE has zero, nada, zilch to do with the physical cubing of density/mass other than to INCREASE this constraint as the dense parts(structure increases). So, the triangular spider drive shape, would INCREASE the structural mass required as its physical mass increases. Not DECREASE. You will note a warship's mass scales directly with tonnage. Why? It is trying to be as small as possible with all of its systems crammed in. It is not a FREIGHTER where most internal space is nothing but a giant empty void that may or may not be filled with cargo!

If you are building nothing but a box freighter and are not counting its physical cargo as part of the tonnage like an embicle, what warship is hollow ??? then the ships structural mass, not counting systems, to cargo mass will go up by the factor of mass^3/h^2. Just because your structural mass to cargo mass ratio decreased with a larger freighter, its overall density DID NOT CHANGE. The structural weight savings on much larger freighters allows them to carry more TEU's!!! So, not only is it cheaper to purchase/TEU, but also carries more TEU/power used to transport! Ai Carumba. Touch reality someday huh?

Are you seriously trying to stupid or what?

Your statement was in regards to how tonnage relates to increases in sensor visibility.

And your original statement is only really true if you insist on building ships that are effectively somewhere between ballshaped or cubeshaped.

Once you start stretching them in one dimension, your statement isn´t even remotely close any longer.

And gee, how amazing, H-verse ships are long, thin tubes. Which ALSO means that the effective inside space is lower compared to total outer surface, because the optimal surface to inside volume comes from having a perfect sphere.

THOSE, are basic physical constraints.

Relax wrote:2) One does not have to "look up" RADAR equations on a computer to figure it out. It is basic physics for signal return. After that it is algorithms used to process the noise from the passive signal. Noise unique to the signal collecting system. Noise generated by the physical constraints of reality compared to the theoretical maximum. These physical constraints are unique to each sensor type.

When you have equations listed for several dozen realworld radars in multiple situations, oh yes you do.

Relax wrote:Next you dribble into: Now a missile designed to effectively use its GRAVITIC sensors exclusively for knowing where to go in regards to coming close to hitting a target and locking a target up is now supposed to use its RADAR!

You might just want to stop lying right away.
Never said any such thing.

You´re the one talking about the whole thing from the start AS IF IT WAS a direct equivalent to radar.

Relax wrote:One of the Honorverses "stupidisms". A missile has to remain locked on target or it decides, for some "pathetic logical reason only known to RFC", to wander off like some 4 year old child instead of the computer it is.

Perhaps you should try reading a little on how REAL WORLD missiles "react" in different situations? Before you make yourself look more silly at least.

RFC has done a fairly decent job of drawing on real world experiences in how he writes about how missiles can and DO behave.

If you want the mythical stuff instead, go play some computer game. Not too advanced a game though, because those will also try to model realistic behaviour.

Relax wrote:Lets put this into Kindergarten mode.

Because that´s apparently the only way you can fudge reality enough to come up with an argument. Sheesh.

Relax wrote:You bring 3 apples in for lunch

Now why would i be silly enough to do that, when every school or kindergarten i ever went to provided lunch?

And never once have i ever seen or heard of your "lunchstealing bullies" here.

Guess what, i can be silly as well.

And in case you missed that little part of reality, there´s a lot of radar systems which uses far below MAX power for normal operations. Hence, doubling signal power is a matter of twisting a dial, pressing a button or typing a command.

Not that it´s even relevant.

Just never mind. Run along, be happy.