Fall 1924: What will the Admiralty build next

Using tractor beams, can you tow a captured ship through the faster than light transition, or is this up with -- Buckley would have warned that this is a bad idea?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

munroburton wrote:Hmm. That hasn't been so unusual, though. Filareta, Crandall and Tourville's fleets are the big three, but the RMN's record stretches back all the way to First Hancock and Third Yeltsin. HoS indicates they captured a further 21 wallers in good enough condition to reuse during those early days.

They might not carry as many marines as they did during those pre-pod days but they're not going to pull a Roland and throw them all away.

Those are also very good counter-examples.

Third Yeltsin, Spindle and Second Manticore are examples of a very outmatched SD fleet coming unawares against the RMN getting its ass handed to it. It isn't supposed to be the typical case, because those things should happen only once, and then they wise up (provided there isn't interference, and taking comm delays into account).

But all those and First Manticore are also examples of not needing large prize crews to man those ships. In all but Third Yeltsin, the RMN didn't want the ships anyway, which is going to be highly correlated with having such an overwhelming victory in the first place. If your tech is so good that you can capture SDs almost intact, those SDs are probably well below what you are fielding yourself. And in the case of Third Yeltsin, that was only possible because it was the home system and thus a target juicy enough to have Parnell screw up badly, but that also means they had the local manpower to provide prize crews.

I think you can. Grav waves or WH are more complex and require dedicated tugs or transport inside a large freighter.

If you capture SDs or any other ships and don't have a place to put the POWs you can always put a well armed security force aboard and do a couple of things prior to taking the POWs off in workable batches. 1) shut down their sensors and targeting software - and physical pull out vital equipment plus fun stuff like WELD shut missile tubes. 2) weld contact nuclear devices to hulls with several sets of fails safes, including acclerometers , hooked to the detonators to time-sensitive channel hopping that goes boom if it doesn't get the right update on time. 3) Install some OOPS software. Tough on your own people IF there is a revolt but you might sweeten the pot a bit by guaranteeing to space twice as many people as harem or that escape. Yeah, nasty.



As far as why didn't the self made superman not take off to the great unknown and set up their own society. Simple.....they have a massive need to be recognized as at least demi-gods compared to "Normals" and to whom would they flaunt their superiority of the rest of humanity didn't know there were in-charge? This is generational instilled need for payback for causing Detweiler to leave Beowulf. They will be on top, they will rub everybody's nose in it and they will sit in their own little detached piece of Heaven deciding the fates of billions on whatever whim is the flavor of the day. Nothing new in psychiatry here folks----crush your foes using their factions against each other and then........gloat---for at least a millennium (or Alignment Civil War, whichever comes first.).

Brigade XO wrote:As far as why didn't the self made superman not take off to the great unknown and set up their own society. Simple.....they have a massive need to be recognized as at least demi-gods compared to "Normals" and to whom would they flaunt their superiority of the rest of humanity didn't know there were in-charge? This is generational instilled need for payback for causing Detweiler to leave Beowulf. They will be on top, they will rub everybody's nose in it and they will sit in their own little detached piece of Heaven deciding the fates of billions on whatever whim is the flavor of the day. Nothing new in psychiatry here folks----crush your foes using their factions against each other and then........gloat---for at least a millennium (or Alignment Civil War, whichever comes first.).

While that's true, that's not how they justify it to themselves. They justify it as having a heavenly destiny to improve humanity through their efforts. If they go away to set up a new society, then they're not improving the humanity they left behind, are they?

phillies wrote:Using tractor beams, can you tow a captured ship through the faster than light transition, or is this up with -- Buckley would have warned that this is a bad idea?

Should be able to, unless you'd be entering hyper into a grav wave. Well, you still could; but it'd be a good way to turn the towed ship, and possibly yourself, into random debris.

We've seen a BC and a CL tractor LACs into hyper - you just need to max out your hyper generator to get its area of effect large enough to encompass the entire towed ship. However even redlined a hyper generator seems only extend about 6 km from the hull -- so that means tractoring the other ship deep inside your own wedge. [Hell, at 6 km away it's closer than your sidewalls would be; those are normally 10 km from the hull] (Or, alternatively, dropping your wedge before tractoring it close enough the hyper out -- though that'd make for a rougher transition)

Jonathan_S wrote:We've seen a BC and a CL tractor LACs into hyper - you just need to max out your hyper generator to get its area of effect large enough to encompass the entire towed ship. However even redlined a hyper generator seems only extend about 6 km from the hull -- so that means tractoring the other ship deep inside your own wedge. [Hell, at 6 km away it's closer than your sidewalls would be; those are normally 10 km from the hull] (Or, alternatively, dropping your wedge before tractoring it close enough the hyper out -- though that'd make for a rougher transition)

A cylinder of 6 km in radius and 12 km and change in height is plenty of volume to put the other ship in. If you line the two ships back to back, on the same central axis, 1 km behind, it's within that volume.

The issue isn't the hypergenerator, though. One, it's going to be the compensator. Those have barely skin-deep extension. That's one reason why the Masadan LACs were limpeted to the MNS Thunder of God hull. A ship outside the compensator volume is going to feel the full acceleration of the other ship. Since it isn't producing its own wedge, it can't have a compensator of its own. So, at best, if it is intact enough, its own grav plating could compensate up to 50 gravities. If you're trying to tow a damaged ship, there's a good chance it can't do that and that its broken bits won't survive 50 gravities of acceleration.

The second issue is, as you said, grav waves. We don't know how far behind the second sail the effect still works on. It can't be immediately behind, because there's a bit of the ship ahead of the first sail and behind the second, but it's not a lot. And because it's a sail, the ship being towed must be ahead or behind the one doing the towing, not parallel to it -- that would intersect the sail itself.

Or maybe it's possible to do the towing with the other ship perpendicular to the first, so it's wholly inside the 6 km hypergenerator radius and between the two Warshawski sails. There's also one particular orientation of this that would put the towed ship's "up" in the direction of acceleration, so the compensators work most effectively.

 ship towed
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sail sail

(not to scale)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:We've seen a BC and a CL tractor LACs into hyper - you just need to max out your hyper generator to get its area of effect large enough to encompass the entire towed ship. However even redlined a hyper generator seems only extend about 6 km from the hull -- so that means tractoring the other ship deep inside your own wedge. [Hell, at 6 km away it's closer than your sidewalls would be; those are normally 10 km from the hull] (Or, alternatively, dropping your wedge before tractoring it close enough the hyper out -- though that'd make for a rougher transition)

A cylinder of 6 km in radius and 12 km and change in height is plenty of volume to put the other ship in. If you line the two ships back to back, on the same central axis, 1 km behind, it's within that volume.

The issue isn't the hypergenerator, though. One, it's going to be the compensator. Those have barely skin-deep extension. That's one reason why the Masadan LACs were limpeted to the MNS Thunder of God hull. A ship outside the compensator volume is going to feel the full acceleration of the other ship. Since it isn't producing its own wedge, it can't have a compensator of its own. So, at best, if it is intact enough, its own grav plating could compensate up to 50 gravities. If you're trying to tow a damaged ship, there's a good chance it can't do that and that its broken bits won't survive 50 gravities of acceleration.

The second issue is, as you said, grav waves. We don't know how far behind the second sail the effect still works on. It can't be immediately behind, because there's a bit of the ship ahead of the first sail and behind the second, but it's not a lot. And because it's a sail, the ship being towed must be ahead or behind the one doing the towing, not parallel to it -- that would intersect the sail itself.

Or maybe it's possible to do the towing with the other ship perpendicular to the first, so it's wholly inside the 6 km hypergenerator radius and between the two Warshawski sails. There's also one particular orientation of this that would put the towed ship's "up" in the direction of acceleration, so the compensators work most effectively.

 ship towed
    ↓

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 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |-----|  ← ship towing
 |     |
 |     |
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sail sail

(not to scale)

Nitpick - the Masadan LACs were outside the compensator bubble. That's why a couple were lost in tow.

Honor of the Queen wrote:No LAC crew could survive the sort of acceleration ships routinely pulled in hyper for the simple reason that their inertial compensator would pack up the instant they tried it. But if they took the entire crew off and removed or secured all loose gear, Valentine suggested, there was no reason the ships themselves couldn’t take the acceleration on the end of a tractor beam.
[snip]
So far, they’d lost only two of the tiny ships. The LACs were just big enough it took three tractors to zone each of them, and one tractor had lost lock during acceleration. That LAC had simply snapped in half; the second had survived the journey only to have its crew find a ragged, three-meter hole torn half the length of their ship where a twelve-ton pressure tank had come adrift and crashed aft like an ungainly cannonball.

In particular if the LAC had been inside the compensator bubble it would have felt zero acceleration and so the pressure tank wouldn't have torn loose.

Though how much of an issue it is to be outside the compensator bubble depends on how low you're willing to keep your acceleration - and whether or not the towed ship still has sufficient power and systems to operate its grav plates.

Though a normal ship probably doesn't have the tractors to entirely zone another warship - so it'd have to keep accelerations down so the structure can handle being towed from just a few discrete points; rather than encompassing the whole ship in a tractor field. And if you're towing nose to tail then you can probably only grab the front of the towed ship's hammerhead -- giving you the least control over it.

But if you're arranged nose to tail, or parallel side-by-side, then the towed thrust axis is going to be perpendicular to what would be experience when the ship was in operation. (Things would fall aft rather than falling towards the deck of their compartment). Now if the ship can still operate grav plates then you can accelerate at 10 gees (assuming the structure can take it) and everything inside can still experience only a normal 1g pull towards the deck. Take you a while longer to work up to cruising velocity; but not a huge problem. If the grav plates aren't working then you'd be throwing things around even at, say, 0.5 gees -- unless you oriented it so it was perpendicular to you and you were towing up on its dorsal surface; in which case you should be able to accelerate at 1g and everything aboard just feels 1g down towards the deck of their compartment.


As for towing while under sail - SVW (now that I look at it again) strongly implies that it can only be done if the towed ship is able to deploy a single sail to stabilize itself. Without one sail I think the damaged ship would be immediately destroyed. With one sail it can be towed; but it sounds like it would need to be towed clear of the 'wave before trying to change bands or drop out of hyper. It'd likely be far safer to go the long way and tow it around 'waves if at all possible.

(Or, you know, just don't bother trying to tow a ship across interstellar space. Instead send a ship able to carry it back as cargo, or a repair ship to get it capable of sailing itself home, or just scuttle or scrap it in place)

In light of how I incorrectly parsed the companion thread about tactical changes, the RMN could build a larger fleet of much bigger tugs which could be strategically positioned around the planet with wedges always up ready to intercept any ballistic attacks on the planet.

How large is a tug? Or its wedge?

cthia wrote:In light of how I incorrectly parsed the companion thread about tactical changes, the RMN could build a larger fleet of much bigger tugs which could be strategically positioned around the planet with wedges always up ready to intercept any ballistic attacks on the planet.

How large is a tug? Or its wedge?

If the wedges are always on then the sneak attack could plot ballistic courses through the unavoidable gaps between them.

If they're just ready to spring into action when an attack is believed to be underway -- well they already have that. That's the block ships we saw at Beowulf -- which blunted the Hasta attack.

And we're told similar ships exists to protect Manticore and Sphinx; it's just the only attacks those planets have suffered were Oyster Bay and there was no warning. (And even if the block ships had been active the MAlign had plenty of time to slip their graser torps past and to have their spotting Ghosts update the fire control relays to loop Cataphracts through the gaps between block ships.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:In light of how I incorrectly parsed the companion thread about tactical changes, the RMN could build a larger fleet of much bigger tugs which could be strategically positioned around the planet with wedges always up ready to intercept any ballistic attacks on the planet.

That is true, and it is my fault for leaving out certain details. I do that often I suppose, when I think certain things are obvious. And oftentimes because my typing ability greatly lags behind my brain, and I simply forget.

But. A lot of my notions hinge on the middle ground that I hope (and I do appreciate the author's dilemma) that the author will observe between how much of an advantage he will allow MA stealth to have. While simultaneously trying to indulge practically every one of his fans by not repeating a boring adoption of another toothless enemy. We all want the MA to be more of a challenge, don't we? Hence, it is the fuel behind my on-going light-hearted banter with ThinksMarkedly about just how close MA stealth can get.

But, I assume any spider drive detector will have a limitation as well. I have posted many times about how I think a system spider drive detector will be a huge monstrosity which is tethered to the Home system.

Even so, even then I think all the RMN can hope for is an early warning system. But not a system good enough to actually track and target a spider. But maybe just a system that is good enough to go on red alert just in the nick of time, or almost in time?

So, a fleet of tugs may be able to detect intermittent signals as the g-torps penetrate them in time to call out range and bearing to their cohorts behind them.

Jonathan_S wrote:If the wedges are always on then the sneak attack could plot ballistic courses through the unavoidable gaps between them.

You very well may be right about that. But my brain is still having reservations about accepting the ability at face value. G-torps don't have wedges, so I suppose that would make them more maneverable since the g-torps don't have to overcome the acceleration of a wedge, but it seems like thrusters should be detectable. Also, the MA has very limited FTL ability and real-time contol of g-torps to be able to thread the needle don't seem written in stone. Unless it can get certain objects positioned deeply inside the hyper limit. Ahem!

Jonathan_S wrote:If they're just ready to spring into action when an attack is believed to be underway -- well they already have that. That's the block ships we saw at Beowulf -- which blunted the Hasta attack.

And we're told similar ships exists to protect Manticore and Sphinx; it's just the only attacks those planets have suffered were Oyster Bay and there was no warning. (And even if the block ships had been active the MAlign had plenty of time to slip their graser torps past and to have their spotting Ghosts update the fire control relays to loop Cataphracts through the gaps between block ships.

Actually I forgot about that, plus, I could use a reread.

At any rate, how many people want the MA to be a real worthy opponent far more entertaining than an 800 lb teddy bear raise your hands.

Ok, I should have asked how many people don't want that.