Attacking Darius:

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Quantum effects are consistent, therefore quantum fluctuations should also be consistent. Quantum manipulation is consistent as well; or it would be impossible to use it in our next generation quantum computers because these quantum computers would then be impossible.

Jonathan_S wrote:On the contrary quantum fluctuations are about the only source we know of of basically perfect randomness.

Yes, they vary within a definable range - but they are equally likely to be any value within that range; and their value at one instant has zero correlation to their value at the next instant.

penny wrote:You said exactly what I meant. Quantum fluctuations will always vary within a definable range. Consistent. That is why I said all you have to do is add the appropriate weight back in from the tables in the back or front of the book (adjust by the appropriate weight). But of course, you cannot pinpoint a certain value; which would be completely contrary to quantum theory.

tlb wrote:We are trying to say that the wall is chaotic, involving gravity shears, energy flows and fluctuations. Instead you think an "appropriate weight" can be ADDED to account for all effects. What if sometimes that has to be subtracted? What if it manifests itself as a force that can have both a random magnitude (even if it is capped by some value) and a random direction?

Jonathan_S wrote:Exactly - knowing an unmeasurably value might, for example, be any value between 0.5 and 2.5 doesn't really help if that range of fluctuations causes a multiple lightsecond dispersion in your entry point. What can you add in to the unknown to counter that?

tlb wrote:There is NO reason to assume that there are only two possible results, NOR that two successive jumps would end up with the same displacement from the origin. Instead they will end up somewhere in the circle defined by the origin and what we hope will be the maximum possible displacement from that origin. From the text in chapter 38 of Echoes of Honor (given earlier in this thread), we know that could be on the order of light seconds.

Again, if the answer were easy, then would already have been solved in the Honorverse.

Jonathan_S wrote:Yeah, I would expect a spherical error margin; unless something goes especially wrong you're going to appear within X of your target point, but you're equally likely to be displaced in any direction from it.

If the variations were purely quantum then it'd probably be an evenly weighted error (you're just as likely to appear at any point within that probability sphere) - but if there's some classical component then it seems more likely it'd be a weighted distribution (for example, you're more likely to emerge closer to the center of the target than right out at the edges of the probability sphere).

penny wrote:Jonathan, you also are not staying within the parameters of our exchange.

I posited the ability to duplicate a jump inputting the exact same data under the exact same conditions with the same ship. I do not think the fluctuations are from moment to moment or doglegs would be impossible. Period. It wasn't luck what Theophile Kgari pulled off.

So, under the exact same conditions, a jump should produce nearly the same results. I attempted to explain my interpretations of the differences, and why.

Jonathan_S has been consistent and you seem to avoid what he is saying. So what do you mean about "the parameters of the exchange"? Do you mean that he should allow you to incorrectly interpret what he said?

Absolutely not! No more than I should allow either of you to misinterpret what I am saying. But I am accustomed to it after nine years on the forum of spinning my wheels for pages only to see all of you eventually come around. In the frequent face of successive books corroborating much of what I argued about for months/years.

Now, are you going to answer that one simple question? You never answer direct questions, but I am the one who avoids things?? Just answer the question.

penny wrote:Regarding kzt's suggested tactic of microjumping in the middle of a GA fleet, is that doable by a navy other than a navy belonging to the GA?

If this is the question you mean, you should have noticed that I commented on it at the time he suggested it.

I did not think that it would be as effective as he suggested, because of the problems with microjumping. The fleet being attacked will be immediately notified of the arrival by the gravitic signals generated by a transit and able to respond quicker than a fleet getting their bearings after a jump.

So any fleet (not just one belonging to the GA) could give it a try, if they thought the results were worth the effort.

penny wrote:
Regarding kzt's suggested tactic of microjumping in the middle of a GA fleet, is that doable by a navy other than a navy belonging to the GA?

I don’t think it is reliably doable by anyone. Particularly not a squadron. It’s a highly unexpected tactic because it is impossible. Like traveling in the top bands of hyperspace is impossible.

tlb wrote:If this is the question you mean, you should have noticed that I commented on it at the time he suggested it.

I did not think that it would be as effective as he suggested, because of the problems with microjumping. The fleet being attacked will be immediately notified of the arrival by the gravitic signals generated by a transit and able to respond quicker than a fleet getting their bearings after a jump.

So any fleet (not just one belonging to the GA) could give it a try, if they thought the results were worth the effort.

We have the example in SVW about the Adm. Pierre battlecruiser taskforce against the DN HMS Bellerophon. The Peep taskforce translated within energy range of the DN. Naively one might think this gives the Peeps the advantage, because they knew when they were translating and could immediately attack (ignoring the fact that they didn't intentionally translate close to the DN), while the victim ship was on the graveyard shift and the officer of the watch was very junior.

But what happened is that the battlecruisers took time to reset their systems after the translation, giving the DN the initiative. By the time the BCs started firing, the DN had the sidewalls up. When it returned fire, there was no doubt of the outcome because the DN seriously outgunned the BCs.

This tactic would only make sense if you could use a small force to take on a larger but unprepared one. If you had a larger force to start with, you wouldn't need this strategy.

penny wrote:But I am accustomed to it after nine years on the forum of spinning my wheels for pages only to see all of you eventually come around. In the frequent face of successive books corroborating much of what I argued about for months/years.

You will have to refresh my memory; because on the biggest disputes that I have had with you, I do not recall a single instance of my coming around to your viewpoint (or other people agreeing with you on these particular subjects for that matter):

Beowulf Karma,
Honor cheating in the sword duel,
Theisman should be tried for treason,
Honor should be tried for dome collapse on school children.

Those are just the ones that come immediately to mind.

Left mount this horse from the other side. Uwi g supplies textev.

"Plot us a least-time course to the Spindle System, if you please, Ms. Zilwicki," Terekhov requested courteously, and Helen swallowed hard. She'd calculated endless courses to all sorts of destinations . . . under classroom conditions.

An Alpha with a genetically engineered brain would never swallow hard. An Alpha would be excited by the mental feedback.

"Aye, aye, Sir!" she said quickly, giving the only possible answer, and began punching data requests into her console.

The speed at which an Alpha who is genengineered to do this job would be off the scale. Without hesitation. Brutally confident.

IF an Alpha even had to utilize a computer rather than his/her own brain. An Alpha might be able to perform these calculations without computer assistance, and much faster. The response time of an Alpha should be increased significantly. Time in the middle of a battle is a valuable commodity.

Lieutenant Commander Wright sat back, elbows propped on his chair's arm rests, with a mildly interested expression. Part of her resented his presence, but most of her was deeply relieved he was there. He might not intervene to save her from herself if he saw her making a mistake during her calculations. But at least she could count on him to stop her at the end if she'd plotted a course to put them inside a star somewhere on the far side of the League.

An Alpha astrogator would NEVER make a mistake, and would be appalled at the idea of needing a babysitter to save them.

The computers began obediently spewing out information, and she plotted the endpoints of the necessary course, feeling grateful that Hexapuma was already outside the local star's hyper limit. At least she didn't have to crank that into her calculations!

An Alpha would welcome as much complexity as possible out of boredom. Again, if they were even using the ship's computers. Especially if they are (@Thinksmarkedly) augmented with their own supercomputer interfacing with their brain. We all know the speed and advantages of having an onboard processor.

Next she punched in a search order, directing the computer to overlay her rough course with the strongest h-space gravity waves and to isolate the wave patterns which would carry them towards Spindle.

An Alpha astrogator has that data memorized, at the very least.

She also remembered to allow for velocity loss on downward hyper translations to follow a given grav wave.

An Alpha would never forget.

She'd forgotten to do that once in an Academy astrogation problem and wound up adding over sixty hours to the total voyage time she was calculating

Should've copied off the Alpha sitting beside you. LOL

She felt a small trickle of satisfaction as she realized the same thing would have happened here, if she'd simply asked the computers to plot a course along the most powerful gravity waves, because one strong section of them never rose above the Gamma bands, which would have required at least three downward translations. That would not only have cost them over sixty percent of their base velocity at each downward translation, but Hexapuma's maximum apparent velocity would have been far lower in the lower bands, as well.

She punched in waypoints along the blinking green line of her rough course as the computer refined the best options for gravity waves and the necessary impeller drive transitions between them. The blinking line stopped blinking, burning a steady green, as the waypoints marched along it.

As easy as the multiplication tables for an Alpha.


Coordinating more than one ship:

Control had to be so fine at such low ranges that something as small as a tiny difference in the cycle time of the hyper generators of two different ships could throw their n-space emergences off by light-seconds and hopelessly scramble his formation.

There would be an Alpha in each ship as an astrogator. I wonder how that would affect the equation.

Finally from chapter 54 of Torch of Freedom we know that the hyper-generator includes mechanical parts that can wear: in this case a rotor shaft that snapped and caused additional damage.

Which would throw a spanner in the works for any astrogator, for any microjump attempted. Risks are taken just as they are when removing the safety interlocks from the "engines."

Summary: I have been spinning my wheels on something so simple it is ridiculous. After All the threads speculating about the MA's genetic tampering. sigh

In the heat of battle, any time saved can be the difference between life and death. An astrogator that is an Alpha doesn't make mistakes. An Alpha might even anticipate requests and have the results ready ahead of time.

There might not even be an astrogator aboard MA ships. The commander may be able to do the calculations in his own head. If you cannot fathom the capabilities of an Alpha aboard each ship in critical positions providing a possible decisive edge, where were you in so many of the appropriate threads?

sigh

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:If this is the question you mean, you should have noticed that I commented on it at the time he suggested it.

I did not think that it would be as effective as he suggested, because of the problems with microjumping. The fleet being attacked will be immediately notified of the arrival by the gravitic signals generated by a transit and able to respond quicker than a fleet getting their bearings after a jump.

So any fleet (not just one belonging to the GA) could give it a try, if they thought the results were worth the effort.

We have the example in SVW about the Adm. Pierre battlecruiser taskforce against the DN HMS Bellerophon. The Peep taskforce translated within energy range of the DN. Naively one might think this gives the Peeps the advantage, because they knew when they were translating and could immediately attack (ignoring the fact that they didn't intentionally translate close to the DN), while the victim ship was on the graveyard shift and the officer of the watch was very junior.

But what happened is that the battlecruisers took time to reset their systems after the translation, giving the DN the initiative. By the time the BCs started firing, the DN had the sidewalls up. When it returned fire, there was no doubt of the outcome because the DN seriously outgunned the BCs.

This tactic would only make sense if you could use a small force to take on a larger but unprepared one. If you had a larger force to start with, you wouldn't need this strategy.

I read kzt's tactic to be solely available to stealth ships. GA ships do not enjoy that stealth.

If RFC will now allow unmanned vessels, will he allow those same vessels to microjump in the middle of a formation. Only one ship needs to microjump in the middle of a fleet if said ship is developed for that purpose.

kzt wrote:

penny wrote:
Regarding kzt's suggested tactic of microjumping in the middle of a GA fleet, is that doable by a navy other than a navy belonging to the GA?

I don’t think it is reliably doable by anyone. Particularly not a squadron. It’s a highly unexpected tactic because it is impossible. Like traveling in the top bands of hyperspace is impossible.

So you microjump several ships independently until you hit the mark. One ship unleashing hell should do the trick. One sub killing 14 ships.

All the stuff that Helen Zilwicki had to enter by hand to set a course could have been done by a properly programmed computer after the end points were entered. This is not even a case where AI was needed. Look at each intermediate step, she just had to initiate the sub-process and the computer did the work. So why wasn't the sub-process automatically initiated? The enter page might need the ability to bypass certain steps, but I cannot think of reason why bypassing would be chosen.

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Yeah, I would expect a spherical error margin; unless something goes especially wrong you're going to appear within X of your target point, but you're equally likely to be displaced in any direction from it.

If the variations were purely quantum then it'd probably be an evenly weighted error (you're just as likely to appear at any point within that probability sphere) - but if there's some classical component then it seems more likely it'd be a weighted distribution (for example, you're more likely to emerge closer to the center of the target than right out at the edges of the probability sphere).

Jonathan, you also are not staying within the parameters of our exchange.

I posited the ability to duplicate a jump inputting the exact same data under the exact same conditions with the same ship. I do not think the fluctuations are from moment to moment or doglegs would be impossible. Period. It wasn't luck what Theophile Kgari pulled off.

So, under the exact same conditions, a jump should produce nearly the same results. I attempted to explain my interpretations of the differences, and why.

Why would moment to moment variations make doglegs courses impossible?

Sure moment to movement variations affecting the entry for that jump would add a certain amount of positional uncertainty, and the exit would add more. But if you know the likely maximum positional error distance (i.e. you'll be no more than X km from your target; you just don't know which direction you missed it by) you can factor those stacked positional errors into your planned course.

If you're aiming for safety then assume you emerged in the worst possible spot in that spherical error blob. For example, if you're jumping towards the hyper limit assume you ended up X km closer to it than planned, so make your course X km shorter than if you assumed you'd hit your entry perfectly. And ditto on hyper exit, if you know you could end up Y km off from your target then make sure the targeted exit point is backed up at least Y km clear of anything it'd be dangerous to emerge next to.

If both of those assumptions were dead wrong you might end up X+Y km short of your ideal emergence point; but more likely they'll be less than the maximal value, and also partially cancel out, so you'll end up somewhat closer - but still inside a sphere of X+Y km radius around your target point.

X & Y might be in the hundreds of thousands of km; but the theory still holds. You can factor maximal errors into your course, or if you need to roll the dice you can risk betting that they errors will be smaller and/or partially cancel, and not leave as much safety margin.

(If you have a bearing uncertainly on entry, where you might get slightly twisted off course as you arrive in hyper, then they wouldn't stack like that; the potential error in bearing would swamp the positional error from entry - but I think the hyperlog wouldn't be able to do long range navigation if there was any measurable uncertainly in your initial heading after hyperspace entry; so I think we can safely assume any errors are positional. You might be offset to some side but, at worst, still on a course parallel to the one you aimed for)


And it's possible that a very skilled astrogator might have a better feel for how those moment to moment fluctuation errors are going to play out on this jump that the baseline computer does - and so assume smaller error spheres. Also, if your engineering team is top notch and has your hyper generator dialed in to unusually tight tolerances then your ship might jump with smaller errors than the average warship. So the maximal error might not be the same for all ships, nor the same for a given ship in various situations.