Attacking Darius:

Darius will force a traditional missile battle. That is what everyone in the forum wishes to see I hope. Whether any of you think Alphas are worthy of the status or not, you are crazy if you don't wish the final installment(s) to prove that they are. Here's hoping god will put his all into the end.

Frankly, I wish to add several new members to The Honorverse Top Ten Tacticians, Strategists list. Pardon me if I do. If you don't wish the same, you are cheating your expectations.

The scouting mission sent to gain intel on El Dorado utilized drones, of course. Those drones had to remain at the far edge of the system for sake of stealth. The GA did not want to tip its hand to Galton that they had been found, giving them a chance to prepare a warm welcome.

But Darius won't make it so easy. First, I think the drones will be detected. And the forts will be under the cover of stealth. Drones will not see spider-driven forts. Huge jamming platforms near the planet will blind Ghost Rider drones. More on that later.

Any scouts on missions like Alistair McKeon, will not return. Every scout or scouting party sent to Darius will be destroyed. The GA will be working effectively with zero intel. If the GA fails to get any intel, they will have to plan for a traditional missile duel. One can not obtain intel on invisible forts, invisible ships and invisible ...

Ghost Rider has enjoyed its dominance for far too long.

However, if there is even just one of you who thinks I do not wish to see a traditional missile battle, then you are insane. I foresee the backdrop of that final climactic battle to be the fight for control of Darius' orbitals.

We have discussed ad nauseam how difficult it is to attack through a junction, and equally how difficult to attack the junction itself. But it should also be difficult to breach the defenses of a stealthy opponent's goal line defense. In a goal line defense, the defense is packed tightly, enjoying mutual defense. A tough nut to crack. Attacking someone's orbitals should be equally difficult if all else is equal; as we know with the MA, it isn't. But the defender has to maintain control of the orbitals.

The Alpha vs Alpha(s)

Everyone keeps playing the same old song, Alphas are not perfect'. But an Alpha does not need to be perfect. In the heat of battle, an Alpha only needs to be more perfect than you.

The funniest thing about the matter is that everyone has always gotten a little upset with me for pointing out the simple fact that they are Alphas. The author made them Alphas. Not me. I have managed to identify it as plain old jealousy. Not of me, but of Alphas. They are Alphas, people. Plain and simple. David Weber created them. I do not dispute the author's ability to create. All and all, don't hate Alphas because they are beautiful and smart. Hate them because they are more beautiful and smarter than you. But don't just hate them.

Honor is going to lose a lot of people in this battle. I expect there to be a lot of sacrifices. And since most of you were willing to feed me to a rabid treecat about the MA sacrificing a Ghost, you better get a hold of yourself before joining the GA's trip to Darius. We can only hope none of our favorite characters are killed. We can hope.

Round one will go to Darius.

penny wrote:The scouting mission sent to gain intel on El Dorado utilized drones, of course. Those drones had to remain at the far edge of the system for sake of stealth. The GA did not want to tip its hand to Galton that they had been found, giving them a chance to prepare a warm welcome.

But Darius won't make it so easy. First, I think the drones will be detected. And the forts will be under the cover of stealth. Drones will not see spider-driven forts. Huge jamming platforms near the planet will blind Ghost Rider drones. More on that later.

Any scouts on missions like Alistair McKeon, will not return.

Alistair McKeon died fighting in the Battle of Manticore, not on a scouting mission.

Although Galton may, or may not, have known that it was being scouted; the Malign definitely knew that it had been found before the fleet departed. Which means that when Darius is found, they will know approximately when the fleet will arrive for them.

Even today there are missiles that can attack jamming stations.

Not that it matters for any outcome, but as a point of information the Onion contains Alphas, Betas and Gammas.

If you are planning to add any of the Detweilers to that list, well it's your list so go ahead. Other people's lists may vary.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:The scouting mission sent to gain intel on El Dorado utilized drones, of course. Those drones had to remain at the far edge of the system for sake of stealth. The GA did not want to tip its hand to Galton that they had been found, giving them a chance to prepare a warm welcome.

But Darius won't make it so easy. First, I think the drones will be detected. And the forts will be under the cover of stealth. Drones will not see spider-driven forts. Huge jamming platforms near the planet will blind Ghost Rider drones. More on that later.

Any scouts on missions like Alistair McKeon, will not return.

Alistair McKeon died fighting in the Battle of Manticore, not on a scouting mission.

I assume he mean "Scotty" Tremaine's CA, HMS Alistair McKeon - who checked out the "dead end" system that turned out to be Galton.

penny wrote:The scouting mission sent to gain intel on El Dorado utilized drones, of course. Those drones had to remain at the far edge of the system for sake of stealth. The GA did not want to tip its hand to Galton that they had been found, giving them a chance to prepare a warm welcome.

But Darius won't make it so easy. First, I think the drones will be detected. And the forts will be under the cover of stealth. Drones will not see spider-driven forts. Huge jamming platforms near the planet will blind Ghost Rider drones. More on that later.

Any scouts on missions like Alistair McKeon, will not return.

tlb wrote:Alistair McKeon died fighting in the Battle of Manticore, not on a scouting mission.

Jonathan_S wrote:I assume he mean "Scotty" Tremaine's CA, HMS Alistair McKeon - who checked out the "dead end" system that turned out to be Galton.

Thank you, that makes more sense. But considering how far out Scotty's ship was, it seems unlikely that it will be destroyed. Not even the Malign will have shells of defenses extending out that far.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:The scouting mission sent to gain intel on El Dorado utilized drones, of course. Those drones had to remain at the far edge of the system for sake of stealth. The GA did not want to tip its hand to Galton that they had been found, giving them a chance to prepare a warm welcome.

But Darius won't make it so easy. First, I think the drones will be detected. And the forts will be under the cover of stealth. Drones will not see spider-driven forts. Huge jamming platforms near the planet will blind Ghost Rider drones. More on that later.

Any scouts on missions like Alistair McKeon, will not return.

tlb wrote:Alistair McKeon died fighting in the Battle of Manticore, not on a scouting mission.

Jonathan_S wrote:I assume he mean "Scotty" Tremaine's CA, HMS Alistair McKeon - who checked out the "dead end" system that turned out to be Galton.

Thank you, that makes more sense. But considering how far out Scotty's ship was, it seems unlikely that it will be destroyed. Not even the Malign will have shells of defenses extending out that far.

No need to. No scout will be able to obtain sensor readings on the MA's stealthed forces from that far out. And drones will be eaten.

Are you sure Darius will not have defenses extending that far out? If the GA can hope to picket the hyper limit in an attempt to blockade (as Honor adopted as a contingency plan in case she needed to fetch a larger force), then surely Darius can "picket" its own hyper limit. Better not hyper in at the wrong location. Those thirty seconds it takes to clean up your vomit might lead to cleaning up your excrement.

penny wrote:No need to. No scout will be able to obtain sensor readings on the MA's stealthed forces from that far out. And drones will be eaten.

Are you sure Darius will not have defenses extending that far out? If the GA can hope to picket the hyper limit in an attempt to blockade (as Honor adopted as a contingency plan in case she needed to fetch a larger force), then surely Darius can "picket" its own hyper limit. Better not hyper in at the wrong location.

Scotty's ship, as you should know, did not come out at the hyper-limit; instead it made the transition three light-weeks out. Do you really think the defense will extend that far? I will accept that the ship will not see everything in stealth mode, but it will certainly see that this is an inhabited sytem. Remember that stealth has to be aligned with the enemy, so the forts would have to know where Scotty will make transit three weeks before he arrives in order to be invisible to him.

It will be about eight hours before they could even get a sensor reading on his arrival.

tlb wrote:Scotty's ship, as you should know, did not come out at the hyper-limit; instead it made the transition three light-weeks out. Do you really think the defense will extend that far? I will accept that the ship will not see everything in stealth mode, but it will certainly see that this is an inhabited sytem. Remember that stealth has to be aligned with the enemy, so the forts would have to know where Scotty will make transit three weeks before he arrives in order to be invisible to him.

It will be about eight hours before they could even get a sensor reading on his arrival.

Right, there's a causality problem here. Unless the forts are 24/7/365 (or however long the days and years are on Darius Gamma) under full stealth, they can't go into stealth when they detect the scouting. They'd have to detect the scout hours before the scout decides to scout.

Similar for drones, and the drones in Galton did not come even close to the hyperlimit. They made a high-speed ballistic fly-by of the system and were recovered later. They just came much closer than the ships.

There's no way to avoid scouting or making the scouts not know that there's an inhabited planet, there's a lot of ship traffic, and some forts are in orbit (because they'll pass in front of the planet). I've also argued that the industrial nodes will not be stealthed at all, so shipyards (and thus ships in construction) and space stations should be visible to a scout to.

I'll grant not finding non-orbiting assets that aren't powered up. Those may be additional forts and ships, but most especially missile shoals.

So I have two questions: will what the scouts see suffice to warn of the terrible danger that is there (assuming there is)? And if not, will they blunder into opening hailing frequencies and get duped into thinking they have not found the Alignment Lair?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:Scotty's ship, as you should know, did not come out at the hyper-limit; instead it made the transition three light-weeks out. Do you really think the defense will extend that far? I will accept that the ship will not see everything in stealth mode, but it will certainly see that this is an inhabited sytem. Remember that stealth has to be aligned with the enemy, so the forts would have to know where Scotty will make transit three weeks before he arrives in order to be invisible to him.

It will be about eight hours before they could even get a sensor reading on his arrival.

Right, there's a causality problem here. Unless the forts are 24/7/365 (or however long the days and years are on Darius Gamma) under full stealth, they can't go into stealth when they detect the scouting. They'd have to detect the scout hours before the scout decides to scout.

Similar for drones, and the drones in Galton did not come even close to the hyperlimit. They made a high-speed ballistic fly-by of the system and were recovered later. They just came much closer than the ships.

There's no way to avoid scouting or making the scouts not know that there's an inhabited planet, there's a lot of ship traffic, and some forts are in orbit (because they'll pass in front of the planet). I've also argued that the industrial nodes will not be stealthed at all, so shipyards (and thus ships in construction) and space stations should be visible to a scout to.

I'll grant not finding non-orbiting assets that aren't powered up. Those may be additional forts and ships, but most especially missile shoals.

So I have two questions: will what the scouts see suffice to warn of the terrible danger that is there (assuming there is)? And if not, will they blunder into opening hailing frequencies and get duped into thinking they have not found the Alignment Lair?

One of the reasons Forts are.. well forts... and not ships, is they are not self-sustainable. They don't have 3 month fuel bunkers, they don't have 6 months of food stored, they don't have piles of spare parts in warehouses, they don't have huge crew rec areas, they don't have hydroponics, etc, etc.

All those things are offloaded to the planetary surface or nearby platforms that do have those features so the Forts are 100% weapons. So when they routinely shift to a relaxed alert posture, there will be a steady flow of non-stealthed cargo and personnel ships flowing back and forth from their nearby support platforms, as well as non-stealthy repair cutters and platforms doing the maintenance that can't be done during alert postures.

At any time a double digit percentage of the forts will be undergoing this evolution - just to get food. so Stealthy or not - their support hardware won't be, which will make them visible.

Theemile wrote:
One of the reasons Forts are.. well forts... and not ships, is they are not self-sustainable. They don't have 3 month fuel bunkers, they don't have 6 months of food stored, they don't have piles of spare parts in warehouses, they don't have huge crew rec areas, they don't have hydroponics, etc, etc.

All those things are offloaded to the planetary surface or nearby platforms that do have those features so the Forts are 100% weapons. So when they routinely shift to a relaxed alert posture, there will be a steady flow of non-stealthed cargo and personnel ships flowing back and forth from their nearby support platforms, as well as non-stealthy repair cutters and platforms doing the maintenance that can't be done during alert postures.

At any time a double digit percentage of the forts will be undergoing this evolution - just to get food. so Stealthy or not - their support hardware won't be, which will make them visible.

Sounds like a remarkably bad fort design.

However, perhaps the Buckley Institute for Advanced Ideas will emulate the illustrious author and steal an approach from another book. "All we need to do is create a wedge with 200 times the normal diameter, and use it to fire a dirigible planet at Darius"

Alternatively, Darius will suffer the coup d'etat already forming up in the previous book. (Hint: Glider.)

On the third hand, one of the clones will realize that a Bolthole is needed. NOW!.

Theemile wrote:One of the reasons Forts are.. well forts... and not ships, is they are not self-sustainable. They don't have 3 month fuel bunkers, they don't have 6 months of food stored, they don't have piles of spare parts in warehouses, they don't have huge crew rec areas, they don't have hydroponics, etc, etc.

All those things are offloaded to the planetary surface or nearby platforms that do have those features so the Forts are 100% weapons. So when they routinely shift to a relaxed alert posture, there will be a steady flow of non-stealthed cargo and personnel ships flowing back and forth from their nearby support platforms, as well as non-stealthy repair cutters and platforms doing the maintenance that can't be done during alert postures.

At any time a double digit percentage of the forts will be undergoing this evolution - just to get food. so Stealthy or not - their support hardware won't be, which will make them visible.

phillies wrote:Sounds like a remarkably bad fort design.

However, perhaps the Buckley Institute for Advanced Ideas will emulate the illustrious author and steal an approach from another book. "All we need to do is create a wedge with 200 times the normal diameter, and use it to fire a dirigible planet at Darius"

Alternatively, Darius will suffer the coup d'etat already forming up in the previous book. (Hint: Glider.)

On the third hand, one of the clones will realize that a Bolthole is needed. NOW!.

I think one of the reasons for the large size of some of the Galton forts is that they house the Galton command structure; so require extra room for all the extra people. The same as some ships have to be bigger to accommodate a Flag Deck.