Attacking Darius:

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.

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?

phillies wrote:

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!.

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.

Jonathan_S wrote:That's probably an overstatement. Yes, the stealth field has to have its weak side pointed away from the enemy. But simply aiming their waste heat towards the planet they're orbiting, or the system's star, should prevent it from being picked up by anybody looking inward from beyond the hyper limit.

(Won't help if the scout manages to sneak recon drones in behind the stealthed forts though. And if they're dumping waste heat towards the planet a close enough view might be able to pick up to resulting hot spots in its upper atmosphere)

I think the bigger problem is that no system, including stealth fields, has 100% uptime. Some of the forts are almost inevitable going to have their stealth fields down for maintenance at any given time -- making them far easier to spot.

penny wrote:Indeed Phillies. I pointed out long time ago that his idea of a fort or fortress is not a fort or fortress. Fortified position is the mainstay of a fort. If a fort can not hold out for at least a week, I'd say, then it is NOT a fortified position.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:Indeed Phillies. I pointed out long time ago that his idea of a fort or fortress is not a fort or fortress. Fortified position is the mainstay of a fort. If a fort can not hold out for at least a week, I'd say, then it is NOT a fortified position.

Sure - it should be able to feed its crew and fuel its reactors for a reasonable length of time.

Though that doesn't really reduce the frequency of resupply trips -- because you'd want to keep the forts' supplies pretty close to topped up. That way if the enemy does attack all the forts have close to their maximum supply levels already aboard.

(If they could hold, say, 6 weeks of supplies it'd be pretty stupid to wait over 5 weeks before before resupplying them. They're sitting right there, just top things off every day or three and then you don't need to worry about getting caught short on supplies)

penny wrote:Indeed Phillies. I pointed out long time ago that his idea of a fort or fortress is not a fort or fortress. Fortified position is the mainstay of a fort. If a fort can not hold out for at least a week, I'd say, then it is NOT a fortified position.

Jonathan_S wrote:Sure - it should be able to feed its crew and fuel its reactors for a reasonable length of time.

Though that doesn't really reduce the frequency of resupply trips -- because you'd want to keep the forts' supplies pretty close to topped up. That way if the enemy does attack all the forts have close to their maximum supply levels already aboard.

(If they could hold, say, 6 weeks of supplies it'd be pretty stupid to wait over 5 weeks before before resupplying them. They're sitting right there, just top things off every day or three and then you don't need to worry about getting caught short on supplies)

Jonathan_S wrote:Sure - it should be able to feed its crew and fuel its reactors for a reasonable length of time.

Though that doesn't really reduce the frequency of resupply trips -- because you'd want to keep the forts' supplies pretty close to topped up. That way if the enemy does attack all the forts have close to their maximum supply levels already aboard.

(If they could hold, say, 6 weeks of supplies it'd be pretty stupid to wait over 5 weeks before before resupplying them. They're sitting right there, just top things off every day or three and then you don't need to worry about getting caught short on supplies)

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Indeed Phillies. I pointed out long time ago that his idea of a fort or fortress is not a fort or fortress. Fortified position is the mainstay of a fort. If a fort can not hold out for at least a week, I'd say, then it is NOT a fortified position.

Jonathan_S wrote:Sure - it should be able to feed its crew and fuel its reactors for a reasonable length of time.

Though that doesn't really reduce the frequency of resupply trips -- because you'd want to keep the forts' supplies pretty close to topped up. That way if the enemy does attack all the forts have close to their maximum supply levels already aboard.

(If they could hold, say, 6 weeks of supplies it'd be pretty stupid to wait over 5 weeks before before resupplying them. They're sitting right there, just top things off every day or three and then you don't need to worry about getting caught short on supplies)

In this style of warfare, a fort (particularly in the home system) is not expected to withstand a siege; because if the invaders can set up a siege, then the mobile forces have already been defeated. A fort is intended to hold a strategic position, such as a wormhole, long enough to be relieved by the manned ships which should have a combined offensive power greater than any fort.

Strangely at Galton there were no manned mobile forces. Note that for Manticore, this includes all those forces that are just a wormhole away.

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Sure - it should be able to feed its crew and fuel its reactors for a reasonable length of time.

Though that doesn't really reduce the frequency of resupply trips -- because you'd want to keep the forts' supplies pretty close to topped up. That way if the enemy does attack all the forts have close to their maximum supply levels already aboard.

(If they could hold, say, 6 weeks of supplies it'd be pretty stupid to wait over 5 weeks before before resupplying them. They're sitting right there, just top things off every day or three and then you don't need to worry about getting caught short on supplies)

How many days of food for a 500 man crew can a million ton freighter deliver? The main limitation is quality of food. Unlike a nuclear submarine the cubic space for storage isn't a big deal, and a SSN typically seems to have 90 days of food. But that last 30 days isn't the best food.