Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

penny wrote:Of course, a reactor on each platform nullifies the need for beamed power. Anyway, I'm just trying to wrap my head around beaming power from a single fort to serve 10,000 separate platforms. If power can be transferred that efficiently, then that setup should be able to fuel at least several platforms indefinitely in the heat of battle, if plasma does not need refilling, and if platforms don't overheat, etc.

The downside is in the event of the minefields completion, the RMN might move their castles (forts) further in-system, relying upon the minefield. Guess what would become a priority target for the MAN? The power source.

I was thinking of the micro fusion reactor and only bring it up at time of attack to save fuel. The beamed power would just keep capacitors topped off and power communications etc.

Haven's Navy has the Donkey and the Solarian Navy has the Husky, both of which include the ability to receive beamed power and gang together multiple platforms. So a fort might only need a dozen power beams and additional devices to receive it and pass it on to multiple other devices. This might even be built into the IEWP. From chapter 65 of At All Costs:

When NavInt reported that the new Manty pods incorporated onboard tractors as a way to allow their pre-pod ships to tow greater numbers of them, it had seemed impossible for the Republic to respond. Their pods were already too big, and they had too limited a power budget, to permit the designers to cram a tractor into them (and power the damned thing), as well. But Shannon had decided to turn the problem on its head. Instead of fitting additional tractors into the pods, she'd come up with the "donkey." That was what everyone was calling it, although it had a suitably esoteric alphabet-soup designation, and it was another of those elegantly simple Foraker specialties.

Instead of the typically Manty bells-and-whistles approach of putting the tractor inside the pod, Shannon had simply built a very stealthy pod-sized platform which consisted of nothing except a solid mass of tractor beams and a receiver for beamed power from the ships which deployed it. Each "donkey" had the capacity to tow ten pods, and a Sovereign of Space-class SD(P) had enough tractors to tow twenty of them. Better yet, they could actually be ganged together, as long as all the pods in the gang could be lined up for power transmission from the mother ship. In theory, they could have been stacked three tiers deep, with each donkey towing ten more donkeys, each towing ten more donkeys, each ...

If Lester Tourville had so chosen, his two hundred and forty superdreadnoughts could—in theory—have towed 4.8 million pods. Except for the minor fact that the drag would have reduced them to negative acceleration numbers. Not to mention the fact that he didn't begin to have the power transmission capability to feed that many donkeys. Still, he could tow quite a lot of them, and the readiness numbers on the display gave him a sense of profound satisfaction.

Note that both units only receive power from the ship, but it would seem possible to beam power as easily as use tractor beams.

However, thinking more about that, it might be better for the fort to cycle through the platforms; rather than dividing up the power at each intermediate step.

tlb wrote:No one of any intelligence attacks a junction by coming through the wormhole, because that is overkill - as you say. Instead they come out of hyperspace and attack with wedges and sidewalls up, or else sneak in using the spider drive and coasting.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That might be what Foraker is thinking of using those for. And don't forget that they have multiple wormholes termini to defend.

But Commander Clayton was thinking of a wormhole transit with "no wedge or sidewall."

There apparently has been ONE successful assault through a wormhole (in Honor Among Enemies): units of Home Fleet fleet came though the junction as part of the plan to capture Trevor's Star from the Peeps. A scout was sent through to check that the defenders had been pulled away by the attack on the forces around the planet and then went back to signal for a mass transit. If there had been a minefield present to destroy anything bigger than a scout, then Manticore's plan might have failed.

penny wrote:Why would the GA need to improve upon that setup? Seventy thousand graser shots against ships without a wedge or sidewall? Isn't that already overkill? If an enemy has more ships than that minefield can destroy to send through that meat grinder, then there is a much bigger problem.

There is the possibility that the MAN might have them shooting at empty space; other than that, I can't see a need to improve upon that minefield.

Mines require a fair bit of upkeep, especially trying to keep them properly positioned around something like an arrival lane where you can't put them into orbit around it. Sure they'd have station keeping thrusters but only so much fuel for those and they can probably only operate for so long before you've got to service the thrusters. So as a long term emplacement you're pretty regularly sending folks out there to refuel and/or bring in for service the individual mines

The IEWPs should have longer effective range than mines (against sidewall protected targets the 250,000km of energy mount range vs the 30,000 km of modern laserhead range) - plus you need 1/7th as many for the same number of shots. Combined, that should let you cut down on how often you need to send craft out there to service the defenses.

penny wrote:Of course, a reactor on each platform nullifies the need for beamed power. Anyway, I'm just trying to wrap my head around beaming power from a single fort to serve 10,000 separate platforms. If power can be transferred that efficiently, then that setup should be able to fuel at least several platforms indefinitely in the heat of battle, if plasma does not need refilling, and if platforms don't overheat, etc.

Why would it all come from a single fort? There are dozens of forts backstopping the minefields around the Junction - and so you could (and presumably would) split the IEWPs between them so each fort needs only power a sub-set of the entire constellation. (Plus they wouldn't all be firing at once, so you only need to beam serious power once a platform starts firing)

penny wrote:OMG! How can you call that boring!? Can anyone truly imagine a graser-head minefield? I agree; their toys can conspire to raise holy hell in the GA's business as usual itinerary.

In my head, I have always seen LDs deploying minefields as spike strips.

Spider-drive minelayers can throw out "spike strips" in the path of an unsuspecting fleet; after watching their same old routine and unchanging habits in time of peace. Like returning to orbit after wargames. I dunno. Something. But the idea of a graser-head minefield just blows my socks off.

You innovate or you think outside the box to find a solution to a problem. Graser minefields laid by spider drive minelayers....why not, if it provides a solution and can build the ships, crew them and build the weapons.
This is the Alignment. Let's say you want to cripple a planetary system and lay the blame elsewhere - sound familure? So if you have two fighting systems or one that has been making trouble for someone like the RF, you organize a strike on that system. Your targets- since you are not going to use starships that don't use impeller drives will need to remain outside the system at an extreme range, you use spider drive weapons in two waves. Having various merchant ships on your payroll through lots of cut-outs, or perhaps use a Ghost to augment, you scout the system and feed the information on two broad categories of targets: 1) orbital facilities including habitats, yards, manufacturing stations. 2) Planetside political, industrial and military locations includeing spaceports. When your plans are set, the two waves are launched/dropped to arrive in system at slightly differnt times. 1st to arrive will be misses targeted at ground targets so they could be as straight forward as KEWs but you are targeting things dirtside. You launch from a distance that lets a spider drive weapon accelerate to a significant fraction of C and be an impactor on you targets. If you need to to get them though the atmosphere, you might even put impellers on them that would take over from the spider drives just before hitting the atmosphere. You might have to range your launching ships around the system to get the most effective timing and some of them not have to go around the planet to hit things on the other side. 2nd wave is just straight spider drive though it could be capital ship size miles using lazerhead warheads. The orbital facilities are not going to know anything is coming till the 1st wave lights off its impellers and or enters the atmosphere and detonate.
So it's an EE attack. It's the Alignment, they don't care if they can make it look like someone else did it. Wipe out much of the spaceborn manufacturing, orbital habitats etc and mostly obliterate the ground targets along with population and cities around them. Politicians, industry, spaceports, and large segments of population wiped out. Not the system is an open target (if a lot less valuable than before) but it's still removed from the list of places that the Alignment has to worry about having to deal with.
The ships that launched the attack have been quietly removing themselves from the area since right after they launched......just head away on some vector that they will change about the time the strikes are timed to hit and who is going to track them?
Blunt instruments in a stealth terror attack., Heck, it might even work on Manticore ---again. This time they just go for the EE components as trimming back the dammed rats who have been messing with The Plan. No newer Alignment tech needed, only need to get product at Darius and whatever they have cranking out equipment ramped up to produce the weapons, ships and crews needed.
Think creative and sneaky, might even take a shot at Beowulf and Earth at the same time along with the Alderman Empire...just a passing kiss to let them know Somebody Out There hates them. Give them a really bad day.

Brigade XO wrote:

penny wrote:OMG! How can you call that boring!? Can anyone truly imagine a graser-head minefield? I agree; their toys can conspire to raise holy hell in the GA's business as usual itinerary.

In my head, I have always seen LDs deploying minefields as spike strips.

Spider-drive minelayers can throw out "spike strips" in the path of an unsuspecting fleet; after watching their same old routine and unchanging habits in time of peace. Like returning to orbit after wargames. I dunno. Something. But the idea of a graser-head minefield just blows my socks off.

You innovate or you think outside the box to find a solution to a problem. Graser minefields laid by spider drive minelayers....why not, if it provides a solution and can build the ships, crew them and build the weapons.
This is the Alignment. Let's say you want to cripple a planetary system and lay the blame elsewhere - sound familure? So if you have two fighting systems or one that has been making trouble for someone like the RF, you organize a strike on that system. Your targets- since you are not going to use starships that don't use impeller drives will need to remain outside the system at an extreme range, you use spider drive weapons in two waves. Having various merchant ships on your payroll through lots of cut-outs, or perhaps use a Ghost to augment, you scout the system and feed the information on two broad categories of targets: 1) orbital facilities including habitats, yards, manufacturing stations. 2) Planetside political, industrial and military locations includeing spaceports. When your plans are set, the two waves are launched/dropped to arrive in system at slightly differnt times. 1st to arrive will be misses targeted at ground targets so they could be as straight forward as KEWs but you are targeting things dirtside. You launch from a distance that lets a spider drive weapon accelerate to a significant fraction of C and be an impactor on you targets. If you need to to get them though the atmosphere, you might even put impellers on them that would take over from the spider drives just before hitting the atmosphere. You might have to range your launching ships around the system to get the most effective timing and some of them not have to go around the planet to hit things on the other side. 2nd wave is just straight spider drive though it could be capital ship size miles using lazerhead warheads. The orbital facilities are not going to know anything is coming till the 1st wave lights off its impellers and or enters the atmosphere and detonate.
So it's an EE attack. It's the Alignment, they don't care if they can make it look like someone else did it. Wipe out much of the spaceborn manufacturing, orbital habitats etc and mostly obliterate the ground targets along with population and cities around them. Politicians, industry, spaceports, and large segments of population wiped out. Not the system is an open target (if a lot less valuable than before) but it's still removed from the list of places that the Alignment has to worry about having to deal with.
The ships that launched the attack have been quietly removing themselves from the area since right after they launched......just head away on some vector that they will change about the time the strikes are timed to hit and who is going to track them?
Blunt instruments in a stealth terror attack., Heck, it might even work on Manticore ---again. This time they just go for the EE components as trimming back the dammed rats who have been messing with The Plan. No newer Alignment tech needed, only need to get product at Darius and whatever they have cranking out equipment ramped up to produce the weapons, ships and crews needed.
Think creative and sneaky, might even take a shot at Beowulf and Earth at the same time along with the Alderman Empire...just a passing kiss to let them know Somebody Out There hates them. Give them a really bad day.

Yeah, I also think spider-drive minelayers would be a logical use of their tech. But your statement that it might be successful against Manticore realizes that a lot of their tech will definitely be successful against lesser protected systems and other priority targets. I've never imagined the MAN wanting to engage in a protracted war. Especially since they have the tools for a short victorious war if any entity ever had. But if the MAN does adopt a conventional war of rear area destruction it is going to be very successful. And if the computer that Theisman used to predict Eighth Fleet's possible targets is put to use against the MAN's rear area assaults? Then it will be very successful in delivering flies to the spiders.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:Why would the GA need to improve upon that setup? Seventy thousand graser shots against ships without a wedge or sidewall? Isn't that already overkill? If an enemy has more ships than that minefield can destroy to send through that meat grinder, then there is a much bigger problem.

There is the possibility that the MAN might have them shooting at empty space; other than that, I can't see a need to improve upon that minefield.

Mines require a fair bit of upkeep, especially trying to keep them properly positioned around something like an arrival lane where you can't put them into orbit around it. Sure they'd have station keeping thrusters but only so much fuel for those and they can probably only operate for so long before you've got to service the thrusters. So as a long term emplacement you're pretty regularly sending folks out there to refuel and/or bring in for service the individual mines

The IEWPs should have longer effective range than mines (against sidewall protected targets the 250,000km of energy mount range vs the 30,000 km of modern laserhead range) - plus you need 1/7th as many for the same number of shots. Combined, that should let you cut down on how often you need to send craft out there to service the defenses.

penny wrote:Of course, a reactor on each platform nullifies the need for beamed power. Anyway, I'm just trying to wrap my head around beaming power from a single fort to serve 10,000 separate platforms. If power can be transferred that efficiently, then that setup should be able to fuel at least several platforms indefinitely in the heat of battle, if plasma does not need refilling, and if platforms don't overheat, etc.

Why would it all come from a single fort? There are dozens of forts backstopping the minefields around the Junction - and so you could (and presumably would) split the IEWPs between them so each fort needs only power a sub-set of the entire constellation. (Plus they wouldn't all be firing at once, so you only need to beam serious power once a platform starts firing)

Hmm. You’re probably right Jonathan. It certainly would make more sense and would be more plausible if as many forts as possible are equipped. Since Honor did not specifically say all of the forts or several or some, I simply concluded it was a single specially modified fort.

However, beamed power has to have its limits. Just like currently (no pun intended) electricity can only be sent so far down a utility line before it needs a step-up transformer. So I assumed only the closest fort (or forts) could be used. But I suppose an array of 10,000 platforms will find themselves better served by an array of forts.

That’s going to require a lot of work though. Modifying an array of forts for power delivery, OR equipping each platform to deliver an indefinite amount of shots. And, if for some reason known only by the author it requires both solutions, then all of the work that follows is going to be an immense project and it is certainly going to alert the MAN that maybe they should not allow the project to be completed.

In fact, she’s already worked out the quickest way to run up a remote platform tied into the central fire control system of a standard terminus fort.”

Yeah, she's probably talking in general.

penny wrote:Hmm. You’re probably right Jonathan. It certainly would make more sense and would be more plausible if as many forts as possible are equipped. Since Honor did not specifically say all of the forts or several or some, I simply concluded it was a single specially modified fort.

However, beamed power has to have its limits. Just like currently (no pun intended) electricity can only be sent so far down a utility line before it needs a step-up transformer. So I assumed only the closest fort (or forts) could be used. But I suppose an array of 10,000 platforms will find themselves better served by an array of forts.

That’s going to require a lot of work though. Modifying an array of forts for power delivery, OR equipping each platform to deliver an indefinite amount of shots. And, if for some reason known only by the author it requires both solutions, then all of the work that follows is going to be an immense project and it is certainly going to alert the MAN that maybe they should not allow the project to be completed.

If we assume that that Darius is currently staying hidden, hoping that everyone will believe that the fall of Galton ends the threat, then I do not see how they could respond in the near term to anything like this. In any case, a minefield is a minefield, no matter how it is composed; so why would they want to respond?

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Of course, a reactor on each platform nullifies the need for beamed power. Anyway, I'm just trying to wrap my head around beaming power from a single fort to serve 10,000 separate platforms. If power can be transferred that efficiently, then that setup should be able to fuel at least several platforms indefinitely in the heat of battle, if plasma does not need refilling, and if platforms don't overheat, etc.

The downside is in the event of the minefields completion, the RMN might move their castles (forts) further in-system, relying upon the minefield. Guess what would become a priority target for the MAN? The power source.

I was thinking of the micro fusion reactor and only bring it up at time of attack to save fuel. The beamed power would just keep capacitors topped off and power communications etc.

Haven's Navy has the Donkey and the Solarian Navy has the Husky, both of which include the ability to receive beamed power and gang together multiple platforms. So a fort might only need a dozen power beams and additional devices to receive it and pass it on to multiple other devices. This might even be built into the IEWP. From chapter 65 of At All Costs:

When NavInt reported that the new Manty pods incorporated onboard tractors as a way to allow their pre-pod ships to tow greater numbers of them, it had seemed impossible for the Republic to respond. Their pods were already too big, and they had too limited a power budget, to permit the designers to cram a tractor into them (and power the damned thing), as well. But Shannon had decided to turn the problem on its head. Instead of fitting additional tractors into the pods, she'd come up with the "donkey." That was what everyone was calling it, although it had a suitably esoteric alphabet-soup designation, and it was another of those elegantly simple Foraker specialties.

Instead of the typically Manty bells-and-whistles approach of putting the tractor inside the pod, Shannon had simply built a very stealthy pod-sized platform which consisted of nothing except a solid mass of tractor beams and a receiver for beamed power from the ships which deployed it. Each "donkey" had the capacity to tow ten pods, and a Sovereign of Space-class SD(P) had enough tractors to tow twenty of them. Better yet, they could actually be ganged together, as long as all the pods in the gang could be lined up for power transmission from the mother ship. In theory, they could have been stacked three tiers deep, with each donkey towing ten more donkeys, each towing ten more donkeys, each ...

If Lester Tourville had so chosen, his two hundred and forty superdreadnoughts could—in theory—have towed 4.8 million pods. Except for the minor fact that the drag would have reduced them to negative acceleration numbers. Not to mention the fact that he didn't begin to have the power transmission capability to feed that many donkeys. Still, he could tow quite a lot of them, and the readiness numbers on the display gave him a sense of profound satisfaction.

Note that both units only receive power from the ship, but it would seem possible to beam power as easily as use tractor beams.

However, thinking more about that, it might be better for the fort to cycle through the platforms; rather than dividing up the power at each intermediate step.

Interesting concept! Essentially turning the forts into step-up transformers!?

But do consider that cycling might not be possible. Beamed power has its limits and capacitors are rated for their time to charge as well as their capacity. It might not be possible to cycle in real time.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Hmm. You’re probably right Jonathan. It certainly would make more sense and would be more plausible if as many forts as possible are equipped. Since Honor did not specifically say all of the forts or several or some, I simply concluded it was a single specially modified fort.

However, beamed power has to have its limits. Just like currently (no pun intended) electricity can only be sent so far down a utility line before it needs a step-up transformer. So I assumed only the closest fort (or forts) could be used. But I suppose an array of 10,000 platforms will find themselves better served by an array of forts.

That’s going to require a lot of work though. Modifying an array of forts for power delivery, OR equipping each platform to deliver an indefinite amount of shots. And, if for some reason known only by the author it requires both solutions, then all of the work that follows is going to be an immense project and it is certainly going to alert the MAN that maybe they should not allow the project to be completed.

If we assume that that Darius is currently staying hidden, hoping that everyone will believe that the fall of Galton ends the threat, then I do not see how they could respond in the near term to anything like this. In any case, a minefield is a minefield, no matter how it is composed; so why would they want to respond?

You'd have to ask them. I'm just the precautionary tale. My guess would be because they have some sort of future plans that include the MWJ. The gist on the other side of my point says that such an immense project would be obvious to everyone entering the system prompting the MAN to get nosey.

P.S. Wouldn't such an immense array be vulnerable to proximity kills by stealthy weapons? 3-second firing graser heads with an output even much less than the g-torp can decimate a minefield.

tlb wrote:However, thinking more about that, it might be better for the fort to cycle through the platforms; rather than dividing up the power at each intermediate step.

penny wrote:But do consider that cycling might not be possible. Beamed power has its limits and capacitors are rated for their time to charge as well as their capacity. It might not be possible to cycle in real time.

Since both are future technology, it is interesting that you want to place limits on them. Somehow the future plasma capacitors are able to keep their power much longer than expected from our point of view, the ordinary pods used in system defense mode did not have additional power supplied. Please remember that the capacitors in the Silver Bullets could be kept topped off by solar panels, which are unlikely to match even the intermittent power from a beam.