Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose?

On Feb 16, 12:51 pm, Loren Pechtel <lorenpech... RemoveThis @hotmail.invalid.com>
wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:05:31 +0100, J'hn1 <jhn1@comcastnet> wrote:
> >On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:03, Loren Pechtel wrote:
>
> >>On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:56, Don Sample <dsam... RemoveThis @synapse.net> wrote:
>
> >>>Why? (Another thing I've never understood about Weber is his insistence
> >>>on always anchoring his fleets to star systems. Why should the
> >>>rendezvous point for any fleet be anywhere near any star?)
>
> >>I got to thinking on this--how well can ships locate a point in deep
> >>space?
>
> >Yes, that is my thought as well. It probably is a problem getting
> >close enough for a warship fleet to meet even when they can emit all
> >they want to help each other find that meeting spot. A hidden and
> >stealthed, probably lightly defended, (if you had heavy defences then
> >you wouldn't need to hide in the first place) fleet base or
> >construction yard would be a lot harder to find to meet and deliver
> >workers and materials and pick up finished ships.
>
> A base in deep space needs to be hidden no matter what against modern
> attacks or they will be c-fraced by MDM's. Use a two-part attack:
>
> The missile ships drop in far out, accelerate to max and fire their
> weapons, burning the first stage only. They do *NOT* stick around to
> guide their missiles, they hyper out.
>
> A second fleet drops in fairly close to the target, figures out what's
> up and starts sending orders to the missiles which are currently going
> ballistic towards the target at close to lightspeed. The missiles
> have another engine stage left for their final attacks and will be
> coming in somewhere in excess of .9c. Good luck stopping those!


Are you sure that you want a missile control mode that, after losing
contact with the launching platform, will accept guidance instructions
coming from the vicinity of the target?

The more specific you get about what circumstances make the new
guidance instructions invalid, the more likely that the missiles will
ignore the ships that are supposed to be guiding them
 >> Stay informed about: Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose? 

On Feb 16, 12:55 pm, Brian McDonald <Brian_knowspam.McDon....RemoveThis@shaw.ca>
wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:05:31 +0100, J'hn1 <jhn1@comcastnet> wrote:
> >On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:03, Loren Pechtel wrote:
>
> >>On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:56, Don Sample <dsam....RemoveThis@synapse.net> wrote:
>
> >>>Why? (Another thing I've never understood about Weber is his insistence
> >>>on always anchoring his fleets to star systems. Why should the
> >>>rendezvous point for any fleet be anywhere near any star?)
>
> >>I got to thinking on this--how well can ships locate a point in deep
> >>space?
>
> >Yes, that is my thought as well. It probably is a problem getting
> >close enough for a warship fleet to meet even when they can emit all
> >they want to help each other find that meeting spot. A hidden and
> >stealthed, probably lightly defended, (if you had heavy defences then
> >you wouldn't need to hide in the first place) fleet base or
> >construction yard would be a lot harder to find to meet and deliver
> >workers and materials and pick up finished ships.
>
> it really wouldn't be any more surprising than a navy ship back in the
> sailing days finding some flyspeck island out in the pacific to RV
> with the rest of it's squadron.
>
> you only need the bearings to 3 or 4 celestial objects to place you
> right on top of the point in question especially if you drop out in
> the area and fine up your navigation first.

You forget that they are not meeting at some flyspeck of an island,
but at a point on the ocean. They would be lucky if precision of
their instruments put them within visual sight of each other. Sight
ranges in hyperspace are worse. Navigation is done inertially with
fixes made each time the ship drops out of hyper. In hyperspace, you
cannot see Alpha Centauri from Sol.

The basic problem of meeting at a featureless point in space is that
it is not immediately obvious that you are at the wrong point of
featureless space. If your reference celestial objects are too far
away, two ships can have the same location on their instruments,
without being able to detect each other.

Stars are used as rendez-vous points because you know when you have
found them and the star's hyper limit gives you some time to react to
sudden guests.
 >> Stay informed about: Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose? 

On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:55:10 -0800 (PST), Ben H
<cataphractlance DeleteThis @gmail.com> wrote:

>> A base in deep space needs to be hidden no matter what against modern
>> attacks or they will be c-fraced by MDM's. Use a two-part attack:
>>
>> The missile ships drop in far out, accelerate to max and fire their
>> weapons, burning the first stage only. They do *NOT* stick around to
>> guide their missiles, they hyper out.
>>
>> A second fleet drops in fairly close to the target, figures out what's
>> up and starts sending orders to the missiles which are currently going
>> ballistic towards the target at close to lightspeed. The missiles
>> have another engine stage left for their final attacks and will be
>> coming in somewhere in excess of .9c. Good luck stopping those!
>
>Except the tac-witches in the second group won't know what the tac-
>witches in the first group told the missles to do originally, so
>they'll have to gather sensor data, lock up the missiles' command and
>control systems, generate an attack profile, and execute, _BEFORE_ the
>missles, which are traveling at a high fraction of lightspeed, execute
>terminal maneuvers.

And why won't they? I'm talking about a pre-planned, coordinated
action. They are shooting at a known situation, just about everything
can be pre-planned, the only decision-making needed is on the part of
the guidance group that looks over the situation. They can drop in a
bit early if they need to do this--so long as they don't sit around
long enough for a missile to reach them. It's not like a normal fleet
situation where the enemy isn't known in advance.
 >> Stay informed about: Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose? 

On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 17:13:11 -0800 (PST), "rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com"
<rlbell.nsuid.TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote:

>Are you sure that you want a missile control mode that, after losing
>contact with the launching platform, will accept guidance instructions
>coming from the vicinity of the target?
>
>The more specific you get about what circumstances make the new
>guidance instructions invalid, the more likely that the missiles will
>ignore the ships that are supposed to be guiding them

I have no problem with it. I'm a programmer by trade--I know how to
make such a system secure.

I wouldn't put a system on the missile that could figure out where the
code was coming from, that's just extra weight and could be spoofed
anyway--what if the enemy put a transmitter in a missile??

Instead, before you launch the missile you give it a bunch of codes.
These are completely random and long enough they can't be guessed. A
missile will accept a code for only one command and it will ignore any
command not bearing a valid code.

This is a one-time pad (although used only for authentication) and
one-time pads are solid against anything, even a quantum computer.
 >> Stay informed about: Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose? 

On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 17:43:08 -0800 (PST), "rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com"
<rlbell.nsuid.RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote:

>The basic problem of meeting at a featureless point in space is that
>it is not immediately obvious that you are at the wrong point of
>featureless space. If your reference celestial objects are too far
>away, two ships can have the same location on their instruments,
>without being able to detect each other.

If you're trying to find a base it is obvious but there is still the
problem with instrument accuracy. For it to be practical you need
instruments good enough to put you within some other means of
detecting your objective.

There remains the problem of unfriendly visitors. There's nothing
else around and you have no hyper limit to protect you, you can be
c-fraced.
 >> Stay informed about: Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose? 

On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:05:31 +0100, J'hn1 <jhn1@comcastnet> wrote:

>On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:03, Loren Pechtel wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:56, Don Sample <dsample.TakeThisOut@synapse.net> wrote:
>
>>>Why? (Another thing I've never understood about Weber is his insistence
>>>on always anchoring his fleets to star systems. Why should the
>>>rendezvous point for any fleet be anywhere near any star?)
>>
>>I got to thinking on this--how well can ships locate a point in deep
>>space?
>
>Yes, that is my thought as well. It probably is a problem getting
>close enough for a warship fleet to meet even when they can emit all
>they want to help each other find that meeting spot. A hidden and
>stealthed, probably lightly defended, (if you had heavy defences then
>you wouldn't need to hide in the first place) fleet base or
>construction yard would be a lot harder to find to meet and deliver
>workers and materials and pick up finished ships.


it really wouldn't be any more surprising than a navy ship back in the
sailing days finding some flyspeck island out in the pacific to RV
with the rest of it's squadron.

you only need the bearings to 3 or 4 celestial objects to place you
right on top of the point in question especially if you drop out in
the area and fine up your navigation first.
 >> Stay informed about: Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose? 

I missed the Staff meeting, but the Memos showed that Brian McDonald
<Brian_knowspam.McDonald.DeleteThis@shaw.ca> wrote on Sat, 16 Feb 2008 19:55:19
GMT in alt.books.david-weber :
>
>>Yes, that is my thought as well. It probably is a problem getting
>>close enough for a warship fleet to meet even when they can emit all
>>they want to help each other find that meeting spot. A hidden and
>>stealthed, probably lightly defended, (if you had heavy defences then
>>you wouldn't need to hide in the first place) fleet base or
>>construction yard would be a lot harder to find to meet and deliver
>>workers and materials and pick up finished ships.
>
>
>it really wouldn't be any more surprising than a navy ship back in the
>sailing days finding some flyspeck island out in the pacific to RV
>with the rest of it's squadron.
>
>you only need the bearings to 3 or 4 celestial objects to place you
>right on top of the point in question especially if you drop out in
>the area and fine up your navigation first.

Up to a point. The Navy could use a navigation system which got
them within several miles over each other, the Air force needed a
little more precise set of instructions. Unlike the Navy, there is a
limit to how much you can throttle the engines back on a plane while
you search for your rendezvous.
I would imagine that there is a lot of "which exact cubic
kilometer did he mean by 'point midnight' is at X.Y.Z.?"

tschus
pyotr

--
pyotr filipivich
The two oldest cliches in the book are "The Good Old Days were
better." and "After all, these are Modern TImes."
 >> Stay informed about: Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose? 

In article
<94c613f4-b8df-4512-8a51-c3af0e531eff RemoveThis @e10g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
"rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com" <rlbell.nsuid RemoveThis @gmail.com> wrote:

> On Feb 16, 12:51 pm, Loren Pechtel <lorenpech... RemoveThis @hotmail.invalid.com>
> wrote:
> > On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:05:31 +0100, J'hn1 <jhn1@comcastnet> wrote:
> > >On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:03, Loren Pechtel wrote:
> >
> > >>On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:56, Don Sample <dsam... RemoveThis @synapse.net> wrote:
> >
> > >>>Why? (Another thing I've never understood about Weber is his insistence
> > >>>on always anchoring his fleets to star systems. Why should the
> > >>>rendezvous point for any fleet be anywhere near any star?)
> >
> > >>I got to thinking on this--how well can ships locate a point in deep
> > >>space?
> >
> > >Yes, that is my thought as well. It probably is a problem getting
> > >close enough for a warship fleet to meet even when they can emit all
> > >they want to help each other find that meeting spot. A hidden and
> > >stealthed, probably lightly defended, (if you had heavy defences then
> > >you wouldn't need to hide in the first place) fleet base or
> > >construction yard would be a lot harder to find to meet and deliver
> > >workers and materials and pick up finished ships.
> >
> > A base in deep space needs to be hidden no matter what against modern
> > attacks or they will be c-fraced by MDM's. Use a two-part attack:
> >
> > The missile ships drop in far out, accelerate to max and fire their
> > weapons, burning the first stage only. They do *NOT* stick around to
> > guide their missiles, they hyper out.
> >
> > A second fleet drops in fairly close to the target, figures out what's
> > up and starts sending orders to the missiles which are currently going
> > ballistic towards the target at close to lightspeed. The missiles
> > have another engine stage left for their final attacks and will be
> > coming in somewhere in excess of .9c. Good luck stopping those!
>
>
> Are you sure that you want a missile control mode that, after losing
> contact with the launching platform, will accept guidance instructions
> coming from the vicinity of the target?
>
> The more specific you get about what circumstances make the new
> guidance instructions invalid, the more likely that the missiles will
> ignore the ships that are supposed to be guiding them

With properly encrypted control signals, there is no chance that the
other guys will be able to take control of incoming missiles. Only a
controller who knows the missile's code will be able to talk to it.

--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
 >> Stay informed about: Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose? 

In article
<1f2f497a-dedb-4115-81b8-f407c7cca123.TakeThisOut@e23g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
"rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com" <rlbell.nsuid.TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Feb 16, 12:55 pm, Brian McDonald <Brian_knowspam.McDon....TakeThisOut@shaw.ca>
> wrote:
> > On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:05:31 +0100, J'hn1 <jhn1@comcastnet> wrote:
> > >On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:03, Loren Pechtel wrote:
> >
> > >>On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:56, Don Sample <dsam....TakeThisOut@synapse.net> wrote:
> >
> > >>>Why? (Another thing I've never understood about Weber is his insistence
> > >>>on always anchoring his fleets to star systems. Why should the
> > >>>rendezvous point for any fleet be anywhere near any star?)
> >
> > >>I got to thinking on this--how well can ships locate a point in deep
> > >>space?
> >
> > >Yes, that is my thought as well. It probably is a problem getting
> > >close enough for a warship fleet to meet even when they can emit all
> > >they want to help each other find that meeting spot. A hidden and
> > >stealthed, probably lightly defended, (if you had heavy defences then
> > >you wouldn't need to hide in the first place) fleet base or
> > >construction yard would be a lot harder to find to meet and deliver
> > >workers and materials and pick up finished ships.
> >
> > it really wouldn't be any more surprising than a navy ship back in the
> > sailing days finding some flyspeck island out in the pacific to RV
> > with the rest of it's squadron.
> >
> > you only need the bearings to 3 or 4 celestial objects to place you
> > right on top of the point in question especially if you drop out in
> > the area and fine up your navigation first.
>
> You forget that they are not meeting at some flyspeck of an island,
> but at a point on the ocean. They would be lucky if precision of
> their instruments put them within visual sight of each other. Sight
> ranges in hyperspace are worse. Navigation is done inertially with
> fixes made each time the ship drops out of hyper. In hyperspace, you
> cannot see Alpha Centauri from Sol.
>
> The basic problem of meeting at a featureless point in space is that
> it is not immediately obvious that you are at the wrong point of
> featureless space. If your reference celestial objects are too far
> away, two ships can have the same location on their instruments,
> without being able to detect each other.

So you use some closer reference points.

A mechanical sextant, of the sort used by sailors, can measure angles
with an accuracy of about 1/300 of a degree. Good enough to put you
within about 10 AU of your target if you pick stars at range of 1 parsec
to do your figuring.

The Hubble Space Telescope can be pointed with an accuracy of 7/1000th
of an arcsecond. (That's just how accurately it can be pointed. It can
measure angles much smaller than that.) That gets you within within .01
AU, measuring something a parsec away, or about 1 million miles.

By Honor's time I would expect that the accuracy of instruments will
have improved considerably. The pixel density required by a holographic
camera means that a single picture of a star field will probably contain
enough information to accurately place your position within a few
thousand kilometres.


>
> Stars are used as rendez-vous points because you know when you have
> found them and the star's hyper limit gives you some time to react to
> sudden guests.

Having a hyperlimit to ensure that uninvited visitors show up at arm's
length is one advantage, but even sufficiently massive planets have
those. You don't really need a star.

--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
 >> Stay informed about: Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose? 

In article <47b79c96$2$25463$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>,
Loren Pechtel <lorenpechtel.RemoveThis@hotmail.invalid.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 17:43:08 -0800 (PST), "rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com"
> <rlbell.nsuid.RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >The basic problem of meeting at a featureless point in space is that
> >it is not immediately obvious that you are at the wrong point of
> >featureless space. If your reference celestial objects are too far
> >away, two ships can have the same location on their instruments,
> >without being able to detect each other.
>
> If you're trying to find a base it is obvious but there is still the
> problem with instrument accuracy. For it to be practical you need
> instruments good enough to put you within some other means of
> detecting your objective.
>
> There remains the problem of unfriendly visitors. There's nothing
> else around and you have no hyper limit to protect you, you can be
> c-fraced.

The hyperlimit doesn't really protect you from that. Someone can still
sit outside it, and accelerate missiles in at you. The hyperlimit just
makes it tougher for someone to get in close to you without you seeing
them coming. It doesn't make it impossible, though, as Shannon Foraker
proved at Adler.

--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
 >> Stay informed about: Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose? 

Ben H wrote:
> On Feb 16, 2:51 pm, Loren Pechtel <lorenpech....RemoveThis@hotmail.invalid.com>

>> A second fleet drops in fairly close to the target, figures out what's
>> up

> Except the tac-witches in the second group won't know what the tac-
> witches in the first group told the missles to do originally,

Wrong turn. "...figures out what's up..." refers to target locations,
not the actions of the missiles.
 >> Stay informed about: Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose? 

On Feb 17, 10:35 am, Offbreed <offbreed_....TakeThisOut@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Ben H wrote:
> > On Feb 16, 2:51 pm, Loren Pechtel <lorenpech....TakeThisOut@hotmail.invalid.com>
> >> A second fleet drops in fairly close to the target, figures out what's
> >> up
> > Except the tac-witches in the second group won't know what the tac-
> > witches in the first group told the missles to do originally,
>
> Wrong turn. "...figures out what's up..." refers to target locations,
> not the actions of the missiles.

Since the second fleet would have been in hyper, they don't know
target locations, OR missile vectors.

Unless of course they were going up against "stationary" targets.
Which, when you're shooting at something like an orbital installation,
or a planet, or anything else along those lines, why even bother with
the second fleet? The targets certainly won't be able to maneuver out
of the missiles' flight paths, so any large wave of frac-c missiles
should overcome any defense they can erect.
 >> Stay informed about: Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose? 

On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:58:42 -0800 (PST), Ben H
<cataphractlance.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:

>Since the second fleet would have been in hyper, they don't know
>target locations, OR missile vectors.

Except it's pre-planned and the first fleet could tell them what they
saw.

>Unless of course they were going up against "stationary" targets.
>Which, when you're shooting at something like an orbital installation,
>or a planet, or anything else along those lines, why even bother with
>the second fleet? The targets certainly won't be able to maneuver out
>of the missiles' flight paths, so any large wave of frac-c missiles
>should overcome any defense they can erect.

I was figuring the missiles might need some final guidance onto the
targets as the original shots would have been very long range and
missiles don't seem to have perfect accuracy on long drifts.

If the initial shots were perfect there would be no need of the second
fleet at all. A normal c-frac strike doesn't use that because it's
from the era of single-drive missiles--there's no point in giving info
to missiles without drives to use it.
 >> Stay informed about: Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose?