Supplies, Schmupplies

[Pantastic]

Well - i was just saying that in the Honorverse, hit&run attacks to take out enemy planets are not feasible, since you won't be able to destroy any infrastructure on the planet. At least not without occupying it and dismantling it.

"Hit and run" attacks in the sense of quickly driving by and launching missile strikes before defenders can get to you are not feasible - you're bound to make an Eridani Edict violation. But slower "Hit and run" attacks where you come in-system, defeat the defending forces, blow up every piece of orbital infrastructure, then spend a day or two destroying anything that you want on the planet's surface work fine.

With Honorverse engine tech, landing to dismantle infrastructure with carefully placed charges is trivial if there's no resistance - grav drives let ground to orbit vehicles zip down and up at will. If there's any military resistance, then you don't need to land, you just bomb the installation from orbit until the ground troops give up or die, then land your troops. The Eridani Edict doesn't prevent this at all, all it says is that you have to control space in the system, that you give military forces and command and control centers a chance to surrender, and that you limit your bombing to those specific targets.

Weber's description of what you can do at: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/31/1

What this means is that a planetary defense missile battery, wherever located, is a legitimate target. The defenders can't stick the missiles in the middle of Central Park in New York City in order to protect them against attack under the terms of the Eridani Edict. If there are weapons there, then they are legitimate targets for attack. By the same token, if two armored divisions dig in to defend New York City and their commander refuses to surrender, then they become a legitimate target. The White House in Washington, DC, would be a legitimate target, as would the Pentagon, because of their command-and-control functions. A civilian powerplant being used to provide electricity to weapons systems, or sensors, or electronic warfare platforms, would also be a legitimate target. However, a factory which produced missiles but had no capacity to fire them, would not be a legitimate target because it poses no immediate tactical threat to the fleet in orbit around the planet or to the assault troops which it might land to take possession of the factory.

[Pantastic]

I'm not exactly clear why this discussion is operating on the assumption of "un-interceptable FTL" as being a given. We know its possible to intercept ships in hyperspace (it happened in Short Victorious war and was even discussed - Helen Zilwicki Senior died in that notable instance.)

People can intercept merchant ships following standard flight plans. There are ZERO examples of intercepting combat ships or supply ships heading to combat ships - they don't have to follow set paths, and they have military grade engines, which means they can travel as fast as the intercepting ship. There are numerous examples of attacking ships leaving troop transports or supply ships out past the hyper limit where they'll be able to get away if the combat fleet loses.

The text you quoted shows that it's possible to catch merchants who follow well-known courses, especially if you know their schedule. It doesn't show that you can catch a supply ship that is trying to avoid being caught, and Honorverse supply ships don't need to run continuous convoys to keep a fleet supplied - Haven packs a set of ships with six months of supplies for what's virtually their entire offensive fleet, and there's no mention that this puts any huge strain on their regular supply for defensive ships.

In B5 we're given a number of examples of starships being detected or intercepted in hyperspace (The one most often coming to mind is Delenn's white star getting blasted by Drakh-guided Centauri warships in season 5.)

The only time anyone is able to intercept and destroy ships in hyperspace is using Elder Race technology - Shadow and Vorlon tech, not anything the younger races had during the series. Neither Earth nor Minbar had any tech remotely capable of doing that, and all interceptions that I can remember take place in normal space or are done by either Shadows or people with Shadow technology (the Drakh). They're not literally uninterceptable, but in a war not involving the Shadows or Vorlons they are not interceptable in practice.

Hell, many other sci fi series I can think of (Lensman, Star Wars, Warhammer 40K, etc) also do not present "un-interceptable FTL".

I'm not familiar with all of the Star Wars EU, but I didn't think you could arbitrarily intercept ships. I'm not aware of any capability of fighting in Hyperspace, it's always shown as safe once you're able to jump and I've always seen battles take place in normal space. If you know the exact path someone is going to take you can put an interdictor cruiser along it to force them into normal space and fight them there, but a not-incompetent commander can make the potential paths much larger than a fleet of interdictors can cover by adding an hour or so to total trip time. There may be examples in books I haven't read, of course.

There's no real interception capability in 40k as far as I know - if you're following someone and jump shortly after them you can track them and possibly catch up, but you can't find someone out in the middle of nowhere. Battle For The Abyss demonstrates this, the loyalist fleet tracking the Word Bearers have to jump quickly, and don't think they'd be able to track the ship if they slow down. I haven't read all of the 40k books, so it's possible that interception capability is shown in something I haven't seen, I'm just not aware of any examples of it happening.

Lensman ships are interceptable, but can fly galaxy-to-galaxy without refueling and because of their shields tend to either be fine or destroyed in a fight. Ground troops use powered armor and energy weapons that can be recharged by virtually any energy source, and they don't use huge armies. The patrol simply doesn't need to worry about supply lines since their ranges are so huge, and the books consistently show that - they worry about taking out bases to force enemy fleets to engage them and deny them a place to retreat to, but they have no problem attacking at galactic distances without conquering a chain of ports.

[Batman]

Try reading the material you quoted. I know, I know, reading more than a line is a strain, but really try! You see, there's this bit "or if my troopships carry enough supplies for longer than my mission.". If you can bring supplies with you, you don't need a supply line.

Until...those supplies run out. Oops. You do know that EVERY ship (wet navy, space navy AND their commercial counterparts) DO carry supplies and STILL need a supply line...because they carry a FINITE load of supplies?

In the B5 example, you need zero troops since you're going for extermination, where the best plan is to nuke them to oblivion, no need to invade anyone.

Because we all know the Minbari were going about it as rationally as possible and totally didn't do it out of an irrational want for revenge and maybe WANTED to do it up close and personal.

In the Honorverse example, you don't need to supply a protracted campaign, you just need enough force to occupy the capital as you take their surrender or drop and destroy undefended infrastructure, and their ships carry more than enough supplies for that.

Err-no? Do you know how many troops it takes to actually occupy a PLANET? Troops you'll have to keep SUPPLIED because no, just because you took over resistance is NOT going to instantly vanish. Neither does it mean all the OTHER systems in the Republic are going to lie doggo just because Haven fell when they didn't when Haven was around and well. What was it the Peep Navy was doing at the beginning of 'War of Honor'? Oh, that's right, deal with renegade systems that didn't care for the new management.
Also, as already pointed out, the Honorverse doesn't take kindly to destroying civilian targets from orbit.

We don't nuke people nowadays because of political and military factors that generally don't exist in SF worlds. If a nuclear-capable country did want to exterminate another country and didn't care about public or other country's opinions, they would use nukes.

Except the Manticorans AND the Havenites DO (and with good reason) and the Minbari weren't going about it rationally to begin with.

You might want to try getting the basic facts right and read all of a statement that you respond to before activating your condescending asshole mode and demonstrating your ignorance of the source material. "Arrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you."

...says the person apparently ignorant of the consequences of ignoring the Eridani Edict.

[Simon_Jester]

Well - i was just saying that in the Honorverse, hit&run attacks to take out enemy planets are not feasible, since you won't be able to destroy any infrastructure on the planet. At least not without occupying it and dismantling it.

True, though raids against orbital infrastructure can still be devastating; we have plenty of evidence of that.

Haven has so much depth that they were still fifty light years from Haven even at the end of the war. And for sustained combat operations, they can't strike much deeper than that without a solid base to provide fuel for the ships from.

That statement is shown to be wrong in the snippets that have been released of the next book (Mantiocore can and does strike at Haven without taking any intermediate fleet bases). It is also completely at odds with Honor's stated plan to deal with the Solarian League in Storm from the Shadows, which requires operations at significantly greater distances.

Umm... you do realize the difference between raiding and sustained combat operations, right? It's very important. Honor can raid from Trevor's Star to Haven. That does not mean she could keep a permanent fleet presence in the Haven system and hold it against counterattack by forces moving in frrom the provinces. There's a difference between hitting and running, on the one hand, and hitting and staying, on the other. To win wars you need staying power.

This is why Honor is not greatly confident of success against the Solarian League. She knows that while the overwhelming tactical superiority of Manticoran ships allows them to raid at will, they physically cannot raid enough targets fast enough to keep the Sollies from building a modern fleet and (eventually) steamrollering Manticore. The only way to beat the Sollies is to break them up politically (which only works because they're on the brink of collapse as it is), OR to physically occupy the Solarian core systems... which no power in the Honorverse has the wherewithal to do.

It also implies that the Solarian League has vastly better logistics than Manticore, since they're starting a strike of similar length at the end of SFS.

I'd expect them to. The League is so big and with such a broad expanse of territory that they have a large merchant marine to draw on for supply ships. Their practice of mothballing a big reserve fleet also helps them, because they can mothball fast tankers, and 100-year-old tankers aren't going to be as obsolete as 100-year-old dreadnoughts.

So it's natural that they can support much larger fleets at greater distances from their home ports than anyone else, with a few possible exceptions among large minor powers with big merchant marines, like Manticore.

In War of Honor, Haven launched a huge coordinated attack at the end of the ceasefire, IIRC it was the most massive offensive in Honorverse history at that time. All of the ships for this attack except for one fleet (the one off in Silesea) went to one uninhabited system so that it would be harder to spot them. Haven sent supply ships to the system with six months of supplies for the ships. While that wouldn't need to include much ammunition, since they weren't in combat, it did include enough food, spares, and fuel for them to continuously operate under combat-like fuel usage (they were conducting exercises to keep in practice).

You're vastly, vastly underestimating how much supply Honorverse ships can carry, and vastly, vastly exaggerating the difficulties of supply. All of your detailed calculations completely ignore the fact that it's possible to bring six months of supplies in one jump of supply ships. This is not multiple supply runs per week, this is one per three months (to be on the safe side), which is not a continuous run of supplies.

That doesn't change the calculation: if you operate near the limit of your range, you're still shuttling freighters back and forth continuously, and you still need more supply ships if you have the freighters running slowly.

Now, if you detail enough supply ships per warship, you can certainly stockpile that kind of reserve. In normal operations, you do not do so. For Thunderbolt (the coordinated attack you mention), that was a maximum-effort operation by the entire Havenite fleet, including the logistics command. They concentrated everything at that one system, leaving very little in place to defend from Manticoran attack, because they had the advantage of knowing that Manticore would not attack them while they were preparing or launching their surprise offensive.

Normally, you would not have the luxury of doing this. You would need significant fleet commands positioned to guard expensive assets throughout your space, and you could not dedicate your entire merchant marine to prepositioning a huge supply cache for them. Thus, regular supply runs become more necessary.

If a ship can operate independantly for multiples of 4 weeks at a time, it does not need more fuel each week to operate. This is basic math. For example, nuclear submarines here on Earth do not need to recieve fuel on a week by week basis, as they carry months worth of fuel at a time.

OK. Resupply the fleet on a month by month basis. Given that the time of flight for distances of more than fifty light years or so is measured in weeks, this is still a problem; you still need to devote

Haven held Trevor's star all through the early part of the war, and Trevor's star is literally right next to Manticore since it has a junction of the wormhole. If they hold some other system nearby, it doesn't make it any more difficult to defend.

Do you not grasp the difference between a tonnage-limited approach through the Trevor's Star wormhole terminus (which means the Havenite fleet emerges under the mines and beams of the Junction forts) and a tonnage-unlimited approach through open space that can strike anywhere at any time?

And there is no difference between a permament fleet and a gigantic raid. If Haven can control space in the Manticore home system for a day or so, the war is over, as Manticore can no longer offer effective resistance.

That works for Haven against Manticore. It does not work for Manticore against Haven. So the question is not "why no deep strikes, why worry about supplies?" It is "Why didn't Haven use a deep strike against Manticore?" The answer is simple: their prewar leadership thought they needed to pare down the Manticoran fleet before concentrating and moving against Manticore proper, and by the time the new government was in effective control, Haven was firmly on the defensive and remained so for most of the rest of the conflict.

Then why did you present that scenario as if it was a bad outcome for Manticore? You wrote it as though that was a drawback of the proposed course of action, but it would be a great thing from Manticore's perspective.

Your lack of reading comprehension is not my responsibility.

You just need to zip into Haven, defeat the fleet, then go into orbit around the planet and point your ships weapons at the capital to dictate a surrender. A week is more than enough time to force the planet where Haven's central government is located to surrender, and to trash all military, government, and production facilities. Six months is massively more than enough time, and it's demonstrated that a single wave of supply ships can carry six months of supplies, so you don't need a continuous supply train, you need one every few months.

What happens when (not if, when) your fleet leaves and the government reneges on the surrender agreement? What stops the government from leaving and relocating the capital at a remote location, out of range of even your raiders?

What makes you think that popping out of the sky, buzzing around for a few weeks, and pointing death rays at the capital is enough to secure the permanent surrender of a major empire?

[Stofsk]

I'm sorry, but have you even seen B5 or more to the point, the movie In The Beginning? That is exactly what we see Minbari do. There's a reason why few people even like the Minbari. Not only are they genocidal fuckwits with sticks up their asses, but they're pretty stupid genocidal fuckwits with sticks up their asses.

I'm sorry, but did you pay attention when you were watching B5 or more to the point, the movie In The Beginning? That is not what the Minbari do at all. The Minbari capture colonies, kill all military forces, and leave the civilian population alone, an Earth officer comments that it's consistent with their 'three castes'. The pictures of hand-to-hand fighting are of Minbari fighting military forces, not killing engaging in genocide. All of the 250,000 casualties from the war were military. Take a look at 36:45 on the In the Beginning DVD and watch for about a minute, they explicitly say that the Minbari are not killing the civilian population.

Minbari don't need many troop transports to exterminate life on Earth unless they're even more boneheaded than usual and want to walk around individually shooting each human.

That is what you fucking wrote fucktard, and what I was responding to. Or are you too stupid to get your facts straight? The Minbari invade colonies and kill off the military units one-by-one, rather than indiscriminately nuke everybody instead.

lollerskates

Of course, if you don't need troops then you don't need to supply them. So how do you propose to invade, or raid, or take command of, or board a colony or space station if you don't have troops? I guess you could just nuke them to oblivion, no need to invade anyone. Of course you don't really need ships either, you could just make automated space missiles to go hit another planet in the solar system. Hey we could nuke people too nowadays, hmm I wonder why nobody does...

Try reading the material you quoted. I know, I know, reading more than a line is a strain, but really try! You see, there's this bit "or if my troopships carry enough supplies for longer than my mission." If you can bring supplies with you, you don't need a supply line.[/quote]
Until your supplies run out. Supplies don't grow on trees.

In the B5 example, you need zero troops since you're going for extermination, where the best plan is to nuke them to oblivion, no need to invade anyone. In the Honorverse example, you don't need to supply a protracted campaign, you just need enough force to occupy the capital as you take their surrender or drop and destroy undefended infrastructure, and their ships carry more than enough supplies for that.

I already told you that I haven't read the Honor books, but in B5 the Minbari were obviously not going about their plan in the most efficient and direct manner possible, or else they would have struck earth early into the war and wiped every one out with some kind of mass extinction style planetary bombardment. The fact that they don't is telling.

We don't nuke people nowadays because of political and military factors that generally don't exist in SF worlds. If a nuclear-capable country did want to exterminate another country and didn't care about public or other country's opinions, they would use nukes.

Sure they would.

You might want to try getting the basic facts right and read all of a statement that you respond to before activating your condescending asshole mode and demonstrating your ignorance of the source material. "Arrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you."

My ignorance of the source material? I noticed you didn't even reply to my entire post, just parts of it, and only to dismiss my points. What about the Narn and Centauri conflict? What about how in the third season the plot turned to making B5 a base of operations to coordinate the YR against the Shadows? Your point is 'The Minbari could have just wiped their asses with humans and committed wanton genocide with no trouble, therefore logistics don't matter' except that's not what happens, at all. You laughably say that the Minbari don't even need to bring troops along because all they're doing is committing genocide, or aiming to anyway, yet the fucking film In The Beginning and the show itself reference ground attacks by the Minbari during the war.

How about you take your condescending attitude and cram it up your ass, it should have plenty of company there along with your head, because clearly you've got it stuck up there as well.

[Connor MacLeod]

People can intercept merchant ships following standard flight plans. There are ZERO examples of intercepting combat ships or supply ships heading to combat ships - they don't have to follow set paths, and they have military grade engines, which means they can travel as fast as the intercepting ship. There are numerous examples of attacking ships leaving troop transports or supply ships out past the hyper limit where they'll be able to get away if the combat fleet loses.

The text you quoted shows that it's possible to catch merchants who follow well-known courses, especially if you know their schedule. It doesn't show that you can catch a supply ship that is trying to avoid being caught, and Honorverse supply ships don't need to run continuous convoys to keep a fleet supplied - Haven packs a set of ships with six months of supplies for what's virtually their entire offensive fleet, and there's no mention that this puts any huge strain on their regular supply for defensive ships.

you will provide evidence to back up your claims now. Claiming "there is no evidence, so I am right" is insufficient. You have to justify your assertion that this particular tactic is only applicable to merchant or civilian ships and that military ships would be immune.

While your at it you can also justify your claims about the supply issue. I'm not inclined to be taking your word on this, and we take burden of proof seriously.

The only time anyone is able to intercept and destroy ships in hyperspace is using Elder Race technology - Shadow and Vorlon tech, not anything the younger races had during the series. Neither Earth nor Minbar had any tech remotely capable of doing that, and all interceptions that I can remember take place in normal space or are done by either Shadows or people with Shadow technology (the Drakh). They're not literally uninterceptable, but in a war not involving the Shadows or Vorlons they are not interceptable in practice.

How much B5 have you actually watched? Did you forget that in B5 hyperspace ships must navigate by beacons IN hyperspace? Without the beacons to guide them from locale to locale they can get lost, destroyed, etc. That alone offers tremendous possibilities for interception - unless you're going to start playing semantics games.

I'm not familiar with all of the Star Wars EU, but I didn't think you could arbitrarily intercept ships. I'm not aware of any capability of fighting in Hyperspace, it's always shown as safe once you're able to jump and I've always seen battles take place in normal space. If you know the exact path someone is going to take you can put an interdictor cruiser along it to force them into normal space and fight them there, but a not-incompetent commander can make the potential paths much larger than a fleet of interdictors can cover by adding an hour or so to total trip time. There may be examples in books I haven't read, of course.

There are TONS of ways to interdict ships. The simple fact that there is a realspace/hyperspace interaction (EG ships can be destroyed in hyperspace if they collide with realspace objects). We know they have FTL sensors (active and passive) that operate at considerable distances as well, nevermind that while not neccessary, there are beneficial qualities to the Hyperspace "Lanes/routes" that exist (for non-warships at least if nothing else.)

There's no real interception capability in 40k as far as I know - if you're following someone and jump shortly after them you can track them and possibly catch up, but you can't find someone out in the middle of nowhere. Battle For The Abyss demonstrates this, the loyalist fleet tracking the Word Bearers have to jump quickly, and don't think they'd be able to track the ship if they slow down. I haven't read all of the 40k books, so it's possible that interception capability is shown in something I haven't seen, I'm just not aware of any examples of it happening.

Starships follow specific routes through the warp for various reasons (safety, speed, etc.) much like in B5 and Starwars. Again, this makes starships predictable. And no,, Battle for the Abyss does not prove your point. You evidently forgot the fact that a.) the Word Bearers (Indeed Horus' forces in general) had alliance with Chaos and that at this point in time the loyalist warp travel was more often than not muddled (as described in the series, in the Collected Visions books, etc.) B.) the psionic mine that was detonated along the warp route the Furious Abyss was using. They were having trouble with astrotelepathy, and they'd lost the Astronomican and the warp route they were following "collapsed." Small wonder they had to jump quick and closley pursue the Furious Abyss, eh? Nevermind later on they find out what the Furious AByss's intentions are, and the whole WE'RE TEH ONLY ONES WHO CAN STOP HIM! angle.)

Similar happens in the BFG novel Execution Hour (A Chaos vessel pursues a IoM cruiser through the warp and realspace over a prolonged period of time, in and out of the warp. Part of it even involves an actual battle IN the Warp. Try again)

Lensman ships are interceptable, but can fly galaxy-to-galaxy without refueling and because of their shields tend to either be fine or destroyed in a fight. Ground troops use powered armor and energy weapons that can be recharged by virtually any energy source, and they don't use huge armies. The patrol simply doesn't need to worry about supply lines since their ranges are so huge, and the books consistently show that - they worry about taking out bases to force enemy fleets to engage them and deny them a place to retreat to, but they have no problem attacking at galactic distances without conquering a chain of ports.

Discussions in Second Stage Lensman (EG Klovia), and the fact that Boskone saw fit to establish numerous bases IN the galaxy the GP inhabited suggest otherwise. Frankly you seem to operate on the assumption that GP ships (or most sci fi ships) have virtually unlimited amounts of everything, when we are told nothing of the sort (Cosmic power relies on the use of atomic motors, which requires fuel to power... nevermind the use of missiles/torpedoes, the "casings" the primary beams use, etc.)

[Teleros]

The patrol simply doesn't need to worry about supply lines since their ranges are so huge, and the books consistently show that - they worry about taking out bases to force enemy fleets to engage them and deny them a place to retreat to, but they have no problem attacking at galactic distances without conquering a chain of ports.

In short, both the Patrol & Boskone don't really need supply lines for Grand Fleet engagements due to the length of the mission, but they definitely do for sustained operations - why bother with Klovia otherwise? If supply lines were as unimportant as you suggest, then the only reason that the Battle of Klovia happened AT ALL is because, erm... I guess because of prestige or something. Had the Patrol had no need for supply lines, Klovia would not have been occupied by the Patrol, and Grand Fleet would've remained at Tellus for Kinnison / Alcon's fleet to attack there. Basically, it's the same thing as Simon_Jester said about the difference between raiding & sustained combat - most of the big battles are essentially monster-sized "decapitation" raids.

[Pantastic]

Minbari don't need many troop transports to exterminate life on Earth unless they're even more boneheaded than usual and want to walk around individually shooting each human.

That is what you fucking wrote fucktard, and what I was responding to. Or are you too stupid to get your facts straight? The Minbari invade colonies and kill off the military units one-by-one, rather than indiscriminately nuke everybody instead

.

When conquering planets, the Minbari invade and kill off military units, not civilians, as the Earthforce officer specifically says at the point I referenced before. We know from the Earthforce President's speech and comments later in the series that they're planning to attempt to wipe out the human race after defeating the military forces. We see in some scenes and hear from Londo that ground forces are not as horribly outclassed as space forces (they offer some resistance before falling). We know that the Warrior Caste expects the war to be "over soon" just before the Battle of the Line starts from Delenn's conversation where she is trying to find a way to stop it. We don't see any huge transport capability, so it's unlikely the Minbari can land really huge armies.

So the Minbari expect the war to be over soon, but they can't quickly and easily beat human ground forces like they do space forces and don't show the kind of transport capability to use sheer numbers to overwhelm the Earthforce army and whatever part of 10 billion people decide to resist. I think the clear implication is that they do not plan on engaging in a protracted ground campaign to wipe out humans by shooting them one at a time. It's possible that they're too dumb to realize that killing 10 billion resisting people in person with what army they can land will not be done 'soon' ("more boneheaded than usual"), but I don't think it's at all likely.

My ignorance of the source material? I noticed you didn't even reply to my entire post, just parts of it, and only to dismiss my points.

When you ignore what I've written to the point that you quote me, ask a question, and the answer to the question is in the quote, and accuse me of not paying attention to the show when it states the opposite of what you claim, I don't see any point in trying to continue conversation with you.

[Pantastic]

you will provide evidence to back up your claims now. Claiming "there is no evidence, so I am right" is insufficient. You have to justify your assertion that this particular tactic is only applicable to merchant or civilian ships and that military ships would be immune.

There are zero incidents of a military ship (that is not involved with escorting or attacking merchant ships) or military supply ship being intercepted in deep space in the fifteen or so books in the series. The reasons that merchant ships follow easily predicted paths don't apply to military ships trying to avoid interception. It's shown in Echoes of Honor that it's possible to fly a convoy of ships directly through enemy space with such a low chance of interception that they only worry about life support failures once a ship is underway. Since military ships don't generally travel at their highest theoretical speed (at least in Honor of the Queen, it may have changed later), it would be useful to have a small scout (that, like a dispatch boat, would travel at max speed) out to spot an enemy fleet en-route to a system and provide a bit of warning.

If it doesn't happen throughout an entire series of books even though there are many opportunities, people in the books don't worry about it even when running through a big chunk of enemy space, and it would be useful for them to do it to get warning, that is evidence that it simply doesn't happen. Proving a negative is generally not possible, but the complete lack of any indication that it happens once over the 20 year war qualifies as evidence that it is not practical to intercept warships and supply ships in deep space.

While your at it you can also justify your claims about the supply issue. I'm not inclined to be taking your word on this, and we take burden of proof seriously.

You really should be more specific when asking for a cite, I'm guessing you mean the six months with no base bit. If so, take a look at p625 on War of Honor (italics mine). They have enough supply ships to carry six months of supplies for everything attacking Manticorian forces but Second Fleet, and can easily detach part of the supply ships to get more if they have to stay longer.

Giscard nodded. As soon as this conference ended, he and the newly designated First Fleet would depart the Haven system and head for his new station in the SXR-136-23 system. It had never recieved a name to replace the catalog designation because the thoroughly useless red giant had absolutely nothing, not even any planets, to attract anyone to it. It did, however, offer a handy anchor around which to park a fleet safely out of sight. And it just happened to be located less than forty light years northwest of Trevor's star.

The logistics ships to support First Fleet were already in place, orbiting SXR-136's dim central fires with sufficient supplies and spares to sustain the entire fleet on station for six months. If it turned out to be necessary to leave First Fleet for longer than that, the fleet train would detach ships in relays to bring back what was needed. And if the balloon went up, every single task group (except Second Fleet) set up by the carefully orchestrated war plan known as Case Red Alpha would depart from SEX-136.

I'll respond to the rest later, out of time for now.

[Samuel]

Why do they use a star as a staging point? Isn't deep space batter because it is alot harder to let slip the basing location?

[Stark]

Holy cow, does the book really say 'balloon went up' ? lol

[Coyote]

So, really, an ideal supply depot would actually be some sort of deep space base with no gravity. Maybe an asteroid used as an anchor point and "hidden" in some way, like an asteroid field or a jovian-like ring system... or something else that distorts images by interposing a gravity mass between your depot and a likely observer...

[Junghalli]

So, really, an ideal supply depot would actually be some sort of deep space base with no gravity. Maybe an asteroid used as an anchor point and "hidden" in some way, like an asteroid field or a jovian-like ring system... or something else that distorts images by interposing a gravity mass between your depot and a likely observer...

Solitary black hole maybe?

[Simon_Jester]

Why do they use a star as a staging point? Isn't deep space batter because it is alot harder to let slip the basing location?

Probably so it's easier to find. For navigation purposes, it's easier to say "go to Hank's Star" than it is to say "go to galactic coordinates blah blah blah." Errors in deep space navigation will tend to matter more.

There are zero incidents of a military ship (that is not involved with escorting or attacking merchant ships) or military supply ship being intercepted in deep space in the fifteen or so books in the series.

There are also very few instances of a military supply convoy traveling at all; does that mean they don't exist?

The reasons that merchant ships follow easily predicted paths don't apply to military ships trying to avoid interception.

Yes, they do, as I just demonstrated: cost and volume per unit time. For X freighters, increasing the time of flight by a factor of two to avoid the risk of interception either doubles the number of ships you need or halves the amount of supplies you can run... which in turn halves the size of the fleet you can sustain.

Try to understand that there's a difference between a one-off run in which a fleet has to sneak through enemy space while avoiding detection (the jailbreak from Hades in Echoes of Honor, deep-strike attacks against enemy infrastructure) and a regular run in which ships routinely travel to and from a major base that is far away from the source of supplies in the region (say, the ships members of the People's Navy took to get to and from Barnett when it was a major Havenite base during the first Havenite war).

For the former, you have the luxury of avoiding any region of space where you risk being spotted. For the latter, you do not, not unless you have massively more transport capability than you'd otherwise need.

If you do not have the luxury of routing your regular supply runs on inefficient, slow paths, you are forced to deal with the same problem faced by civilian merchants, who are intercepted by commerce raiders on a regular basis. This forces you to secure a line of supply for the fleet or (again) suffering either interdiction of supplies (which hurts the fleet) or the use of evasive routing (which reduces the size of fleet which can be sustained, to the point where it is no longer able to sustain combat operations against the enemy forces in the neighborhood).

You really should be more specific when asking for a cite, I'm guessing you mean the six months with no base bit. If so, take a look at p625 on War of Honor (italics mine). They have enough supply ships to carry six months of supplies for everything attacking Manticorian forces but Second Fleet, and can easily detach part of the supply ships to get more if they have to stay longer.

Yes. And how many ships did they use? Second Fleet had a huge commitment of their modern, active capital ships. If it had a comparable commitment from the merchant marine, they might well have sent a ridiculous fraction of their available shipping to carry the supplies for that fleet.

That can be done, but it normally isn't.

[Sea Skimmer]

Probably so it's easier to find. For navigation purposes, it's easier to say "go to Hank's Star" than it is to say "go to galactic coordinates blah blah blah." Errors in deep space navigation will tend to matter more.

We made cruise missiles that guided by tracking distant stars... in daylight no less, in the 1950s. ICBMs use them today and that's besides the whole sailing ship navigation thing. Navigation in space should not really be a big deal, you've got plenty of reference points which are very distant, and would work all throughout a galaxy. The further you are away from the closest star, the better it should would work too, because you can see more clearly without all the junk that orbits stars in the way.

[Simon_Jester]

We made cruise missiles that guided by tracking distant stars... in daylight no less, in the 1950s. ICBMs use them today and that's besides the whole sailing ship navigation thing. Navigation in space should not really be a big deal, you've got plenty of reference points which are very distant, and would work all throughout a galaxy. The further you are away from the closest star, the better it should would work too, because you can see more clearly without all the junk that orbits stars in the way.

Just a guess.

That said, we track the stars on Earth by measuring the angles to the stars, compared to the horizon. In effect we're measuring the plane of the horizon, not the positions of the stars themselves. That tells us where we are... on Earth. We can say "Star 2495 is at azimuth X degrees, elevation Y degrees, so I'm at latitude A, longitude B." In space it doesn't work that way.

Sure, we can measure the angles to nearby stars. But it doesn't tell us where we are if we change our position by a million kilometers in some direction, because we can't really measure the position of stars that precisely. They're tens or hundreds of trillions of kilometers off, and that's just the near ones; how far do you have to move for the background of stars to be visibly distorted from what it was when you started?

So while the stellar navigation software on, say, a Snark would be good enough to tell the ship its orientation relative to the galactic plane (which way is my nose pointed?)*, it would not tell the ship its absolute position relative to fixed points in space (am I half-way between two stars, or am I 1% closer to one than to the other?). Not to very high precision.

So while stellar navigation could probably steer you to within a reasonably close distance of a fixed point in deep space, to a precision of a billion kilometers or so, there are more challenges in finding the rendevous than there would be otherwise.

*Well, sometimes.

"We would have made the rendevous if your galactic charts were more accurate! As it is, we went to where Base Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Seven Four Nine would be if you'd done your job right, not where it really is! Aaargh!"

[Coyote]

That said, we track the stars on Earth by measuring the angles to the stars, compared to the horizon. In effect we're measuring the plane of the horizon, not the positions of the stars themselves. That tells us where we are... on Earth. We can say "Star 2495 is at azimuth X degrees, elevation Y degrees, so I'm at latitude A, longitude B." In space it doesn't work that way.

Sure, we can measure the angles to nearby stars. But it doesn't tell us where we are if we change our position by a million kilometers in some direction, because we can't really measure the position of stars that precisely. ...

I don't know about this; bear in mind that in stellar navigation we'd be able to track stars in an omnidirectional ball out from the ship, and not be limited to what we can see above a horizon line. We'd have multiple angles from which to correlate position in reference to a fixed point, which will probably be the center of the Galaxy. Instead of "magnetic or pole North" we'd focus on Central Mass/Gravity Well of the Milky Way since --until we start going transgalactic in a few skillion years, heh, our position relative to Galactic Center will be sufficient. The Galaxy rotates, sure, but in a mostly predictable manner, course and speed, and we'd be rotating with it, and if we get to the point where we have interstellar travel such drift will be easily calulated into navigation computers (we can already compute expected distances & trajectories afte rall).

Although having distant galaxies to nav off of will also factor-- if suddenly Andromea is way off our expected axis, we know we've been pushed off course by a major factor.

[Commander Xillian]

Right; Because in stellar travel precision is everything, and you would have to factor in everything. However, this would bring about a very, very bad side-affect if you used other celestial bodies, something every traveler is famileir with:

Time lag.

If, say, you go to planet Buttfuckers, and a friend goes in the other direction to plannet Fuckbutters, then your celestial mapping would be horridly askew when it comes to things outside of our galaxy, even if FTL, no sorry Especially if FTL has been achieved. When the two of you meet back up, your maps would be almost completely different, due to the speed of light, and specific bodies being in separate positions at the same time.

... Or did I mess this theoretical science up horridly?

[Coyote]

I think the time distortions expected in relativity will have to be dealt with by whatever the author wants at some level, Xillina, but you do provide an interesting notion-- people travelling at relativistic speeds in different directions and for different durations will all, technically, age differently. So your roommate at Stellar Academy, who graduated with you two years ago when you were both 28, might by 75 when you see him again after many relativistic years of travel, while you've been on system runs and desk jobs and you're only 37.

But I think that there'd have to be a universal constant time that is generally agreed to, much like Greenwich Mean Time is now. In my stories I use Galactic Rotation as a constant; since it rotates at a given speed you have a reasonable expectation that planet Buttfuckers will have moved from position A to position B in a given year, and that will be the constant time referred to no matter how many relativistic hours you've racked up. That would probably also be the constant for calculating pay and seniority, too.

Of course, the Galaxy tends to rotate faster the closer you get coreward, and slower at spinward, which would kinda become "time zones" writ massive. I do wonder how close we could ever really get to the core for it to become another time headache.

[Sea Skimmer]

Just a guess.
That said, we track the stars on Earth by measuring the angles to the stars, compared to the horizon. In effect we're measuring the plane of the horizon, not the positions of the stars themselves. That tells us where we are... on Earth. We can say "Star 2495 is at azimuth X degrees, elevation Y degrees, so I'm at latitude A, longitude B." In space it doesn't work that way.

Yeah it fucking does. If i have three very distant known stars to sight on, and I measure the elevation and deflection to each one, I have my position in 3-D coordinates . Of course in reality my Mk II automatic optical navigation system will have 4-6 telescopes spread around the ship and will timeshare tracking of dozens of different points to keep the ships inertial reference system updated.

Early mariners were limited in what they could do because of instrument limitations. However even then, such navigation done all by hand and eye could still be accurate to within 3 nautical miles even though the earth is moving rather fast. 3 miles is already more then good enough for any realistic space navigation given the premise that we already have interseller ships. The only reason you would need more accuracy is to avoid debris, at which point you need some kind of active sensor anyway, unless you expect to have maps of every last asteroid trajectory in the galaxy with better then 3 mile precision.

Sure, we can measure the angles to nearby stars. But it doesn't tell us where we are if we change our position by a million kilometers in some direction, because we can't really measure the position of stars that precisely.

Yeah, we can. We can also very precisely measure the locations of black holes in the center of our galaxy which is another handy reference. The more points you bring in the more accurate the position will become. This is besides the fact that you could use local stars as reference points anyway, a star works just as well for a navigation beacon if it is 3 light years away or if you are in the same system, provided you have other data to give that single point any meaning.

They're tens or hundreds of trillions of kilometers off, and that's just the near ones; how far do you have to move for the background of stars to be visibly distorted from what it was when you started?

The whole point if using very distant stars is that you have to move a colossal distance before the distant background would change to any meaningful degree. Unless you can cross intergalactic distances in something like hours, its not going to matter. Even then, it wouldn't matter because you just add more reference stars to the database. This is also known as map making, a little something we figured out at least 3,500 years ago. You're going to need a map to make any damn sense of a single star anyway, because you'd also need to know the planet orbits to define a point within the star system.

So while the stellar navigation software on, say, a Snark would be good enough to tell the ship its orientation relative to the galactic plane (which way is my nose pointed?)*, it would not tell the ship its absolute position relative to fixed points in space (am I half-way between two stars, or am I 1% closer to one than to the other?). Not to very high precision.

Fixed points in space? You're whole argument is flawed . A single star is not a fixed point! A star is a rather fast moving object like everything else in space. Distant stars work because the relative movement is very very slight to the point that it does not really even matter. Its fixed as far as the accuracy of optical instructions is concerned. If you guide only based relative to a local star then you aren't going to a fixed point, you would be chasing a moving point!
Furthermore a single star wouldn't work at all, since without taking in other information you have no idea what direction is what. You can't generate a bearing if you have no reference line. All you could do is generate a range, which means the super precise point you think you are following is in fact a circle all the way around the star, it it would in fact be a sphere if the star lacks any predictable features to give it orientation. So you MUST draw in other information and plot a position based on numerous reference points. One star does not work, and without a map even a star with planets tracking thrown in doesn't work.

So while stellar navigation could probably steer you to within a reasonably close distance of a fixed point in deep space, to a precision of a billion kilometers or so, there are more challenges in finding the rendevous than there would be otherwise.

Nope. In fact if you told someone to rendezvous at a given star at a specific range and bearing, with no other reference points they'd have no clue at all where you are, except to search throughout the star system in a sphere at whatever the specified range was. They could be clear on the opposite side of the star and have no damn way of knowing if it was correct or not.

In fact long range star tracking is the only space navigation system that will work over a wide area. Low and behold NASA has already created an automatic system to do this for spacecraft. It currently only uses the sun and the planets, since that works fine for movements within the solar system. But if you want to go interseller then it could and would be expanded to use a wider range of points which are very distant. We are talking about stars billions of light years away (actually mostly they are other whole galaxies or clusters) at which point they still work fine even if you move ~100,000 light years yourself.
The only requirement is that you have maps... and god would that not be hard to do given functional interseller travel of any level.

[Sea Skimmer]

Right; Because in stellar travel precision is everything, and you would have to factor in everything. However, this would bring about a very, very bad side-affect if you used other celestial bodies, something every traveler is famileir with:

Time lag.

Do you honestly think we couldn't program a computer right now to account for that? The speed of light is almost completely predictable except for when it gets bent by gravity, which we can also measure and predict anyway. As for leaving the galaxy, this is why you expand the maps as you expand the area you roam. You are not limited to using a single set of reference points. That wouldn't work anyway because if you are on the other side of the galactic core, you can't see all the same points. But nothing stops you from having hundreds or thousands of distant star clusters programed into the computer. When one cluster falls out of view the robot telescope starts tracking a different one.

This would work a lot better then trying to home in on a single moving star, that's for damn sure. Trying to follow a single star would barely even count as navigation, it'd just be homing in on a moving object and you would in fact have no idea what your true position in the universe is.

[Commander Xillian]

And, this brings us to the theory of Zero-Point (Or Universal Stillpoint). Basically, there is a set space in the universe that everything revolves around. Using this theory, one could, theoretically, compute distances accurately, but like all great theories, it would be useless the moment you left your galaxy. But that would never wo-[KLAAANG!]

What the Fuck was That?

[Sea Skimmer]

And, this brings us to the theory of Zero-Point (Or Universal Stillpoint). Basically, there is a set space in the universe that everything revolves around. Using this theory, one could, theoretically, compute distances accurately, but like all great theories, it would be useless the moment you left your galaxy. But that would never wo-[KLAAANG!]

That doesn't make sense. Why would a fixed point the whole universe revolves around only work within one galaxy? But either way, a single point will never work very well for for navigation. You can generate a range and bearing, but with nothing to define a base axis for the bearing you couldn't tell someone else where you are.

[Commander Xillian]

... Whoopsy, typo on my part. Lemmy just scooch past and hit it with a wrench a few times...

EDIT: Fuck.

[Connor MacLeod]

There are zero incidents of a military ship (that is not involved with escorting or attacking merchant ships) or military supply ship being intercepted in deep space in the fifteen or so books in the series. The reasons that merchant ships follow easily predicted paths don't apply to military ships trying to avoid interception. It's shown in Echoes of Honor that it's possible to fly a convoy of ships directly through enemy space with such a low chance of interception that they only worry about life support failures once a ship is underway. Since military ships don't generally travel at their highest theoretical speed (at least in Honor of the Queen, it may have changed later), it would be useful to have a small scout (that, like a dispatch boat, would travel at max speed) out to spot an enemy fleet en-route to a system and provide a bit of warning.

If it doesn't happen throughout an entire series of books even though there are many opportunities, people in the books don't worry about it even when running through a big chunk of enemy space, and it would be useful for them to do it to get warning, that is evidence that it simply doesn't happen. Proving a negative is generally not possible, but the complete lack of any indication that it happens once over the 20 year war qualifies as evidence that it is not practical to intercept warships and supply ships in deep space.

Oh for crying out loud. I demand evidence for this "un-interceptable FTL" and you fail to bring the evidence. I provided a quote so I don't see why its somehow impossible for you to do so, given how easily accessible online versions of the books are. I don't have to explain "burden of proof" do I?

You really should be more specific when asking for a cite, I'm guessing you mean the six months with no base bit. If so, take a look at p625 on War of Honor (italics mine). They have enough supply ships to carry six months of supplies for everything attacking Manticorian forces but Second Fleet, and can easily detach part of the supply ships to get more if they have to stay longer.

Giscard nodded. As soon as this conference ended, he and the newly designated First Fleet would depart the Haven system and head for his new station in the SXR-136-23 system. It had never recieved a name to replace the catalog designation because the thoroughly useless red giant had absolutely nothing, not even any planets, to attract anyone to it. It did, however, offer a handy anchor around which to park a fleet safely out of sight. And it just happened to be located less than forty light years northwest of Trevor's star.

The logistics ships to support First Fleet were already in place, orbiting SXR-136's dim central fires with sufficient supplies and spares to sustain the entire fleet on station for six months. If it turned out to be necessary to leave First Fleet for longer than that, the fleet train would detach ships in relays to bring back what was needed. And if the balloon went up, every single task group (except Second Fleet) set up by the carefully orchestrated war plan known as Case Red Alpha would depart from SEX-136.

Good! we have a quote to work with at least. However, I don't see how this automatically proves your point, because resource usage is not neccesarily constant across the spectrum since performance is not neccesarily the same (EG ships accelerate faster or slower, changes in firepower depending on what is to be accomplished - eg precision bombardment vs trying to destroy something, etc.) Your quote merely says "on station" for six months, which is not the same as "six months of continuous operations." - hell the KIND of operation can certainly dictate the operational endurance itself (invasion and space battle, vs commerce raiding, or scouting, for example.)