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Pearl Harbour 5642....

kaladorn

SOC-14 1K
Pearl Harbour AARs

This made me think of what an equivalent situation would be like during the early part of 5FW (or 6FW or any other conflict for that matter) - An attack on a naval base system caught napping.

Just read some of the excerpts and you can see that a ships in refit, some commanded by *ensigns*, had to suddenly deal with hostile raiders including minisubs and strike aircraft.

It might be interesting to consider how feasible this might be, what tactics and technologies might come into play, and what it might be like for the people on the recieving end....

(and think of the adventure possibilities!)
 
Well, I suppose this is just stating the obvious, but there's always "black globe invisibility."

...and putting a black globe around one of those dreaded "near-C rocks" would greatly increase the odds of it getting close enough to its target to be "deflection-proof" before being detected. Icky.
 
Near C Rocks are verboten. Really. ;)

Now, the BG - it cuts emissions, but presumably it also optically occludes anything behind it. So it might be hard to detect, but not impossible. Correct?

That's a good start. A carrier popping out of a BG and dropping a strike right into the enemy naval base... argh.....
 
The Fifth Frontier War game allowed the Imperial player to use his four 6-2-8 battle squadrons to make just such an attack, as long as they were the =only= squadrons in the fleet making that attack. They would get a free round of fire on any enemy fleet (or on enemy troops downworld, or drop their own troops) before you'd go to the regular combat sequence. Very nice. But it was just those four battle squadrons, and if you'd attacked too big a target, oops.... :(

Now imagine a fleet with really good navigators, who pick up a high normal-space vector and then jump to the target, planning their arrival jump point so that their nice high vector is aimed just past the target world. The attacking squadrons (if their jump is finely coordinated, a very difficult thing to do) would roar in, get a couple of quick shots as they rush past, and then get back out of the gravity well and safely back into jumpspace.

IMTU this would be a very difficult thing to do, as getting ships to arrive out of jump closely enough together (both in space and time) is not easy. But imagine a battle tender with a squadron of riders attached doing this. Only one jump drive to worry about so planning your arrival is trivial. The risk here is that your battle tender cannot avoid coming into range of the enemy as you go by. Better hope you take the bad guys by surprise, because they'll be gunning for your tender with everything they can muster.
 
Yeah, a BT would work.

I'm thinking arriving out system (1000D out say, and quiet), then drifting in with the BG on.... then dropping your eggs and opening up when you're right on top of the enemy. To do it PH style, you'd catch a numbered fleet in the middle of refit with most of its crew off on leave or reassigned.

That's probably be a lot like PH.... scrambling partially manned shore defences, a few token fighters against the incoming waves, maybe some battle-rider deployed heavy SDBs like the mini-subs....
 
I think in RSB there's a Blackheart Strike Cruiser that is designed for just this purpose. The ship has a big jump drive (like J5), plenty of J-fuel (like for two J3's), and a big spinal mount. I don't think the ship was all that big, and it didn't have much beyond the meson gun and the black globe. It was designed to jump in, drift past, lower the globe at the right time, and blast away for a few rounds, then drift off to safety.

I don't think that was exactly the way to go, but it's close. If the ship doesn't have some kind of defenses beyond the globe, it's pretty much a sitting duck if it encounters something unexpected. You'd want the ship to be pretty big, so that it could deliver the equivalent blow of a small squadron. No riders to recover, no high;y-coordinated strike, and no herd of jumps to detect.

You also want to deliver a very high volume of fire in a very short period of time. Missiles do that job nicely, so you'd put a butt-ton of launchers, and have them set up so they could all be fired in quick order.

While your main gun is going to be a spinal mount, and it's going to take a lot of juice to run it, you can't neglect other weapons. That one gun can fire only so many times, and under most space combat rules systems, one gun = one target, so you want to have other guns too. Bay weapons are there for softer targets, and are for handling SDBs, freeing the main gun for the harder targets. Missiles add a lot of punch, and add nothing to the energy budget. PD-lasers will keep enemy missiles away, sand casters are cheap enough to handle enemy lasers handily, and if we make our ship a needle, we get the maximum size for our main gun and also gain the benefit of sloped armor versus whatever it's shooting at - about 4x armor if we have a 75 degree slope.

The ship is not really designed to dodge enemy fire, so it's all right that it's long; the frontal armor is going to take the brunt of the PAWS hits and shrug them off. The only thing left is meson fire, and we'll mount a reasaonable screen for that. Not too big, just enough to stop things from insta-killing.

When we send this puppy in, the first thing it does is drop a bunch of missiles at the target, hunting for enemy sensors, like the ones tht direct those deep-sites or other static defenses. Ideally, we'll have a second ship for this, which will jump in from a different direction, and pull the defenders off that way, leaving our real strike clear. When the heat is too hot for the other ship (it should probably be a missile boat), it just leaves, as it didn't try approaching the planet.
 
TheDS wrote:

"I think in RSB there's a Blackheart Strike Cruiser that is designed for just this purpose. The ship has a big jump drive (like J5), plenty of J-fuel (like for two J3's), and a big spinal mount. I don't think the ship was all that big, and it didn't have much beyond the meson gun and the black globe. It was designed to jump in, drift past, lower the globe at the right time, and blast away for a few rounds, then drift off to safety."


Mr. TheDS,

That's the beast in question! It was mentioned in RSB, but first appeared in one of DGP's later 'Traveller Digests'. They're Nemesis-class cruisers prepostioned at deep space calibration points as part of Operation Blackheart. Oddly enough, despite being a MT design, the cruiser isn't broken! Despite most of the designs in FSotSI for example. :(

As you point out, the Nemesis class is a pretty barebones vessel, designed for hit and run. She's got the globe for stealth; apparently jumping with it ON, and packs the biggest meson gun that can be crammed aboard. She has fuel for 7 parsecs (IIRC) giving you plenty of jump combinations for her 'boomarang' style raids. One note; while a DGP design, Nemesis breaks DGP's own ruling on jump fuel usage and adheres to the one in HG2. Go figure. :rolleyes:

Nemsis operations entail a very accurate, and thus painstakingly calculated, jump plot. She arrives near the 100D limit on a normal space vector that will bring her in towards her target areas. Her globe is up at 100% and gets dropped at a predetermined time; I've forgotten how temporally accurate MT allowed jumps to get but even +/- 10 hours at a well chosen normal space vector isn't too dangerous. Once the time is up, or weapons fire hitting the globe lets her crew know they've been spotted, Nemesis drops her globe, engages targets, and jumps away. DGP even suggested that the Nemesis class used energy from enemy fire collected by her globe to power her jump.

Target selection for Nemesis operations will be tough. They need to go after something they know will be there. Real time scouting by otheer vessels in-system ahead of a Nemesis strike will only tip off the enemy. A militarized Donosev could lurk in the outer system, build up target data, and then maser that information into the Nemesis arrival region hours to hopefully meet the incoming cruiser. Because the scout will be light-hours out, she'll need to maser her data light-hours ahead of the planned Nemesis arrival time. Signals of the nature will be a red flag to any defenders.

Instead, I think that systems will be continually scouted and the information gathered jumped out to a multiple Nemesis cruisers waiting at a calibration point. The data will be ~336 hours old by the time the cruisers arrive to act on it, but the operation's hand will not have been tipped in the meantime.

One thing to note in operations of this type, or in any operations of a commerce raiding nature; Damage is as good as destruction. Nemesis strikes only need damage fleet trains, supply ships, orbital defenses, and the like. Damage by raiders mean the Zhos still need to divert assets to defend against them. The bar is set much lower for the raider in this case; she only needs to threaten and only needs to succeed occasionally. The defender much thwart or prevent raids with a much higher success rate and that usually requires more assets than is expended by the raider.

Finally, I also believe that Nemesis strikes will be multiple ship affairs spread out over time. Once a Zho fleet train or supply nexus is identified, the Nemesis strikes begin. They're a nuisance, they only cause damage, but they give the Zhos no peace until the Zhos leave the area.

The Allies did something similar against Rabaul once it was bypassed with all-night airplane raids. At dusk, a lone B-25 would arrive, circle Rabaul, drop a few bombs, strafe a few targets, and generally make the Japs' evening unpleasent. Just as that bomber reached her bingo fuel mark, another one would show up to take over the job, then another, then another, and forth until the sun came back up. There wasn't a lot of damage done and very few bombers were lost, but the Japs were kept up all night at their air raid stations and were slowly driven crazier than the proverbial sh*thouse rat.

Multiple Nemesis cruisers arriving at staggered times at different points on the 100D shell with varying normal space vectors will drive the Zhos into the bughouse; psionic-based mental health practices or not.


Sincerely,
Larsen
 
The main problem I have with any of this is the relatively slow normal-space velocity being suggested. The slower you go in normal space, the longer it takes to get through the 100D volume and the more time the enemy gets to shoot at you, black globe or no.

If you can carry a high n-space velocity you can be "here and gone" in a few minutes, and it's unlikely that any defender will be able to build a vector sufficient to pursue you before you get to the 100D limit.

A secondary concern is that black globes are expensive and TL15+ only, which limits availability quite a bit. A =fast= hit and run raider wouldn't need the BG as much and would be cheaper (allowing more to be built).
 
How about jumping in really, really far away from the target and above the plane of the system (ie, away from any likely traffic). Build up an enormous velocity and try to blow through the target area at a high rate of speed.

A variant is to build up a high speed, then eject a large number of missiles that auto-target ships not identified as friends. The launching ship(s) can even jump out after all missiles are launched. The missiles drift in and then go live at a predetermined point in time, doing what they can to auto target. You'd probably get overkill on some targets and nothing on others, but having a large flock of birds inbound at a very high speed would hurt.

Ron
 
Originally posted by Ron Vutpakdi:
How about jumping in really, really far away from the target and above the plane of the system (ie, away from any likely traffic). Build up an enormous velocity and try to blow through the target area at a high rate of speed.

A variant is to build up a high speed, then eject a large number of missiles that auto-target ships not identified as friends. The launching ship(s) can even jump out after all missiles are launched. The missiles drift in and then go live at a predetermined point in time, doing what they can to auto target. You'd probably get overkill on some targets and nothing on others, but having a large flock of birds inbound at a very high speed would hurt.

Ron
This might work, but it depends on just what kind of deep-space sensor network the target system might have. If they see you jump in, or just detect you coming in soon enough, they'll have enough time to go to battle stations, etc, and give you a hot (if very brief) reception.

I once calculated the maximum safe normal-space speed for TRAVELLER starships (based on impact with micrometeorites) and a ship armored at factor-1 can safely reach about 2.26% of lightspeed (6780 km/sec). At that speed you can go from 100D out to point-blank range of a size-8 world in 3 minutes, which is way too fast for the defenses to react. More heavily armored ships could make the approach at faster speeds, but are they really necessary? Carrying that much speed into jump space would (IMTU) make the jump calculations that much harder.

If you jump in far outsystem and accelerate in, you can reach higher speeds (assuming your ship is armored enough to withstand them) and make your pass even faster, but you're giving the enemy more time to detect you (it takes a 6-G ship over 1.5 days just to reach the speed of 2.26% of lightspeed I mentioned) and if normal-space speed does effect jump calculations, you'll have to shed all that speed before you can safely jump out.
 
I just had a thought about where a black globe-equipped ship might be very useful in a high-speed raiding force as I have been describing.

Imagine a battle tender with a BG. She picks up the necessary speed, jumps to the target, launches her riders, and then turns on the BG. She coasts past the planet protected by the BG while her raiders blast the snot out of the targets and then once out of range she drops the BG, recovers her brood, and jumps away (assuming she has the fuel, of course).

Since BTs have enormous Jump-drives they have enormous capacitor banks as a matter of course, enough to absorb a lot of firepower, even if the defenses have the ability to react fast enough and can target the BT while her children are blasting away.

You minimize the number of BGs needed in the raiding force, and deliver a lot of firepower very quickly. Sounds unpleasant to me.
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The Oz wrote:

"The main problem I have with any of this is the relatively slow normal-space velocity being suggested. The slower you go in normal space, the longer it takes to get through the 100D volume and the more time the enemy gets to shoot at you, black globe or no."


Mr. Oz,

First, you needn't move deep into the 100D limit sphere at all. A vector resembling a shallow 'chord' will work nicely.

Second, check out CT and HG2 weapon ranges and then be prepared to go slack jawed. HG2 uses range bands, but they can be converted into hexes by a set of Mayday/HG2 conversion rules in the Mayday game. Hold onto your hat, but a Mayday hex is 3e+5 km; that's 300,000 km, and HG2's short range band converts to 0-5 hexes while the long range band converts from 6-15 hexes! That's an upper range of 4.5e+6 km; 4,500,000 km!

Take Earth as an example; a world with a UWP size of 8. Earth's equatorial diameter is 12760 km (polar is smaller), so the radius of Earth's 100D jump limit shell is;

- 100 diameters, or 1.276e+6, plus
- half of Earth's diameter, or 6380 km, for
- a radius of 1.27600638e+6 (!!!!!)

Thus, according to HG2, a ship can purportedly sit OUTSIDE of Earth's 100D limit and shoot targets in Earth orbit! In the immortal worlds of Ralph Kramdem; "Hummina-hummina-hummina!"

It's only when we start delaing with gas giant that travel time inside the 100D limit becomes and issue. Even then, a couple three hours of 3-gees in the departure system can give you a healthy vector in the target system.


Sincerely,
Larsen
 
OTOH, why risk non-jump craft? Docking is not an instant thing. Launching may be quick, but safely reattaching is something that takes time to do right. The subcraft could just as easily be fighters as BR's.

But why worry about recovering them at all? Simply launch missiles instead. No need to recover them, and they're a lot smaller and harder to hit than fighters, especially if you go the expensive route and apply some stealthing to them.

The diversionary ship I mentioned is not at all unlike the bombing mission Larsen described. YOu see one of these things pop in and play with you, and you think you're in for a long night as another and another pop in, until all of a sudden, you've got a battlewagon blasting away in close orbit that you didn't see (because you couldn't).

I can't really see a ship having its black globe up DURING a jump. Everything says the jump field is maintained a meter or so from the hull grid, and as a lot of descriptions go and say they're dumping Hydrogen mass overboard during a jump (how else to account for the obscene fuel usage?), I really don't think I want to dump that kind of energy into my black globe, no thanks. I also don't see the globe really doing anything about obscuring the jump point; you can't hide those things unless the enemy is too busy looking elsewhere or blinded... and that's why I mentioned the missile boat.
 
Larsen:

Yes, the range bands of HG2, interpreted via Mayday, do give such ranges; however, the sensor ranges of CT Book 2 argue against it. LBB#2 says that military ships detect targets at a max of 2 light-seconds, or 600,000 km, and can only track targets once detected to a max of 3 LS, or 900,000 km. And yes, I'm well aware that these sensor ranges are themselves contradicted elsewhere and are disputed among TRAVELLER fans.

What it comes down to is that this is another place where our beloved TRAVELLER contradicts itself, and is therefore an area where it is the rules of a particular GM that apply in his TU.

The DS:

Yes, missile salvos would work, but I was working under the idea that:

1) The attacker is looking for something a little more precise than just flooding the target area with missiles, which could be intercepted/diverted/just hit the wrong target.

2) It's more dramatic to have the raider ship(s) zoom past the planet at high velocity, blazing away with meson guns, etc.

I do agree that black globes probably cannot be used in jump.
 
The Oz wrote:

"Yes, the range bands of HG2, interpreted via Mayday, do give such ranges; however, the sensor ranges of CT Book 2 argue against it."


Mr. Oz,

They sure do! Maddening, isn't it?

"What it comes down to is that this is another place where our beloved TRAVELLER contradicts itself, and is therefore an area where it is the rules of a particular GM that apply in his TU."

That's very true. Try this: cut down the Mayday hex to BL's hex size; 30K km rather than 300K km, and the picture changes wee bit. Now, we have an upper weapons range of 4.5e+5 km and a 100D limit radius of still 1.276e+6 km. Our spinal mount can still reach ~35% percent of the way into the jump limit sphere from the 100D limit itself. So our Nemesis must pass deeper into the jump exclusion sphere, but still on a 'shallow' chord though.

"2) It's more dramatic to have the raider ship(s) zoom past the planet at high velocity, blazing away with meson guns, etc."

Oh! So that's what we're looking for; Drama! Easy then, use fighters, inertialess drives, and The Force.

"I do agree that black globes probably cannot be used in jump."

Unlike HG2 which specifically allows a black globe cloaked ship to use the energy collected from enemy fire to power her jump drive and escape without damage or penalty; i.e. needn't drop her globe to engage jump engines...

And unlike FFW which allows the Imperial player to raid with black globe cloaked ships...

And unlike the Traveller Digest article which described Nemesis-class operations in the first place...

And unlike both versions of FF&S that don't mention any black globe interference with jump drives.

As you point out, canon is conflicting and confusing on this issue, so pick which ever bit you need to create the drama you require. All that really matters is whether you and your groups have fun. Everything else is moot.


Sincerely,
Larsen
 
Unlike HG2 which specifically allows a black globe cloaked ship to use the energy collected from enemy fire to power her jump drive
I never liked that rule.

Incidentally, has anyone worked out how much energy you need to jump using this rule, and therefore the PP & fuel required, and compared it to the "real" fuel requirement?

and escape without damage or penalty; i.e. needn't drop her globe to engage jump engines...

And unlike FFW which allows the Imperial player to raid with black globe cloaked ships...
Both still work if you have to drop the globe to jump.
 
Originally posted by Larsen E. Whipsnade:
[QB] The Oz wrote: "2) It's more dramatic to have the raider ship(s) zoom past the planet at high velocity, blazing away with meson guns, etc."

Oh! So that's what we're looking for; Drama! Easy then, use fighters, inertialess drives, and The Force.
Not that dramatic; this is TRAVELLER, not STAR WARS. I've played both and I know the differences. As a game designer, I don't like creating situations where one side can act with good effect and the other has no effective power of reply. I like to create things so that if you want more effect, you have to accept some risk, and the more effect you want, the more risk you have to accept.

In this particular situation (the raid on an "anchored" fleet) the no-risk option is to do what DS has suggested: send in a swarm of missiles. Your raiders have practically no risk, but your effect will be limited as you can't be sure what (if anything) you will hit.

My "high-speed pass" is the next up in risk/reward: you get to use precisely targeted energy weapons (especially spinal mounts) and missile salvos, but you'll only get one or two shots (thanks to your high velocity), the enemy will get to reply, but not much as he is hopefully taken by surprise and only his ready-alert forces can shoot back.
 
The Oz wrote:

"Not that dramatic; this is TRAVELLER, not STAR WARS. I've played both and I know the differences."


Mr. Oz,

Ahh, what trouble the lack of an emoticon will wreak! If I'd remembered to add this; ;) , to the my sentence about drama, we would have all had a nice chuckle!

"As a game designer, I don't like creating situations where one side can act with good effect and the other has no effective power of reply. I like to create things so that if you want more effect, you have to accept some risk, and the more effect you want, the more risk you have to accept."

Sure enough, play balance is a noble goal.

"My "high-speed pass" is the next up in risk/reward: you get to use precisely targeted energy weapons (especially spinal mounts) and missile salvos, but you'll only get one or two shots (thanks to your high velocity), the enemy will get to reply, but not much as he is hopefully taken by surprise and only his ready-alert forces can shoot back."

Have you thought about how very easy the targetting solution on a vessel making a high speed pass will be? The vessel's maneuver drive can still add their paltry fee gees of acceleration to the vessel's vector, but that won't be able to change the vessel's future position by any appreciable amount when compared to the vector required by the 'hi-speed pass'. Sure, the defenders may only get a volley or two; same as the attackers, but aiming that fire will so very, very easy.


Sincerely,
Larsen
 
Originally posted by Larsen E. Whipsnade:

Have you thought about how very easy the targetting solution on a vessel making a high speed pass will be? The vessel's maneuver drive can still add their paltry fee gees of acceleration to the vessel's vector, but that won't be able to change the vessel's future position by any appreciable amount when compared to the vector required by the 'hi-speed pass'. Sure, the defenders may only get a volley or two; same as the attackers, but aiming that fire will so very, very easy.


Sincerely,
Larsen [/QB]
Yes, but that really works both ways: as you point out the main uncertainty in fire control solutions at HG combat ranges is the change in vector the target can generate between the time the fire control system gets input from sensors and the time the weapon (laser, meson gun, missile) arrives on the target. This change in vector is solely from the G-rating of the target vessel's drive and is the same whether the target already has a high vector or is stationary (with respect to whatever you're defining as the reference point; in our case, most likely the planet the raid is aimed at).

So I'm trying to dodge a meson gun blast at a range of 300,000 km (one light-second). Assuming their fire control computer can instantly process their sensor data and fire the weapon, I have 2 seconds to dodge in: the second it takes their sensor energy to move from me to them (and this applies whether it's an active or passive sensor) and the second it takes their weapon fire to reach me. In two seconds at 6-G I can change my possible position (delta P; change in position) by a whole 117.6 meters. This gives the enemy a "possible position zone" (PPZ) that looks somewhat like a teardrop with the point oriented back along my original vector. The length of the PPZ is based on my original vector plus the delta P I can generate and the max radius of the PPZ is based on just the delta P. The PPZ will be more elongated as my original vector increases but it's maximum radius is only determined by my available G's. If I was moving at the 2.26% of lightspeed I said at the start of all this my PPZ will be 13.56 million meters long and 117.6 meters in maximum radius. A ship starting at rest will have a PPZ that is a sphere, with a radius equal to the delta P that ship can generate, or 117.6 meters at 6-G.

Note the difference in volume: the ship starting at rest has a PPZ of 6.8 million cubic meters, the PPZ of a ship with a starting velocity of 2.26% of lightspeed (6780km/sec) is 196,286.4 million cubic meters, or about 29,000 times the volume.

The enemy knows I have to be somewhere inside the PPZ, but where? The faster my original vector the longer the PPZ and the greater volume of space I could possibly be in. The only solution is to raster the volume of space I could be in: blast away in a pattern that gives the best chance of including the space my ship will be in when his weapon effect arrives. Meson guns are especially bad this way since they need a three-dimensional fire control solution: the decay point of the mesons has to be calculated to have the beam decay just inside my ship. At least the other beam weapons only need a 2-D solution.

I find myself thinking that meson guns might use a "barrage" fire control solution: they might set up a "wall of fire" where the meson beam is set to decay in a plane oriented perpendicular to the target's initial vector and with dimensions just larger than the maximum target delta P. This ensures that the enemy must pass through the "wall of fire" at some point and if your meson gun can just keep enough bursts going to maintain a continuous wall (or if you can mass the fire of enough meson guns to do so) you're bound to get a hit (configuration and meson screens allowing you, that is).

This makes meson guns very much like World War 2 anti-aircraft guns before the introduction of proximity fuses: it was a common tactic in WW2 to set up a "box barrage" where all guns fired into a specified volume of space that the enemy attackers would have to pass through to reach the target.

You can point out that it's the angular difference that matters, but it still doesn't change things: even if my PPZ is pointed right at the planet (to minimize its angular size) it's still no smaller than the angular size of the PPZ of the same ship starting from rest because it's still based on how far you can move at 6-Gs in two seconds.

So the short answer is: at worst, I'm no easier a target than they are, and I might be a far more difficult target.

A more interesting question is whether the weapons tracking systems on a ship speeding past at 2.25% of lightspeed could accurately aim at a (relatively) stationary target. The angular rate of change will be something fierce and keeping the weapon on track would have to be tough, especially for spinal mounts. I suspect that you'd not try to track the target with the main gun but just point it so that you can fire a burst "as the enemy crosses the muzzle," so to speak. Of course, if the enemy isn't where you expect him and you can't pitch or yaw your ship fast enough to get the meson gun on target before you've gone by, you might find you've made your pass for nothing (except for any hits the enemy got on you as you roared by).
 
The Oz wrote:

"This change in vector is solely from the G-rating of the target vessel's drive and is the same whether the target already has a high vector or is stationary (with respect to whatever you're defining as the reference point; in our case, most likely the planet the raid is aimed at)."

[snip of a nice, but flawed, example]

"Note the difference in volume: the ship starting at rest has a PPZ of 6.8 million cubic meters, the PPZ of a ship with a starting velocity of 2.26% of lightspeed (6780km/sec) is 196,286.4 million cubic meters, or about 29,000 times the volume."

No. This is what we called a 'gross conceptual error' in nuclear engineering.

You've forgotten that an enemy won't be interested in *everywhere* you can be at *any time* during that 2 second period of future time. Instead, they're interested in the relatively smaller number of places you can be in at *precisely* two seconds. You've confused where you can be at in precisely 2 seconds with everywhere you could have been during the 2 seconds between sighting and firing. The first is where you enemy wishes to direct his fire, the second is the shape described by your 'PPZ'. (nice term BTW)

Remember this term, 'time specific'; an exact point in the future. That is what a targeting solution actually requires and not a 'time period'; all the points between now and the future point.

It's akin to the logic-mathematical puzzle involving a rowboat on a river. You present the testee with a rowboat that moves at certain speed on a river that flow at another speed. You then ask how long it would take the rowboat to move X km downstream and return the same distance upstream. Most folks grind out some elaborate equation taking into account the river's speed. A few folks realize that the rivers speed DOES NOT MATTER and they simply plug the rowboats speed into the distance required to get the travel time. The river's speed acts like a frame of reference for the rowboat, just as your initial velocity acts like a frame of reference for your warship. Changes in initial velocity make NO CHANGE to the volume describing time specific future positions. Whether you're standing still or moving at 5% of lightspeed, the volume of time specific future position points remains constant.

A high initial velocity doesn't change the volume of the shape containing all your future postions precisely 2 seconds from now. All it changes is the shape of that future position volume. Please note, this shape we're targeting is a 'snapshot' taken at a specific point in time; i.e. 2 seconds from now, and not a volume describing ALL possible positions over the next 2 seconds.

The change velocities make to the shape of time specific future position volumes eventually helps the defender. You do correctly point out that a meson targeting solution is a 3D exercise. However, your enormous initial velocity, and the way in which is skews or shapes any possible, time specific, future position 'volume', actually makes that 3D solution easier. With no initial velocity, the time specific target volume resembles a solid sphere. As initial velocity increases, the sphere lengthens in the direction of the initial velocity and grows hollow. Finally, at very high initial velocities, the future target volume resembles a long, thin tube with a bulge towards the 'front' end.

Congratulations, your high initial velocity just made any 3D targeting easier because the 'height' and 'depth' of the time specific future postion volume have been shrunk. All your enemy need worry about now is the 'length' of your time specific future position volume because your high initial velocity has already fixed the two other dimensions for him. Say cheese!

Your example of box barrages worked in a somewhat similar manner, they enclosed all the possible locations the target aircraft could be at a specific future point in time and not all the positions between the present and that future point. Gun layers weren't worried about all the positions the airplane could be between the time they pulled the lanyard and the time the shell exploded. All they did care about was the much smaller number of positions the airplane could be in at the precise moment the shell exploded.

As you also correctly point out, high velocities will make defensive fires less likely thanks to defender reaction times, readiness levels, crew qualities, and so forth. However, there will be a point where increases in velocity no longer increase protection from defensive fires; a min-max curve as it were. Just where that point is reached will depend on many factors, like weapon types, weapon numbers, etc. and will vary from attack to attack.


Sincerely,
Larsen
 
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