Jump Torpedos

Would be cool. Would it be powered by a zped or just huge batteries? Battery charging may limit reload time. That actually opens up a whole new use for the jump drive. i.e. jump message drones, jump unmanned freighter...wow. As long as they could get manufacture of the zpeds to a large scale that would be really cool.

Might be prohibitive on a cost basis, considering the size of the Jung fleet, though, especially if they use ZPEDs.

Besides, Na-Tan will need the Jung fleet to help face the NEXT threat. 🙂

I like where your head is at. But at that point all you need is a big enough explosion. What about a drone that carries a bomb, jumps, drops the bomb, and jumps again. That way you aren't wasting the drive.

I would think that once they get to really figuring out the technology, they should be able to make the old style emitters pretty easily. Plus, the range we're looking at only has to be about a light hour to be really effective. What you are doing is basically dropping in a mine or a bomb more than a torpedo - which would be more akin to the FTL kinetic kill devices. With such a low level of power, the charge time is basically nill, so there should be no delay/reload issues, either. It could be a really interesting "tenderizer" weapon. Throw in a few of those and then follow it with an attack.

There is one problem with the "jump torpedo". That is predicting where your target will be from long distance due to looking at the "old light" from target area. If you are sitting a light hour out, it would be hard to predict if an enemy ship will still be there, not to mention from a light day, light month, or light year.

Now these would be a great "terror" weapon for use on Jung core worlds or the industrial capacity of the Jung. Just send one in and BOOM! Explosion from nowhere. Not sure if Ryk would write about "terror" strikes on Jung worlds or not...

Or equip them with nukes for detonation at high altitude of a planet for the EMP or "electromagnetic pulse" effects on non-hardened computers and communications. Then jump in, attack and jump out. Just 2 cents on my part... 😉

For some reason, I suspect the original comm-drone design was a follow-on to a failed FTL torpedo. After all, ships in FTL can't really see what is coming up behind them. Likewise, a normal ship can't detect an approaching FTL ship.

A jump capable torpedoboat (PT Class?) would be able to use the jump drive to ID the target, and be able to then time a torpedo run to give updated coordinates to the torpedoes. As we saw, they still weren't all that accurate, so it may only be capable of hitting a space platform on a good day.

This assumes FTL is cheaper than jump. At least there are factories making comm-drones.

All this talk about FTL weapons seems to neglect the possibility of jump weapons in a more direct manner.

This would be more of an experiment than anything else, one that may be better left untested due to B.
1. Put a jump drive on something small and unmanned.
2. Aim it an enemy craft.
3. Jump through the enemy craft.
Apparently, bad things might happen if this is done. Although, it's not clear what as the Aurora almost has to have jumped through some matter without any clear affects. There aren't too many possibilities as to what to the matter or the ship.
A. The matter is unaffected. It's a point to point movement that doesn't affect anything in-between.
B. Jump drive ship hit's matter at inconceivably high speeds. The jump drive ship itself may be unaffected, but the effects upon the universe would be extreme.

Since there hasn't been any signs of B, even though it's almost certain that the Aurora Jump path passed through some matter at some point. It suggest that the jump drive is actually point to point, but it's not a bad idea to continue to assume the worst and avoid it, as it likely hasn't passed through any substantial amount of mass.

With that in mind, I present the Jump Bomb.
1. Fill a decent sized object, a missile perhaps of a given mass with a roughly equal amount of antimatter.
2. Place a jump drive on it.
3. Jump it inside of an enemy craft. Ideally, using a series of jumps that rapidly (exponentially) closes the distance to the enemy ship in such a way that prevents detection while allowing increasingly accurate picture of where the enemy craft is. IE: Each jump reduces the distance by a half until it's close enough to ensure that it'll be able to jump inside of the enemy craft.
4. Use an explosive to break the antimatter containment.

Anti-matter seems best as it can perhaps prevent any part of the drive from falling into enemy hands. If it simply used explosives, then there's the issue of if some of the bomb occupied the same place as some of the ship. The result may cause a lot of damage but not destroy enough of the jump drive. This would be desirable if antimatter is used. Detonators in many places could ensure that the bomb is reliable and will detonate one way or another inside of the enemy ship. Although, filling it with antimatter may be difficult.

Nuclearman, you are a freaking GENIUS!!! Anti-matter would be perfect. The matter of the casing would be annihilated by the anti-matter with 100% efficiency... position anti-matter container as close to the jump drive as possible to ensure its destruction in the explosion. BRILLIANT!!!

There is one problem with the “jump torpedo”. That is predicting where your target will be from long distance due to looking at the “old light” from target area.

I see your point in a ship-to-ship battle. The very existence would call for maneuvering like is currently done in submarines -- "Crazy Ivans" being the best example. But...against a fixed station or one with predictable movement like a space station, the predicability of position would be child's play mathematically.

Then there is Nuclearman's anti-matter idea, which is logistically flawless. Well conceived, sir!

Ok, you built a great offense. Now, how would you defend against such a weapon?

I keep on thinking, "Great, the Alliance can take back Sol and 1-2 other systems. How do you prevent a Jung counter-attack against same?"

It is traditionally easier to attack than to defend.

Correction for previous post:
"The result may cause a lot of damage but not destroy enough of the jump drive. This would be desirable if antimatter is used."
Should be more along the lines of:
"The result may cause a lot of damage but not destroy enough of the jump drive. This would be less likely if antimatter is used."

@Eric G.:
Having a the anti-matter hug the jump drive seems like the way to go.

@Eric Nay:
The key to defending against a jump bomb is noting that it is actually vulnerable during it's last few jumps. Exactly how many jumps and how vulnerable depends on the specs of the jump bomb. Below are three countermeasures I could think of against a jump bomb, as well as how the jump bomb can be (re)designed to avoid them.

1. Targeted ship is running a ZPED, in which case it may prevent it from making it's final jump. Though it could also guide it to right where it needs to be. At that point, every attempt to be made to destroy quickly before it switches to a different approach or gets too close. Theoretically, the first jump could occur inside of ship using the jump bomb rather than outside of it. Meaning they could already be half-way or more to their target before they could know they were even fired, unless it's possible to detect a jump other than by the light produced. This is a good reason to keep jump bomb armed ships as far away as possible, since the bombs could only need a single jump (assuming they can jump).

The solution is to make the bomb more like a missile, by giving it an engine and an standard FTL drive, making it a Jump/FTL Bomb. Now you have the same idea as a comm drone, but if it misses it can jump back to FTL to get out of range of the ZPED. Once it's out of range, it can turn around and jump near by in order to make another pass (as a missile with an antimatter warhead and proximity fuse). It can repeat this until it can no longer maneuver, after which it self-destructs or jumps into a nearby star.

2. En-globe the targeted ship with a high number of ZPED powered, jump capable drones (or fighters) armed with ideally as many lasers powerful enough to make the antimatter detonate as possible. By using ZPED they can perhaps provide some of the benefit of the targeted ship running a ZPED, with hopefully more of a chance of the jump bomb appearing in range of a drone rather than the targeted ship. This is actually fairly important as otherwise the chances of a jump bomb appearing close enough to hit with a laser before it jumps could be rather low. This also the reason why it's only vulnerable during it's last few jumps, it has to get close enough that the volume of space that needs to be covered is reasonable.

The idea here is to use the drones to located the jump signature of a jump bomb early, then destroy it before it jumps again. It may be possible to have the jump drones chase after the jump bomb if they have a reasonable idea as to where it'll jump next. The greater the difference between jumps of the drones and the bomb, the more jump drones, the more predictable the jump bomb and the closer the final few jumps occur, the more effective this strategy would be.

The solution is to simply have the jump bomb try to avoid the drones by either by jumping around them or jumping past them. Since the bomb will spot them first, unless the drones are jumping randomly making it difficult to tell where a given drone is now. Jumping around them may be best if the defenses are weak. However, ideally the drones would be positioned such that it couldn't be done at all. Jumping past them and into the target early prevents 100% success of landing on top of the target. Thus the damage from the bomb would be less or minimal depending on how close the bomb either detonated or was destroyed.

In the scenario where there are enough well positioned jump drones that are very effective at attracting jump/FTL bombs, which appear close but not too close to the jump drones (such that destroying one damages the drone). Then, those jump drones could defend against a rather large continuous jump/FTL bomb attack from multiple directions as long as the drones can shoot them down fast enough. The issue with jump bombs is that they could potentially jump from inside of the ship armed with them. That would allow for all of the jump bombs to be deployed at once. A bombardment with jump bombs could get rather interesting.

3. Targeted ship jumps around often. The purpose of this tactic is to avoid letting the jump bomb gain/maintain a lock. A jump bomb can't hit something it can't find. It may also delay the final jump long enough to make the bomb give up, but that could take hours or days.

The solution is to allow the jump bomb to act as mine as well. If the lock is lost the jump bomb jumps around in a pattern trying to figure out where the target went. If the target can't be found after so long, it jumps into the nearest star, which it would also do if it gave up. Strictly speaking, allowing the bomb to act as a mine is problematic since mines can be somewhat indiscriminate, and it might accidentally go after friendlies.

Overall, Aurora or any other ship has a good chance of being able to defend against a jump bomb or jump/FTL bomb if time and resources and desire to prepare a viable defense. Although it probably wouldn't come out undamaged unless the bombs don't contain much antimatter. However, a sufficient number of jump/FTL bomb should be able to overwhelm any defenses. Thus any enemy craft with them should probably be destroyed as quickly as possible. On the other side, it may not be a bad idea to use jump bombs to target the drones. If a ship can be stripped of its drones it's rather weak against bombardment via jump bombs.

Hi All - I'll take a stab at defense against the Jump Torpedo. To date there hasn't been a lot of explanation on how the shields work. We know they are energetic, deployed via emitter, and have an effect on both energy and matter. Given that the Takarans were able to use ZPED technology to power massive shields, and that ZPED technology has an adverse effect on the jump drive through generating a force "like" gravity and that the jump field is likewise deployed via emmiter there are some interesting possibilities:
1)The field that ZPEDs create operates out of phase ar at different frequencies that can, with some tinkering, also be transmitted via a different set of emitters - call it a jump shield. jump shields are deployed at maximum range and outside the regular shields of the ship, causing jumping objects to drop into normal space within effective combat range.
2)if the ZPED field can be focused and has an effect on space similar to gravity, it could also potentially be used for point defense. You can take that as far as generating tiny singularities (gravity drive) but it would be more fun to think it produces enough gravity like effect to move object to pre-determined points where you can intercept them with rail gun fire or energy weapons
3)if an unshielded ZPED could be seen to make the curvature of space in its vicinity fluctuate due to the physics of drawing power from the zero point field, it might then be impossible to jump inside the radius of effect because there are no fixed points there to jump to. Large ZPEDs then become a source of defense for large fixed installations because they create a bubble where it is impossible to form a jump point.

WOW!!! Reading some of these posts have made me realize something... There are a lot of smart people reading these books... I feel real intimidated reading stuff in here... 🙂

I like the ZPED-field as a defense strategy. Make sure no Jump ships or jump torpedos can arrive in the vicinity. Good stuff there.