I think were saying the same thing.<br>
If you approach a Jung Battle platform from 200,000 kilometers out, by the time you get close enough to do any good the Jung gunners will have pulverized you.<br>
Jump drive is a doctrine changer.<br>
Jump 3 or 4 light minutes out and get a really good look at gun ports, shield emitters, FTL emitters, reactor heat exchangers, fighter launch tubes, sensors, and main drive.<br>
Then Jump in close and hit them hard and jump away. The Jung gunners can’t shoot at what they can’t see, if you jump while firing and jump away a second or two later, the Jung won’t have time to bring their guns on target.<br>
With a huge Battle platform it may take a couple of dozen passes but sooner or later you will leave them naked (no shields), blind ( no sensors), and crippled (no FTL or main drive) then it’s game, set, match.
Ah, yes. Target practice for the battle platform. For some reason I was thinking it was the other way around.
I'm not sure about the actual choice of only 3 or 4 light minutes. That only gives 3 or 4 minutes until the Battle Platform will notice. Not much time to study the Battle Platform for weaknesses. Also, jumping in close should be along the lines of close enough to allow for an easy shot for the attacker while requiring too much time for the Battle Platform to aim. Also it seems like making a dozen passes, which seems like a low estimate, allows for a rather high chance to get hit. Hence, I'm still inclined to just hit with comm drones unless it looks really, really vulnerable to jump drive attack tactic, which is possible.
We know from the end of book 9 that the Jung are scared of the Plasma cannon, it seems to go through their shields and hulls like a hot knife through warm butter.
As to the 3 to 4 minutes, I'd do an initial assessment and speed /course fine tuning at a couple of light hours out.
Take a couple of minutes for final targeting 3 minutes out, then start pass one.
Also I'd use some of the Ghatazhak as Quad rail gun gunners, if they can make one shot kills while hanging from parachute shrouds, their fixed emplacement marksmanship is probably equally impressive.
Also I’d use some of the Ghatazhak as Quad rail gun gunners, if they can make one shot kills while hanging from parachute shrouds, their fixed emplacement marksmanship is probably equally impressive.
The biggest problem for a space battle is for both sides to figure out where the target will be when you shot. The Aurora doesn't have this issue since it is usually within a few thousand km of the target at all times, and can change its location at any time then feel like it. In any case though, the computer would be able to shoot far more accurately at the ranges and speeds that the ships are going than a human could.
Hi Everyone
In my opinion if you would use anything with jump drive in big quantity - missiles, bombs, fighters - the largest problem will be that some of them will fail and/or get captured by the enemy. They probably will use anything and everything for the chance to reverse engineer it and if they succeed... I wonder what could justify such a risk?
FTL weapons: I agree with those who said the targeting would be a problem. Deliver complex targeting data with light speed comms to something that goes with FTL? Something simple like a stop order sure, but targeting data with interference due to the speed gradient...
Also you can't fire form anywhere or you risk hitting something that you shouldn't -like the populated planet under the battle platform- and that could make you predictable in some cases.
As a defense against a jump ship (also workable against FTL strike) I would go with the mine field strategy. Smart mines and small automated defense-platforms with changing placement patterns around the area of the battle platform. I would use in-system FTL picked drones -we saw that in system FTL can be done- to get an early warning if a ship jumps in "close" to one of them. This assumes that I have a lot of resources to build them.
The "stop order would be a great idea! The weapon jumps to different areas around the target to get a good view of it at various distances. Jump in behind moon to take a look see, and if target has left area to jump back to a "rally point" for pick-up for use at another target. As for hitting a planet, the weapon can jump at right angles of the planet with a known orbit time (i.e. Earth orbits Sol in 365.4 days) to prevent hitting planet and only hit an orbiting platform. This is if I understand Tauwen correctly that is... 😉
If you cannot jump through a target because it will damage you, why not just use a small jump probe to destroy targets instead of a jump torpedo? If you cannot jump through a target, then I would imagine that you are going through space from point A to Point B, but so fast that there is no record of it happening. If that is the case, then you would be going faster than light in magnitudes higher than a FTL drive can go. So the further than you attempt to jump, the more potential energy you will have, and jumping through a target would destroy any target since you can jump through shields uninhibited.
Based on what we know of the jump drive, I think you can jump through matter without any issues. The Falcon and the shuttles have jumped from orbit to a few hundred meters off the ground, and the amount of air mass that they would have to jump through, would be as if they jumped through a solid target. In order to defeat current and future defenses against the jump drive, they will need to do some testing to see if they can jump through a target or not. Either they can and can move freely, they've found a new weapon, or the jump drive will not be able to jump when projected through a solid target.
It may be possible to just disable a ship or battle form in an attempt to capture. You would basically need a large sheet of metal with a jump drive, autonav, and crap load of emitters. Jump the "Jump blanket" directly onto, or within a couple of meters of the enemy then jump it back out. Voila! you have taken out a huge piece of hull and depressurized that area. If placed correctly you could take out the power only and have a dead ship! Of course, if it doesn't work, you have just given the enemy a jump drive :(.
Good one, Al. The power would be large, but a ZPED should work. In fact, just use a comm drone with a ZPED set to max power! Teleport Drone!
I seem to remember something about the Aurora frying if they crossed the Battleship's shield threshold. On the other hand, didn't the Battleship have their shields up when the Aurora tried that trick of jumping inside the shields? Hmmm.
I would think that if you do that once or twice on a capitol ship, you probably cause enough devastation to take it out with other means (energy beams, nuclear blasts, etc.).
Good one, Al. The power would be large, but a ZPED should work.
Btw, I am not sure that such device would have a large power consumption, or require unique power generator such as the ZPED.
Aurora needed two Antimatter Rectors and fuel cells to Jump 10 light years, but Tug's much smaller Falcon had only two small Fusion reactors and still could jump one light year. We also know that on Takar they use self-contained little Fusion power units for everything even cars.
So I don't think that what AI suggest (or jump torpedoes) with its much smaller mass and much shorter jump distance requirement, would need a lot of power, or need much more than one of the mass produced units on Takara.
EDIT:
Also I wonder jump field created by the emitters needs to be sustained through out the jump or just charged. If not, then AI sheets don't jump drive or autonav, it can be single use device lunched from shield. (its emitters powered by the ship)
the aurora uses four anti matter reactors in phase with each other, not two.
@mor the jump field lasts the entire jump, hence when the new emitters were first used testing when the aurora showed the corinairian generals the jump field lasted longer then expected hence they over shot almost into the planets atmosphere.
Good point, I suppose then that using "jump"(or FTL) fields to catapult objects wouldn't be possible. And jump drive and power source are necessary.
As for Aurroa, while it use four anti matter reactors, only two of them were used for its jumps drive, at least it was so in the original setup (the special operation team used half of its reactors), and in EP7 Vladimir confirms that during the tour: ( I just read that part)
“The ship can run on one reactor, but it is normally run on a balance of two reactors.”
“For redundancy and to power our FTL systems,”
I also just read about Loki and Josh eventful recon mission (EP7). Prior to its lunch the Falcon was outfitted with few new toys, one of them was a pair of comm-drones with mini-jump drives. And if you can outfit something the size of a drone(on a fighter) it stands the reason that you can outfit almost anything with jumpdrives. Small mass means less power and without humans on board it can work with multiple short jumps further reducing power needs.
