On 26 June 2015 at 00:35, Joseph Paul <josephnjody@sbcglobal.net> wrote:


    
On 6/25/2015 1:37 AM, Greg Chalik
      wrote:

    

    

      

        
Dan,

          

        

        
The asteroid belt
          is very neat :-)

          

        

        
I see a vastly
          more 'populated' system.

          

        

        
In any case,
          perhaps I'm overstating that part.

          

        

        
But, what if "if
          a squadron of warships appears, you should be able to ID and
          track them when their EM wave front crosses your sensor

          pickets.", but its not a squadron of warships?

        

        


          What if the ships are not even a squadron? 

          

          What if they don't even look like warships? 

          

          What if they appear at different times and for different
          reasons?

          

        

        
By the way, where
          would you suggest looking for affordability calculations?

          

        

        
Greg

        

      

      


      

    

    Workout some volume calculations for space and then take another
    look at what it takes to be as 'populated' as you imagine. If it is
    not as dense as nested Dyson Spheres it is really open. Consider
    also that further improvements in cameras will mean that it is cheap
    to set up pickets with the capability to just watch for changes over
    arbitrary periods of time to catch things that are moving out there.
    We have a system now that will take a scan of the entire sky from
    Earth and check for Near Earth Asteroids once a week. By Traveller
    (or 2025 (if Man is still alive....)) that will probably be  a
    continuous real (light lagged) -time  process. Your objections are
    basically up against the 'Hot Equations' concerning detection in
    space and those have been debated here for a decade or more. 
​Which scan system is that?​
​All I know is that there are 47,000 asteroids out there without us having done very much polluting as yet.​
​So what happens after a system has been exposed to 3,000 years of spacefaring civilization?​
Salvage sounds good, but realistically in space salvage is quite expensive, not like on surface where ships just get towed to India and hakced appart by illiterate workers. 
One of the few games I was in and enjoyed way back when was in fact about salvage, and we soon discovered its not so easy. 
I wonder if anyone has tried to produce a formula for calculating amount of artificial objects in system based on length of habbitation, size of populations, number of habbitats, TLs, etc. 
The same problem exists for submarine detection in the littoral which is very congested under the surface, and that is even without the man-made junk. I'm not aware any nation ahs a full coastal sensor array in place.

    

    >What if the ships are not even a squadron? 

    

    Doesn't matter - either they are going to concentrate at some point
    or they don't.

    

    >What if they don't even look like warships? 

    

    Doesn't matter - ramming planets is such a concern that it gets
    tracked and size calculations alone will be used to rate it's
    potential for trouble. And of course there is the problem of form
    following function and how much you can tell at a distance. And in
    the 3I the fact that they have had 1000 years of space warfare.
    Q-ships have been tried. Protocols have likely been created. 

    

    >What if they appear at different times and for different
    reasons?

    

    If the 'fleet' straggles in looking like liners (that have never
    shown up before) and subsidized merchants that pass boarding
    inspections and is successful in taking a planet the new plan for
    other planets is to keep traffic the hell away from the planet until
    each ship is boarded or otherwise made a non-threat. I like a hefty
    nuclear mine attached to the hull over the bridge. Deviate from
    flight plan, look suspicious, disgorge fast attack craft, or tamper
    with the mine and things will not go well for you. 

​If the next opponent in my Traveller wargame is thinking like you, it should be a 'snap'​, over in a minute.
​This is exactly what I meant when I said that those that have an over-reliance on technology are in for a disappointment.​

    

    

    (PS - Your analyses of Soviet doctrine match nothing that I can find
    and I doubt that you were given access to anything classified by the
    military on the subject. You are missing some points like - "Filling
    the soft shoulders of a flank" does not match with throwing the BTR
    s and BMPs of a Motorized Rifle Regiment into the first echelon
    right behind the tanks. "BTRs are for use on roads to give
    operational agility" ignores the fact that BMPs and BTRs are used in
    the same regiment. The regiment will move at the pace of the slowest
    part and if you put the slower BMPs off-road (for that flank
    protection) you get yet slower advances. It looks an awful lot like
    you want to be creative with the research and derive function and
    doctrine from looking at the vehicle rather than taking what we have
    that the Soviets have written at face value or digging into actual
    AARs.)

​If you want to discuss Soviet doctrine further, contact me off the list.
For now I would just repeat that one should not assume anything.

Greg​
 

  




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