Reply: Jump point assaults

[UnLimiTeD (OP)]

How stealthed can they possibly be against R1 sensors which will always be available at a contested jumppoint?
What other sensors would you need if the enemy is never more than a half million kilometers away?
And if you RP it, the Gunboat will never come back, thus no idea whats going on.
I'm doing a small PvP setup atm, how would I act and such, and it's just both sides constantly having a few beamarmed ships on the point, enough to rip the enemies force in 30 seconds, while being only 10% of their own force.
As such, it is a permanent stalemate costing both sides incredible amounts of resources with no result ever, and a stupid amount of micromanagement.

For anyone new to this:
Started with a suggestion of Jump ECM that stacks with regular ECM for 30 seconds after jump.

[Beersatron]

Point taken on the R0/1 Sensors, that is a risk you would have to run at least a few times until no FACs came back and you re-thought things.

If I understand correctly, you want to be able to fit an ECM that negates the sensor destabilisation and only works at the same time while that destabilsation is in effect? Are you arguing that you should be able to fire 'instantly' on a jump? I feel that there should always be a penalty but that is because it is ingrained in the fiction that has came before, generally speaking across sci-fi stories.

I view jump point assaults as:
The attacker has the benefit of knowing when they are going to attack and planning their buildup accordingly.

The defender knows were that attack is coming from but doesn't know when and has to ensure that the ships they have on station are under good repair and good readiness (crew training).

An argument in your favor could be that to truly make Aurora 'sandbox' then you introduce a negative but provide a way to effect that with a positive - hence turning the destabilisation affect into JumpECM.

Therefore, I would maybe provide a counter suggestion to this, a way for a defending fleet to focus a beam on the JP - causing the destabilisation to be greater, I guess you would term it as the JumpECCM

That ended up being a brain dump and hopefully not gibberish

[UnLimiTeD (OP)]

Well, the idea is not to counter the sensor distortion, but to make ships harder to hit after jump, thus granting a defensive bonus, while accepting the negatives, being no attack at all.
Ships wouldn't be able to see or shoot just as now, but for an investment similar to regular ECM, in addition to it, would be harder to hit after Jumping.

Btw, that would not stop the enemy from using missiles against you, as the ranges are so short, it only works versus green crews with beamweapons.
I have no objections against a counter to that, I mean, why not, if you can build ships specifically for Jump Assaults, you can also build them specifically against Jump assaults.

[Charlie Beeler]

That's actually opposite from my opinion.  The act of jumping into a system should be generating a spike that acts as a huge "here I am" on EM and Active Sensors.  This spike should disapate reatively quickly.  My POV is that this spike is what blinds the ships that just jumped as well.

[UnLimiTeD (OP)]

In that case it should be possible to create dummy contacts of just the number of ships the jump ships can take with them even without actually taking them with them, so to day, "fake jumps".
Also, if such a spike blinds the sensors of the jumping ship, it should actually hide the size and capabilities to enemy sensors, and it should immidiately disappear of you move by a sufficient amount.
If you move a Jump cruiser by 150k in 5 seconds, and he's still not able to see, that spike should again be big enough to hide the exact position of ships inside, thus making them easier to find, but still harder to hit.

[Hawkeye]

In that case it should be possible to create dummy contacts of just the number of ships the jump ships can take with them even without actually taking them with them, so to day, "fake jumps".
Also, if such a spike blinds the sensors of the jumping ship, it should actually hide the size and capabilities to enemy sensors, and it should immidiately disappear of you move by a sufficient amount.
If you move a Jump cruiser by 150k in 5 seconds, and he's still not able to see, that spike should again be big enough to hide the exact position of ships inside, thus making them easier to find, but still harder to hit.

I´m not so sure.

If we accept this "fluff" (and I like it), your jumping group is at "ground zero" of the spike/flash/whatever, so the sensors need some time to recover (sensor overload). The guarding ships, however, are some distance away, so the effect is much lessened. Once the flash/spike itselfe ceases (which is quite short, hence _spike_) your enemys sensors can see you quite clearly.

I belive, the difference between you and me is, that you take the sensor/FC delay to be caused by some kind of field, that exists as long as the dely takes, while I think it is the effect of the jump itself.
The "there is a field" theorie doesn´t make sense to me, because different ships in the same taskgroup can have different delays. If this would be caused by a field, how can the same field be in effect for one ship, but not for the other? How does crew experience, which shortens delay, influence that field?

[Charlie Beeler]

Another way to look at it is that the jumping ships sensor systems are scrambled for the jump and must reset.  


Whichever way we each technobable it, there is an existing solution.  Research long jump distances and squadron sizes.  

Jump distance controls how close to the jump point you arrive not jump.  With enough arrival distance danger from defending beams is reduced.

Squadron size will help reduce the number of required jump ships(read attacking task groups) which reduces scatter.  


I have used ships with small (self-jump) jump drives that have good jump distance (250k/km or better) coupled with 25% or better cloaks.  These make excellent recon platforms.  With a small enough ship, moving slowly to reduce thermal signature, it is possible to jump past pickets, look around and sneak back out.  This is not an early game solution though.  Jump drive and cloak effiencies need to be great enough so that small systems can be built.  Haven't had a game go long enough under v5.0 and later versions to see if Steve's AI changes will force a change in this approach.

[UnLimiTeD (OP)]

Thats pretty much my point, all of those solutions require very high tech, and while I always test stuff that way, got a max tech save for nothing else, it's not very feasible early on.
Laser ranges reach a a million before jump distance crosses 250k, and even at rather low tech it is absolutely no problem to leave a ship with 10m range R1 sensors on a point.
Why would they have any higher resolution, ever?

Also, to examine the fluff some more, so if the enemy sits right on the jump point, and I've yet to find a reason why he wouldn't do that, he should be effected aswell for atleast 5 seconds.
Also, jumping right through the point several times would "re-blind" even the ships that jumped first time and time again.

Also, if that spike causes sensors to shut down, why can't I force them on, risking damage?
That would suddenly give electronic hardening a real sense.

[Charlie Beeler]

Squadron jump radius (the later tech jump distance is the same thing) governs how fair from the jump point you arrive on the other side.  250k is only 3rd level tech and 4000rp, a long way from max tech.  That's well outside equivilent laser tech ranges.  

Why would you want sensor resolutions greater that R1? Ever?  So you don't have to have massive arrays to see warships at missile ranges.  10m km is short range for ship to ship missile combat.  

Ignore the the technobable.  Post jump sensor blindness is here to stay.  It's a holdover from when the core player group came over from Starfire 3rdR.  It's not a shipkiller, just something to account for when planning to force a contested jump point.

So, in the hypothetical  case of sending a single scout FAC your assuming that the defender will have good enough task force training that the the FAC will be detected, engaged and destroyed before it can jump out with scans of the defenders deployment.  And  that this lack of recon data will stalemate the JP.  It's only a stalemate if both sides continue to consider short range beam combat the only resolution.  

Easy counter to beamships defending at point blank range:
1)Build a jumgate and mass fighters.  
2)Jump squadron size =>4 and radius at least 250k for missile ship divisions to envelope the JP from range
3)FAC or fighter equiped with selfjump engines for a dispersed swarm attack

The above ideas are certainly not the only solutions.  

The point being two fold.  First never consider that one approach is so strong that it can't be overcome by it's inherent weakness.  Second, post jump sensor blindness is not a mission kill.

[sloanjh]

Squadron jump radius (the later tech jump distance is the same thing) governs how fair from the jump point you arrive on the other side.  250k is only 3rd level tech and 4000rp, a long way from max tech.  That's well outside equivilent laser tech ranges.  

Good point.  In addition, don't forget that the limit on beam weapon ranges is usually NOT the range of the beam weapon - it's the range of the beam fire control.  And IIRC, it's pretty tough to get above 100k or so for the first ~3 tech levels.

The other point here is that ISTR a discussion during 4.9x when Steve formalized the difference between standard and squadron transit.  My recollection is that we realized that the various weapons ranges had changed since the jump radius tech was defined, and that he bumped them up by a factor of 10x to ensure that you had a reasonable chance of jumping outside the range of beam-armed ships camped on the warp point.

One of the things in SF that Steve was expressly trying to avoid in Aurora was the strong choke-point nature of warp points.  The jump radius tech is designed precisely to avoid the thing you're worried about, so if it's broken, then the fix should be made by tweaking jump radius range bands, rather than by introducing yet-another-tech.

Ignore the the technobable.  Post jump sensor blindness is here to stay.  It's a holdover from when the core player group came over from Starfire 3rdR.  It's not a shipkiller, just something to account for when planning to force a contested jump point.

Well said.  I think it probably has roots even further than that - I always think of it as the crew disorentiation from Pournelle's CoDominion universe (especially Niven & Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye) - computers are messed up by the act of passing through the wormhole.  I've always had it in my head (just from similarities, not from a factual basis) that SF jump mechanics might have been patterned on the Alderson drive.

So, in the hypothetical  case of sending a single scout FAC your assuming that the defender will have good enough task force training that the the FAC will be detected, engaged and destroyed before it can jump out with scans of the defenders deployment.  And  that this lack of recon data will stalemate the JP.  It's only a stalemate if both sides continue to consider short range beam combat the only resolution.  

Easy counter to beamships defending at point blank range:
1)Build a jumgate and mass fighters.  
2)Jump squadron size =>4 and radius at least 250k for missile ship divisions to envelope the JP from range
3)FAC or fighter equiped with selfjump engines for a dispersed swarm attack

The above ideas are certainly not the only solutions.

I ran into this sort of situation a year or two ago - there was an NPR fleet with big honking plasma cannon parked on a WP with a scout trapped in their system.  I designed a jump ship that was just a big ball of armor (lvl 20, IIRC), along with engines and an active sensor, and sent two of them through on a scout mission.  One got vaporized, but the other made it back with intel.

John