On 24 Jun 2015 at 8:27, Grimmund wrote:

> Attacking ships appear from jump, presumably they are detected by
> local defenders, and once detected, tracked.
>
> Defending ships in the local gas giant are probably safe from
> immediate detection, but pretty much any other ship will become
> obvious when they maneuver.  ("Oh, look, drive flare!")

"Drive flare" is one of those things that varies a *lot* between
different TUs.

Reaction drives gotta have it. But since the "standard" Traveller
manuever drive *isn't* a reaction drive, things depend a lot on your
assumed tech (and the associated technobabble)

On the other hand, any ship that isn't *heavily* stealthed (which is
damn hard in real life in space) is going to stand out like a flare
on IR sensors. It'll be *way* hotter than anuy natural object in the
same area.

Attackers have te added problem that unlike "drive flash" *jump*
flash *is* canon. And even if oit wasn't jump entry and exit should
be *really* distinct on gravitic sensors.

> Opening stages of the battle are detection and tracking of both
> friendly and opposition forces.  Spot and plot.
>
> Assuming an attack with more than one ship, there is built in delay
> while waiting for all the attackers to emerge from jump, and group up.
> (And depending on the situation, refuel before they make an attack, so
> they can escape if things go poorly.)
>
> While this is happening, the attackers are also busy spotting and
> plotting the defending ships.   I mean, they aren't just sitting there
> at 100d drinking coffee and waiting for the rest of the battle group
> to drop out of jump....

One *evil* trick the attacker can use is having dedicated sensor
ships (think "spy trawler" :-) jump in well away from anyplace
important. Unless they have really bad luck, it'd be *days* before
anyone can get close enough to attack them.

Meanwhile they can deploy large active and passive sensor arrays and
scan the heck out of the system.

If they jump out, then the enemy has data that'll be 2 weeks old when
he jumps in. That's still useful is many cases.

But if they know when the attack is coming and where the attacking
ships will jump in, the can beam data at the expected emergence loci.
Giving him data that's only hours old. and may even have stuff he
could spot himself (like where shiups are "hiding" at lower power or
next to asteroids, etc)

These spy ships are going to annoy the hell out of defenders. :-)

And, of course, if you have the resources, you have their coverage
overlapping. So there's always at least a couple in system.

> It's not like you can pop out from behind concealment and surprise
> someone, except perhaps during refueling at a gas giant.

Hide inside a "fake" asteroid. Or beyond the ice line, hide inside a
*real* iceball.

Inside the ice line, it'd have tpo be a comet which presents enough
problems to not be a great idea.

Of course, the spy ships will have plotted those sorts of things
unless they've been in place since before the spy runs started.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com