Deep Site Meson Guns in Invasion:Earth

[whartung]

Build multiple decoy racetracks, consider using them as alternate sites too if you can sneak the weapons systems around (they do have their own grav drives, and you can disguise them as spherical-hulled ships at the very least).

You...you do appreciate that burying a meson gun that's at all effective is like burying a football stadium, right? A football stadium shaped like a basketball.

The range of the meson gun is tied directly to its length. As is most meson guns can barely cover lunar space effectively.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

"If you give them stats, they can be killed"
- sarcastic players regarding Deities and Demigods books .:rofl:

I see talking about the immobility factor being a weakness. Agreed, if you know where the primary systems are found (the tube, the controls, power sources, the crew stations) the various items can be knocked out or if you treat it as a buried ship it can be attacked. But is that true?

Regardless of the economic costs however, how do you game that out, per game? There are no rules, per se, in each individually. But by extrapolation, what are the tasks, die rolls, stats efects, results? Random thoughts. here.
Yes I KNOW Mesons bypass ordinary matter. Have not thought these through:

• Like, what sensors are you using, what does it EXACTLY it detect, range, task roll, etc. If you use MT, MgT or Cepheus, they show you what sensor detects what and to what extent. :CoW:
• Fake sites :smirk:: Someone said densitometers. OK, why don't I just use empty excavated "tube-like" holes or caves armoured up underground as false sites. How "real" would a counterfeit site have be, its cost to build, to maintain? How could you tell the difference? How would you distinguish between those, the real ones and other types of manmade powered locations?:devil:
• Doesn't CT Striker (dont know about TNE or T5) have blast radius conversions for Meson guns of starship?:coffeesip:
• If you did this in CT High Guard, would this "ship" (planet) be a Size Y or Z ship to impact die rolls, etc. o:
• Combine with the Striker item, how far do you have to disperse the subsystems for each to be a different ship?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Simple solution; if your invasion fleet is close enough for planetary mesons to hit you they already lost. You can overwhelm planetary defenses with nuc missile swarms from stand off range. So, you will be offering surrender terms if they want their planet to remain habitable.

Yet canon suggests otherwise. E.g. Jewell survived years of "siege" in the frontier wars without either surrendering or being nuked back to the stone age iirc.


The Empire may do that to their own worlds, but nothing I have seen of canon suggests that the major interstellar states routinely depopulate each other's worlds, perhaps for fear that the favour would be returned.

The black wars were different, and noted for it...

 

[Proneutron]

[*]Fake sites :smirk:: Someone said densitometers. OK, why don't I just use empty excavated "tube-like" holes or caves armoured up underground as false sites.

Because they would not read as meson guns as the computer would have comparison templates from REAL deep site meson guns in memory to compare. o: The main expense of such a site isn't the meson weapon. It is the site itself.

 

[Proneutron]

Yet canon suggests otherwise.

Irrelevant. Unless it says exactly HOW it means nothing. You can say, "But Jewell!" as the nukes rain down on the planet but it won't change anything...

 

[whartung]

"If you give them stats, they can be killed"
- sarcastic players regarding Deities and Demigods books .:rofl:

I see talking about the immobility factor being a weakness. Agreed, if you know where the primary systems are found (the tube, the controls, power sources, the crew stations) the various items can be knocked out or if you treat it as a buried ship it can be attacked. But is that true?

Regardless of the economic costs however, how do you game that out, per game? There are no rules, per se, in each individually. But by extrapolation, what are the tasks, die rolls, stats efects, results? Random thoughts. here.

I look at it this way. If you know where the site is, then attacking it is like attacking a ship of appropriate size (a 100m gun is a sphere roughly 38KdTons, that's an M or N in High Guard, which is +1 attack DM), with 0 agility and no computer DMs. Hull configuration is Sphere (which in HG is Not Good against meson guns). Any successful hit is a mission kill on the site.

You don't need a sensor lock to make the attack, you have GPS coordinates. Whether there is anything actually there is another thing entirely.

You don't need sensor lock because the PLANET is that bright thing outside the window, and you simply need some reference (i.e. GPS or whatever) to pin point where you want to go.

In Striker, a meson blast is 10cm, which translates to 100m at scale. Well, a nominal meson gun is 100m already, so you're sending a 100m blast in to a 100m bubble. Now, the Striker guns are "ground" artillery, ship guns are bigger.

No matter.

Simply, however, the meson gun is in a chamber large enough to hold a sphere whose diameter is the length of the gun. Any hit within this area, if it doesn't disable the gun itself outright, is very likely going to disable the mount for the gun, so it can not be aimed. This is why any hit is a mission kill for the gun.

I see no reason why you can't have a meson screen on a deep meson site, so that would have to be penetrated as well.

[*]Fake sites :smirk:: Someone said densitometers. OK, why don't I just use empty excavated "tube-like" holes or caves armoured up underground as false sites. How "real" would a counterfeit site have be, its cost to build, to maintain? How could you tell the difference? How would you distinguish between those, the real ones and other types of manmade powered locations?:devil:

To be clear, deep sites are not tubes, they're spheres, and there's no reason to armor them (they're 10's of meters under ground).

According to FF&S, densitometers are passive. I don't know how good or detailed they are. I don't know if they can be shielded against or spoofed.

If they're at all accurate, and can not be spoofed or shielded against, then planets are in deep trouble.

Every Tom, Dick, Harry, Zho, Vargr, and Solomani will be sending covert "Fishing Trawlers" to do orbital surveys to look for things that look like deep meson sites. As mentioned, they're expensive, and they don't move. With other intelligence they may well be able to pin point them. Once they know where they are, they're kind of a sitting duck.

HOWEVER, since there are anecdotes of meson site crews surviving vicious invasions, perhaps they're more stealthy than not.

[*]Doesn't CT Striker (dont know about TNE or T5) have blast radius conversions for Meson guns of starship?:coffeesip:

Yea, I'm a little disappointed that FF&S doesn't really talk about the blast radius as part of the evaluation step for a meson design. Strikers "design sequence" is "Here you gon, 1 meson gun", and has a 100m diameter area.

 

[Grav_Moped]

You...you do appreciate that burying a meson gun that's at all effective is like burying a football stadium, right? A football stadium shaped like a basketball.

The range of the meson gun is tied directly to its length. As is most meson guns can barely cover lunar space effectively.

The firing positions are spherical. If the gun system is long, it's also skinny. And therefore, the tunnels connecting the firing positions can be skinny too.

I don't think anyone's yet brought up the idea of triangulating a meson gun site by taking bearings from meson screen interceptions (in this thread). All it needs to do is hit three screened ships and you've got a position fix. Kind of expensive way to find it, but...

 

[kilemall]

The Striker conversion sequence for starship weapons delivers a far bigger sphere of destruction then the ground forces version. Fun to calculate volume and therefore how many dtons you are vaporizing. I was doing this as a study project for a CT version of FF&S type hyper design.

The rule actually states that an HG meson gun is converted 1cm per gun value, with hexadecimal values converted to their hex value. Meson Gun-5 is 5cm, Meson Gun-A is 10cm, and so a Meson Gun-M is 20cm (I is skipped as is O probably to avoid confusion with numbers).

Since that's a 200 meter radius sphere, that works out to roughly 33,500,000 cubic meters, divide by 14 for simplicity and that's 2.39 million dtons of destruction. Theoretically a Meson Gun-M square center hit should obliterate ANY ship in the game. I suppose the trick is that the detonations are often 'near misses' and the target ships often take just an edge of the burst sphere.


Just to give everyone an idea of what the RAW are actually saying.


The other thought that comes to mind is the guns don't have to be in a rotating sphere. That does give the full 360 degree on all axes per gun, but they could be done in a more barbette like fashion, physically bendable or maybe several PA tunnels the shots can go down, rendering the guns more like a fountain of water or bouquet shape.


Depending on the nature of the bedrock and crustal stability of the hosting planet, that might be false economy or cheaper then a full sphere. You aren't hollowing out millions of tons and then building a gravitic/M-drive/electromechanical swivel to aim it with.

If the meson beams that issue forth are bendable, you might even get a 180-degree halfsphere firing arc out of it without rotating the whole thing.


Of course that means if you knock out all the guns on one side, the planet is yours. The most expensive PD set is one that does not protect or deter.

 

[kilemall]

The firing positions are spherical. If the gun system is long, it's also skinny. And therefore, the tunnels connecting the firing positions can be skinny too.

I don't think anyone's yet brought up the idea of triangulating a meson gun site by taking bearings from meson screen interceptions (in this thread). All it needs to do is hit three screened ships and you've got a position fix. Kind of expensive way to find it, but...

That's assuming a single gun. If the PD command fires all guns at once, you won't be able to tell which is which and where it came from exactly. Course, if they are different gun values the burst sizes will at least narrow it down, and perhaps you could rule that each gun has a signature quirk that is measurable.

 

[Proneutron]

According to FF&S, densitometers are passive. I don't know how good or detailed they are. I don't know if they can be shielded against or spoofed.

According to MT densitometers give passive Pin Point weapon lock and give detailed maps of interiors. In MT they can determine material composition based on density. No shielding ability is listed for targets of their passive scan.

 

[pzmcgwire]

Meson Subs

It seems that mobile meson guns might be better at tech 13+.

Perhaps many deep site mesons guns were set up as part of Tech 12- defenses and governments being what they are decided to keep them and upgrade them rather than investing in more mobile sites. Terra may have had to invest in mobile submersibles that since their meson deep site infrastructure was trashed during the Imperial invasion in 1102.

The most evocative view of planetary defenses I read was Challenge 53's Wet Navy prologue by Terrance McInnes describing the defense of Avery, a tech level 10 world. Now if those subs had meson guns instead of missiles and lasers.....

Far below the Argent Ocean, four dark shapes cruised silently westward 50 kilometers apart. Their fusion power plants were cold while silent fuel cell-powered electric drives generated no neutrinos to be detected by orbiting sensors. Nonmagnetic hulls assured against detection by magnetic anomaly detectors. The subs had sailed more than a week earlier from bases built into the undersea caves that pock the west coast of Avery's major continent, gliding through an undersea tunnel to emerge undetected in the Argent Ocean almost as soon as Lucan's fleet began heading in-system.

The only evidence of their presence was the sensor buoys trailing on the surface at the ends of kilometers long cables. Their radar-absorbent coating would make them resemble floating driftwood on any radar screen. The buoys carried passive electro-optical sensors and neutrino sensors. The sensors were data-linked through their tow cables to their mother ships beneath the waves.

Wilmuth's fleet burst into daylight as it crossed the dawn line. The sensor buoys noted the fleet's neutrino emissions as it rose above their horizon and trained the electro-optics on Lucan's ships. Target information passed through the data links to fire-control computers which in turn updated guidance packages in dozens of missiles aboard the submarines. Fusion power plants ignited, and full power flowed to all the subs' systems. Laser floats mounting 250-megawatt lasers broke free of the subs' hulls and rose to the surface, locking on to the fleet as they broke water.

 

[whartung]

According to MT densitometers give passive Pin Point weapon lock and give detailed maps of interiors. In MT they can determine material composition based on density. No shielding ability is listed for targets of their passive scan.

Yea, then that's not good.

That mean that these site are simply not "secret", as it seems they can be readily scanned through covert means and stored away for later.

Guns could be moved, sure, but firing facilities could be located.

They could make "lots" of empty facilities, gun sites that can be moved in to, or just dummy sites the whole time, in order to draw ortillery attacks away from the live guns.

But, it just seems to me they could be defeated in detail as the attacking fleet just start systematically destroying them, hoping to get a live one in the process. It doesn't seem to me that once they have a target, putting the meson blast on target is that difficult.

In fact, you could have siege ships loaded up with 100 ton meson bays, lots of guns, making lots of shots. They don't need to be spinals. I think that the deep site guns are particularly fragile to the devastating affects of a meson blast.

That said, meson screens hold up pretty good against the bay weapons, as a possible counter to that.

 

[Proneutron]

But, it just seems to me they could be defeated in detail as the attacking fleet just start systematically destroying them, hoping to get a live one in the process.

An empty site (empty of only the spinal weapon) would easily be differentiated from a "live site" with an emplaced weapon. the mass alone without super detail would give it away.

But apart from densitometers, as earlier mentioned, a huge construction project like that on anything but a completely totalitarian, closed society would be mailed down by agent intel. The testing of the fusion reactors would set off ship passive neutrino sensors and give a general location during an orbital pass.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

According to MT densitometers give passive Pin Point weapon lock and give detailed maps of interiors. In MT they can determine material composition based on density. No shielding ability is listed for targets of their passive scan.

Densitrometers are short range sensors. You have to be well within deep mesons field of fire to be able to detect them.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Irrelevant. Unless it says exactly HOW it means nothing. You can say, "But Jewell!" as the nukes rain down on the planet but it won't change anything...

Irrelevant. We don't need to know exactly how, just that it happened.

This is what canon says:

The most common form of active defense in the deep meson gun site. A deep meson gun is a meson gun of ship ordnance size burried in a deep underground chamber. As the planet itself is transparent to the meson beam, the meson gun can fire at any target desired, while the site itself is effectively impossible to locate. Only when the gun site's surface sensors and target acquisition devices have been destroyed or captured can the gun be silenced, this generally requiring the use of ground troops or extensive planetary bombardment. At lower tech levels, laser and missile sites are used as well, but are much less effective and more vulnerable.

Deep meson guns are effectively impossible to silence. The only way to knock out these weapons is to locate and destroy their target acquisition and fire control sensors.

 

[Proneutron]

Densitrometers are short range sensors. You have to be well within deep mesons field of fire to be able to detect them.

WRONG! MT, they can be used up to 2 parsecs away.

 

[Proneutron]

Irrelevant. We don't need to know exactly how, just that it happened.

WRONG. How would others replicate it? Fairy dust?

 

[Condottiere]

1. Meson screens.

2. A gravity screen blocks densitometers from scanning the inside of a ship, rendering them useless and returning error codes. They are impenetrable to this mode of scanning but the presence of gravity screens will be obvious to the sensor operator.

3. Honey pots.

 

[pzmcgwire]

Densitometer range

> MT, [Densitometers] can be used up to 2 parsecs away.

Where do you find this?

The chart on page 69 of the referee's manual states that TL 15 high penetration densitometers have a penetration of 1 km. Even at TL20, it's only 2.5 million km, well short of two parsecs.

 

[whartung]

Densitrometers are short range sensors. You have to be well within deep mesons field of fire to be able to detect them.

You don't need the sensor to locate them during combat, you use the sensors to locate them before combat through intelligence operations, and then just nuke 'em from orbit, just to be sure.

An empty site (empty of only the spinal weapon) would easily be differentiated from a "live site" with an emplaced weapon. the mass alone without super detail would give it away.

But apart from densitometers, as earlier mentioned, a huge construction project like that on anything but a completely totalitarian, closed society would be mailed down by agent intel. The testing of the fusion reactors would set off ship passive neutrino sensors and give a general location during an orbital pass.

Indeed. Perhaps the workers are digging out the chamber and carrying the dirt out in their pockets.

> MT, [Densitometers] can be used up to 2 parsecs away.

Where do you find this?

The chart on page 69 of the referee's manual states that TL 15 high penetration densitometers have a penetration of 1 km. Even at TL20, it's only 2.5 million km, well short of two parsecs.

1km wouldn't be useful from an intelligence gathering perspective, though counting large construction projects with huge holes in the ground would certainly be suspicious.