Fleet Recon

[AlphaMirage]

The recent discussion in the FedCom Command Decision led me on an interesting thought. Battletech, the setting, and the characters within it are utterly terrible at recon and moderately better at espionage.

I understand that these are for ease of play but am curious from a fictional but informed by rules standpoint what manner of reconnaissance would be conducted and how at a Fleet Level?

For me the most useful pieces of intel and most likely means of acquiring them are below. These are beyond what is presumably the what should be standard process of monitoring standard jump points and executing random checks on suspicious dropships. Notice most of these are fairly passive and mildly expensive but not terribly so.
1. Mapping pirate points - These should be well-understood and it baffles me that we don't see COMSTAR offering payment for astrogation data on various systems that can be added to the databanks of the local Precentor, just in case.

2. Monitoring nonstandard jump points - While it is probably impossible to monitor all nonstandard jump points a few should have sensor satellites out there that can send a warning should they detect a KF-plume. At the very least the threat of such systems might encourage them to jump even further away giving you possibly a greater chance of seeing them before they arrive at their target location and at least forcing a longer deployment time. You can't control all the volume of space but that doesn't mean you shouldn't know what is going on out there.

3. Gathering Economic information - The Interstellar Space Lanes should have all manner of information brokers working with numerous government agencies and corporations to know what ships are transiting to and from and carrying within their cargo holds. Likely this would be transferred via confidential couriers from planetary observers to handlers or sold to COMSTAR assuming they don't already do this (and they should be doing it). If something seems fishy it might be a good idea to alert the garrison that maybe they should make sure their gear is functional. These records could also indicate which space lanes you should raid when it comes to war and what the adversary might be able to deploy to halt these types of operations.

4. Discerning Hostile Fleet Deployments - Putting spies or low powered satellites within your enemy's anchorage system should be fairly standard. If things get strange they could always transmit a coded HPG to their dear Aunt who happens to be their handler as a warning that the fleet is deployed or in base.

The problems I see with Active Fleet Recon is that only the Clans, COMSTAR, and FWLM/WOB can do that well due to the integration of shipboard HPGs that can call for help and maybe have it arrive in haste. Every time you jump in system unless you have LF-batteries you are committing to a fight that you might not know the odds of. You could use LF-battery equipped jumpships that can make a fast escape but that does make them extremely costly for such fragile assets, even if their service might be invaluable.

Now you could say use a dropship/satellite and let it linger in the outer reaches of a system to take a look at something or monitor traffic but the inability to convey that message to command (unless you have agents on world that can receive some coded transmissions and transmit them via HPG through a secondary cipher or smuggle them onto an outbound small craft) makes Active Fleet Recon without LF-batteries or 'Force Recon' methods and HPGs kinda difficult.

[Alan Grant]

The bigger issue isn't just whether they have shipboard HPG or not. It's the limits of sensor technology.

Sensors and Detection (page 119 Strategic Operations)

Sensors like active radar go out to 100,000 kilometers (5,555 space hexes). Detection range somewhere within that depending on type of energy/signature. Odds of detection go up at 50,000 even if using more passive systems.

Emergence signatures can be detected out to 50,000 km

The IR signature of a jumped ship can last seconds to 10 minutes, usually only detectable within 25,000 km.

Large military craft using active radar automatically detect any aerospace units within 1,000,000 km that are using active radar. Civilian ships, fighters and small craft can’t do this.

All aerospace units are equipped with a mix of digitally enhanced optical telescopes, thermal-imaging and c-ray telescopes. Large craft can do a thermal/optical detection check against objects 25,000 km (1,388 space hexes out). Small craft and fighters are less powerful and can only do this at a range of 2,500 km (139 space hexes)

(if I made any mistakes in the above or if that info is outdated, forgive me, that was kinda thrown together quickly, feel free to double-check me)

Really the point I'm trying to emphasize here, is that even the absolute best sensors aren't that great. The distance between the Earth and Mars is around 290 million kilometers right now.

This is a big issue and limitation of fleet recon. You can have a lot of jumpships/dropships/satellites tasked with fleet recon duties assigned to a single solar system, and still not have anything resembling a complete picture of what's out there.

Someone is going to say it doesn't feel like this is portrayed this way in novels and sourcebooks. But here is the thing. The novels and sourcebooks depicting detections/battles and the like. They are telling you about the times that different assets belonging to different sides actually did detect each other (and the subsequent encounter/battle etc.). You don't get a list of all the times they may have crossed paths in the same solar system and missed each other entirely.

[AlphaMirage]

Well lets say the rules changed to allow for more reasonable, realistic (but not real because then it would be easy to detect advanced ships with the number of telescopes and observatories on an 20th century Terra-like world) detection ranges. What would you need?

As I mentioned above the lack of fast interstellar communication is a big problem for ships that don't have access to that technology. However, lets say FEDCOM has the Black Boxes, although perhaps not as neat and tidy as depicted in novels since they are way to small and low powered, those should be closer to mobile HPG level operation for such use. Meanwhile the DCA, CCN, FWLM, and WOB could have access to HPGs on their ships but everyone has access to the regular COMSTAR/WOB planetary HPGs should they need them (although using discreet and indirect coded messages).

What would Fleet Recon provide that Diplomats, Private Info-brokers in the know, and Clandestine Agents (like Shorewatchers) provide that these techniques couldn't?

[Alan Grant]

I'm not looking to change the rules, or the available technology. I don't think that's very fun, nor was it my point. I love the thought of talking about the practical reality of the game as it exists now though.

Honestly, I wouldn't want it to be super more powerful than it is now. In universe like Star Wars and Star Trek and others, there often seems to be little to no limit to what sensors can do. Unless the target is doing something sneaky like hiding behind a rock in space, powered down. Or somebody has a cloaking device. But that also limits how creative you can get. Ideas like surprise attacks, ideas like sneaking around a system and stalking the enemy fleet, become a lot more implausible in those universes.

Real life naval history, prior to the modern era (though it still exists today with submarines), are full of dramatic stories of ships and fleets just trying to find each other, or outrun each other, or hide from each other. I like that the potential for that is present. Not because of the tricks used by other sci fi universes like let's hide behind a space rock or use the cloaking device. But just because your two forces are coming into and out of each other's sensor range.

That's some spooky fun to be had there. And yes with the technology currently available, there are uses for fleet recon, absolutely.

I think a lot of the technology tools are aimed at defense. Such as satellite grids and recharge stations. Spreading them across systems you control to cover a lot of spots. Not to mention orbital space around inhabited worlds.

Where fleet recon is most blind is on offense. Your primary tools are a few scouting-mission tasked jumpships and dropships, maybe some operating "under cover" as neutral vessels. Operating in systems you don't control. Though your own radar can still give you a decent view of what is around your fleet with some early warning of something approaching or jumping it, it's not going to tell you from the Nadir jump point what's in planetary orbit 7 days burn away.

In the offense, clandestine agents and others you mentioned really come into their own. If you can tap into intel on enemy ship positions/movements or learn some things from loose lips. The locations of enemy assets etc. Laserlink comms technology does exist so they can beam data directly to your fleet. Some agents on the ground or on a recharge station can share that data with your fleet and provide some data that your sensors perhaps can't gleam because of those practical limitations.

[Cannonshop]

Forget Sensors, let's talk Telescopes.  This is a setting where they have the ability to grind lenses for weapons-grade lasers that can cut armor like butter.

My read on "Sensors' in the section you quoted, Alan, is "those active ping sensors that let you shoot your gun."  Those are LIKELY to be limited by the effective distance your gun (or missile) can go before an enemy's out of the sight picture just due to light delay.

keeping in mind, this is a setting without inertial dampening or gravity control, and with a society that may well have forgotten how to do more than push a button when it comes to astronomical observation.  (aka why a system with centuries of human trade and habitation lacks the pre-calculated charts to handle tasks like asteroid mining, in-system jumps, etc.-they're still using 400 year old programs written to handle narrowly fixed routes because nobody bothered to learn elementary physics and someone burned all the damn textbooks.)

You don't think it's possible? find an active duty Merchant skipper or Navy officer, and ask them to calculate longitude using only a reliable clock, instead of GPS or radio direction finding.  The odds are good you're going to have to look for that guy, or find a HAM operator who still knows how to speak in Morse code since they eliminated that requirement twenty some years ago.

Nasa built the entire moon program using something called a "Slide Rule", good luck finding someone who still knows how to use one.

[Tyler Jorgensson]

I do find it weird that in naval combat characters are still surprised when an enemy fleet pops out of a pirate point.

The concept of a pirate point (IIRC) is derived from the gravity of planets (and other objects) shifting due to ya know drift and rotations around the sun and whatnot. This opens up windows of time where you can jump in and not be ripped apart, or smash into a planet.

Well I mean we can calculate rotations of planets around the sun in today’s technology and I’m pretty sure they were able to do it a long time ago as well. So imagine in the year 3152 (1,000 plus years!) we would have had a LOT of date to extrapolate on how the planets move and therefore ‘seasonal’ pirate points based on that could ‘theoretically’ be VERY easy to calculate.

Obviously not everyone would be perfect but you would assume that large interstellar empires would keep lists of these points around their most important worlds to protect them and at least have a satellite or two aimed in that direction (along with a gun or two). ESPECIALLY worlds settled early in BT History.


ANYWAYS in regards to the original topic: fleet recon in 2776 versus 3152 is obviously different based on available technology and craft. The SLDF could afford to recon with a light Warship squadron or half a dozen Bug surveillance vessels while Alaric Ward can recon with Jumpships or Sea Fox intel. HPG’s obviously help with instant communication but in a time frame like the FedCom Civil War you have to be wary of ComStar (even if they claim they are neutral). A good example of real time intel is the First Succession War and the Battle of Cholame where the Fed Suns had HPG’s on their command ships and they were able to change orders before half the fleet jumped.

Just my two cents

[Cannonshop]

I do find it weird that in naval combat characters are still surprised when an enemy fleet pops out of a pirate point.

The concept of a pirate point (IIRC) is derived from the gravity of planets (and other objects) shifting due to ya know drift and rotations around the sun and whatnot. This opens up windows of time where you can jump in and not be ripped apart, or smash into a planet.

Well I mean we can calculate rotations of planets around the sun in today’s technology and I’m pretty sure they were able to do it a long time ago as well. So imagine in the year 3152 (1,000 plus years!) we would have had a LOT of date to extrapolate on how the planets move and therefore ‘seasonal’ pirate points based on that could ‘theoretically’ be VERY easy to calculate.

Obviously not everyone would be perfect but you would assume that large interstellar empires would keep lists of these points around their most important worlds to protect them and at least have a satellite or two aimed in that direction (along with a gun or two). ESPECIALLY worlds settled early in BT History.


ANYWAYS in regards to the original topic: fleet recon in 2776 versus 3152 is obviously different based on available technology and craft. The SLDF could afford to recon with a light Warship squadron or half a dozen Bug surveillance vessels while Alaric Ward can recon with Jumpships or Sea Fox intel. HPG’s obviously help with instant communication but in a time frame like the FedCom Civil War you have to be wary of ComStar (even if they claim they are neutral). A good example of real time intel is the First Succession War and the Battle of Cholame where the Fed Suns had HPG’s on their command ships and they were able to change orders before half the fleet jumped.

Just my two cents

remember these large INTERSTELLAR empires contain large COMMERCIAL empires-for whom, short-cuts in routing and delivery would be valuable enough that even if the central government wasn't keeping the record, it's worth the investment to do so for the private sector.


The money, after all, isn't made by what you're HOLDING in your hold, it's made at two points:
1. where the goods are loaded on
2. where the goods are off-loaded.

the faster you can get goods from 1, to 2, the more money you're going to make, all other factors being equal.  Especially if you're also reducing fuel and consumable usage, because merchies have to pay for all that stuff out of pocket.

Reliable 'tide tables' for your major shipping hubs ends up being worth a LOT-enough that even if the government didn't think the idea's good, (for whatever reasons) the shipping associations, merchant captains, and their corporate clients WOULD pay for that.  Cutting a two week transit at one gee down to a few hours is worth BIG MONEY.

[AlphaMirage]

Yeah I think however that any shortcuts would need to be preapproved by the planetary leadership prior to arrival via HPG or scheduled via courier. The sudden appearance of unidentified vessels would be treated as a highest alert. The thing with shortcuts is that you still have like at least 5 days of recharge time between jumps so it would only be really worthwhile on worlds with really long transits beyond the recharge period (>10 days).

These long transit or high capacity nodes probably have their own dedicated jump point to planet dropships and a transshipment/customs station near the jump point for maximum efficiency or are not visited as often due to their commercial nonviability. This might however make them excellent systems to serve as Fleet Anchorages due to the faster (due to a larger star) recharge period and the fact that you just need to watch the pirate point and have a long time to detect incoming hostiles, plus your enemy needs to carry more supplies in order to attack them.

[Minemech]

 My thoughts are that insurance plays a role in interstellar trade route design with routes given to the companies in advance. Shipping licensing may also be at stake.  Excusing special circumstances, you would likely need permission from the federal government, with knowledge and approval of regional and planetary levels. Controls would probably be looser in the periphery regions but become airtight as you approach Terra and some other key regions.

 Now if a lucrative company or stakeholder wants to invest in designing and supporting a route, they can negotiate.

[Cannonshop]

Yeah I think however that any shortcuts would need to be preapproved by the planetary leadership prior to arrival via HPG or scheduled via courier. The sudden appearance of unidentified vessels would be treated as a highest alert. The thing with shortcuts is that you still have like at least 5 days of recharge time between jumps so it would only be really worthwhile on worlds with really long transits beyond the recharge period (>10 days).

These long transit or high capacity nodes probably have their own dedicated jump point to planet dropships and a transshipment/customs station near the jump point for maximum efficiency or are not visited as often due to their commercial nonviability. This might however make them excellent systems to serve as Fleet Anchorages due to the faster (due to a larger star) recharge period and the fact that you just need to watch the pirate point and have a long time to detect incoming hostiles, plus your enemy needs to carry more supplies in order to attack them.

Two things there;

1. presuming it takes 7 days to charge your drive, and it takes 7 days to go from Z/N point to the planet newtonian.

which is going to be more profitable in terms of "Load/unload":
a) dropship turnaround (not including load/unload time) of 14 days (seven there, seven back)
b) Dropship turnaround of 5 hours (not including load/unload)?

This assumes you take the standard 'week' to charge your sail.  One of these, is going to be ready to go to the next port in a week, the other, is going to have to wait an extra week (minimum) to depart (dropship flight time).

2. Routes would most definitely be something Government would likely regulate-likely by auctioning or leasing rights to use it, and those likely won't be cheap, but then, taxes never are.  it's a good income for your local or federal authorities to lease or auction use of those routes, because unless it's truly punitive licensing, it's worth the price for your commercial spacers to compete for those routes.

Further, (b) in my example? yeah, that's five hours flight time, meaning more time for yard maintenance if you need it, or to screen/interview passengers/load cargo, unload cargo, take a trip through town, and so on.

From the government side, if you've got 'regular service' going through your transit points, that means you're likely monitoring those points (gotta enforce those license fees, after all).  This makes your system less attractive to raiders-because their 'stealthy' entry isn't, and there's likely to be a response there *(or within a few hours of there) rahter than days to weeks distant.

Licensing and scheduling can become lucrative in their own right for planetary or system (or national) governments, and the infrastructure is also useful for government cargoes and transits.

[AlphaMirage]

Well not on the recon thing but I have theories on how dropship upkeep and maintenance (Free Trader's Guide, link in sig below) might occur. One using engine recharge works out to around 5 days reliably thus the stellar class is not quite as important and that makes it very predictable and thus economical (now depending on local conditions you could sail charge or if there is high traffic you can gain a day using recharge stations). If there is not a transshipment point with dedicated planetary transports (the most cost effective approach for all needs) there could be two or three dropships running opposite routes while servicing cargoes that use the same jump collar without pirate points.

This could actually be very confounding and a nice way of conducting deception ops that can confuse observers and I think deception ops are likely the best way to conduct a pirate point or other type of raid as you could arrive with the approaching jumpship if you can get agents in place and maybe get a day or two head start on burn in while obfuscating your identity.

Simple Triangle Trade Circuit
Dropship A is on Planet A undergoing some maintenance and reloading its cargo bays like it does monthly on this world to allow for goods to be gathered for export. Dropship A launches to the Jump Point when Jumpship X announces its imminent departure via HPG, or on a regular timetable if HPGs are unavailable, from Planet B. Dropship A arrives at the Jump Point within a day or two of that Jumpship completing its recharge cycle (to allow for possible misjumps).

Dropship B arrives at Jumpship X's location after launching during the previous cycle, they carry a shipment of essential goods for the Jumpship crew from Planet B. In anticipation of their arrival Jumpship X announces its departure to Planet A. Meanwhile Dropship C has made planetfall on Planet B and will have a week to conduct maintenance, unload and reload their cargo bays before it needs to even worry about launching toward Jumpship X when it returns.


All three of the example ships are making money throughout their journey while likely having full cargo holds. Now could you do it with one, maybe but the most expensive capital good is the Jumpship and that is working constantly without the slightly elevated risk of conducting non-standard points. The penalty to conduct a pirate point to pirate point jump is very high and likely to result in KF-drive damage. Plus you do have to worry about heightened security threats from small craft equipped Marauders that can more easily reach you from that planet as you are already in the designated patrol area for the local orbital defense service. If the transit is particularly long and you can't get a transshipment station you can add a fourth dropship that still uses that collar while allowing two dropships to be in transit and two in port at any one time.

Fleet Recon for Intra-system Ops
I think Intra-System ops is the best case use for lighter (and likely modified to possess larger cargo volumes) Assault and Carrier Dropships serving as Patrol Cutters plus up-armed Freighters as Tenders as it will be the bread and butter of Fleet Ops since System Control is likely top priority for these services. The Battletech universe doesn't possess a high volume of interstellar trade as most planets are lightly populated and largely self-sufficient. However, intra-system trade in raw materials I think should be very robust and requires no jumpships, making it very economical.

I think the best deception and recon op would actually be to work your way into the intra-system routes from the Outer System in order to get close enough to a planet or target station that the defense forces can't prepare to oppose you (pirating off a dropship load or ore or taking hostages of key personnel likely happens too). Now that I think is a case for espionage, recon, and special forces that is rarely commented on due to the absurd paucity of such operations in fiction. With such inexpensive space travel there should be dozens such operations in every inhabited system.

However, I think regular presence patrols and counter-intelligence services or the equivalent of Coal and Iron Police (Outer Gas and Ice Police) could limit this threat as you aren't going to conduct these commerce raids/privateering with bigger Assault Craft or Warships, likely nothing larger than a Corvette should be necessary to handle a freighter. It does require resources though and thus I think the Fleet's equivalent of the Coast Guard or Customs Agents might actually be the premier service for recon ops in enemy systems. They could enter under the auspice of 'chasing pirates' into your system that may or may not exist, and leave behind some recon satellites from the Tenders in the process 'to keep an eye out for them' that will at the very least require you send somebody out there to remove them if you detect them which could create an interesting diplomatic situation. Afterall Pirates are bad and its not like we kept it a 'secret' from you that we put a satellite in your system 'for security' that we will be 'back to pick up' in a few months.

[Hellraiser]

2 things about using "Non-Standard/Pirate" points for civilians.

1.  Isn't one of the main factors for using N/Z points to avoid things like meteors/comets/asteroids?
I feel like that was mentioned in the past somewhere.
The N/Z points are outside the gravitational plane & as such are mostly "clear" of obstacles that like to smash into thin skinned jumpships & mess up sails & such.
Time/Fuel saved isn't going to mean anything if you take damage & have to do repairs.
Is it likely?  No.  But for the same reason they also tell you NOT to jump into uninhabited systems.
Sure, you can, but its not the SAFE way of doing things which is what Civilians are concerned about so they don't lose critical assets.

2.  While it might be more time/fuel efficient for the shipping company to arrive closer, it isn't very efficient for the Government/Military.
Maybe they don't want to have to have another set of interdiction checkpoints outside of N/Z.
Maybe its easier to know that since "Pirates/Raiders" are what those points are named for & used by that their natural response is just easier to say, "If you Show Up there, we don't ask questions first, we shoot & keep shooting till it stops approaching. 
For that matter, if you let civilians start using those points then it starts to get real hard to ID Pirates when they show up since they can blend in so much easier w/ all that traffic that is already using that point.
Maybe News copters might "want" to go in a straight line across town, but the airport is still a no fly zone for them, etc etc.
I'd like to walk to the front of the line at the DMV but they like to funnel us into one of those rope queues back & forth in an orderly manner.
Just saying.  Sometimes rules/regs/procedures are there for order v/s speed.

[Alan Grant]

Hellraiser made some good points, particularly about just routing legitimate traffic through the Nadir/Zenith points where you probably have the most defenses/surveillance in place. It might just be illegal in many solar systems to do anything else.

Sarna has a good subsite titled "Jump Point" (just search on sarna and you'll find it). That is very helpful and I appreciate that it breaks down non-standard jump points into two categories.

Canon sources strongly suggest the difficulty level of the jump (for the navigator) is actually a very big deal. The idea that using non-standard jump points, particularly transient ones, just raises the difficulty level for the navigator calculating the jump.

FM: Periphery page 124 talks about this.

"The skill and daring of pirate jumpship navigators are legendary. The need for stealth often requires pirates to enter systems at "pirate points," a dangerous proposition that civilian jumpships rarely attempt. Consequently, pirate leaders value their navigators over all other assets."

In this thread I've seen folks try to suggest that these non-standard points can be quite standard and used routinely. As sarna says, yes you may be able to figure out where they are with elementary physics. But it doesn't mean you know for sure there isn't some passing comet or asteroids right there that represents a physical object threat to your jumpship. Or that something might interfere with the gravitional forces involved (and involved in plotting the jump) JUST enough to cause a misjump.

We know they get used, and not just by pirates. We've seen military forces do this. However civilian spacers seem quite wary of it. I almost wonder if you own a civilian dropship or jumpship, and use non-standard jump points, if your ship's insurance premiums might skyrocket by 3,000 percent or something. Or the crew might just decide that the way you fly is unsafe and want to find a different employer. Or the odds that someone will think you are a pirate or military attack goes up dramatically, and even if they don't send military forces to intercept, they might loft a hefty fine in your direction for sending the entire planet on high alert.

[Cannonshop]

Hellraiser made some good points, particularly about just routing legitimate traffic through the Nadir/Zenith points where you probably have the most defenses/surveillance in place. It might just be illegal in many solar systems to do anything else.

Sarna has a good subsite titled "Jump Point" (just search on sarna and you'll find it). That is very helpful and I appreciate that it breaks down non-standard jump points into two categories.

Canon sources strongly suggest the difficulty level of the jump (for the navigator) is actually a very big deal. The idea that using non-standard jump points, particularly transient ones, just raises the difficulty level for the navigator calculating the jump.

FM: Periphery page 124 talks about this.

"The skill and daring of pirate jumpship navigators are legendary. The need for stealth often requires pirates to enter systems at "pirate points," a dangerous proposition that civilian jumpships rarely attempt. Consequently, pirate leaders value their navigators over all other assets."

In this thread I've seen folks try to suggest that these non-standard points can be quite standard and used routinely. As sarna says, yes you may be able to figure out where they are with elementary physics. But it doesn't mean you know for sure there isn't some passing comet or asteroids right there that represents a physical object threat to your jumpship. Or that something might interfere with the gravitional forces involved (and involved in plotting the jump) JUST enough to cause a misjump.

We know they get used, and not just by pirates. We've seen military forces do this. However civilian spacers seem quite wary of it. I almost wonder if you own a civilian dropship or jumpship, and use non-standard jump points, if your ship's insurance premiums might skyrocket by 3,000 percent or something. Or the crew might just decide that the way you fly is unsafe and want to find a different employer. Or the odds that someone will think you are a pirate or military attack goes up dramatically, and even if they don't send military forces to intercept, they might loft a hefty fine in your direction for sending the entire planet on high alert.

It's a fasanomics problem (once again).  geometry doesn't change once it's been identified, same with the major gravity sources in a star system.  The rules posit you're operating in unknown territory.

every. single. time.

History tends to argue otherwise when it comes to real-world physical phenomena.  Mars doesn't change velocity, vector or location without something altering it, and 'where the points are' is predictable if you have a good chart-and if you've had trade flowing in and out of a star system for centuries, your charts should be bloody immaculately good.

Yet?

they aren't.

It's like everyone forgot how to do basic orbital mechanics, but that's not likely, because if they had, there would be no trade (or transport) happening at all.

So why fasanomics? because under fasanomics, it doesn't matter how much of a given thing you're building, you're paying for the full R&D from day one each and every time you buy or build it.

all of that is digression though.  The pirate point thing? also a digression.  Realistically, given the conditions of Jumpship travel, the best insertion for your intelligence, is out-system along one of the angles NOT covered by zenith or nadir, (or closer L1).  Because planetary scanners and patrols can't cover everything and radio/television signals are omnidirectional, light keeps going infinitely (though time does mean you're mainly spying on what amounts to regular or repeated activities, a good telescope the right distance out and you can watch them build their secret bases in 'real time' years after they've been hidden.)

closer in, and you can effectively listen uninterrupted.

And provided you don't do something like running active scans or loud broadcast at close proximity they're not going to be looking at, or for you.

Y'see the problem with omnidirectional monitoring is the guy sitting in the monitor's seat getting bored-that's what kills universal surveillance as a concept-they can have a camera in every room of every house and tap every line, and miss what they're looking for in the information glut.

that in turn suggests where surveillance is actually going to be (or detection), and that, in turn, tells any half-assed tactician how to bypass that defense.

which, in turn, explains why the SLDF loved them some big ass cargo bays.  They could DO that, even with non-specialist ships.

[Alan Grant]

I think severing this into "FASAnomics" (to use your word) versus real world science is entirely valid and perhaps actually a very important distinction to make in discussion of many topics on these forums.

Both are valid. Both are interesting. Both are useful. But they can make discussions quite confusing at times.

[monbvol]

I find there are two additional considerations for non-standard points.

The rules we have actually do make it quite clear even in a very well mapped system using even the Earth Moon L1 point as an example does carry a significantly higher risk of just borking a jumpcore than a Zenith/Nadir jump.

The proposed time savings only come into play if one Dropship is permanently tethered to a particular jumpship.  We know this is not the case.  We know it is actually fairly common for while a Dropship to be taking goods into a system a different one is taking goods out to the same jumpship.

Which means Jumpship A is not sitting there idle for 14 days while waiting for Dropship A to do it's thing because Dropship B is already on it's way to jumpship A and they'll be jumping out with neglible idle time.

[Hellraiser]

geometry doesn't change once it's been identified, same with the major gravity sources in a star system.  The rules posit you're operating in unknown territory.
...
It's like everyone forgot how to do basic orbital mechanics, but that's not likely, because if they had, there would be no trade (or transport) happening at all.

***

Realistically, given the conditions of Jumpship travel, the best insertion for your intelligence, is out-system along one of the angles NOT covered by zenith or nadir, (or closer L1).  Because planetary scanners and patrols can't cover everything and radio/television signals are omnidirectional, light keeps going infinitely (though time does mean you're mainly spying on what amounts to regular or repeated activities, a good telescope the right distance out and you can watch them build their secret bases in 'real time' years after they've been hidden.)

1.  You know, now I'm sort of wondering.
How long does it take to actually "map" a system?
I mean, here on earth can we say we've ID'd every comet/meteor? 
In just the last 50 years we've downgraded Pluto & found a 10th planet IIRC.

And we've been here staring up at the stars for a LONG time, and using telescopes for a few centuries now, and going into space for 50+ years......

So how long would it take to actually know where every body in some system that was only colonized 600 years earlier?
Some of those colonies apparently didn't even have regular travel to the rest of the system at all w/o regular access to dropships according to the fluff/fiction....
It makes one wonder just exactly HOW well mapped EVERY system is.... and might explain why Janos Vandermere(sp) of the Kell Hounds was known for his Navigation skills & charts that he'd made/owned that were far more detailed and accurate than the competition had.


2.  Agreed, Recon isn't really about Pirate Points for close to the planet insertion, its about jumping in out past Neptune & making a slow approach.
Keeping worlds blocking visual inspection & limited use of drives.  Dropping into orbit around a closer Moon/Planet or even camping out there for a few weeks watching, listening, before moving in a bit closer again.

I think we even see this in one of the GDL battles of the 50/60's.
One of the Lyran regiments did almost exactly that & no one knew they were even in the system.

To paraphrase Billy Bob in Armageddon..........  "our budget allows us to watch 3% of the sky sir, & its a really big sky!"

[Daryk]

A few of things, since I'm coming to this party late:

1) I'm old enough to have done a "day's work in celestial navigation" back in NROTC.  We had a week to do the assignment, and it wasn't easy (granted, we were doing all of our other classes at the same time).  I am of the generation that can actually sing the praises of GPS because we know what it took to do without.  For the record, LORAN wasn't much easier (but it WAS easier).  I really need to figure out where I buried my copy of Bowditch's American Practical Navigator...  It was a gift from my CO when I qualified OOD in USS NIMITZ (THIS century even!).

2) I'm still on Active Duty!  And just managed to stave off statutory retirement for another year... ;)

3) It takes less than 50 tons to equip any Small Craft (or larger ship) with a Hyper-Spectral Imager and enough Communications Equipment to max out the bonuses (and thus, theoretically, the detection capabilities).  That includes the quarters for the crew required for the comms gear.  Mapping a system is literally trivial, even under the RAW.  All it takes is time (and consumables).

[Ruger]

1.  You know, now I'm sort of wondering.
How long does it take to actually "map" a system?
I mean, here on earth can we say we've ID'd every comet/meteor? 
In just the last 50 years we've downgraded Pluto & found a 10th planet IIRC.

When have we confirmed a tenth planet? Some of the math is still saying one should be out there, but I don’t recall official reports saying it’s actually been confirmed found?

Ruger

[Paul]

I think the problem of pirate points is more complex than just knowing where the target area exists mathematically.

Other problems to solve:

A. Your precise location when you decide to jump. Not as easily determined as you might like to think, and we don't know what accuracy tolerance you need to achieve. 1,000,000km? That'd be 'easy'. 1,000km? Trickier. 10 meters? Impossible.
B. Navigation for K-F jumps likely isn't as easy as knowing what 'gps' coordinate to select. Your current location and your target location have a different vector, and you have to 'cast' yourself to it with a degree of accuracy. If it was as easy as typing in 23 x 99, calculations wouldn't take any time.
C. K-F jumps may not be inherently precise even if you get all your math right. If the target you're aiming for is 1,000km wide, and the jump has an error of 990km, then your math better be good up to 10km. Going for standard jump points means you can be wrong by 100,000s of kms, and it won't really affect anyone. And from fluff it seems errors of that size are actually considered the norm, but irrelevant. Odds of overlapping another vessel are negligible small, and it wouldn't affect travel time meaningfully to the planet.
But when aiming for a much tinier margin of error, it literally becomes life or death. The difference between hitting a bullseye or just hitting the wall the board is hanging on.

[Cannonshop]

I think the problem of pirate points is more complex than just knowing where the target area exists mathematically.

Other problems to solve:

A. Your precise location when you decide to jump. Not as easily determined as you might like to think, and we don't know what accuracy tolerance you need to achieve. 1,000,000km? That'd be 'easy'. 1,000km? Trickier. 10 meters? Impossible.
B. Navigation for K-F jumps likely isn't as easy as knowing what 'gps' coordinate to select. Your current location and your target location have a different vector, and you have to 'cast' yourself to it with a degree of accuracy. If it was as easy as typing in 23 x 99, calculations wouldn't take any time.
C. K-F jumps may not be inherently precise even if you get all your math right. If the target you're aiming for is 1,000km wide, and the jump has an error of 990km, then your math better be good up to 10km. Going for standard jump points means you can be wrong by 100,000s of kms, and it won't really affect anyone. And from fluff it seems errors of that size are actually considered the norm, but irrelevant. Odds of overlapping another vessel are negligible small, and it wouldn't affect travel time meaningfully to the planet.
But when aiming for a much tinier margin of error, it literally becomes life or death. The difference between hitting a bullseye or just hitting the wall the board is hanging on.

I keep trying to leave the Pirate Point argument-because it's irrelevant to the topic.  No, really, it is.  Zenith and Nadir 'points' are there, because they're the biggest, closest, safe zones. there are a bigger 'safe zone' in every system, but not nearly as close.

But then, that's why you pack fuel and consumables-because your spy ships don't NEED to arrive that close, to do their job.  Their job benefits from arriving at a distance outside the detection grid, then coming in at newtonian under it.

and that's only if you REALLY want to get close to get those real-time images instead of light delayed.

We're discussing RECON here, not commercial shipping.

You don't drop your pathfinder INTO the enemy base to find things out, you arrive up the coast where he's not patrolling.

and walk in.

same thing.

[Paul]

I keep trying to leave the Pirate Point argument-because it's irrelevant to the topic.

I agree about 50% with you.

But then, that's why you pack fuel and consumables-because your spy ships don't NEED to arrive that close, to do their job.  Their job benefits from arriving at a distance outside the detection grid, then coming in at newtonian under it.

I agree that this would cover the bulk of the missions you wouldn't do by having people simply travel to the target planet to do observation in person.

I think there is meaningful disagreement on 2 points:

- Sometimes, you're in a big hurry to get information right now. A slowboat mission could take weeks, even months to get in position and gather information. Often, that's not an issue at all. But when it is, and you need your signint 5 minutes ago, you better get crafty with pirate points for insertion.
- Secondly, even when you slowboat in, you need to have a strategy to jump out. Just because you've found a nice spot interstitial in the system somewhere doesn't mean it's also suitable to jump out of at a moment's notice. Especially if you're using some kind of satellite body somewhere to obscure direct observation. And a run back to the regular proximity limit, regardless of which direction you're aiming, could take too long. So if you're able to get the best of both worlds, you found a hidey spot that at least makes a jump out plausible.

and that's only if you REALLY want to get close to get those real-time images instead of light delayed.

I think we have to agree that one of the conceits of the universe is that you do have to get very close to gather anything meaningfully. In theory you can just park a satellite somewhere between the Oort cloud and the system proper, even a few light minutes away, and just hoover up all the EM that oozes out over time. But then sigint is basically just 2,000 satellites per House/faction, and their intel gathering is amazing.
We know that capability doesn't exist, so have to accept that along with crap weapon ranges and 'Mechs being king, signint requires true liability in proximity to your intended targets.

[monbvol]

I think we have to agree that one of the conceits of the universe is that you do have to get very close to gather anything meaningfully. In theory you can just park a satellite somewhere between the Oort cloud and the system proper, even a few light minutes away, and just hoover up all the EM that oozes out over time. But then sigint is basically just 2,000 satellites per House/faction, and their intel gathering is amazing.
We know that capability doesn't exist, so have to accept that along with crap weapon ranges and 'Mechs being king, signint requires true liability in proximity to your intended targets.

I'll offer a thought on this particular point:

Yes you can insert a satellite like that and hoover up all sorts of intel but it has the problem of then that information is not useful until it gets back to your mission planers, which are going to be in a different system 99.999999% of the time.

Since the conceit of the setting is Black Boxes and HPGs are not that common(and for the later are not under your nation's control in most cases) that means that you have some decisions to make on how to make that information actually useful.

The tactic I see here is you jump in somewhere between the local Oort cloud equivelant but still more than 15 AU from any known inhabited bodies/known stations.

Deploy the satellite on a long slow coasting trajectory, maybe a couple others to do line of sight communications around celestial bodies, and have a controller ship sitting say about 30 AU out.

Communications delay will be a few hours by that point but done right no one would even notice it when the intel ship jumped in or out and the satellites could easily go unnoticed for years.

[Cannonshop]

I agree about 50% with you.

Well, that's a start.

I agree that this would cover the bulk of the missions you wouldn't do by having people simply travel to the target planet to do observation in person.

which is the bulk of your intelligence gathering and analysis, really.  For instance, knowing where to send your agents is helpful.  But in military terms, learning what the enemy actually does, versus what he's telling his units to do, is also very useful-and can only be established through observation.  An agent on the ground can look at the documents if they're super-awesomely-godlike good, but most aren't.  Agents in Moskow have missed important activities and actions in Belarus or Khazakhstan during the cold war, only to have those things found by observers flying out of Turkey, or by watching ship movements for changes along the baltic or other coasts.  Human beings are creatures of pattern and repetition, six months of observations delivered a month after can be worth MORE than trying to interpret an event or action you learned about yesterday because the document finally got to you.

I think there is meaningful disagreement on 2 points:

- Sometimes, you're in a big hurry to get information right now. A slowboat mission could take weeks, even months to get in position and gather information. Often, that's not an issue at all. But when it is, and you need your signint 5 minutes ago, you better get crafty with pirate points for insertion.

Thus, why you don't rely on any single method or source. 

- Secondly, even when you slowboat in, you need to have a strategy to jump out. Just because you've found a nice spot interstitial in the system somewhere doesn't mean it's also suitable to jump out of at a moment's notice. Especially if you're using some kind of satellite body somewhere to obscure direct observation. And a run back to the regular proximity limit, regardless of which direction you're aiming, could take too long. So if you're able to get the best of both worlds, you found a hidey spot that at least makes a jump out plausible.

Like anything else, that's conditional, situational, and deeply and heavily involved in mapping to work...which means your slowboat missions have to have gone first, since you have to know where to find those hidey-spots...and you have to know enough about your enemy/target to know they haven't found them ahead of you.  There's a limit to how much data James Bond can find out for you in a short amount of time, and a limit on how much he can carry out in his leg-satchel or whatever BS spy gear Q gives him.

I think we have to agree that one of the conceits of the universe is that you do have to get very close to gather anything meaningfully. In theory you can just park a satellite somewhere between the Oort cloud and the system proper, even a few light minutes away, and just hoover up all the EM that oozes out over time. But then sigint is basically just 2,000 satellites per House/faction, and their intel gathering is amazing.
We know that capability doesn't exist, so have to accept that along with crap weapon ranges and 'Mechs being king, signint requires true liability in proximity to your intended targets.

Fasanomics, Paul.  There are huge gapes or 'conceits' in the universe simply because of the blind-spots of the creators.  One recent experience was a recent creator insisting everyone goes into naval combat with the atmo drawn down to null, forgetting whole chapters of lore including Harjel, which are supposed to be better because they keep the air in.  At a certain point, all this becomes moot, because at the end of the day, the optimal design for anything is going to be something that would be crippled in a real military context. (Why have ANY cargo space on a warship, when it's not relevant to a two-mapsheet table game?)

There's what's in the game, (Zeus rifle has shotgun ranges) and there's what's in the RPG (Zeus rifle is a kilometer-distance sniper/antimateriel rifle that edges on near-invisible distance before it stops being effective).

"Aiming your guns to a distance where they can reliably hit" is different from "Seeing a planet."  see the difference here?  ONE of those, has a relevance to a two mapsheet tabletop game, the other only matters on a scale you can't fit on a tabletop.

One more thing back to the Recon issue:  Your HUMINT is limited not only by access to an enemy's infrastructure, but also by the fact your agents are handing their reports to a third party government for transmission, and that third party government has a vested interest in crippling your efforts.

Comstar.

Talk to an IT guy, and feed him some drinks, and when he's good and buzzed, ask him if there's anything that goes through his servers he can't, with some dedicated effort, crack right down to the machine code.

[Lagrange]

For fleet recon, maybe the following approach?

(a) Model "97" Octopus + Scout jumps in very far out.
(b) Octopus attaches to Scout as a tug and accelerates at 0.5g inbound while Scout recharges from fuel (using extra fuel from Octopus as necessary).
(c) Octopus releases a number of recon satellites.  Satellites spread out.
(d) Octopus reattaches to Scout's dropcollar and coasts at high delta-v using passive sensors only through the system.
(e) Satellites transmit all info to coasting Octoscout.
(f) Octoscout runs into a jump point at high speed and jumps out to the fleets location.

At the moment of the jump, the Octoscout has as good of a picture as is feasible in the volume around the jump point. 

[Paul]

which is the bulk of your intelligence gathering and analysis, really. 

Yes, I said that.

Thus, why you don't rely on any single method or source. 

Then we seem to agree that pirate points aren't irrelevant when contemplating fleet recon.

There are huge gapes or 'conceits' in the universe simply because of the blind-spots of the creators.

Sure. And sometimes it's because they want a certain aesthetic; something to be true in-universe regardless of reality. Whether they understand that reality or not.

And in BT, surveillance requires proximity.

One more thing back to the Recon issue:  Your HUMINT is limited not only by access to an enemy's infrastructure, but also by the fact your agents are handing their reports to a third party government for transmission, and that third party government has a vested interest in crippling your efforts.

Comstar.

Only when those guys are, well, around, in-universe.
But even during those days, intel organizations in-universe tended to courier the bits of info they really cared about.
Never mind that most of the time, it simply doesn't matter if C* knows. Even if we presume in-universe knowledge of the handful of times C* abused their knowledge, their list of interventions is incredibly tiny. So who cares if they can figure out this intel report on the goings on of this Marik Militia unit I've been observing? The canon list of C* abusing that kind of knowledge in some way can be counted on 2 hands. I doubt any intel agency has standing orders to avoid C*, the cost of that policy is too great given the penalty it imposes.

Talk to an IT guy, and feed him some drinks, and when he's good and buzzed, ask him if there's anything that goes through his servers he can't, with some dedicated effort, crack right down to the machine code.

99.9% of IT people can't do that at all. That's a conceit of movies, same as having someone who's a "scientist" that is an expert in multiple fields. Just not a thing.
Now, you might get him to bitch about some blatant vulnerabilities that the brass just won't let him fix, which could prove to be some exploit some malware you have can attack, but that's not what you're talking about.

[Paul]

Yes you can insert a satellite like that and hoover up all sorts of intel but it has the problem of then that information is not useful until it gets back to your mission planers, which are going to be in a different system 99.999999% of the time.

Since the conceit of the setting is Black Boxes and HPGs are not that common(and for the later are not under your nation's control in most cases) that means that you have some decisions to make on how to make that information actually useful.

Yep, you're going to have to come by to pick up the data periodically, unless the vehicle doing the gathering is itself a K-F vessel like a Buy-Eye or something trying to work like one.

Deploy the satellite on a long slow coasting trajectory, maybe a couple others to do line of sight communications around celestial bodies, and have a controller ship sitting say about 30 AU out.

Communications delay will be a few hours by that point but done right no one would even notice it when the intel ship jumped in or out and the satellites could easily go unnoticed for years.

Sure, that's a solid plan. (Also at those distances, you'd need few, if any satellites to avoid LOS issues, which is a plus)

I think the real problem is that in BT, the amount of info you'd be able to get from such a network is puny.
Beyond aesthetic decision, one problem is those LOS comms: your opponent is using that as well. So if yours doesn't leak enough to reveal the spy satellites operating normally, the hostile LOS comms will also go undetected by them.
Another consideration: canon detection ranges are extremely tiny. So even passive observation of routine traffic requires some pretty intense proximity to the main travel routes.

With regards to doing recon in a solar system, there simply is no stated known way to pull it off even if you have the entire SLDF fleet trying to cover 1 solar system.

[Cannonshop]

Yes, I said that.


Then we seem to agree that pirate points aren't irrelevant when contemplating fleet recon.


Sure. And sometimes it's because they want a certain aesthetic; something to be true in-universe regardless of reality. Whether they understand that reality or not.

And in BT, surveillance requires proximity.


Only when those guys are, well, around, in-universe.
But even during those days, intel organizations in-universe tended to courier the bits of info they really cared about.
Never mind that most of the time, it simply doesn't matter if C* knows. Even if we presume in-universe knowledge of the handful of times C* abused their knowledge, their list of interventions is incredibly tiny. So who cares if they can figure out this intel report on the goings on of this Marik Militia unit I've been observing? The canon list of C* abusing that kind of knowledge in some way can be counted on 2 hands. I doubt any intel agency has standing orders to avoid C*, the cost of that policy is too great given the penalty it imposes.


99.9% of IT people can't do that at all. That's a conceit of movies, same as having someone who's a "scientist" that is an expert in multiple fields. Just not a thing.
Now, you might get him to bitch about some blatant vulnerabilities that the brass just won't let him fix, which could prove to be some exploit some malware you have can attack, but that's not what you're talking about.

If there's going to be anyone who's an expert, it's going to be Comstar.  and as for vested interests, they do take payment from everyone including the people you're intent on spying on.

one of the most fundamental truisms of intelligence, is that any source or route you can't control, is by definition unreliable and open to compromise.  This would include any service that can read your mail or e-mail, and has a reason to do so.

and comstar DOES have a reason to do so-in part to make sure your messages arrive intact, but that means they get a look at your encryption methods over time, and human beings are creatures of patterns...and anyone 'professional' in a responsible position would have to KNOW that to do their job.

Thus, by definition, your agents-in-place are limited value items with at best unreliable reporting-because there's no hard guarantee that the unsecured method by which their reports are arriving *(and your orders are traveling) hasn't been altered, edited, or "Lost".

the sole and only 'reliable' method of communication, is one that your faction completely controls. 

[Daryk]

One-time pads exist, and are unbreakable unless you can get a copy of the pad... ;)

[Paul]

If there's going to be anyone who's an expert, it's going to be Comstar.

I'm not sure why a conversation about fleet recon drifted to Comstar.

  and as for vested interests, they do take payment from everyone including the people you're intent on spying on.

Yes. So their vested interest to meddle is consequently also close to 0.
Which is why historically, their meddling has been rather tiny.

one of the most fundamental truisms of intelligence, is that any source or route you can't control, is by definition unreliable and open to compromise.

Sure. By ComStar. Not by my competition.

Thus, by definition, your agents-in-place are limited value items with at best unreliable reporting-because there's no hard guarantee that the unsecured method by which their reports are arriving *(and your orders are traveling) hasn't been altered, edited, or "Lost".

That's been true for all of recorded history. As you said:

Thus, why you don't rely on any single method or source. 

So I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make.

the sole and only 'reliable' method of communication, is one that your faction completely controls.

That's great, but that's not a universe we live in. Neither for real or in BT.

One-time pads exist, and are unbreakable unless you can get a copy of the pad... ;)

Yes, and while that's not explicitly stated, it is clear that intel agencies can work around Comstar in a variety of ways. And that's one for sure.
Meanwhile, even if any encryption can be cracked, doesn't mean it will, or that it will in time.