From keri@gmx.net Fri Jun 19 08:05:51 1998 Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 22:12:15 +0100 From: Kevin Richter To: mail2news@news.news.demon.net, David Muir , Neil Wooding , Gabrielle Bubis , "Eric V. Scott" , "Eric V. Scott 2" , Paul Menz , Michael Natale , Tim Fath , Brian Suskind , Josh Young , "Wendon B. Pettey" , Anna Cordray , ### <###@elektriklight.com>, Christian Stark , Erin Kenny , Jeffrey Jenkins , Jeffery Trock , James Bowman Subject: [DanteXF] SB ALIGHIERI: Report - First part Newsgroups: alt.starfleet.rpg ------------------- SD 100424.2000 GMT Holodeck 3 MD 46.0900 ------------------- Roebuck stood in the middle of the command holotank in the tactical planning center. Yssar and Mirtox also stood at the edge of the tank. "Computer, display the minefield. Three dimensional map," ordered the engineering officer. A plan of the outer Dante System appeared. In the center of the display was Hulad. Starbase ALIGHIERI was a minuscule dot in geostationary orbit far above the planet at this scale and the minefield itself was more of a red cloud than a collection of individual points. "Sirs, here you can see the minefield which defends the corridor, planet, and base. Computer, zoom to starbase inner defense network." The display smoothly panned in to reveal a individual points of red, blue, and yellow surrounding the base inside the main minefield. "You see the complex field my team created around ALIGHIERI. Red points are torpedo mines, blue points are phaser mines, and yellow points probes with ECM generators. Those are supposed to fail missile tracking systems and let them explode impacting on a probe instead of ALIGHIERI." Merlin paused a moment to see, if anyone had a question. "I know about the theory of mines," stated the commodore, "but why are they placed so sparsely? I'd feel much more comfortable if there were not holes that you could fit the station through in the field." "Unfortunately, that's not possible. The overlap with this field is optimal. If we have more than the 2100 mines and probes in this field, we would actually be limiting the fields of fire of the mines by preventing them from shooting at objects too close to the field for fear of destroying a large area of the field." "Also, sir, since the radius of the field needs to be about 300,000 km to catch any missile well clear of where it could damage us, we need to cover over 1,100,000,000,000 km^2 (1.1 trillion square kilometers) of space with the field of fire. If we were to physically try to cover this area with contact mines, we would need something like 460 billion mines." "Any ship attempting to pass through the field without an IFF system will be attacked. We've adjusted the size filters on these missiles so they will engage anything down to the size of a small shuttlecraft. This means that if we get another missile attack, they will key on the missiles and engage unless we override. This field will provide enough defense. We can engage up to 8 ships along any given attack vector and about 40 missiles." "We also adjusted the IFF system of the fighters of both sqaudrons. There won't be no problems as long as the pilots don't turn it of." Merlin looked at the Commodore to be sure, that he'll introduce all pilots aboard the station. "Here is the overlapping fire pattern for a sample attack by ships and missiles. The Green lines represent phaser fire and white lines represent photon torpedoes. Torpedoes can only be fired when they are programmed to detonate after a certain flight length. In any other case we would destroy the field and possibly even damage the station since the mines will target objects that have passed the line of the field. " Merlin turned to the officers and nodded to show that he finished his report. "What will happen, if a huge amount of missiles hits the field? Is it possible that this produces a chain reaction and the whole field including the station will be destroyed?" the Commodore asked. "No, sir. The mines are too far apart for that. However, we really don't know how well the targetting algorithm will handle a large-scale attack. If say 100 missiles were incoming at the same time, it might very well overwhelm the system. Mines might not fire or, if they fire, they might divide their attacks so that we can't actually destroy individual targets. The missiles are shielded. Some types, especially those from larger vessels, have substantial shielding. We will be able to override from central control on the base, but jamming could interfere with that or even with the control systems on the mines themselves. "Unfortunatly an attack will destroy a major part of the field, but it was the best solution we found in this short time. It will take approximatly 7 days to reestablish the complete field. We won't loose sensor capacity. The sensor probes are protected very well." "What about the PHALANX system? I guess this would be the better solution." Yssar interupted his engineering officer. "I just wanted to tell this. My research team ran several simulation, but we found no weapon which has the needed shooting range and didn't overheat when we powered it highly enough to actually damage a missile or ship. Currently several engineering research team are workin at this problem fleetwide. I'm pround that ALIGHIERI's is the largest as well as the most developed team." [ to be continued ] --------------------- NRPG: Mike, Dave: Reactions to this wonderful idea? Next will be the description of the sensor probes system. I'll add it to that meeting, but it will take til next week... All: Engineering info will follow after the sensor probes post. If you have any question, feel free to ask! :) Timeline: MD 46.0900 Roebuck reports finishing the prbes field Respectfully submitted Kevin Richter Jeffrey J. Jenkins Lt(jg) Merlin Sanek Roebuck Rear Admiral Telran Vroon CEO COMSFE SB ALIGHIERI (DS 230) INDIGO FLEET ------------------------------------------------------------------- McCoy: "Well, Jim, I hear Chapel's an M.D. now. Well, I'm going to need a top nurse, not a doctor who'll argue every diagnosis with me. And they probably redesigned the whole sickbay too. I know engineers. They love to change things!" --"ST:TMP" Respectfully submitted Kevin Richter Lt(jg) Merlin Sanek Roebuck CEO SB ALIGHIERI (DS 230) INDIGO FLEET ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ McCoy: "Well, Jim, I hear Chapel's an M.D. now. Well, I'm going to need a top nurse, not a doctor who'll argue every diagnosis with me. And they probably redesigned the whole sickbay too. I know engineers. They love to change things!" --"ST:TMP"