> From: [email removed] (Steven M Bonneville)
>On Deep Space Stations:
>It's possible they don't often make much economic sense. (Maybe I'll do
>a quick analysis sometime.) But they might make very good military
>sense, as a refueling depot. All you need are the hulls for holding
>the LHyd fuel, tanker/tugs to haul them around and fill them up, and
>a parsec or so to hide them in. I don't know whether the logistical
>assets to support such a venture would be worth tying up or not.
Believe me, they make enormous military sense! Deep space stations
(particularly mine) altered the entire strategic picture of the
Islands War in Steve's TCS game. The use of deep space stations would
have changed the entire course of the Fifth Frontier War, if the Zhos
or the Imperials had used them...
Deep space stations are nearly impossible for the enemy to find *by
chance* (unlike solar systems); since they can be placed anywhere,
there is NO border anymore, and no chance of predicting where the
attack is coming from, and NO chance of intercepting the enemy fleet
before it is in your system. The war changes to one of fortifying and
defending bodies of strategic interest, like home worlds and major
colonies. In such an environment, habitable gas giant moons are a
pearl beyond price, because the 100-diameter radius of a gas giant is
well outside the orbits of the moons, giving the defender halfway
decent warning of an enemy fleet on his doorstep... Otherwise, your
planet better have massive orbital fortifications and/or planetary
defenses, or it is a sitting duck for the first fleet to pop out of
jump-space at the 100-diameter limit. Your fleet will have no chance
to defend against that attack before the enemy fleet is close enough
to your world to bombard it or launch a ground assault.
The above comments about habitable gas giant moons also apply to
hostile inner-zone worlds that are inside the 100-diameter jump limit
of a star... They are also defensible with a fleet. Perhaps strategic
considerations merited the colonization of some of those
"overpopulated hellholes"?
I've rationalized the use of deep space stations in the Islands, and
lack of their use by the Imperium by deciding that it is a very
difficult navigational task to jump to and from deep space points.
The Island nations had a good supply of such skilled navigators
because the Island worlds are so scattered that merchant ships and
many military vessels *must* use multiple deep-space jumps to get
anywhere. Most of the Imperial worlds are close enough together that
Imperial ships can jump from world to world, and thus the necessary
skill to be a ship's navigator isn't as high, and deep-space jumping
is not a standard part of basic Imperial navigator training. I
also venture to add that Impy merchants consider deep-space jumping
as risky a practice as burning unrefined fuel in your jump drive, and
discourage it. So do their insurers. Someone else can explain why
the Imperial Navy and Zho Navy don't do it very often...
-- Cynthia,
aka Reginald Bell,
PM of New Home, 5717-5728 AD.