“Two ships dead astern and matching course”
Friend or foe?
Now comes the waiting game. With weapons hot and fingers on the trigger.
Any mutual comms frequencies to be able to talk to each other?
Not to mention contrasting social customs that might cause a shooting war.
(Thinking of the B5 Earth-Minbari War)
as mentioned before, they have the “trade coms.” an trade speaks one language.. so , understanding not a prob..
yes now waiting,, the canned “go away!” , “state your business.” , or worse ..
an.. B5,. “Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari Fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else!”
love that line…
Ships that are radio silent and approaching from behind are not friends.
I read a book written by someone who had taken a sailboat around the world. One night, out in the middle of the ocean, he woke up and realized that an unknown ship was silently closing on him. (I suppose with radar he could have had a “ship proximity” alarm but I don’t remember; maybe he was just lucky.) He didn’t have a good feeling and he went below and got his shotgun, and came back up to the deck. He didn’t point it at the other ship but he did make it plainly visible. The other ship changed course and found somewhere else to be.
He talked about it later with a sailor and wondered if he overreacted, and the sailor said something like “No ship that closes with you silently at night is a friend.”
You never know when someone.is trying to communicate with you with a communication system you don’t use or aren’t familiar with… (Telepathy, quantum entangled communicators, quantum tunneling radios, etc.)
Of course, approaching while minimizing any remedy radiating and in a low observability mode, doesn’t usually bode well
I would say something about not opening your gun ports, but I’d design my weapon systems to either pop open a tenth of a second before firing, or blow through the cover plate over the firing port. You can always replace the covers and repair spalling damage around the ports, repairing the ship.from an enemy’s alpha strike is a whole lot harder…
Never understood Straczynski’s “gun ports open = friendly” thing. I’m afraid I’d interpret gun ports open or weapons charged as evidence of hostile intent myself. I.certainly would not APPROACH an unknown that way. But then I always did see the Minbari and being a tad too full of themselves. When approaching an armed unknown I’d be more likely to keep my distance not knowing the limits of the opponent’s kill zone. But then I always try to err on the side of caution.
Just remember the ‘Kizinti Lesson’ any drive capable of accelerating a ship to a significant fraction of the velocity of light, can be used as a weapon. Paraphrasing from Larry Niven. In other words, they get to close, hit them with the plasma drive!
“So no more coddling of the troublemakers?”
I like this teacher’s/administrator’s attitude already.
Heh-heh. You’ll like her even more on Friday.
Her? My, how fooled can one be?
“Two ships dead astern and matching course”
Friend or foe?
Now comes the waiting game. With weapons hot and fingers on the trigger.
Any mutual comms frequencies to be able to talk to each other?
Not to mention contrasting social customs that might cause a shooting war.
(Thinking of the B5 Earth-Minbari War)
as mentioned before, they have the “trade coms.” an trade speaks one language.. so , understanding not a prob..
yes now waiting,, the canned “go away!” , “state your business.” , or worse ..
an.. B5,. “Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari Fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else!”
love that line…
Ships that are radio silent and approaching from behind are not friends.
I read a book written by someone who had taken a sailboat around the world. One night, out in the middle of the ocean, he woke up and realized that an unknown ship was silently closing on him. (I suppose with radar he could have had a “ship proximity” alarm but I don’t remember; maybe he was just lucky.) He didn’t have a good feeling and he went below and got his shotgun, and came back up to the deck. He didn’t point it at the other ship but he did make it plainly visible. The other ship changed course and found somewhere else to be.
He talked about it later with a sailor and wondered if he overreacted, and the sailor said something like “No ship that closes with you silently at night is a friend.”
You never know when someone.is trying to communicate with you with a communication system you don’t use or aren’t familiar with… (Telepathy, quantum entangled communicators, quantum tunneling radios, etc.)
Of course, approaching while minimizing any remedy radiating and in a low observability mode, doesn’t usually bode well
just saying,, they are in known space, with known races, and known communications…
I would say something about not opening your gun ports, but I’d design my weapon systems to either pop open a tenth of a second before firing, or blow through the cover plate over the firing port. You can always replace the covers and repair spalling damage around the ports, repairing the ship.from an enemy’s alpha strike is a whole lot harder…
Never understood Straczynski’s “gun ports open = friendly” thing. I’m afraid I’d interpret gun ports open or weapons charged as evidence of hostile intent myself. I.certainly would not APPROACH an unknown that way. But then I always did see the Minbari and being a tad too full of themselves. When approaching an armed unknown I’d be more likely to keep my distance not knowing the limits of the opponent’s kill zone. But then I always try to err on the side of caution.
Just remember the ‘Kizinti Lesson’ any drive capable of accelerating a ship to a significant fraction of the velocity of light, can be used as a weapon. Paraphrasing from Larry Niven. In other words, they get to close, hit them with the plasma drive!
You know, I REALLY hate autocorrect… Just when everything looks good, Niven becomes Given… Stupid software…
Woodman, did you catch my explanation of the Catia’s Pride’s engineer’s name yesterday?
Bill,
Yes. Yes I did. A looong bit of a reach, but a doable bad pun (is there any other kind of pun?)