Re: Troop Capacity

John spake thusly upon matters weighty: 

> >Okay, but it would be fair to say the reason we use active sensors is

> >they give us more data, faster. Passive solutions take longer to 
> 
> You've gotta fly in-system.  Plenty of time for a good sensor network 
> (sensor bouys strung out into the asteroid belt, wot?) to refine a 
> firing solution.

Sure you do. But active sensors will let you pick up changes in enemy 
course, speed and position faster. A smart enemy would make this 
routine while moving in an assault. Random walk course alterations 
would play hell with your passive solution. You need the active net 
to get up to date (or as near as you can) targeting info.  And I bet 
I can nail your in-system sensors if they transmit their data....

> >develop and are usually less deterministic. So there is a point in 
> >having active sensors. And these can get located from orbit or by EW 
> >fighters or recon missions by SF. Now... once the active sensors for 
> >PD are down.... then they can go to passive and still be a threat. 
> >But a lesser one, and perhaps slower to react, giving the invader 
> >opportunity if he is quick. 
> 
> PDSs will have to use active to deal with multiple small maneuverable 
> targets, but the anti-ship batteries won't have to.

I wasn't so much thinking game mechanics as 'real' life. I think (as 
pointed out above) your big guns need up to date active firecon data 
to hit targets. Keep in mind, SMB may be able to dumb out missiles 
without much of a solution, but particle beams, lasers, etc. need a 
damn good solution - I'm assuming off by more than a thousand or two 
thousand meters is a miss - which is possible when engaging a 
randomly maneuvering target without active sensors. Or so I think.

> >With computer power doubling every couple of years, would you care to

> >speculate how easy this simple pattern analysis (simple i'd guess 
> >with the heurestic expert systems employed in 300 years) is even for 
> >a whole continent? I'm thinking that this might be hard to do now... 
> >but isn't too hard in the future. So locating ground sensors might be

> >a competition of your camouflage system vs. the enemy's terrain AI.	
> 
> Way too complicated without really, really advanced AIs.  It's still
an 
> art today--with all the digitalized doohickys to help it out, you
still 
> need someone with a certain temperment and talent, plus a good bit of 
> specialized training.  

Perhaps (working with people at local Canadian universities in Image 
Processing and pattern recognition from images using AI) I have a 
little more current view of the state of the research art (not 
necessarily that deployed in the outside world yet). The technology 
has improved markedly in the past ten years. Multiply that into 300 
years, and I think this feat will be a joke, if the progress rate is 
linear (most are exponential with computers).  And your comment about 
camouflage just agrees with my point - it'll be a competition of your 
scanners and AI versus his jammers, spoofers, visual and EM 
camouflage - just as it is today - just as it always probably will 
be. 

Tom. 
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