Re: FT tactics vs slow ships, tiny ships are toast

On Fri, 21 Jan 2000, Ground Zero Games wrote:

> >Someone suggested using small ships to make a high speed pass,
> >to either 1) needle beam his drives, 2) knock out his "bonzai
jammers"
> 
> Sorry Guys, but as no-one else has dared comment on this yet I just
HAVE to
> say something..... anyone else got a mental picture of a (probably
> japanese) starship surrounded by hordes of missile decoys shaped like
> little ornamental trees......?

no, no, it's not the shape, it's the method. y'see <tale size=tall> the
term 'bonsai jammer' describes a human doctrine which is essentially
copied from the sa'vasku. as we all know, the SV ships are biological;
they are born, they grow, and they die. SV ships reach an adult size of
about 200 mass for males, 300 for females. smaller ships (20-100 mass)
are
generally juveniles of some sort.

now, it happens that sometimes the sv need to defend themselves a kind
of
parasite which travels through space at high speed, seeking out nearby
SV
ships to feed on; the defence they have evolved against this is to
surround themselves with a flock of decoys which die under the parasite
onslaught, saving the bigger ships. they can't just use baby SV for
this,
as surviving decoys would then go on to grow up, leaving the pod
overpopulated and short of resources.

instead, they use as yet unclear methods, probably involving feeding of
a
restricted diet, to inhibit the growth of a population of ships, giving
them a pool of perpetually small ships to defend the rest of the pod. it
is the fact that they are carefuly cultivated with the specific aim of
maintaining a small size that led to the term 'bonsai' being used;
bonsai
jammers are just the human equivalent of this ancient SV strategy.

> Jon (GZG), who is up FAR too late for this sort of thing....

late? your header indicates that it was only six past midnight when you
wrote that. puny human!

tom

ps what, you expect a </tale>?