Re: [VV] Gate defence

Oerjan Ohlson said:
> You explicitly claimed that the StarFire information was irrelevant
> because not everyone in the discussion was aware of it:

Yes, I did. I will admit that I know nothing about StarFire. I
have never seen the game available in the shops, so I've never
had the opportunity to even read it, yet alone play it. If it's
available on the net, then a simple link to where it can be
downloaded would do (since I haven't seen any provided by
anyone, I assume that it's available hard copy only).

But that is my entire point - and why my initial phrase was
'irrelevent'. If I do not know anything about the properties of
wormholes in StarFire, then I cannot talk about them. Nothing I
say is relevent to StarFire wormholes, except by a fluke of
random chance or due to basic wormhole properties. This is the
reason I'm not talking about StarFire wormholes. I have never
said that I am.

How massive are the wormhole gates in StarFire? If they're
massive (which is something I assume, and I can't remember
whether this was a property I choose for exotic matter when
I built a campaign around them some years back, or whether it's
a property implied by current physics) then tactics are going
to be different than if it's non-massive. The latter will
totally break fixed defences, especially if gravity 'leaks'
through the wormhole, since it allows the 'away' gateway to
be pushed near a star or other massive object, preventing any
fixed positions to be kept when the defences suddenly find
themselves in a gravitational field.

As I've said before, I'm assuming a 2D interface (basically,
a circular gateway) which limits the vectors attacks can come from.
If it's a 3D gateway (like the tetrahedrons in 'Timelike Infinity')
then this isn't the case.

Do they allow causality to be broken? Since this hasn't been
mentioned (and it leads to a completely different set of
tactics), I assume not, so it's quite a biggy :-)

Do they have any 'cannot exist in a gravity well' constraints?
If so, that prevents sticking them on a planet's surface.
A wormhole built with both ends on a planet's surface
gives a big advantage to fixed installations and practically
wipes out using a fleet to assualt it (except to land troops).
I assume that this is possible (and may be desirable if you're
more worried about defence than ease of use).

Can they be shrunk or grown? Does doing so require cooperation
from both ends? A small nation could build only small
gateways, preventing larger nations getting through larger
capital ships.

Things are complicated even further if we use Alderson Points
which don't have any form of gateway at all, or something
similar which allows ships to jump in over a large volume of
space (which I assumed earlier wasn't the case). They could
even be like the StarGate in the series of the same name
(similar gateway to mine, but can be closed, can't be seen
through, very light and many to many connections).

Since I've never played StarFire, I have no idea what the
properties of StarFire wormholes are.

Now, many of the arguments here could well be because no-one
has firmly declared the properties of their 'view' of a
wormhole, and that's my fault as much as anyone's. If my
view has solidified towards one particular implementation
over the course of the discussion (which definitely started
with no particular implementation in mind), then I apologise
if this has caused confusion.

> Those statements of yours are 100% false: the relevance of the
information
> is completely *independent* of whether or not people are aware of it;

This is only true if there is some fixed 'truth' that we are
all discussing. Since there are so many different parameters
which can be used to define wormholes, this isn't the case.

Now, maybe what I'm talking about is 100% similar to
StarFire wormholes. I don't know. What are the properties
of StarFire wormholes?

-- 
Be seeing you,			    --------------------------
Sam.				    http://www.glendale.org.uk