Quote:
Originally Posted by tsofian
In classic MP Prime base get's knocked out by a bio followed by a nuke. The Base computer was programmed to randomly send out wake up codes. This brings up a lot of issues.
Firstly the bad guys know where they popped the nuke. Any radio signals originating from that location would likely have triggered some sort of investigation. The PB crew would have known this was a risk. How would they have dealt with it? One way is to only bounce signals off the Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%..._communication |
There was minimal risk. Prime Base had been attacked and the location was probably already comprised. The codes were supposed to go out all at once, which would minimize the exposure unless the unknown assailant was sitting there, a couple of years post-war, running RDF systems in the vicinity. And if they are doing that, they already know the location.
The mistake which resulted in the codes being sent at random intervals would increase the exposure, but depending on the coding and frequency of TMP comms, it is questionable how long it would take Krell to even start monitoring the wavelength, much less understand the significance. Regardless, monitoring such a signal operating so erratically would be quite difficult and resource-expensive. Krell might not bother when it is such an infrequent set of such small messages from a facility known to be destroyed - it is easy to dismiss as an intermittent short in some failing system.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tsofian
Now this means they would have needed a directional antenna.
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They would no doubt have a few, but not for this. In the original scheme, they could hardly expect to have a couple of antennas zipping mechanically through a variety of directions, and doing so would have dramatically increased the risk (giving away directions to anyone nearby, any mechanical failure dooming the whole effort, substantially increasing transmit time, etc). It is better to use a dipole or other near-isotropic antenna and rely on the coding and frequency schemes to get the signal out quick and quiet.