The Vaygr Armada
22-04-2005, 05:52
(under construction)
Culture
Barbaric in comparison to the modern Western-like culture of many spacefaring nations, Vagyr tradition and culture somehow possesses a certain charm (at least from an external point of view) both in its tradition of leadership, and its effectiveness in sustaining nomadic, starfaring populations of diverse racial and cultural compositions through "total war" conditions where no one is spared the rigors and horrors of almost-constant warfare - in the absence of external enemies the Vagyr tend to make their own.
Vagyr culture is based on a caste system where profession and family reputation (and sometimes gender) dictates an individual's place in society, in modern practice this is remarkably similar to the organisation of military personnel in various units by their operational role. A fleet carrier with its full military and civilian population embarked would be a good case study of the caste system at work.
While most modern space navy''s manpower doctrines would encourage individualistic thought and innovation, in Vagyr culture freedom of action and thought directly depends on a person's caste. A frigate pilot is expected to behave and think as such in accordance to his role, a scientist likewise, and same goes for their leadership - Vagyr culture tends to work well until someone generates some dissent, resulting in the meting out of harsh punishments to keep that person or people in check, or in extreme cases a population mutinies against their leadership with messy results or a family advancing up the caste ladder. This means that there can be a lot of potential energy in groups wishing to break away from the ways of their kin, merely waiting for the right time to do so.
Vagyr leadership culture is totalitarian in nature - a position of leadership granting full authority to do whatever one pleases, at least within the leader's sphere of influence. Thus an infantry squad leader could do what he pleases to his squad, but if the unit doesn't perform to expectations he would take the blame for it. This makes the role of a Vagyr leader one of virtual servitude to his or her reports, as their fate would be decided by them. That "do or die" culture not restricted to this example plays a role in ensuring personnel quality especially where two factors in Vagyr tradition justify such an approach - a mindset of servitude put in place by tradition, and the need to survive threats both internal and external.
It is of note that by tradition, the Vagyr are a matriarchal society thus politics and benefits are more often than not, gender-biased, moreso when warlords sail off to battle leaving their wives or mistresses in total control of the home front.
Technology
Vaygr military technology is quite advanced in some areas and somewhat less so in others; they mostly rely on projectile weapons in combat, though plasma-based weapons are becoming somewhat more prevalent. Most of their technology is a mishmash of designs from various cultures bolted together; they use the Soviet doctrine of "take two things that work and combine them".
Drive Systems
For insystem drive, the Vaygr use high-output fusion torch drives to move their vessels about. The reaction is self-sustaining once begun, thus all vessels only consume reaction mass when their reactors are first powered up.
For interstellar transit, hyperspace tunneling is used; however, while most Vaygr vessels possess hyperspace drive modules, the complex electronic and navigation equipment required is not. Thus, fleet carriers and super capital ships of various types are often required to jump fleets and flotillas of smaller ships around.
Power Systems
The Vaygr use an advanced second-stage "mag-fusion" reactor system, which provides adequate power for their purposes. Like their drive systems, the reaction is self-sustaining once begun. The design can be scaled up and down to provide as much power as neccesary.
Defensive Systems
Due to their lack of shield technology, the Vaygr tend to take a somewhat different route when it comes to protecting their ships from damage. Several different methods are used to prevent and resist damage from various weapon types are used, and these will be detailed below.
-Active Jamming: The first line of defense against enemies, Vaygr ships tend to all employ powerful but crude active jamming, which makes it somewhat difficult to achieve locks on them with most weapons, including missiles.
-Laser Defense System: This involves high-powered lasers specifically designed to target and engage incoming solid projectiles. They are accurate enough to sustain a very high hit rate against even capital ship-class guns; though they have trouble tracking smaller rounds, and of course, a sufficient weight of fire can overload the system.
-Beam Absorb Armor: Possibly the nastiest defensive system employed, the entire hull and armor of almost all Vaygr warships can absorb energy from most energy weapons and use it to replenish it's structure and/or increase the energy reserves of the ship, to a certain extent.
-Heavy Armor: Almost all Vaygr ships are VERY heavily armored, making them very tough nuts to crack.
-Reality Stabilizers: The Vaygr fear time manipulation; so much, that they employ this device, which causes all temporal technology within it's area of effect to simply not function.
Weapons Systems
Most Vaygr vessels use mass drivers of various calibres as part of their primary armament and point defense; these weapons use electromagnetic fields to fling large loads of caseless ammunition downrange at enemies. Replacement ammunition can be quickly created with onboard molecular foundries, and a high fire rate allows continuous pressure to be put on an enemy vessel.
The other primary weapons system most used is missiles; these are also easy to produce via molecular foundries, and fall into a few different categories:
-Concussion Missiles: Fed from a caurosel magazine that allows loading of either HEAP, HESH, or frag ammunition for maximum effectiveness against any particular target, these weapons form the cornerstone of the Vaygr Armada's light missile inventory.
-Medium Fusion Missiles: Mounted on missile frigates and carriers, these weapons have a 25 megaton thermonuclear warhead and home in on enemy capital ships using their own dedicated fusion drive. However, a large size and somewhat slow speed make them somewhat vunerable to CIWS fire. This is remedied by firing them in large volleys.
-Heavy Fusion Missiles: Deployed by destroyers and battleships, these massive missiles have a 100 megaton fusion warhead, with enough power to snap a frigate in half with a single hit and disable larger ships with only a few strikes.
-LRICMs: A long range cluster missile designed to be used against enemy strike craft formations. Deployed by missile frigates and battleships.
-Unguided Rocket Pods: In use on Shamshir II assault corvettes and Heavy Assault Craft, these unleash a stream of 20-40 light rockets for capital assault roles, but take some time to rebuild their ammunition supply.
As for energy weapons, there are four types employed, all with relatively short range but excellent power. The first is the generic plasma bomb, using energy siphoned from the ship's reactor to fire a large orb of plasma at a target in order to deal damage. Smaller orbs can also be generated, allowing plasma bombers to do double duty as fighters.
Next are lance beams; these laser-plasma beam guns are accurate and hit hard, though are somewhat short range. They come in three varieties: small, medium, and heavy. Small types are mounted on strike craft, medium lance beams are fitted to frigates as assault weapons/point defense and larger ships as anti-strikecraft guns, and heavy lances are used as a heavy weapon on some frigates and on capital ships to deal damage to larger enemy ships.
Next, we have the Trinity-type pulse-fusion cannon, currently only employed on the Shamshir II assault corvette; this delivers a large pulse of energy to an enemy ship, smashing and melting armor.
Finally, the most powerful weapon in the Vaygr arsenal: the direct reactor output fusion lance cannon. Currently only equipped on the Merkavah frigate and Auvernagel "Titan of Fire" battleship as spinal mount armaments, this weapon is quite simply, a super-powerful fusion flamethrower that fires in bursts, capable of tearing an enemy ship into drifting slag with continuous fire. It is, however, somewhat short ranged.
-will add ship specs and some more background data later-
Culture
Barbaric in comparison to the modern Western-like culture of many spacefaring nations, Vagyr tradition and culture somehow possesses a certain charm (at least from an external point of view) both in its tradition of leadership, and its effectiveness in sustaining nomadic, starfaring populations of diverse racial and cultural compositions through "total war" conditions where no one is spared the rigors and horrors of almost-constant warfare - in the absence of external enemies the Vagyr tend to make their own.
Vagyr culture is based on a caste system where profession and family reputation (and sometimes gender) dictates an individual's place in society, in modern practice this is remarkably similar to the organisation of military personnel in various units by their operational role. A fleet carrier with its full military and civilian population embarked would be a good case study of the caste system at work.
While most modern space navy''s manpower doctrines would encourage individualistic thought and innovation, in Vagyr culture freedom of action and thought directly depends on a person's caste. A frigate pilot is expected to behave and think as such in accordance to his role, a scientist likewise, and same goes for their leadership - Vagyr culture tends to work well until someone generates some dissent, resulting in the meting out of harsh punishments to keep that person or people in check, or in extreme cases a population mutinies against their leadership with messy results or a family advancing up the caste ladder. This means that there can be a lot of potential energy in groups wishing to break away from the ways of their kin, merely waiting for the right time to do so.
Vagyr leadership culture is totalitarian in nature - a position of leadership granting full authority to do whatever one pleases, at least within the leader's sphere of influence. Thus an infantry squad leader could do what he pleases to his squad, but if the unit doesn't perform to expectations he would take the blame for it. This makes the role of a Vagyr leader one of virtual servitude to his or her reports, as their fate would be decided by them. That "do or die" culture not restricted to this example plays a role in ensuring personnel quality especially where two factors in Vagyr tradition justify such an approach - a mindset of servitude put in place by tradition, and the need to survive threats both internal and external.
It is of note that by tradition, the Vagyr are a matriarchal society thus politics and benefits are more often than not, gender-biased, moreso when warlords sail off to battle leaving their wives or mistresses in total control of the home front.
Technology
Vaygr military technology is quite advanced in some areas and somewhat less so in others; they mostly rely on projectile weapons in combat, though plasma-based weapons are becoming somewhat more prevalent. Most of their technology is a mishmash of designs from various cultures bolted together; they use the Soviet doctrine of "take two things that work and combine them".
Drive Systems
For insystem drive, the Vaygr use high-output fusion torch drives to move their vessels about. The reaction is self-sustaining once begun, thus all vessels only consume reaction mass when their reactors are first powered up.
For interstellar transit, hyperspace tunneling is used; however, while most Vaygr vessels possess hyperspace drive modules, the complex electronic and navigation equipment required is not. Thus, fleet carriers and super capital ships of various types are often required to jump fleets and flotillas of smaller ships around.
Power Systems
The Vaygr use an advanced second-stage "mag-fusion" reactor system, which provides adequate power for their purposes. Like their drive systems, the reaction is self-sustaining once begun. The design can be scaled up and down to provide as much power as neccesary.
Defensive Systems
Due to their lack of shield technology, the Vaygr tend to take a somewhat different route when it comes to protecting their ships from damage. Several different methods are used to prevent and resist damage from various weapon types are used, and these will be detailed below.
-Active Jamming: The first line of defense against enemies, Vaygr ships tend to all employ powerful but crude active jamming, which makes it somewhat difficult to achieve locks on them with most weapons, including missiles.
-Laser Defense System: This involves high-powered lasers specifically designed to target and engage incoming solid projectiles. They are accurate enough to sustain a very high hit rate against even capital ship-class guns; though they have trouble tracking smaller rounds, and of course, a sufficient weight of fire can overload the system.
-Beam Absorb Armor: Possibly the nastiest defensive system employed, the entire hull and armor of almost all Vaygr warships can absorb energy from most energy weapons and use it to replenish it's structure and/or increase the energy reserves of the ship, to a certain extent.
-Heavy Armor: Almost all Vaygr ships are VERY heavily armored, making them very tough nuts to crack.
-Reality Stabilizers: The Vaygr fear time manipulation; so much, that they employ this device, which causes all temporal technology within it's area of effect to simply not function.
Weapons Systems
Most Vaygr vessels use mass drivers of various calibres as part of their primary armament and point defense; these weapons use electromagnetic fields to fling large loads of caseless ammunition downrange at enemies. Replacement ammunition can be quickly created with onboard molecular foundries, and a high fire rate allows continuous pressure to be put on an enemy vessel.
The other primary weapons system most used is missiles; these are also easy to produce via molecular foundries, and fall into a few different categories:
-Concussion Missiles: Fed from a caurosel magazine that allows loading of either HEAP, HESH, or frag ammunition for maximum effectiveness against any particular target, these weapons form the cornerstone of the Vaygr Armada's light missile inventory.
-Medium Fusion Missiles: Mounted on missile frigates and carriers, these weapons have a 25 megaton thermonuclear warhead and home in on enemy capital ships using their own dedicated fusion drive. However, a large size and somewhat slow speed make them somewhat vunerable to CIWS fire. This is remedied by firing them in large volleys.
-Heavy Fusion Missiles: Deployed by destroyers and battleships, these massive missiles have a 100 megaton fusion warhead, with enough power to snap a frigate in half with a single hit and disable larger ships with only a few strikes.
-LRICMs: A long range cluster missile designed to be used against enemy strike craft formations. Deployed by missile frigates and battleships.
-Unguided Rocket Pods: In use on Shamshir II assault corvettes and Heavy Assault Craft, these unleash a stream of 20-40 light rockets for capital assault roles, but take some time to rebuild their ammunition supply.
As for energy weapons, there are four types employed, all with relatively short range but excellent power. The first is the generic plasma bomb, using energy siphoned from the ship's reactor to fire a large orb of plasma at a target in order to deal damage. Smaller orbs can also be generated, allowing plasma bombers to do double duty as fighters.
Next are lance beams; these laser-plasma beam guns are accurate and hit hard, though are somewhat short range. They come in three varieties: small, medium, and heavy. Small types are mounted on strike craft, medium lance beams are fitted to frigates as assault weapons/point defense and larger ships as anti-strikecraft guns, and heavy lances are used as a heavy weapon on some frigates and on capital ships to deal damage to larger enemy ships.
Next, we have the Trinity-type pulse-fusion cannon, currently only employed on the Shamshir II assault corvette; this delivers a large pulse of energy to an enemy ship, smashing and melting armor.
Finally, the most powerful weapon in the Vaygr arsenal: the direct reactor output fusion lance cannon. Currently only equipped on the Merkavah frigate and Auvernagel "Titan of Fire" battleship as spinal mount armaments, this weapon is quite simply, a super-powerful fusion flamethrower that fires in bursts, capable of tearing an enemy ship into drifting slag with continuous fire. It is, however, somewhat short ranged.
-will add ship specs and some more background data later-