NationStates Jolt Archive

I've decided this title will attract at least more views than "Discussion on the creation of a new tech setting."

I've been thinking recently about creating a new tech setting that combines post-modern tech with future tech in the same vein as Cowboy Bebop.

A few FT technologies exist in a world of mostly the same stuff we have now. Hyperspace and hyperspace gates exist, as do advanced power sources needed to cheaply move things into space. Other FT things such as teleporters, advanced energy weapons, super-powerful AIs, cloaking devices, etc. don't yet exist. Starships would be designed to possibly (not always) land in water as they did in Cowboy Bebop, although I'd probably say a good rule of thumb to keep things interesting would be they aren't as powerful as dedicated naval vessels. Assaults on planets would not be a cake-walk where massive star destroyers can park over a country and let loose; planetary defense guns and missile batteries make it a tough beachhead to crack (so orbital drop pods of marines to sabotage infrastructure are used).

Each planet could have several regions on it, and interplanetary trade (and war) are commonplace. Instead of using realistic national populations, a country can use its actual NS population, considering they share a planet with only a handful of other nations. An important feature of this setting is the grand scale of things; assaults on massive superstructures are encouraged.

Other RP opportunities abound with the existance of space pirates, and the formation of alliances to deal with them. Different races/species are much more feasible now.

Impressions?

Bump!

They do that in the NationStates forum.

I've decided this title will attract at least more views than "Discussion on the creation of a new tech setting."

I've been thinking recently about creating a new tech setting that combines post-modern tech with future tech in the same vein as Cowboy Bebop.

A few FT technologies exist in a world of mostly the same stuff we have now. Hyperspace and hyperspace gates exist, as do advanced power sources needed to cheaply move things into space. Other FT things such as teleporters, advanced energy weapons, super-powerful AIs, cloaking devices, etc. don't yet exist. Starships would be designed to possibly (not always) land in water as they did in Cowboy Bebop, although I'd probably say a good rule of thumb to keep things interesting would be they aren't as powerful as dedicated naval vessels. Assaults on planets would not be a cake-walk where massive star destroyers can park over a country and let loose; planetary defense guns and missile batteries make it a tough beachhead to crack (so orbital drop pods of marines to sabotage infrastructure are used).

Each planet could have several regions on it, and interplanetary trade (and war) are commonplace. Instead of using realistic national populations, a country can use its actual NS population, considering they share a planet with only a handful of other nations. An important feature of this setting is the grand scale of things; assaults on massive superstructures are encouraged.

Other RP opportunities abound with the existance of space pirates, and the formation of alliances to deal with them. Different races/species are much more feasible now.

Impressions?

Already have it, can be a form of Near-FutureTech...

Also it is not unique to Cowboy Bebop.... It's also been done on Macross, Robotech and by Live Long Yamato (AKA "Star Blazers" in the US).

http://www.mediacircus.net/sb____17.gif
"Yamato" (Japan) aka "Argo".... The large bore in the front is the Wave Motion Gun..... not best to be in its line of fire...

http://www.mediacircus.net/sb_1.gif
"Andromeda" Earth's newer ship, built from knowledge gleened from original construction of the "Argo"... note the two Wave Motion Gun bores...

Not to mention David Drake's With the Lightning's series. Water landings are one of the only practical ways to have post-post modern space ships land.

And I'd be willing to give it a shot. Though I admit I do have a soft spot for super-AIs. They're so cute. SQUEEE!

Wow, had almost forgot this was in my sig..... I guess I may start thinking about organizing this stuff again, setting down some rules, etc. This thread is always open to suggestions and questions and whatnot.

That sounds exactly what I wanted to do. FT has gotten too OMG big ships! And less practical. Even in the future, space travel wount be as romantic as all the FT stuff is here.


That is what i had in mind when I designed my Jerico-Class Space Tug (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=9334712#post9334712)

YES

I would do this.

Water landings and stuff.

I'd just like to suggest something else. Could we NOT have massive numbers of ships in this sort of thing, period? I kinda think of it as how earth is in Stargate.

Meh,

Pre Future Tech, PFT, anyone?

Hmm... how futury are we talking. Does Real Space need to conform to relativistic physics? Are we taking hyper out of any universe in particular? Are any techs taboo (please say mass antimater production)? Antigravity, or centripitally accelerated decks? A David Drake style universe would be lovely =)

Also muich love for the limited number of hyper capable ships idea. Limited ship numbers makes it easier to develop a fondness for the few you have. Makes it easier to think of names too =)

I like the idea of an upgraded Star Trek: Enterprise style system.

You have ships that take days to reach other planets, those are your fastest, then you have ones that take weeks, those are the destroyer type ships. Then you have ones that take months that mostly hang around and patrol convoys.

Urk... StarTrek is twinky, mainly because it was designed for TV, not for consistancy. And no one has explained the relativistic effects of full impulse.

I think the best system would be either low sublight speeds using nuclear torch drives or the like, so it takes days to travel from planet to planet, and either a hyper system that takes weeks from system to system, or a series of warp-points. Or both, where warp-points could be assembled by hyper capable ships.

My views on Limited Future Tech.

-Best from for sublight transportation is an Accelerated Ion Drive. this is a RL possibility and would allow propulsion to different planets in a matter of days.

-FTL trvel to be done througth unstable wormholes or through stabalized "Jump Points." Not all wormholes can be stabalized though.

-No OMG huge ships, maybe 1 huge mobile space-station per nation or such, but smaller, less armed ships

-Limited ship numbers because of the large cost of such warships.

-I would keep it to projectile tech, IE: Railguns, COIL guns, MAC Cannons. (Lasers would have limited effect because most of the ships hulls are designed to take the extreams of space and orbital landings.)

-No plasma weaponry

-Most Advanced reactor would be a form of fusion, perhapse cold fusion, or a Matter/Anti-matter reactor.

-Maybe some sort of primitive FTL communications, but they will be like radio waves on earth: unreliable, filled with static, needs boosters every so often. This would keep everyone connected while keeping them somewhat far appart,

These are just a few of my thoughts for a PMT/LFT universe.

And how about we NOT allow people to occupy whole galaxys and stuff in this?

I want to do mine like a planetary Air Force built something and put it in space. For a while i'll only have one ship beyond my home system.

Are we going to do some sort of initial trail and error RP for this thing?

My general views:

Ships themselves shouldn't be horribly expencive... it's not that hard to build a hull in space and slap on an engine. Effective warships should be expencive because of the dramatically improved sensors and ECM they require, not to mention the power required to accelerate at anything more than 1 G. Ships capable of atmospheric operations should also be expencive.

FTL should be possible through hideously expencive artificially created moleholes and even more expencive and slower FTL engines which generate a molehole around the vessel and which require constant tuning during FTL... since the travel is FTL, most sensors are useless, meaning crew need to go extravehicular to keep the generators working.

Projectiles are nice, but I see no reason not to permit bomb-pumped x-ray laser missiles, or even standard nukes. I'm not saying we should use them, merely that I can't see any reason not to permit them. Large, heavy, fast missiles should also be permitted so small torpedo boats have a chance at killing larger vessels... perhaps the reason not to use nuclear missiles is that engagements generally happen at too close range... and any further out they get knocked out by megawatt range point defence lasers?

I have no real problems with plasma weaponry, except it's highly overrated.

FTL communication would be best done through courier ships and drones, methinks.

I'd probably allow cold fusion, even in relatively small engines (small enough for a tank) but I certainly wouldn't allow matter-antimatter engines or weaponry. Too dangerous to use... and very inefficient.

Agree with all of that EXCEPT the having to leave ship for the generators part.

That said, I have no problem with FTL's. I just don't want every single ship to have them, and there should be restrictions on it's useage. Meaning you can't jump into hyperspace between two stars.

But... but... leaving the ship while in FTL space is so hard on the crew, and makes them all tough and/or angsty. I can't believe you wouldn't want to send your crew out into a place where radios and light based observation simply don't work, and even normal physics goes wonky.

Alright, this is my first draft of some basic rules and suggestions, feel free to contest them, thats what we're here for!

Physics: Must be kept reasonable and with some type of explainability. Supermaterials like neutronium should not exist. We will allow the creation of energy weapons on the large scale, and dense power sources within reason.

Power sources: I envision the primary source of portable large starship power coming from He3 fusion, the He3 harvested mostly from gas-giants. Fighter spaceships will have a much more limited range and must refuel on some type of expendable chemical (here I picture a bit of bending on physics and say there might be some type of catalyzed rocket reaction that allows for a much higher energy yield.) Fuel is expensive in either case, allowing for resource related conflicts On the ground I imagine most vehicular power will come from the type of fuels we have now, albeit used in much more efficient engines. Even though planes could theoretically use the same fuel as small spaceships, I like to think regularly operating such things in large numbers would be prohibitively expensive. National power supplies could be met with more green solutions, especially because orbital solar stations will be more affordable.

Weapons: Space weapons should include linear cannons, lasers, railguns, particle beams, recoiless cannons, missiles, and nukes may be allowed pretty regularly. Nukes on the ground are still considered pretty bad taboos; they are only mildy acceptable as naval weapons and as mass AA shells. Naval vessels may use linear cannons or possible railguns(I wouldn't recommend those), but except for those meant to fire upon orbital targets, armament will remain the same. On stuff like tanks things will probably remain close to what we use now, maybe with ETC or HVG guns. Hand-held firearms should be essentially conventional; caseless weapons may be more common, but they still have some problems that make cartridge weapons more popular.

Hyperspace: Large ships, like really large ships, should have self-contained hyperspace modules. Small ships should use fixed hyperspace gates. Hyperspace gates should be pretty massive ordeals that can only work in a vacuum and away from planetary gravity so no one can use them as cheap logistic answers (No... OMG my chaingun gets ammo through a mini-gate). Hyperspace communication also falls under these restrictions; you must relay signals from a gate or a small communications ship (basically has a hyperdrive just strong enough to get signals).

Antigravity/Artificial Gravity: I picture antigravity drives being used to launch the larger spaceships, but being extremely power consumptive so it takes hours to charge the drives enough to launch. Antigravity should not be a small scale technology that can replace helicopters. Small fighter spaceships and transports should be able to launch conventionally with the aformentioned catalyzed rockets. Artificial gravity should be produced via centrifugal motion.

AIs: Turing capable sentient AIs will be limited to capital ships and corporate mainframes. Simple AIs may do any number of things, although your country may want to limit their spread since they displace jobs....

Cybernetics: People can't yet upload themselves entirely to computers (well not common people anyway), but the artificial reality cyberworld is alive and well. A very large percent of the population is capable of connecting their mind directly to digital devices, and implanted computer enhancements are pretty common. Mechanical limb replacement is still a taboo for the most part and there are very few people who elect to have it done outside of cases of injury; it is very time consuming and pretty expensive so it isn't something that is given out to soldiers on a regular basis.

Space Navy Size: Should be pretty small, uberships should almost not even exist. Spaceships cost much more than their naval counterparts and therefore should be found in smaller numbers. Small spaceships will be pretty common, possibly even mass produced for some cargo ships, but they are still way out of reach for common people. I guess it helps to frame it in terms of aviation; small planes are pretty expensive, but big planes are really expensive. I imagine most of a fleet will be transport vessels for ground units.

Why not just bombard them?: While sticking around in orbit and bombing an enemy's military bases may sound appealing, it is much easier for them to shoot you down with their anti-orbital weapons, especially because they will almost undoubtedly outnumber you severely. You should punch a hole in their defense and land conventional units so you can invade them on equal terms.

Unit Parity vs. Naval Vessels: Since large spaceships will be doing water landings, some people may be thinking they can kill two birds with one stone by making them good naval vessels. Keep in mind that the kinds of weapons that are good in space are very different than the weapons useful on the ground. Also Keep in mind that these weapons will take up space on a ship, making it heavier and more costly. Conventional naval vessels can be easily transported inside containers to their destination planet.

Unit Parity vs. Airplanes: Small fighter spaceships can in theory be designed to fly in atmosphere, and their engines would allow them to have some pretty good performance. However, they will be vastly outnumbered in most cases, and their weapons won't be much more effective than dedicated planes anyway. Keep in mind also that it would take up space to make a fighter spaceship maneuverable in the atmosphere.

FYI:
ST full inpulse = C/4, this reduces the reletivistic effects to little more than those experienced by RL ground-to-orbit communications.

overall, this sounds good, If i'm reading this right:
ships are generally atmosphere-compatible, interplanetary travel uses jumpgate network, interstallar travel very rare, and problematic.
highly limited AI (Automated Air traffic control.)
non-kinetic weapons uncommon.
biggest guns are likely on mining ships. (ok,this one's my pet idea, but do any of you think, provided it had a full crew, the Red Dwarf coudn't take out an ISD?)

Is H2 fusion not possible? That would be one of the main excuses for landing in water.

I'm unhappy with gravity based technology, mainly because it can easily be turned into a starship drive, shields, and weapons, all which are a little too far future for me.

What scale are we talking about in space warfare, both in distances and size of vessels? How big would a fighter be? How big would a battleship be? (I assume we're still using RL classifications for clarity, just the maximum mass of a battleship will be considerably smaller than an Honor Harrington BB).

How does the propulsion work, now that we have a fuel?

Do the sentient AIs have any signifigant limitaitons, other than size?

Is there any reason not to simply throw rocks at a planet from beyond retaliatory range?

ships are generally atmosphere-compatible, interplanetary travel uses jumpgate network, interstallar travel very rare, and problematic.
highly limited AI (Automated Air traffic control.)
non-kinetic weapons uncommon.
biggest guns are likely on mining ships. (ok,this one's my pet idea, but do any of you think, provided it had a full crew, the Red Dwarf coudn't take out an ISD?)I wouldn't say interstellar travel would be very rare, in fact, I think it would be necessary in order to have enough arable planets, although I see nothing wrong with well-explained terraforming.

AI is highly limited by size; it is possible to have sentient AI, but not practical for most purposes; the Air Traffic Control could be sentient, but not if its for monitoring a bunch of cropdusters.

Non-kinetic weapons are uncommon on the ground and not too powerful in space. Kinetic weapons still provide the most bang for your buck, but lasers make good missile defense, and particle beams are good for swiping at fast-moving fighters.

Dunno what to say to that :D
Is H2 fusion not possible? That would be one of the main excuses for landing in water.

I'm unhappy with gravity based technology, mainly because it can easily be turned into a starship drive, shields, and weapons, all which are a little too far future for me.

What scale are we talking about in space warfare, both in distances and size of vessels? How big would a fighter be? How big would a battleship be? (I assume we're still using RL classifications for clarity, just the maximum mass of a battleship will be considerably smaller than an Honor Harrington BB).

How does the propulsion work, now that we have a fuel?

Do the sentient AIs have any signifigant limitaitons, other than size?

Is there any reason not to simply throw rocks at a planet from beyond retaliatory range?
For a variety of reasons, other forms of fusion have many forms of drawbacks, from a need for much heavier shielding, to being much less efficient to harvest electricity out of. He3 fusion requires minimal shielding and provides electricity directly. Water landings are there because ships over a certain size would crack any surface they land on, and the facilities would be expensive as hell.

Antigravity is only possible in large starships for launching from planets. It requires hours of charging up to do so and is extremely inefficient for use as a mass driver or all-time use drive.

Not quite sure on this one, we'll have to have some people pitch examples of what they'd like to see.

I think the large ships can use Accelerated Ion Drives since we have a great deal of electrical power to expend. As I said, fighter sized things should probably use an expensive chemical that is somehow catalyzed into a high energy plasma, unless someone can pitch a real system that would have a similar power yield. Missiles could use a cheaper, non-refillable version of the drive.

I think it would be nice if people didn't just make unmanned death barges and swarms of cheap fighters (idea on this; the drive system for a fighter makes it costly to create en masse). This will have to be discussed also.

Rocks in all likelihood could be shot down faster than you could throw them. A dedicated rock thrower could probably only throw small rocks unless you want it to extremely expensive, and small rocks are easy to shoot down. Big rocks could be thrown with tugs, but they couldn't manage to throw that many in a reasonable time. Rock throwing should just be part of the distractions during a landing.

Weapons: Lasers and X-ray beams would have a limited effect on ships in Limited Future Tech. This si due to the fact that these massive heat and radation levels are found normaly in space. They might do good if massively large. They are also designed to take the heat of orbital reentry wich negates the both also.

Reactor/Engines: Ion Enegines should be the Norm I think. They would only be kinda harmful in the atmosphere. The reactor being He3 for capital ships is a great idea. But for fighters, range would be limited because they need to sperate fuel tanks, one for the electrical reactor which an last a long time, and one to hold the fuel for the Ion Drive. The second one would use up fuel faster and limit range. Long Ranger Scout ships could be a possiblity.

Hyperdrive: I wasn't planning this, but maybe hyperdrive could be fitted on the largest capital ship and at fixed points as you said, but they should be kinda slow and not allow almost instant travel between systems. This would promote the use of carriers.

AIs: yea, they should be limited on the ground, unless your like russia a future russia and have a socialist socitey where all you people do is sit around and do nothing. In lagre capital ships and on bases, AI's should be extreamly advanced but still be present in fighters for navigation and such.

Fleet Size: The ships themselves would be easy and cheap to make (in space on drydocks), the hard part is keeping them running. He3 is expensive; so expensive that you wouldn't even want to use it as a weapon. Food and water could be made on the larger ships. Ship fuel might cost as much as it took the make the ship it self. Or at least have a higher operational cost to cost ratio.

Subs: Unless we treat all space vessels like sub ala Wing Commander, the space submarine would be the stealth class in LFT. They would have stealth and jammers, but carry signifigantly less weaponry and fighters.

Gravity/Anti-Grav: This is iffy, I dont know if it would be cooler to just have artiffical gravity or use spinning rings. Perhasp artifical gravity is used even on smaller ships, but they still use the spinning rings are they are very ost effective. Anti-Grav wouldn't need hge capacitors to fill, it would just require a lot of energy and would be slow.


Perhaps we could have our own earth....er....galaxy, and have moderators specifically to approve designs.

Hmm, my thoughts on this...

Weapons: Let people use what they want within reason-- as long as they can explain it well and it has a basis in actual physics and so forth. I expect lots of railguns, missiles, some types of beam weapons and so forth-- but nothing that violates laws of thermodynamics :)

Reactor/Engines: Probably most people will be using fusion or nuclear reactors of some type, perhaps supplanted with solar power. Anything else isn't really useful except for very short duration things. As for engines, well, what works in space is limited-- I pretty much only see standard chemical rockets, fusion torches, nuclear pulse drives (for very large ships/moving asteroids), ion rockets, and possibly solar sails for small ships being used. Of course, there's always the possibility of someone coming up with something new :)

Hyperdrive: I would prefer this actually just be limited to just the Solar System for the moment, albiet with gate networks set up like in Freelancer or Cowboy Bebop to speed travel between planets. Interstellar is a bit too big of a scale for my tastes. The gate network thing doesn't HAVE to be done, but I would still prefer to just stick it in the solar system for now.

AIs: AIs arn't really that useful as such-- go ahead and develop them for whatever you want, but since they are ALIVE, expect them to get bored/go insane/kill themselves or whatever if they have to do only a couple of things. I imagine expert systems would be far more useful.

Fleets: Somewhat cheaper compared to a sea ship, but still quite expensive. Let people pretty much do what they want here-- big ships are certainly possible, but you'll certainly have fuel consumption issues and of course maintenance issues...

"Stealth" ships: Possible, but hard to do. I'd only accept one if the technology behind it was explained very well.

Gravity/Anti-Grav: I'd rather not do this. Either a ship is capable of leaving and entering the atmosphere on it's own, or it needs landing boats/shuttles/HLVs to get stuff up and down-- let's not deal with super huge ships in the atmosphere.

As for people to review ship designs-- eh. I see no real need for this. Let people experiment a bit and post stuff-- if it's impractical, it'll be obvious enough to those of us who have an interest in this, and we can make comments in the thread.

OOC: My nation is post-modern and use wormholes and jumpgates to move across galaxy. For now I didn't found any nice RP for post-modern nations... and FT ones are closed or use very advanced Intergalactic Empires... Arakaria is just a small planet in a big universe... Neverthless I look forward to join any RP that could be started as a near-Future-Tech. You can count on me and I think that I'm not a bad Role-Player, although I never had any chance to prove my skills yet, so I wait for opportunity.
I also hate to see anti-matter usage but will accept it if that's the consensus.

WHERE HAVE YOU PEOPLE BEEN ALL MY (NS) LIFE?!?!?!

Finally. I posted a thread asking for hard sci-fi people yesterday.

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=435514

Would the warship I posted there be considered OK?

Power - Would it still be possible to have Hydrogen fusion reactors on thie ground, since it's so much cheaper to find hydrogen around than He3? Or even small tramp freighters that use hydrogen and are generally scoffed at for their low accelerations and heavy shielding? I'm also assuming that we don't have any inertial compencators or anything like that... I hope.

Hyperdrive - The problem with sticking within one solar system is that it's unlikely there could be more than one or two planets capable of supporting life within a single system. The problem with using interplanetary gates is that the gates are so hideously expencive that it's actually more efficient to cruise for a couple of days. In fact, if the gates are only so-big, that is a built in incentive to keep ship size down. What happens when one side of a gate is turned on while the other is off?

AI - I sincerely hope they get bored... I have much love for quirky, surly, snarky computers. And I agree they should be massive and expencive. Cool.

FIghters - There are simple ways of dealing with fighters, and I'm not convinced about their effectiveness against cap ships. Small gunboats are much nastier.

Ships - As I said, it's pretty easy to slap together a hull in space dock and put an engine on it. Weapons, guidence systems, sensors, ECM, all those things are extremely expencive, as is fuel. No one will want massive warships because they simply aren't worth the cost.

Stealth - Stealth is absurdly easy in space, given the high levels of background radiaiton and immence volume. You shut down your engines and sensors, insulate the hull, and make like a rock. Of course... the first clue you'll have that your trick isn't working is a nuke detonating half a klick away.

Own place - I was almost going to suggest moving off forum, but yes, taking it out of the context of most of NS would be terrific. I also wouldn't mind peer review for ships, at least initially. Until we have some precidents we can all agree on.

For the multi-system thing, try a stutterwarp style engine, a la 2300... It can only go so far, otherwise the radiation penentrates the ships own shielding and kills the crew... That keeps us limited in range or use, but still mobile.

The problem with using interplanetary gates is that the gates are so hideously expencive that it's actually more efficient to cruise for a couple of days. In fact, if the gates are only so-big, that is a built in incentive to keep ship size down. What happens when one side of a gate is turned on while the other is off?
You are right but it's easier to build stargate than to make whole engine and put it on a starship. Besides stargate can be limited as signs where wormholes are and where is their destination. I think that turning one stargate will brake whole connection.
Ships - As I said, it's pretty easy to slap together a hull in space dock and put an engine on it. Weapons, guidence systems, sensors, ECM, all those things are extremely expencive, as is fuel. No one will want massive warships because they simply aren't worth the cost.
Good points but when you want to move whole fleet than you need a huge spacecarrier! It would be also much easier to track down size of your fleet with carriers than to do it with millions of small mosquitos... I also would like to some stable war system. For example multiply your population by your economy rating and use points to buy things for current war...
Stealth - Stealth is absurdly easy in space, given the high levels of background radiaiton and immence volume. You shut down your engines and sensors, insulate the hull, and make like a rock. Of course... the first clue you'll have that your trick isn't working is a nuke detonating half a klick away.
It's also easy to eliminate background radiation and turning off support system in a small stracraft is a REALY bad idea.

EDIT
There is one slight problem... Psychics! Consider me "been there, seen that, got the scars" type when dealing with metaphisics...

Arakaria:

You missunderstood, I meant interplanetary gates within a system. Intrasystem gates. I have no problem using gates between systems, but within a system, it gets kinda icky. I was also wondering if, should one end of a gate be opened and the other end closed, any ships that attempt to transit would be destroyed...

I'm not sure I understand your point of tracking down fleet size... Bulk frieghters could be converted to carriers, but I'm not sure I see the point.

It's not so easy to eliminate background radiation and tell the difference between this lump and that lump. I'm thinking all naval combat between individual ships will become similar to submarine warfare. Once fleets get involved, however, there's no point in hiding.

Azanian Economic Bloc:

I like your ship... though I think it's carrying too many missiles. It's about the size of a bluewater cruiser, but the missiles it carries must be FAR larger than anything used on the ground.

Also, I don't know much about stutterwarp... explain?

You're right, I should tone missiles down... Now that I actually started working on my writeup on the LRMs, it really should have more like 12 long range missiles at most, maybe 60 short-medium missiles.

Stutterwarp is probably best explained by the original 2300 source...
http://home.earthlink.net/~ad2300/warptech.htm
http://home.earthlink.net/~ad2300/revisit.htm

Basically, a 7.7 light year limit. But we could tweak that.

IMO, the biggest battleships should be NO longer than 300m's long.

Most of my ships would be between 120 and 200m's.

IMO, one of the most important things is how they operate. A GOOD RULE WOULD BE NO FLEETS! Peacetime or wartime. Unless assaulting a planet.

I hate RP's where everyone has a big fleet everywhere. IMO people should RP with most of their ships in and around their assets and only a few that venture outside and between systems and into other nations space for exploration and/or diplomacy.

I think that after we get this all set up here there should be a thread introducing it with all the rules and stuff too.

I've decided this title will attract at least more views than "Discussion on the creation of a new tech setting."

I've been thinking recently about creating a new tech setting that combines post-modern tech with future tech in the same vein as Cowboy Bebop.

A few FT technologies exist in a world of mostly the same stuff we have now. Hyperspace and hyperspace gates exist, as do advanced power sources needed to cheaply move things into space. Other FT things such as teleporters, advanced energy weapons, super-powerful AIs, cloaking devices, etc. don't yet exist. Starships would be designed to possibly (not always) land in water as they did in Cowboy Bebop, although I'd probably say a good rule of thumb to keep things interesting would be they aren't as powerful as dedicated naval vessels. Assaults on planets would not be a cake-walk where massive star destroyers can park over a country and let loose; planetary defense guns and missile batteries make it a tough beachhead to crack (so orbital drop pods of marines to sabotage infrastructure are used).

Each planet could have several regions on it, and interplanetary trade (and war) are commonplace. Instead of using realistic national populations, a country can use its actual NS population, considering they share a planet with only a handful of other nations. An important feature of this setting is the grand scale of things; assaults on massive superstructures are encouraged.

Other RP opportunities abound with the existance of space pirates, and the formation of alliances to deal with them. Different races/species are much more feasible now.

Impressions?


Have you read the Risen Empire novels? They have something extremely similar to that. Starships use railguns, attack drones, and missiles, and are restricted to light speed. Thus, crews are cryogenically frozen much of the time. When attacking planets, marines insert in small pods filled with crash gel, and remote-piloted craft the size of pinheads infiltrate enemy defenses or defend secured areas. And there are no teleporters, energy weapons or shields, tissue regenerators.

I'm not sure we should say 'No Fleets Punto!' By limiting the number of ships and making the price of fuel astronomical, fleet operations will be limited by cost, not by some arbitrary rule. The trick is to make the universe work in a way that enforces the rules, not fiat 'No fleets!'

One of the best ways to enforce a size restriction is, once again, fuel cost, but also the diameter of the gates. Given that there is no artificial gravity, the most efficient design is a disk with the engines on one face. That way, by simply boosting at 1g, there is no need for expencive centripetal habitats. You can enlarge the ship by stacking decks up, but that's relatively inefficient, requiring elevators to get from the engines to the bridge as opposed to a walkway. Intra-system ships can get as large as they please... so long as the fuel economy is respected.

Sleetris, I can't see an easy way to shoot down half a dozen kilometer wide chunks of rock coming at your planet or orbital emplacements... especially when they are escorted.

Oh, and status of biotech and nanotech?

I could really dig this new tech. Unfortunately, I lack the knowledge to contribute anything to the great discussion y'all are having, but I will definitely consider getting involved if this ever comes about.

Verdant: I'd say biotech and nanotech would be somewhat more advanced than they are now, but not terribly so. Biotech would probably mostly be useful in the medical field for various things. As for nanotech, I'm assuming you mean nanobots-- which would likely only be useful in specialized environments (unlike in Star Trek where they can just go anywhere).

I'm not sure we should say 'No Fleets Punto!' By limiting the number of ships and making the price of fuel astronomical, fleet operations will be limited by cost, not by some arbitrary rule. The trick is to make the universe work in a way that enforces the rules, not fiat 'No fleets!'

One of the best ways to enforce a size restriction is, once again, fuel cost, but also the diameter of the gates. Given that there is no artificial gravity, the most efficient design is a disk with the engines on one face. That way, by simply boosting at 1g, there is no need for expencive centripetal habitats. You can enlarge the ship by stacking decks up, but that's relatively inefficient, requiring elevators to get from the engines to the bridge as opposed to a walkway. Intra-system ships can get as large as they please... so long as the fuel economy is respected.

Sleetris, I can't see an easy way to shoot down half a dozen kilometer wide chunks of rock coming at your planet or orbital emplacements... especially when they are escorted.

Oh, and status of biotech and nanotech?

Centrifugal habitats aren't expensive... They're relatively cheap.

However, your ship design won't work as a combat vessel. Suppose your vessel isn't accelerating, and things are floating around. You manuver, gravity hits you sideways... Exactly the same as a ship with a centrifugal habitat. By the way, the crew doesn't operate in the centrifugal habitat (at least on my ships), they operate in the ship itself which generally doesn't have gravity unless manuvering.

Not to mention building ships like that is going to make them huge targets... If you're attacking the enemy you have a massive sensor profile, and you'll have to spread your armor out a ton, meaning less protection for the same size as a regular vessel. Maybe it's better as a civilian vessel, but I wouldn't want to be in one during combat.

Fuel wouldn't be expensive for standard manuvering, since hydrogen and other volatile elements are abundant in asteroids. But even if you made fuel extremely expensive, how does that prevent anyone from making large fleets? It doesn't, really. It just makes it insanely difficult to attack anyone, or explore period... Too limiting.

Maybe a simple way is to make say, the number of ships in your space force be a certain fraction of that you could afford in naval vessels for your MT NS nation.

Alright, this is my first draft of some basic rules and suggestions, feel free to contest them, thats what we're here for!

Um... this pretty much looks like Near Future Tech. Which I've been doing since... um... April 03?

Um... this pretty much looks like Near Future Tech. Which I've been doing since... um... April 03?

Oh yeah? Well, you sure havn't been doing it around here.

Axis Nova, what I'm really interested in is genetic engineering, cloning, uterine replicators, performence enhancing drugs, and chemical interrigation. Your suggestion about nanobots is a good one... electromagnetic fields and wind are ungood for nanobots.

Azanian Economic Bloc, centripetal habitats are expencive, complex, and prone to damage in warships unless you suggest rotating the entire vessel. Further, it is extremely difficult to perform manouvers when there is a centripetal habitat because every time you boost, an additional vector is added into the habitat... a three G boost will throw everything in the habitat towards the rear of the ship. With my design, the engines being at the bottom of the ship, when you boost, everything is pressed into the floor.

Building ships iusing my design would only make them large targets if you insist on engaging head-on. Their side aspect will actually be smaller than a conventional vessel's, meaning more armour can protect the areas most likely to be fired upon.

We are also assuming that the fuel used in these ships IS expencive... that's the basic premise agreed upon in the first few posts. We aren't using standard reaction drives, and we use He3 as fuel.

I find fiatting a number of ships irritating. I was planning on having few actuial warships, but a number of converted merchantmen and privateers, with only enough forts and gunboats to defend my own system.

Yes, a number of people RP this tech level. What I think we're doing is making an RP community that uses the same basic premises, so as to avoid argument.

I'm not saying having a feet-towards-engine vessel is a bad idea, I employ it on the main body of my vessels. And they aren't really prone to damage unless you go into combat with them sticking out (mine all retract into the hull, since nobody is going to be using them then anyways). But your design doesn't better armor the sides, because you cannot move towards an enemy with your side pointing towards them under your engine idea. They'll aim for the rest of your disk, which will be much easier to hit and always be presented if you're moving towards an enemy in any direction. Even if you put no armor on the sides and focus it out towards the front, its still overall, thinner.

Again, this seems like a better idea for a passenger ship than a combat vessel...

I'm talking about non-FTL manuvering... My ships do use He-3 as fuel primarily, but there are plenty of other methods for getting a ship around when high speed isn't necessary... We need a way to limit fleet size without making it ridiculously hard to attack a system.

Who says you need to be boosting in the direction you are going? You boost towards the target, then rotate 90 degrees, and engage latterally. By spinning the disc slowly, you can limit exposure to any part of the ship at any time, and bring fresh weapon platforms into play. A further advantage is that, although there is a wide area to armour, so long as you aren't fleeing, you can always present at least half your firepower to the enemy. Agreed, it is better for a transport... but a pure warship is a waste of resources. Almost all my major warships will be armed freighters, I think.

I'm talking about non-FTL manouvering too. Sure, there are other fuels, but I think we're fiating that those other fuels can't be used with our powerful and efficient engines =)

The best way to limit fleet sizes is cost. Maybe armour alloys are hard to come by. Perhaps the targetting sensors are expencive. There are all kinds of justifications for keeping fleets size small.

Wait...

Are we doing this so we can't just have little ships that look like planes in space because we have to have something spinning to keep gravity up?

That sucks.

The problem is, if you allow gravitic techology, you also need to allow tractor beams, gravitic shields, gravity based propulsion, and gravity based weaponry. On the other hand, you can have little plane shaped ships if you want to... they'll more or less have to be shaped that way if you want them to be effective in atmosphere... just remember that when in space, unless you're boosting, there will be no gravity like effects.

Edit: SIgh, jolt kicked this post up one.

Wait...

Are we doing this so we can't just have little ships that look like planes in space because we have to have something spinning to keep gravity up?

That sucks.

Axis Nova, what I'm really interested in is (...) performence enhancing drugs
No need to search further. Just dig up some information about psychedelic drugs. Besides, I'm a bit experienced user, so you can ask anything about perception enchance and many other aspects. Besides there are plenty of speeders that increase reflexes, speed and perception. Are you thinking about something really new? I can be usful on that but most modern drugs are based on plants so there isn't many things to make up...
I'm not sure I understand your point of tracking down fleet size... Bulk frieghters could be converted to carriers, but I'm not sure I see the point.
I meant like today's Carriers. Only few, larger nations afford them and have only few. This would reduce huge fleets to only few Carriers with fighters aboard. Those Motherships should be huge and VERY expensive... Otherwise there is no chance to invide any star system that has nukes... How many nukes do you need to take out one 500m long starship? 1? 2? Today on Earth there are tens of tousands...

EDIT
I'll still lobby mild psionic powers...

Lol, I didn't want to know ABOUT the drugs, I wanted to know what the state of pharmasuticals are in this universe we're making. I can design fake drugs alright, I just want to know how far we can go.

I suppose you could simply use carriers and fighters... but I wouldn't... And you're assuming that the nukes actually get close enough to hit. That's my main reason for using fighters... missile interception.

I personally have no problems with untwinky psionics... though I would never RP it.

Who says you need to be boosting in the direction you are going? You boost towards the target, then rotate 90 degrees, and engage latterally. By spinning the disc slowly, you can limit exposure to any part of the ship at any time, and bring fresh weapon platforms into play. A further advantage is that, although there is a wide area to armour, so long as you aren't fleeing, you can always present at least half your firepower to the enemy. Agreed, it is better for a transport... but a pure warship is a waste of resources. Almost all my major warships will be armed freighters, I think.

I'm talking about non-FTL manouvering too. Sure, there are other fuels, but I think we're fiating that those other fuels can't be used with our powerful and efficient engines =)

The best way to limit fleet sizes is cost. Maybe armour alloys are hard to come by. Perhaps the targetting sensors are expencive. There are all kinds of justifications for keeping fleets size small.

Hmmm... I guess. But of course flying into battle sideways raises all sorts of interesting questions about weapons placement... Whatever. To each his own.

And yes, I think that it will be hard to maintain pure warships... My Windhoek is going to double as a prospecting and transport...

I think armor is where we should put in the cost part. That way you can still afford to trade with lots of frieghters, but they won't be as effective in combat and pure warship fleets wont be prevalent. (If I get any carriers or assault ships, they're going to be converted versions of my mining equipment transports).

Revised Views:

Fleet Sizes: By making fuel and building warships expensive you limit how far a fleet can go with so much money. You could have a super huge fleet, but it will take enormous ammounts of money to keep it going.

Weapons: Mainly prjectile and missiles, maybe a superlaser. Plasma weapons would lack range as the magnetic field around ti would be shot by solar winds and radiation. A plantary Ion cannon could be devised, but would only have a ranger out to high orbit. It would send out a steam of electrons to act as a funnel and conductors, then it would fire. Do good damage but, slow, power intensive, and immobile.

FTL travel: FTL travel would be only possible out of a system as the gravitational fields would wreck havoc on anything that went through the wormhole. The wormholes could be artificaly created and stabilized, but it would cost a lot to make them and build them.

AI's: There would be little or no Self-Aware AI's as they would go insaine after a while. What an AI would be would be an advanced computer with some creativity.

Fighters would be good because bombers could fire missiles at short range to the attacker. It is harder to shot down a mobile bomber than it is to shoot a linear missile. Fighters would result to counter this,

Sensors: All that backround radiation would make seeing larger ships very easy and smaller shiups harder. (incentive to build smaller) RAM wouldn't work because it would heat up too much due to all the radiation in space. It would either heat up or reach it's radiation limit.

Stealth: While running at normal you could be picked up by sensors pretty easily, but if you shut off all nonesential systems, you would become harder to detect. Radar would be almost useless, but EM and Infared might be good. But at longer ranges they would lose detail and would have a massive delay in their return.

Sub-Light travel: Ion engines for most warship due to high acceleration. Nuclear pulse engines for long-range travel due to endurance. Maybe we could devise some sort of limited inertia dampener so that we can travel fast.

Artifical Gravity: Used on ships but expensive. Centfuge would be cheaper but less combat friendly.

Anti-Gravity: Do our ships need to be in the atmosphere? Maybe some of the smaller ships could have limited flight capaqbilities in an atmosphere.

I don't think ships should be able to make atmospheric landings. If we must, maybe the ships that could do that would be larger to accomodate the required systems.

I expect there will be plenty of particle beam weapons in use as well-- with power plentiful and capacitor tech improved beyond postmodern levels, beam weapons in general will likely see wide use.

Anti-Grav in atmosphere was already deemed a big no-no... I think the only way a small ship could land on earth is if it was designed to land in the water.

I would not write off radar as useless... Think of it this way: Radar is much better than other systems for long range targeting and actually finding the target, since they have a much wider field of view. EM sensors can easily be fooled or tricked through active degaussing and the radiation that's in our solar system, and IR doesn't really have as much range.

This is my view of how it would happen: RADAR finds target, and other sensors like IR, LIDAR, etc, guide the fire control.

Someone earlier said all ships should be able to make water landings on planets.

I won't do that though. Most of my fleet will be kept in underground hangars in deserts.

Someone earlier said all ships should be able to make water landings on planets.

I won't do that though. Most of my fleet will be kept in underground hangars in deserts.

Not all ships... The ones you designed properly (IE, to float)

And have fun trying to make hangars that fit them... Plus, trying to do a dry landing with a warship would be extremely difficult... Hope you have REAL good landing gear to support several thousand tons, that and a big runway.

The reason for water landings is there is little chance for you to damage either the ship nor the landing surface when landing. While it is certainly possible to have an entirely space based navy, the ability to land your ships does grant a major advantage... not only military, but economically. If you insist on landing in deserts, there is a good chance that sand and dust will damage your equipment during touchdown or dustoff.

Sorry for double post...

I'm really not fond of beam weapons, mainly because they lead to arguments about targetting and electromagnetic shields and such... with a a railgun, you know where you stand! Note, I'm just unhappy about using them for ship to ship combat. If you want to use missile-slagging lasers, go ahead. I just... don't like particle beams designed for ship to ship combat.

I agree with Azanian Economic Bloc on the sensor issue, though I think passive detection will be a big part of combat. Not to mention most ships would have transponders, telling everyone who they are.

USSNA

I don't understand why AIs would go insane. They may not be sane by human standards, but I don't think that would mean that they are unable to function or interact with humans.

And I really don't like the idea of internal compensators... that smacks of antigravity.

Only thing about partical beam is very limited range, and that even if you hit and heat up the armor, the armor would be able to withstande the attack because extream heat is commonplace is space. Ceramic armor would do good as an outter layer as it would have good anti-heat charactoristics. And also long as they are mades as small tiles, they would have good anti-KE properties.

For AIs, just use the William Gibson method: IE, program a suicide mechanism if they get out of control, add in all sorts of things to physically lock them out from networks, etc.

And yes, passive detection would of course be very useful... I should probably start installing ships with degaussing systems. But radio traffic could much more easily be detected, along with the EM discharges of major engine boosts, etc.

This is starting to sound like Submarine warfare in space... hehe.

And yeah, KE and missiles will probably be staple weapons for this. Radiation shielding and ceramet can help you with lasers and particle beams, but KE is tougher to disippate. This also makes fighters a lot more useful... Just load up something higly manuverable with a railgun and you have a cheap weapons platform... I predict plenty of gunships.

Not all ships... The ones you designed properly (IE, to float)

And have fun trying to make hangars that fit them... Plus, trying to do a dry landing with a warship would be extremely difficult... Hope you have REAL good landing gear to support several thousand tons, that and a big runway.

That's the reason most of my ships are going to be like 150m long.

Sorry for double post...

I'm really not fond of beam weapons, mainly because they lead to arguments about targetting and electromagnetic shields and such... with a a railgun, you know where you stand! Note, I'm just unhappy about using them for ship to ship combat. If you want to use missile-slagging lasers, go ahead. I just... don't like particle beams designed for ship to ship combat.

I agree with Azanian Economic Bloc on the sensor issue, though I think passive detection will be a big part of combat. Not to mention most ships would have transponders, telling everyone who they are.

USSNA

I don't understand why AIs would go insane. They may not be sane by human standards, but I don't think that would mean that they are unable to function or interact with humans.

And I really don't like the idea of internal compensators... that smacks of antigravity.


Well immagine this. You can work out every single problem in your head all at once. You know all there is to know. You can beat any simulation. You would have nothing to do but sit there. You would go insane.

Well, given that 150m is about twice as long as the largest aircraft today... good luck?

And yes, I agree 100% with Azanian Economic Bloc's last post.

And would I go insane? Yes. But I'm not a computer with access to almost limitless amounts of informaiton and so many jobs that even I have trouble keeping track of them.

Oh, only 150 meters long.

You're landing something bigger than an Arleigh Burke Destroyer.

Think of this: The space shuttle is roughly 50 meters long, and needs 4.5 kilometers of reinforced runway. And chances are its more aerodynamic than any of your warships.

If you can't find any problems with that...

Anyone here a Stargate fan?

Prometheus looks longer than 150m's and is taller than anything i'd build and it can do VTOL's.... is that completly unheard of in this RP or what?

Stargate =/= realistic in that case.

You're VTOL burning thousands of tons. Highly unlikely that you'll have a propulsion system that can do that unless your ship flips on end to land...

Stargate =/= realistic in that case.

You're VTOL burning thousands of tons. Highly unlikely that you'll have a propulsion system that can do that unless your ship flips on end to land...

Which is, in fact, what my ships would do. Into the water. Nice soft landing, no worries about reinforced landingpads or anything like that. Now, smaller ramjet equipped fighters and gunboats would certainly be permitted to fly from concealed runways... but not major warships.

Yeah... I don't think I'm going to have my major vessels be water-landers. Instead, I'll employ disk craft as dedicated, transatmospheric cyclers... Really cheap ones, pretty much engines and the saucer-hull... Or do you think that's too expensive to work? One one hand, I have to have freighters/carriers/whatever and the disc ships, but on the other hand this is more productive in that freighters can be away while the disc ships offer much heavier lifting capacity, so I can speed up shipbuilding when I bring up components that aren't being manufactured in space...

For surface to space bulk transport, I'm using space elevators =) for vice versa, I think I'll just dump the cargo near a harbour and let boats pick it up, or maybe use scramjet equipped tenders. The only reasons I can see for a larger ship to land is if there aren't proper spaceport facilities, if it's due for an overhaul (some things are easier to do in gravity), or for military purposes... Tanks are big, and it takes a biggish ship to land a signifigant number of them.

I like your tender plan too... but it might be good to have some larger ships able to land... it saves trips up and down, and the unloading only has to happen once. And the crew can have liberty time while the ship is in port. COnversly, I'm planning on carrying most cargo externally, so it needs to be transfered to tenders.

In fact, your tenders bear a marked similarity to my freighters... which are just a disc with containers piled on the nose in a light frame. If you need fuel for a long haul flight, you include some fuel tanks.

But can we aggree that atmospheric fighters and bomber would still be better than a duel space/Atmospheric fighter or bomber.

And that a dedicated surface warship would have an advantage our a space vessel when it is in the water.

He are just some of my ideas on ship weaponry.

Light Anti-Aircraft:
30mm Gatling (Hey, it would still be good in space.)

Heavy Anti-Aircraft:
Small, Manuverable Missiles (A near 1 hit kill.)
35mm Rotary Railgun (Fast and powerful but power-intensive.)

Light Anti-Ship:
Small (above 100mm) Caliber Rotray Railgun (again, powerful and fast, but power-intensive)
Light Anti-Ship Missiles

Heavy Anti-Ship
Large (above 200mm) Caliber Railgun (Powerful; nuff said)

Super Heavy Anti-Ship/ Orbital Defence
Large (around 600mm/24") Magnetic Accelerator Cannon
Super Large (around 1200mm/48") Super Megnetic Accelerator Cannon.



I was going to use COIL guns/launchers to get supplies into space. I need to devise a way to "catch" the cargo as it reaches space though. I might make a ship that has a huge carbin fiber net on the end and a large engine on the top to "catch" the cargo as it comes into space.

Um... atmospheric fighters are certainly cheaper and more manouverable than spacecraft in atmosphere, and are more efficient. But the spacecraft would have massive armour comparitively and would be bloody fast, if aerodynamically designed. On the other hand, they guzzel fuel like there's no tomorrow. ANd yes, surface vessels win against starships in water, hands down.

All of those weapons seem reasonable... but more description would be good. It all depends on the ranges we decide are reasonable to engage at.

No: massdrivers don't work in atmosphere... Exit velocity is Mach 25, your cargo will likely burn up.

USSNA, those are good ideas, but I don't think we should strictly lay down how things should work.

For example, rotary railguns aren't really faster firing... It's not like regular guns where a barrel has to cool, and a rotary railgun system would proably use up more energy than a rapid-fire single barrel (you have to charge up rails before they reach barrel, etc) and would need a lot more capacitators. You're free to try it though.

Another example: One could use LASER weapons as missile defense, the way RL nations do now.

I don't think space ships are meant to fight dedicated surface ship, that's like comparing a landed plane against a tank. The water is chosen simply because its easier to land there... When you've got an ocean as your runway, its just easier.

Anywho, working on some new ships for you guys to eval. We should get that forum or whatever set up at some point...

"Orbital Defence" They would be in orbit.

No, those are just thoughts on What I would use. The thing about laser anti=missile defese if that missiles in soace would accelerate at insane speeds. You could even launch a missile from a small COIL gun to get it's initial acceleration up quickly. I am also planning to make a new type or laser resistance missile for MT and the same principals would work here.

Agreed on all counts, AEB... except for the railguns. Railguns ought to be given a cooldown period, otherwise you'll burn them out extremely quickly. Though I really want some indication of range before I start churning out ships =)

range would only be limted to the power of the targeting computer. They would lose almost no acceleration and go one for a very long time. The only thing is that at a certain distance it become hard to track a target and easier to evade the projectile.

EDIT: Railguns only limit would be on their capacitors and how fast you can fill them up.

"Orbital Defence" They would be in orbit.

No, those are just thoughts on What I would use. The thing about laser anti=missile defese if that missiles in soace would accelerate at insane speeds. You could even launch a missile from a small COIL gun to get it's initial acceleration up quickly. I am also planning to make a new type or laser resistance missile for MT and the same principals would work here.

Uh... I wasn't talking about orbital defense.

"I was going to use COIL guns/launchers to get supplies into space. I need to devise a way to "catch" the cargo as it reaches space though. I might make a ship that has a huge carbin fiber net on the end and a large engine on the top to "catch" the cargo as it comes into space."

And the best way to kill off your missiles is to shoot the sensors... Which you can't really armor unless you want to have the missile teleoperated from the ship itself.

Range is also a function of the power and effective range of the weapons. While a railgun dart may continue on indefinately, beyond a certain range, the target will be able to manouver and avoid it. Assuming a velocity of 10kps, a target even only 100km away would have 10s of manouvering time, more than enough to avoid a dart. Further, missiles have a maximum range based on how long they can maintain their acceleration. To be able to intercept a ship, they effectively need a higher acceleration than the ship... how long can the missile maintain that acceleration before it goes ballistic and is easy to dodge?

See, you armor the missiles with high-heat ceramics, and shield the sensors with a reflective surface. That would give it resistance to lasers. As for range, you could do what I suggested and fire them out of a COIL gun. The fuel could be used for when it gets somewhat close to the target where it then would use fuel to manuver and accelerate even more.

As for the COIL guns for space-bound cargo, if shaped right, the cargo container would lesses the ammount of heat stress put on it and with advanced materials it would be able to takes what heat is pot on it.

See, you armor the missiles with high-heat ceramics, and shield the sensors with a reflective surface. That would give it resistance to lasers. As for range, you could do what I suggested and fire them out of a COIL gun. The fuel could be used for when it gets somewhat close to the target where it then would use fuel to manuver and accelerate even more.

As for the COIL guns for space-bound cargo, if shaped right, the cargo container would lesses the ammount of heat stress put on it and with advanced materials it would be able to takes what heat is pot on it.

Unfortunately, if you shield the sensors with a reflective surface... they can't see out, and are no longer sensors.

As for the coil guns firing cargo, I'd worry that the acceleration would smash anything fragile in the container. And the optimum shape for reducing resistance happens to be a shape that's not particularly volume efficient. Using COIL guns to launch cargo from planets with thin atmospheres, or even from station to station makes sence. Using it from normal planets takes too much work, in my opinion.

Your not getting it. Ever hear of a 1 way mirror?

Fragil? You would cusion it. And it's really getting on my nerves about all the nay-saying. How about we work together and find out how to make it work instead of how to make it not work. You know, forget about the aerodynamic shape, it could have a leading edge on it to break the air and create a pocket for the container to fit through.

A one way mirror allows an equal amount of light in both directions. The reason why it's hard to see through in one direction is that the contrast between the objects on the other side is too small compared to the light being reflected. And think... sensors work by absorbing EM radiation... if you put a mirror in front of them, they can no longer absorb it. Now... if you could find a material that would reflect all frequencies but the ones you were looking for, and that had a high specific heat capacity and was a pretty good conductor of heat, then you'd have something. But a standard two way mirror would not work.

As for the coil gun, if you actually want to make it work in atmosphere, then I'd suggest making a really really really long coil that accelerates the projectile to about mach 2 and then a ramjet kicks in, lifting it up. Then a scramjet, then orbit.

As for the naysaying, you're perfectly capable of criticising my ideas too... But the idea that you can do simply anything because you say it is so ... not really good. One of my main problems with NS is people saying 'ok, well it works for me so there!' People have been working on aerodynamics for YEARS and they have no idea how to make something survive the friction of mach 25. Unless you have some bizzare ceramics... it's not going to fly.

I'm all about criticism, but it when all you do is criticize that bugs me.

okay, as for the sensors. A mirror only reflect IR and Light. EM and RADAR can go through. But if you must reject that idea also, you could place them behind a light reflecting material that allows other wavelengths through. It can be done.

"really really really long coil" It wasn't going to be short to begin with. It would be a very large structure that is about a mile high. It just needs to get past the Troposphere and Stratosphere. Once in the Mesosphere the air is less dense and the natural cooling of -93 degrees Celsius would cool off the container.

Did you know that in the Thermosphere that temperatures can go as high as 1,727 degrees Celsius. If our ships can take that much heat, then they can take a few machs in the atmosphere.

It's not so much the temperature as the rate of heat transfer, I think, though I could be wrong. Given the low dencity of the air, even though the temperature is high, the actual energy transfer would be fairly small. I think.

Ah, you didn't say it was a mile high tower. That makes more sence. Still, you're going to have problems sending up anything sencitive because of the acceleration and the EM fields. Any kind of electronics will be fried, and most stuff will get smashed... depending on how fast you want it coming out of that tube.

And a mirror is something that reflects... regardless of the frequency of radiation. But if you want a mirror robust enough to take weapons grade emmissions... you're going to have to start looking at fairly odd materials, unless you're homing in on REALLY high energy particles.

Well, the COIL gun would be mostly used for raw materials and non sensitive stuff. HLV's would be used for that. Less stain on the cargo.

That's cool... and I'd imagine we use coilguns for sending noncritical shipments of ore and stuff too... but not from planets, only from space. We have space elevators for that =)

Depends on the size of the elevators. It would be cheaper to send it up COIL style than to send it up a bit at a time elevator style.

True... on the other hand, we HAVE the elevators and DON'T have a coil... so we'll use what we've got =)

This is kinda what I was invisioning: In the Background (http://www.videogame.com.sg/images/xba00221a.jpg)

Weapons:
-Keep in mind folks that smaller, fighter sized ships have very high output engines, but only in regards to thrust. Railguns still require a pretty big power source, so if you guys are planning on giving them to smaller ships, you have a few options; give them a microfusion plant (makes them large and expensive), give them fuel cells (require fuel), or charge them up at carriers (very limited number of shots). Fighters should probably be carrying missiles and recoilless cannons, and using their high speed and maneuverability to their advantage (consider this; if you fire a cannon when travelling at high speeds, it automatically gets your speed as a base. You can actually drop warheads with directional thrusters and they can do the same thing as missiles.).

-Particle beams are for anti-fighter work at short range, reason being they don't require turrets to aim, and are more powerful than anti-missile lasers. Unless they are firing a neutral particle, they are extremely poor at attacking planets and ships with charge repelling shields. Neutral particle beams require huge amounts of energy and are basically really inefficient takes on the railgun angle.

Hyperspace Travel Times
Since we will be having interstellar stuff.... I believe the travel times between systems should normally vary from 1 week up to 3 months, and be dependant on what speed you were travelling when you entered hyperspace (or even how much energy you're willing to expend in hyperspace). My reason for this is, if it took really long times to get things through hyperspace, mounting military moves would become vastly more complicated and expensive, so much so that I think it wouldn't be done under almost any circumstances. Also, since it is dependant on the speed at which you entered, lightspeed transmissions sent through hyperspace can arrive in very good times, allowing for a much more trafficked interstellar information net.

Anti-gravity
Anti-gravity will only be for large vessels and will require very long charge up times to take off, some deal less for landing. The only reason I'm letting this tech in is because it is the only reasonable way to get big stuff off the ground in one piece. It will be too energy consumptive to use for anything but this.

Artificial Gravity, and what is this for?
Lets just say that there is a drug that can partially offset the effects of 0g on the human body, meaning artificial gravity is only necessary in long visits to space. People who live in space colonies can spin for gravity, no problem. People who mine asteroids for months or years at a time can have small centrifuge areas. Space patrol ships can have little internal centrifuge areas where people sleep. In any case, you don't want artificial gravity when engaged in space combat because you'll have maneuvering Gs to worry about, and you don't want a big ring sticking out of you.

Procedure for Invading a nation on another planet
Consider this; if you want to invade a nation on another planet, you may have to land a navy. Why? You can't land your big ships on the ground. You can't just let them sit in a bay and unload troops, because an enemy will take their navy over and blow them up. You can't sit in orbit and use dropships because it is expensive and extremely inefficient, and they can shoot you down with their anti-orbital weapons. So you have to land a navy. I envision an invasion fleet consisting of a few warships, and a huge amount of disposable cargo capsules; the warships jump in first and cause a distraction, then the cargo capsules make a dash for the ocean on the far side of the planet. Your warships then pull out to the edges of the system, land with the cargo capsules, or leave. From then on it progresses as a normal war with a few space skirmishes in the background.

I don't want to see space combat becoming the focus of a war! Ground combat has so much to offer and should not become inconsequential!

Weaponry: ... Particle beams don't need turrets? Don't you need a linear accelerator to get the little tykes up to speed? I suppose you could aim them with magnetic fields..., but that would be power intencive. I don't think recoiless cannon are a very good idea, personally. Too low an exit velocity, you could easily run into your own projectile. I see fighters using guided and unguided rockets.

Hyperspace: I understood the gates were going to be practically instantanious, but militarily useless until a bridgehead was seized, except in a strategic sence. Hyper equipped ships taking that long does, however, make sence.

Artificial Gravity: I was planning on making that drug anyway =) Fairly simple thing in the future, to trick the body into thinking it's both working out and in a gravitational field. They already have the makings of gene therapy that may help prevent musculo-skeletal degeneration.

Invasion: An interesting concept, though we're going to need much larger ships if we're transporting naval warships. I had only gone as far as thinking about armoured and amphibious forces being deployed... full out naval transport is interesting.

Well ground war would be preety much the same as it is in MT.

I would have to disagree with you on taking over a planet. You can orbit a planet all you want, even try to glass it. But that would be like using a nuke in MT. Much more effective to land a frace and take over the planet. Also, while in orbit you land the risk of being shot by the plantary defenses.

Holy farking hell, you guys rock. I want to keep updated on this.

I for one plan to make extensive use of mecha. They're good in an environment like this since they're quite maneuverable in space, and being able to carry assorted different weapons will make them very versatile.

Sileetris, if some of the PMT stuff I have can fire many linear gun rounds, I don't think small to medium railguns will be a problem for most fighters.

I would rather not get mecha involved in this, at least not combat mecha. They just... they are just too FT for this I think. At least for combat operations.

Good lord no mecha please.

And Axis nova... the fact that we aren't allowing fighters to carry linear guns tells you something about your PMT stuff =)

And invasions? It would really depend on the planet, I think. Some planets and moons you really don't want to sent warships near, while others will be completely defenceless.

Well most planets woun't have much in the way of defence. But you can have "Worlds." Planets that serve as the Command center for a sector. They would have a lot of defense but would be expensive to maintain.

Just so you know, Axis Nova, I wasn't scoffing at the idea of mecha. But whenever mecha get involved, you have enormous debates about which is more effective, conventional or legged transportation. I'd just as soon sidestep that debate.

And... er, for me, anyway, planets that are important (assuming I have more than one planet, which I actually haven't decided on) will be defended, while others aren't. My organization isn't based around war, we don't like to spend a lot on defences.

This is also an interesting thing we could use form the halo universe:

Slipspace Travel, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipspace) check it out.

Here is an even better pic of my COIL launcher: Link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Newmombassa.jpg)

Verdant: If my normal PMT nation can do linear guns on small vehicles, spacecraft should be able to do it easily regardless of the size. It's not a particularly complex technology especially considering that we're talking about allowing railguns-- which linear guns are simply a cousin of.

And where do you guys get the "mecha are FT" schtick? It's not like I'm planning to debut uber things from Gundam Wing or something like that.

What I'm saying is that normal PMT SHOULDN'T be able to put railguns on small vehicles. It simply takes too much energy.

And my problem with mecha is that people start claiming that it can do things it really can't... like take and equivilent mass and tech tank one on one. It simply won't happen, because mechs are inefficient designs, both in terms of mass and surface area. If you want to use small ATST scout walker types, I don't really have a problem with it, but in my opinon, anything larger than small arms should take it down.

What I'm saying is that normal PMT SHOULDN'T be able to put railguns on small vehicles. It simply takes too much energy.

And my problem with mecha is that people start claiming that it can do things it really can't... like take and equivilent mass and tech tank one on one. It simply won't happen, because mechs are inefficient designs, both in terms of mass and surface area. If you want to use small ATST scout walker types, I don't really have a problem with it, but in my opinon, anything larger than small arms should take it down.

You are drastically underestimating the capacitor and battery technology available to a postmodern nation-- these plus fusion reactors are what make linear and rail weapons possible. Heck, we're talking about allowing some BEAM WEAPONS here-- I really don't think you should be nitpicking about rail guns and linear guns :P

Also, I don't subscribe to the 'tank mecha' style-- any space mecha would be primarily designed for mobility and versatility, and not heavy armor. Mecha and fighters thrive best in an environment where super ECM of some sort forces most combat to occur near or at visual range.

As I understood it, particle beams took less energy to fire than railguns because the particles are charged, though I could be wrong there. And I don't really think I am underestimating the capacitors or powersources. To get a 1kg projectile up to 10kps would take about 50 megajouls assuming a perfectly efficient system... which it isn't. This is approximately equivelent to 40 second's charging by any modern conventional tank. And since it ISN'T anywhere near a perfect system AND you need to account for the energy absorbed in the recoil and and and... you'll be lucky if you get away with less than half a gigajoule behind that shell.

Why on earth would you want mecha in space? That makes less sence than using them on the ground.

Weaponry: Well, my point about beam weapons not requiring turrets is they don't really quite have barrels; to aim them all you'd need to do is slide the last few super-conducting magnet rings a little to the side to put a tilt on the beam, unlike weapons that must pivot to face. They still have quite a few drawbacks though, considering their size and power expense.

VA may be right on the linear guns thing, even though I've never brought up my concerns about them, I've always viewed linear cannons as a technology most people would question the validity of on a small scale. Thats pretty much why I continue to use Gas-Guns (HVG by Sharina's new nomenclature). The velocity on HVGs is actually modifiable, and they are caseless, I use suppressors to keep the recoil and flash down. Linear guns might be able to work, but if you want a decent firing rate you'd have to keep the velocity lower than a railgun. For fighter spaceships, caseless recoilless cannons with discarding sabot ammo may be a decent way to go if you want to keep their size and heat requirements down, and unless you accelerate into your own projectiles you'll be alright.

Mecha: I already use mechs in very small numbers, one type as a scout-sniper, and another as an engineering vehicle. They are both pretty simple two-legged things. I also use robots in the civilian arena for a variety of dangerous tasks, but usually with remote operators to maintain some liability. As long as mecha don't get attributed magical powers, I'm alright with them. I can picture small mechs being pretty good for supporting paratrooper operations actually.

-Also, just in case you're still reading this and AN has stopped posting for the night, a little explanation about mecha in space is in order. Normally for a ship to change facing in space, it must use tiny boosters to reorient itself. Human beings don't have boosters but can do this by shifting their weight. Technically a ship could be designed that shifts weights to change direction, but thats kinda hard to think of. Space mecha (and they don't necessarily have to be humanoid) have limbs they can move, just like a person could, to change facing without expending fuel. This concept is actually a pretty good one in any case, and fighters may be designed to take advantage of it, possibly blurring the lines between them and space mecha. Mechs also have the ability to land on low-gravity objects without scraping their hull, giving them the ability to hide out on asteroids (etc.) with less risk to themselves.

Invasion: My idea for transporting naval ships is basically to have a big shell, possibly disposable (although I think it would be best if they just waited on the seafloor after a fleet lands, just in case a retreat is needed), that gets lifted into orbit by an anti-gravity scaffold tug. The tugs probably wouldn't even have their own power source, just a lot of capacitors to keep the price down, and they could charge up off the infrastructure of the planet they launch from or a dedicated reactor platform that gets sent along with the fleet (ingeniously disguised as just another big shell). As for the naval crew, they may be given a special housing area on the shell, or, while it would be awkward for them but it would save space; they could just live in the ship being transported since it should only be a temporary arrangement. These big shell things could be pretty useful for a number of things actually, you could fit a ton of supplies on them and sink them until you need them again, letting you conduct prolonged operations if need be.

Weapons: I have reservations about the gasguns too, but will withdraw them in this arena! =) I'm very worried about the low velocity of recoiless weapons though, and serioiusly suggest rockets instead.

Mecha in space: Oh, I have no problems with THAT, putting thrusters and such on moveable pods, or allowing the ship to change shape slightly to change it's vector? That's ok. I was imagining something totally different... though you'd still run into the battledamage problems.

Big drop pods for invasions are good too... though I don't see my nation, as I'm invisioning it, conducting too many invasions. Raids a-pleanty, and ground combat. But full scale invasion... that's simply not PROFITABLE!

I'm wondering what kind of specific impulse and thrust to power ratio/power to weight ratio we're getting out of our engines. Just basic figures would be nice to start with, and I won't scream if anyone has an experimental engine or two that surpasses it... but it would be nice to know! I'm thinking the fighter engines will be low specific impulse high thrust to power high power to weight, cap ship drives will be high specific impulse low thrust to power high power to weight, and civies will be high specific impules low thrust to power low power to weight...

You can't sit in orbit and use dropships because it is expensive and extremely inefficient, and they can shoot you down with their anti-orbital weapons.
Why not? Just bombard given area with Neutron Nukes and send dropships. They can contain tanks and troops. I also see no way to land an inter-planetary ship on planet. Think about re-entry people. It's just WAY to costly to optimise your ship for both tasks. Shuttles will do all the job you need. Besides if you win in space than those on the planet will have a HUGE problem with warships droping bombs on their heads.
Tanks are big, and it takes a biggish ship to land a signifigant number of them.
Not so big. You can put few of them on larger dropship.

About mecha - it would be way more interesting than conventional tanks. But I wait for developing of this issue.

Mecha should stay in space... Even then, it'd be easier to use fighters with moveable engine pods than a full blown mecha.

BTW, Sileetris, powered armor>small mecha in terms of infantry support, or at least that's what I'll be using

You put mecha on earth, and my powered armor and tanks breaka yous face. : )

Tanks could still be effective, especially light wheeled or hover ones. They're faster than mechs and they'd have more armor. If I ever do get a planetary assault force, they'll use that.

And you really can't standoff and bombard, they can shoot your missiles down, or start nailing your ships.

To launch a 1kg projectile 3km/s it would take Nine million joules.

So if we up that 1kg to 10km/s it would take Thirty million joules

10km/s divided by 3km/s = 3 and one third.

9 million joules times 3.33 repeating = 30 million joules.

They thing I see wrong with the whole Space Mecha theory is that people say mecha use their weight to chage orientation to save fuel. Well wouldn't that use up fuel or energy itself? A few small thrusters would be far me efficent than a mecha. You could even use compressed air for the job and not you real thruster per say.

I also think that neutron bombardment should not be allowed or the taboo of nukes be placed on it. This is due to the fact that they are a cheap kill. "Ha Ha I neutron bomb your planet and take it over in a week." It should take a lot to invade a planet.

Okey, I'll sum up my ideas. I'm going on vacation (3-4 days), so I can't respond quickly!

WEAPONS: I really would like to see sattelites that can use beam weapons to destroy land and airbone vechicles. I know that now it is quite problematic but in 100 or 200 years I think that there would be developed such devices to support it. They can recharge for a day or two after destroying tank or aircraft and use solar panels (see below).

FORCE FIELDS: Any idea how it could work? If not - there should be no problem to use laser to cut through armor and damage vital parts.

ENERGY: I think that we should allow to gather solar power with high efficiency. At least for system civilian ships, cities and space stations. He3 should be used only in inter-stellar and combat. Look - if you have VERY needed commodity you will find ways to develop syntetic production of that fuel that will be cheaper. Expensive fuel is useless for trade, etc. It would kill inter-stellar trading. Today solar power is gatheret at efficiency of ~5%, maybe 10% - I'm not sure. Near-FT (further: NFT) world surely developed advanced ways to gather at least 50-70% of solar energy if not 95%. It will also give a cheap way to mantain asteroid mining station, spacestations, colonies, etc.

HOVER-TANKS: I concur.

ASSAULT: Bombardment and dropships. There should be also more advanced tactics like using bombs to trigger huge tsunamis or earthquakes. Than using of dropships with hovertanks and infantry. There should be also any good rifle. Any ideas? Maybe something like Pulse Rifles in Aliens?

PLANETARY-ORBITAL TRANSIT: There should be cheap shuttles that can transport goods. Today we are developing better and cheaper ones and in NFT they should be common and even should allow for inter-planetary (never inter-stellar) voyage but I think that only bulky freighters should be allowed to do that. We also should focus on bringing goods to Orbital SpacePort and than it should be extremely efficent and easy way to transport it on the surface and I think that NFT shuttles should do the trick. They can be similar to dropships.

INTER-STELLAR TRAVEL: I recommend to use only wormholes because there is no convincing way to build spaceship that can travel FTL.

PSIONICS: I would use it only for spying. See raports on internet about Astral Projection and Remote Viewing. Two Psychics should also have an easy way to start an Astral battle. For any sceptics I'll repeat - I'm "been there, seen that, got the scars" type... There is no SENSE in arguing about that.

Arakaria:

Weapons:...If you want to have satalites that can kiill tanks, I suppose I have no problem They can, of course, return the favour.

Force fields: I really want nothing to do with forcefields. It's easy to armour against lasers, they're really lousy at cutting stuff.

Energy: And that is the very reason for conflict. Everyone wants access to the few good He3 sources. Think of it like oil today.

Hover Tanks: UNless you're putting a fisison pile or a fusion reactor in them, no. Hover tanks take too much power.

Assault: It's pretty easy to trigger a tsunami... just droip a big rock in the ocean. Unfortunately, that tends to destroy all the nice real estate you're trying to find. AS for smallarms, I'd figure that they'd be lighter, more accurate versions of what we have with some odd things like needlers and high velocity pellet guns.

Oh, and about transporting tanks? The biggest aircraft today can't carry more than a few tanks, and tanks will only be getting bigger. Unless you want to be using your 150m long ships as dropships... you'll need to drop small forces.

Orbital transport: Sure you can have orbital shiuttles... but you still need to come up with the delta-V . It takes a LOT of energy to reach orbit, and that's not going to change regardless of the system you use.

FTL: Our idea for FTL ships is one that builds a wormhole aroundit as it goes. As convincing as a wormhole on it's own, I think.

Psionics: There are no good, falsified reports of psychic powers... but so long as it's limited, and the range is limited, and not everyone has it, and there are drawbacks, I have no real problems.

USSNA
Nope, kinetic energy is proporitonal to tihe square of the velocity. the equation is Ke=m/2*v^2. If we use your calculation as a base, it would go something like

9MJ*c=1/2*(3000^2) where C is the efficiency of the railgun (sloppy, but it'll work, watch.

9 000 000 *c=1/23000^2
c=1/2

This railgun is operating at 50% efficiency, only half the energy being used is actually transmitted into the shell. Assuming that efficiency is retained when you scale up, which is unlikely because of the increased heat and inefficiency introduced by the higher amperage...


Ke/2= energy input

Energy input =10000^2
Energy Input = 100 megajouls.

Alright, here are my views on ground warfare... (Brace yourselves)

Armored vehicles would primarily be a defensive tool, though you could use heavy dropships to carry in light and midrange stuff. Tanks would usually be wheeled or light treaded, the true beasts would be EM cannon armed monsters on treads, capable of shooting satellites out of orbit (Hammer's Slammers style) when necessary.

Another method of invading would be to achieve air superiority, using teams of fast moving dropships/transports and gunships to fly NOE and quickly advance over territory.

For harder areas, some AFVs would be used.

I see the average infantryman having a form of proto-powered armor, with body armor, integrated systems, but not much in the way of strength assistance.

True powered armor would be availible for shock troops and the like, and might be a way of providing light, mobile fire support that could easily be transported by dropship (or dropped in Starship Troopers style, if that's feasible for this tech).

The primary infantry armarment would be some form of caseless rifle or light coilgun, methinks. LASER or particle guns wouldn't be useful being used by or against infantrymen.
--

To the other stuff

There is no real way of making forcefields, and lasers are relatively easy to defeat: heat absorbent ceramic and light-scattering material under that would be very useful to take the edge off a laser... It's not an anti-armor weapon, really, it's better against soft vehicles and electronics.

Solar power? Don't count on it. Solar panels are the most inefficient form of alternative energy you can find, in space the only thing it's better than is a gas generator. You can only get so much out of the sun. I doubt that solar power will get much past 50% efficiency unless you're also using something extra for propulsion like a steam-rocket, which is cheap but it won't work for major vessels. The thing that will be keeping the stuff you talk about alive is mostly going to be steam rockets, nuclear-thermal engines, and so on. Solar power won't be used for propulsion beyond steam rockets, just powering low-energy systems.

Verdant Archipelago,
I don't see why we should focus on one energy source and you didn't turned down my argument about it.
How can tank shut down a space sattelite? You will have to destroy them in space, not from the ground.
Hover-crafts already exist. I don't see why they shouldn't be build during next 200 years. I also think that advanced miniaturisation and nano-tech can make it possible to build reactor small enough and cheap enough to put it on tank.
Tanks won't get MUCH larger. I think that because of miniaturisation, nano-tech and adv. computer systems there will be 1 pilot/driver and actualy they can be smaller then today.
About orbital shuttles - I think they are cheaper than using a LOT (you said it...) energy to fire things in space and stop them before they reach outer parts of your solar system... Space elevator can't be constructed and there are no ideas how to do it. If there are - show me it.
Psionics would be used only for espionage. Astral Projection for sabotage and Remote Viewing for gathering information. It isn't perfect and sometimes Astral travelers see things that they want to see. So it isn't uber-powerful. Besides there are planty of dangers out there...

So far this setting is only like MT - only including larger scale than one world... It's no more than PMT with wormholes. Not Near-FT at all.

Pyschic stuff isn't credible, really. There's no reason to believe the future will make it more so...

If by hovercraft you mean air cushion, it won't work for anything except some light armored vehicles. Air cushions suffer on rough terrain, and they're very easy to destroy (take out of fans or the cushion, and said vehicle is screwed).

If you mean antigrav, I think we already outlawed that for pretty much anything.

Tanks can shut down a satellite... JJust get a railgun big enough and target it with the assistance of a higher powered radar.

1 pilot/driver will never happen. Not in this time period. Too many things to manage with an armored vehicle. The least I can see it going down to is two.

"Nobody has any idea how to do it." (In regard to space elevators).

Not the case.

http://www.spaceelevator.com/
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/space_elevator_020327-1.html
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07sep_1.htm

Could easily be done at this time.

Azanian Economic Bloc, BAH, you keep on stealing my thunder.

What he said =)

Solar energy is horribly inefficient... right now it actually takes more energy to create a solar panel than it will generate over it's lifetime. That's going to improve, but I doubt it'll ever break 20% efficiency. You can use it to power auxilery systems, but you need a high energy power source. I imagine there will be other fuels... but they will be so comparitively inefficient that He3 is the only one that makes sence. This resource scarcity is GOOD for RP, and it's fairly realistic.

Azanian Economic Bloc, your ideas are good, but I don't see tanks disapearing. Armour will improve, and tanks will become harder to find. I'm also nervous about using too many aircraft... high velocity small caliber railgun anti-aircraft platforms may make aircraft suicidal, much like in Hammer's Slammers.

Depends on the aircraft, really *shrug*

Re the linear guns thing: I am not giving up such a useful and well-balanced weapon because one person finds it implausible. The power needed for multiple shots can easily be stored in high-capacity capacitors or batteries and drawn off as needed-- this is how it works on smaller vehicles (larger ones can power them directly from their reactors).

Well... two people =) Sileetris finds them implausible too. It does, of course, depend on the caliber and rate of fire and velocity of the railguns... i have no real problem with smaller ones. And if you CAN find capaciters that can hold quite literally hundreds of millions of joules... I'd hate to be in the tank or aircraft if it gets hit.

This is why all the vehicles in my current nation's military are either light fast things or gigantic super-tough things.

Sides, how would a capacitor/battery going "fzzzt!" due to a critical hit be any worse than an ammo explosion? Either way you have a possibly dead vehicle with a ruined weapon =p

Though I think there's probably a way to deal with a sudden energy discharge.

Alright, well, it seems like we have tech hammered down pretty well... Now we need to talk planets/solar systems.

I'd assume we'll have Sol and all of its planets, maybe with a semi-terraformed mars or a lot of domed cities and such, multiple nations on Earth and Mars.

How do we want to decide what other planets and solar systems there are?

Based on current tech, you might be lucky if the capacitors needed to fire a single railgun shell massed something around 100 tons. The best energy dencity for capacitors that I could find using current tech is about 0.5 joules per gram. I doubled that, because I didn't look very hard =) which gives us 1 joule per gram. 100 million joules=100 million grams, or 100 thousand kilograms, or 100 tons. Even increased by a factor of 10, that is, 2000% better than what we have today, you end up with a 10 ton capacitor required for a single shot... assuming you want to fire a 1kg shell at 10kps, of course.

And as for extent of our exploration, that really depends on how long the gates have been open... I wouldn't mind if my corporation developed the gates but that the patents have been open domain for a long time, if that's ok. If not, that's cool too.

Hmmm... Well, there's the sol system with as many as three habitable major planets (Venus, Mars (anything from domed cities to semi-terraformed), and duh, Earth!), with oppurtunities for facilities on the moon, asteroids, Jupiter's moons, etc.

Assuming solar systems are relatively similar, a few solar systems should be enough space for all of us.

I'd just like to stick with the solar system for the moment. There's plenty of space for everyone involved :)

Alright... How terraformed will everything be then? Or will it be up to the players who inhabit that planet/moon to choose?

Ah, if there's only our solar system, there's no real need for FTL. But I'm ok with that.

I'm not sure I'd call venus terraformable =)

I think we need to decide by consensus... since I imagine many of us will have claims on the same bits of real-estate.

True, Venus would be difficult compared to a lot of other ones, but I'm just throwing out ideas.

oh, of course. I imagine Mars would be fairly well along... possibly even a breathable atmosphere without masks. you could probably get the pressure up high enough easily, but increasing the O2 content would take a lot of time.

Hmmm... I'm sure there's some sci-fi movie or book I'm ripping off, somehow, somewhere when I say this, but I read a study online saying that Mars' level of oxygen is similar to that of Earth when microscopic organisms first started appearing...

Maybe some kind of bioengineered bacteria that gets carpeted over the planet to increase oxygen levels, along with specially engineered plants or fungus... And to get water, you could shoot something at the icecaps like a giant railgun or mass driver.

If that fails, you could do domed or crater cities.

That's what I was imagining... nuclear devices to releace the ice caps, seeding the place with bacteria and later spores. Early settlements would be research stations, then mining stations, and eventually the infrestructure to maintain them.

Nukes might not be the best idea... Water supply ain't no good if it's contaminated. I figure with all the space mining we're doing, we could set up one of our mass drivers that we use in orbit, get some tugs and hault it over to Mars, and fire it.

Then, during the current time of the RP, it will have evolved into one of Mars' major trading posts, flinging raw materials supplied to other shipyards and so forth.

Two birds in one (electromagnetically propelled) stone.

Fair enough... though we need to decide who owns what =)

On the other hand though, Im imagining the terraforming process started a while ago, perhaps before they had effective massdrives in space?

Yeah, we could say the bacteria and fungi was the first part after the first manned missions to Mars... Then a few decades later, whoever built the Massdriver did so.

And on the point of who owns what... We need to get that forum or whereever we're going to claim territory/set up stations, etc.

Should we even have it in the SOL system? Maybe make up some maps and such, but I am in total support of having multiple systems. We could even use existing maps of the galazy, but cut out the SOL system. But if do have it, maybe it could be in the control of a UN type agency and impossible to attack.

Funny thing is, of all the planets we could explore, the Earth is the least likely one to become united.

I don't think we should cut out the solar system... What's the logic in that? It's not like one player controls all of Earth, it might still be the base of operations for a lot of players.

The Sol System is just good to have because we have the maps, the physics, etc. And it really doesn't make sense that we'd completely abandon our home system at this technology level.

Well how about this:

Earth is a super-developed planet. On the ground it would be much like today: scattered cities and smaller town. But in orbit it would be a huge hub for trade. The moon could be kind of like Las Vegas and A Port City all in one. Noone would control the earth as it would be controled by in international UN-like organization.

I was assuming we'd be playing earth based powers... someone could be European Union, another could be The American Federation, another the Pacific Consortium, perhaps leaving Africa in the hands of tin-pot dictators, still ripe for exploitation. With a couple of international corporations to boot... maybe a Spacers Union too.

See, that's the part that won't happen. The Earth is too ethnically fractured for a UN government to succeed. Earth will remain to have independent nations, and more than one, so none of that UN stuff is necessary. For a mining corporation like mine, which has a history rooted in sub-saharan Africa, it's only logical we'd continue to have operations there.

Perhaps there won't be as much direct fighting on Earth, but there's no reason to cut it out of the RP as it would still be a major industrial and commercial center.

To simplify things I was thinking of playing just an incarnation of my current nation, albiet farther down the road.

I was planning on playing something totally different from my nation, not associated with it in the sightest!

Alright, I'd like to reiterate the point of this tech setting is to have the thrill of PMT combat, with the added depth of space travel. The idea is, we're trying to purposely limit the effectiveness of space based stuff so other forms of combat don't fall totally behind. We're trying to avoid the wanky orbital campout of FT.

This isn't to say you can't use dropships and stuff to attack a country, but they are like paratroopers, not air mobile helicopter infantry. You cannot invade a country using only paratroopers; they are expensive to equip and train, and they don't have the ability to last long times in enemy territory. Just like orbital dropships.

Part of the flavor of this setting is to keep things limited so there is some drama and personality involved. Sure, we could allow jumpjet powersuits to fly around and use coil guns to blow up anything they see, but would that really be as interesting as a squad of infantry maneuvering around the back of a tank to use their one remaining rocket? Sure we could just magically say nano-tech and let tanks have fusion plants, but we'd be killing the cool rumble of the diesel engine, not to mention the idea of logistics. We could let people have anti-aircraft railguns that shoot down whatever you feel like, but we'd never see another dogfight.

At the same time, we're trying real hard not to limit people too badly. Thats why I want interstellar transport. If we limit ourselves to Sol, then we either need to rearrange our views of its history, or rearrange our vision of our countries, neither of which is very fun. Forcing people into a frame like that may be alright for an individual RP or Earth # setting, but we're trying to create an entirely new tech bracket.

Well, thats my speech for the day, I'll start talking about individual things again one I make sense of them myself :D

I'm not saying coperations cannot exist, you could even RP your nation as a coperation, but a unified government could go through. It's not like we are forcing people to live next to each other. i also belive that we will all settle down one day and forget about ethniticy. It is also true that one day we all might even be an imbreed of all the races into one.

It still won't happen. With a more crowded Earth, there'd be more competition over resources and more fighting, not less.

A unified Earth government is kind of silly for this scenario. There's really no reason for it to exist in this RP, it doesn't serve any purpose except wishful thinking...

EDIT: Furthermore, anysuch government would be extremely pissed off by Azania, a corporate controlled nation that fields its own military and frequently flies helicopter raids into Africa to slaughter rebellious natives and support the governments that allow AEB to operate there.

;)

I imagine that the solar systemwould be carved up, with some countries owning part of a planet or moon while another country (or three) has claims on another part of it. Maybe the moon is a giant "stop-off" point for travel furhter out into the Solar System.

It still won't happen. With a more crowded Earth, there'd be more competition over resources and more fighting, not less.

A unified Earth government is kind of silly for this scenario. There's really no reason for it to exist in this RP, it doesn't serve any purpose except wishful thinking...

EDIT: Furthermore, anysuch government would be extremely pissed off by Azania, a corporate controlled nation that fields its own military and frequently flies helicopter raids into Africa to slaughter rebellious natives and support the governments that allow AEB to operate there.

;)

Actually Earth could be less crowded. At a certain time in history earth become overpopulated. To solve our problem we went into space (hence all the space tech) and the oligarchy of a governbment: the United Earth Command took it over. Earth became a place for the wealthy. It's surface would be a luxury planet for only the richest of rich while its outer orbit become the largest hub of intersteller trade in the galaxy.

It would give interesting backstory.

I agree, though with the moons of Jupiter or planets beyond the Sol system, you might be able to get a monopoly on a certain planet.

Actually Earth could be less crowded. At a certain time in history earth become overpopulated. To solve our problem we went into space (hence all the space tech) and the oligarchy of a governbment: the United Earth Command took it over. Earth became a place for the wealthy. It's surface would be a luxury planet for only the richest of rich while its outer orbit become the largest hub of intersteller trade in the galaxy.

It would give interesting backstory.

Not likely. Nobody wants to airlift billions of starving Africans or Asians who cant pay for space travel...

Not likely. Nobody wants to airlift billions of starving Africans or Asians who cant pay for space travel...
Nobosy would have wanted to do it. It just had to be done or else the earth would have been destroyed.

Wait... What?

The poor people are destroying the earth? The rich would sooner leave the Earth than pay for the poor to.

Now you're just being plain looney.

Nobody is going to pay to move 2-3 billion people off the earth out of their own pocket... I say we leave earth up for grabs by various nations. And if some silly government wants to boot Azania off and take my cheap labor, then I'll just have myself a nice little war with them.

EDIT: Furthermore a world populated by rich people wouldn't subject to a Pan-Global state, they'd be trying to make power grabs.

Fine, whatever. As long as we're not limited to the solar system.

Other options for how the current system came about include:

-Technological regression from a fallen interstellar empire

-Hyperspace is an alien technology

-Humans were seeded to other planets by aliens either really long ago, or alternately

-Humans were seeded to other planets only a few centuries ago (mebbe left with a time capsule containing hyperspace technology)

I like the current 'progression of tech' thing better...

Maybe with hyperspace as the result of some CERN thing, or created by an accident involving the experiment, I dunno.

I like progression of tech too.

And Azanian Economic Bloc, you're forgetting one very good reason to transport the poor off the planet... cheap, disposable labor.

I also think you should be able to use dropship equipped units the same way as airmobile units... drop in, smash a place, pull out. Of course, if you lose your transport, you're in big trouble...

Also, with regards to the jumping battlesuits... well, you CAN if you want to, as far as I'm concerned, but you'd better stay very low and quiet, because, regardless of how heavily armoured you are, you're going to have a bad day if you're hit.

As for the railgun AAA... well, you still need LOS to get a bead on the target, and the birdies manouver SO fleetly. If you're careless, the planes should get swatted, but I don't think everyone's going to have a railgun AAA battery set up everywhere. The things need massive amounts of power.

I still think that this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipspace) would be the best way to do FTL travel. If would have some inconsistance and would only be available on larger ships.

Slipspace is really the same as all other FTL methods, just with a different name... I don't think it matters how it happens, just how far/how long.

Ah, but the poor off the planet won't help with space colonies... You need more people with technical skills. I suppose once you have functioning colonies you could get some, but you wouldn't take all of them, or even a majority.

This is what seperate Slipspace travel from FT travel: "Faster-than-light travel is not instantaneous; "short" jumps routinely take up to two months, and "long" jumps can last six months or more."

Then add in the 5-10% variance in time and you got s non-FT mode of FTL travel.

I'm talking about the jobs where some poor sod needs to stand in a high radiation enviroment with a wrench. AIs have trouble because the radiation scrambles their little brains. Humans have the same problems... but humans are cheaper.

Also, we have a bit of a problem. There's no way we can get a decent amount of thrust out of an ion thruster. At least, without truely amaizing reactors... what's the power to mass ratio we're expecting out of our He3/deuterium reactors? How big can we make the things? I was simming it out, and I can't get my tugs to work even witih a 2000 ton engine... of course, they're towing 100000 tons of cargo... but if you're going to make a trip, it had better be worthwhile.

Ion engines are not that good untill you add in a partical accelerator at the end that accelerates the particals to near-light speeds. Then they produce a lot of thrust. B5-Tech explanes it better than me. (http://b5tech.com/misctech/engines/ion/ion.html)

yes, that could work, if you had a terrawatt range reactor, or higher. MASSIVE amounts of energy required. We may need to think of a different propulsion source... project orion, anyone?

The only thing wrong with progression of technology is, it doesn't leave enough time for large nations to be set up in space. Under progression of technology, by the time you had really big nations on other planets, the rest of the technology would be more FT.

Wars don't simply consist of going in, smashing a place, then getting out. It would be nice if things were that simple, but that kind of action will never be enough to police a country with a fallen government, covered with the violent remains of their military. It may not even be enough to stop them to begin with, like how in WW2 our bombing raids alone didn't kill Germany (it actually reached peak production in 1944 I think). And you still have to remember that in order to be able to conduct regular dropship raids, you must keep a presence in space against the withering ability of the planet to shoot things down with much simpler units. Dropship raids may only be able to destroy the leaves on a much larger weed you're trying to uproot.

Slipspace as presented by that would be alright for the big ships, although I wouldn't allow them to come out in the atmosphere like the covenant. Gates should still be around though because they offer an important strategic resource. I still like my proposal for hyperspace speed being partially dependant on entrance speed, thereby allowing quick communication.

Also, the fusion reaction, if you want a reactor that needs no shielding, it should be pure He3+He3, because if you have deuterium in there, chances are you'll get a lot of D+D reactions, and those are messy. I'm not sure on the power/mass ratio; say its better than nuclear fission by a very good bit since shielding and steam turbines aren't needed(dunno that ratio either).

It shouldn't take months to go intrasystem... Maybe something similar to intercontinental travel with regular ships.

For a capital ship/freighter grade thing, perhaps its 1 light year every two days (week? Someone give me light years to nearest star), after which the ship must refuel/recharge its FTL engine (insert reactive elements hear) for a few days at port, or you could design logistics ships...

Fighters wouldn't have the capability, or would need added on, single use booster packs that would be very expensive, making gunboats more important.

That way you can't suddenly have a fleet turn up at your doorstep. Even with six months, thats six months where you have no idea where that ship is or is going, and it could show up right on your doorstep. This makes the RP more strategy oriented, as you now have to get refueling points, plan out manuvers more.

But whatever you guys agree on. I'm just chucking ideas.

Assuming decent accelerations of about 1G, it shouldnt take more than a month or two to go cross system.

For intersystem, I suggest we treat everything like a wormhole... you can make and stablize a wormhole with two gates, or a large ship can generate one around itself and wormhole instantly to anywhere... of course, this will be extremely inaccurate, and it would be best to plot a series of intermediary jumps to get one's bearings again. Say, jump to the halfway point (give or take a few thousand AUs), halve the distance again, jump right outside the system, and then jump in. And since the wormholes simply don't work in large mass shadows... one ouight to be careful where one aims.

I think the nearest system is about 4 Lightyears away... I just have trouble seeing two different FTL systems that work on different princibles, the gates and the hypers. Better to make them one and the same, just different applications.

Alright, whether it's straight hypers or gates, I think 1-1.5 LY per week would be a good general speed to establish.

Or, just require the ships to recharge for about a week afterwords... wrapping a wormhole around a ship is TOUGH. So, about four or five weeks travel time anywhere with the jump engines... and for about a week, you'll be sitting there within sensor range of the system, charging up your engines... and even THEN, you can't jump directly to the good stuff... you still probably have another week of realspace boosting before you can engage anything.

Yeah, given the imprecision of the engine, jumping directly into a system might not be a good thing.

Never too fun to pop up in an asteroid field or the gravity well of a gas giant.

Anyway, I think the wormhole thing is what we should shoot for now. Large ships will have them, and you could have gates for smaller traffic managed by various corporations and nations.

I think since we have the kind of time frame we'd like to work in, speed is really dependent on how far apart we want to make the systems. Keep in mind that since we're looking for habitable planets we could be talking about really far spans.... We could end up going extremely fast, but as long as we have fixed time limit factors like weeks of downtime, it shouldn't effect the balance of it. Since this isn't FT where there are millions of space kingdoms around, travelling far distances quickly wont upset people.

FTL Travel: I suppose that it could be faster but I like the variance in times and limit to large ships. Maybe Wurmholes could also be used as a cheaper way that even smaller aircraft can go through.

STL Travel: A particle accelerator wouldn't take too much energy, at least not in this tech. And even without it it is better than anything out there. I was thinking the nuclear pulse engines would be used for civilian craft due to "relativly" simple and cost-effective design. Military craft would use Accelerated Ion engines but would trade off cost for power. Both have good fuel efficency.

I sorta assumed the gates would be effectively instantanious... maybe taking a minute to operate, and the engines, which would be limited to extremely large vessels not particularly well suited to warfare, would take the multiple jumps. So long as we make the gates power intensive and levee high fees for use, it should work fairly well. And no one's going to ATTACK through a gate... it's too risky. If the gate is shut down during transit... the ship is lost. not to mention the forts waiting at the other side. Any kind of ship can use a gate, but since it takes as much energy to power it up for a fighter as for a freighter, I imagine only largish ships will transit.

For the sake of the argument, lets give the warp engines a linear error ratio of 10% and a lateral error of, say 5%. So if you warp 10 light years, you could be up to, say 1.11 lightyears off your target position. That's a LONG way. SO you keep the jumps small... on the other hand, small jumps take as long and as much energy as long ones... this also means that any fleet is going to end up scattered all over the place.

vacationing for a week

Your getting it wrong. The spaced travel is 100% right everytime. What changes is the ammount of time it takes for a ship to go that distance.

He wasn't talking about slipstream because he wants a different system.

We're using a system that goes in a matter of weeks, with a margin of error, so it's more like RL intercontinental naval travel...

And this system doesn't let enemies show up right at your doorstep, so you have to plan out surprise attacks more carefully.

I still like the idea of Slipstream travel better than wurmholes, at least for military operations. They could be made quicker.

Perhapse if you all go with Wurmholes I could develop slipstream travel. It would be slower than wurmholes but would be more versitle.

If we're going to choose a method of FTL travel, I think we should just keep it to one so everything is nice and standardized... I don't know, but there are only so many loopholes you can allow in physics.

And slipstream isn't better for military operations... It's ridiculously slow, considering the amount of ships once can create and the amount of things that can happen in even a few months. Your ships could easily fly themselves into an ambush if the enemy had good intelligence. (And if you do speed it up to the level of wormholes, it's just stupid because it's 100% accurate in location, which is highly unlikely in ANY kind of FTL travel involving long distances)

I'm really hoping this is still alive. All my other attempts to RP on II are basically met with 'LOL STAR DESTROYERZ'...

Let's just say generic 'hyperdrive', that can go about one light year a week. That's surely not too bad.

Yeah, I was saying earlier that was a good ratio. Let's keep a margin of error too, just to keep things interesting.

If we're going to choose a method of FTL travel, I think we should just keep it to one so everything is nice and standardized... I don't know, but there are only so many loopholes you can allow in physics.

And slipstream isn't better for military operations... It's ridiculously slow, considering the amount of ships once can create and the amount of things that can happen in even a few months. Your ships could easily fly themselves into an ambush if the enemy had good intelligence. (And if you do speed it up to the level of wormholes, it's just stupid because it's 100% accurate in location, which is highly unlikely in ANY kind of FTL travel involving long distances)

I'm really hoping this is still alive. All my other attempts to RP on II are basically met with 'LOL STAR DESTROYERZ'...

Your not getting me. I said we could speed it up. The average distance between a star system would be a a week. With a margin of error of up to a day.

The reason it would have greater military value is because the enemy won't know where and when you will move into their system. With a wormhole, they know the exact spot where you will strike.


I also think the wormhole shouldn't be able to be shut off. A wormhole is constanly "on." There could be a couple of bombs made with the use of wormholes in mind. 1 would be a kind of bomb launched into the wormhole that would cause is to become unstable for a short while and cause massive explousions on both sides as the wormhole tries to restablize itself out. The next would be a bomb that would collapse the wormhole and cause it to implode in on itself.

Uhhh, you were apparently not reading the part in which an engine based jump could land you up to a lightyear away from your target... The margin of error is physical.

That is the military drive, the wormholes would be for smaller traffic. Slipstream is just kind of silly because it assumes you land 100% on target. That's ridiculous for this time period.

Read it an weep: "many theorize that there are "eddies" or "currents" within the Slipstream—there is generally a five to ten percent variance in travel times between stars. This temporal inconsistency has given military tacticians and strategists fits—hampering many coordinated attacks."

Read it and weep? Were you even reading what I was saying? It's physical variance. That's what VA and I are talking about. When I said 100% accurate, I was referring to location. I've always been referring to location.

"(And if you do speed it up to the level of wormholes, it's just stupid because it's 100% accurate in location, which is highly unlikely in ANY kind of FTL travel involving long distances)"

"Slipstream is just kind of silly because it assumes you land 100% on target."

In any case, I'm behind Nova's generic FTL, with the gates as something to make commercial travel feasible.

It would not be %100 accurate but you would land within impulse distance.

Besides, it would be kinda lame just to have wormholes. I immagine a world where wormholes would be used by commerical travel because it would be cheap and always on time. Slipspace travel would be more costly, and have varriances in time.

If we go with wormholes, military action would be useless as the enemy would just camp the wormhole and kill you as you came out. Or as your version has it, they would just turn it off. It would take years to get from system to system and military action would not be possible.

Again, please read the argument. We're saying wormholes and the 1-week-per-LY FTL engine.

"I'm behind Nova's generic FTL, with the gates as something to make commercial travel feasible."

Commercial. Travel. Gates.

And see the other posts where the large (IE military) ships are given their 1 Week LY FTL engine.

As VA's consultant on Something You'll See Later Regarding This, he may want me to argue for the constant travel time thing. Or he may have PMed you with stuff, I don't know, but I like it anyway.


Ahem.


A constant time for distance, no matter what distance, is fantastic. Adds a lot to the entertainment - combined with the physical error (which is, again, proportionate to the total distance of that jump), this makes any longrange operation extremely risky and fun. Surprise them? Make a few jumps, say, three, four, that's time 4x - but you get a margin of error of quite a bit, since, say, four hundred light years. Each jump a hundred. Margin of error? Ten light years. And a bit, I'm not up to the math now. Per jump. Then you have to ad in error-jumps, and that adds a bit of time. But you want to be nice (in both the archaic and modern) and precise to poke the other people in weak locations - try 40 jumps. The time taken is about ten times (not counting error correction), but you're pretty much exactly where you want to be. The problem with this?

Spy ship sails through wormhole.

Hi, they're going to be at these coordinates.

Ships poof in! ...oops. *blam*


Anyway. Logistical nightmare. Risk-management, people! Say it with me! Risk is love!

Hey, thanks NS! =) To expand on what New Sarantium said...

The problem with the 1lr a week idea is that, while the nearest system is only perhaps 4LRs away, the nearest one with habitable planets is much, much, much further. Unless you want it to take hundreds or thousands of weeks to get to a target, you need to up the ratio signifigantly. And if you up the ratio signifigantly, say, to 100 LR a week, it may as well be instantanious for shorter distances. I think that instantanious transportation with a large margin of error is the most consistant system... what you are doing is opening a gate and aiming it at a target hundreds of light years away... you appear (relatively) near the target, but the margin of error is large enough that you need to keep the distance jumped low enough that you don't end up in a star. Some reaches of space could take insanely long large amounts of time to navagate because of asteroid congestion... it wouldn't even need to be heavy congestion; no captain is going to risk even a 1% chance of landing in a planetoid if instead he can make a series of small, safe jumps. Pirates could have bases in these areas, having found safe void spaces to jump into that the navy may not know about.

Further this is consistant with the gate technology, unlike a generic hyper or slipspace engine... wildly innaccurate translation in space, but precise timewise.

Has any one thought of RADAR based weaponary.

Theoretically if you built a big enough transmiter and supplied it with enough power a RADAR focused on an object say the size of a Los Angeles class submarine could melt steel by the sheer pressure of the radio waves hitting the object. Not to mention the effect on any electronic systems targeted.

A ten Terrawatt transmitter should be able to achieve this.

Also if you found a way to drammatically increase the frequency you could use said RADAR to direct a stream of gamma rays at the target therefore turning much of the target into a fissionable mass. (Though you're probably talking serious terrawattage here, And its is techinically no longer a RADAR either.)

All RADAR based weaponary would have to be huge but a single station if big enough could track and destroying incoming objects from space.
(Probably extremely useful anti-asteroid/comet protection.)And if you dont want to melt stuff said station could use its power to co-ordiante missiles against thousands of targets.

All this is possible with a massive RADAR station and a mega fast computer to handle and focus the thing.
(Also while turned on, most things probably shouldnt go within two miles of the thing without being properly shielded otherwiseyou get insta-fried.)

Interesting, but not really feasible. It's a waste of power considering it's easy to shield from radio waves with the radiation and heat shielding a ship would have. An interesting concept, but too easy to defeat in comparison to cheaper, more efficient weapons like EM guns and missiles.

Radiation shielding would stop your electronics being fried but only very thick heat shielding would stop the pressure of ten terrawatts of radio waves pressing up against it and stripping it away.

Also neither of the mentioned things would be any help when some one decides to shoot a gamma ray beam at you and turns a section of you hull into a nuclear fission bomb. (Admittedly this would require massive amounts of power).


Also the thing would be a great big hit me sign, as any anti-radiation missile for thousands of miles would be attracted to it like a fly to a lamp. (Which means by coincidence that smaller less powerful sources would be ignored.)

Maybe so, but it would be massively expensive, and the radar array itself would create a huge profile to sensors in virtually every spectrum, making the vessel a huge target. Of course, in a world perfectly suited to demonstrating the effectiveness of the weapon, it would work, but in reality it would be ridiculously expensive and easily destroyed by cheaper and more efficient weapons.

Yeah I suppose... still a good anti-asteroid defence though.
Melt the asteroid a bit and gases given off by the rock vapourising pushes the asteroid off course and saves the planet.

Would have to build into orbit though.... maybe on top of a space elevator so it can be powered from a ground station....

Oh and when I said huge I meant huge the transmitter itself would have to be miles across let alone the power source. So no ship to ship combat with it.

Yeah I suppose... still a good anti-asteroid defence though.


You're unlikely to need one. Any habitable planet shouldn't be bombarded by too many asteroids - it'd ruin the planet. Therefore it must be in an area that has few asteroid collisions, therefore the probability of asteroids hitting it is very low, therefore you don't need an anti-asteroid defense unless someone mounts engines on an asteroid and propels it at 0.7c into the planet.

Well you never know. What happens when at the unlikely chance that an asteroid does collide with your planet and all you can say is;
"I wish we built that gigantic RADAR gun so we could of melted the asteroid. Oh dear too late we are all dead!" better safe than sorry.

Anyway in all its history the earth has benn hit by thousands of big asteroids a quarter of them when it was a habitble planet.

Radio waves have too long a wavelength and too small a frequency to be effective weapons. They simply can't carry enough energy to fry anything, and pass through too many materials. If you focus them, you end up with a low energy maser... increasing the frequency up past the visible spectrum would VASTLY improve the performence... which makes it into a laser, x-ray laser, or graser. Low energy EM radiation doesn't have enough energy to deliver any appriciable pressure.