NationStates Jolt Archive

Why hate me? I'm so luffable and quirky! Besides, I may not have killed all Gungans, but I killed the Source :D

:fluffle:

Ew. Thank you regardless. I still maintain that Gods and Ascended Beings have no place directly upon this plane, and even interfering they should be vastly limited. Like mine are to marks and blessings and stuff. Admitedly a trapping of my source, but it works :)

Indeed. I had a nation with a God as a leader, but he was limited to the amount of power he could channel through his current body. If he used too much power, the body would disentigrate and he would be 'reduced' to a sort of energy-ish state, where it was harder for him to directly affect the world.

You're so restrained. How... Boring.

You aren't a god unless you can summon a few million six-winged cherubs to guard your kid.

Wouldnt those be Seraphim?

You're so restrained. How... Boring.

You aren't a god unless you can summon a few million six-winged cherubs to guard your kid.

Your not a god if you have to send a fraction of yourself to die for an uncaring humanity in the first place, having failed to cow the israelites under your agressive yoke for the Old Testament ;)

needs moar smiting

Lets do the timewarp again...just like we did next summer...

You're so restrained. How... Boring.

You aren't a god unless you can summon a few million six-winged cherubs to guard your kid.

Your not a god if you have to send a fraction of yourself to die for an uncaring humanity in the first place, having failed to cow the israelites under your agressive yoke for the Old Testament ;)

PIME TARADOX

Wouldnt those be Seraphim?Nah. Cherubs have loads of wings, too (That, and scripture's undecided - the two might be the same thing, it seems).

Your not a god if you have to send a fraction of yourself to die for an uncaring humanity in the first place, having failed to cow the israelites under your agressive yoke for the Old TestamentWho says I had to? 'twas just more fun, that way...

Judas' still annoyed that he has to rot in hell for all eternity, despite his deed being 'Necessary' to save mankind ^_^

On the plus side, he tends to forget his annoyance while he's tortured in ways that break your mind in seconds flat.

Well thats irony for ya. Personally I see Judas as a wronged party who ought to be pardoned, like all the unbaptised babies, or Caine. The whole thing with Caine was actually gods fault.

Nah. Cherubs have loads of wings, too (That, and scripture's undecided - the two might be the same thing, it seems).

You mentioned six specifically. That'd be Seraphim:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1f/Seraphim_-_Petites_Heures_de_Jean_de_Berry.jpg

Now, now. Caine killed his brother because said brother got a bit more attention from me. And what did I do? I did not only let him go, but ensured that nobody else would hurt him for his deed.

How many human judges would be this forgiving?

And Judas, well... Free will - and in fairness, he didn't know that he had to do it in order to save mankind, Laibach (Abuse and Confession - Grr) be damned.

The sheer ego to proclaim yourself god :P And all mankind is supposed to be equal in "his" eyes. In that way god created the jealousy and allowed it to happen, cruel and petty as he is. He exiled him from his fellows for all time with a wife who appeared from no where!

Not right.

Anyways! Off topic.

*cough*

KLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR! (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=480837)

Active as of a week ago. I was reading through this thread, and yes, this is off-topic, but nonetheless, those of us who wish to know such things may feel interested. Go, now, and look upon his works, ye mighty, and despair.

Oh, and just to be on-topic, gods are one of the more annoying creations in FT. Indeed, gods are annoying everywhere. It removes humanity from writing, and makes it far less.. good to read.

Deity class characters should only be in RPs designed for them. If they are used elsewhere, it takes the fun out of it.

This is something which should be agreed upon beforehand in OOC threads, or starter threads. Playing with this kind of stuff really unbalances things and is wanky if it isn't agreed upon beforehand. Quite frankly, it bugs me when demons , liches, and godlike things start appearing and waving their magical thingies around in the middle of future tech... Science fantasy is fine as long as you know it is science fantasy-- you are playing around with Darkover or something like Zelazny's Lords of Light, or recently David Weber's new book Off Armageddon Reef.

This is something which should be agreed upon beforehand in OOC threads, or starter threads. Playing with this kind of stuff really unbalances things and is wanky if it isn't agreed upon beforehand. Quite frankly, it bugs me when demons , liches, and godlike things start appearing and waving their magical thingies around in the middle of future tech... Science fantasy is fine as long as you know it is science fantasy-- you are playing around with Darkover or something like Zelazny's Lords of Light, or recently David Weber's new book Off Armageddon Reef.

I recall once upon a time, long, long ago, on a server far, far, away, that somebody once stopped a barrage launched by my entire fleet by creating a shield composed of water in front of his entire fleet. This apparently not only stopped the various energy weapons, but all forms of missiles, slug weapons and plasma. He then launched 10,000 or so missiles which phased out of this dimension and reappeared inside the largest ship in my fleet, bypassing all of its defences.
When I threatened to ignore him, he gave a very sciency-sounding explanation that didnt quite add up, but was very impressive anyway. :rolleyes:
Meanwhile, I have never (personally) encountered reallly BAD techwank/godmodding from a fantasy player. Yeah, Ive seen some newbs, but they made the same mistakes everybody makes.
Or does your definition automatically extend to people who treat sci-fi like fantasy? :P

I recall once upon a time, long, long ago, on a server far, far, away, that somebody once stopped a barrage launched by my entire fleet by creating a shield composed of water in front of his entire fleet. This apparently not only stopped the various energy weapons, but all forms of missiles, slug weapons and plasma. He then launched 10,000 or so missiles which phased out of this dimension and reappeared inside the largest ship in my fleet, bypassing all of its defences.
When I threatened to ignore him, he gave a very sciency-sounding explanation that didnt quite add up, but was very impressive anyway. :rolleyes:
Meanwhile, I have never (personally) encountered reallly BAD techwank/godmodding from a fantasy player. Yeah, Ive seen some newbs, but they made the same mistakes everybody makes.
Or does your definition automatically extend to people who treat sci-fi like fantasy? :P

I believe the explanation I once received of why my ships would be pwned as a result of mages extradimensionally twisting the barrels of my MACs into pretzels, and thereby ignoring the excessive amount of force(read as it usually takes a very big nuke to jack this stuff up) it would normally require to dent, much less bend Chromsten, would be the rankest instance I have personally been aware of of "excessive wankery to magick". Yes, still with the superfluous k.

Actually they would still fire since the space the barrels were in was twisted, they were still "straight". Pointing a laser pointer's beam down the barrel, it would follow the path of the twist. That means anything launched through said barrels would follow the twists and fire normally. I am sure their aim would be deviated and you would have to make a few test shots to get them tracked properly again.

I believe that is the way NonEuclidian geometry would work but I would rather get the opinion of an expert.

That's how Lovecraft represented it, anyway.

Mmmmm....Lovecraft. The master....

Hey Chronosia, sorry about the bitching the other day.

After reading other's examples, it seems I've been very lucky in regards to dealing with others. I can't recall an instance where someone used their magic to totally pwn me, though only about 30% of my RPing has been online.

My nation's leader is a god, by virtue of a research project started by the eccentric head of the country's largest(and secretly multiverse-spanning) arms manufacturer(among other things), and the manipulation and popularization of certain obscure sects as a part of said project.

Absolutely noone knows this.

He's spent most of the time sense his gradual ascension to godhood began in stubborn denial, and has sense gone into near total seclusion as he grapples with a sort of identity crisis.


On the bright side, he did set up a very spiffy afterlife.


Alright, heres an idea for consideration:

Since my army is basically going to be equipped with FT muskets-of-doom...

I am suddenly reminded of my old one-shot anti-armour laser pistol.

http://i15.tinypic.com/44rbsk3.jpg

:D

Suddenly I just had a vision of the effect of 10,000,000 doves going at %80 of the speed of light in a planets atmosphere.
Oh dear. Sudden deceleration. Im not sure, but I think that would result in 10,000,000 shortlived candles, wouldnt it? :P


Relativistic collisions tend to have, uh... "nuclear" results. ;)

I am suddenly reminded of my old one-shot anti-armour laser pistol.

http://i15.tinypic.com/44rbsk3.jpg

:D




Relativistic collisions tend to have, uh... "nuclear" results. ;)

You and your fancy schmancy flintlocks. REAL men use matchlocks!

Wouldnt it be a rather small nuclear explosion? Individually at least...pigeons dont have a whole lot of mass...

Well, assuming a dove weighs a kilogram (which, in all likelyhood is WAY off), you're getting about 14.3 megatons per flying rat. So we said, what, 10,000,000 pigeons? So, you get a grand total of 143 teratons of explosive force.

Well, assuming a dove weighs a kilogram (which, in all likelyhood is WAY off), you're getting about 14.3 megatons per flying rat. So we said, what, 10,000,000 pigeons? So, you get a grand total of 143 teratons of explosive force.

Really? Somebody should tell Homeland Security ;)

I was never a science person anyway :P

You and your fancy schmancy flintlocks. REAL men use matchlocks!


I'm sure you can order a matchlock version - the smaller weapons smiths especially are fond of custom orders.



I was never a science person anyway :P

Online sciency calculators = win.

:)

Actually they would still fire since the space the barrels were in was twisted, they were still "straight". Pointing a laser pointer's beam down the barrel, it would follow the path of the twist. That means anything launched through said barrels would follow the twists and fire normally. I am sure their aim would be deviated and you would have to make a few test shots to get them tracked properly again.

I believe that is the way NonEuclidian geometry would work but I would rather get the opinion of an expert.

Guided rounds are win. Who needs to actually point the guns at somebody, when the bullet points itself?

Guided rounds are win. Who needs to actually point the guns at somebody, when the bullet points itself?

Only works if you're not trying to fire very far off-bore, 'cause by then your bullets will start to look an awful lot like missiles.

Who needs guided rounds when you have massive volley fire? Put enough lead/energy/ZOMGSUPAHDENSEJURANIUMFLUIDALOY into one area and you HAVE to hit something ;)

Yes that is true, but what one costs more?

Yes that is true, but what one costs more?

Powerstones last a long time :P
'Sides, considering the sheer numbers involved in many FT nations, I think most of them could afford to drop gold bricks on peoples heads from orbit if they wanted.

Ooooh. That gives me a wicked awesome idea.

Ooooh. That gives me a wicked awesome idea.

Does it involve dropping liquid gold on towns, then cooling it rapidly so that you get a huge gold statue thing?
'Cuz that would be cool. Sometimes I wish I was evil :P

That is good too. Like real good. Like "Jesus H. Christ" Good.

You my good sir, are an Idea man.

That is good too. Like real good. Like "Jesus H. Christ" Good.

You my good sir, are an Idea man.

I get that sometimes.
Too bad most of my ideas are only suitable for psychotic villians of the more sadistic sort.
But hey, sometimes I get stuff like the thaum-cannons :P

You my good sir, are an Idea man.

Jade Star is teh outtie?

Jade Star is teh outtie?

'Preserve the idyllic village life today, have a local village preserved in gold!
For an extremly reasonable price our expert craftsmen will unload 10,000 tons of liquid metal onto an unsuspecting township of your choice, then, using specially designed cooling equipment, preserve the townspeople EXACTLY as they stand at the time of impact, right down to the very expressions of horrendous agony on their faces!
Act now, this is a LIMITED time offer!'

I guess that's a yes.

What if we want a village in silver?

I guess that's a yes.

What if we want a village in silver?

What are you, some kind of wuss?

Speaking of eccentricity, a year or so back - after considering the multi-trillion dollar figure that NSEconomy pegs my annual government waste as - I bought 250 Iowa-Class battleships, with gold-plated toilets, and built a starship around a ginormous cannon that fired said battleships at relativistic speeds from a revolver-type mechanism.

I really should revisit that one.

Who needs guided rounds when you have massive volley fire? Put enough lead/energy/ZOMGSUPAHDENSEJURANIUMFLUIDALOY into one area and you HAVE to hit something ;)



Try saying that after fighting a running battle at multi-lightminute ranges.

*hugs his missiles*

;)

Speaking of eccentricity, a year or so back - after considering the multi-trillion dollar figure that NSEconomy pegs my annual government waste as - I bought 250 Iowa-Class battleships, with gold-plated toilets, and built a starship around a ginormous cannon that fired said battleships at relativistic speeds from a revolver-type mechanism.

I really should revisit that one.
...
*hugs*





Try saying that after fighting a running battle at multi-lightminute ranges.

*hugs his missiles*

;)

That just requires more, larger, guns. Or good calculations as to where your wall of lead will end up :P

There's really no right answer to that question, is there?

No, not really.
...
Wuss.
<_<
>_>
*runs for it*

There's really no right answer to that question, is there?

Only works if you're not trying to fire very far off-bore, 'cause by then your bullets will start to look an awful lot like missiles.

Ok. So I have kinetic missiles... <_< Still hurts to get hit by 600 tons of hate and ownage.

...
*hugs*


Now that I think about it, I belive the firing ship was supposed to modled on the old Doujin-class Superdreadnaught.




That just requires more, larger, guns. Or good calculations as to where your wall of lead will end up :P

-Evasive Random-Walk.
-Recon drones with FTL comms.
-FTL sensors.

:P

Now that I think about it, I belive the firing ship was supposed to modled on the old Doujin-class Superdreadnaught.
Was never much into the MT world...Tried it, failed, went FT :P
I take it the Doujin-class is xbox-hueg?





-Evasive Random-Walk.
-Recon drones with FTL comms.
-FTL sensors.

:P

10,000x THE SPEED OF LIGHT BULLETZ UV DOOMZ!

Ok. So I have kinetic missiles... <_< Still hurts to get hit by 600 tons of hate and ownage.


Yes, yes it does.


Tho personally I leave kinetic kill to ECM and submunition missiles - the real weapons are the dual-purpose laser-head matter-energy conversion bombs.

Was never much into the MT world...Tried it, failed, went FT :P
I take it the Doujin-class is xbox-hueg?


http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Doujin_Class_Super_Dreadnought



10,000x THE SPEED OF LIGHT BULLETZ UV DOOMZ!


FTLi - LAWLS!11

'sides, FTL weapons are typicly considered a godmod.

Since when? I'm pretty sure there are at least a few people who use C-plus cannons.

Since when? I'm pretty sure there are at least a few people who use C-plus cannons.Indeed. The question is whether these people manage to get a lot of recognition. You know, in the sense of 'Yeah, you exist'.

Although I don't think anybody would complain if you claimed C-plus-plus cannons. The compatibility issues alone would make maintenance a nightmare. </bad joke>

But being reasonable, how would one calculate energy output for c+ cannons, anyway? a 0.9999...c (9s are recurring) weapon results in (and requires) NI energy anyways.

I mean, I can understand moving things faster than light, but using it as a weapon would most likely have horrible consequences varying based on whatever flavour is used.

I use c+ weapons.

My ships move faster than light and they attack the enemy by ramming them. You calculate the damage the way you do everything else in FT:
(Ass Space * Best Guess) + how strong you think the other person ought to be - how much cooler you know your stuff is = damage.

Since when? I'm pretty sure there are at least a few people who use C-plus cannons.

Sense they enable you to do things like blow the shat out of someone from three star-systems over.

C+ weapons are potentially very powerful - they have to be carefully balanced.


I use c+ weapons.

My ships move faster than light and they attack the enemy by ramming them. You calculate the damage the way you do everything else in FT:
(Ass Space * Best Guess) + how strong you think the other person ought to be - how much cooler you know your stuff is = damage.


You must hate FTLi.

Hey Chronosia, sorry about the bitching the other day.

After reading other's examples, it seems I've been very lucky in regards to dealing with others. I can't recall an instance where someone used their magic to totally pwn me, though only about 30% of my RPing has been online.

Nah, its cool. We all have our off-days, to be fair I'm most likely being a bit hardline, but I have some things that just niggle me. Though, to my credit, I've never actually ignored anyone ^^

The C-plus cannons I refer to are the ones from the Fred Saberhagen Berserker stories, which seem to be designed to penetrate shielding. From what I know, they hit a shield, and in the process of penetrating it, are slowed down, but still hit the target at quite a clip.

You must hate FTLi.

I've never encountered FTLi, which I assume is faster than light inhibitors. I've never fought anyone on NS, so I'm spared the majority of 'and this how I nullify everything you do' arguments. I wouldn't hate it. My ships would then just ram at sub c speeds, so I'm not certain what there is to hate.

However, I'd want to know how it worked. Unless they have a way of directly affecting my engines or my drives, I'm not certain how they'd force a slow down.

Nah, its cool. We all have our off-days, to be fair I'm most likely being a bit hardline, but I have some things that just niggle me. Though, to my credit, I've never actually ignored anyone ^^

Maybe you are, but as you have no idea who I am, and I'm chatting about bringing god into the mortal plane, it's too be expected.

Maybe you are, but as you have no idea who I am, and I'm chatting about bringing god into the mortal plane, it's too be expected.

Of course it is. Look up some of my stuff, I'll check you out. Who knows, maybe we'll RP together.

I've already read bunches of your stuff.

You provided me with my only opportunity to show off my Gellar field, even.

Only too happy to oblige :P

The C-plus cannons I refer to are the ones from the Fred Saberhagen Berserker stories, which seem to be designed to penetrate shielding. From what I know, they hit a shield, and in the process of penetrating it, are slowed down, but still hit the target at quite a clip.

Not familiar with it. Range, speed, power, rate of fire - properly adjust these and an FTL weapon's fair game. But in my admittedly limited experiance, they're typicly more in line with interstellar artillery.

And I supose I just don't want to see uber FTL guns becoming the next NS fad.

I wouldn't hate it. My ships would then just ram at sub c speeds, so I'm not certain what there is to hate.


I was thinking more in terms of a friendly compitition and/or IC kinda hate.



However, I'd want to know how it worked. Unless they have a way of directly affecting my engines or my drives, I'm not certain how they'd force a slow down.



FTL ramming, warp-straifing, jump-point tactics(specificly the tactic of opening a jump point inside my ship), teleporting bombs into the bridge and/or reactor rooms - for these reasons and more, I've created FTLi for every form of FTL I can think of, simply because my naval model wouldn't be viable if you could, say, take out a three-RL-month-to-build Battleplate by slamming a cardboard frigate into it at seventy bazillion times lightspeed.

And yes, I've had people try and FTL ram or jump into my supercapital ships befor - I only have ten of the things(3 'plates, 7 smaller Superfortresses, and along with 32 frigates, they're my entire navy), so you can understand my interest in closeing these kinds of loopholes.

:)


Well, that and it allows me to create strategic geography in a space setting, whereas in my past experiance people would usually go right for your capital/homeworld.

Of course it is. Look up some of my stuff, I'll check you out. Who knows, maybe we'll RP together.

Awwwwwwww. Chron being nice....its so cute.

*Runs and hides*

Awwwwwwww. Chron being nice....its so cute.

*Runs and hides*

By "Let's RP together" he means, "Let me decapitate your people and pour their blood into a huge, heated pool, because Slaanesh likes to frolic in the blood hottub when she comes to visit."

Kunukistan:
"I was thinking more in terms of a friendly competition and/or IC kinda hate."

You'll pay for this Captain Planet! *waves fist*

" FTL ramming, warp-straifing, jump-point tactics(specificly the tactic of opening a jump point inside my ship), teleporting bombs into the bridge and/or reactor rooms - for these reasons and more, I've created FTLi for every form of FTL I can think of, simply because my naval model wouldn't be viable if you could, say, take out a three-RL-month-to-build Battleplate by slamming a cardboard frigate into it at seventy bazillion times lightspeed."

I'm also guess that yours supership has been attacked by a multitude of lasers, torpedoes, particle beams, y-cannons, etc. You've probably also spent time trying to defend it against those. However, if you told someone you had a Wif (weapon inhibition field) that made all weapons in the area stop working, something tells me many would have trouble swallowing that.

Hence my asking 'how does it work?'

The Kesshii have what some might consider a type of FTLi. They've distorted and corrupted the subspace in their solar system, making it more dangerous to travel in.

But being reasonable, how would one calculate energy output for c+ cannons, anyway? a 0.9999...c (9s are recurring) weapon results in (and requires) NI energy anyways.

I mean, I can understand moving things faster than light, but using it as a weapon would most likely have horrible consequences varying based on whatever flavour is used.I don't think - or hope, anyway - that anybody's talking about c+ kinetic impacts - largely because infinite energy detonations happen to have unfortunate effects.

'c+' is rather more likely to refer to either FTLing missiles (Which tend to be piss-easy to make once you've FTL in the first place), and which would impact (Or detonate) at sub-c - the c+ bit refers exclusively to reach a target faster, or to evade missile defences, or FTL beam weapons.

I use c+ weapons.

My ships move faster than light and they attack the enemy by ramming them. You calculate the damage the way you do everything else in FT:
(Ass Space * Best Guess) + how strong you think the other person ought to be - how much cooler you know your stuff is = damage.Welcome to infinite energy detonation land?

Worse, the presence of subatomic articles, well... everywhere in space will tend to cause you to go boom in the same picosecond you reach c (Well, just before that happens, really).

Sense they enable you to do things like blow the shat out of someone from three star-systems over.Well, it depends - your c+ (Beam-)weapon could (For example) still suffer beamspread over distance identical to c-propagation - which would limit its range to 'Normal' levels, it just crosses them faster.

Not that this is particularly 'Feasible' (Beamspread being a function of/ over time, I believe), but hey. It's not like the FTL beam is feasible in the first place.

Similarly, the c+ (Beam-)weapon, assuming that it isn't some gridfire-esque absurdowatt-taken-from-asspace thing, will suffer from having only limited energy available - it may be able to 'Splatter' this energy along its trajectory (Think of photons coming into existence in 'Normal' space, seemingly from nowhere), but the energy that eventually reaches the target would be insignificant (I'm thinking of this as a form of EW, mostly) - or it'd 'Drop' all its energy at a predetermined point (Kinda like displacing a laserbeam... In a way), but it can't actually hit anything between its point of origin & said reentry point, screwing up a possible missile defence role, and probably screwing up targetting as well.

If one wants to balance really hard, one can even assume that the beam moves through under/ overdimensional space, which IIRC changes the way waves propagate, and you get another decrease in accuracy.

On a side note, re: FTL interdiction. Sure, it's a plotdevice to prevent OMG TACJUMP or displace-bomb-onto-bridge things, but I do tend to disbelieve perfect, well... everythings. I'd like to think of it as a form of 'Electronic Warfare' (We'll for now ignore that it might have nothing at all to do with electromagnetism), that is effective most of the time - but with a bit of efford and some luck, one might be able to break through it every once in a while (Errr, during an engagement).

With the probability of 'Breaking through' increasing proportionally over distance from the interfering source.

Well. At least that's how I treat my own.

But it still causes the problem of needing to invest at least NI energy in the projectile in the first place, whether it's in the form of fuel, launch acceleration, or otherwise. At any rate, by the time it reaches around .999c or so you may as well be trying to shoot down lasers for all the laws of physics care.

Really, the only way around that is to use some form of Tac-FTL or even blinking (random short-range teleports).

I suppose the problem arises when people start toying with shields and weapon defence systems which oscillate faster than light or whatnot (how this is possible, given that any signal can only ever go at light speed at best, I'll leave for another argument) which may as well be opaque, is when people start needing to pull things like c+ weapons out of nowhere to deal with them.

That's the crux of the problem, really. Impossible defences warrant impossible weapons, and vice versa.

But it still causes the problem of needing to invest at least NI energy in the projectile in the first place, whether it's in the form of fuel, launch acceleration, or otherwise. At any rate, by the time it reaches around .999c or so you may as well be trying to shoot down lasers for all the laws of physics care.Ummm... That's of course assuming that it goes at .9+ (Well, .4+, really, considering complications in terms of time dialition and other such things) c.

Which... It might not... When it's just a missile (Only form of FTL projectile I can think of) taking an FTL-shortcut, but otherwise ending up with the momentum & KE it had before doing its FTL routine. Remember, for FTL to work, things like causality, relativity, conservation of energy & the likes have to take a step back in the first place. Deal.

(Now, granted, some (I.e. me, though I'm limited by FTL transition taking time & being detectable) might 'Cheat', using a continuous FTL form to suck KE & Momentum from $Elsewhere and exiting at $Absurdly-high velocity, but to my knowledge, few do)

I'm also guess that yours supership has been attacked by a multitude of lasers, torpedoes, particle beams, y-cannons, etc. You've probably also spent time trying to defend it against those. However, if you told someone you had a Wif (weapon inhibition field) that made all weapons in the area stop working, something tells me many would have trouble swallowing that.

Hence my asking 'how does it work?'

The Kesshii have what some might consider a type of FTLi. They've distorted and corrupted the subspace in their solar system, making it more dangerous to travel in.


I don't have just one kind of FTLi - Truespace Barrier Effectors, for example, are designed to stop exospace FTL(hyper, sub, warp, quasi, etc.) by creating a reality inversion along every non-threespace dimentional axis, with the fold-induced zero-point 'hawking radiation' released mostly offsetting the otherwise impossibe(but still quite huge) energy requiorments.

Something like Quantum Resonance Jammers, meanwhile, specificly inhibits probability and uncertainty based FTL.

There are really a fair number of them.


EDIT: I also limit my FTLi propigation to half lightspeed and don't allow it to be 'blinked' to allow things like reinforcments. Any 'exception', further more, can only be generated by the large, stationary, strategic FTLi generators, and take a while to acomplish this feat.

This brings up a point that was briefly raised earlier in the Thread but quickly over run by other events taking place at the time.

The subject of FTLi and their seemingly all-encompassing effect.

Before I go further, I would like to state I don’t mind FTLi as long as the person using them can differentiate what it stops and how it does. To affect player’s ships, they should know what and how it does in Normal Speak (as opposed to Tech Speak). That way they can tell you how it works. With that knowledge you and the player can determine the effect the FTLi would have against your particular drive technology.

Instead it seems everyone is adapting the “I can stop everything out there with my FTLi” attitude. It doesn’t matter that they might never have encountered your types of drives before and theoretically not have any reason to even think it is possible to achieve FTL in your manner. There should be no reason to have that effect covered by their existing systems.

“I come into your system and set up a battle formation.”

“Nope, I have FTLi.”

“You do? OK, what does it affect?”

“Everything.”

“That’s impossible. You have probably never encountered my drive types. How could you develop a way to counter them?”

“Ask (-insert nation-), I bought it from them.”

Don’t laugh, while not accurate, I have seen conversations like this more than once. They have a generic FTLi and thinks it can stop EVERYTHING. While this does not seem realistic to NS players, it is out there and growing in popularity.

Perhaps it would be equally fair to R&D Kesshite’s WiF (Weapon Inhibition Field) idea. It would use the same principals as the FTLi and if people accept and use one, the other would have to be held as valid since they both work along the same set of vague methods. If they use a general FTLi it would grant permission to use a general WiF. I would not actually do this because it would be cheating but it seems to be a fair trade. It is my opinion that a WiF should not exist in FT because of the unfairness of it. The next logical step is to have a WiF attuned to allow your weapons to function. That is just BAD.

I believe the FTLi should be arranged in different classes based upon how they work. A good example is the FTLi using Gravity would cause the navigational computers to stop Star Wars ships and bring them out of Hyperspace. A Gravity FTLI would thus affect Hyperspace and other forms that are messed up by the presence of gravity wells.

Any thoughts on this?

Well, personally, I'll typically accept that someone's FTLi works as advertised, even if I know it has no business stopping my ships, unless it looks like the FTLi is OOCly intended as of limited scope - afterall, not everyone's really interested in the tech aspect of FT roleplay, while others don't really grasp it, and I don't feel like penalising them for it.

Unless you seriously abuse it, FTLi just adds a new dimension to space combat. One I feel is necessary in light of instantaneous hyper-accurate FTL drives and cheap insta-kill tactics.


Hell, the broad diversity of FTL can be taken as an argument for FTLi - if you're not sufficiently familiar with a type of FTL, ICly, chances are you're not going to be able to track ships using it, meaning you'll never see them coming, much less be able to intercept or pursue them.

Imagine having an enemy battlefleet drop out of hyperspace next to your fleet while it's in port, launch a devastating fleet-wide alpha-strike, and then jump away befor you can seriously fire back - plenty of people have ships that don't have to recharge their FTL drives to hop away, trek for example, while people with drives that open gateways like Babylon 5 hyperspace could just pair up, with one ship opening a gate in and the other out(or open the gates and just fire out, never leaving hyperspace). To say nothing of realspace FTL drives and warp-strafing, against which most would be utterly helpless. Or maybe accelerate an anti-matter superfreighter up to half lightspeed and jump it into the upper atmosphere of your homeworld.

Just some of the cheap but potentially devastating tactics that can be done with accepted off-the-shelf hardware and a little creativity.

Tactical FTL is insanely powerful.

I ignore generic stop-everything FTLi and require people to explain how, exactly, theirs works.

For example, I use Babylon 5 style jump gates and jump points, so gravity, which messes up a lot of FTL systems, is not a factor for me.

Der Angst:
" Welcome to infinite energy detonation land?'

If special relativity were right, there would be infinite energy. Of course, FLT in Sci-Fi pretty much sets special relativity on fire then pisses on it to fix the problem.

My ships use inversions drives; meaning I calculate speed as being complex and having a component made up of imaginary numbers. If you calculate speed as such, you don't need infinite energy and you don’t hit infinite mass. On the only hand, you do experience time dilation (the faster my ships go, the longer the occupants perceive the journey as taking) and you start taking on negative mass. I'm not a physics major, but as I understand it, if you go fast enough while calculating complex speed, your real mass will equal 0 and your real time will equal 0.

Good news: You can go anywhere instantly. Bad News: You cease to exist.

Either way, this particular drive does not have an infinite energy problem.

Balrogga:
" This brings up a point that was briefly raised earlier in the Thread but quickly over run by other events taking place at the time.

The subject of FTLi and their seemingly all-encompassing effect."

That's why I described my FTLi as I did: subspace is distorted and corrupted in my solar system. I don't claim that all ships that use subspace will be dead in the water, and it says nothing about the ships that use alternate methods of propulsion.

Kanuckistan:
" I don't have just one kind of FTLi - Truespace Barrier Effectors, for example, are designed to stop exospace FTL(hyper, sub, warp, quasi, etc.) by creating a reality inversion along every non-threespace dimentional axis, with the fold-induced zero-point 'hawking radiation' released mostly offsetting the otherwise impossibe(but still quite huge) energy requiorments."

How I read that:
We make a barrier between regular space and all of the alternative dimensions some ships use to travel through.

It sounds like a shield. I'm willing to believe in a shield that protects against 90% of whatever it's used to protect. Alternatively, in one that can take X amount of damage before weakening. It's the concept of a shield that protects 100% and never falters that strikes me as being unrealistic.

To be sure, I'm not saying that's how you present your Truespace Barrier. I'm speaking in general.

" Something like Quantum Resonance Jammers, meanwhile, specificly inhibits probability and uncertainty based FTL."

How I read that:
Eh?

Besides, why not just use a minefield? It seems much easier.

Kanuckistan:
"Imagine having an enemy battlefleet drop out of hyperspace next to your fleet while it's in port, launch a devastating fleet-wide alpha-strike, and then jump away befor you can seriously fire back - plenty of people have ships that don't have to recharge their FTL drives to hop away, trek for example, while people with drives that open gateways like Babylon 5 hyperspace could just pair up, with one ship opening a gate in and the other out(or open the gates and just fire out, never leaving hyperspace). To say nothing of realspace FTL drives and warp-strafing, against which most would be utterly helpless. Or maybe accelerate an anti-matter superfreighter up to half lightspeed and jump it into the upper atmosphere of your homeworld.

Just some of the cheap but potentially devastating tactics that can be done with accepted off-the-shelf hardware and a little creativity."

How is that any different from MT?

If a nation is sufficiently large enough, they can launch 10,000 ICBM at my nation from half a world away. The idea that I get to have a ICBMi that instantly turns all those warheads into puffy white clouds, because their ICBMs are cheap seems to compound the problem instead of dealing with it.

How I read that:
We make a barrier between regular space and all of the alternative dimensions some ships use to travel through.

It sounds like a shield. I'm willing to believe in a shield that protects against 90% of whatever it's used to protect. Alternatively, in one that can take X amount of damage before weakening. It's the concept of a shield that protects 100% and never falters that strikes me as being unrealistic.



Which is why I made it a reality inversion; ie, reality is bent back upon itself. You attempt to transit the barrier, and you don't run into it, but rather, you run headlong into yourself.

If your ship were a train, and reality the track, the inversion would be a U-turn in the track.




Besides, why not just use a minefield? It seems much easier.

Space is big.

And you can FTL a ship through a minefield.




How is that any different from MT?

If a nation is sufficiently large enough, they can launch 10,000 ICBM at my nation from half a world away. The idea that I get to have a ICBMi that instantly turns all those warheads into puffy white clouds, because their ICBMs are cheap seems to compound the problem instead of dealing with it.


But MT has nuclear MAD, the whole OOC OMGNOOKS R EVIL!1! mentality, and ABM systems - sometimes people even claim perfect ABM.

Godrods...
>_>

Godrods...
>_>

Anti-satalite weapons.

Blowing up the core of a planet..... ^_^

Blowing up the core of a planet..... ^_^

Not MT. :-p

Big enough nuke. Or many nukes.

I have several defenses against FTL in my system. The gravity well of 4 gas giants will mess up many FTL systems. Plus, the nearby asteroid belt would be fun to navigate through. There may also be magnetic fields that mess up subspace.

The gravity well of 4 gas giants will mess up many FTL systems.

:confused:

Gravity of Most Stars >>>>>> Any 4 Gas Giants

Plus, the nearby asteroid belt would be fun to navigate through.


This is a common sci-fi myth - real asteroid belts are incredibly sparse. Just ask any NASA probe to the outer solar system. Not that that's ever got in the way of fiction.

Besides, you can always go over/under them. Or FTL past them.

Well, non-magical nations would probobly have a tough time blocking my FTL system...since it relies on magical energy, and the only real way to interfere with it is to throw up some serious magical interferance. I suppose the effect could be achieved with Psykers or similar though.
But its also pretty much useless for ramming or warp-straffing, since ships arrive at a standstill, and the immidiate planeshifting from the place you just shifted in from is dangerous.
Planeshifting one ship into another ship though...

Well, non-magical nations would probobly have a tough time blocking my FTL system...since it relies on magical energy, and the only real way to interfere with it is to throw up some serious magical interferance.

My strategic FTLi ought to work, as it's based on a system that was originally developed to protect against magic and psionics. Ships carry it, too, but because of it's potency the field can't be extended much beyond the shield radius.

Truespace barrier fields might also work, if the drive does what the name sugests, and the ships physicly move between planes, rather than teleport or something.



Ya know, if I ever create another FT nation, I think I'll just FTLi my systems via "Natural Phenomenon."

Perhaps, I suppose it would depend on the power output of the planeshift drive in question, and whether or not it was recieving aid from a powerful enough mage. A planeshift could probobly break through most FTLi systems designed to be used against it if enough power was applied.
But of course this drains the mage as well as the ships power.

Truespace might work...it would depend on the plane the ship was using as a stopover.
Basically the planeshift drive works sort of like a combination of hyperspace and a wormhole, in that it creates a hole into the other dimension, pulls the ship through, then does the same thing, depositing it in the original plane in a different location.
But I imagine different stopover planes have different charecteristics...eh.

Perhaps, I suppose it would depend on the power output of the planeshift drive in question, and whether or not it was recieving aid from a powerful enough mage. A planeshift could probobly break through most FTLi systems designed to be used against it if enough power was applied.
But of course this drains the mage as well as the ships power.


ASPEW doesn't jam or counter-force. It disables the underlying characteristics of reality that permit, say, magic, to function within it's radius.

You should see what modern ASPEW does to the nature of space-time.


But now that I know there's a primarily magic space nation out there, I'll have to tone down the anti-magic effects if you ever come knocking on my door with hostile intent; it's designed as an IC counter-balance for abuse and wank, afterall, and the last thing I want to do is undercut normal functionality.


Truespace might work...it would depend on the plane the ship was using as a stopover.
Basically the planeshift drive works sort of like a combination of hyperspace and a wormhole, in that it creates a hole into the other dimension, pulls the ship through, then does the same thing, depositing it in the original plane in a different location.
But I imagine different stopover planes have different charecteristics...eh.

Ah, good; that's the style of FTL it's primarily designed to inhibit. Nothing short of ASPEW could have hindered something like a magical teleport.

This is a common sci-fi myth - real asteroid belts are incredibly sparse. Just ask any NASA probe to the outer solar system. Not that that's ever got in the way of fiction.

Besides, you can always go over/under them. Or FTL past them.

The asteroids in my system are a lot denser than they are in the RL solar system (but probably not as dense as the asteroids in "Empire Strikes Back"). And shooting past them FTL would probably overshoot my planets as well. You have a point about going over/under them though.

As for the gravity, a lot of FTL doesn't work that well too near a star either. And I'd think the 4 large gas giants AND the star would further complicate it.

Also, we aren't experts at FTL, since we still haven't gotten ours working yet. There certainly appears to be SOME factor messing things up, but our current theories on the reason could easily be wrong.

To affect player’s ships, they should know what and how it does in Normal Speak (as opposed to Tech Speak).

Um, when dealing with fictional science, the only 'normal speak' answer is 'it stops you doing that.'

Instead it seems everyone is adapting the “I can stop everything out there with my FTLi” attitude. It doesn’t matter that they might never have encountered your types of drives before and theoretically not have any reason to even think it is possible to achieve FTL in your manner. There should be no reason to have that effect covered by their existing systems.

Why? Maybe they've encountered something like your drive systems before or theorised that such systems could be constructed and built in countermeasures in case they were encountered later. The attitude that unless you've engaged a ship using $drive it must be a total mystery to you is absolutely nonsensical.

Perhaps it would be equally fair to R&D Kesshite’s WiF (Weapon Inhibition Field) idea.

They're called shields, you've probably heard of them.

I believe the FTLi should be arranged in different classes based upon how they work.

No. FTLi does what the player using it says it does. If they say it stops all FTL travel regardless of the mechanism, it's probably a very broad range of jamming systems in a single package.

You're all being rather silly about this. FTLi or whatever will work if both RP participants say so, and will fail if both RP participants say so. If they disagree, then they gotta work it out. It's really that simple. Arguments about suns/gas giants/asteroid belts/FTLi/ubermagic/whatever simply come down to "it doesn't work!" "yes it does!"

Bottom line: Shut up and decide what's best for your roleplay. Leave pseudoscience out of it.

Bottom line: Shut up and decide what's best for your roleplay. Leave pseudoscience out of it.



Frankly, some of us like the pseudoscience. It's fun. I've probally spent far more time playing with my tech base than typing RP posts.

Some of us also like having fairly solid backgrounds and capabilities on which to stage our RPs, and to allow the interplay of these and circumstance to impact the RP. "I want to roleplay XYZ - let's see what happens!"

Pseudoscience is dumb when it's a cheesey plot device. I've never seen the thread...I think...but I'll try and make a point.

Not everyone likes science to interefere with a fine piece of fiction! I spent years having guys shout hard statistics at me and it was the most boring thing I ever had to deal with. Fiction isn't real, who cares if you can't explain something if the character interaction is good.

Mad lulz for this thread, btw.

You're all being rather silly about this. FTLi or whatever will work if both RP participants say so, and will fail if both RP participants say so. If they disagree, then they gotta work it out. It's really that simple. Arguments about suns/gas giants/asteroid belts/FTLi/ubermagic/whatever simply come down to "it doesn't work!" "yes it does!"

Bottom line: Shut up and decide what's best for your roleplay. Leave pseudoscience out of it.

I don't like pseudoscience and the varying phallic arguments of which tech base is best, but what I will say is that discussion such as this IS important. There has to be limits in any system, even in freeform, there ought to be a type of 'internal moderation', whereby we collectively draw up some sense of limitation in an entirely open system.

If we can't agree on how suns/gas giants/asteroid belts/FTLi/ubermagic/whatever then how can we ever play together as though in a cooperative universe, whereby the laws of any given thing are dependant upon "deciding whats best". How then would any randomness ever spring forth!?

my interest and concern isn't about weapons. we have other kinds of 'future tec' that can be improvised for use as weapons at need. if we want to make big holes we have energy devices made for the mining industry and for close in work we have very effective nonlegthal devises used by law enforcement.

rather it is the absurd assumptions that are ignored for the sake of playing war.
like never running out of nonrenewable substances. minor little details like that.

my interest in future tec, my very interest in the game of simulating nations at all, is in environmentaly harmonious infrastructure, the engineering and maintainence of same.

on mundane earth, the only nation that is going arround invading everybody is the only one that is so much 'bigger' militarily then everyone else that no one alone can do anything about it. (on the somewhat twisted premis that if it doesn't dictate how the rest of the world lives everyone else will want to invade and destroy them. which of course, could perhapse at some point lead to a bit of self fulfilment if everyone else were to get togather to do something about it, which enough may eventualy feel pushed to. everyone but everyone will, at some point get sufficiently tired of it if it doesn't stop soon, that's almost for sure)

what i'm getting at here is the lack of suspension of disbelief of this state of infinite and constant warfare, and the utter absurdity that if everyone is constantly engauged in it they will continue to have available means and resources to continue developing and deploying hotter and hotter weapons.

and this even gets to the pseudo-science of economics own self-isolation from such minor little details as resource realities. sure keep those little green piece of paper circulating and they create a nice security blanket of the illusion of unlimited means of power through incentive. well incentive is all nice and good, but there is x amound of metalurgable mineral in the ground, and x amount of carrying capacity of the web of life, which incidently is where air to breathe comes from.

perhapse your populations have become entirely cybernetic and no longer require air or sustinance. they still need maintainence and replacement, and almost certain some sort of other supplies. anything that has mechanicly moving parts for example, requires some sort of lubrication for them.

and then, like food for organic life forms, there is the question of energy. which also gets back to what i mentioned in the first place. you can only pirate everything you need for just so long. in environmental reality it has been observed that the size of preditor populations is controlled by the size, and thus availability, of the populations of their prey.

consume a nonrenewable and it is consumed. and a nonrenewable, however much of it you have to start with, does get, unless recycled in some manor, the way nature does 100% and nothing else seems sufficiently motivated to even develop the means of doing, well you sooner or later find that it is gone.

space is big, so maybe you think you can always find more victums, "out there". one problem. it also takes time and energy to deal with just how big it really is. enough so as to make most circumstances under which space battles are fantacized as occuring just a wee tiney bit impractical.

there's something else. populations of awairnessess sooner or later get damd tired of the impediment to the real gratifications of creating and exploring that armed conflict eventualy comes to be seen as nothing other then.

and the do, just as one can always sneak a weapon and attempt to start a war, find ways of getting togather to do something about it.

in the case of the vastness of space, i'm talking here about alliances and supercollective entity aggreements. such as for example the united nations kind of thing.

you don't think you're going to find an already existing galactic united nations out there? don't kid yourself. earth is very much the new kind on the block. and like every new kid on the block you can damd well expect to sooner or later find a cop on the corner too.

i think you will find it far more gratifying to explore, not destroy but explore, with however high but sustainable a tec suits your fancy, the intimate convoluted spaces of natural environment on the surface of exotic worlds, then to endlessly and tediusly stand off in the big empty blasting away at each other. that's my two cents worth anyway.

=^^=
.../\...

rather it is the absurd assumptions that are ignored for the sake of playing war.
like never running out of nonrenewable substances. minor little details like that.

One can assume, that, in future-tech, nonrewenable substance are infinite. 'cause, y'know, the sky is no longer the limit. There is no limit.

on mundane earth, the only nation that is going arround invading everybody is the only one that is so much 'bigger' militarily then everyone else that no one alone can do anything about it. (on the somewhat twisted premis that if it doesn't dictate how the rest of the world lives everyone else will want to invade and destroy them. which of course, could perhapse at some point lead to a bit of self fulfilment if everyone else were to get togather to do something about it, which enough may eventualy feel pushed to. everyone but everyone will, at some point get sufficiently tired of it if it doesn't stop soon, that's almost for sure)

Please. This is not General. If you want to go and snipe and countries, go there. This sort of thing will only lead to an argument about politics in a thread devoted to the discussion of RPing - it has absolutely no place here. I disagree, but I'm not going to take that any further. There's a time and a place to bitch about these things, and the time isn't now, and the place certainly isn't II.

what i'm getting at here is the lack of suspension of disbelief of this state of infinite and constant warfare, and the utter absurdity that if everyone is constantly engauged in it they will continue to have available means and resources to continue developing and deploying hotter and hotter weapons.

Uh-huh. Considering that most of the time, most FT nations aren't engaged in war, I think that point adequately kneecaps itself and falls over at the first hurdle.

but there is x amound of metalurgable mineral in the ground, and x amount of carrying capacity of the web of life, which incidently is where air to breathe comes from.

Right. But when 'x' happens to be a number so absurdly high that your head would implode just to look at it, that isn't really an issue any more. When you get right down to it, mineral resources are not an issue. Viable biospheres, perhaps, but mineral resources? The things that can be found floating around damn near everywhere in space?

and then, like food for organic life forms, there is the question of energy. which also gets back to what i mentioned in the first place. you can only pirate everything you need for just so long. in environmental reality it has been observed that the size of preditor populations is controlled by the size, and thus availability, of the populations of their prey.

Now, let's see what you've done. You've taken a premise based on modern-day technology and means, and applied it to interstellar empires. Is it really necessary for me to tell you how silly this is? One can see, even here on Earth, that humanity can modify the environment to some degree in order to suit. Indeed, being able to adapt one's environment, as opposed to adapting, is a key human feature.

Thus, the 'question of energy' is really inconsequential. Even if you're using fission power, you can easily generate enough of that to keep cities safely powered without any major worries. The resources of space are staggering. The only problem we have today is, y'know, utilizing them. The FT name implies that we have the technology and resources to do so.

consume a nonrenewable and it is consumed.

Conservation of Energy would like to say otherwise. And CoE tends to win these arguments. In the context of a single planet, with limited resources that can be accesses - yes, a nonrenewable cannot be renewed. However, such a term is practically irrevelent in a FT environment - to travel between the stars, one can imagine this takes immense amounts of energy. Once this is accomplished, the ability of a society is unfettered - if individual miners can hollow out an asteroid, the idea of mining for metals within the gravitic environment of a planet - where gravity will wear-and-tear the mining equipment, and where farms and other biosphere-only constructions could be built, is almost ludicrous.

and a nonrenewable, however much of it you have to start with, does get, unless recycled in some manor, the way nature does 100% and nothing else seems sufficiently motivated to even develop the means of doing, well you sooner or later find that it is gone.

Right. So you find some more. Repeat ad infinitum.

space is big, so maybe you think you can always find more victums, "out there". one problem. it also takes time and energy to deal with just how big it really is.

Look. I don't mean to be offensive, but are you just writing down these arguments as you think of them? They hardly seem cohesive. 'dealing with the size of space' isn't a major rigour. We know space is big. I won't quote Douglas Adams, but, suffice to say, we know it's not the seas in the days of the British Empire. We know planets and stars are tiny in comparison. It's not a mindblowing relevation.

enough so as to make most circumstances under which space battles are fantacized as occuring just a wee tiney bit impractical.

Impractical, yes. The kind of thing that sounds incredibly cool? Also yes. We're not astrophysicists. We're writers. And, when you get right down to it, literary style has much that pure science doesn't.


you don't think you're going to find an already existing galactic united nation out there?

If you're talking about reality, no. Let's be quite honest here. How stupid is it to expect a spacefaring race to develop sapience in the manner of another, so that they can both communicate, understand one another - and share morals? Assuming that every race out of there will conform to human morality is absolutely idiotic. On the flip side, if you're talking about FT - no, again. People write, and roleplay. People write. There are no mythical organizations out there that live in the synchronized, unharnessed imaginations of all NSers.

don't kid yourself. earth is very much the new kind on the block. and like every new kid on the block you can damd well expect to sooner or later find a cop on the corner too.

Right. But, in this case, the block is about one trillionth or so the width of the road. So the chances of a cop seeing you are.. well, next to nil. Hell, crossing the road is a journey not many would survive, unless they could find some manner of faster-than-car-travel.

i think you will find it far more gratifying to explore, not destroy but explore

Nope.

with however high but sustainable a tec suits your fancy, the intimate convoluted spaces of natural environment on the surface of exotic worlds

Nooppe. A lot of the fun of this game is interaction. Writing about exploration tends to leave very little room for interaction. War, on the other hand, is interaction-filled.

Before I go further, I would like to state I don’t mind FTLi as long as the person using them can differentiate what it stops and how it does. To affect player’s ships, they should know what and how it does in Normal Speak (as opposed to Tech Speak)."It prevents FTL jump in/ jump out."

With that knowledge you and the player can determine the effect the FTLi would have against your particular drive technology.Considering that it's a plot device to prevent tacjumping, FTL-missile-exiting-in-planet-at-very-close-to-c and other such things (And, coincidentally, preventing spacedy-MAD - not necessarily a good thing, IMHO, but hey...), I believe the correct answer is 'It works.' Personally, I can be convinced relatively easily to make an exception for gates (Star gate/ Babylon 5/ Trek-Wormholes & such), because all of these happen to be utterly incapable of doing what the FTL-interdiction plotdevice is for, but other than that...

Instead it seems everyone is adapting the “I can stop everything out there with my FTLi” attitude. It doesn’t matter that they might never have encountered your types of drives before and theoretically not have any reason to even think it is possible to achieve FTL in your manner.Going briefly away from aforementioned ooc arguments, and entering the realm of technobabble...

It doesn't have to have the slightest idea of any given FTL method existing in the first place - all it has to do is to prevent relativistic space from being locally violated.

Read: It doesn't have to screw with your particular FTL method - all it has to do is to protect space from being screwed with by your FTL method. And as every from of FTL has to do this in one way or another, blanket-interdiction is actually likely. (Kind of like electronic interference can screw up a nokia cellphone just as good as a Compaq notebook's WLAN connection).

Or interdiction - other than through minefields and shooting everything that shows up - would be inherently impossible, kinda like it's... difficult to 'Interdict' ships with a magic field that makes their engines not work.

Frankly, do it one way. Either there is FTL interdiction, as a plot device to - for example - prevent every planet in the galaxy from being busted by hyperspacing c-fractal missiles. Then it works with everything (Probably giving some leeway in the form of EW comparisons, I.e. one might get lucky and break through when one spends enough time on working it out, locally - but it'd never be a permanent solution. Hum. I suppose that the player who keeps up the interdiction could roll a dice for you, to ensure fairness), or there is no FTL-interdiction (Tbh, that's what I personally prefer, although I can see plenty of good reasons for the former), and... yeah.

Everything in-between is just weaseling out.

Also, curse Mei-chan for beating me to the weapon inhibition field :/

If special relativity were right, there would be infinite energy. Of course, FLT in Sci-Fi pretty much sets special relativity on fire then pisses on it to fix the problem.Ummm... A plotdevice to cross interstellar distances within reasonable timeframes != redefining kinetic energy.

Either way, this particular drive does not have an infinite energy problem.My point wasn't that you need infinite energy to get up to speed - everyone with FTL cheats in this regard. Some - I.e. me - worse than others.

My point is that ramming something at FTL velocities, in relativistic space, is patently silly. There's a reason 's for why most FTL-plotdevices avoid FTL velocities in 'Normal' space. This is it.

I suggest you ignore Cameroi. He posts these long off-topic rants about how resources are running out and then never bothers to reply to anyone.

Ah, ok. I took a look through a few of his posts, and I see what you mean. Rather annoying, though. If you're going to take the time to create a post like that, you should at least have the decency to follow it up.

In any case. FTLi is something I dislike - it is reminiscent of fortresses, and makes space combat far more like ancient combat than I'd really like, but, on the other hand, I see the necessity for it. Kanuck's FTLi is something I accept, primarily because of the tiny number of ships he has. They can only be in so many places at once. However, I still believe in FTLi as I believe in weaponry-shielding. You're using energy to reinforce the fabric of spacetime.

I'm using energy to screw around with it. If my energy > your energy, then, consequently, your FTLi should fail to do anything. Thus, system-wide FTLi is something I find impractical, wheras, say, AU-wide I could condone.

I feel that FTLi is more or less required for combat these days. Battles should be fought with whatever units are on the field at the time that the battle begins, not with your entire military or a significant portion of it simply because you claim to FTL it in.

If you're being attacked out of the blue, you're not going to have many ships available for deployment, let alone many that would be close enough to intervine. It would take hours to scramble emergency reinforcements, and days to assemble a fleet. By that time, the battle would likely be long over.

To simply FTL backup into the battle within seconds is not only cheap, but it's godmoding and metagaming. Until people can learn to use realistic time tables for reinforcements, FTLi will have to be the rule to NS space combat rather than the exception.

To simply FTL backup into the battle within seconds is not only cheap, but it's godmoding and metagaming. Until people can learn to use realistic time tables for reinforcements, FTLi will have to be the rule to NS space combat rather than the exception.
To be honest, I think that depends. For the most part I agree with you, but in some cases, quickly arriving reinforcements are possible. For example, a nation with very fast FTL and a fleet without meat to slow it down could very likely respond within seconds, pulling ships off of patrol duty or possibly other systems.

Not that I do so. While I do fit the bill for both of those requirements (fleshbags make bad pilots, after all), it still seems rather cheap. :D


It sounds like a shield. I'm willing to believe in a shield that protects against 90% of whatever it's used to protect. Alternatively, in one that can take X amount of damage before weakening. It's the concept of a shield that protects 100% and never falters that strikes me as being unrealistic.
I actually apply this to my FTLi, it's only 98% effective. However, the 2% that gets through usually has trouble doing anything while the other 98% of their hull, systems, guns, etc. has spontaneously converted to energy. :D

I'm using energy to screw around with it. If my energy > your energy, then, consequently, your FTLi should fail to do anything. Thus, system-wide FTLi is something I find impractical, wheras, say, AU-wide I could condone.The problem is, of course, that the volume of any given ship <<< the volume of interdicted space - the energy you'd need to pump into whatever causes the interdicting effect (Assuming that you want to do it over, lets say, a sphere ten lightseconds in radius) would therefore have to be of proportions that make Population III Stars blush with embarrassment. Otherwise the ship could locally overpower interdiction, and bam, it's there.

Not exactly practical, 's much as it's a nice explanation for gates/ wormholes/ whatever overpowering ship-based interdiction.

Well. One of the reasons for me to keep such things at one - or at best ten - lightseconds/ radius. Although I tend not to care about energy requirements in the first place - it's some bullshit about interference that makes going in difficult. And EW-equivalents don't need as much energy as a capship-grade lasercannon.

Well remember with powerful enough antigravity, being a flesh bag means nothing as you can counter all the ludicrous G's you pull [Saberhagens Berserkers is what I go by for that and Neural nets.] However Bryn shander has an excellent point in the FTLi'ing. Whereas some people [like myself] have limitations on their FTL and wouldnt be able to deploy $teh entire fleetz0rz at once, not everyone does. However keeping FTLi around for say...the people that DO do that is definetly a good idea. People like Mini miehm for instance, who at least as far as I can tell in the Constantine thread just jumped in 3000 ships.

Of course this in itself isnt exactly wrong, especially if it was planned, it does lead to the problem of..well some people do that regardless of it being planned or not. So in my mind having at least some kind of FTLi would be good. Hell my wanky DEM jammers/sensors work by distracting the AI of any ship in the area. The smarter the AI the less effect, ranging from turning a low end drone or missile in to a drooling idiot, to making an AI behave as if he had a rather annoying buzzing in his ears. This of course is how we affect FTLi, by making it harder to jump out, miscalculating how far they wanted to go with less dangerous, more annoying effects. However you can still jump out any time you want, its really just a side effect of it. I personally dont want a full scale FTLi..but if i have to make one I will, though I will try to make it rather toned down. Before a certain point in time I was not familiar with the concept of FTLi outside of Star wars, so it seems a tad new to me. Then again I havent heard of some of the FTL I have encountered as well, so it does seem to make sense in some cases.

[Note this DEM jammer is really more of an anti missile and one of the "clarke tech" style technologies I use, it doesnt effect Biological computers, just helps to put people on par with machines, however there is a way around it, if anyone read, Commodore, we seem to have lost the subject they would know its the way the machines think being alien to the dimensional energy whatsits. Very esoteric and really no basis in ANY RL science. Its really more of a dimensional sensor that emits a noise that electronic minds dont like much, and cant tune out entirely if they arent designed like a living creatures brain.]

However I think more really people should just question the more...ludicrous forms of FTL.


For instance tesseracting around at will claiming it cant be FTLi'd would be an example. Jumping in and having only enough energy to jump away after is not ludicrous, nor is any form of wormhole style gating systems. [One requiring jump points.] However the full scale use of FTLi could prevent wars from basically turning in to one really huge battle..and make it look like an actual war. So I am all for their being at least broad types of FTLi, that being said..FTLi ranges should be in question..and really shouldnt be that long. Just enough to prevent people jumping "right on top of you" mid battle, and actually forcing you to move your reinforcements in to a war zone..perhaps this would actually cause there to be battles raging across entire planetary systems, rather then directly over Enemy capitals.

In any case. FTLi is something I dislike - it is reminiscent of fortresses, and makes space combat far more like ancient combat than I'd really like, but, on the other hand, I see the necessity for it.


Really? I find geography a much more apt comparison, as it forces you to spend time traveling.



If you're being attacked out of the blue, you're not going to have many ships available for deployment, let alone many that would be close enough to intervine. It would take hours to scramble emergency reinforcements, and days to assemble a fleet. By that time, the battle would likely be long over.



Well, if you have drives fast enough to get there in time, you could cycle ships/fleets through an on-call response role.

In the ESUS/GFFA war, for example(and this is strictly OOC information), I positioned two of my supercapital ships to cover certain areas, while a third sits on a massive displacer platform that traditionally has allowed me to get one of my ships(but just the one; this thing is absurdly expensive, afterall, and has a long cycle time) more-or-less anywhere I need it on relativly short notice.

These ships are then periodicly replaced with fresh craft and crews.


Of course, FTLi gives the defenders much more time to get reinforcments to the scene. But then, it also allows the defending player to build in a realistic response time, rather than being forced to have ships ready to fight 24/7 'cause the other guy can jump a battlefleet six feet off your bow whenever he wants to.

Agreed with kanuckistan, in my mind anything that makes a war appear like a real war and less like a massive ubar battle royale seems good to me. I have always disliked having units as small as three ships and never getting to use anything smaller then a battle fleet in a battle :(

Well remember with powerful enough antigravity, being a flesh bag means nothing as you can counter all the ludicrous G's you pull
Untrue. Sure, while inertial dampeners make meatbags to take more G's, the AI ship can take correspondingly more. For example, assume your inertial dampeners can take 300 G's of acceleration before letting the rest soak through to the crew. Your human pilots can take another 9 before blacking out. My crewless ship, however, can take as much as the hull can take, which could be, say, another 300.

So what you're saying is that cosmic dust would cause the bubble to burst and your projectile to instantly violate the laws of physics and divide by zero?

Well, TFU?

Well, TFU?

Don't goad, he is aware of the post and will reply, if he so chooses, in his own time. Acting all high and mighty from your self proclaimed pedestal just makes you look like a jester.

Untrue. Sure, while inertial dampeners make meatbags to take more G's, the AI ship can take correspondingly more. For example, assume your inertial dampeners can take 300 G's of acceleration before letting the rest soak through to the crew. Your human pilots can take another 9 before blacking out. My crewless ship, however, can take as much as the hull can take, which could be, say, another 300.

Going back to the "Father of Space Opera" E.E. Smith and many intervening sources; Some fictional Reactionless drives exert an even force on every molecule within a vessel, making the "Inertial Dampeners\Compensators" of Star Trek and Star Wars et al an irrelevancy. Regardless of composition, the interior of a vessel would accellerate at the same rate as the exterior.

This is, incidentally how my stuff works (though it has compensator functions for dealing with impacts and such, mind).

There are of course many other ways in which a decently designed drone would outpreform a human, but that's not necesserily one of them, with all tech-bases.

Its how mine works too. Nothing like a method of propulsion that works as its own inertial dampening system.

Well, TFU?The possibility of the projectiles using FTL propulsion to cross the distance and then drop out of warp to hit at sub-c didn't occur to you, did it?

... Well, no, of course not. It's pretty well known that you've a grudge with TFU and just bait at every opportunity. Not sure why TFU should even bother with you.

The possibility of the projectiles using FTL propulsion to cross the distance and then drop out of warp to hit at sub-c didn't occur to you, did it?

... Well, no, of course not. It's pretty well known that you've a grudge with TFU and just bait at every opportunity. Not sure why TFU should even bother with you.

Except that he didn't say that. He said that they're hitting at 6c.

Except that he didn't say that. He said that they're hitting at 6c.following these volleys of energy weapons Hundreds of Cfractional projectile cannons fired again and again in unison , shooting out FTL boosted shells that jumped to faster than lightNothing about hitting. Just that they go FTL - most rational people would assume that they're TacJumpers.

Which might be questionable, but it's hardly the same thing as causing infinite energy KE damages.

no to mention 10 tone shells going at 6 times the speed of light.Again, says nothing about them hitting at 6 c - once more, the most likely possibility (Certainly the possibility I'd have gone with) would be tacjumps & hit-at-sub-c.

And while both posts are, indeed, ambiguous in this regard (To an extend - one would have to be mildly deranged to do FTL collisions, so it's usually a possibility immediately discarded), your claim that TFU actually said explicitly that they'd impact at c+ is, what's the term...

Ah, right.

A lie.

Or a misunderstanding. These things happen rather often, I am led to believe.

Untrue. Sure, while inertial dampeners make meatbags to take more G's, the AI ship can take correspondingly more. For example, assume your inertial dampeners can take 300 G's of acceleration before letting the rest soak through to the crew. Your human pilots can take another 9 before blacking out. My crewless ship, however, can take as much as the hull can take, which could be, say, another 300.


Correction; your crewless ship can take as much accelleration, after compensators, as the most G-sensitive piece of equipment - probally some form of electronics or part or the reactor or something. The hull of a warship is typicly one of the hardiest bits.

Of course, as others have said, there are reaction and reactionless drives that don't need compensators, and inertialess drives, well, they speak for themselves(tho any warship should have a compensator for dealing with impacts).

Kunickistan:
" Which is why I made it a reality inversion; ie, reality is bent back upon itself. You attempt to transit the barrier, and you don't run into it, but rather, you run headlong into yourself.

If your ship were a train, and reality the track, the inversion would be a U-turn in the track."

Meaning it's 100% effective for however long you want to us it?

" And you can FTL a ship through a minefield."

I can? I couldn't before, but if you say so.

" But MT has nuclear MAD, the whole OOC OMGNOOKS R EVIL!1! mentality, and ABM systems - sometimes people even claim perfect ABM."

Sometimes people even claim perfect FTLi.

GMC:
" They're called shields, you've probably heard of them."

No, shields don't stop weapons from working, and they don't stop 100% of a weapon's damage for an infinite amount of time. Which is what Kesshite's WiF would do.

Middle Snu:
" Arguments about suns/gas giants/asteroid belts/FTLi/ubermagic/whatever simply come down to "it doesn't work!" "yes it does!""

I don't think that anyone is actually arguing at this point. Asking someone why something works is much different from saying it doesn't work.

Auman:
" Not everyone likes science to interefere with a fine piece of fiction!"

I'll agree with this.

Hyperspace Travel:
" One can assume, that, in future-tech, nonrewenable substance are infinite. 'cause, y'know, the sky is no longer the limit. There is no limit."

There is a limit, but it's decided by the story instead of the world as we know it.

In regards to FTL, I like to think of them as a plot device that allows you to go really really really really fast.

I call FTL, the Really Fast Moving Device.

That's just me of course, I just want to write a story >_>

Der Angst:
" Considering that it's a plot device to prevent tacjumping, FTL-missile-exiting-in-planet-at-very-close-to-c and other such things (And, coincidentally, preventing spacedy-MAD - not necessarily a good thing, IMHO, but hey...), I believe the correct answer is 'It works.' Personally, I can be convinced relatively easily to make an exception for gates (Star gate/ Babylon 5/ Trek-Wormholes & such), because all of these happen to be utterly incapable of doing what the FTL-interdiction plotdevice is for, but other than that..."

I see nothing wrong with plot devices that prevent unfavorable or unfair situations. If Kunuckastain wasn't to make sure an entire fleet can't pop into space right beside his planet and smash away before popping out, I will support whatever techno babble he comes up with to make sure that doesn't happen.

The majority of my FTL technology can only work between solar systems because blah, blah, blah, lots of mass, space curvature, and blah.

However, when someone extends a plot device to create their own unfair and unfavorable situation, I object. It's one thing to protect your planet, it's another thing to say that when a ship nears theirs, the ships FTL just stops working.

Meaning it's 100% effective for however long you want to us it?


Theoretically - I have some ideas for defeating it, but I'm not in the habit of publicly pointing out holes in defences I've spent years refining. My FTLi does have a couple of limits, tho.

Frankly, I don't see what the big deal is - I'm only creating geography. It just prevents you from entering and leaving the area around my ships/planets instantly and without warning.

True, it can be abused, but the same goes for anything. My FTLi is potent, but I'm careful in implementing it.



I can[FTL through a mine field]? I couldn't before, but if you say so.


Unless your FTL allows you to hit small STL objects in realspace when attempting to jump pass them, I don't see why not.

Der Angst:
" My point wasn't that you need infinite energy to get up to speed - everyone with FTL cheats in this regard. "

I do not. I cheat in pretending there's a physical substance that can provide you with imaginary numbers. If you make speed a complex equation, you don't need infinite energy.

"There's a reason 's for why most FTL-plotdevices avoid FTL velocities in 'Normal' space."

Mine doesn't avoid normal space. However, as I said a few pages ago - it makes no difference to me how fast my ships are going. They'll ram you at super-c, c, or sub-c speeds, whichever you prefer.

Correction; your crewless ship can take as much accelleration, after compensators, as the most G-sensitive piece of equipment - probally some form of electronics or part or the reactor or something. The hull of a warship is typicly one of the hardiest bits.
True. However, even in modern aircraft, the components can take quite a bit more than the pilot. With less weight limits than a fighter and rather large technology advances, a spacedy ship's components can take rather large stresses. Less than the hull, of course.

I actually apply this to my FTLi, it's only 98% effective. However, the 2% that gets through usually has trouble doing anything while the other 98% of their hull, systems, guns, etc. has spontaneously converted to energy. :D

Cute, but even worse. Now don't just have a FTL 'shield' but whatever hits it is 98% vaporized, so it's a weapon as well. So you haven't somehow broken my drive, you've magically destroyed 98% of my ship.

...Kunuckastain...

o.O?



However, when someone extends a plot device to create their own unfair and unfavorable situation, I object. It's one thing to protect your planet, it's another thing to say that when a ship nears theirs, the ships FTL just stops working.


"FTL stops working" is, realistically, the only way of ICly protecting yourself from cheap FTL tactics. Unless you want to try enforcing "OMG U CANT DU THART!11" OOC rules.

My FTLi propagates slower than, well, any other FTLi I've seen on NS, is inflexible, and also stops me from using my FTL; it is, in my view, about as balanced and fair as is practical.

Kinickestian:
" It just prevents you from entering and leaving the area around my ships/planets instantly and without warning."

No, it doesn't prevent me from doing that, as my ships never leave normal space, and so can't pop into and out of 'no where.' I'm not having this discussion because I want to appear out of nowhere and have my ships dive bomb your planet.

My objection is that you're claiming to have a system that's 100% effective all of the time. Whenever I encounter a claim like that, my reaction is to start picking at it.

" Unless your FTL allows you to hit small STL objects in realspace when attempting to jump pass them, I don't see why not."

As I've said several times, my ships travel through real space. If they enter a minefield, they'd hit mines.

Kunukastin:
" o.O?"

Not my first misspelling, if that's what you're referring to.

" "FTL stops working" is, realistically, the only way of ICly protecting yourself from cheap FTL tactics. Unless you want to try enforcing "OMG U CANT DU THART!11" OOC rules."

Role-playing is cooperative, not competitive. If someone seeks to destroy my nation/planet/species via 10,000 n00ks, popping into existence beside my planet and causing my sun to go nova, or calling upon Wafhoker''erazz the Dark Lord to smite me from on high, my response is the same. I write them a polite TG explaining that we obviously have different views of how to have fun, and that I think we should start RPing with different people.

You enjoy misspelling my name, don't you?


My objection is that you're claiming to have a system that's 100% effective all of the time. Whenever I encounter a claim like that, my reaction is to start picking at it.


I don't claim my FTLi will stop everything, but it's method of operation is such that it'll probably stop most forms of FTL all the time. There aren't exactly a whole lot of variables.

Alot of things iRL will be 100% effective all of the time, barring some physical problem.

Hurm; think of it as saying, "You can't row your canoe up to my front door; my house is in the middle of an island." Sometimes, the right solution will be 100% effective all of the time.


As I've said several times, my ships travel through real space. If they enter a minefield, they'd hit mines.


Meh - I was speaking in general terms.

So a minefield would be able to hinder you; the same won't be true of most people.

I find mines to be useless. Space is like, omnidirectional. You could go over the mines and into the system. Unless you covered your system in mines up down left right east west and whatnot...

... then I salute you.

I would tend to blow up mines, given that they don't generally move (unless they're like loitering missiles, which is a MUCH better idea than static mines, even then..), and the only way to make them an obstacle is to blanket the area in millions of mines that would be painfully easy to shoot at.

Role-playing is cooperative, not competitive. If someone seeks to destroy my nation/planet/species via 10,000 n00ks, popping into existence beside my planet and causing my sun to go nova, or calling upon Wafhoker''erazz the Dark Lord to smite me from on high, my response is the same. I write them a polite TG explaining that we obviously have different views of how to have fun, and that I think we should start RPing with different people.


Correction: RP is both cooperative, and competitive.

Besides, I like having IC reasons backing my IC choices - it sure as hell wouldn't make sense to build a Battleplate, for example, if anyone with sufficiently accurate B5 hyperspace tech, like the Minbari, could destroy it by opening jump points inside it. If you can stop this from happening, the design continues to have merit.


FTLi, even perfect FTLi, is not a "flawless defence" - it's a limitation on mobility, and otherwise unstoppable FTL drives.

Kanuckistan,

I've added your name to Word. Sorry about that.

Some things will or won't work 100% of the time in an RP, but these should be things that the role-players can agree on. To put it in PnP terms, my GM never had me roll Dex to eat a meal, or Int+Mechanics to flush the toilet.

Yes, you can't row a canoe to the middle of an island. Canoes travel in water and an island is land. However, rowing a canoe to the middle of an island is not equivalent to piloting a FTL to your planet. Canoes travel through water. Space ships travel through space. The middle of an island is land. The space around your planet or your ships is... space.

Now that canoe is traveling through space that you've 'mudded.' I have no problem with you turning the space around your planet and ships into a swamp, but not solid land. The 'swamp' around your solar system can be very dense and nasty, that's fair. However, if you tell me that you can cause the space around your ship to permanently become dry land, and that if I send a thousand canoes to you that every single one of them will be grounded, then I object.

" Meh - I was speaking in general terms. "

I know you were. However, I have tried to keep this discussion focused on my ships because I know what they can do and how they work.

As Bolirog pointed out earlier, you've never encountered my race or my ships IC, yet you've claimed to be able to stop their FTL travel.

If 'most people' couldn't hit a minefield, that would suggest their drives are different than the Kesshite's. Given the dozens of choices available, you've somehow created a perfect defense against every one of them.

Kanuckistan:
"Correction: RP is both cooperative, and competitive."

Good point but...

Correction to your correction: The RPs you enjoy are both cooperative, and competitive. The RPs I enjoy are cooperative, but not competitive.

I have no problem with characters competing. But if one player has to lose for another to win, then I consider the RP a failure.


"Besides, I like having IC reasons backing my IC choices - it sure as hell wouldn't make sense to build a Battleplate, for example, if anyone with sufficiently accurate B5 hyperspace tech, like the Minbari, could destroy it by opening jump points inside it. If you can stop this from happening, the design continues to have merit."

I don't recall the Minbari ever opening a jump point inside a ship.

Nevertheless, in order for your IC 'choices' to be legitimate, you still have to have OOC willingness to compromise. FT runs the gamut from realistic to NFW-powerful. If I want to use Battle Star Galatia tech, then in order for that choice to be legitimate, those playing Star Trek tech need to be willing to not crack out the Borg cubes 'just because.'

"FTLi, even perfect FTLi, is not a "flawless defense" - it's a limitation on mobility, and otherwise unstoppable FTL drives."

Perfect FLTi is still perfect. It works 100% of the time verses every possible technology whenever the player wants it to do so. If my ships ever feel the need to ram yours, I will respect the effort that you've put into this technology and make sure they use sub-c speeds.

Again, this isn't about me trying to get a leg up on you. It's just that I dislike any defense/offence/whatever that works 100%

Kanuckistan,

I've added your name to Word. Sorry about that.


Eh, I was just joking with you - personally I'll just copy/paste the less straightforward names when I need to use them.



Some things will or won't work 100% of the time in an RP, but these should be things that the role-players can agree on. To put it in PnP terms, my GM never had me roll Dex to eat a meal, or Int+Mechanics to flush the toilet.

Yes, you can't row a canoe to the middle of an island. Canoes travel in water and an island is land. However, rowing a canoe to the middle of an island is not equivalent to piloting a FTL to your planet. Canoes travel through water. Space ships travel through space. The middle of an island is land. The space around your planet or your ships is... space.

Now that canoe is traveling through space that you've 'mudded.' I have no problem with you turning the space around your planet and ships into a swamp, but not solid land. The 'swamp' around your solar system can be very dense and nasty, that's fair. However, if you tell me that you can cause the space around your ship to permanently become dry land, and that if I send a thousand canoes to you that every single one of them will be grounded, then I object.


Sorry, imperfect metaphor - the canoe was the FTL, the person rowing was the ship. Hit land and it doesn't stop you, you just have to walk the rest of the way.

Likewise, my FTLi are primarily designed around methods intended to invalidate the approaches used to effect FTL, rather than brute force methods.



As Bolirog pointed out earlier, you've never encountered my race or my ships IC, yet you've claimed to be able to stop their FTL travel.

If 'most people' couldn't hit a minefield, that would suggest their drives are different than the Kesshite's. Given the dozens of choices available, you've somehow created a perfect defense against every one of them.

I never claimed I could stop every FTL drive out there, just that when a FTL drive was effected by my FTLi, it would, for most drives, always work. It's just that I've developed a broadly effective range of different FTLi effects - chances are, if I run into someone, it will work(afterall, there are only so many ways of doing a given thing), but we'd have to compare methods to know how they'd interact.

If your FTL drive operates by methods I haven't covered, then my FTLi has no right stopping you(I could name a half dozen off the top of my head that I haven't yet figured an appropriate counter for).

I thought I had already said as much earlier? Eh, no matter.


As a matter of courtesy, however, I'll typically accept the effectiveness of FTLi that has no right stooping me.

Nothing works one hundred percent of the time against everything. There are varying forms of FTL, many of which involve entering entirely seperate dimensions. You cannot claim to have something that works 100% of the time, against everything, even stuff you haven't encountered yet.

The sheer illogic of it is mind-boggling.

This was in response to Kesshite btw

Kanuckistan:
"Correction: RP is both cooperative, and competitive."

Good point but...

Correction to your correction: The RPs you enjoy are both cooperative, and competitive. The RPs I enjoy are cooperative, but not competitive.

I have no problem with characters competing. But if one player has to lose for another to win, then I consider the RP a failure.


Just because both sides would like to win, doesn't mean they have a problem with being defeated - afterall, it's not so much the destination as it is the journey.

God knows I've had fun getting my ass kicked in the past, even tho I was trying to win - hell, especially because I was trying to win.

:)

A couple questions:

One, Kesshite, do you mind explaining your WiS or whatever it was? I am just curious about it.

Two, I would like if someone could explain to me how exactly FTL weapons work exactly? Because I have an FTLi in mind that prevents faster than light weaponry and people from jumping around constantly, like, they fire a barrage at me, then activate their drives and repeat that same cycle.

Thanks.

Just because both sides would like to win, doesn't mean they have a problem with being defeated - afterall, it's not so much the destination as it is the journey.

God knows I've had fun getting my ass kicked in the past, even tho I was trying to win - hell, especially because I was trying to win.

:)

Again, I'm putting it down to taste. You and I just enjoy different things from RPing. I have no problem with characters winning and losing, but I don't like RPs were the players have to win or lose.

You won't exactly enjoy war then, will you? The RPing itself is a cooperative discipline which can, and often does, deal with competitive themes. Its just something you have to deal with. Normally there end up being winners and losers in most things

So, they don't ram at FTL speeds? As in one moment they are far away, the next they are breaching deck seven, hallway B?

A couple questions:

One, Kesshite, do you mind explaining your WiS or whatever it was? I am just curious about it.

Two, I would like if someone could explain to me how exactly FTL weapons work exactly? Because I have an FTLi in mind that prevents faster than light weaponry and people from jumping around constantly, like, they fire a barrage at me, then activate their drives and repeat that same cycle.

Thanks.


The WiF was just my take on FTLi. The Kesshite don't actually have any such thing.

My ships attack by ramming. My ships have FTL drives. They power their engines and try to go as fast as they can toward the largest gravity source they can feel that is non-kesshii or whatever they'd consider a non-/life-globe/.

In total, Veskaland has about 8,000 ships maxium in the Milky Way galaxy at any one time, including support ships etc. Does this sound like a resonable number?

In total, Veskaland has about 8,000 ships maxium in the Milky Way galaxy at any one time, including support ships etc. Does this sound like a resonable number?

It would depend on the types, size, armament, etc. etc. etc., as well as your nation size, which Im too lazy to look up >_>

Again, I'm putting it down to taste. You and I just enjoy different things from RPing. I have no problem with characters winning and losing, but I don't like RPs were the players have to win or lose.


Huh, I don't suppose you could elaborate on the player not loosing? I can only guess you mean pre-arranged outcome? From the context it sounds like you're worried about hurting peoples' feelings or something.

You won't exactly enjoy war then, will you? The RPing itself is a cooperative discipline which can, and often does, deal with competitive themes. Its just something you have to deal with. Normally there end up being winners and losers in most things

I enjoy fights. Large scale wars, especially space wars aren't my thing. I'd much prefer people throwing themselves at one another and blood being sprayed everywhere if there's going to be a battle.

However, you've ignored the difference between the character and the player. I have no problems with millions of Kesshii dying. I am not my characters.

It would, if all the ships were standard frigate sized or smaller, but even that is pushing it a bit. You wouldn't have much of a land army after allocating so many men and resources to the navy. I'd say its pushing it alittle.

EDIT: Post was aimed at Veskaland.

The players mind dictates the will of the characters. If you don't like competitiveness, your more likely to steer your nation and characters away from such confrontations. I myself love ground war, and favor it wherever I can over space war, as many will attest.

Players can't win or lose except how their characters win or lose. It's not like it generates crushing despair or joyeous elation. It's just another progression in the story.

The WiF was just my take on FTLi. The Kesshite don't actually have any such thing.

My ships attack by ramming. My ships have FTL drives. They power their engines and try to go as fast as they can toward the largest gravity source they can feel that is non-kesshii or whatever they'd consider a /life-globe/.

So, you arent at one spot then all of sudden, using FTl, are at my ships location, smashing through armor like paper?

Both... "speeds" destroy both ships utterly however. Resulting in a null battle.

So, they don't ram at FTL speeds? As in one moment they are far away, the next they are breaching deck seven, hallway B?

If they can, they will hit you at FTL speeds. As I've stated previously, an inversion drive doesn't require infinite energy and it the ship picks up negative mass the faster it goes.

On the other hand, if another player doesn't want to deal with FTL ramming, they just have to tell me and I'll say they ram at c.

Both... "speeds" destroy both ships utterly however. Resulting in a null battle.

Wow, how did that post come before Kessite if I posted it after he posted, wierd.

Wow, how did that post come before Kessite if I posted it after he posted, wierd.

Because the Jolt time server has the same sense of time as a blind cave fish.

The players mind dictates the will of the characters. If you don't like competitiveness, your more likely to steer your nation and characters away from such confrontations. I myself love ground war, and favor it wherever I can over space war, as many will attest.

Players can't win or lose except how their characters win or lose. It's not like it generates crushing despair or joyeous elation. It's just another progression in the story.

I never said I didn't like competitiveness. I said that I consider an RP were the players win or lose to be a failure. You'll also notice that the example I gave was the destruction of my nation/planet/species.

RPing doesn't generate crushing despair or joyous elation for you?

So, you arent at one spot then all of sudden, using FTl, are at my ships location, smashing through armor like paper?

I don't travel through hyperspace, if that's what you mean.

My ship senses yours; it tries to ram it as fast as it can. If you have your shields up, it probably hits the shields. If you have a bulkhead and can't move at FTL to dodge, then I probably hit your bulkhead. If I hit your bulkhead, I might pierce it.

According to Azaha, I'd destroy your ship utterly if that happened. That's not how I see things playing out, but if that's what *you* say would happen if I hit your ship at c or c+ speeds, then I have no problem saying they hit at sub-c.

And I'm not a guy.

So exactly how can the player loose, and how does this relate to trying to win/being competitive?

'cause the way I see it, the player only looses if they don't have fun.




Also;

Welcome to the internet, where men are men, women are men, and little girls are FBI agents.

I don't travel through hyperspace, if that's what you mean.

My ship senses yours; it tries to ram it as fast as it can. If you have your shields up, it probably hits the shields. If you have a bulkhead and can't move at FTL to dodge, then I probably hit your bulkhead. If I hit your bulkhead, I might pierce it.

According to Azaha, I'd destroy your ship utterly if that happened. That's not how I see things playing out, but if that's what *you* say would happen if I hit your ship at c or c+ speeds, then I have no problem saying they hit at sub-c.

And I'm not a guy.

Umm... Pretty sure that a solid object impacting at FTL would result in the "infinite energy release" required to utterly annihilate anything. This includes a Death Star, planet, or Patrol Cutter. FTL is bad for business, especially when considering impacts.

Kanuckistan:
" So exactly how can the player loose, and how does this relate to trying to win/being competitive?"

In any game, the player loses when a situation is achieved that they consider a 'loss'. In chess, it's losing your king. In soccer, it's having fewer points when the time finishes. In an RP, it's far looser concept. I keep on using the destruction of one's nation/planet/species as an example, but, in truth, if a player ever walks away with the feeling that they have lost and another player has won, then I see there as being a problem.

This maybe because the player feels this way has an unrealistic concept of the game. For instance, I once ran a Call of Cthulu game in which some of the players didn't quite get the genre of the RP. It wasn't until they saw how every player's character was being horribly slaughtered and/or rendered insane that they understood that survival was difficult to impossible, and that this was part of the 'fun.'

On the other hand, when one player constantly tries to beat another, regardless of the characters involved, then it's not the characters playing against one another but the players.

Umm... Pretty sure that a solid object impacting at FTL would result in the "infinite energy release" required to utterly annihilate anything. This includes a Death Star, planet, or Patrol Cutter. FTL is bad for business, especially when considering impacts.

If that were the case, I'd be exploding with infinite energy whenever I hit a hydrogen atom while rushing through space.

Umm... Pretty sure that a solid object impacting at FTL would result in the "infinite energy release" required to utterly annihilate anything. This includes a Death Star, planet, or Patrol Cutter. FTL is bad for business, especially when considering impacts.

Indeed, an "infinite energy release" would be nasty, what with the resulting sphere-of-doom expanding outward at the speed of light until it consumes the entire universe in exactly eleventy-bazillion years, give or take a week.


In this case, however, our friend seems to use fancy math to achieve FTL speeds without infinite energy.

If that were the case, I'd be exploding with infinite energy whenever I hit a hydrogen atom while rushing through space.

Guess I win then. We already know that hitting interstellar hydrogen(and various other shit) is bad for cfrac weapons. Why should the same not be true of unshielded ships? Or even ships whose shields impact with said shit.

Umm... Pretty sure that a solid object impacting at FTL would result in the "infinite energy release" required to utterly annihilate anything. This includes a Death Star, planet, or Patrol Cutter. FTL is bad for business, especially when considering impacts.

Actually, I'd think that impacting at any c+ speed would result in infinity+1 situations with regards to the energy produced.

I don't travel through hyperspace, if that's what you mean.

My ship senses yours; it tries to ram it as fast as it can. If you have your shields up, it probably hits the shields. If you have a bulkhead and can't move at FTL to dodge, then I probably hit your bulkhead. If I hit your bulkhead, I might pierce it.

According to Azaha, I'd destroy your ship utterly if that happened. That's not how I see things playing out, but if that's what *you* say would happen if I hit your ship at c or c+ speeds, then I have no problem saying they hit at sub-c.

And I'm not a guy.

I dont mean hyperspace, I mean going as fast or faster than light just to ram me. That's what I mean. But I think you solved that when you said you could go subfrac, which is normal speed I assume or something. Also, I did not call you a guy, so where that came from I don't know.

And if any ship collided with another, it's a pretty sure bet one or both would explode and be consumed in a fiery fireball.

Kanuckistan,

It is mathematically possible to go FTL in real space without infinite energy or gaining infinite mass.

If someone wants me to explain it, I will do my best. My ability to do so is limited by my lack of understanding when it comes to physics.

TSL,
I have no idea what cfrac is.

Though my ships have yet to explode when hitting hydrogen, feel free to wait in breathless anticipation for that to happen.

On the other hand, when one player constantly tries to beat another, regardless of the characters involved, then it's not the characters playing against one another but the players.


Regardless of characters, maybe, but when the situation calls for it, there's nothing wrong with trying to win, so long as you're not unfair about it.

Anything less wouldn't do the characters justice - they're fighting for their lives, afterall - and it helps add tension and suspense.


And, frankly, your definition of 'loss' seems kinda silly in this context - so long as you had fun, and the outcome didn't really upset you, then both players win. If you feel like you lost, as a player, and the other guy played fairly, then it's probally a sign that you're taking a game too seriously.

Telros,
Azaha referred to me as 'he.' Saying you're female online is like doing a sit-up, you have to do it repeatedly to get the effect you want.

If you don't like the math I use, I have no problem with hitting at sublight speeds.

It would depend on the size of the ships, yes? My smallest ship is 18 meters long. My biggest is a half-kilometer long ovoid, but it's used to colonize other worlds, it wouldn't willingly do something that would lead to its death.

Bryn Shander,

Oh? I thought special relativity only required infinite energy pass the speed of light. Once you're on either side of the c barrier, does it still require as much energy?

~edit~ Ignore that question. I misread your response.

I have no idea what cfrac is.



C-fractional.

Kanuckistan:
"And, frankly, your definition of 'loss' seems kinda silly in this context…"

In the context of an open-ended game, I can think of no other definition that matters.

Is there any way to write special characters and mathmatical equations via the forum?

In the context of an open-ended game, I can think of no other definition that matters.

While there is merit in that, I think you're taking it a little far - if you do your best to play fair and have fun, and are willing to comprimise when necessary, you shouldn't have to worry about upsetting others, especially as it's usually damn hard to gauge their feelings on the matter anyway, to say nothing of doing so acuratly.

In the end, it's only a game.


Besides, I was also reffering to your other definitions of 'loose' - I can loose a game of chess, have done my damnedest to win, but if it was a good game, and I enjoyed it, I still won. You seem to have this silly notion that trying to win somehow means that I'll take it badly if I loose, which is absurd.

Is there any way to write special characters and mathmatical equations via the forum?

You can always draw it in something like MS Paint, then post it on the net.

www.tinypic.com is a quick and easy temporary image host I tend to favor.

Hitting intersteller hydrogen isnt bad for my C fracs, thats only because well..its a Cfrac and you would need something like an anti static charge for it to work in the first place. After all sending super lead at 180 000 kms will blow up if it hits anything, and space for all its emptiness..isnt as empty as it looks.

I think more so the problem with this Cfractional argument is that people are trying to use real science to describe a weapon system that does not work with modern science. Just like most of the "science" problems in FT. Lets just put it this way, everyone who has FTL breaks the laws of physics, anyone who has FTLi mangles them even worse. As for FTL impacts, well I have seen FTL missiles and C+ cannons everywhere. Same thing it goes up against my Ubecht field and DEM armour and it doesnt do that wonderful FTL hibbedy jibbesy. Why because my Esoteric Hibbedy jibbedy, which follows not the laws of physics can counter the hit.

Thats what I think people are missing the most here..this is a game about writing. For instance in the constantine thread [I dont want to mangle it with my viewpoints anywhere but this thread, which is what its for] Solarin league is talking about tactics. How good his are and the like. To be honest that one little FTL jump getting you out of the way is great except for one slight problem. You never did take the first hits, it takes a little time to FTL, even if its half a second with Missiles screaming at you at 1.8 million kms, your not going to get away without having to take..some hits at least. They may not impact at that speed but they sure do move that fast. Thats how TFU used them. Also, Solarin, simply SAYING your in a better position doesnt make it so. You wrote nothing other then that, you wrote no movement, no maneuvering and as far as anyone else knows you have never, ever written your ships or presented them as extra agile and mobile. The only thing you write your ships as is very bluntly and without any real descriptions as simply well armed.

So why should anyone accept your ships as being super fast and agile when you have never once presented them as such. This is the problem, right now your big advantage is numbers TSL, and thats the only one you have over the rest of the people there, at least in my view of it. As for your massive C fracs, one must remember C fracs are VERY short ranged and can be intercepted in many, many fun ways.

Chess is not an RP. Chess is a zero-sum game. The purpose of chess is to try to win, something which can only happen if the other player, your opponent, loses. Battleship, Monopoly, and Football are also zero-sum games.

In an RP, there are other players, but there are only opponents if you choose to make it so. Whether someone wins or loses can only be decided by the way they feel, because there is no other way to define winning or losing. However, one could introduce a second non-RP game into the first; my PnP partners used to put wagers on certain events in the story.

As for not being able to gauge the other player's feelings - have you read this thread? Some of the OOC comments register a large amount of unhappiness.

I am taking it far because I've had to deal with friends of mine in tears over what has happened at the RP table. One of the biggest problems I encounter is players who feel the need to 'beat' other players. I'm not talking fifteen-year-olds. I'm talking about college age men and women. So yes, I maintain that if a player feels like *they* have lost, then there is a problem.

PS: I don't think you mean 'loose'

You can always draw it in something like MS Paint, then post it on the net.

www.tinypic.com is a quick and easy temporary image host I tend to favor.

Thanks. I usually use Imageshack, but their upload program has decided to ignore me.

No, shields don't stop weapons from working, and they don't stop 100% of a weapon's damage for an infinite amount of time. Which is what Kesshite's WiF would doAaaaaaaaactually, some shields (I.e. some takes on SW shields) do - they've a wattage threshold they can radiate off, and which one has to exceed with one's fire in order to break through. Inflicting wattage below this threshold could be done for all eternity - nothing would change.

If they can, they will hit you at FTL speeds. As I've stated previously, an inversion drive doesn't require infinite energy and it the ship picks up negative mass the faster it goes.A tad ineffective. What's responsible for causing damage when ramming something? The object's kinetic energy, of course. KE = 1/2 m x v^2.

As one can see, no mass, no KE.

You've negative mass. Therefore, you've negative kinetic energy (And momentum).

You lack the very thing that actually causes damage when ramming something. The object you're ramming on the other hand, doesn't.

My guess is that upon colliding, the two would balance out (If it's a frontal collision, anyway) - energy (And momentum) get transferred from the object you rammed to you, up until equilibrium is reached. For the object you rammed, this means that it slows down.

For you, this means that you're hit with, lets see... A 100 kton ship at .01 c would have a kinetic energy of 108 gigatons (Roughly seven million times the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb)...

Not pretty.

I strongly suggest using guns instead of ramming.

I find mines to be useless. Space is like, omnidirectional. You could go over the mines and into the system. Unless you covered your system in mines up down left right east west and whatnot...Modern landmines tend to have range, and are capable of reacting to a target within engagement range (Which goes well beyond 'Stepping on it'). I don't know about you - my spacedy anti-ship mines tend to have a maximum engagement range of thirty million klicks (Not that they hit very reliably over that distance, but still). W00t bomb-pumped gamma/ x ray lasers.

They would, admittedly, not be very useful when located in a system's oort cloud. But deployed where they are - most usually in the hill sphere of a planet -, they're kinda hard to avoid...

There's of course difficulties with detection, too - no sand to bury them under -, but depending on one's preferences, passive (Twinky - black body, G/EM conversion, heatsink, active only when needed) or active (EW - you'd be very lucky to see these tiny things when space is flooded with it) means to keep their location reasonably unknown are available.

About winning or losing: to me, if I lose a war RP that I didn't really intend to lose, than it IS a loss. My MT nation once lost a war with a nation that, on paper, wasn't as strong as mine. I had expected to win, or at least fight him to a standstill. I considered that a loss. I didn't make a big deal about it because I HAD overextended myself before engaging him, and he won fair and square, but it did interfere with some RP I had planned for the future that depended on that nation being a badass.

OTOH, it also opened a couple of other RP avenues, and we got in some good RPs of the repercussions before RL forced me to withdraw.

IMO, there IS "winning" and "losing" in RPs, but just like in RL competitions, both parties should be "adult" in how they handle it.

Hitting intersteller hydrogen isnt bad for my C fracs, thats only because well..its a Cfrac and you would need something like an anti static charge for it to work in the first place. After all sending super lead at 180 000 kms will blow up if it hits anything, and space for all its emptiness..isnt as empty as it looks.

I think more so the problem with this Cfractional argument is that people are trying to use real science to describe a weapon system that does not work with modern science. Just like most of the "science" problems in FT. Lets just put it this way, everyone who has FTL breaks the laws of physics, anyone who has FTLi mangles them even worse. As for FTL impacts, well I have seen FTL missiles and C+ cannons everywhere. Same thing it goes up against my Ubecht field and DEM armour and it doesnt do that wonderful FTL hibbedy jibbesy. Why because my Esoteric Hibbedy jibbedy, which follows not the laws of physics can counter the hit.

Thats what I think people are missing the most here..this is a game about writing. For instance in the constantine thread [I dont want to mangle it with my viewpoints anywhere but this thread, which is what its for] Solarin league is talking about tactics. How good his are and the like. To be honest that one little FTL jump getting you out of the way is great except for one slight problem. You never did take the first hits, it takes a little time to FTL, even if its half a second with Missiles screaming at you at 1.8 million kms, your not going to get away without having to take..some hits at least. They may not impact at that speed but they sure do move that fast. Thats how TFU used them. Also, Solarin, simply SAYING your in a better position doesnt make it so. You wrote nothing other then that, you wrote no movement, no maneuvering and as far as anyone else knows you have never, ever written your ships or presented them as extra agile and mobile. The only thing you write your ships as is very bluntly and without any real descriptions as simply well armed.

So why should anyone accept your ships as being super fast and agile when you have never once presented them as such. This is the problem, right now your big advantage is numbers TSL, and thats the only one you have over the rest of the people there, at least in my view of it. As for your massive C fracs, one must remember C fracs are VERY short ranged and can be intercepted in many, many fun ways.

The word "seconds" implies multiples, at the minimum, 2. The first hits were the only ones I took, if your ability to read had been sufficient to the task of actually letting you understand words like "shaken up" "badly battered" "minor damage", and the like, you would have known this.

I asay that my position(aka, behind him, out of his line of fire) is advantageous, because it is. Unless of course for some reason it's suddenly advantageous to be in front of someones heavy guns. Movement was unnecessary. They have yet to actually fight in any meaningful manner beyond trading potshots.

I have ALWAYS presented my ships as such, to the point of treating them more along the lines of fighter craft that full up starships. They do not sit there, they move in combat. When they move, they are both extremely fast, and extremely maneuverable.

Assuming you desire to play the numbers game, and your comment about the Sharlin indicates such, then you have to accept that ISDs are also stupidly fast and maneuverable. Since we must accept that, and since my ships are faster and more maneuverable than ISDs(demonstrated), we must then accept that my ships are both fast and maneuverable. You're attempting to discredit something that has at least 2 nations on YOUR SIDE accepting it. Possibly 3, depending on Abhs opinion. Now, if you intend to treat my fleet like the cardboard it isn't, I'll treat your ships like the bullshit they are and ignore them. Wonderful two way street. You don't have to accept my ships, but I don't have to accept you.

Der Angst:
"A tad ineffective. What's responsible for causing damage when ramming something? The object's kinetic energy, of course. KE = 1/2 m x v^2.

As one can see, no mass, no KE.

You've negative mass. Therefore, you've negative kinetic energy (And momentum)."

I said it picks up negative mass. I never said the total mass reached 0 or below, if that happened I'd stop existing. Hence, the comment about going anywhere, instantaneously but ceasing to exist by the time I get there.

Did you read my other posts in this thread or just that one?

As for guns, of course they're better than ramming. That doesn't mean the Kesshii have them.

In an RP, there are other players, but there are only opponents if you choose to make it so. Whether someone wins or loses can only be decided by the way they feel, because there is no other way to define winning or losing. However, one could introduce a second non-RP game into the first; my PnP partners used to put wagers on certain events in the story.


On the contrary, there are many ways to define winning and losing. It's just that player enjoyment, be it chess or RP, is the only one that ultimately counts.

This is, however, something of a tangent; my point was that you can go into a competitive RP convinced you're going to win, want to win, and play your assets as best you can to win, and yet, if you lose, still have thoroughly enjoyed yourself and be satisfied with the outcome. So, even if you're a little disappointed, you've still won as a player.

You seem to be asserting that one can't try and ICly win, end up ICly losing, and still have 'won' as a player. This is utter nonsense - it happens all the time. In fact, it's utterly normal and the expected outcome.



As for not being able to gauge the other player's feelings - have you read this thread? Some of the OOC comments register a large amount of unhappiness.


And I'm sure many of those people aren't nearly as upset as you suspect, while others that don't seem upset were quite so.

I didn't say that you couldn't gauge others' feelings, just that doing so reliably and accurately was nearly impossible, unless you're constantly outright asking(and even then, many won't be completely honest).




I am taking it far because I've had to deal with friends of mine in tears over what has happened at the RP table. One of the biggest problems I encounter is players who feel the need to 'beat' other players. I'm not talking fifteen-year-olds. I'm talking about college age men and women.


I'm not going to comment on this; I see the relevance, and can relate, but opening a discussion on this tangent will, well, open a full-blown tangentical discussion, and I scarcely have the time for this one.



So yes, I maintain that if a player feels like *they* have lost, then there is a problem.


*deletes his original, uh, 3 or 4 responses*

*make that 5(or 4; whatever)*

'kay, there's so much grey-scale here, I'm going to stop muddling around and address that aspect directly.

By lost, do you mean that they feel that the game wasn't worth playing? That the negative outweighs the positive?

After much consideration, this seems to be the only meaningful definition of 'player loss'. And, frankly, an outcome I'm reasonably sure I've never seen in over a decade of RPing.


PS: I don't think you mean 'loose'


Indeed. I make some bizarre typos when I'm tired or otherwise distracted. In this case, amazingly consistent, spellcheck-defeating typos.

I said it picks up negative mass. I never said the total mass reached 0 or below, if that happened I'd stop existing. Hence, the comment about going anywhere, instantaneously but ceasing to exist by the time I get there.But as long as it still does have mass - regardless of how much mass -, the horrible singularities and general absurdities upon FTL (Or very, very high STL) -collision with a lonely proton, and so on remain...

But anyway. Assuming that it works... Well, because it does (Suspension of disbelief on FTL/ STL collisions being raped beyond mortal comprehension aside), there's still the problem of said collisions causing mutually assured destruction. If I'm understanding this right... Ship gains mass (And energy) as it accelerates towards c, 'Hops' across the lightspeed barrier, and when accelerating further, sheds (Relativistic) mass- and energy-increase (One wonders where the energy goes... probably a band of EM in your trail, randomly hopping out of 'FTL', frequency decreasing the faster you go).

Alright. Comes about reasonably balanced - you can't go too fast, or you don't cause all that much damage.

Problem is, of course, that you still have the problem of, ummm... dying upon ramming something, due to the gigatonnage mentioned in the previous post.

I think I would have to agree with Der Angst here concerning the ramming of objects through FTL speeds. And besides the mathematics involved the very tactic of ramming is a foolish one to use right off, thats why the Greeks and Romans never did it until they ran out of arrows and catapult ammunition, and the enemy presented them with a absolute broadside target. Its just tactically unsound to do so in, as you said, the three-dimensional area of space. You may get lucky, like maybe once or so...but not too often unless its part of a rp's plot line.

As for guns, of course they're better than ramming. That doesn't mean the Kesshii have them.

*offers to sell the Kesshii guns*

I'm sure I could even come up with organic ones, if yer folk insisted. Would be an interesting challenge.

But as long as it still does have mass - regardless of how much mass -, the horrible singularities and general absurdities upon FTL (Or very, very high STL) -collision with a lonely proton, and so on remain...


I dunno - as soon as you start playing with mass-reduction, you can widdle the KE down to almost nothing if you want to.



If I'm understanding this right... Ship gains mass (And energy) as it accelerates towards c, 'Hops' across the lightspeed barrier, and when accelerating further, sheds (Relativistic) mass- and energy-increase (One wonders where the energy goes... probably a band of EM in your trail, randomly hopping out of 'FTL', frequency decreasing the faster you go).


I've always assumed that's a case of incomplete math, like how newtonian physics don't account for relativistic effects and the lightspeed barrier.

If you want bio-guns, Kesshii, I'm your man...

Ramming is a waste. You're just as likely to kill yourself as kill others (Admiral Dalaa presents...), and the way to circumvent ramming is pretty easy. Just through a pretty big projectile (my meteor cannon throws large flaming rocks...that'd do) in the way, or tractor-beam an asteroid over...and the rammer would certainly need to get outta the way fast to avoid blowing him/her self up on said object.

If you want bio-guns, Kesshii, I'm your man...



My aproach to figuring out how a weapon works looks something like THIS (http://i4.tinypic.com/166lqv6.jpg).

*hugs his Ripper Gun*

:)

Der Angst:
" Aaaaaaaaactually, some shields (I.e. some takes on SW shields) do - they've a wattage threshold they can radiate off, and which one has to exceed with one's fire in order to break through. Inflicting wattage below this threshold could be done for all eternity - nothing would change."

Interesting.
*pause*
*five minutes later*
I'll allow it.

" If I'm understanding this right... Ship gains mass (And energy) as it accelerates towards c, 'Hops' across the lightspeed barrier, and when accelerating further, sheds (Relativistic) mass- and energy-increase (One wonders where the energy goes... probably a band of EM in your trail, randomly hopping out of 'FTL', frequency decreasing the faster you go)."

Hmm, not quite. Alternatively, not as I understand it. I'm going to sit down and write out a post explaining how it works soup to nuts. Looking over my posts, I see me dribbling a bit of info here and there but not enough to be coherent.

"Problem is, of course, that you still have the problem of, ummm... dying upon ramming something, due to the gigatonnage mentioned in the previous post."

That's not a problem for me.

Whether it's a dramatic explosion or a nasty smack against another's shield, the kesshii ship will likely die. I leave it to the other side to tell me what happens to their ship and - 9 cases out of 10 - I doubt they'll tell me their battleship exploded when my 18-meter long spaceworm hit it.

I'd like to comment here that the Kesshite is only 50 years old. They don't *have* warships. They have scout and exploration vehicles that they use to travel to pre-spaceflight worlds to rape their biomass. Their only experience of fighting is with soldier breeds they send down to the surface.

While the ships have been evolved to live and function in space, that doesn't mean they can survive being hit by a photon torpedo or ramming something larger than they are at full speed.



Kanuckistan:
"It's just that player enjoyment, be it chess or RP, is the only one that ultimately counts."

There are games with objective win and lose situations. In chess, the win that actually counts is that of taking the king. Football riots don't occur because one club of players feels they lost, but because that club did lose.

However, reading your posts, I'd say we agree more than we disagree when it comes to this issue.

" *offers to sell the Kesshii guns*"

We’ve never interacted IC.

Thrashia:
"And besides the mathematics involved the very tactic of ramming is a foolish one to use right off…"

And the alternative is...?


Amazonian Beast:
" If you want bio-guns, Kesshii, I'm your man..."

We've never interacted IC.

To clarify, my ships don't have guns.

There are Kesshii soldier breeds with acid spit, focused sonic screams, and spine needles.

Another counter to ramming is, y'know, moving out of the way.

When you're going at relativistic speeds there's really no way for you to turn, and if you don't line up correctly you're not going to hit your opponent at all.

'Ramming Speed' means you are turning your ship into what basically amounts to a giant missile. Smaller vessels would not be subject to ramming, and if they can turn faster than you they will simply move out of the way and slag you.

I've yet to encounter a vessel that was smaller than a Kesshii spaceworm. In fact, the smallest vessel encountered by the Kesshii so far has been a Borg sphere.

Yes, I get it. Ramming is not the best attack. I already knew that. However, the Kesshii have little alternative at this point.

We’ve never interacted IC.



And for that shameful oversight I am indeed sorry.

However, that doesn't mean we can't plan for the future, and contact with some element or other of my civilization would be a trivial matter to arrange.

Y'all seem interesting folk. :)


To clarify, my ships don't have guns.

There are Kesshii soldier breeds with acid spit, focused sonic screams, and spine needles.


You don't have access to naquada, do you?



When you're going at relativistic speeds there's really no way for you to turn, and if you don't line up correctly you're not going to hit your opponent at all.



Common missconception; there is nothing stopping you from lateraly applying full thrust to your nominal course. You just have a smaller window of opertunity to impart delta V, 'cause you'll reach your target sooner. But the same applys to your target.

Sure, turning around is a pain, but matching evasive maneuvers shouldn't be much more difficult than if you were making a single, slower-yet-still-high-speed pass at an enemy you're trying to ram, from a distance you'll cross in the same amount of time.

I dunno - as soon as you start playing with mass-reduction, you can widdle the KE down to almost nothing if you want to.Well... You can reduce it for any given mass (Errr, pre-reduction)... But make a single proton fast enough and you get, lets say, kiloton yields.

... Okay, so this goes a bit far, given that the über-protons accelerated by god-knows-what manage mere singledigit joules, but still. In theory...

I've always assumed that's a case of incomplete math, like how newtonian physics don't account for relativistic effects and the lightspeed barrier.Ummm... Which bit? o_O

That's not a problem for me.

Whether it's a dramatic explosion or a nasty smack against another's shield, the kesshii ship will likely die. I leave it to the other side to tell me what happens to their ship and - 9 cases out of 10 - I doubt they'll tell me their battleship exploded when my 18-meter long spaceworm hit it.Ahhh... Well, when spacedy fireships are the intention, all's well I suppose.

On a side note, an eighteen-metre spaceworm is likely to carry somewhat more KE than the average projectile launched in a 'Close Range' (.1- 1 lightseconds) engagement, so I wouldn't exactly underestimate their destructive capabilities...

I'd like to comment here that the Kesshite is only 50 years old. They don't *have* warships. They have scout and exploration vehicles that they use to travel to pre-spaceflight worlds to rape their biomass. Their only experience of fighting is with soldier breeds they send down to the surface.It's not hard to think of guns in space. We've been doing it decades before the sputnik was launched.

Similarly, it's not at all hard to toss stuff out of one's cargo bay a few seconds pre-collision, and then moving off and watching the pretty fireworks.

I can understand (Sort of..) your desire to play without guns (For a change, if nothing else). But rationalising it is... Difficult ;)

Kanuckistan,

I've spent more time talking on this thread than I have RPing the last couple of days. I have no idea how interesting the Kesshii are IC. I think they're rather forgettable.

You're talking the Stargate metal, right?

There's some on the third and sixth planet of their solar system, as well as a stargate on the third planet. They're in the middle of terraforming the third planet, but the Kesshii don't practice metallurgy. If they came across it now, they'd just see it as a very dense, quartz-like mineral.

Ummm... Which bit? o_O


The part in current math where C+ velocities get things like negative energy and other funky things.



You're talking the Stargate metal, right?

There's some on the third and sixth planet of their solar system, as well as a stargate on the third planet. They're in the middle of terraforming the third planet, but the Kesshii don't practice metallurgy. If they came across it now, they'd just see it as a very dense, quartz-like mineral.

Shiny - I've wanted to get my paws on that stuff for years.

And I can see it being extreamly useful to you, once someone shows you how to use it.



You don't have zat guns, too, do you? :D

Der Angst:
" Ahhh... Well, when spacedy fireships are the intention, all's well I suppose."

They're an unfortunate side effect.

" On a side note, an eighteen-metre spaceworm is likely to carry somewhat more KE than the average projectile launched in a 'Close Range' (.1- 1 lightseconds) engagement, so I wouldn't exactly underestimate their destructive capabilities..."

Hmm, possibly. I assume that the average projectile in a space battle has a warhead of some sort within it that gives it extra 'umph'.

" It's not hard to think of guns in space. We've been doing it decades before the sputnik was launched."

As far as I know, no space shuttle or probe has had any armaments on it. Yes, we've launched weapon satellites, but that was to attack/defend against other groups on our planet. Kesshii have never been at war with other Kesshii.

" Similarly, it's not at all hard to toss stuff out of one's cargo bay a few seconds pre-collision, and then moving off and watching the pretty fireworks."

What cargo bay? As I said, my spaceships are living beings and my technology is organic. The Kesshii can't make fireworks. The ships excrete other kesshii ships, and it takes awhile.

Your suggestion is akin to, "Instead of slamming into this ship, you should find a bomb...somewhere...shove it into your [female body part], run as fast as you can to them, go into labor, give birth to the bomb, and then run off."

" I can understand (Sort of..) your desire to play without guns (For a change, if nothing else). But rationalising it is... Difficult ;)'

Except, I don't have a desire to play without guns. I have a desire to play the race that I created. You're putting the horse before the cart.

You're putting the horse before the cart.

Well, putting the cart before the horse tends to not work out too well.

You don't have zat guns, too, do you? :D

Not at all.

Here are some kesshii... (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=12374515&postcount=6)

Of all those pictured, only a /pawn/ could handle a gun, and they have all the emotional control of a freebasing weasel.

Well, putting the cart before the horse tends to not work out too well.

Umm...

Wow, do I feel stupid.

Of all those pictured, only a /pawn/ could handle a gun, and they have all the emotional control of a freebasing weasel.

I see you play Starcraft. I suppose I could suggest you look to the Tyranids for inspiration - the original Zerg!

http://www.coyotesdenonline.com/images/carnifex.gif

Voila. Here is a shooty biocreature for you. Yes, the things which look like freshly-exploded zits on his back? They be spore launchers (not unlike what, say, what a Hydralisk spits).

P.S. Isn't the 'Bishop' thing a hydralisk?

I don't play Starcraft, but the rook and bishop are both from that universe. I don't play Warhammer 40k, but the pawn and heidrophant are both from that universe.

I already have shooty biocreatures. As for the Carnifex, I am debating whether I should use him has my knight strain. However, part of me wants to have the original biomechanoid monstrosity for that role.

PS: Indeed, the bishop is a hydralisk.

The part in current math where C+ velocities get things like negative energy and other funky things.Well... *Shrugs* One typically avoids the problem by not being in relativistic reality when raping it, so the question never comes up... I rather like avoiding fucking with state-of-the-art knowledge (I could end up being wrong, after all), so it's all 'We don't know quite how it works, but it does!' - kinda like bronze-age societies having no clue about kinetic gas equations, while still building sailing ships.

What cargo bay? As I said, my spaceships are living beings and my technology is organic. The Kesshii can't make fireworks. The ships excrete other kesshii ships, and it takes awhile.

Your suggestion is akin to, "Instead of slamming into this ship, you should find a bomb...somewhere...shove it into your [female body part], run as fast as you can to them, go into labor, give birth to the bomb, and then run off."No, its akin to suggesting 'Maybe you should get a purse and carry a few stones with you...'

Except, I don't have a desire to play without guns. I have a desire to play the race that I created.Same effect. Don't be obtuse.

You're putting the horse before the cart.Yes, that's how it's usually done...

Yuuzhan Vong use organic tech, and they shoot globs of plasma and metal eating bugs at everything...

In the Starship Troopers movie there are bugs that shoot plasma balls from their asses as anti-ship weapons and others that spit napalm.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v186/Nightbane/The_More_You_Know2.jpg

I believe those were the same bug. They also used that plasma to accelerate asteroids to hyperspace but it was never explained how.

Der Angst:
" Same effect. Don't be obtuse."

Don't be rude.

We're not talking effect. We're talking motive. When you say, "I understand your desire to do X." I think I'm within my rights to point out that I have no desire to do X. Therefore, your assumption that I'm trying to rationalize my not having guns doesn't fly. Let's move the discussion to a different genre and see if you understand where I'm coming from.

***

Kesshite: I'd like to comment here that the Elves don't have war-dragons. Their kingdom is only 50 years old and they haven't raised any.

Der Angst: It's not hard to think of firebreath in fantasy.

I can understand (Sort of..) your desire to play without firebreath (For a change, if nothing else). But rationalising it is... Difficult ;)

Kesshite: Except, I don't have a desire to play without firebreath. I have a desire to play the race that I created. You're putting the horse before the cart.

Der Angst: Same effect. Don't be obtuse.

***

I have nothing against playing with guns; the Kesshii will get guns if they have a reason to desire them and the IC ability to do so.

The purse analogy is interesting, but a purse is something separate from your body. A kesshii ship is a single, living creature. For larger ships, kesshii it holds were typically grown within it. It can excrete smaller ships, but that takes time. It doesn't have 'hands' so it can't pick up something like an asteroid and hurl it toward another ship. It can't use a purse because there's no kesshii equivalent for a giant space purse.

Yuuzhan Vong use organic tech, and they shoot globs of plasma and metal eating bugs at everything...

There are numerous of examples of organic technology that allows ships to shoot beams and torpedos. The Shadow and Vorlon are another example.

I believe those were the same bug. They also used that plasma to accelerate asteroids to hyperspace but it was never explained how.

Nah, they were different.

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/miniature/detail.php?qsID=880&qsSeries=

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/miniature/detail.php?qsID=848&qsSeries=

Huh. Yer right... they looked kinda similar in the movie. Point still stands about using plasma for hyperspace tho.

Not at all.


I was joking. :p

Also, some of those links don't work.


As for not being able to handle a weapon, well, Kanuckistani biotech is excellent; a few geno-tweaks or an add-on, or maybe just a non-invasive neural interface...

If it ever comes to it, I've got the tools to enable.



Your suggestion is akin to, "Instead of slamming into this ship, you should find a bomb...somewhere...shove it into your [female body part], run as fast as you can to them, go into labor, give birth to the bomb, and then run off."




Your ships need food, don't they?

'cause I have this image in my head of a space-worm doing a relativistic pass while 'excreting' undigested food/space-dung at the enemy.

Of course, you could always develop a 'missile' breed that rides parasitically on the hull of your ships until needed.

Yep, I deleted some of the images and replaced them with others. I had decided to put the pictures in my FT factbook instead of posting them to the thread. Then I decided to go to bed before finishing the update.

Laziness, thou name art 'Kesshite.'

Spaceworms will burrow into an asteroid, expand themselves to create a seal, open up their 'mouths,' heat the minerals of the asteroid into a liquid, and suction the liquid into their body where it's metabolized. I've also described a few of their cousins floating around after a large battle absorbing the various organic and artificial debris.

Many of the explore ships depend on the kesshii within them to gather biomass from other worlds.

As the nukes impacted with the ships secondary emerald colored barriers of energy formed around the ships, absorbing the explosions and secondary radiation and sending them upward in a flash of light.

"What the hell was that?" Admiral Maxwell queried.

A dark figure with green eyes steps onto the bridge. "I've taken the liberty of having my followers place barriers up around the fleet. At the Emerald Emperor's request of course. He is pleased with your handling of this situation and wishes to inform you that he will be here soon along with the rest of the fleet he is rallying."

Ok, I have to ask, where the hell did that second shield came from? By the way you are saying, it seems to be magic, held up by these followers...and thermonuclear weapons deal a lot of damage, especially in their numbers, so I don't really know if a magical shield, made by people, would withstand it. Some should at least be dying from the strain of holding it up. Especially considering how many it would take to cover the ENTIRE fleet.

Also, I kinda shot a lot of missiles at you, I literally spammed you. You had around.....twelve ships. Are you saying they could deploy combat wasps enough to destroy 560? You would need a lot to take them out, especially with the little amount of ships you have.

Now, do you seriously need to bring in THAT many ships? It takes a while to gather ships and have them gather at a point to jump and arrive at the battle. Forty ships should take quite a bit. This battle has been going for maybe a minute or so, making it kinda hard to gather any ships on time. Also, if we start bringing in this many ships, it's going to turn into a number spam. At which point, I'm leaving. I brought in a few ships, as it made sense and I didn't want to number spam. Also, shouldn't your twelve ships be low on wasps, so the number deployed would be lower?

Also, I do believe you have 52 ships, 54 at most. You said you arrived with 4 command carriers, 5 battlestars, and 4 vio ravens, along with two medical ships. One battlestar was destroyed, leaving with four remaining. You gained reinforcements of 40 Vio Ravens, which would bring your fleet up to 52 combat ships, 54 total with the medical ships. Also 325....thats a large fleet, do you really need to have them inbound, though the time is appropriate.

If I am totally wrong, then feel free to smack me with a herring. Also, on a normal note, have you read the book series by Peter Hamilton, the Neutonium Alchemist and all that?

Science vs. magic is a rather tricky path, for anyone. science has a set of rules everyone agrees on. Magic, what form of magic is truer than the other? I agree with your statement, a Thermonuclear bomb, is a largescale weapon, and even a master mage would have trouble even keeping the shield up. Mage, being the neutral international term I will use for anyone with supernatural powers.

Now, on the magic side of things, it depends on both how many people, and how strong their powers, both individually and combined. Even maintaining a magic barrier is tiring, and the greater the attack, the more energy required to maintain it. A strong thermonuke would utterly shatter most barriers. But that shouldn't mean his entire side gets effected either.

For a standerd magic barrier, the most logical result would be a shattering of the barrier, but also lessend effect. How lessend, well, say he had no less than 100 standerd mages. these guys aren't very strong, but their capable of a good sized range of magic. Well, Then while yes the barrier should be shattered, its impact should be halved, like, say, the initial impact blast, minus 50%. in Ft, generally, Radiation can be cleaned up quickly, or shielded against, so it falls into irrelevency.

But, there are other factors involved.
What if these mages specialised in defensive magic?
When a mage specialises in a certain area, or element, or both even, they gain much more expertise in the field than a normal mage would.

Did a major character of his, who was also a Mage aid in the barrier?
Major characters generally, are stronger mages, like my Magi-Masters.
Generally, they have a lot of power, and a lot of experience, training, and knowledge to back that power up. If one of these cast a shield spell, generally speaking, it can last against quite a bit.

But, in order to better assist, I would need to know more about TEF's style of magic. I have been speaking out of my style, and my style and TEF's style probably differ. which is the entire problem behind magic in the first place. It lacks the universal system Science does.

I did figure that that question would come up and no it's not magic...Their powers are based on Green Lantern rings. I like the concept of the hero and adapted it into my national tech. These guys are my equivalent of the Green Lantern Corps. There are four placed on every ship in order to keep the Emperor in direct contact with the fleet. They utilize gauntlets that draw power from the crystal known as the Emerald Flame. These gauntlets are capable of creating hard light constructs of whatever they will into form in this case a barrier to absorb the nukes. This is only temporary as the charge on the gauntlets runs down like a battery so this is a stop gap to keep me from dying at this moment and time. I chose to use them like this rather than deploy them directly against you for the time being. I hope that's alright. I was just trying to be creative here.

As for the ships I have You're correct I did lose one Battlestar but I came in with 9 Vio-Ravens to begin with...I had twenty ships with forty more on standby which I just brought in so I have fifty seven combat ships...Which alters the numbers a little...I forgot I lost that Battlestar so Thanks for pointing it out. I'll go back and alter the numbers as such.

As far as the missiles go the combat wasps deploy sub munitions to detonate other combat wasps but I figured since your missiles broke up into multiple ones after being blocked that they could hit that way...I did take damage from the missiles and the rail guns and the lasers though...

As for the number of ships. We have over 5,000 of various classes in service in the Dominion. The Emperor communicated through the crystal to the Flame Weavers of the 325 closest ships and is having them come. The Dominion not being that big and our jump drives being based on Caprican technology and our Vio-Ravens having wormhole drives means it should take about 3 hours to gather everyone up. Mainly my reason for having so many is because I'm being attacked by 3 fleets of imperial tech which I'm getting my ass kicked by so far. If you want I'll alter the numbers...Your call.

And yes I have read the Reality Dysfunction...I'm wrapping up the Naked God now. If you want my people can start shooting white fire and possessing people every time a ship dies. Kidding. I think this covers everything if you have anymore questions feel free to ask...I could give you a screen name or something too if you'd prefer to do it that way.

I did figure that that question would come up and no it's not magic...Their powers are based on Green Lantern rings. I like the concept of the hero and adapted it into my national tech. These guys are my equivalent of the Green Lantern Corps.

So basicly what you're saying is that because my guns fire yellow megaparticle beams, you'd be completely fucked if we ever fought?

So basicly what you're saying is that because my guns fire yellow megaparticle beams, you'd be completely fucked if we ever fought?

Have you been reading comics lately? Green Lanterns arn't vunerable to yellow anymore.

Have you been reading comics lately? Green Lanterns arn't vunerable to yellow anymore.

I don't read DC because of all the stupid powers, weaknesses, and retcons.



Edit: Oh wow. Pime taradox.

Thanks for covering that Axis Nova. Now you have a reason to Bryn Shander. So there.

Would the same be true if everybody then decided to paint their ships yellow and 'dye' their weapons?

Edited: Phoo... thread moves fast...

I did figure that that question would come up and no it's not magic...Their powers are based on Green Lantern rings. I like the concept of the hero and adapted it into my national tech. These guys are my equivalent of the Green Lantern Corps. There are four placed on every ship in order to keep the Emperor in direct contact with the fleet. They utilize gauntlets that draw power from the crystal known as the Emerald Flame. These gauntlets are capable of creating hard light constructs of whatever they will into form in this case a barrier to absorb the nukes. This is only temporary as the charge on the gauntlets runs down like a battery so this is a stop gap to keep me from dying at this moment and time. I chose to use them like this rather than deploy them directly against you for the time being. I hope that's alright. I was just trying to be creative here.

As for the ships I have You're correct I did lose one Battlestar but I came in with 9 Vio-Ravens to begin with...I had twenty ships with forty more on standby which I just brought in so I have fifty seven combat ships...Which alters the numbers a little...I forgot I lost that Battlestar so Thanks for pointing it out. I'll go back and alter the numbers as such.

As far as the missiles go the combat wasps deploy sub munitions to detonate other combat wasps but I figured since your missiles broke up into multiple ones after being blocked that they could hit that way...I did take damage from the missiles and the rail guns and the lasers though...

As for the number of ships. We have over 5,000 of various classes in service in the Dominion. The Emperor communicated through the crystal to the Flame Weavers of the 325 closest ships and is having them come. The Dominion not being that big and our jump drives being based on Caprican technology and our Vio-Ravens having wormhole drives means it should take about 3 hours to gather everyone up. Mainly my reason for having so many is because I'm being attacked by 3 fleets of imperial tech which I'm getting my ass kicked by so far. If you want I'll alter the numbers...Your call.


Ehhh....I ain't into stuff like that usually, but you seem like a nice guy and don't use it like a fat kid uses candy. >-> Being creative is fine, I just didn't understand it much, hence my post here.


Thanks for altering the numbers. I know you didn't mean to, but hey, thats what obsessive minds are for. =P

I kinda dont get what you are saying with the missiles. I never said you didnt take damage, you did. Thats a fact.

I understand the fleet things. The reason being I understand bringing in reinforcements but, I dont want everyone to bring in huge numbers just so they can compete, you know? I don't want you to alter your numbers, it shouldn't be up to me. I merely made a suggestion.

Oh and Peter Hamilton owns! Glad to find someone else, FINALLY, that reads his books.
And yes I have read the Reality Dysfunction...I'm wrapping up the Naked God now. If you want my people can start shooting white fire and possessing people every time a ship dies. Kidding. I think this covers everything if you have anymore questions feel free to ask...I could give you a screen name or something too if you'd prefer to do it that way.

Hamalton rules. I read the Night's Dawn series long ago. It really sucked waiting for them to be released. The series is the reason I used Nanonics and a number of other things at the beginning of my nation.

Heh, nice. Well I am still reading them and I don't quite know how to use nanonics, so I don't use them....for the moment.

I am aware this is not an argument, but an opinion I am offering.

In the past few days I have noticed a trend in FT that is developing. An opposition of belief is forming between two groups of thinking and I believe it will be quite a sight if they ever meet.

I am not talking about the GFFA, the GE, or even the ESUS. I am talking about The Human Union (THU) and The Equal Rights Accord (ERA). You can locate them in the following two links.



The Human Union (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=535562)

The Equal Rights Accord (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=535753)


How large of fireworks might develop if they clash? Opinions anyone?

In my opinion, you can make a ship as powerful as you want. However, the greater its power, the greater its weakness has to be. For instance, my Avatar battlecruisers and Paladin dreadnoughts are devastating at long range against large capital ships and are near impossible to fully destroy due to their armor and shield schemes. However, both lack any real defense against bombers or other light craft once their shields are down and their subsystems are left vulnerable. The Longbow frigate can engage heavy and light ships effectively at any range, but has armor made of paper mache. Berserkers are heavily armored and can tear apart anything smaller than a destroyer, but have to close to almost point blank (in FT terms) to fire. All my ships pack advanced technology, but I don't have very many.

I always build weaknesses into my ships in the interest of balance and to make a good RP.

[...]
How large of fireworks might develop if they clash? Opinions anyone?

Much (http://pdphoto.org/jons/pictures4/fireworks_1_bg_070404.jpg) bigger (http://braino.org/me/wp-content/0607_fireworks_green.jpg) than (http://www.firebirdents.co.uk/images/fireworks3.jpg) these. (http://www.fireworks.co.uk/firework_photographs/jubilee-fireworks2005/images/jubilee-fireworks_0214.2.jpg)

I'm hoping for lots of nice fleet-shredding explosions, myself. This has the potential to be a true clash of ideologies, in a way that the more purely political alliances are hard-pressed to manage. I think there's the potential here for everything from repeated battles over particular planets and groups to small clashes between spies and such, with politicians and diplomats yelling at each other for good measure.


~~~~~
Yeah, I agree that balance is critical. Virtually anything can be acceptable as long as it has balancing characteristics, be they some fatal flaw in its defenses or the fact that it's too expensive and time consuming to build for it to be used in anything approaching large numbers. Balance, and a willingness to compromise with the other players involved.

Honestly, the ERA would apeal to me more OOCly but ICly, Ta'Nar consider themselves to be superior but know that attitude would make it hard to interact so they hide it. When not around anyone who might hear them, they refer to other races as meatbags.

That means I would assist the ERA before I would even consider the THU. I would then gloat about having to help the ERA to myself.

OOC: Nation size has nothing to do with tech-level, besides, if the Empire decides to go with conventional warfare I wasn't planning on utilizing any "planetkillers"... they ruin the fun if u ask me...


Discuss! :P

Discuss! :P

I suppose it's a matter of perspective. Every nation has to start off with a tech-level of some kind, otherwise every nation would have to RP its development from the earliest human societies to whatever level of technology they wanted to play.

Vescopa, for example, has started out (and largely failed, it seems) extremely primitive, comparatively speaking - nuclear fission power plants, xenon ion drives, railguns, no magical energy shielding, no FTL... it takes them two-thirds of a year to traverse their own solar system. In other words, aside from the fact that they are aliens, they're probably closer to PMT in the grand scheme of things. And yet, other FT nations start out with advanced technologies such as FTL, particle beams, magical-teleportors-of-doom, etc.

Where is the line drawn, exactly?

EDIT: Sorry if that's not the point you were referring to. If it was the planet killers bit, I don't really have an opinion - they should be reserved for plot devices I think. As to their feasibility... any sufficiently powerful explosion could destroy a planet, it is just a case of generating that explosion.

I will add my $0.02

While we are not really limited to tech level by the Mods, we are limited by what our population can support. Our NS population is basically our size. If you have a nation that is smaller than another then by an extension of logic you can afford less than the larger nation.

It's all relative.



I have 150 ships under my command, 2 of which are essentially big-ass guns capable of taking out any planet or deathstar, while "planetkiller" bombs are onboard all of my 150 ships.



Now, 150 ships full of "planetkiller bombs" must cost one hell of a lot of your resources in addition to those two ships that are just "big-ass guns". This is in addition to the rest of your nation's military.

Also, having all your ships capable if destroying worlds and yet you hide yours by making them "secret" so nobody else on NS knows reminds me of another player who tried that and ended up getting IGNORED alot. He eventually ended up getting banned but that was for other reasons that will not get discussed here. Ask about the fate of SQ

I suppose it's a matter of perspective. Every nation has to start off with a tech-level of some kind, otherwise every nation would have to RP its development from the earliest human societies to whatever level of technology they wanted to play.

Vescopa, for example, has started out (and largely failed, it seems) extremely primitive, comparatively speaking - nuclear fission power plants, xenon ion drives, railguns, no magical energy shielding, no FTL... it takes them two-thirds of a year to traverse their own solar system. In other words, aside from the fact that they are aliens, they're probably closer to PMT in the grand scheme of things. And yet, other FT nations start out with advanced technologies such as FTL, particle beams, magical-teleportors-of-doom, etc.

Where is the line drawn, exactly?

EDIT: Sorry if that's not the point you were referring to. If it was the planet killers bit, I don't really have an opinion - they should be reserved for plot devices I think. As to their feasibility... any sufficiently powerful explosion could destroy a planet, it is just a case of generating that explosion.



It's sort of a combination of both points. What is acceptable for a nation to have right off the bat? Is it ok for a nation to waltz in and claim to have a planet-killing fleet?

I personally think that size, being directly related to population, matters in terms of how much of something you have, especially something as plot-devicey as planet-killing weapons.

It's sort of a combination of both points. What is acceptable for a nation to have right off the bat? Is it ok for a nation to waltz in and claim to have a planet-killing fleet?

I personally think that size, being directly related to population, matters in terms of how much of something you have, especially something as plot-devicey as planet-killing weapons.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by 'planet killing' too - a Vescopan warship could probably make an Earth-sized planet's surface *somewhat* unpleasant to live on with its nuclear torpedo complement alone. But if we're talking about something like a Death Star... well then, yeah (though personally I don't think *anybody* here has a population large enough to build a metal ball the size of a moon... but suspension of disbelief and all that is necessary in most things we do here).

And with the other point, a five million nation probably couldn't spare the resources necessary to research and develop faster-than-light travel, nor a Death Star. Yet they invariably have them. Perhaps one could explain them away by saying they are foreign imports, or that their people are the remnants of a cataclysmic war... something like that. At the end of the day, it's all about what other players are prepared to accept, I think. You can roleplay with whatever you want, but if nobody will pay any attention to you... you won't have much fun (at all).

I suppose it depends on what you mean by 'planet killing' too - a Vescopan warship could probably make an Earth-sized planet's surface *somewhat* unpleasant to live on with its nuclear torpedo complement alone. But if we're talking about something like a Death Star... well then, yeah (though personally I don't think *anybody* here has a population large enough to build a metal ball the size of a moon... but suspension of disbelief and all that is necessary in most things we do here).

And with the other point, a five million nation probably couldn't spare the resources necessary to research and develop faster-than-light travel, nor a Death Star. Yet they invariably have them. Perhaps one could explain them away by saying they are foreign imports, or that their people are the remnants of a cataclysmic war... something like that. At the end of the day, it's all about what other players are prepared to accept, I think. You can roleplay with whatever you want, but if nobody will pay any attention to you... you won't have much fun (at all).

The GE, as an alliance, has a single Death Star :P

The GE, as an alliance, has a single Death Star :P

Well, there you go then!

The GE, as an alliance, has a single Death Star :P

Well, there you go then!

EDIT: Jolt is having its daily spaz again...

I agree, nation size has nothing to do with tech level. However, I tend to judge whether your tech is superior to MINE depending on a combination of population and fleet size (going by Chron's whole "1000 ship" thing with a bit of Anime Ninja syndrome thrown in). So, if you want ten thousand ships at 5 million, they're pretty much going to be cardboard when compared to, say, mine (roughly 1k ships at 6 bil).

As for planet-killers and other superweapons, I don't really have a problem with small nations having them. As long as they're kept in the plot-device realm where they belong, there's nothing inherently wrong about possessing them.

I'd say since technically for FT you can basically come up with w/e you want...just agree oocily on things before the rp starts...

Hardly reasonable. You ought to have one set idea and not have to compromise with people for every different RP. I have no problems with accepting most things...Except Gods directly meddling in this plane, or techwank or numberwank....But smaller nations have restrictions before they get bigger, and that includes what they throw around.

It's like how you don't build up a significant nuclear arsenal in MT until you have more pop/resources/budget etc to support it

I'd say since technically for FT you can basically come up with w/e you want...just agree oocily on things before the rp starts...

I agree, nation size has nothing to do with tech level. However, I tend to judge whether your tech is superior to MINE depending on a combination of population and fleet size (going by Chron's whole "1000 ship" thing with a bit of Anime Ninja syndrome thrown in). So, if you want ten thousand ships at 5 million, they're pretty much going to be cardboard when compared to, say, mine (roughly 1k ships at 6 bil).

As for planet-killers and other superweapons, I don't really have a problem with small nations having them. As long as they're kept in the plot-device realm where they belong, there's nothing inherently wrong about possessing them.

I have a bit of an issue with that fleet size thing, to be honest. The size of any fleet has more to do with internal and external politics and funding than anything else - it seems to me that it's the fact that these sorts of things aren't generally roleplayed in FT is what necessitates the whole '1000 ships per billion people' guideline. It's handy to have a 'guide', but... things should really be judged on an individual basis. Vescopa has a grand total of four warships (they did have five, but... one blew up), but it would probably take all of them combined to be a threat to a single capital ship from another nation. Even if their introductory thread ever finishes, they still won't have more than twenty or thirty ships for a while. For a real world example, just compare the navies of China and America...

You ought to have one set idea and not have to compromise with people for every different RP.

I like to think that it's judged on a per-roleplayer basis. If a five million strong MT nation can come up with a believable and well-done means of having nuclear weapons... then so be it. Israel roleplayed them well and nobody ignores them!

I didn't really come up with that rule, but it is a nice guideline. I happen to have a bit less than that. Most of my fleets are transports anyways, moving troops from one war-zone to the other...

Because I'm a ground war addict...

I use a simple rule that bases the number of ships that my people currently possess. I take into account population, general level of technology (resource extraction, refinement and construction), how cohesive (collectively speaking) my race is and the actual number of systems I currently inhabit.

Generally speaking, few ships will be over the 1km size and over 90% (not including small craft) will be under half that. It should be noted that even the largest most formidable warship can only be at one place at any given time - something that few people seem to take into account during RP's.

Heh. I always take that last bit into account, as I'm always trying to figure out which ship or fleet to send where and who have I sent off on Jedi missions and so on. It's a drag sometimes, but it injects a sense of realism in an otherwise unrealistic setting.

And then I make the universe explode due to a reality allergy, :p.

Germany has more capabilities in the department of war than Africa ever could. Size is irrelevant on its own. Even with purchasing power: is India richer than America? Nope.

Course, each member of $_nation could be a billionaire playboy or a demi-dog of unbelievable power, so population becomes less of a yardstick of power when each individual citizen is as far away from "human" as Carrot Top is to humor.

Probably best just to write and not jump into a thread thinking "I'm so awesome!" with ships that only exist in your imagination.

Realistically, the bottleneck for number of ships in FT would tend to be crew and not actual number of ships. Unless you need some sort of rare handwavium element for parts of your technology, there's plenty of raw materials floating around in space, so assuming moderate amounts of automation in manufacturing and resource collection, it shouldn't be all that hard to build ridiculous numbers of ships.

I've always thought the size = power thing was a red herring in FT-- there's just too much variation. The stuff displayed on an NS nation page is not really relevant to FT RP at all-- how could it be? The game was not designed with RPing interstellar empires in mind.

That being said, I RP the FT version of Axis Nova as having a somewhat small population comparatively, and as for ship numbers, they're more or less arbitrary. I don't expect to need every ship my nation has in one place at once, so it really doesn't matter how large the fleet is in total.

Thing is, I don't use a crew at all. So technically, I could just have an infinite horde of uber-powerful ships at my disposal if we just went with the resource bottleneck argument. Which, while more realistic, isn't exactly much fun for anyone.

Thus why things should be done in proportion. Even assuming you have a gigantic empire and a huge spacefleet (I'll use Unified Sith as an example here), you are not gonna be able to concentrate all of your military power on one single opponent at a time. The more stuff you control, the more ships and manpower you need to devote to keeping it secure and so forth.

While we are not really limited to tech level by the Mods, we are limited by what our population can support. Our NS population is basically our size. If you have a nation that is smaller than another then by an extension of logic you can afford less than the larger nation.This depends entirely on what bottlenecks limit your economy (Available labour, for one). With a sufficiently high developed technology, some bottlenecks go bye-bye, and you get GSVs floating past you, supporting 100k-strong planetkiller fleets with a population of, erm, one.

And really now. With civilisations capable of mass-producing stable neutronium, building ringworlds for shit & giggles, chucking neutron stars over interstellar - if not intergalactic - distances, and utilising energies rivaling that of stars, as is seen aplenty in NS...

They should damn well have the means of cutting out the 'Labour' (And, for that matter, the 'Money') bottlenecks. Balanced this is not, but logical? Definitely.

Concerning the Jurai thread, I have edited said posts thus restricting myself to 1 single "superweapon". When I mentioned my ships having "planetkilling bombs" on board, I ment that each ships has one single large anti-matter bomb which can make a planet rather unhospitable due to secondary as well as primary effects that would follow a detonation, thus not "kill" the planet in deathstar-type of way... anyway, I now consider the argument closed.

As for my nation's capabilities, I tend to support Idiran's argument. I mean, once a nation reaches a point of nanotechnological capability together with replication possibilities and almost unlimited power (thanks to dimensional tech), it kinda steps out of certain restrictions, like my nation has; small robots build bigger ones, which build even bigger ones, which build everything from ships to battle-mechs to what not.

Chron, the GE also has the galaxy-gun, ecplise destroyers etc...

Oh, and Balrog, dunno which thread I read ur post on, but I apologize for my not RPing spy-operations; I didn't realize that was necessary...

I've never really cared about Sith's arsenal. I'm very selfish by comparison :P

What the heck is a galaxy gun?

A giant space-gun that fires hyperspace capable missiles to destroy distant worlds and inspire fear under the rule of the Galactic Empire.

I prefer orbital bombardment, virus-bombing etc, when I kill worlds.

And I prefer invading and having a nice conquering over any other option :D

A giant space-gun that fires hyperspace capable missiles to destroy distant worlds and inspire fear under the rule of the Galactic Empire.

In other words, it makes for a nice "plot device" - nothing more. Because if anyone claims to have destroyed one of my inhabited worlds in this manner, I'll promptly ignore it.

I prefer orbital bombardment, virus-bombing etc, when I kill worlds.

I prefer the second option - very efficient...

And I prefer invading and having a nice conquering over any other option :D

This is fun too as it opens up good possibilities for RP's. And after all, isn't Rp'ing is what its all about?

Indeed it is, and it's what I aspire to do. Craft worlds and stories and characters

Thus why things should be done in proportion. Even assuming you have a gigantic empire and a huge spacefleet (I'll use Unified Sith as an example here), you are not gonna be able to concentrate all of your military power on one single opponent at a time. The more stuff you control, the more ships and manpower you need to devote to keeping it secure and so forth.

Thing is, I don't have a gigantic empire. I own about twenty planets, of which four or five are inhabited. Heck, I still use my NS population, as I don't really see the need for a bigger one. And I could STILL mass-produce GSV-level ships in the billions if I felt the need, due to lack of crew and the ease of harvesting raw materials. As this would just be silly, and boring to write about, I don't, and rather expect others to follow suit. Thus the whole "1000 ship" argument.

Thing is, I don't have a gigantic empire. I own about twenty planets, of which four or five are inhabited. Heck, I still use my NS population, as I don't really see the need for a bigger one. And I could STILL mass-produce GSV-level ships in the billions if I felt the need, due to lack of crew and the ease of harvesting raw materials. As this would just be silly, and boring to write about, I don't, and rather expect others to follow suit. Thus the whole "1000 ship" argument.

So what you're saying is... your country suffers from mass unemployment?

Technically, sure. Although it's the same way the Culture suffers from unemployment: No suffering involved. With nearly all of your needs provided by an omnipotent, omniscient AI, you only really need a job if you want one. Sorta like the Matrix gone right.

Even if the resident deity didn't interfere in the economy, there wouldn't be much harm from the lack of a military-industrial complex (well, one with civilian input). Several countries IRL don't have much of one, or lack one completely, and still have reasonably powerful economies.

The debate over tech-size-power is almost something that can't even be debated due to the nature of FT.

[Ex: Maybe SW says it took a galactic empire to build the Death Star, but then go to some other Universe like the Ender's Series and the planet Earth has the Dr. Device to kill a planet.]

However, it is completely different to argue whether it is logically possible and whether it should be accepted. While I would say it is completely possible to have uber-whateva in logical terms, I would also contend that newer nations should not attempt to match older ones in power, etc.

Indeed it is, and it's what I aspire to do. Craft worlds and stories and characters

This would be the precise reason why I have made a "mysterious incident" lead to the disappearance of my FT nation, and now have only 1000 people and a single ship to RP.