NationStates Jolt Archive

This will be the OOC Thread for "The Lost Legacy” Thread. The IC Thread can be found HERE (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=14429827#post14429827).

I am starting a Thread where a completely automated shipyard is discovered by some nameless trader and rumor quickly travels about the wonders it held. The shipyard is deserted and like I said, completely autonomous meaning all you have to do is insert the schematics of a vessel into the computer and it will begin to use its industrial size replicators to create the ship.

There are resource bins with enough in storage for ten normal vessels (200 to 400 meters) or one huge ship. If you put in schematics for fighters and drones the appropriate number can be requested. If you do not have schematics, you can also activate the scan feature to sample a vessel to make a copy and store the readings as a schematic. It will not instantly produce the vessel, you will have to retain possession of the shipyard for a day before production would turn out the first normal size ship. Larger vessels take longer and of course small things like drones and fighters might take several minutes to an hour depending upon their mass.

What does this have to do with you? If you locate the shipyard and can beat off others who are also looking for it then you can try to claim it. After resources are gone, you can feed it raw matter from asteroids and it will process the material into more resources and store it internally for later usage.

I want a bloody battle to start over possession of this alien machine. I want to see how many people will try to gain possession of it and how long people can retain hold of the shipyard before someone else can take it away.

Who is interested in claiming this artifact? Post your interest below and after I get a few, I will make the IC Thread.

Sounds like a good idea.
Not sure how my little Valiant class will do but, I'll take part in it

Sounds interesting, reminds me of that one mission in 40K. Any limit on what to bring? Also, do we just jump in, giving a little intro about how we heard the rumor and whatnot?

Sure, why not? Been looking for something with fleet action lately. Not that I really need another giant fabber, but hey, it's shiny.

If we can keep this nation to nation, I'm in.

I'll give it a go.

I am only providing an object of desire for others to fight over. I will not send in any of my fleets.

As far as other players, bring in what you think you might need. Remember, this would be priceless as one of your resources and deadly in your enemies hands. Imagine if your enemy could replace a lost ship in days instead of months.

I will type up the basic start and you can post how you heard about the rumor and your searching for the artifact. Then you can bring in your fleets once you discover it and find others trying to claim it too.

Or something like that.


I just want to have fun.

I am only providing an object of desire for others to fight over. I will not send in any of my fleets.

As far as other players, bring in what you think you might need. Remember, this would be priceless as one of your resources and deadly in your enemies hands. Imagine if your enemy could replace a lost ship in days instead of months.

I will type up the basic start and you can post how you heard about the rumor and your searching for the artifact. Then you can bring in your fleets once you discover it and find others trying to claim it too.

Or something like that.


I just want to have fun.

Just out of interest, if you could put the schematics of the shipyard in would it make another?

already have something like this, but as someone else said. Its shiny..
So expect the F&D federation to show up.

No, the shipyard would not fit within itself. It is not a TARDIS, and even that would cause the universe headaches.

If you know anyone who might be interested in joining send them a link.

I started the IC Thread. It can be found here:

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=14429827#post14429827

Just out of curiousity, can it be destroyed/damaged, and if damaged, does/can it repair itself? If people will be fighting in/around/on this thing, it's likely to get damaged, no?

That means you will have to be careful for you reallt have no idea if you might damage it or not. if you are trying to win the prize, be careful so you don't break it in the process.

As we don't hang out in the same circles as most of the rest of the galaxy's sentient life, rather than pick up on the rumour in a tavern we claim to have found the artifact by following the damaged freighter with probes. If there's some reason that this is improbable or unlikely, let me know so I can change it.

Whatever works, just as long as everyone plays nicely in their bloodshed and warfare.


EDIT:

One thing I would like to mention. You might want to indicate the type of Interdiction you are employing. Not all FTLi works on all drives the same way, they are type specific.

The Star Wars Interdiction works by using gravity wells to mess with the nav computers of the ships so the safties prevent the ship from jumping. Now, if you had a gravity drive, the gravity well interdiction would not bother them. That is just an example, I bet you can think of others if you really wanted to.

The three "black bubbles" that just popped into system are the ONV Mind Like a Steel Sieve and the ONV Monad, both (or all three, depending on how you look at it) being Arachne IVs (http://wiki.esusalliance.co.uk/index.php?title=Arachne_IV_Battle_Cruiser). Obviously not noticed yet, given that they're moving fast enough to almost be standing in their own images. They should arrive about half a second after they're first visible.

Also, since they'll be passing that message you sent, Tenuria, care to provide a translation? After all, Sieve and Monad are hardly limited to humanoid senses.

Also, expect Gracie to be trying to crack that message. She's a damn good computer, and as Bal knows, rather intelligent and capable of hotlinking with other Gracies for help.

Very true... on both accounts.

The translation is more or less:

"Greetings. We are the [nation] Tek'atje, here in this system on a mission of peaceful exploration. What is your purpose here?" (The apostrophe, by the way, is a sort of click, not a glottal stop or some random punctuation thrown in to make the names look more alien.)

I'll use this thread to post translations of any other messages or words not explicitly translated ICly, as well.

One thing I would like to mention. You might want to indicate the type of Interdiction you are employing. Not all FTLi works on all drives the same way, they are type specific.

My FTLi works by preventing anything from traveling faster than light within the range of the field. Likewise, hyperspace jumps travel at the speed of plot, and have a range of however many light-years I can get away with with what is essentially scavenger tech.

Less facetiously, FTLi was designed primarily to protect the Damalgians from other factions of Damalgians, most of whom use hyperspace as FTL travel. As a result, hyperspace engines do not work within the range of the field, and attempting to make a hyperspace jump into the field results in "coordinates not defined" messages. It is most powerful against hyperspace travel, but also fairly useful against other "overlay dimensions" like slipspace or subspace, moderately useful against spatial distortion like wormholes and warp drives, and not very useful against travel through parallel dimensions like the Immaterium. As the field gets stronger the closer you get to the source, however, it also grows more effective against other means of FTL. Hence why we brought it, as it prevents anyone else from showing up right next to the artifact (a single interdictor with a range of 1 AU isn't very useful in combat, which tends to occur at much longer ranges).

Yeah, so I know I didn't actually explain all that much. See the first paragraph.

@New Dornalia: Translation of the message directed towards your ships: "Attention alien ships, please slow down and depower any weapons, you are approaching a Damalgian research zone; failure to acknowledge this message may cause trouble for you."

Consider me interested. I'll have a post up soon. Good to see you again Bal.

Might consider doing it quickly, or at least having it occur chronologically before my next post: I'm going to be throwing up a somewhat larger (a couple of hours instead of 8 minutes) FTLi field in my next post. I use a "reality hardener", which pumps energy into the local fabric of space, making it exceedingly more difficult for vessels to either warp reality (wormholes, foldspace, warp drives) or enter or leave it (hyperspace, slipstream, subspace, Immaterium, etc.). A large enough vessel can usually still break through, but will typically use enough power to render itself defenseless.

That, and the gravitic impellors on the Arachnes (to say nothing of their KK-drive equipped SCCAMs and drone fighters) have a gravity well big enough to shift a small moon in its orbit, which will interfere rather nicely with hyperdrives.

@Otagia: The "slow down and power down weapons" was directed at ND, not you; I'd argue that you couldn't have intercepted it or something, but meh, it wasn't particularly well encrypted anyway.

Actually, my main issue is: Eight light-minutes. 0.999c stated velocity. Half a second of travel time??? I mean, unless you were speaking relativistically so what feels like half a second on board your ships lasts a little over eight minutes for my stationary onlooker. Or something.

Well, you did mention noticing heat from their arrival, and since they're literally half a second behind their own light after eight minutes of travel...

Anyway, apologies about the message thing, will edit post appropriately. EDIT: While maintaining the coherency of your latest post. :D

I might jump in.

Thankfully not with the Mekantans. ("Darkship has arrived. Love is over.") Probably with the Tsthathi. I haven't used them much. They're just sort of... there.

Alternately, Shivans.

Well, you did mention noticing heat from their arrival, and since they're literally half a second behind their own light after eight minutes of travel...
We have probes, about 20 minutes out, doing our sensor work. And FTL sensors are usually assumed to be immune to FTLi for some reason. *shrug* I'll leave it.


Anyway, apologies about the message thing, will edit post appropriately. EDIT: While maintaining the coherency of your latest post. :D

Don't worry about it. We can just say you were in the way of the transmission and it accidentally hit you as well as ND, or something. <.<

I'll detail what happens regarding the shell hits when I get more info on them.

Hmm I'd be interested in Joining but Ima have to create an FT factbook now lol

The "shells" are actually just Shinigami Avatars with a boring attachment. They're actually hitting with virtually no energy due to onboard inertiics in the borer, but the attachment uses a mild conversion field to cut/melt a hole through hulls. Was going to detail such in my next post, but I think I'll wait for you to decide whether or not defense systems just vaporized them...

My main FT NS (or the billions of voluntarily unemployed and Anonymous) wouldn't have interest. But it doesn't mean I'm not interested OOCly, and considering I still try to push this Turtledove-like idea no matter how I lost interest in furthering the FT Intro, I'd like to bring the Poland in Space! to the game.

I've decided to NOT make the Artifact invulnerable so people have to be careful to not destroy what they are trying to claim. The shells will operate as expected. Don't cause too much damage or you might end the Thread before it gets good.

If anyone else wants to join they had better hurry before thewy lose the chance to get in before the shooting starts. So far everyone is approved as long as the players play fair.

Tenuria: Not sure what you're trying to do there with my reply.

Quick question for you Ten: Would you be amenable to my inanely heavily armed Avatars holding your away team hostage? Probably not going to do so in the next post, but if Monad and Sieve think they can get away with ransoming your people (and the station itself) in return for free access to the station (or at least to gain an advantage in a fight), they're likely to do so.

Also, Bal, do we have air inside this place? It's not going to bother an Avatar, but it'd be nice to know if I'm looking at people in environmental suits or just every day boarding armor. ;)

Also, finally, what exactly is a Dalmagian? Trying to write Sieve describing one to Monad, but don't quite know what to say. From your other writing, I'm guessing they're not humanoid?

So far the exploration has only penetrated the main assembly hanger which is open to space. The freighter I mentioned in my last post is docked with one of the arms but nobody has reached that yet and logically if the ship is docked, the crew were able to access something, no telling if any passages in the walls are atmosphericly stable since the huge amount of damage when the construction pod broke off whatever it was attached to.


Your shells would hit mostly densely packed machinery since the fabrication is located in the walls of the hanger and the main unit is located behind the back wall (do too much damage and that section will not work resulting in ships not being able to be created if they extend beyond that point, you are only just inside the outer hull and has not caused any permanent damage - yet). When people explore they will find this out.

There are tramways for deliviering crew and supplies located within the inner and outer hulls on the same "levels" the docking appendages attach to the inner hull. They are three rails with one at the back and the other two slightly above and below the level of the car so as to not interfere with loading and unloading of the contants toward the bay.

Logically there should be a control room somewhere, most likely near the main fab unit.

got myself a shiny new factbook to try out! . . .the IC thread posted somewhere?

@New Dornalia: We're just receiving it, and acknowledging that we've received and understood it. (Damalgians aren't big on archaeology so they have no real word for "artifact".)

@Otagia: Feel free to hold the away team hostage, if you find them. The Captain won't mind. Well, he will mind, but it's not like he can do anything about it. :P

As for a Damalgian, they're best described as the product of an ill-advised union between a centipede and a shark. Picture something with more tentacle-like appendages than Great Cthulhu, a main stalk resembling a vampiric asparagus, connected to a body that moves a lot faster than it looks like it has any right to (and when they open their mouths they could be confused for a baby Sarlacc). They stand a bit taller than a human being but weigh somewhat less.

Gah! talk bout ill advised unions Shark + tentacle beast?

unless you like sushi...

unless you like sushi...

lol point but killing those things would just be a pain.

Come to think of it, I could have shortened that by replacing it with a link to this page (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EldritchAbomination)*. But I like the similes.

* This is also how we perceive humanoids, by the way, so it goes both ways.

lol nice and oh gods "Coordinated preemptive strike". This Can't lead anywhere good lol . . .and I get even rep without god-modding . . .Not Good lmao

Hey--

Listen--technical difficulties might slow up my RPing a LOT, owing to some USB ports that decided to freak out on me. Heads up.

ND

Not a big problem, I'm slow to begin with (just ask the Polacks). Just gimme a y/n on the whole coordination thingy and we'll be golden.

New post up, just assume the same scene is repeating itself aboard every newly allied vessel.

Our primary weapons are FTL capable missiles, operating in swarms of 22 -- usually 20 standard with two additional missiles, one to break the swarm through shields, one to attempt to bypass FTLi operating in the area. With the reality hardening thing present, swarm size would probably have to be increased to 23 with a second FTLi-bypassing missile. (How did these come to be developed? Well, when your number one enemies all have the capability to hit you from hundreds of light-years away with a weapon you can only be prepared to face in advance, FTLi is a major part of the R&D budget. So unless you want to waste hundreds of missiles for each ship you destroy, you develop something that can bypass FTLi if necessary. Dominance among Damalgians is determined largely by who is best capable of avoiding FTLi -- or who takes the initiative to develop a sublight weapon capable of maintaining similar elements of surprise.)

(If, for some reason, this is disliked by the majority of participants, the contents of the Damalgians' armories is as yet OOCly unknown, so I'm at liberty to change it to my liking up until actual warfare begins. In other words: if I find out that my idea would be impractical, I can change my mind and decide to use those lens flare things from Star Trek instead.)

Our primary weapons are late world war two missiles in space! and forties pulp sci-fi knock-offs like atomic ray guns.

My FTLi works by preventing anything from traveling faster than light within the range of the field. Likewise, hyperspace jumps travel at the speed of plot, and have a range of however many light-years I can get away with with what is essentially scavenger tech.

Less facetiously, FTLi was designed primarily to protect the Damalgians from other factions of Damalgians, most of whom use hyperspace as FTL travel. As a result, hyperspace engines do not work within the range of the field, and attempting to make a hyperspace jump into the field results in "coordinates not defined" messages. It is most powerful against hyperspace travel, but also fairly useful against other "overlay dimensions" like slipspace or subspace, moderately useful against spatial distortion like wormholes and warp drives, and not very useful against travel through parallel dimensions like the Immaterium. As the field gets stronger the closer you get to the source, however, it also grows more effective against other means of FTL. Hence why we brought it, as it prevents anyone else from showing up right next to the artifact (a single interdictor with a range of 1 AU isn't very useful in combat, which tends to occur at much longer ranges).

Yeah, so I know I didn't actually explain all that much. See the first paragraph.

@New Dornalia: Translation of the message directed towards your ships: "Attention alien ships, please slow down and depower any weapons, you are approaching a Damalgian research zone; failure to acknowledge this message may cause trouble for you."
Um what does FLTi stand for? I can understand faster than light but FTLi?

EDIT: And I'm an idiot . .. faster than light inhibitor . . .. riggggght. How do you fit a faster than light drive into a missile? And how do you guide it. . . and order it to drop out of (insert your preferred type of FTL travel here)?

FTL interdiction. Prevents people from getting in or out of the area by FTL methods. Two fields are currently in place, one belonging to Tenuria at 8 light minutes, one belonging to me at two hours, the latter with a few drones flitting about near the border for sensor coverage.

FTL interdiction. Prevents people from getting in or out of the area by FTL methods. Two fields are currently in place, one belonging to Tenuria at 8 light minutes, one belonging to me at two hours, the latter with a few drones flitting about near the border for sensor coverage.

Awesome. Goodd to know. Sorry I'm totally new to FT Rp'ing is there any standard AOE for FTLi fields?

Depends on how much power you're pumping into it. Generally it doesn't get any bigger than a few hours, although a day or two's worth isn't completely unheard of in static emplacements.

@DaWoad: It's a fairly large missile with a fairly short-range drive (I usually cap the range at about 60-65 light-hours, which can be expanded to hundreds of light-years if you use drones to transport them to range). Targets are acquired using probes and the instant communication everyone uses around here. It doesn't really need much more advanced guidance than that as the real time between launch and arrival is essentially zero (hyperspace being another dimension, or whatever technobabble you so choose)*, and the arrival points are usually the bridge or engine of the targeted ship. If there is some interference that a swarm cannot break through, like a very strong FTLi or energy field, the missile impacts the field instead, with the intent being to weaken it.

* Yes, this does mean that we only see the explosions some time after they actually occur. In fact, the destruction of a star during a Great War thousands of years ago is only now becoming visible at Laishk's current position.

Amusingly enough, I don't really use instacomms for anything besides communication between Otagians (can't patch someone into the quancomm network without manually tinkering with their systems, which is why you have an Avatar sitting by your helm). For everyone else, I just either deliver Avatars or use lasers and other EM systems.

@DaWoad: It's a fairly large missile with a fairly short-range drive (I usually cap the range at about 60-65 light-hours, which can be expanded to hundreds of light-years if you use drones to transport them to range). Targets are acquired using probes and the instant communication everyone uses around here. It doesn't really need much more advanced guidance than that as the real time between launch and arrival is essentially zero (hyperspace being another dimension, or whatever technobabble you so choose)*, and the arrival points are usually the bridge or engine of the targeted ship. If there is some interference that a swarm cannot break through, like a very strong FTLi or energy field, the missile impacts the field instead, with the intent being to weaken it.

* Yes, this does mean that we only see the explosions some time after they actually occur. In fact, the destruction of a star during a Great War thousands of years ago is only now becoming visible at Laishk's current position.
right got it. how would those work around deflector shields/Armor? (or do they just re-emerge within the ship?)
last question, (I promise lol) whats he warhead on these things?

right got it. how would those work around deflector shields/Armor? (or do they just re-emerge within the ship?)

Depends on what kind of shields you have. If they're only deflector shields (the kind of thing you see on Star Trek, f'rinstance) then they only block off stuff coming in from realspace, so the missiles just emerge from hyperspace inside your ship, delivering 733 MT of shiny happy DEATH. More advanced shields get a metaphorical saving throw, but even so, we throw in stuff designed to weaken and break through shields, so missiles can still get through. I'll calculate numbers when I see what you've got.

Depends on what kind of shields you have. If they're only deflector shields (the kind of thing you see on Star Trek, f'rinstance) then they only block off stuff coming in from realspace, so the missiles just emerge from hyperspace inside your ship, delivering 733 MT of shiny happy DEATH. More advanced shields get a metaphorical saving throw, but even so, we throw in stuff designed to weaken and break through shields, so missiles can still get through. I'll calculate numbers when I see what you've got.

lol I'm new all I've got are grav-based deflector shields (think honorverse) and KE shields (kinetic energy Absorption shields good against KEWs and shrapnel/shock waves but useless gainst something like a laser/graser/Xaser/w.e.)

Meanwhile, I'll be mostly shooting SCCAMs at you (if you've read the Humanx stuff by Alan Dean Foster, you have the basic idea. If not, it's a box with a black hole duct taped to the dangerous end). Slightly uncanon in the fact that they don't use a nuclear warhead, instead just relying on the big boom from a few tonnes worth of singularity exploding violenty (basic E=MC^2 matter-to-energy kaboomage). Those would also be the green swarm flying around my vessels (emerald event horizon on the artificial singularities), and are used to intercept incoming shots. Mostly useful against KE weapons, but if the laser passes other SCCAMs or drone fighters on the way in, they can intercept DEWs too.

Other weapons include high calibre coilguns, variable frequency DEWs, and swipes from effectors if you get close. Other defenses are composed of accumulator shields (block most everything, although burnthroughs happen occasionally, and they release all energy they absorbed when they fail) and a thermally superconducting hull over an exotic matter laminate.

Anyway, post with shooting should be up soon.

Meanwhile, I'll be mostly shooting SCCAMs at you (if you've read the Humanx stuff by Alan Dean Foster, you have the basic idea. If not, it's a box with a black hole duct taped to the dangerous end). Slightly uncanon in the fact that they don't use a nuclear warhead, instead just relying on the big boom from a few tonnes worth of singularity exploding violenty (basic E=MC^2 matter-to-energy kaboomage). Those would also be the green swarm flying around my vessels (emerald event horizon on the artificial singularities), and are used to intercept incoming shots. Mostly useful against KE weapons, but if the laser passes other SCCAMs or drone fighters on the way in, they can intercept DEWs too.

Other weapons include high calibre coilguns, variable frequency DEWs, and swipes from effectors if you get close. Other defenses are composed of accumulator shields (block most everything, although burnthroughs happen occasionally, and they release all energy they absorbed when they fail) and a thermally superconducting hull over an exotic matter laminate.

Anyway, post with shooting should be up soon.

Aight got it ty :) (i think . . .hell I would get myself into this in my first encounter with anyone wouldn't I lol). The SCCAMs seem pretty Similar to SLAMs from Path of Fury (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_of_the_Fury).

The Avatar looped happily. "Excellent! FTL-equipped missiles, eh? Will make sure to stutter the FTLi fields for you. I've analyzed the launch patterns of your missiles, and I should be able to flicker for them without any problems. Now, at my signal, please flicker your FTLi for one quarter millisecond and fire."


"Grad students, you say... " The Avatar's aura pulsed a dull red for a moment as its bobbing slowed. "You'll likely be best suited to defensive duties, protecting the Dalmagian vessels, who are also coordinating with us. They're expert bombardiers, I doubt you'll have much difficulty protecting them. Please remain here and do your best to prevent them and the artefact from suffering any undue harm."

______________

Allies briefed and ready, herr Monad. Time to take a few cycles off of playing with your new toy and commiting a display of excessive force for our audience.

Very well. Only FTLi in system is friendly. Standard envelopment strike?

We have numbers on our side, and certainly surprise. Targets are in broadside formation, which implies that their bows are relatively weak in comparison. So yes, standard envelopment strike. Ready?

Always. Hop in three picos. Two. One. Hop.

_______________

A fraction of a second beforehand, the Avatar aboard the Dalmagian flagship glowed a soft white, its equivalent of a grin. "Fire."

_______________

As the two FTLi fields broke for the tiniest fraction of a second, the three Otagian battle cruisers and their emerald swarms vanished from the midst of the fleet as if they had never existed. Simultaneously, they snapped back into existence, three hundred thousand kilometers off the bow of their prey, as their FTLi fields snapped shut again, blazing at three light-hours.

Immediately, the swarms reformed into a solid wall in front of the cruisers, holes chaotically appearing as they permitted outgoing railgun shells and CREW fire through, slamming shut as quickly as they appeared to present an invulnerable green wall to the foe. More of the green specks darted around the barrier as SCCAMs left the launchers of the Arachnes, slamming towards the enemy cruisers and detonating in massive multi-gigaton blasts.

whats being shot at who exactly?

Hello, everyone.

Is this too far along for new players to enter the fray, and do we have to RP as ships from a actual nation? I was thinking that you never really see enough space pirates in these FT threads...

You are welcome to join in.

You can use whatever you wish but remember, the big shiny artifact is something you might not want others to get hold of and most pirates would avoid large military encounters like how this is turning out because they don't have the budget, resources, or manpower to replace losses.

Sorry for the delay in posting, between work and Wednesdays being an EXTREMELY bad day for my free time, I've barely been able to write.

Also, F&D, mind coming up with a reason to block the things that isn't completely senseless technobabble? ;)

OOC: @F&D: Actually, stabilizing the prefire collar with a photon lock won't work very well at all, as hyperlight gamma-ray and sub-gravimetric sensors can detect the photon lock and order the missiles' reentry guidance to ignore them and behave normally. That would only work if we were using transporters rather than built-in hyperspace engines to move the missiles, which however does fit in with what your crew knows about the Damalgians so far.
Wait, that random string of words actually meant something?

Wait, that random string of words actually meant something?

I dunno. I've adopted a policy of fighting technobabble with technobabble. :P

Sorry for the delay in posting, between work and Wednesdays being an EXTREMELY bad day for my free time, I've barely been able to write.

Also, F&D, mind coming up with a reason to block the things that isn't completely senseless technobabble? ;)

I got one :D

While that would probably work, I can't see any safe way to generate a gravitic field that strong and still manage to keep the structural integrity of ships and people intact inside it. (I'm pretty sure the fleet would collapse into a singularity if it tried to maintain that kind of formation; gravitational drives are not the kind of things you want to mess with.) Even if there is some way to do it, it's the kind of thing we would have detected parsecs away, so we wouldn't be firing normal FTL missiles anyway.

*I* can think of several ways to defend oneself against FTL missiles. If I decide to bring in the Union or another faction of Damalgians to attack my own people already there, I might demonstrate a few. One of them's kind of similar to this, actually. :P

While that would probably work, I can't see any safe way to generate a gravitic field that strong and still manage to keep the structural integrity of ships and people intact inside it. (I'm pretty sure the fleet would collapse into a singularity if it tried to maintain that kind of formation; gravitational drives are not the kind of things you want to mess with.) Even if there is some way to do it, it's the kind of thing we would have detected parsecs away, so we wouldn't be firing normal FTL missiles anyway.

*I* can think of several ways to defend oneself against FTL missiles. If I decide to bring in the Union or another faction of Damalgians to attack my own people already there, I might demonstrate a few. One of them's kind of similar to this, actually. :P

I think it would probably work, Generate a field forward of the ships and it accelerates towards the field, stressors on hull etc. would be minimal as the ships always accelerating towards the grav field so there would be no force Stressing them, bringing the drives together would be dangerous, sure but we've all got AI's controlling that kind of thing and FTL travel would be even more dangerous. As to people, Well technically the Kind of Accell. we've been Rp'ing would have killed so I'm assuming we're using some sort of artificial Grav. generators anyway. As to detection . .. your right sorry bout that though I'm pretty sure my fact book outline the fact that I use Grav. Drives but I definitely should a outlined that . . .sry.

Tenuria, mind holding your reply till my next post? I have something I want to try with those corpses...

DaWoad: I'll grant you this one. You'll need the break once we bring in the overwhelming force. :P

I should point out though that there's no real way to stop the missiles from detonating. Each one contains 15.6 kg antimatter inside a 800+ kg shell + guidance + engine, and the containment field is broken by FTL travel, so they blow up on arrival. Then bear in mind that that's 176 GT of stuff exploding in your fields, and they're programmed to avoid strong gravitic fields so they've come as close as possible before detonating. At very least, the shockwaves alone should be doing a lot more damage to the KE shields.

anyhow I figure the Subcaptain's new at this, he just screwed up and wasn't paying attention to it.

And Otagia, will do.

Hrm, thought of something else. SCCAMs react badly to other singularities. Very badly. As in, if the two singularities touch, they typically both invert, and honest-to-god negative gravity (not to mention the contents of said singularities) tends to be bad for everything nearby. >.>

Anyway, post should be up after about an hour (will have been home from work long enough to type coherently by then).

DaWoad: I'll grant you this one. You'll need the break once we bring in the overwhelming force. :P

I should point out though that there's no real way to stop the missiles from detonating. Each one contains 15.6 kg antimatter inside a 800+ kg shell + guidance + engine, and the containment field is broken by FTL travel, so they blow up on arrival. Then bear in mind that that's 176 GT of stuff exploding in your fields, and they're programmed to avoid strong gravitic fields so they've come as close as possible before detonating. At very least, the shockwaves alone should be doing a lot more damage to the KE shields.

anyhow I figure the Subcaptain's new at this, he just screwed up and wasn't paying attention to it.

And Otagia, will do.

Got ya i'll edit that one. :) And oh gods . . . overwhelming forces with better tech . . . .this could be a problem lol.

Hrm, thought of something else. SCCAMs react badly to other singularities. Very badly. As in, if the two singularities touch, they typically both invert, and honest-to-god negative gravity (not to mention the contents of said singularities) tends to be bad for everything nearby. >.>

Anyway, post should be up after about an hour (will have been home from work long enough to type coherently by then).
yah SCAMs are gonna be a problem lol

Actually Otagia and I without knowlege of each other used the same series of novels for our background. I think we are the only two on NS that has (as far as I know) the same basis but we both went different directions from that same starting point.

He is right about the SCCAM missiles inverting as well as posigrav drives and planetary gravity wells. Artificial singularities don't react well together.

My post is, of course, a trick. Just a QUETZAL implant stuck in their brains, animating their bodies (including restarting most vital organs, as evidenced by the arterial spray) and talking. It's imitating their accent based on your transmission, and combined with the artificial hoarseness and slurring, would probably be indistinguishable from the real thing.

What kind of drives do you have on your Singers? It takes a lot of enerrgy to move a black hole and at FTL speeds, would it stop? That is a lot of mass to speed up and slow down instantly (a few nanoseconds total travel time, the duration fo the FTLi flicker) without tearing apart the projectile.

I just don't want people to pull out of the RP because of this.



If any of the other players has FTLi and were to turn theirs on it would stop the attacks.

A singularity drone isn't a black hole until it hits a gravitic field (which crushes it into a black hole). 'Til then it's just a very heavy drone. Engines are standard ones. And the nature of hyperspace means that it technically isn't speeding up or slowing down at all; its realspace velocity (which is pretty low) remains exactly the same throughout. (Velocity in hyperspace, velocity being a function of time over distance, is undefined. The hyperspace engines have only enough power to keep the laws of physics in flagrant violation for about one light-day; they're smaller than the ones on a missile because more room has to be devoted to the contents.)

Points in DW's favour? It's a pretty small black hole, so only centrally located ships in the formation will be affected. You can avoid it by just going around it. We don't have a lot of them. We're mostly doing it as a show of force to discourage the Raiders from coming any closer.

The Artifact conducted a jump to the nearby asteroid feild to gather resources. It used naturally occurring wormholes in quantum foam to ignore the FTLi. Natural Phenomon works outside the limitations FTLi imposes.

Well, mine at least. I think ASPEW rewrites the laws of the universe. Luckily though, I see no KAG around... ;)

Post being worked on. I'll have it done soon.


Bringing a full Tsthathi fleet.

you stop Quantum Foam from forming and matter ceases to exist theoretically

The ships and personal within the Artifact would have traveled with it but those outside would most likely be left wondering what happened.

Actually Otagia and I without knowlege of each other used the same series of novels for our background. I think we are the only two on NS that has (as far as I know) the same basis but we both went different directions from that same starting point.

He is right about the SCCAM missiles inverting as well as posigrav drives and planetary gravity wells. Artificial singularities don't react well together.
Yah thats gonna be . . .spectacular if they hit (not fun at all)

"I observe a pointed lack of destruction at the location of the enemy fleet," said the Subcaptain sternly. "What is going on?"

"It appears our missiles were dragged off course by a powerful gravitic field, Subcaptain," said the Navigator. "Operating much like our gravitic shields."

"And we overlooked something like that?.... Okay, scratch that. We didn't know they had gravitic shields?"

"They weren't active on the first ships we destroyed. And as you should know, half the point of gravitic shields is so that they don't know you have 'em until it's too late."

"Point. We'll have to adjust our fire parameters then and send them another round."

"Incoming message from Warships Two and Five, Subcaptain. They say they've examined the problem and come up with a solution, and for the record have fired weapons," said the Communications Officer.

"... What was that?"

"In battle, every second is precious, and Damalgians have infinitely slow reaction times compared to AIs. Permission was granted by the ship's AI, as it had been automatically set to combat."

"What did they do, though?"

The Weapons Officer was looking through the data. "Classic solution: they sent a singer."

--------------------------

Singularity Drones had become the standard Damalgian method of dealing with gravitic fields and anomalies impeding their passage: turn the fields into singularities, rendering them harmless to the Damalgians if they avoided the event horizon -- and very harmful to whatever ship was generating them. Damalgians generally avoided using those shields themselves for this reason. The drone was FTL capable, and used to making short hops en route to an enemy fleet. In this case, however, "short" meant "1-4 light-hours". Two hops and the singularity drone was at the fleet of Woad Raiders. It was large for a drone, more than fifteen meters long; it was mostly remarkable for being extremely massive, filled with some of the densest and heaviest materials available to Thalia Tek'atje; and its second FTL hop brought it right to the edge of the gravitic fields.

The difference between a standing gravitic field and a black hole is mostly compression. Put a significant amount of mass into a standing field and a black hole results as the field is drawn into the mass, creating a point of focus. When the drone arrived, the field swept over it in a tiny fraction of a second as the fleet moved forward, and it was immediately crushed into a point smaller than the nucleus of an atom. At about the same time it absorbed the energy created by the engines, vented from the exhaust ports, and continuing on towards it from the shockwave. This was more than enough to suffice.

The fleet was still moving forward, but now it was moving forward into the event horizon of a growing black hole. They had a few picoseconds to decelerate before being ripped to pieces, and their engines were contributing to the black hole's growth. The formation they had adopted was especially suicidal, as the ships were necessarily extremely close together. If the Damalgians didn't use weapons like these too often, it was only because black holes were really difficult to harvest for materials.

Problem here either you flickered your FTLi. . .or it was sublight (thus giving CMs etc. a chance to respond). EIther way can u edit that post?

EDIT:Scratch that i'ma post under the assumption that you bothflickered your FTL drive long enough to launch that over two hops.

you stop Quantum Foam from forming and matter ceases to exist theoretically
As I said, rewrites laws of physics. :D

As I said, rewrites laws of physics. :D
Can u see any issue with my reply?

The only issue I see is that my FTLi field would only need to flicker once to allow the singer through, seeing as its range is 8 minutes and each hop is 2 hours. So the closest you could get on the second hop would be about 8 minutes, which is still fairly close range (ok, so it's not *that* close, but it would take a couple of minutes to get our sensor probes into position), and I'll word my reply on that assumption.

The only issue I see is that my FTLi field would only need to flicker once to allow the singer through, seeing as its range is 8 minutes and each hop is 2 hours. So the closest you could get on the second hop would be about 8 minutes, which is still fairly close range (ok, so it's not *that* close, but it would take a couple of minutes to get our sensor probes into position), and I'll word my reply on that assumption.

kk works for me :). Just so I know, what did you shoot at me with? (FTL missiles? + secondaries or what?)

8 minutes is about 1 AU

100+ FTL missiles, plus things to break shields and FTLi ('cause we're not risking turning our fields off just yet).
Maybe 100-200 mass driver rounds.
Lots of plasma bursts and lances (a few targeting each ship).
50-70 shieldbreaching canisters with various contents including antimatter explosives, nanobots, neutron radiation, carnivorous party favours, et cetera (shieldbreaching canisters are like highly maneuverable drones, with countermeasures attached, that phase in and out of reality to pass through shields)

under cover of jamming, in order to make them difficult for point defense systems to target.

100+ FTL missiles, plus things to break shields and FTLi ('cause we're not risking turning our fields off just yet).
Maybe 100-200 mass driver rounds.
Lots of plasma bursts and lances (a few targeting each ship).
50-70 shieldbreaching canisters with various contents including antimatter explosives, nanobots, neutron radiation, carnivorous party favours, et cetera (shieldbreaching canisters are like highly maneuverable drones, with countermeasures attached, that phase in and out of reality to pass through shields)

under cover of jamming, in order to make them difficult for point defense systems to target.
Got it. ty

Dang, I am glad I moved the Artifact for repairs before these last few exchanges.

lol.

by the way, DaWoad, trying to break out of the anti-grav field by bringing all your gravitational fields to 120% power would work.... if you had a lot more ships. as it is all you'll be doing is wasting a lot of fuel and engine life trying to generate gravitic waves that immediately dissipate. and you'll be weakening the interdictor's ability to generate the field, of course, but nowhere near quickly enough to be useful. sorry.

the good news is, uh....... your starship maintenance costs will go way down for this financial year! <.<

lol.

by the way, DaWoad, trying to break out of the anti-grav field by bringing all your gravitational fields to 120% power would work.... if you had a lot more ships. as it is all you'll be doing is wasting a lot of fuel and engine life trying to generate gravitic waves that immediately dissipate. and you'll be weakening the interdictor's ability to generate the field, of course, but nowhere near quickly enough to be useful. sorry.

the good news is, uh....... your starship maintenance costs will go way down for this financial year! <.<
Yah well it was worth a shot. How exactly do you fill matter with anti matter? or guide shells? more importantly . .. without FTL comms where did the massive battle station come from and more importantly why are you Rp'ing my missiles for me? I mean I can live with FTL missiles, I can even live with u being able to pinpoint where u want em some how. Massive amounts of surge protection capable of handling nearly 1600 ships (about 100 of them capital ships) is a little absured but ok. This is getting a little ridiculous though Tenuria . . .anyway I'll RP this but honestly . . .little bit odd. . . even FTL can only travel so fast and how do you transport a ship that size 2.5 kilometers through hyperspace? You'd need insane amounts of fuel which you wouldn't have space for cause you carrying "an apparently endless stream of high-gigaton range shells" . . . . . And A gravity inhibitor?Really?[/rant]


aight throwing something together . . .

1) You're right, actually. There's no way I'm going to fit a containment field inside a flechette. They're filled with generic high explosives instead. (I may have gotten a little carried away.)
2) Guided shells? Oh yeah, there's a name for those..... "missiles". :facepalm:
3) FTL comms are active. They exploit what Balrogga picturesquely referred to as the quantum foam, which generally isn't blocked by FTLi because it's a natural phenomenon (it's far easier to put a few photons through a wormhole than to expand that to accommodate a warship). You can't really block FTL comms if they're properly done, so everyone should still have access to those if they're at the appropriate tech level.
4) am I RPing your missiles for you? sorry about that. <.<
5) 1600 ships.... I saw 60 ships. I guess I'm not really counting the LACs though, they sound like fighters, those can't have all that much power apiece.... But yeah, that definitely changes things. I'll record the interdictor as damaged and unable to maintain extensive fields due to your little grav surge thing.
6) This is sort of "enforced method acting". I'm purposefully not giving the full picture ICly in order to obtain the desired IC responses. Our apparent technological, numerical, and tactical superiority is intended to intimidate and demoralize our enemies so that they don't stick around long enough to find out that we can't sustain a long-term battle. Thus, I mention how large and powerful the battlestation is, and not how its engines use up so much power traveling through hyperspace and generating shields and FTLi and whatever that they can only support it for about thirty minutes each day. Etcetera. It's likely that in my next post (coming ... whenever) we'll be requesting a ceasefire, presumably leading to hilarity to ensue when both sides think they're losing but try to act as though they have the advantage in order to scream defiance at the enemy.

1) You're right, actually. There's no way I'm going to fit a containment field inside a flechette. They're filled with generic high explosives instead. (I may have gotten a little carried away.)
2) Guided shells? Oh yeah, there's a name for those..... "missiles". :facepalm:
3) FTL comms are active. They exploit what Balrogga picturesquely referred to as the quantum foam, which generally isn't blocked by FTLi because it's a natural phenomenon (it's far easier to put a few photons through a wormhole than to expand that to accommodate a warship). You can't really block FTL comms if they're properly done, so everyone should still have access to those if they're at the appropriate tech level.
4) am I RPing your missiles for you? sorry about that. <.<
5) 1600 ships.... I saw 60 ships. I guess I'm not really counting the LACs though, they sound like fighters, those can't have all that much power apiece.... But yeah, that definitely changes things. I'll record the interdictor as damaged and unable to maintain extensive fields due to your little grav surge thing.
6) This is sort of "enforced method acting". I'm purposefully not giving the full picture ICly in order to obtain the desired IC responses. Our apparent technological, numerical, and tactical superiority is intended to intimidate and demoralize our enemies so that they don't stick around long enough to find out that we can't sustain a long-term battle. Thus, I mention how large and powerful the battlestation is, and not how its engines use up so much power traveling through hyperspace and generating shields and FTLi and whatever that they can only support it for about thirty minutes each day. Etcetera. It's likely that in my next post (coming ... whenever) we'll be requesting a ceasefire, presumably leading to hilarity to ensue when both sides think they're losing but try to act as though they have the advantage in order to scream defiance at the enemy.

1) lol See I'm right sometimes! HA! (it happens so rarely . . .especially while ranting. . .)
2)see now missiles I coulda gone for . . . *Facepalms*
3)I was referring to earlier where u said u didn't have ftl comms (look back waaaay back). But if you've got em that'll work.
4)no worries :D I just Rp'd em for me right back lol
5)That works. .. Or even just down for 5 minuets as a countermeasure gainst your FTLMs. I didn't ever expect it to last and if u've switched em out anyway that works just as well. . .(when u jumped in the new one)
6)now that should be interesting . . .I thought I got despair going pretty good from my commandant guy lol.

(as an aside, I think you could do as well with solid matter fletchetts for shield Sapping and once your through the shields, flettchetts, anti-matter or not are gonna do less than the full sized shells and lazers that'll follow em.) . . .i can't spell fletchet

it's flechette... or so my spell checker tells me *nod*

anyway, bedtime now, but i'll probably have a post tomorrow.

it's flechette... or so my spell checker tells me *nod*

anyway, bedtime now, but i'll probably have a post tomorrow.

Sounds good, sorry bro

I'll see what I can do about getting a post up. Expect one between noon and six CDT.

One point, the Artifact moved to the other side of the system, that should be several light hours away, not only 90 minutes. It is outside all the FTL madness currently to actually give everyone a chance to get to it again.

Sorry if I was not clear.

One point, the Artifact moved to the other side of the system, that should be several light hours away, not only 90 minutes. It is outside all the FTL madness currently to actually give everyone a chance to get to it again.

Sorry if I was not clear.

lol good to know . . .that bein said I think me and tenuria are going at it more cause we started shooting rather than anything else.

Don't forget, this is still going on...