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[Ross Vernal]

Sounds good. The figures are just sort of ballpark anyway, I'd hardly imagine all the star nations, transstellars, etc are all going to build the same size or design.

http://galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Beam_Weapon
http://galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Missile

Going to ignore projectiles for now, unless someone wants to try to weaponize asteroids.

[Ross Vernal]

I still can't help but feel that I'm missing stuff.

[Dwarmin]

This does look cool...not sure if I'd play, because I'm sure how the game IS going to be played.

You have a system for ground combat/interaction btw? Yet another layer of complexity!

[Ross Vernal]

I figured that once you control the high orbitals and the system, that's more or less that. Launching a two-ton missile into a planet at  0.6c is an extremely strong form of discouragement (and potentially a "Congratulations, the entire known universe now wants you dead" if you don't follow the laws of war in regards to it.)

But yes, actually, I do have mechanisms for boarding actions, raids, guerilla, etc. Same with fixed planetary defenses.

[Ross Vernal]

The players as a whole vote on general strategy, what missions to take, etc.

Individual players can pick a specific role, which will allow for more discretion, additional choices, etc.  For example, if two people decide to pool together to buy and arm a BC, the person who plays the Captain will confer specific bonuses on the ship crew, XP, etc. What the other person picks will boost that. Say, the other person plays a Space Marine colonel. Means heavier troops, stronger drop ships, etc. If they go for Chief Engineer then the ship will repair faster, be able to pull more G's, so on.

Alternatively, if someone goes "You know, I'd rather be the sub-admiral in charge of the Bureau of Personell, then overall quality will go up.

I am hoping for more of a role play than a roll play. Not going to demand paragraphs of exposition, but seeing actual personalities in play would rock.

[escaped lurker]

Well, I don't know anything about the books or games you seem to reference, but here are some of my thoughts.

Are Shields in?
Shields. The holy sci-fi-grail of defense techniques. Pure Phlebotinum. Well, at least according to Orbital Vector. Still, "Reflective Armour" is pretty realistic. Against lasers.

Robots, Drones & Electronical Warfare;
Oh boy, the options. What can't they do expect diplomacy? Not much. Either way, electronic warfare could also be very interesting, as wrong sensor readings, or lack thereof, leads to plenty of options as well.

Suicide-Rammers / Drone Breachers;
Not sure why one wouldn't just strap more explosives on those thrusters, expect you want to keep the enemy ship, cargo & systems intact, but hey.

Different Races, or Human Sub-Species;
Not to go FTL on this game, though different races may be a nice touch. Else, human sub-species, or rather, engineered adaptations, are another interesting thing to consider.

Medical Science;
We can barely get to mars, but artifical limbs are coming along nicely. Not sure to go all the way to cyborgs, but enhancers & implants could add a nice touch - and if it is to rp only.

Trading & Supplies;
Do we pump all those credits into empty space, and just magically get what we need, or is there a need to do the occasional docking. Not that we want a trading simulation each time we need new fuel, but maybe as fluff for random events, or if we pilfered stumbeled upon something special?

[Ross Vernal]

There's a few links here and there. Plenty of reading.

Yes, shields exist. They have to, because at high speeds, running into debris would be amusingly fatal. It's more of a particle shield than anything, though.

As far as propulsion goes, uhm... that's fun to explain. On the "top" and "bottom" of the ships are huge gravity band wedges that provide propulsion and are presently unable to be breached by any known weapon.  On the "port" and "starboard" are weaker versions of the same thing (sidewalls) that cut effective range when active, but that can be shot through both ways (think 20,000 kilometer range for energy weapons), although you're generally not going to be able to take energy shots at someone unless they can fire right back at you. It does, however, leave the throat "fore" and kilt "aft" completely exposed to incoming fire, with the throat being the bigger of the two. Ships aren't always in the exact same location within the wedge, etc, etc.

EW is going to be a thing, in many ways. Jamming, stealth, decoys, etc. Be creative - if you want an EW missile in the salvo that fakes splitting into ten missiles, invent it.

Robots? Well, there's going to be a lot of automation, and you can kit out ships to be even more automated, but full auto ships aren't very popular outside of fighters. While you're certainly going to have pseudo-AI that's specifically designed (Robotaxis, for example" there's been enough sci-fi to understand that "gee, maybe we shouldn't put total automated  control of a ship that can mass-extincti a planet in less than a day", and such.


With the current propulsion system, the response to ramming is "turn up so they ram straight into the gravity bands and die", although you're encouraged to be creative with Fighters. It'd be handy against 'fixed' installations which are all sidewall and no wedge, though, assuming it doesn't get blown the hell up on the way in.

Aliens? Feel free. I was mostly going with "Earth sentients, which include some of the higher nonhuman species, genetically adapted for longer life and planetary adaption" with the idea but aliens can absolutely be a thing. (Anyone remember Kai Queen? )

Medical science is pretty far along. Cybernetics exist, limited regeneration exists, Vorkosigan style cryonics exist, etc. Brain damage and spine damage is still pretty bad and very damn hard to recover from, but getting a limb blown off or falling on the grenade isn't necessarily permanently fatal or crippling, assuming the procedures are done right. It will absolutely have negative side effects even if the person is immediately put on ice, all the flechettes pulled out, internal organs cloned and regrown, etc.

Some things, you'll be able to just pick up in space. Hydrogen, raw materials, etc, you'll just pick up - shouldn't be TOO hard to find meteors and crap like that. When it comes to weapons, defenses, modules, foodstuffs, trade goods, etc, there's going to be actual trading involved. Same with "Oh hey, you stumbled across a derelict pre-FTL colony ship that ate a missile through Nav and Com and Cryo Control", too.

[Parsely]

Still, "Reflective Armour" is pretty realistic. Against lasers.

Not strictly true.

And no, mirrors will not work as armor. The best finish you can reasonably expect to keep on an exterior surface, will still absorb 10-20% of the incident energy, which will be enough to burn through the outer layer on the first pulse. And the rough and now hot interior will be even less reflective.

[Ross Vernal]

Weaponmusing.

Base size / base damage / base cost / cost-size modifier

Particle Beam 2:  12/ 1 / 25 / 10% per "size"
- 13/2/27.5
- 14/3/30
- 15/4/32.5

Laser 3: 6/1/30/10
- 6.5/2/33
- 7/3/36
- 8/4/40

Stinger Missile 1: 18/2/50/3%
- 18/3/51.5
- 19/4/53
- 20/5/56

Stinger 4: 12/2/51/3%
- 12/3/52.5
- 13/4/54
- 13.5/5/57

Subject to change. As implied earlier, missiles have range and power at bigger size and cost. Energy weapons are weaker, smaller, and have the virtue of infinite ammo as long as you have power.

So, hypothetical destroyer with a souped up weapon?

Slugger-Class Destroyer
Equipment:
Base Weapons (0), 1/1
Dreadnought L3 (7), 3/0,  36bc
Sensors MkII (3), 3bc
General Life Support (2), 3bc
Hull Reinforcement 1 (3), 3bc
655g standard accel
5850g hyper accel
Top hyper band: Theta

40 energy/10 missile, 130 HP,  70bc.

Compact and fast, designed to close to energy range with ships of similar size.

Play around a little with it.

[Ross Vernal]

On second thought, weapon damage values may get the same x10 modifier that health did.

Make it a 40/10. That way it's not dueling with modified laser pointers and poppers, but massive cannons and heavy weapons.

[Rolepgeek]

I figured that once you control the high orbitals and the system, that's more or less that. Launching a two-ton missile into a planet at  0.6c is an extremely strong form of discouragement (and potentially a "Congratulations, the entire known universe now wants you dead" if you don't follow the laws of war in regards to it.)

But yes, actually, I do have mechanisms for boarding actions, raids, guerilla, etc. Same with fixed planetary defenses.

Well, but if there are laws of engagement, it's entirely possible that because they know you can't slag the planet or else bad shit will happen to you, they can resist. Plus, what happens if the planet has missiles to fire at you? They can host a much, much larger set of missile silos, and still have plenty of room for point defense. Plus, if the planet is valuable for any structures or the like it may have...well...and then of course there will always, always, always be terrorists who refuse to let you conquer their people and destroy their way of life.

Also, Atomic Rockets is most certainly not the only site or source for this sort of thing. It's not about absorbing energy, it's about reflecting it. A perfect finish in an atmospheric ship would be nigh impossible, and certain areas you certainly can't manage it, and most of the time, visible light isn't going to be what you're trying to reflect anyway. But if you can tune your armor/shields to the same frequency as the light, and it's based off reflective properties to help negate damage? If it's the same 'color' as their lasers, it would negate basically all damage. Shifting frequency lasers would help with this, of course, but then, the counter to that is overlapping or self-adapting armor panels, or shields.

With shields, you just have to get creative. Lattice of nano-tubes/machines that cause the warhead to go off before reaching optimal position at the ship's hull. Fields of what amounts to glitter, held in place via EM fields, to refract and scatter laser light.

Also, I personally really like projectile weapons, and had an idea, though it could possibly mean we aren't perfectly based on Harrington 'verse. I also like idea of aliens, possibly even playing as some, maybe even(though it's unlikely) with a different tech tree compared to Honorverse.

Plus, if you can get a certain amount of acceleration in missiles that can turn, what can you get with massive grav cannons/ gauss coils with projectiles that simply go in a straight line? Sure, they aren't that accurate, but they're probably a lot harder to notice on sensors, and they can be small enough to fire a lot of them. Might be able to punch straight through a sidewall too, at some ranges. Possibly a race that's made the Wedge into a way to fire weapons using it. Thoughts, Ross?

Also, I'd say make weapons take a bit more space per damage increase. Right now, it's far more effective to have a few big weapons that a lot of small ones, both in terms of cost and ability.

[Ross Vernal]

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/31/0

Explains it better than I can. But, basically, the defenses are perfectly valid targets. If they happen to be in the middle of their biggest city, that's their problem, not yours. You're just supposed to not wantonly and indiscriminately slaughter people, pretty much.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/site/entry/Harrington/124/1 also goes into some detail. 

You'd need a hell of a lot of energy. Supposedly, the particle shields can eat a 2 ton object at 0.6c. I'm willing to handwave a little so long as the fake physics are internally consistent and make some kind of sense.

Feel free tomess  with the numbers. You have access to the same links I do, and my speculative fiction has been more fantasy than sci-fi.

[Rolepgeek]

FAKEEDIT: So why aren't those particle shields around planets? Or defenses or whatever? I mean honestly. I always dislike when sci fi basically shoves away the problem of 'we want to take the planet without having to break the infrastructure'. >.> Sure, you have super weapons. But, A. infrastructure and B. where there are super weapons, there are people trying to make super defenses. But that's just me ranting.

I actually thought about it some more and had an idea. Several really, trying to figure out how to make them comesh and whatnot.

The basic, original principle that would still let most ships be more or less the same, is basically massive artillery cannons mounted on ships. Primary use is specific types of shells, that are actually unguided, but it's not really a problem because they accelerate to ridiculous speeds. And then a bit faster. And then faster than that. And then they go into the Alpha Band. The really good (read: extremely new and prone to backfiring horribly) ones go into the Beta band. And they come out right before they impact your ship. Hopefully. It can be hard to time it right at those speeds, and while the Grav Wedges can't completely stop something like that(mostly because they're usually designed to try and exit the Hyper Band past the range of where the Wedge can stop you), they will tear it into tiny tiny pieces that won't really hurt a warship much. Fuck up a merchant, though. Of course, trying to use these up close is basically pointless. That's what asteroids/different type of shell that either contains missiles or is effectively a giant laser cannon in projectile form are for. Mass Driver mode. Not nearly as fast, still expensive as fuck unless you use asteroids, still slow as fuck especially if you use asteroids, but capable of hurting something closer than several planets. And these run basically the entire length of a ship, and trying to mount more than two(one for each wedge) is asking for problems. Possible, but even two can be pushing it. On big ships, using smaller ship versions? Sure. Much, much, much smaller forms can be fitted to fighters, and they are exponentially weaker and harder to maintain, so it isn't done much. Oh, and probably more often the shell is basically used as a way to transport a bunch of other weapons that pop into action once it appears; and you can never be quite sure where it'll appear. They also take a long-ass time to load and fire, and are probably used by a race that figured out a roundabout way to get stealth in space (other than really subtle EW that is).

I think that makes sense? I haven't read Honorverse in a while so I may have fucked up the pseudo-science some. If I remember right, the big, main Hyper Bands are only in specific regions mostly because it's dangerous for people otherwise and to get anywhere with decent speed you need to be up high in the bands.

My idea for a different form of FTL travel was basically worm holes. They don't have grav wedges or missiles, so their ships are in some ways much weaker and slower, but they move by using what amounts to a weak Renault drive, so their technology tree just basically went an entirely separate route. More maneuverable and the spatial distortion works wonders for deflection from front and rear, though. Almost the opposite, in fact, of Honorverse ships, in some ways.

[Ross Vernal]

Planets? Prohibitively expensive. Defenses? Absolutely in place around orbital installations, space forts, etc.  It'sbett er than nothing, even though you can just do the Manty Missile Massacre strategy. Great for stopping a single object of that mass at that velocity; less good against a few thousand missiles of equivalent mass at a higher velocity.

Sort of. Stars have a "hyper limit" or gravity well of several light-minutes that prevent you from entering hyperspace.

Hyper itself is defined as non-Euclidean geometry coexisting with "normal" space, organized into discrete bands, with each band corresponding to a lower point-to-point distance compared to normal space. This meant for a given velocity, higher hyper bands allow for higher effective velocity over the speed of light.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The major problem limiting hyper speeds was that simply getting into hyper did not create a propulsive effect. Indeed, the initial translation into hyper was a complex energy transfer which reduced a starship's velocity by "bleeding off" momentum. In effect, a translating hypership lost approximately 92% of its normal-space velocity when entering hyper. This had unfortunate consequences in terms of reaction mass requirements, particularly since the fact that hydrogen catcher fields were inoperable in hyper meant one could not replenish one's reaction mass underway. On the other hand, the velocity bleed effect applied equally regardless of the direction of the translation (that is, one lost 92% of one's velocity whether one was entering hyper-space from normal-space or normal-space from hyper-space), which meant that leaving hyper automatically decelerated one's vessel to a normal-space velocity only 08% of whatever its velocity had been in hyper-space. This tremendously reduced the amount of deceleration required at the far end of a hyper voyage and so made reaction drives at least workable.
Since .3 c (approx. 89,907.6 km./sec.) was the maximum velocity at which an "upward" translation into hyper-space could be made, the maximum initial velocity in hyper-space was .024 c (or 7,192.6 km./sec.). Making translation at speeds as high as .3 c was a rough experience and not particularly safe. The loss rate at .3 c was over 10%; dropping translation velocity to .23 c virtually eliminated ship losses in initial translation, and, since the difference in initial hyper velocity was less than 1,700 KPS, most captains routinely made translation at the lower speed. Even today, only military commanders in emergency conditions will make upward translation at .3 c. There is no safe upper speed on "downward" translations. That is, a ship may translate from hyper-space to normal-space at any hyper-space velocity without risking destruction. (Which is not to say that the crews enjoy the experience or that it does not impose enormous wear and tear on hyper generators.) Further, translation from one hyper band to a higher band (see below) may be made at any velocity up to and including .6 c. No vessel may exceed .6 c in hyper (.8 in normal-space) because radiation and particle shields cannot protect them or their passengers at higher velocities.

[Rolepgeek]

Well I meant around planetary bases. Have a few dozen layers of them and suddenly things are a bit different.

Also, not really sure how to get around that or anything, so maybe my idea won't work. I dunno. Seems like it won't. Oh well.