Advice Thread OOC Future Tech Only

[Escalan Corps-Star Island]

Why when you guys argue about fighters, do you always say stuff like, "if it can damage a capital ship..." or "What if there are multiple capital ships?" I was in the assumption that you would have one or two capital ships and then the rest of your navy, because if every one of you ships is a "Capital ship" then it is just the norm and can then be considered your frigate or another general ship class. It kinda doesn't make any sense now that I think about it cause my capital ship could be smaller than you frigate and... but... *mental breakdown.*

I have no idea where I am going with this. But I always hear most of you talking about tech wanking, but most of you do it, whether it is on purpose or just an automatic reaction cause by the human condition that makes us all want a bigger stick then thine neighbor but I don't know. It just makes be angry how the norm of ships sizes in FT has gotten to the point where it is pretty much a moving battle station and it could destroy a planet with a press of a button and where pretty much people who like to have smaller conceivable ships are forced to spend countless hours in the early morning contemplating how in the world they are to combat such ships, but eventually coming to the conclusion that the only way to do so is by story handwavium by which any ship can destroy another purely just for the sake of the story. And they will probably come to the even more depressing conclusion that they will keep adding stuff onto their ship and in the end they will have to add countless weapons and technologies that these hypothetical "big boy space races" have already developed completely draining creativity from the experience of nations states, and cause it to no longer be any fun.

Or maybe its just me.

Your entire post is why my ships of the line are precisely a hundred and eight meters in length from stem to stern.

Because it makes me chuckle.

I agree with both of you. You'll see this in the next installment of the EFR.

[Escalan Corps-Star Island]

The Escalan Fighter Rant

---

Part Two: Thinking Realistically

For this section, a single point will suffice to cover many of the complaints as to "competence" of governments and the universality of PD-equipped capital ships. At this point it is also important to note that I am making specific references to the fact that the NSFT community is not an accurate representation of advanced spacefaring civilizations as a whole.

Out of all the cultures and races capable of doing so, realistically very few would even have the capability to travel faster than lightspeed, let alone mount massive weapons on kilometre-long capital ships. Let's take modern Terra as an example. Out of all the world's nations, the majority fall into the "third-world" or "developing" category. Many of those just emerging from this classification are able to because the international community is so interdependent, thereby making it advantageous for the most powerful of the large countries to aid the smaller ones and increase their national influence by doing so. Following up on this analogy, and given that comparatively undeveloped or small cultures would be limited to one planet, far from any contact with other races capable of reaching them. It is highly probable that life in some form exists elsewhere in the universe; why then do we have no ability to know if this is true. By virtue of this argument, a civilization might not contact any other for millennia, long after its own colonization and expansion phases in which it is most impressionable. If said culture has no contact with others who think otherwise, it is merely natural to extrapolate the technology they themselves have used in the past on wet navies to starfighters and a similar structure in space. Even if they were to come into contact with another sentient force, the overwhelming probability is that it would have followed a similar track, and, if not, would at least be in the early stages of development and thus have inadequate defense against fighter-borne weaponry. However, such a comparatively insignificant and weak emerging civilization is absolutely miserable to RP as, because no victory is possible against the rest of us. I quote Fata on this, as they were actually brave enough to attempt such a feat and as such I commend them. Seriously, though, this is just peer pressure to the extreme. The desire to be able to make a difference in the FT community prompts everyone to wank on some level and thus make NSFT an inaccurate representation of an actual developmental and tech spectrum.

Now, on to more specific, objective arguments.

• Now, when I said that point defense is expensive, I mean that defensive armaments capable of combating all fighter-based weapons would be very difficult indeed and, if possible at all, very expensive. This is not to say that any form of PD is unfeasible, merely that fighters could still get around it.
• As for the tactical FTL, all I'm going to say on the matter is that it is not the fairest form of combat, but it is possible and therefore an argument can be postulated as to its effectiveness.
• I'm not saying that large ships cannot enter the atmosphere, but they cannot operate on a small enough scale so as to compare with a fighter in that situation.
• Power. This is indeed a pressing concern, but not entirely insurmountable. As several of you have pointed out, my suggestion about using batteries may have been a bit misguided. In general, it's probably safe to say that fusion reactors are still unnecessary to power fighters, though, because surprisingly large amounts of power can come from the plasma engines themselves.
• If I'm fighting multiple capital ships as opposed to just one, any shots aimed at fighters attacking another ship have the potential to damage it, i. e. "friendly fire". This effectively negates having fighters threatened by another large vessel.
• And fighters can carry more than one very powerful bomb/missile/etc.
• In regards to the "human element" quote, any competent society would have almost everything controlled by AI, it's just the ability for manual override and provision for computer failure that is important in this case.
• As opposed to drones. . . Well, the fighters are more multi-purpose.

In conclusion, I'm not saying that the debate shouldn't happen, merely that brand new RPers should not be sucked into it against their will nor beaten about the head because they don't care about hard sci-fi and are just here for the fun. We were all newbies once, right?

[Rethan]

Why when you guys argue about fighters, do you always say stuff like, "if it can damage a capital ship..." or "What if there are multiple capital ships?" I was in the assumption that you would have one or two capital ships and then the rest of your navy, because if every one of you ships is a "Capital ship" then it is just the norm and can then be considered your frigate or another general ship class. It kinda doesn't make any sense now that I think about it cause my capital ship could be smaller than you frigate and... but... *mental breakdown.*

I quantify a 'Capital Ship' as any ship designed to do the majority of the fighting. Escorts, Destroyers and Frigates for me all have different, more 'refined' purposes.

I have no idea where I am going with this. But I always hear most of you talking about tech wanking, but most of you do it, whether it is on purpose or just an automatic reaction cause by the human condition that makes us all want a bigger stick then thine neighbor but I don't know.

Most people that I know in FT roleplay with technology they want to. Having giant ships, or firing small stars might be counted as tech wanking by some, and just plain fun as others. It's why I rarely throw around the term with any kind of meaning. It shouldn't matter what you claim to have, it should only matter whether you use it in a way which works for co-operative roleplay. Tech wanking is a very tenuous term, and is very dependant on a person's own opinion. Someone who roleplays with hard science fiction stuff might accuse people using Star Trek like technology of tech wanking, just as someone with Star Trek tech might accuse someone roleplaying as the Culture of tech wanking. You're guilty of it, I'm guilty of, everyone is guilty of it.

It is, like I said, only a legitimate complaint if it interferes with roleplay.

It just makes be angry how the norm of ships sizes in FT has gotten to the point where it is pretty much a moving battle station and it could destroy a planet with a press of a button and where pretty much people who like to have smaller conceivable ships are forced to spend countless hours in the early morning contemplating how in the world they are to combat such ships, but eventually coming to the conclusion that the only way to do so is by story handwavium by which any ship can destroy another purely just for the sake of the story

I have huge ships for what I consider legitimate reasons (namely, I'm nomadic and many of my ships need to house the industrial capacity to survive alone). Some people have bigger ships because yes, they are more powerful, and in those cases they should acknowledge that they will be more expensive and rarer. Or maybe their ships are bigger because they simply don't have the technology necessary to make them smaller. If you don't have sufficiently advanced laser weapons, you need a giant reactor to get good results and hence you need a giant ship. Compared to someone with a better tech base who could probably fit the same firepower into a ship half the size.

And they will probably come to the even more depressing conclusion that they will keep adding stuff onto their ship and in the end they will have to add countless weapons and technologies that these hypothetical "big boy space races" have already developed completely draining creativity from the experience of nations states, and cause it to no longer be any fun.

Or maybe its just me.

It's called an arms race. There's no reason you need to keep up with the "big boy space races" if you don't want to, but then you can't go around complaining that people who do prepare for war are more prepared than you are. To be quite honest, I'd be surprised if that even mattered. A lot of the people I've roleplayed with, or have read the roleplays of, gloss over tech advantages and so forth because it complicates matters. If person X has warships armed with stuff of godtech level, then person X should play fair and deploy less of those godships when facing down person Y who is a less advanced tech base. Or heck, just not even mention the tech levels at all.

Complaining about people roleplaying with heavily developed and powerful navies isn't going to help you, because otherwise you are asking them to give up a part of their nation. Take someone like Huerdae, who has half the galaxy pointing guns at him, or me, who is universally hated by everyone who isn't Huerdae. Of course our ships are going to be as big and as nasty as we can make them, it would be suicide not to, and we'll happily accommodate the fact that your ships might not be as 'tech wanked' as you claim ours to be. Be it by deploying less ships, or deploying lower tier ships. But you don't get to call anyone tech wanked without at least giving them the benefit of the doubt and seeing if they can use their 'big boy' guns in a way that everyone can have fun with.

EDIT: For Escalan's rant above. The only thing that matters is the last line. Nobody here as said "Don't use fighters ever ever ever because they are fail". What people have said is that by all logical thought processes and application of RL science fighters are inferior to missiles in a deep space combat environment. That's what the argument is, not whether you can use fighters in RP or not. By all means, go ahead and use them. Just don't try and justify them as being hard science or superior, because it won't work and isn't necessary for roleplay.

[IshCong]

The Escalan Fighter Rant

---

Part Two: Thinking Realistically

For this section, a single point will suffice to cover many of the complaints as to "competence" of governments and the universality of PD-equipped capital ships. At this point it is also important to note that I am making specific references to the fact that the NSFT community is not an accurate representation of advanced spacefaring civilizations as a whole.

Out of all the cultures and races capable of doing so, realistically very few would even have the capability to travel faster than lightspeed, let alone mount massive weapons on kilometre-long capital ships. Let's take modern Terra as an example. Out of all the world's nations, the majority fall into the "third-world" or "developing" category. Many of those just emerging from this classification are able to because the international community is so interdependent, thereby making it advantageous for the most powerful of the large countries to aid the smaller ones and increase their national influence by doing so. Following up on this analogy, and given that comparatively undeveloped or small cultures would be limited to one planet, far from any contact with other races capable of reaching them. It is highly probable that life in some form exists elsewhere in the universe; why then do we have no ability to know if this is true. By virtue of this argument, a civilization might not contact any other for millennia, long after its own colonization and expansion phases in which it is most impressionable. If said culture has no contact with others who think otherwise, it is merely natural to extrapolate the technology they themselves have used in the past on wet navies to starfighters and a similar structure in space.

A bunch of punk college kids on the Internet aren't falling for the obvious fallacy that is 'apply to space what we've applied to water'. IRL leaders didn't fall for that when we made the jump to the skies, and they won't fall for it if/when we jump to space, especially if, as we can see here and now, punk college kids and high school students are capable of realizing that's not inherently a great idea, and considering it at length. Therefore, there is no reason to assume entire species are going to fall for that without an in-depth and very thorough analysis of whether or not fighters should be used at all.

Even if they were to come into contact with another sentient force, the overwhelming probability is that it would have followed a similar track, and, if not, would at least be in the early stages of development and thus have inadequate defense against fighter-borne weaponry.

Doubtful. Constructing warships in space is almost certainly horribly easy when compared to mastering something that breaks physics. You'll be more likely to be able to construct warships in space with a great degree of skill prior to discovering FTL.

Now, when I said that point defense is expensive, I mean that defensive armaments capable of combating all fighter-based weapons would be very difficult indeed and, if possible at all, very expensive. This is not to say that any form of PD is unfeasible, merely that fighters could still get around it.

If Point-defense is expensive, you can bet the warship is. And the expense of that warship means you'll want to make sure it doesn't get swatted a few minutes into a fight by a missile and fighter combo that costs a fraction of what the warship does. No, you'll take the piddling additional cost of PDS/CIWS and put it all over so you don't waste the far grander investment that is the ship itself.

And nothing you typed suggests that fighters can get past PDS/CIWS, and moreover doesn't in any way suggest that a fighter can get past CIWS/PDS better than a missile fired from the 'carrier' in the first place.

As for the tactical FTL, all I'm going to say on the matter is that it is not the fairest form of combat, but it is possible and therefore an argument can be postulated as to its effectiveness.

FTLi makes tactical FTL irrelevant. From what I've seen, FTLi isn't common on NS, but neither is tactical FTL. The emergence and use of the latter will generate the emergence and use of the former. Moreover if you can FTL right next to an enemy warship with your fighter why are you not simply FTL'ing bombs into that warship?

I'm not saying that large ships cannot enter the atmosphere, but they cannot operate on a small enough scale so as to compare with a fighter in that situation.

Your space fighters should not be operating in atmosphere, the design requirements for a space fighter, assuming one accepts it, make them wholly unsuitable for the task. Besides, why go into atmo at all? You don't need to extend your range because you're already fighting at light-second ranges in space...

Power. This is indeed a pressing concern, but not entirely insurmountable. As several of you have pointed out, my suggestion about using batteries may have been a bit misguided. In general, it's probably safe to say that fusion reactors are still unnecessary to power fighters, though, because surprisingly large amounts of power can come from the plasma engines themselves.

Wait. Are you suggesting you should use engines to power engines? I'm...not sure you know what an 'engine' is.

If I'm fighting multiple capital ships as opposed to just one, any shots aimed at fighters attacking another ship have the potential to damage it, i. e. "friendly fire". This effectively negates having fighters threatened by another large vessel.

Pfft. Not if you have a half-decent targeting system. You can have dozens of kilometers between your ships and still not occupy a meaningful volume of space between two planets, let alone a system. You're far and away more likely to just miss everything than to hit a friendly target. Especially if you're using tracking munitions, like missiles.

And fighters can carry more than one very powerful bomb/missile/etc.

But less than larger ships can, and less efficiently than larger ships can.

In regards to the "human element" quote, any competent society would have almost everything controlled by AI, it's just the ability for manual override and provision for computer failure that is important in this case.

You're more likely to have the pilot fail than the computer, and in any event, a 'Human' pilot flying without a computer or AI will be functionally useless when facing those who are.

As opposed to drones. . . Well, the fighters are more multi-purpose.

No inherent reason that's true.

In conclusion, I'm not saying that the debate shouldn't happen, merely that brand new RPers should not be sucked into it against their will nor beaten about the head because they don't care about hard sci-fi and are just here for the fun. We were all newbies once, right?

It's one thing to do something because Rule of Cool, but a whole different thing to try to justify Rule of Cool by arguing 'it's realistic'.
If you want to do something because Rule of Cool, there is no stopping you, but note that in no way makes it realistic. At least not inherently so.

[Kreanoltha]

The Escalan Fighter Rant

---

Part Two: Thinking Realistically

For this section, a single point will suffice to cover many of the complaints as to "competence" of governments and the universality of PD-equipped capital ships. At this point it is also important to note that I am making specific references to the fact that the NSFT community is not an accurate representation of advanced spacefaring civilizations as a whole.

Out of all the cultures and races capable of doing so, realistically very few would even have the capability to travel faster than lightspeed, let alone mount massive weapons on kilometre-long capital ships. Let's take modern Terra as an example. Out of all the world's nations, the majority fall into the "third-world" or "developing" category. Many of those just emerging from this classification are able to because the international community is so interdependent, thereby making it advantageous for the most powerful of the large countries to aid the smaller ones and increase their national influence by doing so. Following up on this analogy, and given that comparatively undeveloped or small cultures would be limited to one planet, far from any contact with other races capable of reaching them. It is highly probable that life in some form exists elsewhere in the universe; why then do we have no ability to know if this is true. By virtue of this argument, a civilization might not contact any other for millennia, long after its own colonization and expansion phases in which it is most impressionable. If said culture has no contact with others who think otherwise, it is merely natural to extrapolate the technology they themselves have used in the past on wet navies to starfighters and a similar structure in space.

A bunch of punk college kids on the Internet aren't falling for the obvious fallacy that is 'apply to space what we've applied to water'. IRL leaders didn't fall for that when we made the jump to the skies, and they won't fall for it if/when we jump to space, especially if, as we can see here and now, punk college kids and high school students are capable of realizing that's not inherently a great idea, and considering it at length. Therefore, there is no reason to assume entire species are going to fall for that without an in-depth and very thorough analysis of whether or not fighters should be used at all.

Even if they were to come into contact with another sentient force, the overwhelming probability is that it would have followed a similar track, and, if not, would at least be in the early stages of development and thus have inadequate defense against fighter-borne weaponry.

Doubtful. Constructing warships in space is almost certainly horribly easy when compared to mastering something that breaks physics. You'll be more likely to be able to construct warships in space with a great degree of skill prior to discovering FTL.

Now, when I said that point defense is expensive, I mean that defensive armaments capable of combating all fighter-based weapons would be very difficult indeed and, if possible at all, very expensive. This is not to say that any form of PD is unfeasible, merely that fighters could still get around it.

If Point-defense is expensive, you can bet the warship is. And the expense of that warship means you'll want to make sure it doesn't get swatted a few minutes into a fight by a missile and fighter combo that costs a fraction of what the warship does. No, you'll take the piddling additional cost of PDS/CIWS and put it all over so you don't waste the far grander investment that is the ship itself.

And nothing you typed suggests that fighters can get past PDS/CIWS, and moreover doesn't in any way suggest that a fighter can get past CIWS/PDS better than a missile fired from the 'carrier' in the first place.

As for the tactical FTL, all I'm going to say on the matter is that it is not the fairest form of combat, but it is possible and therefore an argument can be postulated as to its effectiveness.

FTLi makes tactical FTL irrelevant. From what I've seen, FTLi isn't common on NS, but neither is tactical FTL. The emergence and use of the latter will generate the emergence and use of the former. Moreover if you can FTL right next to an enemy warship with your fighter why are you not simply FTL'ing bombs into that warship?

I'm not saying that large ships cannot enter the atmosphere, but they cannot operate on a small enough scale so as to compare with a fighter in that situation.

Your space fighters should not be operating in atmosphere, the design requirements for a space fighter, assuming one accepts it, make them wholly unsuitable for the task. Besides, why go into atmo at all? You don't need to extend your range because you're already fighting at light-second ranges in space...

Power. This is indeed a pressing concern, but not entirely insurmountable. As several of you have pointed out, my suggestion about using batteries may have been a bit misguided. In general, it's probably safe to say that fusion reactors are still unnecessary to power fighters, though, because surprisingly large amounts of power can come from the plasma engines themselves.

Wait. Are you suggesting you should use engines to power engines? I'm...not sure you know what an 'engine' is.

If I'm fighting multiple capital ships as opposed to just one, any shots aimed at fighters attacking another ship have the potential to damage it, i. e. "friendly fire". This effectively negates having fighters threatened by another large vessel.

Pfft. Not if you have a half-decent targeting system. You can have dozens of kilometers between your ships and still not occupy a meaningful volume of space between two planets, let alone a system. You're far and away more likely to just miss everything than to hit a friendly target. Especially if you're using tracking munitions, like missiles.

And fighters can carry more than one very powerful bomb/missile/etc.

But less than larger ships can, and less efficiently than larger ships can.

In regards to the "human element" quote, any competent society would have almost everything controlled by AI, it's just the ability for manual override and provision for computer failure that is important in this case.

You're more likely to have the pilot fail than the computer, and in any event, a 'Human' pilot flying without a computer or AI will be functionally useless when facing those who are.

As opposed to drones. . . Well, the fighters are more multi-purpose.

No inherent reason that's true.

In conclusion, I'm not saying that the debate shouldn't happen, merely that brand new RPers should not be sucked into it against their will nor beaten about the head because they don't care about hard sci-fi and are just here for the fun. We were all newbies once, right?

It's one thing to do something because Rule of Cool, but a whole different thing to try to justify Rule of Cool by arguing 'it's realistic'.
If you want to do something because Rule of Cool, there is no stopping you, but note that in no way makes it realistic. At least not inherently so.

Took the words right out of my mouth. Thanks bro.

[Escalan Corps-Star Island]

At this point my only option is just to shut up. I'm apparently not capable of making a case that will be interpreted effectively or make a difference. Any vestige of self-esteem or sense of accomplishment I still had has been pretty much destroyed. RP as you will, but if only to keep this civil, I'm stepping out.

Note: Gloating OOCly here may be sufficient cause for a war.

[IshCong]

At this point my only option is just to shut up. I'm apparently not capable of making a case that will be interpreted effectively or make a difference. Any vestige of self-esteem or sense of accomplishment I still had has been pretty much destroyed. RP as you will, but if only to keep this civil, I'm stepping out.

Note: Gloating OOCly here may be sufficient cause for a war.

Nobody is going to gloat, and I don't think anyone is trying to attack your self-esteem or sense of accomplishment. Nor do I think you should just shut up. The point is to discuss the matter, and get both parties to consider the position of the other side. I just hope you've done that and will take those considerations into consideration when contemplating what is realistic or not, and perhaps how you might RP and design your nation.

[Escalan Corps-Star Island]

At this point my only option is just to shut up. I'm apparently not capable of making a case that will be interpreted effectively or make a difference. Any vestige of self-esteem or sense of accomplishment I still had has been pretty much destroyed. RP as you will, but if only to keep this civil, I'm stepping out.

Note: Gloating OOCly here may be sufficient cause for a war.

Nobody is going to gloat, and I don't think anyone is trying to attack your self-esteem or sense of accomplishment. Nor do I think you should just shut up. The point is to discuss the matter, and get both parties to consider the position of the other side. I just hope you've done that and will take those considerations into consideration when contemplating what is realistic or not, and perhaps how you might RP and design your nation.

I'm using excessive hyperbole. It's all a bit of a joke, anyway. My main point is really just that fighters are actually usable. I'm not attacking PD or drones, I'm just saying fighters can be nearly as effective.

[Arthropoda Ingens]

Why when you guys argue about fighters, do you always say stuff like, "if it can damage a capital ship..." or "What if there are multiple capital ships?" I was in the assumption that you would have one or two capital ships and then the rest of your navy, because if every one of you ships is a "Capital ship" then it is just the norm and can then be considered your frigate or another general ship class. It kinda doesn't make any sense now that I think about it cause my capital ship could be smaller than you frigate and... but... *mental breakdown.*

That's one of the silly - retarded, actually - brainbugs infesting fiction.

A capship is a main combatant. Simple. Having only one of two main combatants is pretty damn silly - you're investing a shitton of resources into the infrastructure to build them, then stop building them? You're building ships that can take out anything smaller, yet keep building smaller shit just because?

Production of pre-dreadnoughts stopped once dreadnoughts appeared, too, you know (Well, unless you're French. Silly French). And unless you were a minor entity incapable of affording more (And, for that matter, incapable of building big boats, forcing you to buy foreign instead), you didn't just build one or two, you built shittons.

The United States don't exactly rest on having just one or two carriers, either. Granted, France and Britain do, but that brings us back to minor entities with delusions of grandeur.

A capship shouldn't be a special snowflake. If it is, something went horribly wrong in the production program or the defence ministry's budget allocation. Now, that's fine if it's intentional - when this error has occured IC, when it was, in fact, a horrible missallocation of funds or hilariously overestimating the nation's defensive needs or manufacturing capacity. Indeed, I'd say it adds nice fluff. But the argument that capships should be something fundamentally limited to one or two boats per nation is so fucking retarded, it gives me aneurisms.

I have no idea where I am going with this. But I always hear most of you talking about tech wanking, but most of you do it, whether it is on purpose or just an automatic reaction cause by the human condition that makes us all want a bigger stick then thine neighbor but I don't know. It just makes be angry how the norm of ships sizes in FT has gotten to the point where it is pretty much a moving battle station and it could destroy a planet with a press of a button

I find this highly doubtful and most likely to be a product of your imagination and a mild persecution complex.

You wouldn't be able to name any names, link to any posts by 'Most of us' to source your claim, would you?

[Vernii]

]That's one of the silly - retarded, actually - brainbugs infesting fiction.

A capship is a main combatant. Simple. Having only one of two main combatants is pretty damn silly - you're investing a shitton of resources into the infrastructure to build them, then stop building them? You're building ships that can take out anything smaller, yet keep building smaller shit just because?

Production of pre-dreadnoughts stopped once dreadnoughts appeared, too, you know (Well, unless you're French. Silly French). And unless you were a minor entity incapable of affording more (And, for that matter, incapable of building big boats, forcing you to buy foreign instead), you didn't just build one or two, you built shittons.

The United States don't exactly rest on having just one or two carriers, either. Granted, France and Britain do, but that brings us back to minor entities with delusions of grandeur.

A capship shouldn't be a special snowflake. If it is, something went horribly wrong in the production program or the defence ministry's budget allocation. Now, that's fine if it's intentional - when this error has occurred IC, when it was, in fact, a horrible missallocation of funds or hilariously overestimating the nation's defensive needs or manufacturing capacity. Indeed, I'd say it adds nice fluff. But the argument that capships should be something fundamentally limited to one or two boats per nation is so fucking retarded, it gives me aneurisms.

To back this point up further, back at the height of WWI, Great Britain and Imperial Germany each possessed several dozen dreadnoughts, the US today operates 11-12 supercarriers (not to mention the smaller ones), and then you have the USN's other large warships as well. Capital vessels are by no means rare, and its one of the more idiotic brainbugs in sci-fi that they should be.

On that note, I'm been tinkering a bit with an intelligence report by a NavInt officer trying to explain the disparity that exists between the Raumreich navies and 'frontier' civs in terms of warship numbers. The report leans to the idea that the disparity is cultural, and that the barbarians who populate the rest of the galaxy see capital ships in much the same light as the champions of ancient armies, or personal flagships for warlords. Basically rare, prestigious, and mostly there for morale purposes.

[YellowApple]

That's why in retrospect I stated that missiles were a bad example. However, one ship with moderately bigger and stronger capabilities than an individual smaller ship doesn't counter that - mass-wise - there's more overall potential of firepower with the many smaller ships because of increased combined surface area per unit of volume - and mass. Recall my analogy to cluster computing; one monolithic machine will not run as fast as a cluster of individually-slower but aggregated smaller machines combining their efforts without significantly higher expense.

Power plants aren't computers. Power plants are power plants. And power plants become more, not less efficient as they increase in size. Sauce.

Do you have a copy of the full text? An abstract and a prompt to pay $40 to read the whole thing isn't much of sauce at all. Nice try.

Meanwhile, this article on HowStuffWorks indicates that the complete opposite is true in real-life hybrid vehicles - that smaller engines are more efficient. So your mileage may vary.

Your ad-hominem arguments about how my comparisons are "flat-out lies" hinge on a single paper that is not openly available without paying up and that doesn't seem to be matched by other, freely-available scientific documentation, and hence are therefore not only uncalled for, but also untrue.

This is the reason why I discontinued this discussion last time it broke out: instead of providing an informed discussion, the participants on the "fighters are stoopid!!!!110ne" side of this argument insist on getting angry about things. Chill out.

[Kreanoltha]

Do you have a copy of the full text? An abstract and a prompt to pay $40 to read the whole thing isn't much of sauce at all. Nice try.

Meanwhile, this article on HowStuffWorks indicates that the complete opposite is true in real-life hybrid vehicles - that smaller engines are more efficient. So your mileage may vary.

Yeah... I'm going to stop you right there. That works for gasoline engines. Not so much for fusion reactors. As the reaction chamber gets bigger, you can react more hydrogen which creates a hotter reaction which generates more power more quickly. I don't have any sauce, but if AI comes back with more I'm sure you'll come around.

[YellowApple]

Do you have a copy of the full text? An abstract and a prompt to pay $40 to read the whole thing isn't much of sauce at all. Nice try.

Meanwhile, this article on HowStuffWorks indicates that the complete opposite is true in real-life hybrid vehicles - that smaller engines are more efficient. So your mileage may vary.

Yeah... I'm going to stop you right there. That works for gasoline engines. Not so much for fusion reactors. As the reaction chamber gets bigger, you can react more hydrogen which creates a hotter reaction which generates more power more quickly. I don't have any sauce, but if AI comes back with more I'm sure you'll come around.

Alright then. So it's dependent on the technology; some engines are efficient when smaller, while others are efficient when bigger. Which means that this whole argument would boil down to the tech base of the player/author.

But if the chamber is bigger, wouldn't there be more hydrogen to fuse, which means that the length of time required to heat it all up to fusion temperatures would increase?

[Kreanoltha]

Yeah... I'm going to stop you right there. That works for gasoline engines. Not so much for fusion reactors. As the reaction chamber gets bigger, you can react more hydrogen which creates a hotter reaction which generates more power more quickly. I don't have any sauce, but if AI comes back with more I'm sure you'll come around.

Alright then. So it's dependent on the technology; some engines are efficient when smaller, while others are efficient when bigger. Which means that this whole argument would boil down to the tech base of the player/author.

But if the chamber is bigger, wouldn't there be more hydrogen to fuse, which means that the length of time required to heat it all up to fusion temperatures would increase?

Fusion does not work that way. The reactor chamber only has as much hydrogen as you're intending to fuse in that one reaction cycle. It happens instantaneously. It's a bit like an internal combustion engine with fuel injection.

[The Akasha Colony]

Power plants aren't computers. Power plants are power plants. And power plants become more, not less efficient as they increase in size. Sauce.

Do you have a copy of the full text? An abstract and a prompt to pay $40 to read the whole thing isn't much of sauce at all. Nice try.

Meanwhile, this article on HowStuffWorks indicates that the complete opposite is true in real-life hybrid vehicles - that smaller engines are more efficient. So your mileage may vary.

Your ad-hominem arguments about how my comparisons are "flat-out lies" hinge on a single paper that is not openly available without paying up and that doesn't seem to be matched by other, freely-available scientific documentation, and hence are therefore not only uncalled for, but also untrue.

This is the reason why I discontinued this discussion last time it broke out: instead of providing an informed discussion, the participants on the "fighters are stoopid!!!!110ne" side of this argument insist on getting angry about things. Chill out.

It should be pointed out that the efficiency improvements for a hybrid vehicle are not because the engine is more efficient in and of itself, but instead because the battery system allows for load-leveling, thus reducing the engine's maximum required output, allowing a smaller engine. A normal car must have an engine sufficiently powerful enough to accelerate the car on its own, but when the car is at-speed, this power is wasted. A hybrid uses an engine designed only to maintain speed, and uses energy saved during decelerations and stops to bolster net output temporarily by drawing from the battery system. It also means that the hybrid engine can be optimized for a narrower expected power band than a conventional engine, which will experience a wider range of RPMs. Hence, it is best to say that hybrids are optimized toward 'typical use' conditions, at the expense of 'power use' conditions.

These issues of course are of much less import for a warship's reactor. In order to properly power the ship, it should be as powerful as possible to maximize the power of the weapons, engines, and defenses attached to it. A ship will also need thrust to brake its forward momentum and maneuver, unlike a car which can rely on friction to slow it down, meaning that the warship will require power accelerating, decelerating, and while maneuvering in combat. By their nature, warships are designed for maximum-output situations. Most rarely see combat in relation to the amount of time spent on patrol, in transit, and refitting, but are still usually optimized for line combat, where energy demands are greatest. Patrol ships and cutters may be designed for typical use situations, but are another matter entirely.

For redundancy, usually multiple engines are shipped (on surface warships, although most Western submarines use only a single reactor), and hence if fuel consumption is of absolute import, in cruising mode, extra reactors can simply be shut down, an option a car does not have. It is, however, still most efficient to consolidate these reactors into the smallest number that can be practicably achieved while balancing the nature of redundancy and failsafes.

[YellowApple]

Alright then. So it's dependent on the technology; some engines are efficient when smaller, while others are efficient when bigger. Which means that this whole argument would boil down to the tech base of the player/author.

But if the chamber is bigger, wouldn't there be more hydrogen to fuse, which means that the length of time required to heat it all up to fusion temperatures would increase?

Fusion does not work that way. The reactor chamber only has as much hydrogen as you're intending to fuse in that one reaction cycle. It happens instantaneously. It's a bit like an internal combustion engine with fuel injection.

But thermal conductivity isn't instant; unless you're heating every hydrogen atom instantaneously, the heat is going to radiate from the source through the hydrogen fuel. Then there's the delay between receiving sufficient thermal energy to fuse and actually being fused. More hydrogen would therefore mean longer cycles, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

Do you have a copy of the full text? An abstract and a prompt to pay $40 to read the whole thing isn't much of sauce at all. Nice try.

Meanwhile, this article on HowStuffWorks indicates that the complete opposite is true in real-life hybrid vehicles - that smaller engines are more efficient. So your mileage may vary.

Your ad-hominem arguments about how my comparisons are "flat-out lies" hinge on a single paper that is not openly available without paying up and that doesn't seem to be matched by other, freely-available scientific documentation, and hence are therefore not only uncalled for, but also untrue.

This is the reason why I discontinued this discussion last time it broke out: instead of providing an informed discussion, the participants on the "fighters are stoopid!!!!110ne" side of this argument insist on getting angry about things. Chill out.

It should be pointed out that the efficiency improvements for a hybrid vehicle are not because the engine is more efficient in and of itself, but instead because the battery system allows for load-leveling, thus reducing the engine's maximum required output, allowing a smaller engine. A normal car must have an engine sufficiently powerful enough to accelerate the car on its own, but when the car is at-speed, this power is wasted. A hybrid uses an engine designed only to maintain speed, and uses energy saved during decelerations and stops to bolster net output temporarily by drawing from the battery system. It also means that the hybrid engine can be optimized for a narrower expected power band than a conventional engine, which will experience a wider range of RPMs. Hence, it is best to say that hybrids are optimized toward 'typical use' conditions, at the expense of 'power use' conditions.

These issues of course are of much less import for a warship's reactor. In order to properly power the ship, it should be as powerful as possible to maximize the power of the weapons, engines, and defenses attached to it. A ship will also need thrust to brake its forward momentum and maneuver, unlike a car which can rely on friction to slow it down, meaning that the warship will require power accelerating, decelerating, and while maneuvering in combat. By their nature, warships are designed for maximum-output situations. Most rarely see combat in relation to the amount of time spent on patrol, in transit, and refitting, but are still usually optimized for line combat, where energy demands are greatest. Patrol ships and cutters may be designed for typical use situations, but are another matter entirely.

For redundancy, usually multiple engines are shipped (on surface warships, although most Western submarines use only a single reactor), and hence if fuel consumption is of absolute import, in cruising mode, extra reactors can simply be shut down, an option a car does not have. It is, however, still most efficient to consolidate these reactors into the smallest number that can be practicably achieved while balancing the nature of redundancy and failsafes.

Very good points, I suppose. However, it still doesn't answer one fundamental issue that I have with big ships vs. small ships: the square-cube law. What's being discussed is true for the reactor itself, but if the main engines still only provide thrust over one face of a rectangular prism, and the prism as a whole has a volume - and therefore mass (assuming equal density in the entire volume) - growing faster than the area of thrust, then wouldn't that be an increasingly-restrictive bottleneck as the size grows?

[The Akasha Colony]

It should be pointed out that the efficiency improvements for a hybrid vehicle are not because the engine is more efficient in and of itself, but instead because the battery system allows for load-leveling, thus reducing the engine's maximum required output, allowing a smaller engine. A normal car must have an engine sufficiently powerful enough to accelerate the car on its own, but when the car is at-speed, this power is wasted. A hybrid uses an engine designed only to maintain speed, and uses energy saved during decelerations and stops to bolster net output temporarily by drawing from the battery system. It also means that the hybrid engine can be optimized for a narrower expected power band than a conventional engine, which will experience a wider range of RPMs. Hence, it is best to say that hybrids are optimized toward 'typical use' conditions, at the expense of 'power use' conditions.

These issues of course are of much less import for a warship's reactor. In order to properly power the ship, it should be as powerful as possible to maximize the power of the weapons, engines, and defenses attached to it. A ship will also need thrust to brake its forward momentum and maneuver, unlike a car which can rely on friction to slow it down, meaning that the warship will require power accelerating, decelerating, and while maneuvering in combat. By their nature, warships are designed for maximum-output situations. Most rarely see combat in relation to the amount of time spent on patrol, in transit, and refitting, but are still usually optimized for line combat, where energy demands are greatest. Patrol ships and cutters may be designed for typical use situations, but are another matter entirely.

For redundancy, usually multiple engines are shipped (on surface warships, although most Western submarines use only a single reactor), and hence if fuel consumption is of absolute import, in cruising mode, extra reactors can simply be shut down, an option a car does not have. It is, however, still most efficient to consolidate these reactors into the smallest number that can be practicably achieved while balancing the nature of redundancy and failsafes.

Very good points, I suppose. However, it still doesn't answer one fundamental issue that I have with big ships vs. small ships: the square-cube law. What's being discussed is true for the reactor itself, but if the main engines still only provide thrust over one face of a rectangular prism, and the prism as a whole has a volume - and therefore mass (assuming equal density in the entire volume) - growing faster than the area of thrust, then wouldn't that be an increasingly-restrictive bottleneck as the size grows?

Only once you've reached the maximum amount of power your engine technology can usefully harness. Once past this point, any additional reactor output and accompanying mass would indeed lead to reduced maneuverability, although the gains in reactor power, and the reduction in vulnerable surface area relative to the energy output may make pushing past this limit an acceptable design choice.

Now, if your technology base is such that this intersection of reactor output and engine input occurs at the extremely small level, say, for fighters, then this would indeed make them efficient platforms, from an energy-maneuverability standpoint. Of course, it's very likely that this could occur at, say, the dreadnought level. Given the complex nature of scaling technologies down as opposed to up, it's reasonable to assume that the most efficient technologies would be first made large, then made small, but by the time they are made small, new technologies to improve the efficiency of large engines will have come along, inducing a lag time between new technology and the miniaturization of that technology to the fighter scale.

[YellowApple]

Very good points, I suppose. However, it still doesn't answer one fundamental issue that I have with big ships vs. small ships: the square-cube law. What's being discussed is true for the reactor itself, but if the main engines still only provide thrust over one face of a rectangular prism, and the prism as a whole has a volume - and therefore mass (assuming equal density in the entire volume) - growing faster than the area of thrust, then wouldn't that be an increasingly-restrictive bottleneck as the size grows?

Only once you've reached the maximum amount of power your engine technology can usefully harness. Once past this point, any additional reactor output and accompanying mass would indeed lead to reduced maneuverability, although the gains in reactor power, and the reduction in vulnerable surface area relative to the energy output may make pushing past this limit an acceptable design choice.

Now, if your technology base is such that this intersection of reactor output and engine input occurs at the extremely small level, say, for fighters, then this would indeed make them efficient platforms, from an energy-maneuverability standpoint. Of course, it's very likely that this could occur at, say, the dreadnought level. Given the complex nature of scaling technologies down as opposed to up, it's reasonable to assume that the most efficient technologies would be first made large, then made small, but by the time they are made small, new technologies to improve the efficiency of large engines will have come along, inducing a lag time between new technology and the miniaturization of that technology to the fighter scale.

I suppose, but I don't know if we're on the same page. In that case, I'll explain differently.

Let's make ourselves a small two-dimensional ship made out of Xs, with a propulsion system that involves shooting thrust made of equals-signs, like so:

XXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXX=

This ship can push four equals-signs of propellant out the back at any given time, and has a mass of 32 Xs (an 8*4 rectangle). Now let's, say, scale up the volume of the ship to double the original size:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX=

Now we have a thrust of eight equals-signs at any given point of time, but our ships mass has grown to 16*8, or 128.

Thus, while the small ship has a thrust-to-mass ratio of 4/32 = 0.125, the big ship has a thrust-to-mass ratio of 8/128 = 0.0625 - about half the thrust-to-mass. This would equate to slower acceleration, if my (admittedly simplified) model is accurate, since there's less thrust per unit of mass to push the ship as a whole.

Likewise, if we shrink our original ship like so:

XXXX=
XXXX=

We have a thrust of 2, a mass of 8, and a thrust-to-mass ratio of 2/8 = 0.25. Another halving in size:

XX=

results in a thrust of 1, a mass of 2, and a thrust-to-mass ratio of 1/2 = 0.5.

Again, my model is probably over-simplified, since it doesn't take into account the exact details of the ship's mass distribution or engine configuration, but it still illustrates why the "big ships can accelerate faster than small ships" idea is questionable, at least in my own opinion.

[The Akasha Colony]

[snip]

I'm aware of what the square-cube law is, and how it affects the ability to dissipate power. My point is that below a certain size, if we pick the largest possible engine configuration and scale it down, the engine will become increasingly inefficient as the reactor rapidly shrinks, being unable to provide the engine with the power it needs to operate at full efficiency. Hence, all of that unused engine capacity becomes deadweight.

At the same time, above the size we started at, now the reactor starts to have additional unused capacity. This is easier to deal with since extra power can be sunk into additional weapons and defenses, whereas extra unused engine capacity just results in deadweight. However, it is possible to redesign the configuration of larger ships to increase the surface area of their engine bank, staving off this intersection.

Text-based communications are not really the best way to describe it, but configuration can be used to allow larger ships to be build even when engine power is maxed out. To put it in a similar diagram, let's assume our engine technology is such that each engine 'unit' can safely harness eight 'reactor units' of power. We essentially get this:

XXXXXXXX=

This is one possible ship configuration, although it may be a poor one since it maximizes surface area, and hence vulnerability, but without massive amounts of power. A ship could also be designed like this:

XXXX
XXXX=
XXXX=
XXXX

This configuration is also efficient, and minimizes surface area to improve defense. Each engine (two) still receives the maximum amount of energy it can safely harness. But these are not efficient:

XXXX
XXXX=
XXXX

XXXX=

The top ship has more power than its lone engine can accept, while the bottom has too little, and hence has wasted potential. When building a large ship however, one runs out of options eventually in terms of efficient layouts, even though they still exist:

XXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXX=
XXXXXXXX=

In this case, now the ship only has the option of expanding along either its width or height, as this adds engine surface area proportionate to the volume added. Extra 'stacks' of reactor volume and engines could be added without altering the ratio. But this could theoretically be sustained indefinitely, although it would result in a flat, pancake-like ship if taken too far, and would lead to poor surface area efficiency and likely sub-optimal design characteristics in other areas.



tl;dr: If you take one fighter and weld another fighter to it, you will have doubled your mass, volume, and engine power, which should result in the same speed. This can be applied to capital ships as well, which is possible unlike in real-world ships because hydrodynamics and drag are not a problem in space, and pancake-ships (while ugly) are eminently feasible. You can keep doing this until it impacts some other area of the design.

[Escalan Corps-Star Island]

I'm not arguing that fighters are necessarily the most effective option or even a smart one, but merely that they can be used effectively. Even though drones and PD are better. To cut a long story short, my history holds that this works within the Alkirienid Interior Collective, and it's how my people view this. These other concepts are unfamiliar to them IC, so I'll let it rest with that.

Also, by 17230 and the Catastrophe/Ripple Transcendence/ Ascension, the Escalan are. . . different. Radically so.

[YellowApple]

tl;dr: If you take one fighter and weld another fighter to it, you will have doubled your mass, volume, and engine power, which should result in the same speed. This can be applied to capital ships as well, which is possible unlike in real-world ships because hydrodynamics and drag are not a problem in space, and pancake-ships (while ugly) are eminently feasible. You can keep doing this until it impacts some other area of the design.

That's exactly what I'm getting at: the only way that I can picture upscaling to result in equal or greater efficiency is if one stacks individual engines at a size optimal for propulsion efficiency - neither too large nor too small. However, since the engine isn't the only part of the ship's mass, it's inaccurate.

Here's where things get complicated, since they depend on exactly how a player portrays his/her tech: in order to evaluate this, we'd have to determine how other subsystems - weapons, computing, life support, armor, etc. - scale with the size of the ship. Considering that this is - again - completely dependent on the individual player, it would be very difficult to accurately ascertain whether either is more thrust-efficient with the entire ship considered.

[Arthropoda Ingens]

Do you have a copy of the full text? An abstract and a prompt to pay $40 to read the whole thing isn't much of sauce at all. Nice try.

Meanwhile, this article on HowStuffWorks indicates that the complete opposite is true in real-life hybrid vehicles - that smaller engines are more efficient. So your mileage may vary.

Your ad-hominem arguments about how my comparisons are "flat-out lies" hinge on a single paper that is not openly available without paying up and that doesn't seem to be matched by other, freely-available scientific documentation, and hence are therefore not only uncalled for, but also untrue.

This is the reason why I discontinued this discussion last time it broke out: instead of providing an informed discussion, the participants on the "fighters are stoopid!!!!110ne" side of this argument insist on getting angry about things. Chill out.

Did you actually read and comprehend the article?

It's a rhetorical question. It's pretty clear you didn't.

The efficiency in the article concerns not the energy output of the engine relative to its mass, but fuel consumption over distance. Indeed, it specifically mentions that the smaller engine produces insufficient power for peak output activities, which is why it needs the assistance of a battery, which, as you may or may not be able to figure out, rather changed the mass/ power equation a bit. The efficiency discussed isn't 'How many watts per kilogram', but 'How many litres per kilometre'. Which are very, very different things. Indeed, it's blatantly obvious that the issue discussed in the article is the problem with conventional engines that they expend more fuel - produce more power - than is strictly speaking needed to do a given job. They run at a higher output than is required to go a given distance, and this higher output is effectively wasted. They produce more energy than is needed, and that is the inefficiency discussed. Somehow this appears to have gone way the fuck over your head, though. Well, no surprise there.

Needless to say, when the article specifically states that the smaller engine is incapable of competing with bigger engines at peak output - second-last paragraph - unless it gets assistance, and you're either willfully ignoring or - probably more likely - are incapable of comprehending this, you probably have some very basic problems and frankly, shouldn't be talking about things you do not understand.

Neatly fitting in there is your really, really pro move of using How Stuff Works to somehow disprove an actual, peer-reviewed scientific paper.

... With an article that doesn't even remotely state what you're hallucinating it to state.

[Mini Miehm]

Why when you guys argue about fighters, do you always say stuff like, "if it can damage a capital ship..." or "What if there are multiple capital ships?" I was in the assumption that you would have one or two capital ships and then the rest of your navy, because if every one of you ships is a "Capital ship" then it is just the norm and can then be considered your frigate or another general ship class. It kinda doesn't make any sense now that I think about it cause my capital ship could be smaller than you frigate and... but... *mental breakdown.*

I have no idea where I am going with this. But I always hear most of you talking about tech wanking, but most of you do it, whether it is on purpose or just an automatic reaction cause by the human condition that makes us all want a bigger stick then thine neighbor but I don't know. It just makes be angry how the norm of ships sizes in FT has gotten to the point where it is pretty much a moving battle station and it could destroy a planet with a press of a button and where pretty much people who like to have smaller conceivable ships are forced to spend countless hours in the early morning contemplating how in the world they are to combat such ships, but eventually coming to the conclusion that the only way to do so is by story handwavium by which any ship can destroy another purely just for the sake of the story. And they will probably come to the even more depressing conclusion that they will keep adding stuff onto their ship and in the end they will have to add countless weapons and technologies that these hypothetical "big boy space races" have already developed completely draining creativity from the experience of nations states, and cause it to no longer be any fun.

Or maybe its just me.

A capitol ship is any mainline combatant(battleship, battlestar, murderfiend, dreadnought, etc.). It is not necessarily always outnumbered by your screening elements, since they tend to get butchered when a real capship points its weapons at it.

Moving on from that point, you need to define exactly what "a moving battlestation" is. Unless people are building dozens or hundreds of ships in excess of ten-twenty kilometers, and I missed the memo, your argument seems to fall on its face.

[YellowApple]

-snip-

First:



Seriously now. Take a chill pill. You're getting way too worked up about this. Everyone else is being nice and civil, and I'm sure you can, too.

And you still didn't answer my question: do you or do you not have a document that doesn't require me paying $40 to analyze myself? If you do, then I'd be overjoyed to read it. Otherwise, with only an unsupported abstract and some charts that measure engine efficiency as a function of the year of introduction, there's not much supporting either side of this discussion, which leads to logic:

Big ships have big mass, which means more propulsive force is necessary to move with a given acceleration than a small ship with a small mass. More force equates to more fuel consumed per unit of acceleration.

How the consumption of fuel scales to the mass of a ship is dependent on a number of factors, the most important being the technology base of the player/author. How much mass is needed for the engine? How much for the fuel? Life support? Computing? Armor? Weapons? Supplies? Crew? All quite variable, and there is hardly a defined answer that covers every single possible use scenario.

Moving on from that point, you need to define exactly what "a moving battlestation" is. Unless people are building dozens or hundreds of ships in excess of ten-twenty kilometers, and I missed the memo, your argument seems to fall on its face.

That's not unheard of among some NSers...

[Ularn]

For Christ's sake can we PLEASE talk about something else besides fighters?