NationStates

The Steampunk Empire wrote: we dont spend much time in the void between stars, cause well, its all cold and dark an there's nothing there except scary scary lovecraftian horrors that want to eat our souls...

You rang? We dont eat your souls that is a myth! We reprocess you for our own means.....geez.

I am of the opinion that every nation in FT could qualify as a cosmic horror. We are all more than willing to kill members of other species, our own species or even things that don't exist yet for our own sake. We're all fully capable of detonating planets, with a few of us even able to accidentally entire star systems. So, while I respect cosmic horrors for being the spice of life, I have no respect for their capabilities as monstrosities... As we all know, man is the greatest monster of all.

Thank you for your time and have a nice day.

Auman that brought a tear to my eyes......you have made it clear to me what must be done!!!! DESTROY HUMANITY!!!! How dare they be the bigger monsters!

HiveMind Primus wrote:Auman that brought a tear to my eyes......you have made it clear to me what must be done!!!! DESTROY HUMANITY!!!! How dare they be the bigger monsters!

Come at me, bro.

Auman wrote:Come at me, bro.

Im not sure I want to.........

Anyway While im here a question to discuss!!!!

Organic orbital strikes!

Now if a MAC round or other non-living ballistics hit a planet it leaves a crater?
I was wondering if I could do the same thing throwing giant organic lumps of bio-mass? I fiqure so long as they are dense enough and can survive entry into an atmosphere they should do considerable damage along with spreading disease and other nastys?

HiveMind Primus wrote:Auman that brought a tear to my eyes......you have made it clear to me what must be done!!!! DESTROY HUMANITY!!!! How dare they be the bigger monsters!

Are you kidding? I've been trying to do that since I created my nation, and it's hopeless. Humanity spreads faster than bad news.

HiveMind Primus wrote:

Auman wrote:Come at me, bro.

Im not sure I want to.........

Anyway While im here a question to discuss!!!!

Organic orbital strikes!

Now if a MAC round or other non-living ballistics hit a planet it leaves a crater?
I was wondering if I could do the same thing throwing giant organic lumps of bio-mass? I fiqure so long as they are dense enough and can survive entry into an atmosphere they should do considerable damage along with spreading disease and other nastys?

My ships are organic...and we do perform kamikaze manuevers sometimes. But I wouldn't recommend it over just shooting the planet or using inorganics though. They do considerable damage but it's usually not worth using ships over, and our vessels don't spread disease.

I'd say just drop a bio-weapon bomb.

Let’s forget about the biological component and issues with energy density and use to begin with and discuss standard, field assisted and zero relative re-entry of a useable combat lander.

Atmospheric entry is not easy and should never no matter the tech level be treated as such. Atmospheric entry in a combat situation of anything more than real world scale missile RVs should be portrayed as brutal. The beach assaults of World War II should have nothing on the losses you would have against single shot launchers and the like on a defended area as you try to establish a space head. Oh sure your big orbital warships or dedicated planetary assault carriers or whatever can vaporize major ground installations and blast every atmospheric craft and armored vehicle to ash and even individual formations on the ground, you can drone swarm , KEW and CREW ..but ... A little one shot tube buried no matter its size with a simple IR seeker and a big warhead will still ruin your Landers day and more importantly does not in any way require to survive very long, be expensive or be more than one use only.

A meteor goes around 30 miles a second, your ships a lot faster than that if it’s assaulting a planet. You in your lander need to be slower and slowing down. FT does not always allow for nice safe orbits in combat its hard burn and hard burn all the time or die. In hostile fire conditions this is bad. You need to control and retard your velocity without burning up, this involves a careful balance of how hot you can get for how long and how fast you can shed speed using the atmosphere as a brake, (worse still this puts you on predictable flight paths, if the enemy has a “JANES ALL THE UNIVERSES COMBAT LANDERS” or its equiv information on you they will know roughly the maximum angles you can handle and thus your probable flight paths) you could assist this braking if you had the power and indeed you will need to have some power to alter your path if you’ve got inbound fire. Ironically a certain scale of large object does this better and can shed speed faster with its larger braking area. The perfect examples of either of these in SF would be battle tech drop ships or aerodyne drop ships. Use massive heavy size, huge power output and or hull shape to slow down and ruin your day. With more power or real grav drive true zero relative (grav ship style) is possible. This of course means you glow like a damn Christmas tree of drive fields.

Field assisted re-entry is self explanatory, if you have the tech and you have the power why not?
Well power cost will be intense and if anything the field will probably be larger and flashier (and thus attract even more inbounds) than your hull. Of course your hull wont need to burn the precious ablatives you may need to stop other things. Unfortunately it probably will be needed to as your glowing.

So combat re-entry is brutal, high energy, fraught with danger from weapons that otherwise couldn’t do a great deal to you and down right dangerous.

Now to warhead RVs.

Even a bio RV is pretty simple..It’s just mostly already a dead shell. Think a super modified mollusk or the like. Fill it with something nice dense metal. You can replicate everything a dense kinetic impactor can do with this, because it is in fact a dense kinetic impactor.

If it’s fast enough to do MAC shell damage then it’s too fast to “simply” spread contaminants very far. You need sub munitions to do that.

Now to “dense” RVs. hitting fast. With dense bio goop. The problem with dense bio goop ? …well you’re not as dense as metal and density doesn’t actually help all that much with reentry. And being dense..it doesn’t spread. And its just landed in a superheated puddle of molten rock fire and explosion. Again being dense its in that blast. So its dead.

What you need is a nice ablative shell. Literally a shell.

What you really want to do for a biological weapon is dispense aero shells that cool off sufficiently to release your cloud of nasty and really with delivery shells that’s not that slow. A hypersonic main body impactor releases supersonic or transonic delivery ..well crop dusters that spread your low mass clouds about when they stop being on fire. Low mass so that your space death fungus floats in the breeze or the stratosphere.

I would second everything that Zepplin said above.

Balrogga wrote:

The Steampunk Empire wrote:we dont spend much time in the void between stars, cause well, its all cold and dark an there's nothing there except scary scary lovecraftian horrors that want to eat our souls...

Not true, I am also inside systems as well as outside them.

Us Cosmic Horrors can be anywhere you don't want us to be, right Rethan?

Speaking of Horror, perhaps the Second Galactic War could be a prime testing ground for the new systems?

EternalNight wrote:

Balrogga wrote:
Not true, I am also inside systems as well as outside them.

Us Cosmic Horrors can be anywhere you don't want us to be, right Rethan?

Speaking of Horror, perhaps the Second Galactic War could be a prime testing ground for the new systems?

If our dear Roman ever continues it. <_______________<

Second Galactic War? I'd say it's more along the lines of "First Roman Genocide" or maybe "Last Days of Rome"...oooo, or maybe the "Roman Incident."

Khandosia wrote:Second Galactic War? I'd say it's more along the lines of "First Roman Genocide" or maybe "Last Days of Rome"...oooo, or maybe the "Roman Incident."

The Great Gamma Cookout?

OMGeverynameistaken wrote:

Khandosia wrote:Second Galactic War? I'd say it's more along the lines of "First Roman Genocide" or maybe "Last Days of Rome"...oooo, or maybe the "Roman Incident."

The Great Gamma Cookout?

Oh I like this one. I'll bring the Bavin Burgers, you bring the steaks!

OMGeverynameistaken wrote:

Khandosia wrote:Second Galactic War? I'd say it's more along the lines of "First Roman Genocide" or maybe "Last Days of Rome"...oooo, or maybe the "Roman Incident."

The Great Gamma Cookout?

Win for the day.

Just for LULZ

Hey Primus.

What?

I am feeling a little hungry; do you want to get a little bite to eat or something?

Sure, what were you thinking of?

I don’t know, I think Italian might sound good.

I know this great little place down in Beta that caters to Gamma. They offer an All-You-Can-Eat buffet, you finish off what they bring and they send more.

Is it expensive?

Nah, the food isn’t that good but it is dirt cheap.

Sounds good, I will give Rethan and EternalNight a call and have them meet us there.

Cool, you driving?

Let's both drive.

Bal that is so full of win that I cannot explain to you how much that wins!

Balrogga, my good sir, you win everything.

So I have a question. How does everyone organize their fleets?

Mine for example are organized in to strike groups, my new battle ship class (6 in total) will lead their own groups.

Each Battleship will have a battle group in the form of one squadron of frigates (6 ships) 3 destoryers 3 strike cruisers 2 command cruisers and one battleship. In contrast to a command cruiser strike group.

Will be made up of virtually the same number of ships only one command cruiser and additional destroyers, "specialist long range torpedo ships" strike cruisers and frigates. will make up their groups.

Note for my torpedo ships:

The Fedral Union wrote:So I have a question. How does everyone organize their fleets?

Mine for example are organized in to strike groups, my new battle ship class (6 in total) will lead their own groups.

Each Battleship will have a battle group in the form of one squadron of frigates (6 ships) 3 destoryers 3 strike cruisers 2 command cruisers and one battleship. In contrast to a command cruiser strike group.

Will be made up of virtually the same number of ships only one command cruiser and additional destroyers, "specialist long range torpedo ships" strike cruisers and frigates. will make up their groups.

Note for my torpedo ships:

The torpedo ships tend to be as needed. Meaning they aren't always present in strike groups. (they're meant to fire high yield shield busting (though with about the efficacy of a first generation AIM-9. torpedoes) They differ from missiles as they are designed to travel in subspace/hyper space (only partially so they aren't exactly FTL)

we don't have "fleets" we have wings which consist of whatever pilots want to operate together as a group, which are in turn cut into smaller groups by the wing's leader, who divides the group into squadrons (typically following the lines already present in the groups that have joined to form the wing). squadrons are divided into flights by the squadron leaders if they so desire

pilots have generally have worked out how to handle flight, squadron, and wing hierarchies amongst themselves, as a subculture

flights are roughly 3-5 spacecraft, squadrons can be as large as 20 or so, and wings can be any other larger amount, since there is no further unit, and it's not very likely you'll get overly many lhazarene pilots to agree to act in concert in one place. or, really, that you'll need to have more than, say 30 or so

The Fedral Union wrote:So I have a question. How does everyone organize their fleets?

Mine for example are organized in to strike groups, my new battle ship class (6 in total) will lead their own groups.

Each Battleship will have a battle group in the form of one squadron of frigates (6 ships) 3 destoryers 3 strike cruisers 2 command cruisers and one battleship. In contrast to a command cruiser strike group.

Will be made up of virtually the same number of ships only one command cruiser and additional destroyers, "specialist long range torpedo ships" strike cruisers and frigates. will make up their groups.

Note for my torpedo ships:

The torpedo ships tend to be as needed. Meaning they aren't always present in strike groups. (they're meant to fire high yield shield busting (though with about the efficacy of a first generation AIM-9. torpedoes) They differ from missiles as they are designed to travel in subspace/hyper space (only partially so they aren't exactly FTL)

12 fleets, each lead by a battleship. 5 more fleets lead by dreadnoughts (newer battleships, not lolhueg), various planetary defense forces and strike groups.

The Russian navy is organized into fleets based around significant planets, as well as an additional 'interstellar fleet' which is deployed where it is required. The idea being that it would be impossible to adequately defend EVERY system with a fleet, thus planetary and system defenses are employed to delay the enemy long enough for the nearest response fleet to arrive.

Fleets can be divided into ad-hoc squadrons for various purposes, such as inter-system patrols, escort missions and suchlike.

Systems are organized into theater commands (similar to the US military and its combatant commands), with a fleet assigned to each. Fleets are not at arbitrary strength, number and types of assets vary according to deployment schedules, operational needs, etc. On both strategic and tactical levels, the squadron is the base unit of organization (8 ships per squadron). It subdivides by half into divisions, and by half again into lances. Above that there is no strict rule for what constitutes a task force, flotilla or fleet. Those depend on what units are available and what needs to be achieved.

My fleets are organised into small groups called Starbattalions that will be assigned to work as part of a larger force if and when it is required. Every group is focussed around a Starfort, the closest thing to a capital ship that is produced by my nation.

A Starfort will be accompanied by a customised retinue of between 2 and 10 other units with typically dumber AI systems. How many other units accompany the Starfort, and the equipment the Starfort has, vary according to the mission the Starbattalion has been assigned to.

There are a couple of exceptions to this: Dedicated planetary defence forces will typically be much larger in size, with as many as a hundred small attack vessels milling around on standby. They run on a basic search and challenge subroutine, but additional orders can be sent to them by any high class AI system.

The big brothers of the Starforts, the Starfortresses (of which there are only two), will also have a larger number of vessels dedicated to them. The only active one currently commands a Starbattalion of 22 units, as well as being responsible for giving orders to other Starbattalions.

Ships are simply organized according to whatever mission or defensive needs are required. Highest ranking officer present is the fleet commander, however there are operational and theatre commanders for certain missions or areas. In practice the most common grouping is a set of 5 ships, 1 destroyer 4 frigates, used for planet defense and patrol. It doesn't have an official name.

Fleets come in two variations. Progenitor Fleets and Nephilim Fleets. Then there's the myriad of other operational organisations.

Progenitor Fleets typically contain anywhere between 20 and 100 craft, with the majority being non-combatant (though still armed). These fleets consist of the smaller Rethast vessels and are aimed at small time raids. Progenitor fleets would hit a small colony or space station and are aimed at gathering food and infected individuals, though they have some small time resource harvesting abilities. Progenitors consist of Nocturnals, Unforgiven and Penitent warships, along with Parasite World Harvesters and Seeder ships in a 1:4 ratio on average of combatants:non-combatants, though it varies from fleet to fleet.

Nephilim Fleets rarely number less than 100 ships, but also almost never see combat. Nephilim System Harvesters are in command, and are defended by Tartaruchii and Nocturnals. Then there's a lot of Parasites and Seeders to aid in consuming the system, and the ratio is typically 1:10 in favour of non-combatant ships.

Sucidium travel in missile swarms, and are independently operational. Usually a swarm will be directed towards a system where a Progenitor Fleet is about to invade, and they act as interstellar artillery bombardments prior to invasion.

Grigori travel alone, but can be recalled by Nephilim, and are akin to war fleets by themselves. There's only 6 Grigori in existence, and they're unlikely to ever be seen except for WTFOHSI- moments.