Argument Thread OOC Future Tech Only

[Avenio]

What would you say to someone who built a ship the size of Cuba ?

"Easy target?"

On a ship that size, would it even matter? Short of crashing a good sized asteroid into it, I'm not sure what weapon could take out.

A handgrenade tossed into the engine room might do the trick nicely.

Only if your nation fails at any form of sensible engineering.

Assuming its shaped like a traditional battleship, wouldn't the gravity from something that big cause it to collapse in on itself?

[Rethan]

What would you say to someone who built a ship the size of Cuba ?

"Easy target?"

On a ship that size, would it even matter? Short of crashing a good sized asteroid into it, I'm not sure what weapon could take out.

A handgrenade tossed into the engine room might do the trick nicely.

Only if your nation fails at any form of sensible engineering.

Assuming its shaped like a traditional battleship, wouldn't the gravity from something that big cause it to collapse in on itself?

How fortunate my big ones are not shaped as such. Also, given that a lot of people manipulate gravity such that they can walk normally on their ships, I don't quite know how it would work exactly. And it wouldn't collapse unless it was horrifically huge, it would just try and force itself into a sphere.

[The Romulan Republic]

How fortunate my big ones are not shaped as such. Also, given that a lot of people manipulate gravity such that they can walk normally on their ships, I don't quite know how it would work exactly. And it wouldn't collapse unless it was horrifically huge, it would just try and force itself into a sphere.

So just make your really big ones spheres to begin with, Death Star-style?

[Rethan]

How fortunate my big ones are not shaped as such. Also, given that a lot of people manipulate gravity such that they can walk normally on their ships, I don't quite know how it would work exactly. And it wouldn't collapse unless it was horrifically huge, it would just try and force itself into a sphere.

So just make your really big ones spheres to begin with, Death Star-style?

Or be really really unorthodox in your construction so that you don't actually have a centre of gravity as such, yeah.

Or I could be talking crap, who knows?! Not me!

[The Romulan Republic]

Or be really really unorthodox in your construction so that you don't actually have a centre of gravity as such, yeah.

How would that work?

[Rethan]

Or be really really unorthodox in your construction so that you don't actually have a centre of gravity as such, yeah.

How would that work?

Well, I'm trying to think of an example which accurately portrays the image in my head... Unimatrix Zero (or whatever the hell it was) comes to mind. I really don't know. But if you don't have a centre of gravity, you have nowhere for your ship to crush itself towards.

[Ilharessa]

Or be really really unorthodox in your construction so that you don't actually have a centre of gravity as such, yeah.

How would that work?

Well, I'm trying to think of an example which accurately portrays the image in my head... Unimatrix Zero (or whatever the hell it was) comes to mind. I really don't know. But if you don't have a centre of gravity, you have nowhere for your ship to crush itself towards.

The ship from the show Andromeda comes to mind. The ship itself completely lacks a center of gravity, and building one much larger still would not alter that.

Oh, and I updated my reply to you on the previous page a bit.

[Rethan]

Well, I'm trying to think of an example which accurately portrays the image in my head... Unimatrix Zero (or whatever the hell it was) comes to mind. I really don't know. But if you don't have a centre of gravity, you have nowhere for your ship to crush itself towards.

The ship from the show Andromeda comes to mind. The ship itself completely lacks a center of gravity, and building one much larger still would not alter that.

Oh, and I updated my reply to you on the previous page a bit.[/quote]

Never watched Andromeda actually. And in reference to your previous post which I missed entirely:

All depends on the nation. As I have Rethan right now, only my Xentrifuge class ships have sensible engineering construction, the rest are susceptible to destroy via a lucky hit on the engineering section. ICly it's for the reason's you stated, OOCly it's so they're easier to kill because of my Inertialess tech they're hard bastards to hit in the first place. Again, except for the Xentrifuge

That being said, every ship design I use from now on will follow sensible guidelines. A lot of nations I've seen are Post-Scarcity, and as such they are only limited by how much mass they can get their hands on. Given the eventual developments of the Rethast, getting mass material will not be a problem. Of course, it's easier, cheaper and perhaps easier to manage a single engineering room, but each has their advantages. I, for one, prize efficiency and sensibility in ship design and as such in future ship generations don't expect to get lucky. I'd liken my designs to a Borg Cube, which can operate perfectly even after suffering 76% damage to it's structure.

I can do science me.

[Kilrany]

With relativistic KKV's, you're operating on a whole different scale (greater, in fact, by several orders of magnitude). Spalling due to the impact of such a round would be similar in effect to having a large plasma weapon go off inside your ship due to the vast amounts of energy the hull fragments would possess from simple collision with such a fast moving "bullet". That means that far more than flesh would be destroyed by the expanding cloud of superheated plasma erupting from such a penetration.

Mind you, I still think that KKV's should be larger than bullet sized, partly because this makes them less prone to vaporization en route to target and partly because this increases the likelihood of a large percentage of the kinetic material remaining inside the vessel as opposed to shooting straight through it. Something closer in size to a modern auto-cannon round would be just fine; in no case would the round need to be much larger than a modern antitank round (120mm).

I'll have to concede the point on this one, or at the very least admit to an inability to argue it, as I have no practical knowledge regarding relativistic velocities and armaments. It does seem odd to me nonetheless though, which I suppose is why I choose to take a very generic view on FT period for the sake of roleplay.

[The Kafers]

I'm taking about KKV's traveling at speeds of 0.1c and greater (30,000,000 m/s). If you do the math, calculating the energy such an object would have, and then work out how such an impact would affect the hull materials struck, it's not hard to see that the resultant temperatures would turn the impact fragments into plasma. Typical AT rounds travel a speeds of less than 1,000 m/s, so we're talking about kinetic energy levels over a billion times (nine orders of magnitude) greater than the usual WW2 tank-vs-tank scenario.

That's not an "ouch". That's an "OMFGD-that-hurts!"

[Kilrany]

Though its mostly semantics given the multiplication difference, your typical kinetic anti-tank round will travel at close to two thousand meters per second, with seventeen hundred being the ideal, but that's with modern tank rounds. Any faster and the front of the round tends to melts to much, causing it to shatter upon the enemy tank's armour. Not something to really be concerned about when we're talking about space and that large multiplication increase though.

I'm interested though what would happen with a KKV traveling at such high velocities hitting even something small like dust particles and such in between the target and firing point, can't be healthy for it at those speeds.

[UNIverseVERSE]

No, the energy of the bullet will cause it to vaporize on impact, which means that its remnants will expand rapidly at relativistic speeds once they have breached your hull. The hull materials encountered along the way will also undergo hypersonic spalling in the process.

Think about what gunshot wounds look like in the human body; they're not neat little holes, but conically expanding zones of destruction. Now multiply that a billion fold.

Goodbye, starship.

This is the purpose of a couple layers of whipple shielding -- to turn relativistic dust into harmless plasma. Once the projectile has been vapourised into plasma by hitting the first one, it will expand out basically spherically from that point, meaning it loses damage effects remarkably rapidly. So I'm already down to only a tiny fraction of the energy released slamming into the second plate, which then has the same effect on what's left. If the remainder after this is enough to pass through the hull, then it does the same thing again in the compartment it lands in. The vast majority of its energy is dissipated sideways, as a cloud of plasma, which disperses extremely rapidly, and thus doesn't do much at all to my ship.

The much more interesting question is how the hell do you make a relativistic KKV in the first place?

Edit: To clarify, this is not to say that kinetics aren't useful or lethal weapons in space. I'm simply arguing that it isn't the automatic win for kinetics that some people might expect it to be.

[Morningstar Coalition]

The much more interesting question is how the hell do you make a relativistic KKV in the first place?

You know, I recently saw Avenio use a rather novel concept to get relativistic KKVs.
Basicly, the shell is designed with a large radiation shield on the rear end. After launch, you direct a bunch of UV-frequency lasers on that shield, and use the lasers to accelerate the projectile up to speed.

Honestly I have no clue if this would work, but it does solve the problem of thrust to mass ratios by making the "fuel" totally external to the vehicle.

[Otagia]

It's quite workable, being based on ye olde solar sailor, but it's got a couple of drawbacks: Not only does it require an absolutely massive sail (a few thousand square kilometers being best), but the thrust-to-power ratio is pretty damn horrible (1 newton per 300 megawatts, IIRC). Of course, it doesn't need to be very good, in the classical due to the fact that you've got an entire sun moving you, and in the method you proposed (I first saw it in The Mote in God's Eye, a novel I highly recommend) due to being able to have an entire planet devoted to accelerating you.

The final drawback, of course, is decelerating: You can tack into the solar wind, but whether this would be enough to slow a relativistic vehicle to a stop is highly debatable, and would take years anyhow.

Oh, one last thing: You can't have your laser be too powerful, otherwise you burn the sail clean off.

[Mostrov]

The first is magic handwavium, because you'll only have your magnets on the inside of the field, which makes it rather tricky to keep the particles stable during any sort of maneuver. So a combination of a few missiles and a laser strike would deal with you -- the first force evasion, which scatters the shield, and the second kills you. The second doesn't work, because at the laser energies that are being referred to, the imperfections in the mirror will result in it being near-instantly vapourised.

That was a rather rushed post and I would like to clarify the actual mechanism. Something akin to a Bussard Ramjet collects charged particles these are then condensed and directed in front of the ship, between the ship and the enemy. This is then channeled by further electromagnets. Hence any kind of weapon will not be able to destroy such a shield because it is a constant flow of matter. Of course I'm speculating you would be required to be near a large stellar object for the appropriate gases to available in sufficient density.

Which would be why you then read the next paragraph of that same post, where I suggest that the optimum method involves deploying one even larger laser, which will easily be able to outrange any of the smaller weapons on a typical turreted ship.

The point here is that 'modern' FT warships are actually similar to 1st World War battleships in that regard.

---

After some thinking about the electromagnet problem, why not build a ship out of non-metallic compounds and plastics, for instance carbon compounds are certainly stronger then metals.
It seems this thread has really just turned into spaceship optimization. So what would be the most effective spaceship?

[Bryn Shander]

So what would be the most effective spaceship?

Mine.

[Kilrany]

That's rather considerable hyperbole there given how you attempted to explain the advantages of your ships that one night and only managed to negate your own arguements. Now effective I have no doubt, as many people’s ships are, but no one here on NS has ever managed to field a ship anyone could seriously call superior to another because it’s an impossibility to achieve unless another player is willingly playing the role of a less advanced power, a very rare thing indeed.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

A sudden increase in open FT threads right after I finally find a few open threads to get involved in, oh, NS, you tease...

Anyway, I've done a bit more work on both my factbooks and I've gone ahead and linked them in my sig. Once again, comments and critique are welcome

Rather annoyingly, it's quite hard to find decent images with the 1812 model shako. The 1805 version is alright, but I find the 1812 is more uniquely Russian, a bit iconic of the army of the era which I so love. I guess I'll have to look harder.



I'm giving some consideration, now, to the non-combat equipment of my soldiers. A comprehensive list would probably be a bit too much, but in general I'm thinking I'll certainly include some regular picks, shovels and suchlike in there. You can't EMP a shovel


EDIT:
My bad if this qualifies as a rule-breaking gravedig, but I don't think that just creating a new topic would be any different, really, and this thread is still relevant to its original purpose and all that.

[New Ganurath]

So what would be the most effective spaceship?

Mine.

Neo-Mekanta's, actually.

I want to know how plausible my FTL concept is. The Currently Unnamed Device reduces the ship's effective area for purposes of interacting with matter outside the field, funnelling the lost apparent mass into the distance covered by the engines. Essentially, it takes F=ma and turns it into F=(m-x)(a+x) where x a cubic milimeter short of the ship's full mass.

[Neo-Mekanta]

Neo-Mekanta's, actually.

Eh, the Darkships are plagued by the fact that one can only be in one place at any given time.

Granted, anything within a few lightyears of that place is, to put it lightly, "at risk" but space is BIG.

I want to know how plausible my FTL concept is. The Currently Unnamed Device reduces the ship's effective area for purposes of interacting with matter outside the field, funnelling the lost apparent mass into the distance covered by the engines. Essentially, it takes F=ma and turns it into F=(m-x)(a+x) where x a cubic milimeter short of the ship's full mass.

It's late, and I might be reading it wrong, but it appears to just be a way of cheating a bit to get a reactionless drive. If I'm right on that, there's a bit of a problem. Because it still has mass, it's not at all a plausible FTL concept, because you're still within realspace and without something to get you out of Einstein's clutches, you're still under the jurisdiction of Relativity.

[New Ganurath]

Hrm... Well, what I'm going for is a drive system that depends on the ship being wrapped in the energy field it uses for combat shields, thus encouraging a cultural mindset of fighting to the last, not unlike the Sontarans with their spinal belly buttons.

[Despoticania]

I use a few relatively similar ship designs, most of which are enormously huge and have some overkill weapons but are otherwise as scientifically believable and practical as possible. I've actually taken quite some time to make sure everything is (mostly) plausible while still retaining the possibility of having large and scary space derelicts and boarding fights and just plain ol' sense of wonder and astonishment...

Take this nice BattleArk starship, for example (yes, I'm rather proud of the design, and with the damned GSU, it took pretty long time to get right); it boasts a large frontal shield which is the only truly heavily armored part, not coincidentally built around the largest and heaviest weapon systems, both offensive and defensive in nature. The ship is roughly cylindrical in shape, as I'm not allowing any artificial gravity beyond acceleration and centrifugal forces.

The internal design resembles seval O'Neill cylinders of varying sizes built inside each other: when the ship is not accelerating, illusion of gravity can be generated by spinning the ship along its longitudinal axis. Of course, the closer to the center you get, the lower the gravity will be; on the outer hull I imagine it to be somewhere between 1.5 and 2 gees. As such, the centrifugal force can be used to propel smaller interplanetary ships and fighting drones far away from the mothership.

My biggest problem with FT have always been the huge accelerations involved (1000-5000 gees seem to be rather common, even for large ships). I've decided to keep my accelerations (relatively speaking) low, and as such, my ships are limited to 1-2 gees under normal circumstances and 5-10 gees at absolute and very momentary maximum during combat. When the BattleArk is accelerating, the interior resembles a tremendously tall building with over two thousand floors - thus, the higher accelerations can put a very big strain on the support structure of the ship, and it can barely turn at all when accelerating (think about a very tall skyscraper aligned horizontally - it would immediately break under its own weight) at over 1 gee.

The FTL engine used by me - as I've stated once before during this thread - is essentially an Alcubierre Drive with (purely fictional) limitations so that I must exit the warp bubble when I'm several AUs away from the central star. And I would never ever use the FTL engine offensively; it could very easily mess all that is fun with space battles.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

Alright, so here's what I've thought for my 'submarines', which I believe I mentioned earlier in the topic:

The concept is basically this, they're a ship with the capability of partially entering the Etherway, my version of the Eldar Webway, rendering them quite difficult to hit or observe. With essentially all of the ship 'submerged', all that would be left in realspace would be a sensor 'periscope', designed to be difficult to detect of course, and a hazy visual image of the ship itself, assuming it has not completely entered the Etherway.

The downside to this is that they move quite slowly, by FT standards, because of the issues involving scale and the different physics of the Etherway and realspace, essentially the Etherway is on a smaller scale than realspace, and its physics, while allowing for lightspeed travel with certain enhancements, do not like things sticking into it from other dimensions.

Thus the ship can only be at 'periscope depth' for a certain amount of time, after which it has to 'surface', that is, enter realspace at which point it can employ conventional Etherway drives or whatever.

The primary means of attack would be, where possible, conventional weapons on the ships deck, much like in early WWII and pre-WWII submarines, the idea would be to use stealth to get close to merchant and supply vessels, either shoot them up or 'convience' their crews to scuttle the vessel, and leave before a response can arrive. Torpedoes, modified so that they can be fired from the ships partially-in-another-dimension state, their main downside being that each vessel can only carry so many of them, they are rather large.

The equivalent of 'sound', which will allow the ships to be detected by conventional sensors, comes in the form of a 'wake' generated by rapid movement in the ships partially submerged state, especially when its periscope is up, its torpedo bay doors are open, or anything is otherwise protruding into realspace or sticking off of the hull in a strange way. The 'wake' generated by the ship becomes more obvious as speed increases, or if a large abnormality, such as a gaping hole, has been attached to/inflicted on the ship.

My early vessels will be the equivalent of the early, pre-WWI submarines, that is, primitive, slow, both in realspace and 'submerged', as well as noisy and generally not as useful as they sound. With time, I will be endeavoring to improve them up to about the equivalent of WWII submarines. The 'perfect' subs of the modern era just aren't as much fun, and the Russian naval command doesn't strike me as the type to invest too heavily in this sort of stealthy shenanigans.

[Rethan]

Snip

Submarines in space....

I think I love you.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

Snip

Submarines in space....

I think I love you.

Subcosmos, maybe? Subspaces just doesn't have the right ring to it. Maybe Substellars?

I've never been good at names