Argument Thread OOC Future Tech Only

[Arthropoda Ingens]

Considering that players tend to make dreadnoughts larger than typical asteroids, I'd be surprised if there isn't at least a very slight gravitational pull.

"Typical asteroid" can mean just about anything.

Also consider this: In a battle between a magnet on a refrigerator and the planet pulling on it, the magnet wins. The gravitational attraction of starships, even multi-megaton ones, is going to be something that gets measured by highly sensitive instruments, not on any level appreciable to human senses.

Fucking magnets...

[Ularn]

Considering that players tend to make dreadnoughts larger than typical asteroids, I'd be surprised if there isn't at least a very slight gravitational pull.

"Typical asteroid" can mean just about anything.

Also consider this: In a battle between a magnet on a refrigerator and the planet pulling on it, the magnet wins. The gravitational attraction of starships, even multi-megaton ones, is going to be something that gets measured by highly sensitive instruments, not on any level appreciable to human senses.

Except here we're talking about multi-gigaton starships - possibly even into the low teraton ranges in some cases. Not sure how much of a difference that makes but it needs to be pointed out that we're dealing with lolhueg multi-km superdreads here, not some piddly 800m ~10Mt Vengeance class from the UIF!

[North Calaveras]

"Typical asteroid" can mean just about anything.

Also consider this: In a battle between a magnet on a refrigerator and the planet pulling on it, the magnet wins. The gravitational attraction of starships, even multi-megaton ones, is going to be something that gets measured by highly sensitive instruments, not on any level appreciable to human senses.

Except here we're talking about multi-gigaton starships - possibly even into the low teraton ranges in some cases. Not sure how much of a difference that makes but it needs to be pointed out that we're dealing with lolhueg multi-km superdreads here, not some piddly 800m ~10Mt Vengeance class from the UIF!

nerdiest things ive heard all day lol

it's a good thing though i guess

[Senestrum]

If we assume that Ruthless Slaughter's 60km lolship takes up 30% of the volume of a box with its maximum dimensions and densities ranging from 500kg/m³ to 3500kg/m³, we get masses between 1,800,000,000,000,000 (1.8 quadrillion) and 12,600,000,000,000 (12.6 quadrillion) tonnes. Gravity will definitely be noticeable, although its distribution is going to be funky since the ship isn't a nice simple sphere.

[Manoka (Ancient)]

The Raven Class is...*Dips into Your Navy's Primary Starship Thread*

Length: 60km
Width: 20km wing tip to wing tip
Height: 10km at the bow

Depending on the planet I would alter tides with that thing. Mind you it's our "primary" inasmuch as it's the vessel we're most known for. We don't have more than 15 or so.

So that's 40 miles long, 12.5 miles wide, 6.25 miles high.

I mean, what do you make these things out of, asteroids, mountain ranges- what do you fuel them with? O_o


I realize it's in space but you still need fuel.

Why do you even need a ship that big, you'd have all these people to take care of too! O_O;


I could see carving out asteroids and then making them to fit sense there's a lot of steel in there, or melting them down in some giant factory and assembling it right outside a moon so the effect of gravity is really low and it's easy to put together but...

Why- I mean it would take years, possibly decades for tens of thousands of people to build one of these ship, let alone 15 and I mean, that would take an entire colony or city perhaps just to get these things built, and what gun needs to be that big anyways! o_o

[Manoka (Ancient)]

Alright, well I think a decent starter would be the simple sounding question of, "Just how many ships should one be able to have?"

A very subjective question quite obviously, but one I would like to see some opinions on. Even in MT where things are more concrete I've always had the problem deciding how large my military should be, and more often than not, cut its size down far smaller than I could have made it out to be. At the same time though, while I’m not foolish enough to think I can be all powerful, nor would I want to try and thus kill any potential RP, at the same time I do want effective, and I've always seen ridiculously huge fleets from 99% of other players.

Granted this is about roleplay, but if I want to RP a war, I’d feel it a requirement to know how many ships I had and what those losses meant to my forces overall.

Perhaps it could be based on tonnage, like in the Navy.

[Caragonia]

Alright, well I think a decent starter would be the simple sounding question of, "Just how many ships should one be able to have?"

A very subjective question quite obviously, but one I would like to see some opinions on. Even in MT where things are more concrete I've always had the problem deciding how large my military should be, and more often than not, cut its size down far smaller than I could have made it out to be. At the same time though, while I’m not foolish enough to think I can be all powerful, nor would I want to try and thus kill any potential RP, at the same time I do want effective, and I've always seen ridiculously huge fleets from 99% of other players.

Granted this is about roleplay, but if I want to RP a war, I’d feel it a requirement to know how many ships I had and what those losses meant to my forces overall.

Perhaps it could be based on tonnage, like in the Navy.

Yeah, that argument is long, looooong dead. Back then we used to have TpB, or 'Thousand per Billion', in other words a thousand ships for every billion in your NS pop. It meant that certain people such as Bryn and Auman, as well as older nations in general, could claim to be powerhouses in NSFT and block off the hope that any newer members of FT could do anything that really mattered. Thankfully, it's gone the way of the dinosaurs, just with less meteorites.

[North Calaveras]

what's the new rule for how many ships a nation can have?

[Caragonia]

what's the new rule for how many ships a nation can have?

There isn't. FT is freeform, remember?

[North Calaveras]

what's the new rule for how many ships a nation can have?

There isn't. FT is freeform, remember?

well, i didn't even know the 1,000 ships per billion even went away, i havn't kept up on that news.

[Huerdae]

There isn't. FT is freeform, remember?

well, i didn't even know the 1,000 ships per billion even went away, i havn't kept up on that news.

There was a push to take that out of the mainstream as far back as the last few months of Bryn's time here. It was...unbalancing and foolish. I think we're all better for it, honestly.

[Axis Nova]

"Typical asteroid" can mean just about anything.

Also consider this: In a battle between a magnet on a refrigerator and the planet pulling on it, the magnet wins. The gravitational attraction of starships, even multi-megaton ones, is going to be something that gets measured by highly sensitive instruments, not on any level appreciable to human senses.

Except here we're talking about multi-gigaton starships - possibly even into the low teraton ranges in some cases. Not sure how much of a difference that makes but it needs to be pointed out that we're dealing with lolhueg multi-km superdreads here, not some piddly 800m ~10Mt Vengeance class from the UIF!

What's your point? Mimas, one of the larger moons in the solar system, has a diameter of about 396 km and a huge mass compared to virtually any spaceship, yet a surface gravity that is comically small. You could literally run off the surface if you had a way to keep traction and a good ramp.

(yes it's not possible to run 0.159 km/s on Earth but on Mimas there's no atmosphere to slow you down and you'd weigh less so you'd be able to accelerate faster)

Also, if your ship is large enough and massive enough that gravity from it's mass is going to be a problem, then it's going to have severe problems just undergoing ordinary maneuvers unless it uses artificial gravity in some fashion-- in which case it's mass doesn't really matter, now does it?

If you're going to spew out a bunch of big numbers and try to impress people, at least make sure those numbers make sense first.

[YellowApple]

If we assume that Ruthless Slaughter's 60km lolship takes up 30% of the volume of a box with its maximum dimensions and densities ranging from 500kg/m³ to 3500kg/m³, we get masses between 1,800,000,000,000,000 (1.8 quadrillion) and 12,600,000,000,000 (12.6 quadrillion) tonnes. Gravity will definitely be noticeable, although its distribution is going to be funky since the ship isn't a nice simple sphere.

Which brings us to the new problem of a large ship collapsing in on itself from its own gravitational pull and becoming a sphere of crunched metal. This probably won't be an issue for a typical warship, but for the lolhueg WH40k ships hundreds of kilometers long, you'll have to take measures to either reduce the ship's gravitational footprint or withstand the forces it would generate.

[Caragonia]

If we assume that Ruthless Slaughter's 60km lolship takes up 30% of the volume of a box with its maximum dimensions and densities ranging from 500kg/m³ to 3500kg/m³, we get masses between 1,800,000,000,000,000 (1.8 quadrillion) and 12,600,000,000,000 (12.6 quadrillion) tonnes. Gravity will definitely be noticeable, although its distribution is going to be funky since the ship isn't a nice simple sphere.

Which brings us to the new problem of a large ship collapsing in on itself from its own gravitational pull and becoming a sphere of crunched metal. This probably won't be an issue for a typical warship, but for the lolhueg WH40k ships hundreds of kilometers long, you'll have to take measures to either reduce the ship's gravitational footprint or withstand the forces it would generate.

...If you can give me examples of those ships, I'd love that.

The settled length of a Retribution-class Battleship, one of the variants of the largest canon designs in the Imperial Navy, is only 7.5km. Even the Planet Killer is probably under 15km.

[YellowApple]

Which brings us to the new problem of a large ship collapsing in on itself from its own gravitational pull and becoming a sphere of crunched metal. This probably won't be an issue for a typical warship, but for the lolhueg WH40k ships hundreds of kilometers long, you'll have to take measures to either reduce the ship's gravitational footprint or withstand the forces it would generate.

...If you can give me examples of those ships, I'd love that.

The settled length of a Retribution-class Battleship, one of the variants of the largest canon designs in the Imperial Navy, is only 7.5km. Even the Planet Killer is probably under 15km.

Then I suppose I stand corrected. My postulation of outrageous vessel size was based upon the prevalence of players here on NationStates that seem to combine 40k tech with outrageously absurd ship lengths.

[Caragonia]

...If you can give me examples of those ships, I'd love that.

The settled length of a Retribution-class Battleship, one of the variants of the largest canon designs in the Imperial Navy, is only 7.5km. Even the Planet Killer is probably under 15km.

Then I suppose I stand corrected. My postulation of outrageous vessel size was based upon the prevalence of players here on NationStates that seem to combine 40k tech with outrageously absurd ship lengths.

Yes...'those people'. :| When they state their ship is such and such a size, please point them to this post. I think most 40k RP'ers on NS could do with familiarising themselves with the proper rituals to safeguard against such folly.

"Suffer Not The Ignorant To Wank In RP's.
Burn The E-Peen Where Its Taint Lies.
Look To Your Brain For Salvation."
-Mantra of the Ordo Let's Have Some Bloody Common Sense In Here.

[Vocenae]

That's because 98% of the people that play as 40k ripoff nations have little to no goddamn knowledge on the material they're basing off of.

Caragonia, Chronosia, Khandosia and Abruzi are the only players that you can trust to pull off competant, enjoyable 40k RP because they know the material inside and out.

[YellowApple]

Then I suppose I stand corrected. My postulation of outrageous vessel size was based upon the prevalence of players here on NationStates that seem to combine 40k tech with outrageously absurd ship lengths.

Yes...'those people'. :| When they state their ship is such and such a size, please point them to this post. I think most 40k RP'ers on NS could do with familiarising themselves with the proper rituals to safeguard against such folly.

"Suffer Not The Ignorant To Wank In RP's.
Burn The E-Peen Where Its Taint Lies.
Look To Your Brain For Salvation."
-Mantra of the Ordo Let's Have Some Bloody Common Sense In Here.

A-fucking-men.

[Caragonia]

That's because 98% of the people that play as 40k ripoff nations have little to no goddamn knowledge on the material they're basing off of.

Caragonia, Chronosia, Khandosia and Abruzi are the only players that you can trust to pull off competant, enjoyable 40k RP because they know the material inside and out.

Careful, you'll make my head spin.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

Unfortunately, most people who borrow 40k ships of absurd size don't take into account the side effects.

I recall in one 40k novel, there was a little sub-plot involving what was essentially a tribe of people living on one of the ships main gun decks for generations. They were completely cut off from the rest of the ship except for rare visits by Adeptus Mechanicus types, and thought the captain of the ship was a god, who had given them a divine mission to make sure that the big noisy things kept working properly, while only the senior leaders actually new that they were servicing guns.

In a 40 mile long ship, things are bound to get lost occasionally. On that scale, 'things' might happen to include large numbers of crewmembers, portions of the ship and lovecraftian horrors.

[Vernii]

Which brings us to the new problem of a large ship collapsing in on itself from its own gravitational pull and becoming a sphere of crunched metal. This probably won't be an issue for a typical warship, but for the lolhueg WH40k ships hundreds of kilometers long, you'll have to take measures to either reduce the ship's gravitational footprint or withstand the forces it would generate.

If a warship can handle repeated detonations from antimatter munitions, nuclear shaped charges, and multi-G accelerations (assuming it doesn't have inertial compensators so it can pull even higher accels), I think it's going to be able to handle its own innate fraction of a standard gravitational pull just fine. If it can't, then quite frankly the naval architects who designed it should be shot for criminal incompetence.

Holy crap! Length wise that's larger than largest asteroid bases! Never mind our warships...It's bigger than my capital city! 14km from the end of one docking pier to the opposite one and, IIRC, 1.5km high - unless you count the space elevator it's attached to....I mean, what do you make these things out of, asteroids, mountain ranges- what do you fuel them with? O_o

For a bunch of people who love to chant about "Rule of Cool" you guys sure do have some limited imaginations when it comes to space engineering.

[YellowApple]

Which brings us to the new problem of a large ship collapsing in on itself from its own gravitational pull and becoming a sphere of crunched metal. This probably won't be an issue for a typical warship, but for the lolhueg WH40k ships hundreds of kilometers long, you'll have to take measures to either reduce the ship's gravitational footprint or withstand the forces it would generate.

If a warship can handle repeated detonations from antimatter munitions, nuclear shaped charges, and multi-G accelerations (assuming it doesn't have inertial compensators so it can pull even higher accels), I think it's going to be able to handle its own innate fraction of a standard gravitational pull just fine. If it can't, then quite frankly the naval architects who designed it should be shot for criminal incompetence.

Holy crap! Length wise that's larger than largest asteroid bases! Never mind our warships...It's bigger than my capital city! 14km from the end of one docking pier to the opposite one and, IIRC, 1.5km high - unless you count the space elevator it's attached to....I mean, what do you make these things out of, asteroids, mountain ranges- what do you fuel them with? O_o

For a bunch of people who love to chant about "Rule of Cool" you guys sure do have some limited imaginations when it comes to space engineering.

My point is that such a massive ship would have a hard time defending against anti-ship weapons because of the sheer mass. Though it may seem minute, even the slightest of a constant force can introduce stress points that - if not properly addressed - will result in serious damage from surprisingly slight impacts.

Moral of the story: don't build ships the size of small planetoids / large asteroids.

That's because 98% of the people that play as 40k ripoff nations have little to no goddamn knowledge on the material they're basing off of.

Caragonia, Chronosia, Khandosia and Abruzi are the only players that you can trust to pull off competant, enjoyable 40k RP because they know the material inside and out.

Duly noted.

Unfortunately, most people who borrow 40k ships of absurd size don't take into account the side effects.

I recall in one 40k novel, there was a little sub-plot involving what was essentially a tribe of people living on one of the ships main gun decks for generations. They were completely cut off from the rest of the ship except for rare visits by Adeptus Mechanicus types, and thought the captain of the ship was a god, who had given them a divine mission to make sure that the big noisy things kept working properly, while only the senior leaders actually new that they were servicing guns.

In a 40 mile long ship, things are bound to get lost occasionally. On that scale, 'things' might happen to include large numbers of crewmembers, portions of the ship and lovecraftian horrors.

I personally hadn't really thought of that aspect at all, though many of my own city-ships (which *do* approach that size, but since they're not meant for combat, I'm okay with that) are large enough to support multiple communities per vessel; culture within each of these massive vessels is quite diverse, and even more so throughout fleets. Between fleets, there are so many cultural differences that YellowApplans are hardly similar beyond name and their answering to the Administrator; such is the effect of being separated by thousands of lightyears for months or years at a time.

[Vernii]

My point is that such a massive ship would have a hard time defending against anti-ship weapons because of the sheer mass. Though it may seem minute, even the slightest of a constant force can introduce stress points that - if not properly addressed - will result in serious damage from surprisingly slight impacts.

Moral of the story: don't build ships the size of small planetoids / large asteroids.

Pretty sure you're still not getting the point. If a state has the capability to build such a vessel, then one should assume that their vessels have the capability to deal with the pitifully weak force that is their own innate gravity.

EDIT: This is not to say I'm defending the idea of a 60x10x20km warship, but I dislike the idea because of issues regarding military practicality, not because I think it'll collapse under its own mass like some.

[Senestrum]

Which brings us to the new problem of a large ship collapsing in on itself from its own gravitational pull and becoming a sphere of crunched metal. This probably won't be an issue for a typical warship, but for the lolhueg WH40k ships hundreds of kilometers long, you'll have to take measures to either reduce the ship's gravitational footprint or withstand the forces it would generate.

...If you can give me examples of those ships, I'd love that.

The settled length of a Retribution-class Battleship, one of the variants of the largest canon designs in the Imperial Navy, is only 7.5km. Even the Planet Killer is probably under 15km.

Oh, they have bigger stuff. That's a chaos ship, but the imperium responds with a couple of similarly fucklolheug warships.

[Caragonia]

...If you can give me examples of those ships, I'd love that.

The settled length of a Retribution-class Battleship, one of the variants of the largest canon designs in the Imperial Navy, is only 7.5km. Even the Planet Killer is probably under 15km.

Oh, they have bigger stuff. That's a chaos ship, but the imperium responds with a couple of similarly fucklolheug warships.

I've bolded a relevant part above. If this chaos ship was mentioned anywhere other than in Bloodquest alone, that would make it canon. Since it's not, I chose to go with the ones GW does acknowledge.