NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Vol. 11.0

[Crookfur]

Such ammo exists (although I'm pretty sure it's faster than circa 100m/s) but to hard kill torpedoes with it you need medium calibre cannons

Right, do you have any source for that? That'd probably be extremely helpful for me

I linked it perviously:

http://www.dsgtec.com/products#./mea

They claim the hmg calibres can deal with stuff like torpedoes but it looks to be fairly conditional.

[Nightor]

Self-noise generally becomes problematic above ~20-25 knots, depending on the design of the submarine and the sonar. Above 30 knots, the submarine will basically be deaf.

Sorry just one more thing, do does anyone have any source for this (I can't find it)? I've gotten the attention of somebody so they'd rather have proof prior.

Also, since the person doesn't seem to care that much if their "mini-subs" get detected, what would be the viability of using active sonar to mitigate these issues?

[The Akasha Colony]

Sorry just one more thing, do does anyone have any source for this (I can't find it)? I've gotten the attention of somebody so they'd rather have proof prior.

There is no single source because it requires reading a bit about submarine design and hydrodynamics, and is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. But it is largely determined by flow over the bow and how fast the submarine can go before this flow becomes too turbulent (which generates noise) and before the propeller begins cavitating (which also generates noise).

It is however well known and there are a plethora of sources available about how bad the noise is at extremely high speeds; Soviet crews doing high-speed runs in K-222 described the noise as practically deafening, and they were deep inside the hull. Such high speeds also resulted in damage to the outer hull. And K-222 couldn't even do 45 knots, nevermind 55. The extreme noise was one of the reasons the Soviets abandoned high-speed submarines after the Alfas; the extreme speed was of little use since the boats were so loud everyone and their mother could hear them from the other side of the ocean while they were themselves totally deaf. This coupled with the high costs and complicated maintenance is the reason why the high-speed submarine died and the slower but much quieter submarine took its place.

Submarines are designed to hide. A submarine that cannot hide well is a bad submarine. If you want to go fast, get an airplane.

Also, since the person doesn't seem to care that much if their "mini-subs" get detected, what would be the viability of using active sonar to mitigate these issues?

Which issues in particular? Because there are a lot of issues being discussed.

How useful active sonar will be depends on how powerful the sonar is and how fast the boat is traveling. And active sonar is still not infallibly accurate, as Kievan People already mentioned previously. Beyond this, active sonar also doesn't cover the rear arc of the boat so it would not be possible to continuously track a trailing torpedo.

[The Manticoran Empire]

Would it be possible to modify a Humvee Ambulance variant into an armored personnel carrier for airborne troops?

[The Corparation]

1)Why an ambulance variant? Why not a regular Humvee?
2)Only in the loosest possible meaning of the word "armored" (Protection from Small Arms fire) and at the cost of over a ton and a half of extra weight

[Isilanka]

Would it be possible to modify a Humvee Ambulance variant into an armored personnel carrier for airborne troops?

Humvee.
Armored.

Are you fighting people with muskets ?

Just get a regular IFV. Maybe less sexy and iconic than a Humvee, but at least it protects the people inside.

Also, on the sub issue, the speed at which the submarine becomes blind and deaf depends a lot on the engine and enertgy source used as well as the general shape of the sub, but your immediate worry is more the amount of sound you make. Outrunning torpedoes won't save the sub if you can very precisely pinpoint its position because it's a goddamn underwater heavy metal concert.

But to go back on the very first question that started this discussion, if you're doing a realistic MT RP and are in front of a person who refuses to aknowledge that he gets submarine wrong, both in their tactical and strategic role and handwaves any realism remark you can make with "ADVANCED ULTRA SECRET TECHNOLOGY" there's not much we can do besides pointing out that his ideas are problematic to say the least.

[The Manticoran Empire]

1)Why an ambulance variant? Why not a regular Humvee?
2)Only in the loosest possible meaning of the word "armored" (Protection from Small Arms fire) and at the cost of over a ton and a half of extra weight

Ambulance variant has room for 6-8 troops in the back. All I'm really interested in is protection from rifle and machine gun fire. That's about all I'll be able to manage with anything that can be airdropped in the first place.

[United Earthlings]

It's random question time. In this edition: Food.

Does your population have significant groups with special dietary needs (vegetarians, muslims etc.) and how if at all does your army cater to these needs? Do your field kitchens worry about these things? What about your MREs?

Not cool Purp, causing me more work in figuring out my nations divisional TOEs…

Now I want to turn a LVSR into a food truck so my logistic soldiers can just roll up on a FOB and give my troops a nice variety of hot grilled sandwiches and barbeque. Install a portable generator on the vehicles for refrigeration capability for meat and fish, fresh fruit and vegetables just to name a few things. Even have the LVSR towing a 3028 liter water tank for rehydration and sanitation purposes.

After the soldiers have had their fill of a nice homemade street meal, just roll on out to the next outpost/FOB.

Looking at the Stryker brigade BSB field feeding team, add in a three vehicle food truck section and of course don’t want the enemy to steal all that glorious food so going to need to add a security platoon of mechanized infantry for good measure.

Like how charging headlong into machineguns and field artillery believing that elan will carry the day made sense in 1914 because experiences from the previous war demonstratively showed the approach to work and nobody had actually seen the new generation of weapons in action yet.

Actually, many people across the world had seen and reported on the devastation wrought by machine guns, rapid fire artillery and trench warfare [which itself had already existed for centuries before] during the Russo-Japanese War that occurred a decade before. But, the ones with the foresight or caution either lacked the influence and power to effect changed within their nation’s military structure or were outright ignored, but the lessens were still there and many defense articles and journals were written and published by various people on the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War and how it might attain to a future European war.

Now, the obvious implication of a SF civilization, even a completely non FTL one that can merely colonize its own solar system is still post scarcity. It just is. If you have fusion power and asteroid mining you can pretty much newer run out of resources unless you embark on stupid megaprojects like an overzealous Dwarf Fortress player.
And with those resources and levels of automation which are within our grasp (as close as fusion power anyway) your society begins to approach the point where most people are just useless. Like, factory work is gone. Farming is gone. Any job that does not require creativity and ingenuity is automated away. And by the time you hit several centuries of such existence and FTL travel you're pretty much bound to end up in a society where only the top 1% if not just the top 1% of the top 1% actually can meaningfully contribute.

I’m not sure that’s true, even futuristic civilizations would still be bound to the principles of economics not to mention the laws governing physics like the Laws of thermodynamics and the universe. Even with the ability to colonize an entire star system, I don’t see how that would eventually eliminate all scarcity. Even Fusion itself isn’t unlimited, it just doesn’t reach its scarcity limit on human timelines so it appears to us as unlimited, but it’s still bound to the governing laws of the universe {Footnote: as we currently understand them, as yes I acknowledge a more advance SF civilization would probably have developed technology that has expanded their understanding of said laws, as they would have too to permit FTL travel.}

That stated, while resources in theory might be abundant, that doesn’t mean their distribution would be. People are never {newer for you, happy now?} going to be useless, because depending on how your society has evolved naturally your society will never have 100% automation in anything. Machines break, period, your still going to need people to oversee the machines whether during their operation or for when they stop working. In addition, expanding on the society type, is ones more a caste system, capitalist, socialist, democratic, dictatorial, etc?

A society governed by a dictatorial slave empire is probably not going to innovate or automate the same as a society that would be more capitalist and democratic.

Also, how FTL was developed and came into widespread service I believe would also play a decisive role in how a society gradually culturally evolves.

I also believe intergalactic colonization would be a slow gradual process not happening all at once. Which means even with FTL travel cheap and widespread, which it probably wouldn’t be in the beginning, you’d have temporary isolated colonies either semi or fully independent of the home world giving them time to develop their own culture divergent of what was the basis of their society on the home world.

That’s in general how I evolved the lore of my FT civilization; FTL travel has only existed for five centuries, but for only two centuries has it been available on individual vessels. So, worlds were settled in stages since for the first three hundred years it was a one way trip to the new worlds and a very dangerous trip at that. So, my civilization in its little galactic sector is all the same species, but what I call Core Worlds, each would have very different flavors given their initial independent nature until the more widespread adoption of a safer form of FTL was developed. From there I have them evolve into a loose Confederation of planets, before eventually being united into a Federation once regular contact and trips to the home world could become commonplace.

So I'm facing somebody who believes that armor piercing super-cavitating bullets (traveling at 200 knots) are an end-all solution against any non-super-cavitating torpedo in which they'd block nearly every single one. The idea is that there'd be a tiny sub capable that's fast and maneuverable (using super-cavitating propellors) and be capable of firing these weapons. And with this, they could block nearly every single torpedo launched by a major air attack against fleet they're protecting. When I asked them why wouldn't irl militaries develop such a solution if it was so effective, they said that it was because irl navies only have to worry about a few torpedoes in the time. When I said that modern torpedoes travel silently and don't exactly go straight they said that when it speeds up the sub would be able to detect it and shoot it down, and these bullets have a range of 100 meters.

Also apparently they also have a combat sub (205 meters long) with many interior hulls and one giant hull, and something about a ww2 concept for anti-torpedo measures. It's air filled, so I guess it has to do with anti-torpedo bulges/belt (presumably covering the entire sub). The hull is also made of titanium alloy and is connected "via hatches and connecting tubes." The hull has titanium alloy with carbon-steel interior plating. Thanks to that the sub can be protected from torpedo warheads up to 290 kg and can take multiple hits before it's "primary" (i assume outer) hull is punctured. Also apparently it can electronically jam torpedoes by confusing their sonar? I know that decoys exist but I never heard of jamming a torpedo, but maybe I'm wrong here. The ship is also capable of firing the supercavitating bullets thanks to having guns alongside its body, and with turrets, this allows for 360-degree coverage.

That hull design (anti torpedo belt/bulge) is also applied to their regular size submarines, allowing them to withstand 4 torpedoes before going down.

Obviously, I'm calling BS on all this. The person said they did plenty of research behind it, but I only found similar concepts on NS forums like this (although albeit it's a more toned down version of that). So is there any realism to this? And what would be the weak points of such designs?

On speedster submarines and why a faster submarine isn’t necessarily better.

The example of the trail run of K-162, “On these trails a speed of 42 knots was achieved with 90 percent power. During the 12-hour full speed run, the fairing on the access hatches, the emergency signal buoy in the superstructure and several grills at the water intakes were ripped off. Portions of these grills entered the ship’s circulating pumps and were ground up. The noise was horrific; a Russian account reads: the biggest thing was the noise of the water going by. It increased together with the ship’s speed, and when 35 knots was exceeded, it was like the noise of a jet aircraft. . . . In the control room was heard not simply the roar of an aircraft, but the thunder of the engine room of a diesel locomotive. Those [present] believed the noise level to be greater than 100 decibels.” Pg 139

“A submarine has five noise sources: Machinery operation: main propulsion and auxiliary machinery, unbalanced rotating machinery and poorly machined gears are significant contributors. Propeller: induced propeller blade vibrations and cavitation (formation and collapse of bubbles produced by the propeller). Hydrodynamic flow: the flow of water around the submarine’s hull, sail and control surfaces as the submarine moves through the water. Transient perturbations: pulselike noises created by the movement of torpedo tube doors or shutters, control surfaces and other submarine activities. Crew: crewmen opening and closing hatches and doors, using and dropping tools, etc…” Pg 148

Finally, even if all the features described by the person in question work and perform as described, the cost to build even a single type of this submarine would be exorbitant {think close to at least what half of a modern Ford Class carrier costs} and furthermore, given the submarines many negatives like extreme noise radiation the countermeasures would be much cheaper to develop and deploy considering most already exist and have for decades so further refining and developing countermeasure technology wouldn’t be a tall order for any nation with at least some semblance of a naval shipbuilding industry.

For example on countering the submarines thick hull that in theory could withstand a blast of 290 kg, if a 10 to 20 kiloton nuclear warhead isn’t a option, then one must simply use a larger torpedo warhead on a larger 650 or 670mm torpedo: “The 650-mm DST-90 has a warhead of about 1,235 pounds (560 kg) and the DT torpedo carriers a 990 pound (450 kg) high explosive warhead.”

Countering the submarines supposed anti-torpedo defenses, one simply must employ a torpedo that doesn’t use acoustic homing {no active sonar} to engage the enemy super sub. No active sonar makes the weapon quieter and therefore a deadlier predator giving the submarine and its crew less time to detect the threat and engage their supposedly fool proof defense system(s).

“The appearance of wake-homing torpedoes in the 1980s was especially threatening to Western warships. U.S. officials expressed considerable concern over this weapon; one admiral when asked, in 1987, the most effective way to counter the weapon, replied: The only way we can stop the wake-homer now is to put a frigate in the wake of each carrier! A subsequent U.S. Navy appraisal of Soviet submarine torpedoes stated: The Soviets have been emphasizing torpedo development….They have an imposing torpedo arsenal when analyzed form any aspect: variety, capability, warhead size or quantity. According to some estimates, a hit by one of the Soviets largest diameter torpedoes could put a CV [aircraft carrier] out of action.” Pg 302-303

That was 30 years ago, if one can design a torpedo to take out a CV thirty years ago, one could certainly design a more modern torpedo to take out this was never going to be wonder weapon and probably for 3/4ths the cost.

Excerpts taken from Cold War Submarines

As for destroying a torpedo with an underwater bullet, from what I’ve read that won’t work since currently the only hard kill countermeasures against a torpedo is an another torpedo, an anti-torpedo torpedo if you’ll pardon the bad pun.

[The Akasha Colony]

Also, on the sub issue, the speed at which the submarine becomes blind and deaf depends a lot on the engine and enertgy source used as well as the general shape of the sub, but your immediate worry is more the amount of sound you make. Outrunning torpedoes won't save the sub if you can very precisely pinpoint its position because it's a goddamn underwater heavy metal concert.

There's only one source of power that can reliably get a submarine up to these speeds, and that's a nuclear reactor.

[Purpelia]

I’m not sure that’s true, even futuristic civilizations would still be bound to the principles of economics not to mention the laws governing physics like the Laws of thermodynamics and the universe. Even with the ability to colonize an entire star system, I don’t see how that would eventually eliminate all scarcity. Even Fusion itself isn’t unlimited, it just doesn’t reach its scarcity limit on human timelines so it appears to us as unlimited, but it’s still bound to the governing laws of the universe {Footnote: as we currently understand them, as yes I acknowledge a more advance SF civilization would probably have developed technology that has expanded their understanding of said laws, as they would have too to permit FTL travel.}

I should have qualified that a bit more.

My view is that essentially any civilization that gets access to fusion power production and asteroid mining is going to have the capacity to become post scarcity for the average person. As in, it's going to have so much electricity and raw materials at hand that the average person is not going to experience general scarcity in day to day life. Especially once you combine it with a high degree of automation, something that tech vise we have today already but which would be driven to insane levels if we had huge amounts of super cheep electricity.

So whilst I fully expect large projects like starships, orbital infrastructure, power plants and other such stuff to still be costly and thus scarce. On a personal level you could run a welfare state with basic free income for everyone, free healthcare and education and all that good stuff. And for the average citizen buying a car or a home is not really going to be a huge investment if the raw materials are dirt cheap and the production is not more expensive either.

But that's just what you could do. Not necessarily what you would do. I didn't do it. Well, I did but I also didn't. It's complicated. Reasons.
And your reasons might be different than mine. You might not want to run a society like that. Or it might be culturally unacceptable for some reason. Or you might have entrenched elites that refuse to allow it. Or all sorts of different stuff might stand in your way. But strictly in terms of the resources and technology available it is an option.

That stated, while resources in theory might be abundant, that doesn’t mean their distribution would be. People are never {newer for you, happy now?} going to be useless, because depending on how your society has evolved naturally your society will never have 100% automation in anything. Machines break, period, your still going to need people to oversee the machines whether during their operation or for when they stop working. In addition, expanding on the society type, is ones more a caste system, capitalist, socialist, democratic, dictatorial, etc?

You are touching on the fun aspects that I wanted to explore with my civilization and the setting in general. And if you are having fun discussing this imagine how much fut it would be to sit down and write about such a society in a creative setting.

Yes I am recruiting.

A society governed by a dictatorial slave empire is probably not going to innovate or automate the same as a society that would be more capitalist and democratic.

It's also probably not going to be too competitive in the grand scheme of things though. As in, uncompetitive enough to be eaten up by its neighbors.
Technology by necessity demands a change of perspective. Because if you don't others will. So I am unsure how well such societies could survive.

Also, how FTL was developed and came into widespread service I believe would also play a decisive role in how a society gradually culturally evolves.

The way I do FTL in my settings (and this is just me) is that I simply declare the speed of light to not be the ultimate barrier. That's it. So you don't need any fancy tech or anything. You just need a big enough rocket.

That's not how I did it back in the day. But it was how I did it. As in, I did it that way but I also had some unnecessary fluff on top that I've since ditched for future games.

I also believe intergalactic colonization would be a slow gradual process not happening all at once. Which means even with FTL travel cheap and widespread, which it probably wouldn’t be in the beginning, you’d have temporary isolated colonies either semi or fully independent of the home world giving them time to develop their own culture divergent of what was the basis of their society on the home world.

Intergalactic colonization would be slow. The void between galaxies is so huge that it makes no sense to even try and maintain a coherent nation across multiple ones unless you have already conquered your own galaxy entirely.

As to colonization inside your own galaxy, which is what I think you meant, I feel the same way. This being said, it all boils down to what you want to do. Expansion comes in two main forms, wide (grabbing more land) and deep (developing the space you control). And you can't do both at full power because on this scale you still very much do suffer from limited resources. So what ever you do is always going to be a balance between those two extremes made in the knowledge that if you expand too narrowly others will snatch up all the good space and if you expand too widely your frontiers will be easy picking.

In my game the only hard and fast rule I had about it was that in the end everyone averaged out the same. But that was for gameplay balance and I don't expect this to be a thing in reality.

That’s in general how I evolved the lore of my FT civilization; FTL travel has only existed for five centuries, but for only two centuries has it been available on individual vessels. So, worlds were settled in stages since for the first three hundred years it was a one way trip to the new worlds and a very dangerous trip at that. So, my civilization in its little galactic sector is all the same species, but what I call Core Worlds, each would have very different flavors given their initial independent nature until the more widespread adoption of a safer form of FTL was developed. From there I have them evolve into a loose Confederation of planets, before eventually being united into a Federation once regular contact and trips to the home world could become commonplace.

That is interesting. I did something similar, although more warlike.

Basically the lore of my FTL was that even though you can go infinitely fast in theory that's not true in practice. In reality you are limited by how fast your current technology lets you go. And so as technology advances to let you conquer more space neighbors, previously content with staying out of each others way start rubbing off uncomfortably against one another. This inevitably leads to war, conquest and assimilation. And that in turn inevitably leads to a situation where you can't expand any more practically because you have to rebuild and your starships are too slow to make protecting any more land impractical. And in a century or so technology advances and the cycle starts all over again.

By the time of the game my empire had just entered a new cycle having previously (before game history) conquered 2 major and many minor factions and incorporated them into its society.

[New Vihenia]

can we put MIRV on FOBS ?

[Spirit of Hope]

can we put MIRV on FOBS ?

Yes, you could put MIRV's on a FOBS missile. You could probably do it with each missile orbiting separately, though I imagine that would be less mass efficient. You could certainly have one orbiting system that then delivered multiple warheads that reentered separately.

[The Corparation]

1)Why an ambulance variant? Why not a regular Humvee?
2)Only in the loosest possible meaning of the word "armored" (Protection from Small Arms fire) and at the cost of over a ton and a half of extra weight

Ambulance variant has room for 6-8 troops in the back. All I'm really interested in is protection from rifle and machine gun fire. That's about all I'll be able to manage with anything that can be airdropped in the first place.

So functionally you want a an up armored Humvee with an armored metal box on the back. There are no technical reasons why you couldn't build this but I'm skeptical it would be any good. IIRC Up armored Humvees had suspension and power issues and adding an extra armored box in the back would not be helping things.

[United Earthlings]

I apparently like Long posts lately, 6 pages this time.

You are touching on the fun aspects that I wanted to explore with my civilization and the setting in general. And if you are having fun discussing this imagine how much fut it would be to sit down and write about such a society in a creative setting.

Yes I am recruiting.

Fun is not an objective truth in this case. I already shat {no not a typo} down and did the write up years ago when I was planning on doing an FT Intro I never got around to posting, a minimum of 10 hours work by my count. 12 now after reading your post I went and worked on it some more. Was 19 pages in a word doc, got it up to 20 now [Covering everything from a brief history, to culture to the number and type of named planets claimed (colonized).] YEAH! Cue headbang similie.

P.S. Apologies for being the Grammer Nazi, but what did you do to your N on your keyboard? You totally T’kd it! First the w with newer now the n with fut [See Bolded word], I’m tempted to sick my former English teachers on you; they would love you and probably murder you too.

A society governed by a dictatorial slave empire is probably not going to innovate or automate the same as a society that would be more capitalist and democratic.

It's also probably not going to be too competitive in the grand scheme of things though. As in, uncompetitive enough to be eaten up by its neighbors.
Technology by necessity demands a change of perspective. Because if you don't others will. So I am unsure how well such societies could survive.

Since the only Real World examples we have, Said human societies survived for thousands of years with massive slavery nations still existing less than 170 years ago. Technologic progress still continued within these nations, just enough in some cases to permit their continued survival.

The way I do FTL in my settings (and this is just me) is that I simply declare the speed of light to not be the ultimate barrier. That's it. So you don't need any fancy tech or anything. You just need a big enough rocket.

That's not how I did it back in the day. But it was how I did it. As in, I did it that way but I also had some unnecessary fluff on top that I've since ditched for future games.

I borrowed some concepts from various Sci-fi TV shows, mixed it with what we actually knew at the time about physics and quantum mechanics that would permit possible FTL travel and developed a sort of combined hybrid lore for my FT civilization. Our civilization’s First FTL device wasn’t actually able to be fitted within space vessels themselves, but was in fact a massive station known as a Jump Gate {basically, the station creates a wormhole} and flings vessels, things, whatever you want, hopefully as I decided to add in some uncertainty that it wouldn’t always work as planned to a chosen preselected star system or hopefully within the general area. Getting within 1 AU of the designated jump destination was considered a successful mission, many a colony fleet found itself dozens of light years from where they wanted to go, such is the nature of early space travel. Until the new colony could develop enough of an industrial base to build another Jump Gate, it was a one way trip.

Individual FTL drives for the vessels themselves I went with Quantum singularity powered hyperdrives because I figured any civilization advanced enough to master FTL travel would have master the hell out of quantum mechanics. Besides, if your civilization’s not harnessing the extreme energy output of a black hole, it has no business calling their civilization advanced.

One’s gotta advanced to that Type III somehow, right fellas?

Intergalactic colonization would be slow. The void between galaxies is so huge that it makes no sense to even try and maintain a coherent nation across multiple ones unless you have already conquered your own galaxy entirely.

As to colonization inside your own galaxy, which is what I think you meant, I feel the same way. This being said, it all boils down to what you want to do. Expansion comes in two main forms, wide (grabbing more land) and deep (developing the space you control). And you can't do both at full power because on this scale you still very much do suffer from limited resources. So what ever you do is always going to be a balance between those two extremes made in the knowledge that if you expand too narrowly others will snatch up all the good space and if you expand too widely your frontiers will be easy picking.

In my game the only hard and fast rule I had about it was that in the end everyone averaged out the same. But that was for gameplay balance and I don't expect this to be a thing in reality.

Crap that was my bad, stupid terms get used interchangeably to many times by too many different people. Yes, interstellar {within a specific galaxy itself} is what I meant. My FT civilization is a Type II {2.2 to 2.5 maybe}. I agree with you on the rest, that’s why I made my FT civilization a little odd in various ways to break out of that mode pattern. Strategic star systems to claim {colonize} are limited given the local galactic sector is a mess which put my civilization in a slightly isolated position relative to other space faring civilizations. I also made them for good measure because why not: paranoid, xenophobic, aggressive and extremely territorial. Which of course allowed me to IC justify developing unique interstellar military vessels and weapons most people would probably hate and consider OP if they were game coded.

A real civilization wouldn’t strive for balance, but instead seek superiority of its dominion through whatever means it had access to. However, I did balance it out some in that while our civilization would probably be despised and hated as some type of interstellar boogyman, to use a Star Trek reference there not the Borg wanting to assimilate everything in sight, but more like a Klingon-Romulan hybrid, culturally speaking. Our civilization will aggressively defend its area of claimed space, but for rare occasions won’t for the most part try to aggressively annex other civilizations claimed systems. There quite content to sit in their claimed section of the galaxy [Expand Deep in our case] cut-off and isolated from most of the other interstellar civilizations, because as you said expand to fast and to widely and your space frontiers will be easy pickings. Considering there is no such thing as an insignificant part of Commonwealth territory, easy pickings our civilization is not. Over a dozen star systems, almost 70 billion souls and thousands of starships is a giant FU to potential hostile interstellar civilizations, of course pending in any of them would know that IC because well…

That is interesting. I did something similar, although more warlike.

Basically the lore of my FTL was that even though you can go infinitely fast in theory that's not true in practice. In reality you are limited by how fast your current technology lets you go. And so as technology advances to let you conquer more space neighbors, previously content with staying out of each others way start rubbing off uncomfortably against one another. This inevitably leads to war, conquest and assimilation. And that in turn inevitably leads to a situation where you can't expand any more practically because you have to rebuild and your starships are too slow to make protecting any more land impractical. And in a century or so technology advances and the cycle starts all over again.

By the time of the game my empire had just entered a new cycle having previously (before game history) conquered 2 major and many minor factions and incorporated them into its society.

I had my FT civilization lore go a slightly darker path without all the need for interstellar warfare and conquering other major or minor interstellar civilizations.

Long snippet ahead that I wrote years ago, back when Jolt was a thing.

Societal Characteristics:

"Terrans are an extremely territorial and paranoid race due to having been isolated in an unstable region of their local galactic sector that limited their contact with other civilizations of similar technological capability. This fanatical devotion to territory and there being no "insignificant corner of Terran space" evolved due to the limited number of habitable planets found within the galactic region the Commonwealth found itself located in, it was this very reality of limited access to the necessary life sustaining resources that was vital to sustain growth within the Commonwealth that would fuel a generation of colonization in the early years of the Commonwealth. This devotion to territory is best expressed by Terrans that even if all should appear to be hopeless, unwinnable and unsustainable Terrans will often fight savagely refusing to surrender any ground whatsoever even for territory that may be deemed by all others to be worthless and of a non-strategic nature. In addition, this territorial ambition is closely matched by Terrans extreme paranoia of other races due to having no official contact with other races and the possible threat they might pose to the Commonwealth itself. The citizens of the Commonwealth have taken this paranoia so far that they limit their space exploration to just their regional sectors, long range communication transmissions are exceedingly rare and furthermore, the Commonwealth has surrounded their entire civilization in a cloaking field with ships, stations and even entire planets being hidden behind the cloaking barrier that is the Commonwealth.

However, it is this very extreme paranoia that has led to the Commonwealth’s most advantageous tactical advantage, stealth and thanks in no small part to their advancements in cloaking technology. This paranoia has also severely affected starship design and operating procedures within the Commonwealth. One main key design trait that all Imperial Commonwealth vessels and stations have in common is that besides their cloaking shields their hulls are composed of an element that specifically scrambles sensors in such a way as to prevent detailed bio readings from being discernible and to a limited extent other detectable energy transmissions. Finally, when on the rare occasion of communicating with other space-faring civilizations, Commonwealth vessels will limit their communication to audio or text based transmissions especially when communicating with an unknown or hostile species.

The Terran civilization has had zero contact with other space-faring civilizations due to being located in a very unstable and thereby isolated region of the universe/galaxy {note-I don't roleplay being in the Milky Way}. This has resulted in our civilization being confined to a small galactic sector in our local galaxy of just a few hundred light years in area with slightly less than two dozen habitable planets so far being discovered, claimed and colonized beside the home world.

With such limited contact with other races for so long, it’s sort of understandable why ours has become while not outright xenophobic, but extremely paranoid of other races and their intentions. Furthermore, this extreme paranoia of our race has resulted in them becoming extremely territorial and militaristic, a belligerent race if you will. As our civilization was quite late in getting our first Faster-Than-Light vessels operational, when our race was just starting out to explore our small region of space, our races extreme paranoia that all potential races it might encounter would be outright hostile and technologically superior to boot due to our races late arrival on the galactic scene. As fear of this possibility spread a massive military build-up was begun and it was this very aggressive military building that dictated what systems and planets were settled, claimed and colonized to further extradite the gathering of resources from what little was located in our nearby galactic sectors to increase the rate of this military build-up of ships, stations and weapons platforms.

This part hostility part fear of other races led our species basically to become introverts in that they really pushed the boundaries of science when it came to cloaking technology to further protect our race from what was feared were hundreds of potentially hostile races just waiting out there. This obsession led our entire civilization to recede almost exclusively into the shadows with entire fleets, star bases and even some inhabited planets masked by large cloaking fields to hide their presence and thereby detection from others. One way our species has deliberately masked themselves is by limiting the amount of space exploration it undertakes and furthermore, closely monitors its long range transmissions to ensure were not detected by other space-faring races that our species itself has detected within close proximity of our outlaying systems with proximity in our species mind being anything within a few hundred light years distance.

Conclusion, as I haven’t gotten around to doing a FT Intro yet, my race doesn’t technically even exist. So all those who have lost contact with vessels exploring unknown sectors of the universe/galaxy never to hear from them again, perhaps they were unbeknownst to them unlikely enough to enter my races territory and were while their transmissions were jammed promptly destroyed so as to prevent my race from ever being detected and thereby discovered and all evidence of their destruction removed from existence-collected and what wreckage wasn’t saved for study was dumped into the numerous black holes and other unstable gravitational anomalies that are located within our races region of space.”

can we put MIRV on FOBS ?

Yes, you could put MIRV's on a FOBS missile. You could probably do it with each missile orbiting separately, though I imagine that would be less mass efficient. You could certainly have one orbiting system that then delivered multiple warheads that reentered separately.

MIRV's are so yesterday, MMIRV's are what's fashionable today, get with the times people.

If you can’t put a 25 kiloton warhead up a specifically targeted enemy’s ass from 20,000 kilometers away after launching it into low orbit, you’re not spending enough on defense.

Besides, a shit ton of FOBS missiles with MMIRV's would be more mass efficient because each could assume a different orbital path to strike the designated targets factoring in redundancy. You can get very elaborate when you decide to move through 3D space, also considering how planetary orbiting works different orbiting attitudes would have slightly different orbiting velocities. Basically, from what I remember reading on the subject is that this shit gets complicated fast and you have to really like math.

That’s how the Commonwealth does it and if you are going to decide to nuke someone from orbit you might as well do it the right way.

[Purpelia]

Fun is not an objective truth in this case. I already shat {no not a typo} down and did the write up years ago when I was planning on doing an FT Intro I never got around to posting, a minimum of 10 hours work by my count. 12 now after reading your post I went and worked on it some more. Was 19 pages in a word doc, got it up to 20 now [Covering everything from a brief history, to culture to the number and type of named planets claimed (colonized).] YEAH! Cue headbang similie.

And just like me you do it because it's fun. I am currently working on a history of Purpelia in my factbook and I am just about to hit WW1.
But like my old SF history. That thing was so big it was a literal PDF I attached to the game thread for people to download.

P.S. Apologies for being the Grammer Nazi, but what did you do to your N on your keyboard? You totally T’kd it! First the w with newer now the n with fut [See Bolded word], I’m tempted to sick my former English teachers on you; they would love you and probably murder you too.

No idea. I was probably in a rush or something and just did not bother running the spell checker. English is like not my first language. In fact it's not even in my top 3. So these things happen.

Since the only Real World examples we have, Said human societies survived for thousands of years with massive slavery nations still existing less than 170 years ago. Technologic progress still continued within these nations, just enough in some cases to permit their continued survival.

Over time however they would tend to fall off and die. And as the pace of technological development advances the life span of such things would go down. Really the killer here isn't lack of innovation so much as lack of a highly educated class required to produce and utilize new devices effectively. Which is why societies like the SovietUnion worked just fine.

I borrowed some concepts from various Sci-fi TV shows, mixed it with what we actually knew at the time about physics and quantum mechanics that would permit possible FTL travel and developed a sort of combined hybrid lore for my FT civilization. Our civilization’s First FTL device wasn’t actually able to be fitted within space vessels themselves, but was in fact a massive station known as a Jump Gate {basically, the station creates a wormhole} and flings vessels, things, whatever you want, hopefully as I decided to add in some uncertainty that it wouldn’t always work as planned to a chosen preselected star system or hopefully within the general area. Getting within 1 AU of the designated jump destination was considered a successful mission, many a colony fleet found itself dozens of light years from where they wanted to go, such is the nature of early space travel. Until the new colony could develop enough of an industrial base to build another Jump Gate, it was a one way trip.

I understand what you did. But it's not an approach I would take.

My view of SF writing in general is that I like writing space opera. Realistic space opera, yes. But ultimately space opera. And the underlying core of every space opera setting is that it's not actually telling a story about space. Rather it's taking a historical period and transplanting it into space. Famous examples from history include:

Start Trek TOS: Age of sail - Frail ships firing broadsides at each other from close up. Boarding actions everywhere. And every so often the crew gets dramatically showered in splinters from a good shot.

Star Wars: Pacific WW2 - Aircraft carriers and long range fighters swarming around warships in dogfights and torpedo runs.

And whilst this is most obvious in how combat plays out it it reflects on everything else in the setting. Things like communication and travel speed, overall strategy, numbers and sizes of ships etc. and even how your FTL works all depend on what setting you want to play out. And the setting I like to emulate is pre-carrier post dreadnaught warfare. So essentially WW1, Russo Japanese War, that sort of thing. I like my battles to be between massive fleets of lumbering heavily armored behemoths. And I like my space strategy to be a giant game of cat and mouse between such fleets before one finally manages to force an engagement. So for that I need a fluid FTL system, but also one that won't just let you jump out into FTL instantly. But I also need travel times to be reflective of that age. So basically if you have a wide empire it should take months to cross it diagonally.

One’s gotta advanced to that Type III somehow, right fellas?

In my setting I think nobody was really a proper type 2. Well, one guy was. But he like literally just controlled one star system. But we were in the T2 power level.

Crap that was my bad, stupid terms get used interchangeably to many times by too many different people. Yes, interstellar {within a specific galaxy itself} is what I meant. My FT civilization is a Type II {2.2 to 2.5 maybe}. I agree with you on the rest, that’s why I made my FT civilization a little odd in various ways to break out of that mode pattern. Strategic star systems to claim {colonize} are limited given the local galactic sector is a mess which put my civilization in a slightly isolated position relative to other space faring civilizations. I also made them for good measure because why not: paranoid, xenophobic, aggressive and extremely territorial. Which of course allowed me to IC justify developing unique interstellar military vessels and weapons most people would probably hate and consider OP if they were game coded.

I just took it as granted that every civilization is highly militarized because if you aren't your neighbors teach you why it's a bad idea.
To quote a great man: It is from their foes, not their friends that cities learn the lesson of building high walls.

A real civilization wouldn’t strive for balance, but instead seek superiority of its dominion through whatever means it had access to. However, I did balance it out some in that while our civilization would probably be despised and hated as some type of interstellar boogyman, to use a Star Trek reference there not the Borg wanting to assimilate everything in sight, but more like a Klingon-Romulan hybrid, culturally speaking.

You strive for balance not because you want to but because you have to. If your empire becomes too large too quickly than you'll have a bunch of underdeveloped star systems and no real industrial core to work from, your outer colonies will be too far from existing industry to effectively reinforce and control and you'r whole empire will basically be really thin and flimsy. But if you go too far on the other side you end up really strong and hard to conquer but really small and limited in resources.

So the "balance" you strike is how ever much you judge your self to be capable of maintaining effectively.

Our civilization will aggressively defend its area of claimed space, but for rare occasions won’t for the most part try to aggressively annex other civilizations claimed systems. There quite content to sit in their claimed section of the galaxy [Expand Deep in our case] cut-off and isolated from most of the other interstellar civilizations, because as you said expand to fast and to widely and your space frontiers will be easy pickings. Considering there is no such thing as an insignificant part of Commonwealth territory, easy pickings our civilization is not. Over a dozen star systems, almost 70 billion souls and thousands of starships is a giant FU to potential hostile interstellar civilizations, of course pending in any of them would know that IC because well…

70 billion is like what 10 earths worth? That's really, really, really, really small scale. Like really small. You could comfortably fit orders of magnitude more in a single star system.

I had my FT civilization lore go a slightly darker path without all the need for interstellar warfare and conquering other major or minor interstellar civilizations.

I'll read this later as it's very late and I am tired.

[Gallia-]

>25 kilotons

Actual 1945 tier.

[Taihei Tengoku]

Now that FEX III is in the books I have the time to devote to Match 1 of NSMRC Thunderdome. Without further ado:

NSMRC THUNDERDOME MATCH 1: BEACHFRONT PROPERTY

Map and GMRS overlay from http://hawg-view.com/

Background: It is the summer of 2015. Blue and Red are mutually hostile states, mutually claiming the area around the SH 10 road and the village of Machara. The road is one of the few paved crossings across the Kavkaz mountain range, and the village of Machara its terminus. Past conflicts have led to the imposition of a demilitarized zone in the area around the civil border north of the village of Tkhubuni. Recent ethnic violence against ethnic Red civilians in the DMZ have strained Blue-Red relations to the breaking point. Opposing forces arrayed across the DMZ mobilize to secure the neutral zone once and for all.

Conduct: BLUE and RED meeting engagement with company-sized units in the vicinity of Machara. Time limit is 24 hours from 0000 1 July 2015 to 0000 2 July 2015. The area of operations is limited by the 68th and 75th eastings, and by the 55th and 60th northings. The airspace above is contested by opposing aircraft and air defense systems. Any supporting units will be located in the respective battalion assembly areas. Blue and Red will each have 1 overall commander and up to three subordinate unit leaders.

TG me if interested by 12:00AM EST next Sunday, July 29th. Please include an ORBAT if you are interested in company command. More detail the better, but at the very least I will need total numbers of personnel and all vehicles. I will organize teams around the responses I get.

[Kassaran]

I feel that the most accurate depiction of space combat would be analogous to TOS combat. Primary reasons are because of the 'frail' depictions. Also, Lines of Battle, and larger fleets being the only way to functionally wage war.

Accurate depictions of space settling would be more like how mega-cities build up. Critical star systems shouldn't be considered such for the planets, but for the raw manufacturing capabilities, tied with long-distance deep-space observation tech.

I have a series of short-stories I'm writing set in a universe called Nobis Pacem. Basically follows Humanity in the late 24th Century as it wages war against itself as resources begin to dwindle out in Sol. There are no FTL devices in common use (though some energy sources that will allow constant acceleration to occur are beginning to reach production lines) and Earth has been uninhabited for some hundred and fifty years. Most people alive actually remember Earth due to Genetic Engineering enabling immortality and most societies around Sol are Feudal in appearance.

Immortality led to the rise of a ruling class and a working class in more sedentary areas, while manufacturing sectors became highly diverse in social class. Merchants travel often between the great expanses of the planets, but are liable to come under inspection by whatever ruling faction they enter the territory of. Not that this all happens fast or anything. The last major conflict in the setting was the Martian Wars, set between the International Coalition of Martian Republics against the Jovian Empire (yes, an actual empire managed to come about, thanks in part to the advent of a ruling class becoming common again). It took something like three Earth years for the first battle to end as it was fought out at distances well into 3 to 4 AU's. The last major battle only ended roughly twelve years after the start of the fighting when a massed Jovian Invasion Fleet entering Martian planetary space was caught off-guard by a cold-fleet in the Martian Orbital Mirror installations. In order to keep Mars warm, massive mirrors were moved into place in high orbit. As the Jovian ships closed to within 1 AU, Martian vessels fired up their reactors for the first time in nearly nine years and moved to engage with a massive line of reserves. Additionally, the mirrors were used to focus high amounts of energy through a massive magnification apparatus powered from the planet, codenamed Archimedes. Most of the assault fleet was destroyed and within the same day the attack took place, the Jovians signaled surrender and were allowed to return home.

[The Manticoran Empire]

I feel that the most accurate depiction of space combat would be analogous to TOS combat. Primary reasons are because of the 'frail' depictions. Also, Lines of Battle, and larger fleets being the only way to functionally wage war.

Accurate depictions of space settling would be more like how mega-cities build up. Critical star systems shouldn't be considered such for the planets, but for the raw manufacturing capabilities, tied with long-distance deep-space observation tech.

I have a series of short-stories I'm writing set in a universe called Nobis Pacem. Basically follows Humanity in the late 24th Century as it wages war against itself as resources begin to dwindle out in Sol. There are no FTL devices in common use (though some energy sources that will allow constant acceleration to occur are beginning to reach production lines) and Earth has been uninhabited for some hundred and fifty years. Most people alive actually remember Earth due to Genetic Engineering enabling immortality and most societies around Sol are Feudal in appearance.

Immortality led to the rise of a ruling class and a working class in more sedentary areas, while manufacturing sectors became highly diverse in social class. Merchants travel often between the great expanses of the planets, but are liable to come under inspection by whatever ruling faction they enter the territory of. Not that this all happens fast or anything. The last major conflict in the setting was the Martian Wars, set between the International Coalition of Martian Republics against the Jovian Empire (yes, an actual empire managed to come about, thanks in part to the advent of a ruling class becoming common again). It took something like three Earth years for the first battle to end as it was fought out at distances well into 3 to 4 AU's. The last major battle only ended roughly twelve years after the start of the fighting when a massed Jovian Invasion Fleet entering Martian planetary space was caught off-guard by a cold-fleet in the Martian Orbital Mirror installations. In order to keep Mars warm, massive mirrors were moved into place in high orbit. As the Jovian ships closed to within 1 AU, Martian vessels fired up their reactors for the first time in nearly nine years and moved to engage with a massive line of reserves. Additionally, the mirrors were used to focus high amounts of energy through a massive magnification apparatus powered from the planet, codenamed Archimedes. Most of the assault fleet was destroyed and within the same day the attack took place, the Jovians signaled surrender and were allowed to return home.

Honestly, I think a space war will be based on orbital dynamics and 360 degree maneuver. You'll probably see lots of missiles and missile defense systems with few ship to ship guns. The biggest concerns will be gravity, heat dissipation, and supplies.

[Taihei Tengoku]

One company command slot has been accounted for, the other is still open. If you are on the Discord, I will not take submissions outside of NS TG.

[The Manticoran Empire]

One company command slot has been accounted for, the other is still open. If you are on the Discord, I will not take submissions outside of NS TG.

Is spectator an option?

[The Free Republic Of Arconia]

Naval question, if I have both Littoral combat ships and corvettes, should I get rid of one of them since they both serve a similar purpose?

[Kassaran]

Naval response: What differentiates an LCS from a Corvette and which do you need more? If you want to downsize your navy, get rid of the less needed overlap and shift it onto either shore-based facilities or larger ships in the navy.

[Korva]

Now that FEX III is in the books I have the time to devote to Match 1 of NSMRC Thunderdome. Without further ado:

NSMRC THUNDERDOME MATCH 1: BEACHFRONT PROPERTY
(Image)
Map and GMRS overlay from http://hawg-view.com/

Background: It is the summer of 2015. Blue and Red are mutually hostile states, mutually claiming the area around the SH 10 road and the village of Machara. The road is one of the few paved crossings across the Kavkaz mountain range, and the village of Machara its terminus. Past conflicts have led to the imposition of a demilitarized zone in the area around the civil border north of the village of Tkhubuni. Recent ethnic violence against ethnic Red civilians in the DMZ have strained Blue-Red relations to the breaking point. Opposing forces arrayed across the DMZ mobilize to secure the neutral zone once and for all.

Conduct: BLUE and RED meeting engagement with company-sized units in the vicinity of Machara. Time limit is 24 hours from 0000 1 July 2015 to 0000 2 July 2015. The area of operations is limited by the 68th and 75th eastings, and by the 55th and 60th northings. The airspace above is contested by opposing aircraft and air defense systems. Any supporting units will be located in the respective battalion assembly areas. Blue and Red will each have 1 overall commander and up to three subordinate unit leaders.

TG me if interested by 12:00AM EST next Sunday, July 29th. Please include an ORBAT if you are interested in company command. More detail the better, but at the very least I will need total numbers of personnel and all vehicles. I will organize teams around the responses I get.

I don't the time to participate, but will you be posting updates here or elsewhere?

[Republic of Penguinian Astronautia]

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is an MMIRV?