Future Tech Advice and Assistance Thread [O.O.C.]

[G-Tech Corporation]

You beat me to linking that post SG. That makes me sad.

[-The Unified Earth Governments-]

I was wondering what would make for a reasonable level of star ship armor.

I was planning of doing some sort of layering with a thin section of the outer armor being a Titanium-A armor and was wondering what sorta of underlying armors I could add.

[StellarGate]

You beat me to linking that post SG. That makes me sad.

Funny thing is, I got the link from your signature. I don't think I've bookmarked it yet.

[G-Tech Corporation]

You beat me to linking that post SG. That makes me sad.

Funny thing is, I got the link from your signature. I don't think I've bookmarked it yet.

Shot to the heart by my own signature. The fierce and biting irony. World... going black... so cold.

[StellarGate]

Funny thing is, I got the link from your signature. I don't think I've bookmarked it yet.

Shot to the heart by my own signature. The fierce and biting irony. World... going black... so cold.

No dying man! D: You're probably going to be better at answering questions then me, I'm just like the person that asks question to flesh out detail. You're a mentor with a special green name! I cannot match your wisdom.

[G-Tech Corporation]

Shot to the heart by my own signature. The fierce and biting irony. World... going black... so cold.

No dying man! D: You're probably going to be better at answering questions then me, I'm just like the person that asks question to flesh out detail. You're a mentor with a special green name! I cannot match your wisdom.

Naw. I'm a P2TM Mentor. Xis or Feaz will gladly tell you we're the Untermensch of the Mentoring circles.

Anywhos, glad to see you join FT Denne-Dotenburg. I don't do excessively much with FT these days, but I'd be happy to answer any questions you have to the best of my ability, or pass you off to the best authorities to answer your questions I can't deal with. Feel free to TG me at any time.

[StellarGate]

No dying man! D: You're probably going to be better at answering questions then me, I'm just like the person that asks question to flesh out detail. You're a mentor with a special green name! I cannot match your wisdom.

Naw. I'm a P2TM Mentor. Xis or Feaz will gladly tell you we're the Untermensch of the Mentoring circles.

Anywhos, glad to see you join FT Denne-Dotenburg. I don't do excessively much with FT these days, but I'd be happy to answer any questions you have to the best of my ability, or pass you off to the best authorities to answer your questions I can't deal with. Feel free to TG me at any time.

Those darn P2TM mentors, you guyz need a different color, so we normal folk can tell the difference.

Seriously. Any help you need, post here, TG a mentor, get on the NSFT chat (I don't have the link to this,) please just ask. Most people are happy to help from fleshing out weapons systems and histories to asking about how hard scifi your ship is and how to justify it.

[Kyrusia]

While I greatly appreciate the welcoming attitude, let's remember to keep general chatter to a minimum. There are at least two IRC channels available for that - both directly related to Future Tech. Thanks again, everyone.

---

So, ehm. Hello everyone! I'm, like, a complete noob to FT and the entire FT scene, but I'd like to get involved. One of the few ideas I had was a nation that was loosely based around and inspired by the combine, instead of being these Synth beings, comprised of a plethora of different species into one big standing 'Army' of sorts, it'd be a single species who, like the combine, have an Empire that spans over several species of the universe, but not to the extent that it does within that of Half-Life.

First of all, as the others have stated: Welcome to Future Tech and, specifically, welcome to the Advice and Assistance Thread. If you have not read the original post yet, I strongly encourage you to do so, as it will likely answer many of the introductory questions you may have. Just as well, there is both a constantly-growing vocabulary of common FT terms which may prove useful, as well as various internal and external resources which may be of use to you.

Onto your actual post...

First of all, there is nothing wrong with drawing general inspiration from existing canon - be it from books (fiction or non-fiction), films, video games, comics or graphic novels, etc. There are a plethora of players within the FT community which have drawn inspiration from existing sources in the crafting of their given star-states or civilizations; many of them are not merely respected, but at least one is a NationStates roleplaying mentor (Feaz). That being said, a caveat need be mentioned: if you intend to draw inspiration from an existing source of canon or continuity, it is best to understand early on that players who follow this route are rather strongly expected to not directly rip from those sources.

It is considered rather bad form by considerable portions of the community to, say, pull directly from the Halo/Marathon franchise and attempt to roleplay the Covenant or UNSC, pull directly from Star Trek and play the Klingon Empire or United Federation of Planets, or pull from the Star Wars franchise. This caveat extends, more or less, to any canon which exists outside of your (the player's) own intellectual property or creative license. For players whom intended to draw inspiration from such sources, it is often advised to take the aspects which intrigue or interest you most, and adapt them to your own creations; while it can be argued that there is no real "originality" to be found in fiction anymore, this is not considered an excuse to not try. Players are expected to create, more or less, their own star-states and civilizations which are unique to themselves and original in their execution.

Even players whom draw heavily from existing canon do so only to augment their own creations or work as a foundation upon which to build their own. It is my personal advice to take what you like from the Combine, but otherwise do not attempt to directly interconnect it with the Half-Life universe. After all, the NationStates FT community is a world all its own.

Secondly, and this pertains directly to your citing as the Combine for inspiration, it is my understanding that the Combine - or the Universal Combine - is a metropolitan, multi-species empire spanning at least one membrane or universe, possibly into others. Within much of the NationStates community, this form of "massive empire" is generally not expected - especially by newer players; this is not an attempt to "neuter" newer or less-experienced players, but is a part of a rather collective consensus that has built-up over the years into a system for determining the "power" or "influence", though more correctly termed "wiggle room", of players and their star-states within the In-Character world.

You see, in Future Technology, a player is valued (and, thus, given more "wiggle room") based upon the merit he maintains as determined by the community as a sort of... collective unconscious gestalt of opinion and perspective. Due to this, newer players - by benefit of not being familiar to the community or having participated in it - are often viewed as having little-to-no merit. As a player learns about the community (and the community learns about the player), that player's merit grows; eventually, if that player comes to be cooperative and collaborates with other players, is willing to compromise for the mutual enjoyment of both himself and other players he regularly interacts with, is creative, and is consistent, then the player will gain even further merit and respect within the community, allowing them greater "wiggle room" for larger, more potent, or otherwise complicated concepts.

Few players - much less new ones - have ever found themselves with the respect to carry-out a trans-galactic or inter-galactic star-state (much less a universal one) and have it be accepted by a plurality of the Future Tech community.

As such, it is generally advised for newer players to have no more than around three planetary systems under their dominion; I tend to personally advise that these systems are further divided by a ratio of 1:2:2 or 1:2:3. Such is to say that in one planetary system (usually the capital system), the civilization has one fully-urbanized and inhabited world (typically a homeworld); in another system they have around two planets undergoing active colonization or terraforming efforts (or some analogue to this); and in another they have between one and three worlds which serve as outposts, research stations, industrial bases, or - really - are just beginning to become a target for minor habitation.

All in all, however, if you tend to follow the "3 System Standard" and do not get carried away, you'll do fine.

Thirdly, given the nature of the Half Life franchise, I must make note of a concept called "Fractal Sol". As posited in the original post, Fractal Sol is a...

Term describing the nature of Sol System (the Solar System) and/or earth in the Future Technology community; generally understood to mean that, within the canon and continuity of Future Tech, for each instance in which a player determines their respective entities to possess or originate from Sol System, a new, identical copy of Sol System comes into existence; term describing the necessity for multiple Sol Systems and multiple earths in Future Tech in order to reconcile possibly conflicting individual instances of canon or continuity; the nature of a "Prime Sol" or "Prime Earth" is debated, considered by many to "effectively non-existence" or "otherwise not applicable" in order to maintain reconciliation of different individual canons and continuities.

In short, this means that if you (or any player) intends to occupy, own, or originate from Earth or our real-world solar system (Sol), then the canon for that system is unique to yourself (or that player) and may (and likely will be) different from the canon and continuity involving Sol System for others players. Some players simply do not acknowledge the existing of Sol for one reason or another, some groups or players have a common "Sol canon", and others fully integrate the fractal nature of Sol into their own canon and completely recognize most Sol System's in some form. This can largely be extended to include other popular, real-world systems (such as Alpha Centauri), making them also "Fractal [whatever]".

This should be kept in-mind when you are developing your back story for your star-state, which comes to my last point...

While martial and military-oriented roleplays are, by far, the most common ones created for FT, they are not the only ones and, in many instances, the actual "martial" portion of the roleplay serves purely as a conduit. In fact, this can be said for almost (if not all) things in FT: they are conduits for the story. While wholly-competitive roleplaying does occur within the FT community, unlike other tech-branches (especially MT), most roleplaying threads tend to focus upon at least one central plot or theme, with other sub-plots and themes, each serving as the primary purpose of the roleplay - not the competitive drive to "win". Competition, when it does occur, tends to still be plot-driven or is orchestrated as a part of a story or plot, usually occurring between closes Out-of-Character friends, rather than the "rag-tag-and-random" nature of "war" in MT and other tech-branches.

As such, it is generally advised to not solely focus on martial and military capabilities of your star-state, but to also focus on the culture, history, social relationships, politics, government, and virtually every aspect you can think of, as it will forever enrich both your star-state and the play you find with others.

I hope that answers whatever immediate questions you may have had; I believe I saw you briefly pop into #NSFT and I didn't get a chance to respond immediately. Sorry for that. I hope this has helped you start on your path into the FT community, nevertheless.

[-The Unified Earth Governments-]

Oh come on, a day later and my questions are still left unanswered :|

[Feazanthia]

Oh come on, a day later and my questions are still left unanswered :|

Well here's a question - how close to realism do you want to get, and what are you defending against?

Because Titanium-A is not a thing, thus its properties are a mystery to me.

[Vorkova]

Oh come on, a day later and my questions are still left unanswered :|

If you don't want to go down the realism route you could say you use Adamantium.

[-The Unified Earth Governments-]

Oh come on, a day later and my questions are still left unanswered :|

Well here's a question - how close to realism do you want to get, and what are you defending against?

Because Titanium-A is not a thing, thus its properties are a mystery to me.

Titanium-A is a strong metal thats from Halo, which I'm predominantly based on.

Its composed of high grade Titanium-50 that is strengthened on the molecular level, and its notably resistance against heat.

I'm not sure how if I should implement it just yet.

I was thus wondering what else there was, in regards from a realistic standpoint to a usual fictional one.

Oh come on, a day later and my questions are still left unanswered :|

If you don't want to go down the realism route you could say you use Adamantium.

Nah, I don't want to go on and steal everyones spot light and be small....

I'm sorry, that joke was done poorly...

[Feazanthia]

Well again, it depends what you're defending against. For things like lasers, you'll want something with a high vaporization-point-to-mass ratio, usually some form of carbon. You want your armor to ablate, or vaporize and thus diffuse the strength of the beam. I use silicone-impregnated carbon plates for my own purposes.

If a kinetic weapon is moving at any appreciable fraction of C, there is no realistic defense armor can provide against it. The Whipple shield was designed to protect orbital crews from micrometeor impacts, and it's assumed that a scaled-up version might defend you from a KEW, but for most of the anti-ship KEWs that get chucked around NS, your best defenses are going to be heavy compartmentalization of your ship, multiple redundancies for all systems, and move the fuck out of the way when a KEW is coming at you.

[-The Unified Earth Governments-]

Would carbon nanotubes be good for filler armor?

[Huerdae]

I think that's about as close to an endorsement as I will ever get from Feaz as to my choice to use actual projectiles.

[Feazanthia]

Would carbon nanotubes be good for filler armor?

You could, but I've seen no data that says carbon nanotubes would ablate any more efficiently than lower-cost materials. Nanotube armor is projected to be useful primarily against penetrators and, as I've said, with the velocities of the average KEW being chucked about, you'd need way more armor than could realistically be applied.

[Feazanthia]

I think that's about as close to an endorsement as I will ever get from Feaz as to my choice to use actual projectiles.

Your dakka is still silly. But we love you anyway.

[SquareDisc City]

Responding to some oldish posts I know. I've been playing rather too much Kerbal Space Program lately and not posting here.

I would like to RP my FTL Communication tech as being undeveloped and extremely difficult, so that they rely more on STL communication and snail mail in space. What would be some stuff they could do to aid the communication between forces within a solar system given the fact they mostly use STL communication?

You could have a natural space anomaly affecting your system, spoiling FTL communication for pretty much everyone and thus creating a "level playing field". That would also explain why your nation's FTL comms are underdeveloped.

If you have a reasonable FTL drive, then it's the obvious way to transport the data. You might have a cloud of probes that surround a larger control ship which they radio their observations to. The control ship stores the observations and periodically travels back to the planet or other main base with them.

Otherwise, you'd probably be relying a lot on prediction and making the sensors you have as sensitive as possible. You'd also ideally make individual fleets, stations, and colonies much more capable of handling things themselves, since there isn't the opportunity to get quick reinforcements. This wouldn't just mean tougher shields and more dakka, but also greater autonomy and freedom on the political and military command side of things. Of course, I say ideally; the reality may be different with the top brass back on the homeworld desiring a tight grip. That could create a plot point of a colony administration being faced with an impatient foreign power, and the administration is supposed to clear things with the homeworld but fear the foreigners won't wait for it. (Needn't be hostilities either, it could be an alliance, or something totally non-military like a business/trade deal or an urgent rescue mission.)

Would a civilization still in the interplanetary age (no ftl travel) be able to build and utilize plametary shields?

I was sort of hoping to have a one system nation with dyson nets ( above and below the planetary orbital plane), with a past of using orbital bombardment, with it countered with highly advanced teraforming technology and planetary scale "battle screens". And yes they are descendants of the post-final war concordeat, they still have SWIFT communication, and even Cloud chambers (albiet with more limited capabilities to limit godmodding potential), but they have lost the capability to use hyperspace due to lost tech. Where they have advanced is nanite type rapid terraforming, large scale battlescreens, a more traditional form of energy shielding (it allows lighter units and planets to avoid the plasma wash generated by the battlescreens use), qauntum teleportation, holographic displays, more efficient and powerdul hellbores amd hellrails, interplanetary wormholes, and infantry level antimatter weaponry.

There's absolutely no reason planetary shields shouldn't be developed before FTL travel. Indeed, given energy shields don't need to break or cicrumvent any laws of physics, while FTL does, I'd expect the shields to come first.

As for your specific defenses, I disagree somewhat with Kyrusia's assesment. A "planetary scale battle screen", orbital defence grid, or whatever you want to call it can be as light and sparse or as dense and powerful as you want. And it's not like a building on the ground that needs to be finished before it's useful; one defense ship launched is already better than done.

A similar thing goes for Dyson nets. They're a sparse structure, mostly empty space. If you make it a net of statites, so that it "floats" on the solar wind rather than having to hold its own weight up, then what structure there is is mostly lightweight. While the resources needed are never going to be trivial - even one cable surrounding the star is a LONG cable - but they aren't at the silly levels you'd need for a rigid shell. As for why you'd want the net rather than a disconnected swarm of satellites or bubble of statites, well wired power transmission and communications are much better than wireless.

Still, I think you'd be better to drop the net for now. It's clear that already your stuff is contentious. Perhaps you'd have the beginnings of it, say half a dozen statites connected up, not even fully encompassing the star yet, but still a respectable defensive installation and/or solar power station.

So..... how 'bout that space weather?

What kind of FTL drives does everyone use?

A more interesting question, I feel, is how many FTL technologies to people think a nation should have. IRL, some areas of technology have lots of approaches. There are all sorts of fuels and propulsion methods for land vehicles, for example, while by contrast virtually all computers use binary transistor-transistor logic on semiconductor chips. I don't know which way FTL should go, although considering NSFT has lots of drives around that might point to the former.

I'm thinking the UPT Space Force will consolidate on three in-service drives, with a few experimental ones, and some that remain "on paper".

Warp drive (a bit vague at present, I need to put my own stamp on it) is the "everyday" technology. UPT warp drives are pretty much point-and-squirt, they don't have to charge and in the past I've RPed them as not bothered by gravity. They can be put on a 100m craft, but the technology's not been shrunk enough to fit a 10m craft with one. Speeds are modest and a bit unpredictable (the latter so it can go at the speed of plot), making it good for shorter journeys and in-system hops but not the drive of choice for a long trip.

Inversion is the restricted, military-only technology. It works by transitioning to Giratina's domain, the Inverse World. Though it behaves like a "parallel Universe", technically the Inverse World is a different way of existing in the same normal Universe. Short distances in the Inverse World correspond to long ones in the real world, and vice-versa. The upshot of this is that there's an "ideal" travel distance (around 30,000 ly, though I may change that) that's quickest with Inversion, and journeys that are either shorter or longer in the real world are slower with Inversion, the former because it's a longer trip in the Inverse World, the latter because it requires greater precision to avoid missing the target. Inversion strains the spacecraft that uses it, forcing designs to be hollow rings, cylinders, or spheres with a thickness that's small in comparison to their overall span, consequently it's used on large craft that act as motherships. The strain also precludes the safe use of "double jumps" that would otherwise allow very quick travel over arbitrary distances. Looking at the Inverse World has been known to induce insanity; generally not a problem on spacecraft which can just turn off the cameras, but it befell some of the soldiers who travelled on the prototype that was a "bare" Inverter transporting them from the homeworld to a distant planet.

Glitch Roads are faults in reality that act as point-to-point portals. The ends of the portal have to be transported by some other means. They can only be created by MissingNO, too many in an area make weird things happen, and in the home Universe FTL interdiction kept breaking them, so they aren't used as much as the UPT would like.

Warp drive is probably the most affected by "weather", though I've not tended to portray it as such. Crews, rightly or wrongly, tend to regard it more as a shortcoming of the drive than a natural effect. The Inverse World's main menace is Giratina himself, who gets angry easily. He's unlikely to actually stop spacecraft unless the UPT is having an internal dispute - but the UPT often has internal disputes!

I was wondering, would there be any notable dangers to coils in hot and cold environments, because I was wondering if those could be used as some sort of set back or something for my guns, maybe to make people think about how they use their weapons or something.

I'm not sure about it though.

I assume you mean coilguns. If they aren't expected to work in vacuum, they'll probably be cooled convectively, so hot environments will impair cooling and thus reduce the usable rate of fire. Really hot environments might kill the electronics if they aren't built to withstand it. If they're expected to work in vacuum then they'll use radiative or evaporative cooling, and the presence of air - even hot air - will probably make the cooling work better. Intense sunlight, however, might impair cooling.
Cold is less of a problem, but differential thermal contraction could cause mechanical components to sieze up. The power source might also have issues.

How well would Gravity based weapons be?

Realistically, not very. Gravity's a weak force. Unrealistacally, as well as people are prepared to accept.

I was wondering what would make for a reasonable level of star ship armor.

My thinking on spacecraft armour, as expressed in my blog, is that materials strength is relatively unimportant, so long as it's not going to shatter into a zillion pieces. Whatever hits is going to melt or vaporise some of the armour, so the thermal properties are what matter - how much energy does it take to melt/vaporise 1 kilo of armour. After that, the thickness.

If you want an interesting improvement, have something that can be kept stuck to your ship when it's melted somehow. That way it needs to be vaporised to get rid of it, which takes lots more energy than just melting, and it's self-healing to an extent if left alone.

It's also quite reasonable to have virtually no armour, beyond that needed to protect against micrometeorites and docking mishaps. In either the situation where shields are vastly superior to armour, or that where weapons are too powerful to practically defend against so the only option is to try and not get hit, thick armour would be useless.

[-The Unified Earth Governments-]

How should I determine the weight of a ship? Are they're any calculators that I can use?

[SquareDisc City]

Assume it's approximated by a simple shape that you know how to find the volume of, assume an average density, calculate the mass. The slightly tricky bit is getting the average density, but one way is to look at real-world vehicles.

If your designs are generally similar, just scaled up or down, then get the mass of one and use the scaling laws: x times the length means x³ times the mass.

[-The Unified Earth Governments-]

If this is 900 meters, how tall would it be then? I believe I can handle the width.

[SquareDisc City]

Well the whole image is 900x231. May as well make it 1 metre per pixel. Then just hover the mouse over the top and bottom in a paint program and it should show you the co-ordinates.

[-The Unified Earth Governments-]

Well the whole image is 900x231. May as well make it 1 metre per pixel. Then just hover the mouse over the top and bottom in a paint program and it should show you the co-ordinates.

I'll give it a try....

btw do you like it, it spent me en entire day almost (It seems like it) to properly piece it together, edit it and shape the thing from its original pieces.

[Vocenae]

So, FT Advice thread, here's a topic that has come up in the FT IRCs (#NSLegion and #NSFT), and I felt that I could shed some light on the subject here.

Missile warfare. How is it used in your nation? Is your navy based around it, or do you use missiles to supplement your other weapons? Do you have ships devoted to carrying and launching missiles as their only form of offense, saturating the battlefield in explosive projectiles or do you use a more modular system of releasing missile pods? In the end, like everything, the effectiveness of ANY weapon system is determined by the needs of the plot and cooperation and communication with you RP partner(s), but let us go over some of the pros and cons of the aforementioned systems.

MISSILE-BOATS
The advantages of using a ship based system is that your delivery system is arguably better defended. You have hull armor and the ability to move across the theater with relative speed. Using a missile-boat will (depending on your tech) also allow you to operate longer as you can either store more projectiles within the hull or potentially have ship-based manufacturing facilities constantly feeding your missile batteries. You also have the ability to run away entirely without the worry that the enemy might try to capture your weapon system.
The cons are that missile boats are also going to be huge targets, and without a proper escort, you're going to have to worry about them getting attacked at long range or engaged at close range where they cannot fight back effectively (or at all). This means you're going to have to compensate by assigning escort ships, or adding more weapons onto your missile boat which, due to the need for these defensive weapon systems, decrease the actual amount of missiles your boat is capable of carrying/producing and launching. After all, more systems mean more space needs to be allocated to those systems, and on top of lowering your loadout, you're going to be hit with increased mass and hull size which will end up with your ship being slower or that much larger a target.

MISSILE PODS
The advantage to a missile pod system is that most of the time, they are small. That means when you have fleets and space fighters flying about, it could be really hard for a enemy to target your missile pods individually when there are much larger threats in the area. This allows you to 'mine' the combat area with pods that you can pretty much forget about. These pods can also be controlled by a digital/synthetic intelligence which frees up your ships and crews from needing to babysit the pods. Unless you actually stick crews on the missile pods themselves, which would be a interesting (and rather intense perspective to write from) twist, but you'd be lowering their overall effectiveness, as we'll talk about in the next section.
The cons are that missile pods are typically going to be limited in payload size. Unless you're a sufficiently advanced enough civilization, your missile pods are going to have the equivalent to an ammo clip and they will eventually run out. Pods are also essentially static, you may have a dedicated ship deploying them or give them thrusters of their own to manuever into position, but if you give them the ability to move freely about the battle-space you're going to see a drop in effectiveness, either payload wise or the fact that the easiest way to get shot in space is by giving away your position.

SUPPLEMENTARY SYSTEM
And by supplementary, I mean making missiles a secondary weapon system for your warships. This gives you the bonus of being able to carry more missiles than a missile pods and that they are better protected. You also have the ability to carry them around the battle-space with you, and it makes your ship a more well rounded combat vessel. You're able to engage at medium to long range combat with multiple projectiles which depending on your enemy might give you a distinct advantage. you're also going to give your ship another way to defend itself against players that use space fighters. They may not be as effective as dedicated point-defense systems, but I doubt a enemy pilot who realizes you just locked onto him with several missiles will continue attacking you.
The con to this is that if missiles are your secondary weapon system, they're typically going to be much weaker than missiles fired from dedicated missile-boats or missile pods. This is simply because you want to divert more power to heavier weapons like anti-capital turrets and spinals. Those are your primary weapons, your missiles need to act more as 'tenderizers', weakening the enemy hull so that the heavier weapons that inflict that much more damage to your enemy. You're also going to have to deal with a limited amount of missiles, though this issue isn't as glaring as it is with missile pods.
_______

In closing, I'd like to touch just slightly on ship design to assist those of you that might be designing your own ships via Lineart or a modeling program. Please remember that you need to take proportion into account. That means planning for the interior loading systems for your missile batteries, how large the storage areas are. You may even need to take into account the actual size of your missiles in comparison to the hull of your ship. The same goes with turrets and spinal weapons, if you just toss these things onto a warship without taking into account how much room they are actually taking inside your hull, then you're going to end up a ship that just looks like not much thought was put into it. This is the same for spaces like crew quarters and even simple power distribution. It is all about scale and proportion.

I hope that this semi-guide will help you design your navy. Again there is no perfect weapon system in RP, it is all about communication and cooperation with your RP partner, but I hope that this will help you develop a believable, balanced way of approaching how you conduct warfare in space.

[Imperial and Federal Union of States]

I've decided to collate all my lineart, maps, and other such things into an Album for people to see, complete with links to the relevant wiki article when such things exist. As always, please critique away.