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

[The Eastern Hegemony]

I discovered FTL is not that cool of a thing anymore. See, Superman's top speed is around 270,000,000,000c where c = speed of light. That's all fine and dandy.
The Flash, in comics, has gone so fast to the point of being faster than a Planck Length, or trans-time velocity. He was going so fast to the point of beating two nigh-omnipotent beings that had instantaneous travel or teleportation. Using sheer speed. To put this in perspective, someone did the math (here) that means at minimum, The Flash is moving at ~23,759,449,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000c. That blows Superman and FTL out of the water. FTL is boring. Let's start working on "Flashspeed" Technology. Or better yet, "Faster than Flash" technology...

Oh, and I know exactly what to call the drives that go this speed: Flashdrives! Eh? Eh? Come on, it's an amazing idea!

Usain Bolt's faster. I was reading a blog by this guy who talks a lot about how his cat's always stepping on his keyboard and messing stuff up. He also talked about Usain Botl and how we runs at 25890968708756056896389547619586740870247106549063400486508589027560285760428750847502847542085760284756028503020080887576667048719118c.

Pretty good, eh? Bolt Drives for the win!

[Excidium Planetis]

-problem resolved-

[The Eastern Hegemony]

http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=361566

I made this RP. If anyone's interested, by all means, check it out. If not, then don't, obviously.

This is not a thread for advertising your RPs.

Sorry. Blank post, dead ahead!

[Dooom35796821595]

I discovered FTL is not that cool of a thing anymore. See, Superman's top speed is around 270,000,000,000c where c = speed of light. That's all fine and dandy.
The Flash, in comics, has gone so fast to the point of being faster than a Planck Length, or trans-time velocity. He was going so fast to the point of beating two nigh-omnipotent beings that had instantaneous travel or teleportation. Using sheer speed. To put this in perspective, someone did the math (here) that means at minimum, The Flash is moving at ~23,759,449,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000c. That blows Superman and FTL out of the water. FTL is boring. Let's start working on "Flashspeed" Technology. Or better yet, "Faster than Flash" technology...

Oh, and I know exactly what to call the drives that go this speed: Flashdrives! Eh? Eh? Come on, it's an amazing idea!

Superman is a poster boy for godmodding and OP, while also suffering from the Worf effect. Comics in general are mad, but superman is another world of OP. Flying around the earth to turn back time? Superman 4?
And anyone want to explain how the flash survives ac/deceleration?

Not to mention they neglect to mention how it dosen't violate general relativity, or the hypersonic cone generated by the flash running so fast.

[The Eastern Hegemony]

I discovered FTL is not that cool of a thing anymore. See, Superman's top speed is around 270,000,000,000c where c = speed of light. That's all fine and dandy.
The Flash, in comics, has gone so fast to the point of being faster than a Planck Length, or trans-time velocity. He was going so fast to the point of beating two nigh-omnipotent beings that had instantaneous travel or teleportation. Using sheer speed. To put this in perspective, someone did the math (here) that means at minimum, The Flash is moving at ~23,759,449,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000c. That blows Superman and FTL out of the water. FTL is boring. Let's start working on "Flashspeed" Technology. Or better yet, "Faster than Flash" technology...

Oh, and I know exactly what to call the drives that go this speed: Flashdrives! Eh? Eh? Come on, it's an amazing idea!

Superman is a poster boy for godmodding and OP¹, while also suffering from the Worf effect. Comics in general are mad, but superman is another world of OP². Flying around the earth to turn back time?³ Superman 4? ⁴
And anyone want to explain how the flash survives ac/deceleration?⁵

Not to mention they neglect to mention how it dosen't violate general relativity,⁶ or the hypersonic cone generated by the flash running so fast.⁷

1. Yup. In the early days, it was jumping an 8th of a mile, picking up a 1-ton car, and melting a metal rod, and people were amazed. Today, it's flying from the Fortress to Alpha Centauri in 1.2 seconds, picking up a 500 million-ton key, and incinerating an entire army of hulk-level Doomsday clones.
2. Yeah... in the silver age of comics, he felt a sneeze coming, flew to another universe in the time it took the sneeze to happen, and said sneeze destroyed an entire solar system- I guess each piece of snot traveled at 0.999999999999999999999999 c and obliterated each heavenly body? Or did the force tear apart space-time?
3. Actually, there's a cool explanation for this- he used his immense speed to 'break the light-barrier' and went back in time, and as he was travelling back in time, we saw the Earth spinning in reverse. The fact that he was near the Earth has nothing to do with the means of time travel.
4. You mean the wall-building? I've got nothing, except of course that he used his superluminal reflexes to store all the 'destroyed' matter in a pocket-universe as it was being 'destroyed', and used a combination of several of his 'visions' to re-open the pocket universe in order to deposit the matter in the exact place it once was, and then reshaped the matter into bricks so fast that our eyes couldn't see it.
5. Flash does not move through the universe, the universe moves through (or rather, around) him. Check out the Alcubierre Drive (actually, that's pretty common in the FT world and you probably already know more about it than me), and then apply comic-book reality-stretching to turn that 10-112c into Flash-speeds. So there is no acceleration or deceleration needed.
6. See above. Alcubierre Drive checks out with Einstein.
7. See above and above the above. The particles can't be moved by Flash's motion because he isn't moving. The universe around him, including the particles needed for a hypersonic cone, is being moved. In fact, while running superluminally, the Flash doesn't even exist in our universe, he exists in a bubble of nothingness.


That's just my feeble attempt at a scientific explanation for superhero OP qualities. Not saying it isn't ludicrous to have a human being doing that, just explaining it. Sorta.

[Plumbumvita]

So, I have a question. This is isn't exactly a fully FT question, but rather, a general RP question. However, I am sure that I will roleplay mainly within FT, and this thread seems to be a good place to ask.

How do I characterise my characters well?

It is a general question. But stories in FT are often dependent on engaging and interesting characters, and as such, a much more interesting FT experience requires such characters. I am asking about what makes interesting characters- well, interesting. Also, I ask how to better characterise them. What traits make them engaging? How does one make and develop a character? Which kinds of character generally serve better as important protagonists or villains compared to others? What personality quirks and traits make them interesting? How does one avoid making them completely one dimensional?

[Planet Dahan]

So, I have a question. This is isn't exactly a fully FT question, but rather, a general RP question. However, I am sure that I will roleplay mainly within FT, and this thread seems to be a good place to ask.

How do I characterise my characters well?

It is a general question. But stories in FT are often dependent on engaging and interesting characters, and as such, a much more interesting FT experience requires such characters. I am asking about what makes interesting characters- well, interesting. Also, I ask how to better characterise them. What traits make them engaging? How does one make and develop a character? Which kinds of character generally serve better as important protagonists or villains compared to others? What personality quirks and traits make them interesting? How does one avoid making them completely one dimensional?

A fantastic resource thread on the topic of character creation can be found here!

[The Uthani Imperium]

So, I have a question. This is isn't exactly a fully FT question, but rather, a general RP question. However, I am sure that I will roleplay mainly within FT, and this thread seems to be a good place to ask.

How do I characterize my characters well?

It is a general question. But stories in FT are often dependent on engaging and interesting characters, and as such, a much more interesting FT experience requires such characters. I am asking about what makes interesting characters- well, interesting. Also, I ask how to better characterize them. What traits make them engaging? How does one make and develop a character? Which kinds of character generally serve better as important protagonists or villains compared to others? What personality quirks and traits make them interesting? How does one avoid making them completely one dimensional?

Character development is, more likely than not, the most challenging task in front of any writer for one simple reason: It's very hard to think like someone else.The best piece of advice I can give you is to start with the most basic character outline possible and build up from there. People don't just wake up one day and decide to start acting or thinking a certain way; life experiences, genetic predispositions, and the environment that one grows up in shapes the way people think and act. So lets say you want your character to be quick tempered, irritable, violent, etc. First ask yourself why your character behaves this way. Did your character have a rough upbringing? Did your character experience some kind of traumatic loss? Did your character happen to be that funny looking kid who got picked on and then grew into a 6'6 asskicker with a chip on his shoulder? Humans are born empty slates, and they grow into people. So if you're trying to design a character, its my advice that you look at how exactly they became who they are today. Decide how their relationship with their parents and immediate family members were, decide what sort of income bracket they grew up in, what sort of neighborhood, the circumstances of their birth, the type of government system they grew up in, and etc. Once you get started, you'll probably find that it's easier to add greater depth and more characteristics than just sticking with your basic, "My character is angry because angry guys are cool."

In regards to making a character engaging, that's a little bit trickier. For me, when I read pieces of literature its less about making the character intentionally engaging, but instead realistic. Any character can be engaging under the right circumstances, but the key is to make them consistent, relate-able, and most importantly flawed. People aren't perfect, and your characters shouldn't be either. The flawless, never-wrong, and most certainly never-beaten character is, quite simply, boring. That doesn't mean your character has to be a total screw up who never gets it right, but finding a realistic balance that seems both plausible and lets your audience relate to the character in question is important. Finally, the best way to keep your character from seeming one-dimensional in my opinion is to, mentally, throw all sorts of situations at them and imagine how they'd respond. Once you've figured out how your character thinks, you'll know how they'll respond, and since nobody can read your mind and we're working through a text medium, the written reaction of your character is the best way to portray dimension and depth.

Moving on, importance is subjective. The best characters, regardless of how important or unimportant they are, are the ones you've spent time developing and exploring. No single "archtype" of character makes the best protagonist or antagonist (that's another thing, never think of your antagonist as a villain, that just dehumanizes them and sucks all the depth right out of them), but if you spend enough time developing your characters they should fill their rolls just fine.

And finally, as far as making them interesting goes, the only advice I can give you is quite simply to write them in a manner that interests you. Nobody has the exact same interests as anybody else, but if you enjoy writing about and are intrigued by the person you've created, that's all that really matters.

[Krosana]

Any suggestions for improvement on my military?

[SquareDisc City]

Looking over your Factbook, at the moment it's just a gallery of Cool Stuff. There's no sign of any overall view or vision, little about structure and organisation, and so on.

What I try to do is find something to act as a sort of foundation of the whole thing. It might be tactical doctrine, it might be economic constraints and political needs, it might be an ideology and attitude, whatever works. Something that then the whole affair builds on. I like having an internal logic - because of X we have Y, because of Y we have Z, because of Z we don't have P and Q, that kind of thing.

Think also about how it might shape your RPing. For example if your nation believes in "boots on the ground" you'll be RPing more army operations, while if it believes in "nuke it from orbit" you'll be RPing more space combat. If you have droids everywhere that has an impact on how you RP characters. That kind of thing.

[Krosana]

First off, thanks for the criticism.Well, for now my military is just a gallery of my vehicles. I don't really know how to expand my explanation of my tactics, but I constantly modify and edit my factbook to add more information. And I've always wanted to know if my military would be considered 'OP'.

[Lubyak]

First off, thanks for the criticism.Well, for now my military is just a gallery of my vehicles. I don't really know how to expand my explanation of my tactics, but I constantly modify and edit my factbook to add more information. And I've always wanted to know if my military would be considered 'OP'.

Well, a military is more than just a collection of dudes with guns and vehicles. Starting out by selecting out your vehicles is likely the wrong way to go about building a military.

The most important question is the following: What is your military's job? Is your military a simple local self defence force, meant to keep the local expansionist empire at bay? Is it an expeditionary force that travels to the less privileged portions of the galaxy offering humanitarian aid? Is it only defending a few systems? Is it a defensive force, meant to protect your inter-stellar shipping and systems? Is it an expansionary force meant to bring your enemy's to their knees?

As a corollary to the above, in FT, you also need to determine what your tech is like. How do your ships move from place to place? How common place is FTL technology? How is FTL communication?

Once you've determined what your tech base is like, and what your military's job is, then you can try and determine how they're going to do that job. This is your military's doctrine, and it's going to shape the design of your equipment more than anything. Your doctrine should be drawn focusing on the big picture. It's how your military is envisioning its duty in a wide general sense, not how they're going to fight an individual battle. You're also going to draw heavily on what your tech base is like to determine the answer to this. Feel free to draw on historical examples here to try and build things up, and especially if you want echoes of '[X] IN SPACE' throughout your nation.

Now that your doctrine has been decided, you can go into more detail. You know what their mission is, and how they're going to try and fulfil that mission in a wide context, so now you can start flavouring your equipment as necessary. Lists of pictures with some vague stats beneath them are--frankly--boring. Cool pictures are a dime a dozen on the internet, and anyone can say their ship is [X] meters long with [X] super-duper-turbo-rail gun cannons. Adding detail to your ships, describing how they're mean to be used, and what role they're meant to fill can give your military a lot of flavour. From there, you can start to think about the actual tactics your fleet would use. Always remember to think at multiple levels: what would a fighter squadron commander facing another fighter squadron do? Facing a light vessel? A capital ship? What would a capital ship commander facing a fighter squadron do? (This of course ties back into your tech: are fighters even a threat to capital ships? Are they reliant on some kind of munition to be a threat?)

As for being OP, don't worry too much about that. The general rule of FT is that while everyone's equipment should be internally consistent (i.e. if weapon [X] is described as having certain properties in one place, it should always have those same properties) the actual final 'effect' is determined by plot. This is similar to FTL speed, where ships travel at the speed of plot. Weapons will do as much or as little damage as required by the plot of the RP you're in. Just remember the general rules of FT-Prime, especially the principles of co-operation and communication. I also recommend shying away from giving your equipment actual 'yields', i.e. describing your laser gun as firing a 50 terrawatt beam.

Hope this helps out, and feel free to ask any follow ups.

[Zepplin Manufacturers]

Another option is of course giving the weapons yields in a nonsense term that gives a scale within your world build but in no way relates to actual measure. While trek technobabble should be kept at a minimum if you really want your battleships guns to have a rating that shows just how much rp jitsu energy your putting into its bang stickiness then this is a valid choice.

[Krosana]

I've added some more info. Is it good?

[Lubyak]

I've added some more info. Is it good?

You seem to be developing an angle of your military as focused on robotics, drone soldiers, as well as pre-dominance of the Navy. That's good! However, expand on these. Why is space combat given more importance? What led to your reliance on robotics? How does your fleet fight? What are the roles of the various types of ships? These are all areas you can expand on.

On the other had, despite what I said earlier about not worrying too much about being 'OP' this does come with a caveat that certain things are heavily frowned upon in FT-Prime. Ships longer than a couple kilometers tend to set off alarm bells, as do planet--and especially star--destroying weapons. This isn't to say they can't be done well, but more to say that they tend to be done very poorly. In general, such weapons are considered plot devices, not general use weapons, and that you seem to have a large portion of your fleet outfitted with them will make a lot of players worried that you're going to wank in your RP. I would recommend shying away from such devices unless the destruction of a planet or star is somehow central to your RP.

Reading through more of your factbook, I have to say I feel some warning signs as well. Overall, it feels as though you're crafting a utopia. Now, that's fine, but I do want to caution you. Generally, when I see a player craft a utopia, that player becomes highly resistant to the idea of that utopia 'losing', or just--in general--not being the best. I'm not saying that you're doing this, but it's something I want you to consider as you move forward. You've done a lot to describe your society, but also think about the downsides of it. What are the problems? What issues does your society face?

Also, your factbook at this point is very hard to read, since you have a mass of large pictures in the middles. I would recommend putting those in a separate factbook entry, as right now they're severely cluttering up your page. Remember, this page is meant to be an overview of your nation as a whole, not an in depth look at every piece of equipment in your military. You can have such a page, but I'd recommend keeping it separate from the main page. Most FT players will be more concerned with what your nation is like culturally and structurally long before they care about the type of handgun your soldiers use. I would also recommend you focus more on other aspects of your nation before you come to the military. While the military can be a lot of fun to build and structure, other elements of society like its culture, economy, etc. deserve a lot of focus, as the military is going to grow out of these.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

For ships, I personally like to give a little background to the class. WHY is the ship the way it is? That sort of thing.

For example:
Ekaterina III Class

class image

Vessels in Class:
IRN Ekaterina III
IRN Olga II
IRN Ekaterina Velikaya
IRN Maria

Builder:
St. Petersburg Admirality Shipyard

Years in Service:
5

Cost:
15,901,120 roubles

Information:
The current head of the Russian navy, these mighty ships are the culmination of a two decade program of modernization lead by Peter VII. They are large, fast, well armed and heavily armored, capable of tangling with the best the rest of the galaxy has to offer one to one. Conceived from the start as flagships, they are equipped with admiral's suites and fleet command decks to enable coordination of multiple ships without the need for rennovation, and are easily capable of housing an admiral's staff and hosting his other requirements via the ship's diplomatic facilities.

The Ekaterina III class was constructed with the latest in post-contact advances, employing advanced sensor systems, superior communications devices (both intra-ship and fleetwide) and a new Lebedenko Process armor scheme which has proven mhighly resistant to the more commonly encountered forms of energy weapon. Health complaints during the ship's painting were dismissed as 'peasant whinging,' although it is notable that the ship features a 10cm thick anti-radiation belt on the interior of the armor.

The ships are called 'Autocrats' within the Russian navy, a reference to the title of the empress they are named for, as well as their prodigious size and firepower. The ship's extremly long main guns are some of the most powerful in their caliber, which has generated some concern due to the expense of replacing them as they wear out.

Stats:
Length: 378m
Width: 55m
Crew: 8,912


Primary Armament:
8 x 30.5cm 55-caliber Obukhov linear cannons


Secondary Armament:
16 x 205mm Obukhov Linear Cannons (8 x 2)
12 x 205mm Obukhov Linear Cannons (12 x 1)
24 x 120mm Obukhov Linear Cannons (12 x 2)
8 x 50mm Acidalia Arms Rotary Repeaters
16 x 20mm Caliber Autocannons

Other Armament:
8 x 53mm Raduga VA-2707 'Vikhr' Torpedo

Shields:
9 x Mars Industrial 'Shield of Mars' Type III Shield Generators
4 x Antaonov VII Utility Shields

Armor:
Triple Density Lebedenko Process Tritanium Armor

Belt: 455mm
Upper/Lower Sides: 127mm
Turrets: 320mm
Decks: 76mm

Machinery:
25 x OMZmash Industrial Triple Expansion Claudia Tube Boilers
2 x Hybrid U-Sphere Impellers

Fuel Type:
Pelletized Claudia

Realspace Endurance:
High

Realspace Acceleration (Class Relative):
Medium

You don't really need to go into detail about the types and names of equipment, of course, but I personally think it makes ships feel a bit more fleshed out. Plus if you're really OCD you can always go through and make a document explaining the specific strengths and weaknesses of each mode

[Krosana]

Moar culture added.

[North Calaveras]

I probably need to make some adjustments to my military based on doctrine and the bigger picture.

[Transvaal Vrystaat]

The military of Transvaal is a bunch of ice farmers with spaceguns.

It's fucking on, NSFT.

[Taledonia]

I'm Brits in space, Boer!

[Krosana]

EY, M8! I'M BRITS IN SPACE!

[Tierra Prime]

I generally don't RP because I like to write my canon trough my factbook, but I do read a lot of FT RPs in II. My question is, can I mention snippets from these RPs in my factbook? I've been thinking about writing a new factbook entry called "A Dark Future" that speculates what might happen in my nation in the coming centuries. I was going to mention some notable events from the Milky Way, like Terraius' homeworld getting destroyed by a "warp god" (As he put it), and the Rethast eating a few star systems. The information would have come to the attention of my people by the way of traders who got lost in my "galaxy" (It's basically a star cluster near the Milky Way held together by a big black hole) after taking the wrong hyperspace lane.

[Novum Alexandria]

So, ah. It has occurred to me that, beyond extremely basic tactics, I have no clue how one would go about waging war in space. Do any of you happen to know of a post/thread or be willing to give advise regarding tactics in a naval battle?

[OMGeverynameistaken]

So, ah. It has occurred to me that, beyond extremely basic tactics, I have no clue how one would go about waging war in space. Do any of you happen to know of a post/thread or be willing to give advise regarding tactics in a naval battle?

Assemble your ships in line formation, close to within 100 meters and fire broadsides at the enemy until they run away.

Anything else is pointless frippery.

But in all seriousness, it does depend on your tech. If you're taking a more realistic/hard SF approach, Atomic Rocket is a good source.

[Tierra Prime]

So, ah. It has occurred to me that, beyond extremely basic tactics, I have no clue how one would go about waging war in space. Do any of you happen to know of a post/thread or be willing to give advise regarding tactics in a naval battle?

Don't over think it, you'll just get bogged down. Technology varies so wildly in future tech that your doctrine will never be perfect. I use a relatively simple doctrine myself, based off of 17th, 18th, and 19th century naval thought. The vast majority of my ships are "line ships." At the start of a battle, my line ships will form a battle line, getting as many as their guns trained on the enemy as they possibly can. This will work against enemies who use a similar strategy, but not against enemies who use small ships, or who use hit and run attacks. The best thing you can do is have several doctrines to fit different scenarios. IC, this means being able to adapt your forces to meet whatever threat they come across. This is assuming you're doing a war RP in which everyone is equal. If you're doing something with a set story, or if you don't want to fight, none of this will apply. As always, discuss things with your RP partners before you commit to an idea, especially if its war-related.

Now that I think of it, Warhammer 40k style ships would fit my doctrine better than Star Wars-style ships, but I've already used star destroyers in a canon RP and written them into my factbook.