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

[The Fedral Union]

Heat is just an after effect, it would have KE like a particle beam.

The heat keeps it from slowing down and becoming a gas.

I thought you meant thermal damage, but yeah its likely it could melt through most armor if it didn't bore through first, so the electronics would be shot.

[SquareDisc City]

The problem is if I say my nation's mirrors can reflect the lasers, other people can say the same about their nations' mirrors!

If the weight is an issue, or for that matter the recoil, I figure it would be handled by active stabilisation. The vessels aren't ships strictly speaking anyway, but ground effect aircraft, so stability is going to be mainly from the aerodynamics. (Using ground-effect aircraft at all is mainly for cool factor I admit.)

[Oppressorion]

The problem is if I say my nation's mirrors can reflect the lasers, other people can say the same about their nations' mirrors!

Not being familiar with ground-effect aircraft, I couldn't possibly comment on it. However, the reflection issue can be handled easily enough - you only need a reflector at the top of the mast, whereas in order to work your opponent would need to mirror his entire ship.

[The Fedral Union]

The problem is if I say my nation's mirrors can reflect the lasers, other people can say the same about their nations' mirrors!

Not being familiar with ground-effect aircraft, I couldn't possibly comment on it. However, the reflection issue can be handled easily enough - you only need a reflector at the top of the mast, whereas in order to work your opponent would need to mirror his entire ship.

Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't any reasonably weaponized lasers energy merely ablate or melt the mirror and screw your ship anyway? I mean a fraction of that energy could do it so I've read.

[Oppressorion]

Not being familiar with ground-effect aircraft, I couldn't possibly comment on it. However, the reflection issue can be handled easily enough - you only need a reflector at the top of the mast, whereas in order to work your opponent would need to mirror his entire ship.

Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't any reasonably weaponized lasers energy merely ablate or melt the mirror and screw your ship anyway? I mean a fraction of that energy could do it so I've read.

You need mirrors to even generate a laser, so if you can make one powerful enough to weaponise then you already have mirrors capable of channelling the beam safely.

[The Fedral Union]

Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't any reasonably weaponized lasers energy merely ablate or melt the mirror and screw your ship anyway? I mean a fraction of that energy could do it so I've read.

You need mirrors to even generate a laser, so if you can make one powerful enough to weaponise then you already have mirrors capable of channelling the beam safely.

Wait wait, I thought we were talking about mirror armor not focusing lenses...? Lenses/mirrors for that are totally different than a mirror armor/reflectors.

[Ularn]

After an absence lasting over five months, a journey of over 6,000 miles, and at least a few hours of seriously considering a lifetime as a Buddhist monk, I have reached what is more or less the exact opposite side of the planet Sol III/Terra/Earth from which I began my journey, and re established reliable internet connectivity. Miss me? Even notice I was away? Whatever. What're we talking about?

Also forgot to mention that I read the whole of Iain M Banks' Culture series while I was on the road. So don't be surprised if the UIF happens to take a turn towards space-hippiness henceforth. I know AIs are going to become more of a thing for me, anyway.

[Jovian Lunar Empire]

You need mirrors to even generate a laser, so if you can make one powerful enough to weaponise then you already have mirrors capable of channelling the beam safely.

Wait wait, I thought we were talking about mirror armor not focusing lenses...? Lenses/mirrors for that are totally different than a mirror armor/reflectors.

Uhm... No, they wouldn't be.

The bigger problem is keeping the mirror armour below its melting and vapour points. Sure, you could reactively cool it, but any sort of radiator structure coming off of your ship is going to be hilariously fragile compared to the rest. It would have to be retracted in combat, giving you a limited time before you bake your crew from the heat you systems generate, never mind weapons and armour. Even a truly massive ship is going to have this problem. Endurance is going to be a question of ship mass, in battle, not armour.

[The Fedral Union]

Wait wait, I thought we were talking about mirror armor not focusing lenses...? Lenses/mirrors for that are totally different than a mirror armor/reflectors.

Uhm... No, they wouldn't be.

The bigger problem is keeping the mirror armour below its melting and vapour points. Sure, you could reactively cool it, but any sort of radiator structure coming off of your ship is going to be hilariously fragile compared to the rest. It would have to be retracted in combat, giving you a limited time before you bake your crew from the heat you systems generate, never mind weapons and armour. Even a truly massive ship is going to have this problem. Endurance is going to be a question of ship mass, in battle, not armour.

Ah ok thanks for clearing that up, yeah.. So the ships mass would effect things like how many shots/weapons you can fire and things like that? or... Am I making a shot in the dark?

[Jovian Lunar Empire]

Uhm... No, they wouldn't be.

The bigger problem is keeping the mirror armour below its melting and vapour points. Sure, you could reactively cool it, but any sort of radiator structure coming off of your ship is going to be hilariously fragile compared to the rest. It would have to be retracted in combat, giving you a limited time before you bake your crew from the heat you systems generate, never mind weapons and armour. Even a truly massive ship is going to have this problem. Endurance is going to be a question of ship mass, in battle, not armour.

Ah ok thanks for clearing that up, yeah.. So the ships mass would effect things like how many shots/weapons you can fire and things like that? or... Am I making a shot in the dark?

No, you are bang on. Also how long you can run the reactors, scanners, vidscreens, door motors, energy field shielding, etcetc. Of course, if the more massive ship has a proportionally greater crew compliment and so on, it is of questionable help. But yeah, the bigger the heat sink, the longer you can sit in combat before you have to pop out your radiators again.

[The Fedral Union]

So pretty much anything that uses power and creates waste heat, got it. What would the optimal cool down time be for beam weapons in your opinion, anti capital ship scale mind you. Also I would assume missile weapons would be unaffected ? (Mind you this is out of curiosities sake)

[Jovian Lunar Empire]

So pretty much anything that uses power and creates waste heat, got it. What would the optimal cool down time be for beam weapons in your opinion, anti capital ship scale mind you. Also I would assume missile weapons would be unaffected ? (Mind you this is out of curiosities sake)

I'll get back to you on that one. It involves math and refernces, and I am on a phone at present.

Edit: Luke Campbell, of some fame, claims that the smallest effective beam weapon for shipboard combat is going to be on the order of 1e11 watts/cm2 on target. There's a bunch of fancy maths in the middle to do with range and so on... but that's not the question.

The most efficient lasers known today have an efficiency of around 65% energy-to-beam, which means that the remaining 35% is getting dumped as heat (there may be some sound, but I doubt it). There's an online calculator for this, but a 100MW laser (which is around ship-to-ship grade at closer ranges) cooled by 1000kg FLiBe, firing at 35% efficiency for 5 seconds per shot gets about 43 shots before you've reached the heat capacity of your coolant and need to cool that.

Obviously that can be handwaved (oh, we have more efficient diode lasers or more capacitive coolant), but for realism's sake, bear that in mind. Optimal cool down time is going to be whatever period of time it takes your radiator network to get your coolant back down to the lowest temperature you can manage.

In fact, doing this math is making me question the wisdom of the Jovians in using lasers for point defense weapons, at least on anything smaller than an asteroid-fortress.

Edit2: With pure lithium, you can about double the shots.

Edit 3: You asked about missile weapons - these are going to generate some heat also, but not nearly as badly as energy weapons. I envisage larger missile weapons being "popped" from their tubes using simple gas expansion, drifting some distance away from the ship, and then firing, to both semi-randomize their incoming vector, and minimize waste-heat dumpage.

Bonus points if the missile is essentially a KKV and was being used as a heat sink prior to launch.

[Vernii]

I am new to the FT Community of NS. So if this is a dumb question, excuse my ignorance. How feasible are terra-forming machines that could make a world more conducive for life to develop?

It entirely depends on the planet in question and how fast you want to terraform it. An important thing to keep in mind is that barring godtech of various sorts, there's not much you can do about things like non-standard surface gravity. Not to mention that it will probably require massive amounts of energy and matter input. Oceans don't come out of nowhere after all, for example.

All in all, I find the entire thing to be a rather inefficient use of resources and time. Why try to turn some barren shitball into something marginally habitable when I could just crank out a few thousand space habitats instead, each with their own custom designed ecology and climate?

There is of course a middle ground between the two: paraterraforming. Roof over the areas of a world that you'd like to colonize and then terraform it in batches. I'll use Mars as an example. Terraforming the entire planet is a difficult and rather unlikely event, but your nation really, really wants to establish a large colony on it? Just roof over Valles Marineris, pump in atmosphere, bring in vegetation, crops, and water, and build a colony with its own climate and ecology within the canyon walls. If you're worried about war affecting it, just have strict building codes (all buildings must be capable of sealing against vacuum for example) and use compartmentalization, like say, dividing walls running laterally across the canyon floor every 50km or so.

Eventually need to expand? All those craters around it look pretty promising, roof those over as well.

*snip*

Would this make it acceptable?

Certainly acceptable, though (sorry for this), I have to question it now on the grounds of sensibility. Basically it comes across as the things being too big for their own good, and thus while mobile, are cripplingly slow, while armed, are paper tigers, and while big, are as thin-skinned as a hemophiliac. If they can't both manuever, use their point defenses/weapons, and have their shields online at the same time due to only having enough energy for one or the other, why not downsize them until they can do both? Who on Earth would potentially shovel billions of people into such a death trap in the first place?

It'd make more sense, IMO, to build McKendrees that individually hold only millions of people, since with the smaller mass and energy requirements they could be individually more capable, and the destruction of one wouldn't be as devastating in loss of life. Not to mention that it would allow you to still have communities of billions simply by having them link up with each other into clusters, and undock from the group when needed.

The problem is if I say my nation's mirrors can reflect the lasers, other people can say the same about their nations' mirrors!

Don't aim at their mirrors then.

Also forgot to mention that I read the whole of Iain M Banks' Culture series while I was on the road. So don't be surprised if the UIF happens to take a turn towards space-hippiness henceforth. I know AIs are going to become more of a thing for me, anyway.

<3 the Culture novels, as well as Banks' other sci-fi work. I'm currently reading The Algebraist myself.

EDIT: And just finished The Algebraist, good book.

[New Tauri Republic]

Their "paper tiger" thin armour is several kilometers thick, and that is just countimg the dedicated outer armour shell. Then th nice big fleet it happens to cary ( its hanger bays are some three hundred kilometers in diameter, running almost the length of the entire thing). The shields, and weapons are there mostly to buy time, and destroy rogue asteroids. It cannot use the shields and weapons at the same time, but combined with the thick armour and defensive fleet, it is far from defenseless.
If it stays on the edge of the gravity well, it can escape quite quickly, with the ftl drive mostly precharged. The thick armour and point defenses ( once an object gets close enough, the accuracy of the guns does not have to be that great to hit the object due to the shear vollume of fire, which at long range would be very easy to dodge ), are to defend it from that which can harm it, really big or very fast objects ( large asteroids, or relativistic objects traveling on a straight line trajectory). Atlhough it is really slow ( and why it would move so deep into a gravity well that it cannot escape I have no idea), it can pivot about its center of gravity relatively quickly utlilizing the inertialess drive, atleast for something of its size.


It is meant to be a mobile homeworld, not a battlestation. Its primary defense is that it can flee from battle, and the simple fact that the earth like enviroment is protected by several kilometers of armour, a multikilometer thick cylinder base, and several kilometers of bedrock. There are multiple independant cylinders, each with a gridwork of mountains and closable barriers to prevent atmospheric loss incase the habitat is punctures. Buildings are designed to be closed off in case of vacuum, with emergency life support until the can be rescued. Even a hole puncturing several hundred of meters will lead to minimal loss of life, unless it happens to hit a city head on. Unlike a planet where such attacks would most likely kill everyone on the planet at the time. Sixteen ( alright I slightly changed the design ), indpendant earth like envoroments, each splitt up into 500 kilometer by 500 kilometer atmosphere containment blocks should be more than enough redudancy to prevent lucky hits from killing every body.


It is mobile, has a stable enviroment ( no hurricanes, tsunami waves, earthquakes etc.), can avoid supernovas by simply leaving the system, as well as do the same for any other danger. More poeple can safely live on it than on a planet. What damage is done to it can be repaired, unlike a planet that either has to be teraformed or rebuilt. Anything capable of damaging it ( please note that most ft antiship weaponry could wipe out all life on earth in short order, nevermind relativistic spaceships...). Not exactly a death trap.


And need I mention it is mobile in the ftl sense of the word. Once it is gone, good luck finding it again. Space is really big.


Does this explain why I want to use them in my nation? Other than the rule of cool.

[Vernii]

Yea that sounds entirely fine.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

Don't aim at their mirrors then.

Or be a real man and use kinetics. Lasers are weapons for aliens and women!

[New Tauri Republic]

Don't aim at their mirrors then.

Or be a real man and use kinetics. Lasers are weapons for aliens and women!

Or the middle road! Relativistic Bomb Pumped Lasers! High end kinetics, nice lasers, and a side helping of nukes!

Or replacde bomb pumped lasers with casaba howitzers.

[Jovian Lunar Empire]

-snip-

I could do this with actual math, but you're going to need reactor outputs on the stellar level, even with your energy limitations, if you're going to have armour kilometers thick.

Also, and I will have actual math on this, but if you have such a structure, it's going to collapse under it's own gravity and become a McKendrie Sphere.

[New Tsavon]

Don't aim at their mirrors then.

Or be a real man and use kinetics. Lasers are weapons for aliens and women!

And nukes, lots and lots of nukes.

You can really never have enough nukes.

[Interstellar Planets]

Or be a real man and use kinetics. Lasers are weapons for aliens and women!

And nukes, lots and lots of nukes.

You can really never have enough nukes.

This always seems true until you're on the receiving end of them, at which point you can certainly have enough!

---

Sorry to change the subject, but I read something about diplomacy threads a couple of pages ago, and just wanted to post my brief (and belated) thoughts on the subject - we used to have loads of FT diplomacy threads in II back on Jolt, and I can't say with much certainty why they don't crop up so much anymore (with the exception of the obvious absence of whizz-bangs).

They tend to work best with a lot of OOC discussion before and during, and are often most interesting when caused by alliances rubbing each other the wrong way - the Hermes v IRON stuff that cropped up a couple of years ago, for example, had a lot of diplomatic wrangling going on around it which was very cool and proved that there's still a place for it. The tension and potential for things to go catastrophically wrong on a galactic scale when two large groups interact in this way makes for good drama, for a lot of folks at least. But they need to be worked out first - what the goals of the event will be, how things could potentially go wrong, how things will progress during, etc.

You can have diplomatic threads between friendly nations, of course, and I always welcome those, but in my opinion the big, over-arching diplomacy threads won't happen organically until we have another set of large, disparate alliances competing for galactic dominance. With the fractured nature of FT at the moment (so much so that we've had to start calling it Prime to differentiate it), that seems unlikely at the moment unless it is deliberately orchestrated (like, I'm led to understand, the Hermes v IRON stuff was - I wasn't part of it so I don't know for sure).

That's not to say that smaller, nation-to-nation diplomacy threads or even one-off interstellar conferences (what ever happened to the Galactic Assembly idea anyway?) couldn't happen or be just as interesting, and I don't see why new players would be excluded from doing such, at least OOCly (ICly, more renowned nations might not take newer nations seriously, of course, but that wouldn't translate to OOC unless you were playing with a complete arse, in which case you're better off not bothering anyway).

So my advice to those looking to take part in some diplomacy, but unable to get into existing threads for whatever reason, would be to contact a nation you like the look of (either because you could be friends or could be foes) or have worked with before (past interaction can lead to future diplomacy - even if /especially if that interaction was violent) and work something out together. Diplomacy has been done before and done well in II FT, and I see no reason why it couldn't be done again by a determined soul.

There, I'm done. You can all go about your bombing again now!

[Vorkova]

So I'm probably going to turn this nation into my FT nation, and I wanted to get some criticism on my origin story. I'm going to go with furries this time, canines to be exact, and I was thinking about how my people could have changed from wolves to anthros. Rather than say they evolved over hundreds of millions of years, I wanted to give them a more... unique origin.

I was thinking about a scenario where a radioactive meteor crashes into my homeworld around fifty thousand years in the past, causing a group of local wolves to mutate and take on some humanoid characteristics (This would be a gradual change over a few hundred years). An earthquake could eventually cause the small island they live on to sink, destroying the meteor (And subsequently halting their evolution at a stage similar to modern humans) and forcing them to emigrate, which eventually leads to them spreading across the entire planet. I was thinking races could develop quickly (Foxes, ect.) after this due to the lingering effects of the asteroid, which allows them to adapt to climates quickly (This would wear off within a few generations).

As to how earth wolves got to a random alien system in the first place, I was thinking they could be the result of a failed human colony. A colony ship jumps to the system sometime in the future, inadvertently encountering a warp anomaly on the way which sends it fifty thousand years into the past. Unaware of what has just happened, the humans colonise the planet and seed it with earth life. When a plague breaks out sometime later and the support necessary to save the colony doesn't come, the humans die out, leaving the animals behind. This is where the above mentioned meteor comes in and sets things rolling.

Thoughts?

[Vorkova]

Don't aim at their mirrors then.

Or be a real man and use kinetics. Lasers are weapons for aliens and women!

And alien women!

[SquareDisc City]

Personally I've enjoyed military standoff scenarios, where you've got a couple of nations or groups massing forces and making threatening manouvres, while at the same time negotiations are going on to try and avoid conflict. More excitement than "pure" diplomacy, and more complexity than a straight-up battle.

[The Fedral Union]

Well alliances aren't that popular anymore, I mean I've got GESO going pretty good.. so far its been strong for four months but there isn't any other major group out there like that.

[Rethan]

In some part I agree with Interstellar Planets. I miss the old days of intrigue and diplomatic wrangling. I'm a relatively young player by the FT community's standards, so my only experience of that sort of intricate politicking came from the IRON/'Hermes conflict, and some of my fondest memories of FT come from that time period.

That said, I think the age of big alliances has largely passed. There are some alliances for sure, but they don't dominate the FT community as much as they used to, and on the whole I think we're better for it. There was a whole lot of OOC bickering and bad blood that the cold war brewed up (and I'm sure some of it was there beforehand), and when you have an alliance of comrades to back you up with your condemnations, it just adds fuel to the fire. I liken it to the bad blood that exists between some MT regions, and even with my cursory involvement in the war I was privy to some of that behind the scenes unpleasantness.

The current age of FT (again, compared to my relatively limited time in the community compared to folks like...say, Otagia, ZMI or Miehm) seems to be much more fluid (as IP noted, there's a hell of a lot more closed RP groups and separate canons than I remember there being on Jolt, and more power to those folks when their community actually lasts longer than 4/5 months) but also somewhat less lively than it used to be. There are still plenty of alliances (or alliance type things) out there, they just don't plaster themselves all over the forums as such. They're more individual agreements between players built up over several roleplays that happen naturally. I don't like the concept of 'join here' type alliances, and I don't think they're terribly healthy. Is this better or worse than what we had? Meh, it has its pros and its cons. Personally I think something akin to IRON/Hermes will happen if you give it time.

I'm still waiting for the numerous people who are staring angrily at Vipra to poke him with a stick.