Culture vs SW scenario

[Admiral Valdemar]

Isn't true that Culture ships fight from hyperspace? How would SW vessels attack it?

Yes it is true, and no SW can't do anything about it.

[Connor MacLeod]

Indeed... leave the Culture mulching to the Foundation Federation. Not only do they have the speed and the communications, but they've also got the firepower to back it up. :p

No surprise you'd show up when you think there's an easy kill.

And the FF is the bitch of the Culture AND the 4th Empire.

[Alyeska]

Indeed... leave the Culture mulching to the Foundation Federation. Not only do they have the speed and the communications, but they've also got the firepower to back it up. :p

No surprise you'd show up when you think there's an easy kill.

And the FF is the bitch of the Culture AND the 4th Empire.

Actually I pointed E to the thread when someone claimed the sheer size of SW forces would ensure SW victory.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm going to point out a few things here. The SW Galaxy is ridiculously well armed, so regardless, they SHOULD have an abiilty to injure any culture warship (at least by the DS-2's alone..) assuming they can engage it (which is the problem - Displacer-transported munitions and multi Light hour/light yearr ranges, effectors, ability to fight at FTL, etc..) The best chance for the SW side to win it is to destroy the GSV first and then worry about the rest (Again, assuming they are able to engage it...) assuming the Culture doesn't have time to build a second one. Without the GSV, I believe the culture side's time is going to be more difficult (not impossible neccesarily, more difficult, though.)

In the case of the Culture, their ideal strategy is to stay on the outer rim, go into hiding, and start mining resources to build up their fleets before attacking. Presumably noone knows they've arrived yet (and they can keep it that way) and the SW galaxy is big enough for them to hide in and even expand. First choice should be to build a few more GSV's to decentralize their production ability, then to focus building other fleets. This may also involve building more drones, oir capturing/brainwashing more organic beings to help their purposes.

If the SW galaxy knows the Culture side is there (how they would would be interesting to know) - their level of intel comes into play. Do they just know someone has invaded their galaxy, or do they have specific numbers/capabilities? If they know someone is there, and where, its still probable for the GSV to go into hiding while some or most of the "other" ships act as decoys to draw them away, even at the cost of their own lives. Perhaps they even deliberately sacrifice themselves to give the SW side the belief the threat is "ended" and to get them to underestimate Culture capabilities. Meanwhile, that GSV is still building....

Once the Culture side builds its forces up, the ideal method should be to strike at major shipbuilding facitileis (as many as they can) as near-simultaneously as they can. They may also strike at training facilities, food production facilities, Major fleet/naval bases. Smaller ships (or hell, even suicide ships) might be deployed to take out or cripple sensor or comm networks if possible. This again might take awhile, given the scale and distances involved, but it should not be totally impossible for the Culture, particularily if there is no requirement to engage the enemy fleets beforehand.

[Connor MacLeod]

Indeed... leave the Culture mulching to the Foundation Federation. Not only do they have the speed and the communications, but they've also got the firepower to back it up. :p

No surprise you'd show up when you think there's an easy kill.

And the FF is the bitch of the Culture AND the 4th Empire.

Actually I pointed E to the thread when someone claimed the sheer size of SW forces would ensure SW victory.

Which changes my point how?

[Darth_Shinji]

Isn't true that Culture ships fight from hyperspace? How would SW vessels attack it?

Yes it is true, and no SW can't do anything about it.

See, I thought so. Thats the only reason the Culture isn't Skylarks bitch.

On topic the culture would win on that edge alone. Not to mention there range, effectors, and combat speed.

[NecronLord]

Isn't true that Culture ships fight from hyperspace? How would SW vessels attack it?

Yes it is true, and no SW can't do anything about it.

SDespite the obvious differences

[Admiral Valdemar]

Isn't true that Culture ships fight from hyperspace? How would SW vessels attack it?

Yes it is true, and no SW can't do anything about it.

SDespite the obvious differences

I'd like to see how SW hyperspace is like Culture hyperspace and even then the Culture uses numerous levels of that plane. SW uses hyperspace primarily for travel, the only exception being hyperspace spy-sats that orbit planets in hyperspace.

[Darth_Shinji]

Isn't true that Culture ships fight from hyperspace? How would SW vessels attack it?

Yes it is true, and no SW can't do anything about it.

SDespite the obvious differences

But they can attack from hyperspace into realspace. So even if they are different, the Culture has the ability to attack all ships in realspace at least. Meaning effetaully taking them all down.

Though I personally agree with you. The Culture is overrated. They just posses to many cheap shots to win.

[Crazy_Vasey]

From this thread the culture sounds like the ultimate techno wankfest.

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

From this thread the culture sounds like the ultimate techno wankfest.

it is.

Most Culture battles take 0.01 seconds.

[HemlockGrey]

The Culture is the bitch of the Principality. Whatcha gonna do about it? Send nineteen quazillion ROCs after it?

[HemlockGrey]

From this thread the culture sounds like the ultimate techno wankfest.

That would be the Principality of Zan.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The Culture is the bitch of the Principality. Whatcha gonna do about it? Send nineteen quazillion ROCs after it?

Naw (it's ROUs anyway). They could just sublime and become gods and make you not exist.

[NecronLord]

The Culture is the bitch of the Principality. Whatcha gonna do about it? Send nineteen quazillion ROCs after it?

Naw (it's ROUs anyway). They could just sublime and become gods and make you not exist.

Excuse me

*runs outside and screams gibberish*

Right...

[HemlockGrey]

Naw (it's ROUs anyway). They could just sublime and become gods and make you not exist

Or, they couldn't since the Imperator of Zan is God.

Do Culture shields, when struck with energy, warp that energy to another target?

Can Culture snubfighters fight at C?

Do Culture ships carry in excessve of 500K of these fighterS?

Are Culture warships armed with disruptor cannons that travel 300 trillion times the speed of light, and can defy the law of thermodynamics by erasing energy and matter?

[The Nomad]

Or, they couldn't since the Imperator of Zan is God.

This should just attract the Excession. Fine.

Do Culture shields, when struck with energy, warp that energy to another target?

Trapdoor shields send energy into hyperspace. That's enough.

Can Culture snubfighters fight at C?

Culture ships are said to have baffling acceleration despite their size, ( aka GSVs, indicating reactionless-type drives ), but otherwise we've no true idea.

Do Culture ships carry in excessve of 500K of these fighterS?

The Culture doesn't even need fighters.

Are Culture warships armed with disruptor cannons that travel 300 trillion times the speed of light, and can defy the law of thermodynamics by erasing energy and matter?

Culture military GSVs can attack at 1500 lys range instantenously through Grid-Fire, which effectively uses a layer of the Energy Grid which links the multiverse and seemingly contain infinite energy, in order to slice up or vaporize planets easily, IIRC. Otherwise the Culture use gravity-based weapons ( lineguns or G-impactors IIRC, but since Culture ships can stay without problems near a black hole provided they don't reach the event horizon, that gives you a pretty good idea on how much destruction they can cause - short ranged apparently, but seem to ignore shields ), transported weapons ( nanoholes, CAM ammo, plasma bombs ), effectors ( ultimate hacking devices, can be used instantenously over tens of lightyears), and so on. They use simple lasers for orbital bombings ( when they don't want to simply vaporize it, which any ROU or GCU can do without its main weaponry ), and as you see, most of their weapons are designed to ignore "invulnerable" energy or kinetic shields, which they already seem to posess, to a certain extent. And their ships can instantaneously communicate or spy within a range of 20 000 lys by the time of Player of Game.

Not to mention God-like IAs piloting every ship.

BTW, the Culture rapes the Foundation Federation in the ass every day. The reasons ?

1) they're even more overrated than the Culture
2) effectors

The Nomadculturevulture hath spoken.

[NecronLord]

Drive fields are reactionless, they are powerd by the grid. The manuverability is achieved by shunting the excess KE into hyperspace... incase you wanted to know...

[HemlockGrey]

This should just attract the Excession. Fine.

Haven't read Excession. No spoilers.

Trapdoor shields send energy into hyperspace. That's enough.

Warpshields warp the energy. I.E, let's say a a 500 teraton blast were to hit the shield; that's fine, just warp it to a nearby enemy planet...

The Culture doesn't even need fighters.

They do when snubfighters carry planet-killing weaponry and are nigh-impossible to hit.

Culture military GSVs can attack at 1500 lys range instantenously through Grid-Fire, which effectively uses a layer of the Energy Grid which links the multiverse and seemingly contain infinite energy, in order to slice up or vaporize planets easily, IIRC. Otherwise the Culture use gravity-based weapons ( lineguns or G-impactors IIRC, but since Culture ships can stay without problems near a black hole provided they don't reach the event horizon, that gives you a pretty good idea on how much destruction they can cause - short ranged apparently, but seem to ignore shields ), transported weapons ( nanoholes, CAM ammo, plasma bombs ), effectors ( ultimate hacking devices, can be used instantenously over tens of lightyears), and so on. They use simple lasers for orbital bombings ( when they don't want to simply vaporize it, which any ROU or GCU can do without its main weaponry ), and as you see, most of their weapons are designed to ignore "invulnerable" energy or kinetic shields, which they already seem to posess, to a certain extent. And their ships can instantaneously communicate or spy within a range of 20 000 lys by the time of Player of Game.

Not to mention God-like IAs piloting every ship.

Hitting a Principality ship with that gridfire trick is a nice way to end up with a vaporized solar system. Kinetic weapons do not work against Principality ships and their ships are not controlled by computers, but by living energy.

The standard way of swiftly destroying a solar system is for a Principality warships to stay in it's home system, nuke the enemy fleet and then turn the star into a black hole. Principality ships have instantaneous FTL but the range of disruptor cannons is so far that the only snubfighters engage at ranges less than a few thousand LYs

[The Nomad]

You don't understand Gird-Fire, do you ? NO shield can stop it. You just dodge it, if you can. Even culture fields, which send zillion teratons of direct energy into hyperspace, are just ignored. Orbitals can be sliced up quickly by it.
To give you an idea, in Look to Windward, it is written than an Orbital ( Culture's equivalent for a planet ) like Masaq' can be upgraded to easily resist to anything close to a supernova. So I don't think that puny planet-killing weaponry is going to affect them, except if they can attack quick enough to catch the Hub by surprise ( which is unlikely ), before it raise its fields or trapdoor shield. In which case the inhabitants of the inner face are indeed fucked.

Cultureverse can easily turn stars into novae, although it is rarely done ( for the same reasons an ISD doesn't just BDZ every planet on its path ).

Can Principalty ships stay hidden in hyperspace when Culture ships can effectorise them from it ? ( Effectors affect CPUs, bio-brains, and what is even remotely close to an intelligence, even Minds which hide most of their computing power into hyperspace are vulnerable to it ). Can warpshields affect displacer-tech ( extra-dimensional ) ?

Given Culture's reaction times ( nano-picosecond ) and sensor ranges, near-C fight seems almost useless. Bye snubfighters.

Do warpshields have vulnerabilities ? ( eg frequency, special weapons )

[HemlockGrey]

You don't understand Gird-Fire, do you ? NO shield can stop it. You just dodge it, if you can

Well, considering that Principality ships warp-shift around the stars several times per picosecond, that shouldn't be terribly difficult.

Besides, why wouldn't warp-shields stop it? It's energy, is it not? Unless Culture-verse energy is somehow magic.

To give you an idea, in Look to Windward, it is written than an Orbital ( Culture's equivalent for a planet ) like Masaq' can be upgraded to easily resist to anything close to a supernova. So I don't think that puny planet-killing weaponry is going to affect them, except if they can attack quick enough to catch the Hub by surprise ( which is unlikely ), before it raise its fields or trapdoor shield. In which case the inhabitants of the inner face are indeed fucked

'Planet-killing' as in 'Blast half of it to magma and sterilize the other half'

These are the weapons carried by snubfighters. Not warships.

Cultureverse can easily turn stars into novae, although it is rarely done ( for the same reasons an ISD doesn't just BDZ every planet on its path ).

So can Principality ships. They can also turn yellow stars in red giants, create neutron stars, create planets, etc and they do both often.

Can Principalty ships stay hidden in hyperspace when Culture ships can effectorise them from it ? ( Effectors affect CPUs, bio-brains, and what is even remotely close to an intelligence, even Minds which hide most of their computing power into hyperspace are vulnerable to it ). Can warpshields affect displacer-tech ( extra-dimensional ) ?

But te living energy is not intelligent. It can't be hacked; there's nothing to hack. Besides, Principality ships don't do hyperspace. They warp around instantanously, and by Issue 21(there are 30. If you want one, you'll have to come to my neighborhood/town area. Zan is extremely obscure.) ZaKras Sstilth and his crack team of researchers(read: forty-six solar systems) had created a method of hiding indefinetly in warp-space.

Given Culture's reaction times ( nano-picosecond ) and sensor ranges, near-C fight seems almost useless. Bye snubfighters.

Not near C. Snubfighter acceleration is C. Not to mention they warp like fuck.

Do warpshields have vulnerabilities ? ( eg frequency, special weapons )

Nope. Only way to get past them is to use disruptors, which erase matter and energy. They don't destroy warp-shield, just ignore them. So you use disruptors to hammer down the energy shields, and you have to do it in one or two picoseconds so they don't regenerate, and then you use the disruptors to try and disappear the hull before the living energy repairs it.

[The Nomad]

So warp shields can be ignored... welcome displacers

The beam of the Energy Grid is a part of the Grid, not a simple beam of coherent energy ( in fact, it can take nearly every shape, and could possibly destroy a part of the universe - several galaxies if used at a good power, but I didn't read this part myself, it is 2nd-hand data... ) . It's a dimension of the Grid merged into our 4-dimensional universe, so... but since even in the Cultureverse it isn't used against warping ships, I'l concede that point. I'm not in the mood for a "no-laser"-type debate.

Effectors do affect energy... they're not "hacking tools" in the way that they infiltrate other CPU using commlinks and softwares, they simply manipulate energy, wether in neurons, or in circuitry or whatever... so this energy could be manipulated as well.

But apparently they'll just both stay in their own hyperspacespace indefinitely, until an Excession comes out and begin to play with them like Q to the 1Oth power.

[HemlockGrey]

So warp shields can be ignored... welcome displacers

Are displacers energyless and matterless? If not, they can't ignore the warp shields.

Effectors do affect energy... they're not "hacking tools" in the way that they infiltrate other CPU using commlinks and softwares, they simply manipulate energy, wether in neurons, or in circuitry or whatever... so this energy could be manipulated as well.

This living energy does not take the form of neurons or anything. It exists in warpspace and can best be described as a liquid. Dunno if that could be hacked.

[HRogge]

So warp shields can be ignored... welcome displacers

Are displacers energyless and matterless? If not, they can't ignore the warp shields.

Displacers are matter and energyless, they are wormholes... they don't got through the shields, they go around them.

[HemlockGrey]

Displacers are matter and energyless, they are wormholes... they don't got through the shields, they go around them.

There's still the energy shields, and the warping, to deal with...