SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread I

[Steve]

Remember that defensively carriers aren't as bad as they are with their direct anti-ship weapons (As opposed to their combat wings).

[Coyote]

I was wondering because I'm having trouble reconciling a lot of the ship classifications and points with the stuff I created in my imagination; in some cases the comparisons are thin.

[loomer]

And there goes my awful attempt at radio transmissions. Obviously it's all in Outlander 'common' and just translated to English to avoid me writing out long segments of random letters. Apparently the Arayna taught them human radio terminology, too!

[Steve]

I was wondering because I'm having trouble reconciling a lot of the ship classifications and points with the stuff I created in my imagination; in some cases the comparisons are thin.

PM it to me, I'll see how we can make it work.

[KlavoHunter]

I have a dedicated carrier class that follows all carrier rules, but all my ships of cruiserweight and up carry a relatively small fighter compliment for their combat value. $1 of fighters on the $60 cruiser, etc etc.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, adding 2$ of carrier cost to the hull should be good enough, then.

[KlavoHunter]

$2 of deckspace for every $1 of fighters, which is worth $2 in battle... Why, I may as well not even have taken the deckspace out for them at all, it offers no advantage.... or disadvantage Mmm, fluff.


So, Oskuro, what's the deal with your Orks, are those three sectors near me the Ork "homeworlds"? Because I get the feeling that if so, my nation ends up being hit by tons of Ork pirates, but doesn't bother trying to go on reprisal raids on your worlds there, because that just attracts the whole lot of them who want a scrap!

[K. A. Pital]

Army:
7.5k, 1.05 billion soldiers

-$3k 150 million Elite Commune troopers (x3 kit modifier, 50,000 soldiers per $)
-$3k 300 million Commune regulars (x2 kit modifier, 100,000 soldiers per $)
-$1.5k 600 million Commune conscripts (x1 kit modifier, 200,00 soldiers per $)

Navy:
$49500

Ship types:

Small craft (bundled in with their carriers, not needed to be bought seperately most of the time)
Fighter: 12 per $
Bomber: 6 per $

Carrier budget: $25000
Megacarrier (ultra heavy design) 20 in service. $500 each, total cost $10000
A massive vessel with multiple flight decks, carries 1800 fighters and 600 bombers. While the vessel has decent shields and armour however it is armed only with point defence batteries and very few anti ship cannons.

Carrier (Super Heavy design) 40 in service. $500 each, total cost $10000
Smaller more economic version of the megacarrier with the same limitations and only 900 fighters and 300 fighters on its flight deck.

Cruiser-carrier (Super heavy design) 25 in service, $200 each. Total cost $5000
A hybrid vessel that overcomes some of the short comings of the pure carrier designs.While only able to carry a modest 360 fighters and 120 bombers the cruiser carrier's reduced flight deck made room for a few batteries of cannon and extra armour plating allowing the cruiser to at least fight even though it has combat strength is equivalent to that of a vessel half its weight if you exclude its fighter and bomber complement.

Cruiser budget: $19600

Cruiser (Medium design) 170 in service, $80 each. Total cost: $13600
Cruiser's escort carrier's and do patrols, they have good shields and a decent cannon battery for their size.

Battlecruiser (Heavy design) 50 in service, $120 each. Total cost: $6000
Bigger stronger version of cruiser.

Frigate budget: $4900

Scout frigate (ultra light design) 195 in service, $20 each. Total cost:$3900
A small ship with good sensors and engines.
Attack frigate(light design) 40 in service, $25 each. Total cost: $1000
As above but trades sensors for cannons.
Ship shortlist

20 megacarriers $500 each $10000 total
40 carriers $250 each $10000 total
25 cruiser-carriers $200 each $5000 total
170 cruisers $80 each $13600 total
50 battlecruisers $120 each $6000 total
195 scout frigates $20 each $3900 total
40 attack frigates $25 each $1000 total

This is accepted. Works well enough for me.

Commune elites: clouds, soldiers composed of nanobot swarms (this is their elite status and elite equipment).
Commune regulars: ordinary Commune homo sapiens supported by some mechs and tanks (re: advanced equipment).
Commune conscripts: homo sapiens with basic military equipment (re: basic equipment).

Homo Sapiens infused with anti-agathic nanorobots can be killed like any other ordinary being (though they do not age or die). Clouds require an application of enough force to destroy a large fraction of the swarm, but in the end they are also mortal. Uplinking is not that hot in the Commune, due to fears of a massive superintelligence arising spontaneously with unknown consequences.

Oh, and Commune birthrates are very low. A constant influx of communist deportees is enough trouble already. Immortality allows most citizens to give birth to a child at a time when they are ready, not being forced by the short time of human life or short fertility period.

Ships are cool enough, dimensions and minutiae will come later (if I'd need them at all).

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I personally don't favour carriers much. As it is there are likely like 2 600$ carriers, 9 or so 300$ and that's it. My Space Marine vessels are hybrids (for the obvious reasons) with drop pods, thunderhawks. I'm not sure if I should budget for boarding torps when thunderhawks might cut it actually.

[Norade]

I know people are mostly not putting numbers to things, but what sorts of firepower are we looking at? Are my 2.6MT/s lasers weak sauce or powerful? How about my 6 gigaton anti-capital ship missiles? What if I use the power from my lasers to instead fire mass drivers which manage to put far more energy on target (to the tune of 2.9 teratons per shot if I convert batteries to single gun mass drivers firing 300,000,000kg slugs at 9 million m/s using my 1.08e16 W of power)? Where should I look to draw the line?

[Siege]

Why do you seek the draw a line in the first place? Why do we have to put meaningless numbers to this sort of thing, instead of just taking about starfighters getting "vaporized" or capital ships "breaking apart under a hail of fire"? If you ask me it's just dumb, pointless and straying dangerously close to (if not outright into) the field of outright wankery to quantify how many whatevertons of energy a ship puts out.

[Darkevilme]

I was under the impression we were going for a star trek ish sort of power level with most non strategic weapons having an upper limit on firepower in the low hundreds of megatons. Of course that was a while ago so this could of changed dramatically since then.

Edit: But siege is right, this is a creative story telling exercise not a scientific analysis... and i really don't want to have to try and work out how much energy it takes for a Chamarran beam cannon to be able to punch clean through an unshielded enemy battleship's hull.

[DarthShady]

Your 500$ ship is equal in power to anyone else's 500$ ship. What weapons you use, doesn't matter, its all just fluff. No line of any kind needed.

[PeZook]

Of course, we should probably roughly know if a 1000$ supership can blast a planet apart or not

[Norade]

I was just asking as I've been enjoying seeing what I can do within the rather hazy veil of roughly star Trek like technology. If used right it can be downright scary, fuck phasers and photon torpedoes, hell yeah with mass drivers and relativistic missiles. Also, not knowing what energies we're throwing around makes it a bit tougher to describe battles. I mean, do our near missed vaporize asteroids or do we have trouble destroying a single asteroid with sustained fire and a full magazine?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Just rationalise away. Me? My warp cannons might be uber, but there are relatively few cannons per ship, and often are underpowered because other cannons have to be powered as well.

[Coyote]

Steve and I touched on the subject in a recent PM; I think he wants to avoid not only numerical/wattage-tonnage valuation but even trying to make comparisons to known settings, like "my stuff is like Star Wars, your stuff is like Star Trek, and so my stuff is inherently superior" "no it's not!" --that kind of stuff.

Basically, a $200 ship will beat a $100 ship, and it doesn't matter if, in your mind, you see that as power generated on a Star Wars scale or if it is more like Serenity/Firefly.

[Siege]

It's all power of plot, so if we want to of course we can vaporize asteroids. And the minute someone asks "but are they made of loosely packed ice or solid iron" I am going to personally reach through the Internet and punch that person in the middle of the face. Really hard. Twice.

Personally, I imagine any ship of about $500 and up can ruin the shit out of a planet with its main batteries. Maybe not BDZ it per se, but definitely make sure the locals will be having a properly bad day. That is if they don't have anything to defend themselves with of course -- I believe Steve had some ideas about planetery defense that I haven't really perused yet.

[KlavoHunter]

Well, the energy value of antimatter/matter annihilation seems to be a good yardstick, since it's mentioned straightaway in the rules as being one of the primary power sources in the 'verse. We KNOW what that value actually is, if you want to calculate from there, go ahead, but again, a $500 ship is a $500 ship. That's what makes this ruleset so awesome!

I believe I heard talk of planetary shields, so you can't just casually nuke just anywhere that has any serious presence invested.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, my desires in the vein of quantification are pretty limited. For me it pretty much boils down to: Are nukes a joke?

In a setting where the weapon power is at Star Trek levels or below, you take nukes damn seriously because they deliver an instantaneous punch comparable to the heaviest capital ship weapons. In a setting where weapon power is up in the Star Wars range, nukes are laughable because they're so much less powerful than even light capital ship weapons.

So, is anyone proposing to write ships that can just ignore having a hydrogen bomb go off against the hull? If so, I need to revise my purely mental picture of what my own ships are capable of, so as to avoid finding myself making claims that my own ships should be unable to beat this enemy at equal-point-cost odds.

That's the only thing I have any desire to know. Using modern nuclear weapons as a benchmark, should such weapons be considered:
"powerful" (as in, capital ship beam weapons deliver a punch weaker than nuclear torpedoes),
"average" (capital ship beam weapons are comparable to nuclear torpedoes) or
"weak" (point defense weapons are comparable to nuclear torpedoes)?

Left to myself I'd vote "average," and I gave my fleet a fluff description accordingly.

[Ryan Thunder]

I imagined that my faction wouldn't consider them weak so much as inefficient. Why use them when I have hi-lasers and particle projectors that direct all or most of their energy against the target instead of radiating it in all directions?

I mean, even my missiles are just rocket-propelled particle projectors or relativistic kill vehicles.

[KlavoHunter]

In between average and weak, I'd think - I use nuclear weapons as antimissile/antifighter, and for smaller ships, but for serious anticapital ship firepower, antimatter/matter warheads.

[Ryan Thunder]

In between average and weak, I'd think - I use nuclear weapons as antimissile/antifighter, and for smaller ships, but for serious anticapital ship firepower, antimatter/matter warheads.

Oh, right, forgot about that part. Weak, then.

[Darkevilme]

My perspective of where nukes sit on the Chamarran scale is roughly on par with gun battery shots though significantly weaker than beamcannon. And we use missiles cause they've got a long effective range, we use nukes as opposed to antimatter cause we don't like seeing our capital ships vaporized by magazine hits.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Nuclear weapons can be found in relatively cheap battlefield MLRS rockets.