SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread I

[Siege]

Well, as long as we don't have any idiot civilizations around where it is considered a mark of respect and honor to approach an alien flotilla with the gunports open and the ECM suite flooding space with interference on every conceivable frequency...

[Simon_Jester]

Certainly not. Except as some kind of bizarre equivalent to the twenty-one gun salute, and even that would be unlikely. Definitely not if the other party wouldn't already know what to expect.

[CmdrWilkens]

Well, as long as we don't have any idiot civilizations around where it is considered a mark of respect and honor to approach an alien flotilla with the gunports open and the ECM suite flooding space with interference on every conceivable frequency...

...wait so I shouldn't have that as my customary greeting?

[Siege]

Not unless you want to get your welcome-to-Severia greeting squad blasted to tiny half-molten bits by USSF warcraft. And then we can re-enact the Earth-Minbari war, except with less lobsidedness and less moronical stupidity all around?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

What does "somewhat" immune mean, though? Does that mean "fifty megatons going off in direct contact with the hull barely makes a dent?" Or does that mean "The ship can survive such a hit and keep fighting, and it would take many such hits to stop it, just as it takes many punches to stop a human being?"

Sorry, wasn't too clear. The I would rather the hull left with some ablating of the armor, and burning off hull paint, but not such that it results in secondary effects. This is an era where internal radiation stoppers should exist.

And I don't think your argument about nuclear weapons being "pathetic" or primitive is sound. It's based on a preconceived idea that progress must take the form of rapid growth in the amount of energy thrown around, inevitably, and that everything in the future will be "just better" than everything in the past.

Well, I prefer our armor to be more resistant to megatonnage level weapons. Certainly not on the level of Star Wars, or Warhammer 40K, but not on the level of Star Trek!

[K. A. Pital]

*snip*

This is accepted. Works well enough for me.

Have you considered yachts? Having diplomats show up in warships may not send the right message, after all.

A "scout frigate" may not be much of a warship, but it's still a warship (in theory, anyway).

The Commune has no luxury ships. Any ship of the Commune fully represents the Commune itself. Naturally, since they roam around Commune space, they need to have weapons.

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

Probably not, unless you get supremely bored one evening.

Well, the designs are already there.

[Simon_Jester]

The Commune has no luxury ships. The Commune might, however, have courier ships; surely not all courier ships need to be armed?

[K. A. Pital]

I thought the civilian spacefleet is outside the realms of military spending. Cargo and passenger ships surely exist (as they do in other nations), but no one spends on them, right? We don't have special representative ships. But then, a couple-o courier ships is possible, why not.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, in the Commune, the distinction between civilian and military ships is going to be hazier- no private property, at least not on the scale of a starship, right?

But that said, unarmed ships, unarmed troopships that require military escorts, and so on shouldn't need to be in the military budget. So I figure you're right.

[PeZook]

All Collector yachts are armed. We mistrust our neighbors.

Can anybody really blame us, though?

[Ryan Thunder]

"Nova bombs"? I don't think so.

[Lonestar]

"Nova bombs"? I don't think.

You rarely do.

[Ryan Thunder]

You rarely do.

Aha. ha. How clever of you. Reminds me of something my classmates might've come up with back in the ninth grade.

Read the fucking thread, dipshit. We specifically did not want planets to be so easily destroyed.

[Lonestar]

Hurr hurr.


Reading the fucking prologue dipshit, the planet wasn't "destroyed", it was Glassed, and it took several years for the fleet to work it's way in system. There was nothing "easy" about it.

[Ryan Thunder]

Hurr hurr.

Reading the fucking prologue dipshit, the planet wasn't "destroyed", it was Glassed, and it took several years for the fleet to work it's way in system. There was nothing "easy" about it.

Nothing "easy" about glassing the entire planet with a single bomb? Have you been huffing paint again? You can't see missile-based applications for that?

[Lonestar]

Nothing "easy" about glassing the entire planet with a single bomb? Have you been huffing paint again? You can't see missile-based applications for that?

Well, harder then simply shooting KT-level Asteroids at the planet again and again.

But hey, I guess I could magically deploy species tailored-toxins. That's much more likely than some kind of orbital bombardment.

Now, go fuck off.

[Lonestar]

Before anyone else gets their panties in a twist(which, to be honest, is a phrase I pretty much reserve for Ryan), the Nova bomb isn't a "planet destroyer". It's basically a bomb that can simulate the effect of dropping a large asteroid on the planet, but was create because of the exotic nature of the Xenos defenses. Steve has told me that it is not to be used in the actual game, and I accept the ruling.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Shady and I wanted to pulversie planets to bits...

[Norade]

I have an issue, I designed my mainline capital ships to be armed with lasers, but doing some poking around it seems that for the same energy a mass driver will damn near always give you more bang for your buck. I mean, why bother using your wattage for lasers when that same energy does more damage if put towards launching a chunk of metal at something. The issue I have is that a 1.08e16 W laser imparts 2.6 megatons to a target, that same force used to accelerate a mass of 50,000 tons would accelerate it to around 70% the speed of light and cause your 5.5m by 27m chunk of magnetically coated Tungsten to impart hundreds of teratons of energy. Changing to a system like this hows that given the right focus technology wise even Mater/Anti-mater can deal serious damage to damn near anything.

This of course assumes my math isn't grossly wrong.

The same goes for an efficient VASIMR engine using compressed Xenon as a fuel, using a capacitor that would get 1 kiloton from a 60% efficient laser will propel a rather heavy warhead very quickly into things for high gigaton to low teraton energy transfers.

[Steve]

.....

How is that an issue? As I pointed out earlier, your weapons are all fluff, your combat value for ships is everything that matters.

[Norade]

Well given the increase in energy that fluff would lead to far greater devastation to any landing zones my ships decide to soften up first. The reality is that no matter how much we would prefer no numbers ships firing strategic scale weapons into planets will have an effect. How large an effect is based on the scale we choose. Obviously high teraton mass drivers will cause more damage than low megaton lasers when used to clear an LZ.

[Beowulf]

I have an issue, I designed my mainline capital ships to be armed with lasers, but doing some poking around it seems that for the same energy a mass driver will damn near always give you more bang for your buck. I mean, why bother using your wattage for lasers when that same energy does more damage if put towards launching a chunk of metal at something. The issue I have is that a 1.08e16 W laser imparts 2.6 megatons to a target, that same force used to accelerate a mass of 50,000 tons would accelerate it to around 70% the speed of light and cause your 5.5m by 27m chunk of magnetically coated Tungsten to impart hundreds of teratons of energy. Changing to a system like this hows that given the right focus technology wise even Mater/Anti-mater can deal serious damage to damn near anything.

This of course assumes my math isn't grossly wrong.

The same goes for an efficient VASIMR engine using compressed Xenon as a fuel, using a capacitor that would get 1 kiloton from a 60% efficient laser will propel a rather heavy warhead very quickly into things for high gigaton to low teraton energy transfers.

Your math is grossly wrong.

[K. A. Pital]

Well, in the Commune, the distinction between civilian and military ships is going to be hazier- no private property, at least not on the scale of a starship, right?

Private starships? You're kidding, right?

[Lonestar]

Godless Communists

*adds to THE LIST*

[Norade]

I have an issue, I designed my mainline capital ships to be armed with lasers, but doing some poking around it seems that for the same energy a mass driver will damn near always give you more bang for your buck. I mean, why bother using your wattage for lasers when that same energy does more damage if put towards launching a chunk of metal at something. The issue I have is that a 1.08e16 W laser imparts 2.6 megatons to a target, that same force used to accelerate a mass of 50,000 tons would accelerate it to around 70% the speed of light and cause your 5.5m by 27m chunk of magnetically coated Tungsten to impart hundreds of teratons of energy. Changing to a system like this hows that given the right focus technology wise even Mater/Anti-mater can deal serious damage to damn near anything.

This of course assumes my math isn't grossly wrong.

The same goes for an efficient VASIMR engine using compressed Xenon as a fuel, using a capacitor that would get 1 kiloton from a 60% efficient laser will propel a rather heavy warhead very quickly into things for high gigaton to low teraton energy transfers.

Your math is grossly wrong.

I had guessed as much, as it seemed pretty off to me. However I think I did the math for my missiles right, I haven't had to do much with physics since back in high school though so please correct me on my horrible mistakes.

Mass of a fully fueled missile = 44,000kg
Mass of a missile that has expended all propellant = 11,200kg

The Xenon compressed by the force of 500 gravities is forced through a VASIMR style engine that is feed 1.67 x 10[sup]12[/sup] W at a rate of 1312kg per second. That we can convert 80% of that wattage into accelerating the gas we then get that 1,312kg of gas being forced out of the rocket at a velocity of 124.6 million m/s. If my math is right this means that, assuming 100% of this force is translated into forward momentum we get a force of 1.6728 x 10[sup]11[/sup] N acting against a mass of 42,688kg thus propelling it forward at 3,918,666m/s after the first second of engine burn. Even assuming that the missile doesn't accelerate faster as the missile loses fuel mass we end up with a final velocity of 97,966,650m/s after a full 25 second burn. I am aware that some velocity should be lost at this percentage of light speed, but as I did not increase the acceleration after each second to account for lost mass I think it is a good rough estimate.

Plugging 11,200kg and 97,966,650m/s into the calculator on the main site gives me a kinetic energy of 14 gigatons as a rough estimate for energy that would be imparted to a target when the missile strikes after a full burn.

This is assuming that the missile starts at a velocity of 0 m/s and my math isn't horribly wrong again.