SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread I

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Ha! That's what you think...

[returns to blueprints for next generation ion cannon carrier]

What? You want me to bring my Battle Barges or my Retribution battleships? I assure you, the main guns are the size of a cruiser in some fleets. Let's not talk about the kilometers mass driver gun too.

[Simon_Jester]

Of course we do, silly, we're holding a naval arms trade show!

Seriously, per-ton superiority goes to the Imperium, since the in the Technocracy there is not ONLY WAR! And granted that your capital ships have more tons than our capital ships; note the section on what the Technocrats call a "Strike Cruiser" in the Umerian Space Security Forces article on the wiki. Feel free to laugh; you are welcome, nay, encouraged to do so.

So we concede that your ships are more efficient per ton. And have more tons than we do.

The one point we do not concede is the physical size of capital ship energy weapons. Really big particle cannon are one of the core ideals that Umeria stands for! And so we, too, tend to build them big. If anyone is going to bring a gun to the table that matches the Imperium, it's us.

Of course, we wound up building those energy weapons onto some very skinny hull designs, with relatively little secondary armament. So you still have enormous advantages over us in the fields of warship survivability and GRIMDARK, which are critical issues for any fleet.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Of course we do, silly, we're holding a naval arms trade show!

Seriously, per-ton superiority goes to the Imperium, since the in the Technocracy there is not ONLY WAR! And granted that your capital ships have more tons than our capital ships; note the section on what the Technocrats call a "Strike Cruiser" in the Umerian Space Security Forces article on the wiki. Feel free to laugh; you are welcome, nay, encouraged to do so.

So we concede that your ships are more efficient per ton. And have more tons than we do.

The one point we do not concede is the physical size of capital ship energy weapons. Really big particle cannon are one of the core ideals that Umeria stands for! And so we, too, tend to build them big. If anyone is going to bring a gun to the table that matches the Imperium, it's us.

Of course, we wound up building those energy weapons onto some very skinny hull designs, with relatively little secondary armament. So you still have enormous advantages over us in the fields of warship survivability and GRIMDARK, which are critical issues for any fleet.

You more or less summarised my fleet procurement and design doctrine.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, you see, the Office of Naval Intelligence was trying to get a handle on you guys. Then they found this collection of ancient sourcebooks tactical manuals, and suddenly it all made sense!

Really, looking at the Imperium Navy from 40k it's obvious that the doctrine emphasizes survivability over firepower, though the sheer size and sophistication of the ships guarantees firepower too. I figure that someone put a LOT of thought into designing the ships with layered protection schemes, internal defensive cofferdamming, damage control, that sort of thing. Then they wrapped the whole thing around a 'merely' average main battery, and accepted that the ratio of defense to offense on their ships was such that it would take hours for it to beat down the guard of an opposing ship of its own class.

Which turned out to be a really good idea, given that a lot of those ships have lasted for over ten thousand years. Which, given the Imperium's aversion to running away from a fight, the fact that those ships lasted for ten thousand years is pretty damned impressive.

In contrast, the Umerian design philosophy views defense as a necessary adjunct to getting the ship into position and putting power on target. So the ships aren't designed for maximum survivability, not beyond the point required for them to do their jobs in the kind of action they're expected to go into. The dreadnoughts are fairly sturdy, but everything lighter tends to suffer from "eggshells armed with sledgehammers" syndrome.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Well, you see, the Office of Naval Intelligence was trying to get a handle on you guys. Then they found this collection of ancient sourcebooks tactical manuals, and suddenly it all made sense!

Really, looking at the Imperium Navy from 40k it's obvious that the doctrine emphasizes survivability over firepower, though the sheer size and sophistication of the ships guarantees firepower too. I figure that someone put a LOT of thought into designing the ships with layered protection schemes, internal defensive cofferdamming, damage control, that sort of thing. Then they wrapped the whole thing around a 'merely' average main battery, and accepted that the ratio of defense to offense on their ships was such that it would take hours for it to beat down the guard of an opposing ship of its own class.

Which turned out to be a really good idea, given that a lot of those ships have lasted for over ten thousand years. Which, given the Imperium's aversion to running away from a fight, the fact that those ships lasted for ten thousand years is pretty damned impressive.

In contrast, the Umerian design philosophy views defense as a necessary adjunct to getting the ship into position and putting power on target. So the ships aren't designed for maximum survivability, not beyond the point required for them to do their jobs in the kind of action they're expected to go into. The dreadnoughts are fairly sturdy, but everything lighter tends to suffer from "eggshells armed with sledgehammers" syndrome.

I think my ships compromised a little on the durability, and gave a bit more to firepower than the 40K equivalents. I didn't quite borrow everything wholesale from the universe after all. But yeah, my ships are durable and have been rebuilt from time to time. Tried and tested gun arrangements and armor arrangements need only to be upgraded/replaced after a few decades to a century of service.

Pretty much why I accepted fewer numbers in favour of individual quality. Also, sometimes one must identify sweet spots within the system that give a mix of relatively fast ship building and also firepower.

[Steve]

The Badlands would have a fair number of Orks, yeah.

[Simon_Jester]

I think my ships compromised a little on the durability, and gave a bit more to firepower than the 40K equivalents. I didn't quite borrow everything wholesale from the universe after all. But yeah, my ships are durable and have been rebuilt from time to time. Tried and tested gun arrangements and armor arrangements need only to be upgraded/replaced after a few decades to a century of service.

Pretty much why I accepted fewer numbers in favour of individual quality. Also, sometimes one must identify sweet spots within the system that give a mix of relatively fast ship building and also firepower.

Even so, though, I think your ships reflect a more rugged (and balanced) design concept than mine. If you look at the wiki page for the Umerian Space Security Forces, I tried to make it clear that my capital ships are practically nothing but superheavy energy weapon carriers. Everything else on the ship is designed to make sure the big guns get to the battlefield and keep shooting until the enemy has been pounded into glowy molten metal slushies.

When it works, it works well; when it fails, we get our asses kicked. And I'm quite willing to write the outcome either way.

[loomer]

Where was their initial destination? One of the systems now in the UN? It took a century just for Earth to Nova Terra travel by non-FTL drives; no way your ship would get from Earth to the current Commissions sectors in a mere 200 years.

Pretty much, yeah. They didn't have an absolute destination (they were planning on finding a rich system and building some habitats rather than settling on a planet), but due to some short-lived spacial anomalies (read: act of plot/Q/giant space wasp) they wound up where they are instead and thought it was pretty groovy to have ended up that much further out.

[Steve]

That doesn't change the problem that it'd be impossible for them to get that far in simply 200 years.

[Simon_Jester]

This is easy to resolve.

They leave via "slowboat" (STL colony ship). The slowboats motor on away from Earth for a century or two, making a pretty considerable amount of distance- a few dozen light years. Then they fall into a "Space Warp:" something exotic happens. Next thing they know, they're an impossible distance from home- three or four hundred light years.

But while they never planned for that, it's exactly what they want: to be so far away from home that no one could possibly catch up with them for millenia... right? Uh, right?

[cues first hyperspace arrivals]

Dammit!

[loomer]

That's pretty much what I was shooting for, yeah - they leave on their generation ships, make it a couple of generations conventionally, and then Shit Happens and they're being flung through space at impossible speeds.

Honestly, if it's a huge deal, I'll scrap them being human, but I'd rather keep it that way.

Edit:
Hang on - the year is 3400. These guys left before the Heim drive came about in the 23rd century. I don't think I ever said it took them two hundred years to get to Outlander space - they're new-ish arrivals, within the last couple of centuries. I'm not really seeing a conflict here - it's just a bunch of guys who set out on tech that became obsolete shortly after they did and have only now scrabbled their way up to standard.

[Steve]

I thought you'd said you wanted them to arrive where they were going 200 years after leaving?

What, precisely, do you want to have happen? They arrive after a few centuries and spend the next several centuries slowly building up to assume control of the Commissions? Or they arrived relatively recently?

[loomer]

I don't recall saying that and a quick search doesn't show it - maybe that was someone else's backstory combining with my use of the word recent.

Anyway, what I'm currently writing up is that the Arayna arrived after around 700 years (which would be, assuming fertility drugs and breeding regulation ~20 generations at most), so sometimes in the 2800s, then spent the next three hundred years as a minor vassal state of the Immin and the Airaii (changing hands due to internal conflicts, largely.) before reaching their full potential around 3150 and murdering their way to the top with help from the Airaii and Angmarids by 3010.

Now, they're still 'recent' by the standards of the Mari, the Immin, and the Airaii, who have been cruising around that space (and further afield, though none of those distant colonies will be entering play) for the last couple of millennia, but they're fairly well established in that section of space by human standards. Still pissed though when hyperlight ships turned up basically the day after they arrived though, because that real 'punch in the balls' thing is something I want to have expressed in their culture.

[Steve]

Ah. Still, given the scope of the map, to fit that timeframe you would have to do the space warp thing.

Alternatively, it still fits if they use one of the earliest forms of cheap Heim drive, such that it did take 700 years of travel to journey that far. I just think you're grossly underestimating the size of the map when proposing an STL convoy.

[Coyote]

Maybe he fell through an uncharted, natural wormhole. One that was unstable, so it closed up afterwards..?

[loomer]

I probably am, yeah. I'll think on it during the day while I'm trying to sleep, figure out how I wanna go with that element.

[Simon_Jester]

Ah. Still, given the scope of the map, to fit that timeframe you would have to do the space warp thing.

Alternatively, it still fits if they use one of the earliest forms of cheap Heim drive, such that it did take 700 years of travel to journey that far. I just think you're grossly underestimating the size of the map when proposing an STL convoy.

Again, I don't think loomer meant for them to travel all the way to their current location in STL. His described backstory works very, very well artistically; the only flaw is that 700 years of realistic STL flight isn't enough to cross twenty or so map sectors.

Which is, as you may recall, a numbers issue... and therefore something that we can handwave with UNEXPECTED WORMHOLE! and neat stuff like that. So his STL slowboat fleet coasts out from Terra at 0.1c for several centuries, then stumbles into a Negative Space Wedgie and gets zapped out into the middle of nowhere, a thousand light-years (or whatever) from Earth. I fail to see the problem; the image of stranded space travelers is a classic SF idea, going clear back to the days of "Danger, Will Robinson!"

[Steve]

That's why I remarked on the space warp thing being necessary.

[Steve]

Eh, I have this sudden impulse to change the Anglian PM character and make him a non-avatar.

[loomer]

I have slept on it - it's a stupid fucking expression given that you don't think when you sleep - and it's GIANT SPACE WASPS! all the way. STL generation ships heading somewhere closer, and then wham, their onboard physicists (by this point well into fifth generation shipdwellers) figure out what they think is a way to go FTL, it goes wrong and ends up just creating a wormhole that they end up going through because they can't decel fast enough to stop.

Said wormhole destroys some of their ships, deposits them in the shoal regions near Outlander space, and they abandon the technology because they're able to buy Heim and Hyperlight equivalents from the Outlanders. This way it has an element of hubris to it as well - they tried to soar too close to the sun and it backfired, sending them somewhere far from the peaceful paradise they initially planned to found and killing hundreds of thousands (and potentially millions, since each genship was also loaded with sperm and ova from people back on Earth to avoid some of the bottlenecking.) while preserving the 'punch in the dick' element when they find out that FTL really is possible and that if they'd just waited another fifty years they'd have had a safe version rather than the one they hacked together from an AM radio and a Coke can.

[PeZook]

So...July is here, are we kicking this thing off or what?

[Lonestar]

Wait for the weekend killer.

[PeZook]

Wait for the weekend killer.

Bah! A guy gets a slow day at work for the first time in a month and you tell him to wait for the weekend...

[Simon_Jester]

Hey! I, for one, am only almost finished with my first prologue segment! We can't all be tireless, unflinching machines, PeZook.

Well... I hope not, anyway.

[slinks away and hides in corner, rocking and muttering "Can't sleep... Collectors will eat me... Can't sleep... Collectors will eat me..."]

I have slept on it - it's a stupid fucking expression given that you don't think when you sleep

Ah, but you do think so very much better after sleep. So I think it's fair...

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Shady and I are still working on... well, our prologue chapters which have been excruciatingly slow owing to work etc. etc.