SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread II

[PeZook]

A frictionless surface does not eradicate the heat plume, since your ship still needs to physically push air out of the way. Even if you do it with a perfectly frictionless surface, you will still create a heat plume (just smaller) because of the air particles colliding with each other and compressing over the shield.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Imperium favours gravitc measures such as a gravitational radar to detect stealth ships. Even if Inertial drive negates most of the mass of a ship, no negation is perfect, and a ship will leave a small detectable wake.

[Simon_Jester]

The Imperium favours gravitc measures such as a gravitational radar to detect stealth ships. Even if Inertial drive negates most of the mass of a ship, no negation is perfect, and a ship will leave a small detectable wake.

Well, OK, but again, my technobabble ought to be able to work against yours to some extent and vice versa. It's no more fair for you to have unbeatable detection equipment than it is for me to have unbeatable stealth.

If you use anti-turbulence energy fields, then it would make sense that the other guys might detect your anti-turbulence energy fields, mang.

#3, well, stealth ships can attack civilian ships and crappy military ships with impunity, like U-boats. But against competent enemies, I think they'd detect you when you start pew-pewing lasers even if your cloaked. One way to go around this is to use stealthy missiles? I dunno.

The point isn't that you shouldn't attack targets while in stealth. It's that you should concentrate on the mission, whatever it may be, while in stealth. If the mission is to kill merchantmen, act efficiently to kill merchantmen. If the mission is to sneak a commando team onto the enemy's planet, act efficiently to do that. Don't get distracted, don't do things that make the enemy more likely to detect you just because they seem like a good idea at the time.

I have a big problem with the set of presumptions about stealth and heat that is being thrown around in here because it is getting to damn technical. Did we not agree to keep things from developing into a he says tech works that way she says tech works this way at the very beginning. For example, how does the Lesbian orgy power source get detected? While we should all agree that Stealth needs to have limits, but I can find flaws with some reasoning pertaining to atmospheric tracking, ie we don't necessarily care about turbulence thanks to energy fields and similar that can counter the turbulence.

We have to admit to a little bit of magic in our sci-fi here, and I know that some people don't want it but we got to keep in mind that pages of arguments over tech are unreadable and boring.

I agree with that. The point being that I should be able to counter your technobabble with my technobabble and vice versa: your ship that's runs on the power of friendship should not be completely immune to detection by my ship that's powered by SCIENCE!... and vice versa.

In which case, like it or not, my ship will be using the power of SCIENCE! to detect your friendship-powered ship, while your ship would probably use the power of TEAMWORK! or some such to detect mine.

Specifically Simon of your five things not to do while cloaked, I disagree with 3 and 4. 3 because certain warfare makes this stupid to hold as a maxim, ie targeting civillian shipping.

In that case, attacking civilian shipping is your mission and you should do as much of it as possible. The point is that if you're sneaking around for a purpose, doing anything that distracts from that purpose makes it more difficult to escape detection.

I disagree with 4 because it is backwards, stealth is more possible in air than it is in space, just as it is with water compared to air. With some of our exotic tech like shields, we might not even generate fireballs, ie a frictionless field limiting interaction with the atmosphere. That hasn't been ruled out, but you make it into a rule with out really thinking about the potential our tech is working at.

Actually, my intent in Rule Four was to make it general- in almost any conceivable medium, you can compromise your stealth by going too fast. In water, submarines are limited in their underwater speed by the need to avoid making noise. In air, stealth aircraft generally have to stay subsonic. In space, any drive that generates any signature, be it rocket exhaust or Particles-of-the-Week or grave disturbances in the Force, will be more detectable when used to push the ship harder.

In no environment is it plausible for going fast to be stealthier than going slow. I gave the specific example of semirealistic craft in atmosphere because it was applicable to Force Lord's situation, or seemed to be; I could equally well have used submarines in water or made something up about spacecraft in space.

Thus, Rule Four is not meant to be a highly specific "thou shalt not go too fast in atmosphere" rule. It's a general principle, much like "thou shalt not tempt fate."

And Steve, I am surprised that the flag wouldn't delegate the task to a lighter vessel so that they can get on with the invasion. As it is they are a moose chasing a gnat despite having other more important things to trample.

At this point, every ship in the Pendletonian Navy (more or less) is destroyed. The only things left to fight are surface to aerospace missiles (which are difficult to target until the sites reveal themselves with a launch) and that destroyer (which the Anglians probably assume is a stealthed Pendletonian ship that's planning to try and smuggle VIPs off the planet).

Keeping a watch out for the destroyer is understandable.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Imperium favours gravitc measures such as a gravitational radar to detect stealth ships. Even if Inertial drive negates most of the mass of a ship, no negation is perfect, and a ship will leave a small detectable wake.

Well, OK, but again, my technobabble ought to be able to work against yours to some extent and vice versa. It's no more fair for you to have unbeatable detection equipment than it is for me to have unbeatable stealth.

A standard recon ship which is a corvette in the Imperium is 75 pts. If you are going to get past that, you are going to have to work a bit harder.

[Shroom Man 777]

I have a feeling your ships are nowhere near the galactic norms in terms of disposition and capabilities.

[Simon_Jester]

I don't think using point costs for stealthiness works as well as it does for combat effectiveness. Among other things, the "ideal" stealth ship is usually small; one would expect a shuttle to be harder to spot than a battleship in most environments, not easier. Likewise, most fleets use smaller, cheaper ships for scouts, and it seems unreasonable that scouts would have inferior sensors when compared to the ships they scout for, just because they cost less.

Should my 0.5$ sensor picket gunboats* be vastly less effective at detecting enemy ships than your 75$ cruiser-sized corvettes? If so, I wish someone had bothered to tell me at game start; it would have affected my order of battle in a big way.

Conversely, why should my 0.5$ stealth gunboat be vastly less effective at hiding than someone else's 50$ stealth destroyer? Especially when whoever owns the stealth destroyer would tend to protest loudly if I argued that their stealth destroyer fought at less than 50-point firepower?

I don't think it should be about point cost; it should be about circumstances, about being able to find things to hide in, and about the cunning of the ships involved in trying to see and avoid being seen. Look at this matchup between the Centrality stealth ship and the Anglian cruiser- it was ultimately decided not by the Anglian being a more expensive unit, but by the Centrality ship doing something dumb.

The question "is my ship spotted?" became a subject for writing, not for rules. I would argue that that's is a much better way to decide the outcome of "detection battles" than trying to forcibly adapt the point cost system we designed to measure ships' combat effectiveness into a system for measuring their sensor capability.

*Which make a huge tradeoff in antiship firepower in exchange for sensor capability, and I write them as such.

[Dave]

Nice post, Darkevilme. I had almost forgotten about our terraforming agreements.

[Kartr_Kana]

Sorry I've been dark for the last couple of days, I got roped into helping a friend with his 48hr film festival project. So I've now caught up with the commentary time to go see what's been happening in game. Sounds like I'll have to write a piece for Adm. Paktu and activate the rest of the 1st Task Force, Home Fleet.

[Simon_Jester]

I hope you like what I did with your guys in the last Bannerman chapter.

[Kartr_Kana]

Yeah I did, fit well with the way I see the Bombers working.

[Force Lord]

Firstly Steve, I did tell you this was my first time. Secondly, I wasn't home for several hours, so I couldn't respond. Finally, I'm not that knowledgable with the capabilities of several sci-fi stuff.

Well, let me explain. Long story short, Forg was hasty, didn't think straight. He and his crew are not very experienced with cloaking devices, since their experience has been limited to internal spying and very low-key operations, where the chance of being detected is pretty much low. The fact they've been sent to do something beyond their pay grade is just a testament of how fucked up Centralist planning is when it comes to covert ops far outside their area of space.

[Simon_Jester]

Actually, everything happening here is reasonable except the orders the dictator gave to send the mission. Your Centralist operatives all have one essential trait: they are more afraid of their Supreme Leader than they are of dying or failing the mission. This means that whenever they think they might have failed, they start to panic... which in turn makes it far more likely that their fears will come true.

So, aside from the dictator being an idiot, everything else you did makes sense. Including the ship sending a transmission in violation of the Fifth Law of Stealth.

[Steve]

Firstly Steve, I did tell you this was my first time. Secondly, I wasn't home for several hours, so I couldn't respond. Finally, I'm not that knowledgable with the capabilities of several sci-fi stuff.

Well, let me explain. Long story short, Forg was hasty, didn't think straight. He and his crew are not very experienced with cloaking devices, since their experience has been limited to internal spying and very low-key operations, where the chance of being detected is pretty much low. The fact they've been sent to do something beyond their pay grade is just a testament of how fucked up Centralist planning is when it comes to covert ops far outside their area of space.

Honestly, you're not doing bad at all, and we're just playing with you. These things are what make STGODs fun, ideally for all sides.

I look forward to your response; after all, they know your ship is there somewhere, but they don't know the exact spot. Datton might still slip away.

[Force Lord]

Well, I'm now working on my next post. Tardis finally makes a decision.

[Force Lord]

Tardis decides to spill the beans as vaguely as possible, and sends Kordis and his force to do the job for him.

[Force Lord]

Damn you, triple post.

You all just want me to make another story post, don't you. Don't blame me for stealing your thunder, then!

[Steve]

Well, you're preparing interaction with the Blockade Fleet. Katr_Kana's character is running it and Rogue and Jester are the main guys doing them. So they've got to finish reactions and stuff.

[Force Lord]

I was concerned about your fleet, Steve. How long can it take it to reach the Bannerman side of the Gap?

[Dave]

Just so that everyone's well informed ahead of time, my university starts back up August 23rd, and I'm likely to be five kinds of busy after that.

I'll try to keep up, but of course real world takes precedence.

[Steve]

I was concerned about your fleet, Steve. How long can it take it to reach the Bannerman side of the Gap?

If it gets called in, probably a few hours. Still fast enough that you don't want to get into a firefight with the blockade fleet.

Note that if your force outside the Outback moves in and begins heading down the lane toward Lochley, the Grand Fleet (or the rest of it with half going to Bannerman the moment the request is sent) will go on high alert and move into position to intercept it if it heads to Bannerman.

[Simon_Jester]

Since Kartr is in command, and since my forces would be a minor component of any fleet actions, I'd prefer to let Kartr, Rogue, Shinn, and/or Zor take the lead on this one.

[Kartr_Kana]

Almost ready to post my response to the initial incursion, mostly just what RogueIce alluded to but from Adm. Paktu's perspective. It will also show the Adm's preparations should it come to blows. Once I've finished that I'll deal with The Return of the Centrality.

[Force Lord]

Pendleton pays the price of Forg's desperation...

[Simon_Jester]

Well, it helps establish their non-Pendletonian status if when they are captured; on the other hand, it also makes them easy to capture.

[Steve]

Pendleton pays the price of Forg's desperation...

OTOH, Forg has doomed himself by decloaking. His capture is certain now. So was it really worth it to decloak and shoot just to slag a Pendletonian defense installation already on the target list?