Ideas for a new universe

[lordofchange13]

How do I convey, to you the reader, the fear, the sadness, the pre-battle euphoria or anxiety that these two men are feeling right now, and how do I, in story, maintain their professionalism to the rest of the crew, seeing as they are both leaders of men.

I have never been a big fan of military scifi literature, but from what i have read in Dan Abnett's books was that he would have the commanding officers think back on similar battles and remember how many soldiers and friends they have lost. then suppose have them inspect the ships, they will come into contact with crew members who they feel for. Though they are leaders of men they are still men and all sane men hate to watch others die around them. In my opinion all you need to do to convey the sadness and fear is to simlpy show that the commanders are still people not robotic kill-atrons.

[Feil]

I'd suggest working with an assumption that you're going to be wasting roughly 1/10 of the power produced by your space ship, work out that quantity, and then work out the amount of radiative surface area you need to properly dissipate that much power.

I'd also suggest seriously thinking about how, or if, you are going to be able to reconcile using projectile weapons at distances no projectile can accurately cross. Or, for that matter, can cross it at all without being smashed to atoms. A 2cm wide projectile launched across 10 astronomical units will sweep out a volume of roughly .6 cubic kilometers and encounter something like half a quadrillion grains of cosmic dust, presumably traveling at some significant fraction of the speed of light.

[gigabytelord]

On the same topic, think counter missiles. And counter counter missiles. And ECM and counter ECM. And the enemy ship firing defensive missiles that are actually small nukes pumping bomb pumped X-ray lasers to shoot down enemy projectiles. Modern AshM's can hide becouse they use all sorts of clever tricks like skimming the surface of the water all the while going really, really fast to hide. In space, that won't be happening.

This said, if your primary long range weapons are missiles like that. And if your primary combat usually always happens at long ranges I could actually see an interesting patten emerging. Namely, battles being fought over long ranges until one side exhausts its munitions and with relatively few actual losses. Battles ending in a withdrawal more often than annihilation. I don't think that is what you want but it is an interesting thought.
...
I let my imagination run wild again.

Well in this universe there isn't exactly a shortage of people to through at the enemy, what there is a shortage of, is what I like to call "Class A Human Habitable Worlds", I decided to drop the complicated planet classification early on and just go with something simple, Class A/B/C...

And than you get to the inevitable. What happens when some admiral pulls a Nelson and decides he ougth to do the sensible thing and pull in as close as possible to the enemy so that point defenses are rendered moot? You know, get into mele range so to speak. I imagine who ever comes up with that one first would lead a revolution into warfare and kill all the chivalry of war. Even thou such battles would come at a much higher cost of men they would lead to the annihilation of the enemy.

And I was also leaning in that direction as well, perhaps the shift from extreme long ranged combat to 'shorter' ranged combat happens with the construction of the first planetary shields, which forces enemy fleets to now close with the planet to protect the invasion fleet has landing craft jump back and forth between the planets surface and orbiting transports, which means the most brutal fleet fights will almost always happen above Class A worlds, since it's illegal to nuke them, for obvious reasons, in this universe.

I'm really glad I bit the bullet and may this thread, I've been completely satisfied so far.

[lordofchange13]

What is the state of humans when your story is taking place? Are they still modern humans but with better stuff,lightly genetically enhanced , or straight Transhuman beings? The type of humans populating your universe will decide what kind of civilizations would make sense, their social interactions ect. Also space is not an ocean: ships in realist space combat will not stand still while they fire there Ragnarok missiles, so you should do some research in aerial tactics and build from their.

@Shroom: i will very soon be starting up a thread for my universe, so you can help pick it apart. just going to spend some more time hammering out the social structures of the 12 or so governments. Though my universe's tech is more like the Culture series in that it is just a back drop to political affairs, deconstructions of Indiana Jones, and my ideas on the singularity. Only one of my stories is really about 'pew pew gigawatt lasers". But the universe has been my brain child for nearly 7 years and i want to fashion it truly my mental image, it may be some time till i think it is ready.

[gigabytelord]

I have never been a big fan of military scifi literature, but from what i have read in Dan Abnett's books was that he would have the commanding officers think back on similar battles and remember how many soldiers and friends they have lost. then suppose have them inspect the ships, they will come into contact with crew members who they feel for. Though they are leaders of men they are still men and all sane men hate to watch others die around them. In my opinion all you need to do to convey the sadness and fear is to simlpy show that the commanders are still people not robotic kill-atrons.

Thinking I need to go to the book store tomorrow, I've read a lot of Tom Clancy stuff, so it might be time to dust off those old books.

I'd suggest working with an assumption that you're going to be wasting roughly 1/10 of the power produced by your space ship, work out that quantity, and then work out the amount of radiative surface area you need to properly dissipate that much power.

I'd also suggest seriously thinking about how, or if, you are going to be able to reconcile using projectile weapons at distances no projectile can accurately cross. Or, for that matter, can cross it at all without being smashed to atoms. A 2cm wide projectile launched across 10 astronomical units will sweep out a volume of roughly .6 cubic kilometers and encounter something like half a quadrillion grains of cosmic dust, presumably traveling at some significant fraction of the speed of light.

I'd already came to the conclusion a while ago that hitting anything smaller than a planet with unguided munitions at anything over .1 AU is going to nearly impossible, unless the enemy you're shooting at is insane, unaware of your presence, or both, hence the reason I was limiting the range of ship to ship engagements using their main armaments (in the case of the empire, railguns) to around the 1.2-2.4 million km range max, on the long end, if my math is correct, a projectile fired at 99.9c will still take, what?, just over 8 seconds to travel 2.4 million km? and even then the possibility of landing a hit on any thing smaller than a capital ship drops exponentially the smaller, and therefore faster the ship gets.

As far as bleed off of heat, well, frankly I was thinking of a system where the heat is stored in massive heat sinks which for all intents and purposes are retracted inside the ship and, after combat the heat sinks are extended like the periscope of a submarine just way bigger (for lack of a better phrase, also this means once retracted you can cover the opening with a mobile slab of armor plating) so they can bleed properly, this would not be hard to accomplish with a ship that is 12km in length, or have the heat sinks built right into the weapons turrets, but that would only vent the heat generated by the weapons themselves.

Also weapons will scale with the ship, for instance say the enemy fleet consist of destroyer size or smaller ships the only way to deal with such small and maneuverable ships would be to employ your own, because the massive capital ship size guns your Battleship is fielding will not be able to, with accuracy, target and hit that destroyer, battleships are designed to kill other battleship (or equivalent sized ships) and so on.

Also Capital class weapons are "instakill" weapons, these are many meters long slow firing guns that launch multiton projectiles at incredible speeds, and are designed specifically to kill big things, to be blunt.

Okay poke and prod away let me know what you think, I have to work tomorrow evening so I'ma call it for tonight, er... this morning.

[Simon_Jester]

EDIT: Well, Giga seems to have thought this through a bit, which is good.

Honestly, there are some problems with the "single giant weapon" idea. There are reasons for it, but there are also reasons against it. One is that it is often desirable to shoot twice, fast- two shots, each of which causes great damage, may be better than one shot which is 100% guaranteed to put down one target if it hits.

Technical breakdowns are a problem too, because the supergun is a single point of failure. One circuit board freaking out, one misaligned part, or (Heaven forbid) one serious shot of combat damage, and the ship's main armament is totally neutered.

So personally, when sketching out huge spinal-gun supermonsters, I tend to hand them a battery of multiple weapons.

EDIT II: There's one catch, though. Depending on the relative balance of offensive and defensive technology, this idea that all ships duke it out with other ships of equal size may be deeply flawed. If making and mounting a ship-crippler missile is easy, then relatively small ships designed to lob a salvo of shipkillers and stay comfortably out of the range of any plausible direct-fire weapon can get a big advantage- because all the armor plate in the world isn't too helpful against a gun-launched missile coming in at relativistic speeds, barring technomagic.

As a handy reference point, "0.01c" can translate as "one kiloton of energy per kilogram of mass." This increases with the square of the speed; "0.1c" is approximately "100 kilotons per kilogram," and so on. At the extreme high-relativistic limit this becomes inaccurate, but for projectiles that fast (say, 0.5c and up), you might as well just assign the projectile an arbitrarily large impact energy and assume it crosses the whole distance at light speed.

Worrying about it more precisely than that is a matter for the gunnery computer, not the author. Anyone who says "the missiles came in at 251,842 kilometers per second" needs their head examined.

[looks irately at David Weber]

I'd suggest working with an assumption that you're going to be wasting roughly 1/10 of the power produced by your space ship, work out that quantity, and then work out the amount of radiative surface area you need to properly dissipate that much power.

I'd also suggest seriously thinking about how, or if, you are going to be able to reconcile using projectile weapons at distances no projectile can accurately cross. Or, for that matter, can cross it at all without being smashed to atoms. A 2cm wide projectile launched across 10 astronomical units will sweep out a volume of roughly .6 cubic kilometers and encounter something like half a quadrillion grains of cosmic dust, presumably traveling at some significant fraction of the speed of light.

Check the kinetic energy of those grains impacting the projectile- is it enough to vaporize the projectile? If not, then something gets through- and even vaporization doesn't get rid of the law of conservation of momentum, though what arrives at or around the target will be a spray of cosmic rays instead of a 'solid' projectile.

Not that concepts like "solid" that rely on chemical bonds between atoms really matter when you get up into this energy range- the interactions involved in a collision are far more powerful than the bonds holding atoms together in a solid object, so from the point of view of the target there's no real difference between a bullet and a very tight particle beam.

A bigger issue: 10 AU is about two light-hours, which means the target has at least two hours to get out of the way, or more. Not good, not if they have anything like enough sense to duck. To hit anything at several million kilometers you need either a guided projectile, an inert target, or (preferably) both. Closer in, it depends on size: can the target move by several times its own apparent width in the time it takes your shots to arrive? If so, all it has to do is fire its thrusters at random and you'll have a very poor chance of hitting it.

[gigabytelord]

Honestly, there are some problems with the "single giant weapon" idea. There are reasons for it, but there are also reasons against it. One is that it is often desirable to shoot twice, fast- two shots, each of which causes great damage, may be better than one shot which is 100% guaranteed to put down one target if it hits.

Oh no there are going to be turret mounted batteries of these weapons of each battleship, since this primary design if ship like that of a modern nuclear submarine, (cigar shaped) there will be a total of eight turrets placed in symmetrical positions along the sides of the ship, remember I'm going for a bit of the old WWII era "letting off a full broadside toward the enemy even though you can barely (or not) see them over the horizon, and hoping at least one of rounds land home".

And of course as I stated before the weapons and tactics will change with the size of ship, I doubt the captain of cruiser would willingly place his crew and ship at the mercy of a much larger ships guns, or the captain of a battleship, just sitting back and doing nothing even after those incoming missiles, which were launched from an enemy cruiser, have been confirmed, if I were him I'd put up a goddamned solid wall of flak or get the hell out of there, the latter of which is not going to be easy when the ship in question is 12km long.

[gigabytelord]

Oh my god, my grammar! what happened to it? I knew it was a bad idea to post right after I awoke.

Okay now I going to work.

[gigabytelord]

Okay now that I'm awake, and presumably capable of using proper grammar, lets see if I can get everyone taken care of.

What is the state of humans when your story is taking place? Are they still modern humans but with better stuff,lightly genetically enhanced , or straight Transhuman beings? The type of humans populating your universe will decide what kind of civilizations would make sense, their social interactions ect. Also space is not an ocean: ships in realist space combat will not stand still while they fire there Ragnarok missiles, so you should do some research in aerial tactics and build from their.

Think modern humans with considerably more advanced tech, which means many of the same political and cultural issues, I don't like getting into genetic modification, and I therefore tend to stay away form it, but it's a big universe, and people like to experiment.
Basically I'm trying to stick to a familiar era, something I know and can understand, to a point.

EDIT II: There's one catch, though. Depending on the relative balance of offensive and defensive technology, this idea that all ships duke it out with other ships of equal size may be deeply flawed. If making and mounting a ship-crippler missile is easy, then relatively small ships designed to lob a salvo of shipkillers and stay comfortably out of the range of any plausible direct-fire weapon can get a big advantage- because all the armor plate in the world isn't too helpful against a gun-launched missile coming in at relativistic speeds, barring technomagic.

The ships in question are very durable, and use a combination of armor and shields for protection, but like I've said, and you've reinforced, "a rock thrown sill hurts", it just depends on fast you're willing or are able to throw it.

Worrying about it more precisely than that is a matter for the gunnery computer, not the author. Anyone who says "the missiles came in at 251,842 kilometers per second" needs their head examined.
[looks irately at David Weber]

I know this, and it saddens me that the technical specs that I'm fretting over so badly will never be seen by the readers unless I pull a Tolkien, and pile it all into a book of it's own and release it separately, and there's a lot of it.

[lordofchange13]

Okay now that I'm awake, and presumably capable of using proper grammar, lets see if I can get everyone taken care of.

What is the state of humans when your story is taking place? Are they still modern humans but with better stuff,lightly genetically enhanced , or straight Transhuman beings? The type of humans populating your universe will decide what kind of civilizations would make sense, their social interactions ect. Also space is not an ocean: ships in realist space combat will not stand still while they fire there Ragnarok missiles, so you should do some research in aerial tactics and build from their.

Think modern humans with considerably more advanced tech, which means many of the same political and cultural issues, I don't like getting into genetic modification, and I therefore tend to stay away form it, but it's a big universe, and people like to experiment.
Basically I'm trying to stick to a familiar era, something I know and can understand, to a point.

What about Cybernetics? how prevalent and invasive are augments? In a realist setting most space navy leaders would need some sort of implant to keep track of all the combat variables and actions or near magical recall. You have stated before that you want your story to be fairly Hard on the scifi scale, so be aware that the future isn't going to be star trek or wars: mostly normal people with space ships. You don't have to have anything to drastic but mental enhancements are a pretty much a must, assuming of course that your fleet doesn't use some sort of advanced battle computer or AI.

[Stark]

My advice is don't listen to anyone who wants to inject their own thematic elements into your vision unless you think they add something.

The whole focus on the term 'hard scifi' is just a huge distraction. Successful hard scifi works because it explores hard scifi themes, not because the author calculated the specific impulse of every rock in the solar system. What themes do you want to explore?

[lordofchange13]

Excuse me if i was injecting my own elements. Stark, Hard scifi is a science fiction that uses it's internal technology(magical or not) logically and consistently. This is the reason behind me suggesting some level of enhanced humans in his military, Unless for a real reason to the contrary they should exist in some form.

[gigabytelord]

What about Cybernetics? how prevalent and invasive are augments? In a realist setting most space navy leaders would need some sort of implant to keep track of all the combat variables and actions or near magical recall. You have stated before that you want your story to be fairly Hard on the scifi scale, so be aware that the future isn't going to be star trek or wars: mostly normal people with space ships. You don't have to have anything to drastic but mental enhancements are a pretty much a must, assuming of course that your fleet doesn't use some sort of advanced battle computer or AI.

I'm not going to go into a lot detail, because cybernetics are a very big deal, in universe, suffice to say. Yes they will have certain cybernetic enhancements, but on the grand scale of things, cybernetics and their use in the empire are highly restricted, and in some cases the controls placed on their usage is similar to the war on drugs today, the usage of, or rather the sophistication of military AI is also limited for various reasons, primarily because some (some, lol) people got killed a long time ago, which is related to a long running conspiracy (for the lack of a better word).

Any body notice that I keep randomly forgetting and/or misusing conjunctions? damned if I know why.

[Stark]

Excuse me if i was injecting my own elements. Stark, Hard scifi is a science fiction that uses it's internal technology(magical or not) logically and consistently. This is the reason behind me suggesting some level of enhanced humans in his military, Unless for a real reason to the contrary they should exist in some form.

Don't worry too much, but transhumanism is a topic absolutely chockers with implications throughout all of society, and thus has massive knock-on effects in any story. I'd avoid it unless those issues are issues the story is already dealing with; I'd say injecting it just for flavour is a mistake.

And 'hard scifi' is either boring infodumps about fractals and useless equations on fuel fractions or a story that explores how changing technology, aliens, or some other element affects the way people live, percieve, create, and grow. There's a signifcant gulf there.

[lordofchange13]

Excuse me if i was injecting my own elements. Stark, Hard scifi is a science fiction that uses it's internal technology(magical or not) logically and consistently. This is the reason behind me suggesting some level of enhanced humans in his military, Unless for a real reason to the contrary they should exist in some form.

Don't worry too much, but transhumanism is a topic absolutely chockers with implications throughout all of society, and thus has massive knock-on effects in any story. I'd avoid it unless those issues are issues the story is already dealing with; I'd say injecting it just for flavour is a mistake.

And 'hard scifi' is either boring infodumps about fractals and useless equations on fuel fractions or a story that explores how changing technology, aliens, or some other element affects the way people live, percieve, create, and grow. There's a signifcant gulf there.

Of course, i am not implying for him to just inject his universe full of Transhuman stuff, just for him not completely to ignore it.

The first one is an interesting definition of hard scifi. Hard Scifi for me is simply Magic A equals Magic A but in space. Huge info dumps aren't completely necessarily, you only need just enough to describe the limits of tech. Equations just for Equations sake is kinda stupid.

[Purple]

Of course, i am not implying for him to just inject his universe full of Transhuman stuff, just for him not completely to ignore it.

The first one is an interesting definition of hard scifi. Hard Scifi for me is simply Magic A equals Magic A but in space. Huge info dumps aren't completely necessarily, you only need just enough to describe the limits of tech. Equations just for Equations sake is kinda stupid.

He does not even have to do that. You can have a perfectly fine SF story without ever revealing how stuff works (see Star Wars). All he has to do is know enough in the background to not break his own rules and to maintain internal consistency. The reader newer has to know these rules at all. No one is going to care if his missiles blow up one way or the other. But they will care if say one character can get half way across the galaxy in a mater of hours one day and than can't fly to the edge of his solar system the other.

[lordofchange13]

Exactly, those are the sort of explanations I mean. He should have to, for example his FTL travel, explain hoe causality and FTL make any sense when put together but rather just say a points in the story that his ship can more at X speed and can't more at that speed when Y happens. But that maybe just me, I like to know what stuff can and can't do. See your point and am now done with it.

[gigabytelord]

Stark just to let you know, I may be expending a lot of effort developing how the tech works and purposefully placing that tech within certain constraints, but the tech is not going to be important to the overall story it's self, will it be visible? Yes of course, but it is not the goal, it is the means by which I want to achieve the goal.

And also I'd like to let everyone know that, my friend and I have officially started working on pulling the story together into a comprehensive whole, so maybe the dozen or so short stories we have may start to make more sense.

As always, I'm up for any further suggestions. ~ Giga

[lordofchange13]

How about you give us an idea of the shorty stories plot? I am interested in knowing were you want to go with your universe.

[gigabytelord]

How about you give us an idea of the shorty stories plot? I am interested in knowing were you want to go with your universe.

Well lets see, the one that has been developed the most, involves a covert war between two spec ops agencies, and the assassination of a prominent politician and it's aftermath, I can't go into great detail, (public forum) but it's quite a long story that bobs and weaves through several worlds, including the capital world, as the protagonist searches for particular items which will help end the war, insert the conversation between the two admirals just before the planetary invasion, that I referenced in an earlier post.
Several other stories that I have both in mind and on file are based around the life of these men and several other men in the invasion force, and are intended to be flash backs to both good and bad events in the individuals lives, all of this leads, of course, to the eventual conflagration, which is the invasion.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh no there are going to be turret mounted batteries of these weapons of each battleship, since this primary design if ship like that of a modern nuclear submarine, (cigar shaped) there will be a total of eight turrets placed in symmetrical positions along the sides of the ship, remember I'm going for a bit of the old WWII era "letting off a full broadside toward the enemy even though you can barely (or not) see them over the horizon, and hoping at least one of rounds land home".

If the turrets are mounted along the flanks of a roughly cylindrical hull, wouldn't the best direction to fire be forward or aft, along the ship's axis of acceleration?

Also, massive amounts of firing blind gets energy-intensive fast. How much power are your ships willing to burn chewing up vacuum and not hitting anything, in order to achieve one hit? What if victory goes to the guy who builds two ships that each expend half as much fuel in combat by not firing until they get into a range where hits are probable, counting on you not being able to take out both your ships before they get there?

And of course as I stated before the weapons and tactics will change with the size of ship, I doubt the captain of cruiser would willingly place his crew and ship at the mercy of a much larger ships guns, or the captain of a battleship, just sitting back and doing nothing even after those incoming missiles, which were launched from an enemy cruiser, have been confirmed, if I were him I'd put up a goddamned solid wall of flak or get the hell out of there, the latter of which is not going to be easy when the ship in question is 12km long.

How solid can a wall of flak get in space, and for how long can it be sustained? Is the 'cruiser' really worried about being hit from gun ranges at which even a battleship-sized target is likely to be missed? Remember, missiles outrange direct-fire weapons in space, assuming high enough drive performance.

[gigabytelord]

If the turrets are mounted along the flanks of a roughly cylindrical hull, wouldn't the best direction to fire be forward or aft, along the ship's axis of acceleration?

How frightening would it be, to have an entire fleet of capital ships jump into position, (ie less than 1.2 million km on average) pointed right at you and blast the ever living shit out of you, I'd be shitting my pants.

Also, massive amounts of firing blind gets energy-intensive fast. How much power are your ships willing to burn chewing up vacuum and not hitting anything, in order to achieve one hit? What if victory goes to the guy who builds two ships that each expend half as much fuel in combat by not firing until they get into a range where hits are probable, counting on you not being able to take out both your ships before they get there?

The ranges I see ship to ship actions taking place would be, on average, less then 1.2 million km, this places you within the range of more traditional sensor types, including advanced optics, and radar.
So blind firing? no, an, on average 4-8 second delay using advanced radar, yes.

And when your targets are other battleships, a short delay, which can be corrected using sufficiently advanced AI, isn't much of an issue I would think.

(1) How solid can a wall of flak get in space, and for how long can it be sustained?

(2) Is the 'cruiser' really worried about being hit from gun ranges at which even a battleship-sized target is likely to be missed? Remember, missiles outrange direct-fire weapons in space, assuming high enough drive performance.

(1) If the ship is alone, not very long, but maybe just long enough to jump to "safer waters"

(2) An intelligent captain wouldn't fire at something he can't hit, nor would an admiral leave a capital ship sitting out by it's self completely undefended, remember, battleships in my setting, are just like battleships during the 20th century, they are only some what effective when alone, the vast majority of the time were being escorted by a much larger fleet consisting of numerous ship types, some of which will be designed and used specifically to protect the capital ships.

[lordofchange13]

If the turrets are mounted along the flanks of a roughly cylindrical hull, wouldn't the best direction to fire be forward or aft, along the ship's axis of acceleration?

Excuse my terribleness at geometry, but wouldn't his cylindrical ship's hull have to expand outward towards the aft, or all the turrets would fire nearly at each other. Giga says his ships have gravity drives so his axis of acceleration allowing his ships to fire broadsides.

[Purple]

I don't think firing along your axis of acceleration is a good move tactically. That's because if you do that it means your ship is pointing at the enemy, or to give a naval equivalent you are crossing his T. If you have to point toward the enemy to deliver your full firepower that also means you have to keep pointing at him to fire and can't dodge or pull evasive maneuvers. Instead, you have to go down a predictable bath strait at the enemy guns.

[gigabytelord]

I don't think firing along your axis of acceleration is a good move tactically. That's because if you do that it means your ship is pointing at the enemy, or to give a naval equivalent you are crossing his T. If you have to point toward the enemy to deliver your full firepower that also means you have to keep pointing at him to fire and can't dodge or pull evasive maneuvers. Instead, you have to go down a predictable bath strait at the enemy guns.

This is true, but I'm also trying to avoid the 'water in space' movement that so many sci-fi stories have used, so 'crossing his T' would apply better in the context of the era which that phrase is from, so I might be coming from below, above, or quite literally any angle, of course, there's always a chance that a captain might make an error in judgment, one which the enemy takes advantage of.

Excuse my terribleness at geometry, but wouldn't his cylindrical ship's hull have to expand outward towards the aft, or all the turrets would fire nearly at each other. Giga says his ships have gravity drives so his axis of acceleration allowing his ships to fire broadsides.

That's what I was thinking, although I suppose if the turrets are setup in two groups, one toward the front and the other toward the back, and placed so that they won't hit one another when firing... I wonder does anyone here paint and/or draw professionally? if so, are you excepting commissions? and what are your rates?