SDNW5 Preliminary Discussion Thread

[Rabid]

Oh, a question.

Who here has self-aware AI warships with human (or at least organic) captains? Anyone?

That would be me- or, well, the Stellar Nation to be exact.

If you want more precisions at this time, send me a PM, as I'm still debugging some possible writing inconsistencies.

[Simon_Jester]

As long as you have them, and other people know you have them, it's good enough for what I wanted to know.

Which, by the way, was a player thing not a mod thing. I'm writing a post where it affects a line of dialogue.

[Crossroads Inc.]

We could do it on a technicality, but I'm reluctant to buy "yes, and all ten inhabited worlds I own are within a tiny radius of the corners of the two sectors I own." It reminds me of bad things, which I'd rather not discuss right this minute when I'm still not entirely awake, and have other things on my mind.

You only have about 5-6 homeworlds among these species, right? That makes things more flexible since the homeworlds can represent either all the living major worlds of one sector, or half or so of the living major worlds of each of two sectors.

5 homesworlds for 6 species. 4 out of those 5 have off world "colonies" but there is only one of those that is actually developed enough to have any industrial production.

If you want, you could think of my sector as an expanded version of the system from Firefly. Lots of habitale worlds in a small area.

Not sure what "Bad things" may come from thatm, if you want PM me about that to describe in detail. If its a big thing, I can work out to spread out if really needed.

[White Haven]

Put as simply as I can...scroll up. Specifically, look at the conversation regarding having a low number of populated worlds per sector allows for heavy defense concentration. Now this isn't quite that problem; it wouldn't concentrate static defenses, but at the same time having everything in a dense area effectively means that any mobile defenses can concentrate quickly and easily to meet any threat. It's not end-of-the-world heinousness, but, well, ask yourself if you really need seriously lopsided astrography like that. And when you find that the answer is 'probably not, pending some minor edits...'

You effectively want one really valuable, really dense half-sector, surrounded by a sector and a half of trackless wastes, with the GDP of both sectors all balled up in defense fleets blanketing them. Sorta...hinky. Not catastrophic, but hinky, and not really necessary.

[Rabid]

As long as you have them, and other people know you have them, it's good enough for what I wanted to know.

Which, by the way, was a player thing not a mod thing. I'm writing a post where it affects a line of dialogue.

For Information, the number of Organics in the Doxa's Navy is a single digit multiple of the number of ships in my OOB (including trainees). The ships are totally automated, the Organics being only there to act as a form of authority over the warships' AI.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Heh...and we can thank me for said discussion. Hey, not my fault I didn't know about CN at the time. That being said, Crossroads could always do something like I am (aka, have the major worlds be developed, and the smaller ones not be developed). Depends on just how much territory that Crossroads wants/needs.

[Akhlut]

Since we're not in the game yet, would everyone be okay if I rearranged my OOB a bit? I just want to change numbers of ships a bit (in retrospect, I didn't realize I was putting such an emphasis on carriers from the NenAltKik as far as money goes).

[White Haven]

That's the great thing about pregame, man, nothing's set in stone. Hell, I've changed entire nations in pregame before. The League was not actually my first concept for 2k8...

[Skywalker_T-65]

Yeah, it is nice to have the time to edit stuff as needed. Like my aforementioned colony problem. I see no problem with editing an OOB, since that really shouldn't be set in stone till game start.

[Akhlut]

All right, made my slight alterations to the OOB and added naval doctrine and fleet listings.

As always, the mercs are an unknown quantity to everyone else because they aren't nearly so orderly or nice about things.

[OmegaChief]

5 homesworlds for 6 species. 4 out of those 5 have off world "colonies" but there is only one of those that is actually developed enough to have any industrial production.

If you want, you could think of my sector as an expanded version of the system from Firefly. Lots of habitale worlds in a small area.

Not sure what "Bad things" may come from thatm, if you want PM me about that to describe in detail. If its a big thing, I can work out to spread out if really needed.

Idea, you want your species to have been in communication before they met, but can't get the close enough for conventional radio to work, so why don't you have them invent like, Subspace/Hyperwave communications (possibly under manipulation of that secret advanced species) well before they work out hyperdrive.

Though this does make it curious how they never picked up the outside galaxy before... unless there was some mysterious very advanced ship flitering the communications between worlds some how, hmmm.

[White Haven]

Hyperwave comms are ubiquitous enough that unless you're deliberately trying to hunt out new life and new civilizations, you'd never even bother sifting them through the morass, even if you could pick them up at range. Crude variants of the technology could even be relatively short-ranged, making it even less likely. Frankly, nobody cares that a bunch of half-assed yahoos are banging rocks crude hyperwave transmitters together.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Yeah, I doubt very many people would actually notice. Not like they would be sending random hyperwave communications to Space Sweden or any of the other nations.

[Simon_Jester]

Since we're not in the game yet, would everyone be okay if I rearranged my OOB a bit? I just want to change numbers of ships a bit (in retrospect, I didn't realize I was putting such an emphasis on carriers from the NenAltKik as far as money goes).

No skin off of my nose. Although tyrannosauruses in Space F-14s are awesome.

[OmegaChief]

Well I more meant for the guys in Crossroads sector to not have picked up anyone from outside thier sector by listening in, but yea, either making them crude and short ranged, or having your msyterious string pullers pulling strings is one potential solution to the problem I think Crossroads.

[Simon_Jester]

The Crossroadian stars could have some other means of communication too, one which is neither hyperwave nor radio- I NEVER meant to imply that hyperwave was the only possible form of interstellar communication.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Which I suppose we should have thought about...wait a second, I have holo-transmission in Arcadia! I just now realized that I did that without even making sure it was possible...I got into thinking I was writing a SW fic for a second I guess. It is possible right? If not I'll need to edit my prologue post.

[Simon_Jester]

Why can't hyperwave transmit 3D virtual images?

Remember, I specified the speed of hyperwave communications as "very fast, thank you." Exactly what that means is entirely up to you. I don't care one way or the other.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Okay...just making sure. Can't be too careful you know.

[Crossroads Inc.]

The Crossroadian stars could have some other means of communication too, one which is neither hyperwave nor radio- I NEVER meant to imply that hyperwave was the only possible form of interstellar communication.

The whole hting is... Complicated...

Basically long long ago when I was making al lthis up.. I had this crazy "What if" idea of people making contact with aliens, not in "the future" but at barely 1930 or 1940 tech levels. Basically at a time before modern conceptions of Sci-fi had been set in stone.
The idea was for the three planets in question to "grow up" together, going from the industrial, to electronic and then into the space age.

So intial contact I envisioned was people with very basic Radios picking up the singles that had started to come in from planets only a few LY's away...

Having some sort of "Special" radio invented would ruin the whole "meeting at 1930's tech level" thing.

I know now why this is being looked over, having all your plantes so close together makes deffending easy and a bit of a "cheat"
I mean I created all this when I was in High School over a decade ago, so I never really planned for something like this... Sooo...

What about something to balance out or offset the closness of my planets? What if we put in some technobable of, say something from the nebula, making space traffic much slower then normal? Radio and comms move at the same speed, so that would not change my set up.. But if I wanted to move fleets to defend a planet, I would be moving much slower then others aand thus offset the Closeness of my worlds?

How does that sound?

[Rabid]

Hyperspace Shoals.

The answer you seek is Hyperspace Shoals.

This may also explain why your civilizations are only now joining the galactic stage : because hyperspace travel in this region of space is hard.
This also give them an incentive to expand, in order to create a colony somewhere else where it will be easier for them to trade with the rest of the galaxy.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Hmm...the thing is that its not so much the fleet, as the fact that a sectors basic defenses are very clustered here. I had the same problem with my colony sectors a couple pages back actually. Though the fleet is part of it. I'll leave it to Simon to explain better/decide...he is the mod after all.

EDIT: What Rabid said works too.

[Rabid]

Basically, your systems can be as close as you want ; if it takes as long to travel between them, for various reasons (hazardous travel conditions, strain on the hyperdrives, etc...) as it would if they were 50 LY away, that's not really a problem, I think.

[OmegaChief]

The whole hting is... Complicated...

Basically long long ago when I was making al lthis up.. I had this crazy "What if" idea of people making contact with aliens, not in "the future" but at barely 1930 or 1940 tech levels. Basically at a time before modern conceptions of Sci-fi had been set in stone.
The idea was for the three planets in question to "grow up" together, going from the industrial, to electronic and then into the space age.

So intial contact I envisioned was people with very basic Radios picking up the singles that had started to come in from planets only a few LY's away...

Having some sort of "Special" radio invented would ruin the whole "meeting at 1930's tech level" thing.

I know now why this is being looked over, having all your plantes so close together makes deffending easy and a bit of a "cheat"
I mean I created all this when I was in High School over a decade ago, so I never really planned for something like this... Sooo...

What about something to balance out or offset the closness of my planets? What if we put in some technobable of, say something from the nebula, making space traffic much slower then normal? Radio and comms move at the same speed, so that would not change my set up.. But if I wanted to move fleets to defend a planet, I would be moving much slower then others aand thus offset the Closeness of my worlds?

How does that sound?

Only having a special kind of radio -doesn't- ruin the 1930's tech level thing, you have to remember that '1930's tech level' is in no way uniform, why would another race have the exact same technological progression as humanity on earth? What's stopping them from setting up some sort of big radio telescope and then accidently (Or perphas due to strings being pulled) they find a way to beam and recive messages FTL (But still perhaps slow enough for it to take years between transmissions) to and from each other.

I mean, your high gravity dudes would have been lacking in terms of sea going ship tech in comparision to humanity of the same era because they avoid crossing water right? So I don't get what the hassle might be with a little tweak like this.

As for shoals, that's as much an advantage as a disadvantage as -everyone- is slowed down by them.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Although tyrannosauruses in Space F-14s are awesome.

Considering what Akhlut and I have managed to work on with regards to backstory, it's probably likely that the NenAltKik's Space F-14s were of Belkan design, modified to better fit dinosaur physiology.

Incidentally, the Belkans most likely ripped off their iteration of the Space F-14 from the Haruhiists. Given that I've poached a ton of stuff from Macross/Robotech for the Holy Empire's fighter designs and that the VF-1 Valkyrie and its direct descendants are inspired by the F-14 in some form or another...