StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Yeah, that's all good.

Okay, latest proclaimation is that this planet has three moons. One is the size of Miranda, and has a similar crater (Q's sense of humour--it's the Death Star looking down on you!). Two more are captured asteroids, about the size of Phobos and Deimos. Miranda-equiv is about at a lunar-ish orbit, the asteroid moons are in erratic orbits with the closest approach almost to the equivalent of geosynchronous orbit.

This is doubtless useful in a space programme.

Hoo, that'll complicate things, since Miranda's surface gravity is significantly higher than our moon's, despite being smaller.

EDIT: IGNORE THIS, I AM STUPID

phongn wrote:Hoo, that'll complicate things, since Miranda's surface gravity is significantly higher than our moon's, despite being smaller.

On the other hand, getting into orbit only requires 92% of the total thrust on this world than on our own, because it runs .92g's of gravity due to being smaller and lighter itself (the tidal range is probably pretty impressive--I recommend investing into tidal power. There's probably a LOT of places like the Bay of Fundy here). An 8% reduction in required energy to put a pound into orbit is pretty damn useful. Also, there's the two asteroid moons as potential resources.

If we survive long enough, I'm sure we will be warring over the moons.

phongn wrote:Hoo, that'll complicate things, since Miranda's surface gravity is significantly higher than our moon's, despite being smaller.

What?

If we're talking about the same Miranda (the moon of Uranus, right?) then its surface gravity is pitifully small. It's 0.0079 m/s^2, which means the escape velocity is 0.19 km/s as opposed to the Moon's 2.38. It will e pitifully easy to launch from the Moon, which means we don't actually need a Saturn V rocket! The original Apollo CSM had a delta-V of around 2 km/s. It will need an order of magnitude less in this case.

Goddamnit, I swapped the two's information when I was looking up information on them.

If Miranda stays official, I'll sit down and calc an estimate on how much mass we'll actually gonna need to get two people to the surface and back.

phongn wrote:Hoo, that'll complicate things, since Miranda's surface gravity is significantly higher than our moon's, despite being smaller.

EDIT: IGNORE THIS, I AM STUPID

Jesus tittyfucking christ that was a big error, too. I THOUGHT there was something odd with it, but my mind was "Phong knows space", so I went along with it. But the actual surface orbital gravity of Miranda is only .079m/s. ... This moon would however be substantially heavier, being largely Rock.

The surface looks like Miranda, though, except for a huge crater like Mimas (I honestly had the two confused). The surface area is the same as Miranda's and the weird diapir activity was still present. It just nearly got hammered to pieces. Also, the density is appropriate for a rocky basalt body, but it's going to have significantly lighter gravity than the Moon anyway due to the smaller size, making landings and recoveries from its surface substantially easier, as even then it probably has less density than the moon--I need to go to bed and I just keep fucking up trying to make this plausible, so I'll issue a final ruling on density later, but it should be, like, a density suitable for the described materials. *yawns* Will decide later. However, it'll be trivial to calculate the delta-v once I settle on that. Shit, I'll do it for you .

The Duchess of Zeon wrote: The surface looks like Miranda, though, except for a huge crater like Mimas (I honestly had the two confused). The surface area is the same as Miranda's and the weird diapir activity was still present. It just nearly got hammered to pieces. Also, the density is appropriate for a rocky basalt body, but it's going to have significantly lighter gravity than the Moon anyway due to the smaller size, making landings and recoveries from its surface substantially easier.

What sort of "significantly lighter" are we talking about here?

Since changes in gravity make everything change, from the weight of the lunar lander to the launch vehicle itself. If the difference is as big as between the real Miranda and the real Moon, then there is potential to literally save dozens of tonnes on the LEO payload, since the effect is cascade: lighter lander means less fuel/engine power needed to get it to the Moon that plus lower escape velocity means a smaller CSM, all that in turn means a smaller TLI stage, etc.

PeZook wrote:

The Duchess of Zeon wrote: The surface looks like Miranda, though, except for a huge crater like Mimas (I honestly had the two confused). The surface area is the same as Miranda's and the weird diapir activity was still present. It just nearly got hammered to pieces. Also, the density is appropriate for a rocky basalt body, but it's going to have significantly lighter gravity than the Moon anyway due to the smaller size, making landings and recoveries from its surface substantially easier.

What sort of "significantly lighter" are we talking about here?

Since changes in gravity make everything change, from the weight of the lunar lander to the launch vehicle itself. If the difference is as big as between the real Miranda and the real Moon, then there is potential to literally save dozens of tonnes on the LEO payload, since the effect is cascade: lighter lander means less fuel/engine power needed to get it to the Moon that plus lower escape velocity means a smaller CSM, all that in turn means a smaller TLI stage, etc.

Okay, I finally got this straightened out--the density shall be 3.1g/cm^3, or .3g/cm^3 less than the moon (about 3.4), with the exact same physical dimensions as Miranda.

That is official and final.

P.S. Remember when calculating vehicle weight that the gravity of this planet is also only .92g's.

Hey, would everyone like it if at the end of each in-game year I posted the percent of economic growth on average for the world ? Like, "Last year, your economies boomed by 3%", or "Minor recession, subtract -1%" etc in terms of determining your GDPs to add a bit more variability in them? I could split it up by continent and make it fairly random, too.

That might be cool, especially if people are posting big military increases without offsetting it or accounting for it by good RP in some way.

Yeah, I think there needs to be some side-effect with regard to the massive defense expenditures starting to appear in game now. Meanwhile, I'll just amass immense foreign currency reserves ...

Bearing in mind that the FTO signed a free trade agreement which ought to have been fairly beneficial I'm okay with this plan .

The problem with that is that you people on that continent are fighting more wars and buying more military crap as a portion of your GDPs than, well, most people.

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:The problem with that is that you people on that continent are fighting more wars and buying more military crap as a portion of your GDPs than, well, most people.

True, although in terms of buying crap and fighting wars I feel I've been fairly conservative myself (well, at least by Frequesuan standards ). Certainly I didn't fight any all-out wars with my neighbors. In 12 months I bombed a bunch of crap in Sabika, cruised a few ships around the continent and ferried a few soldiers over to the CFR for peacekeeping duties...

I don't think it needs to be a strict, spreadsheet-based dollar-for-dollar management program. Just a sense of good judgement and posts that show that the player is aware of what they're doing and RP'ing the consequences.

In my own posts, for example, my THEL and air-defense expansion is soaking up a lot of other Defense money, and I've posted that the Navy is pissed about not getting more ships... and the THEL in general would have been killed for budget purposes, had I not shared it with outside interests. I also have not expanded the military at all, or had any major procurements, since starting. However, actually accounting for each dollar would be time-consuming and tedious, at least from my pov.

As far as my military expenditures go, I increased my budget to $40 billion a year at the start of the game. That's about the size of Italy's miliary budget. My army is around Italy's size ( the new 4th division makes it larger), while my air force is bigger now and my navy quite a bit smaller.

Ballparking it like this is about all I have the time for. If anyone could tell me where to find a relatively easy to use guide about how much running a modern military costs, I would be gratefull.

There have also definitely been reprecussions from my wars and military budget. The Big Particle Accelerator program I've been working on was cancelled, and my government is about to fall, with the President being extremely unpopular for being, if anything, too weak on the Imperialists.

FTAs aren't magical: they can do as much damage as good things. Entire domestic industries were ruined by FTAs in the past.

PeZook wrote:FTAs aren't magical: they can do as much damage as good things. Entire domestic industries were ruined by FTAs in the past.

Considering my nation is run by hyperaggressive capitalists who'd sell their mothers if they thought it'd net them a profit, I'm not too worried...

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:The problem with that is that you people on that continent are fighting more wars and buying more military crap as a portion of your GDPs than, well, most people.

Um, I'm part of one, maybe two military operations, a light brigade in the settlement, and a military force in the CFR. I have a roughly 24 ship navy, and a 156 aircraft air force. I don't think this would put me in a rampant military spending category.

SiegeTank wrote:Considering my nation is run by hyperaggressive capitalists who'd sell their mothers if they thought it'd net them a profit, I'm not too worried...

And now my omnipresent feeling of doom gets stronger.

SiegeTank wrote:Considering my nation is run by hyperaggressive capitalists who'd sell their mothers if they thought it'd net them a profit, I'm not too worried...

Your new flag is ready!

Well, you gotta admit, for a hypercapitalist I haven't really been that bad, have I?

Consider this dead official--that 600-bomber loss Beowulf claimed is deader than a doorknob. However, I'm not sure how many were knocked out, or the results of the strike yet. But that was way, way excessive, short of using nuclear-tipped AAMs and SAMs.