Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Discussion regarding the Outsider webcomic, science, technology and science fiction.

Moderator: Outsider Moderators

TrashMan
Posts: 306
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2011 2:01 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by TrashMan »

Someoen said humantiycan't hurt the Loroi? Wrong.
They can utterly murder them IF the get in range. Their mass drivers pack a bigger punch that practicly anything in Loroi arsenal.

Of course, that means little when you get blasted before you get in range of your super-weapon.
The the issue is getting in range.

Imagine if you will, humantiy experimenting and by accident (or design) descovering accurate in-system jumping. The range and speed advantage of Loroi suddenly becomes moot as an entire human feet suddenly jumps in right behind the Loroi force, in spitting distance no less.

A single mass driver salvo and half of the loroi force will be either crippled or destroyed.

As the saying goes...if you can't win by playing by the rules...change the rules.

TrashMan
Posts: 306
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2011 2:01 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by TrashMan »

Mr.Tucker wrote:Your replies honor me :)
Actually, I'm thinking about how they would detect the firing. If the weapons were inside the vessel, it would take time for the heat from the weapon to reach the outer skin of the ship (by radiation, conduction and whatnot). By the time Loroi/Umiak sensors indicated that the craft was, say, 30Kelvins hotter, consistent with weapons discharge, the slug may already be well on it's way. Combined with some sort of pattern-launching submunitions (splitting the round into several projectiles) and a boosted rounds' high velocity, it makes hitting even the agile alien ships easier. I'm trying to think like a Terran tactician :) .
A space mass-driver shotgun?
Kinda like buckshot.

It has one big downside - those bullets WILL keep traveling till they hit something.

discord
Posts: 629
Joined: Thu Mar 24, 2011 7:44 am
Location: Umeå, Sweden

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by discord »

trash: and second problem, a loroi/umiak force does not NEED to see it being fired, just doing the regular 'evasive patterns in case someone tries to sneak mines in on us' movements, which are SOP, then those buckshot guns WILL miss with a 99.9999 or so % chance / gun, assuming the targets are not actively at battle stations, just being a little cautious.

TrashMan
Posts: 306
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2011 2:01 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by TrashMan »

A few thoughts:

I dont' see technological advancement as a straight road that means that a generally more advanced race is better in EVERYTHING.
While one branch of technology generaly pulls another, different branches, even different sub-branches, can advance at a different pace.

I'm a firm believer in the concept of a research forest (not tree). And in such a scenario, even an advanced race may fail to look up one of the trees.

User avatar
CrimsonFALKE
Posts: 404
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2013 11:31 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by CrimsonFALKE »

TrashMan wrote:A few thoughts:

I dont' see technological advancement as a straight road that means that a generally more advanced race is better in EVERYTHING.
While one branch of technology generaly pulls another, different branches, even different sub-branches, can advance at a different pace.

I'm a firm believer in the concept of a research forest (not tree). And in such a scenario, even an advanced race may fail to look up one of the trees.
Sometimes just often enough superior technology doesn't mean a damn thing. Mig-17s out performed F-4 Phantoms, and had a massive kill ratio over US aircraft.

User avatar
Arioch
Site Admin
Posts: 4593
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 4:19 am
Location: San Jose, CA
Contact:

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Arioch »

TrashMan wrote:Someoen said humantiycan't hurt the Loroi? Wrong. They can utterly murder them IF the get in range. Their mass drivers pack a bigger punch that practicly anything in Loroi arsenal.
Just to clarify, the Loroi and Umiak don't have mass drivers because they don't need them; at very close range, the AMM kinetic kill missiles do just as much damage with better accuracy. The Terran fleet can hurt Loroi or Umiak ships at close range, but the reverse is also true; the Terrans don't have any special advantage at close range.
CrimsonFALKE wrote:
TrashMan wrote:Sometimes just often enough superior technology doesn't mean a damn thing. Mig-17s out performed F-4 Phantoms, and had a massive kill ratio over US aircraft.
Unfortunately untrue. F-4's had a kill ratio of about 3.7:1 against MiG's in Vietnam, and the vast majority of the kills were against MiG-17's. The reason that the rates weren't higher had very little to do with the capabilities of the aircraft; rather, it was mainly a combination of the rules of engagement restrictions on the American pilots, and the fact that most of the American pilots (prior to the establishment of Top Gun and other tactics schools midwar) had been trained to intercept Soviet bombers with missiles, and had no dogfighting skills.

User avatar
CrimsonFALKE
Posts: 404
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2013 11:31 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by CrimsonFALKE »

Arioch wrote:
TrashMan wrote:Someoen said humantiycan't hurt the Loroi? Wrong. They can utterly murder them IF the get in range. Their mass drivers pack a bigger punch that practicly anything in Loroi arsenal.
Just to clarify, the Loroi and Umiak don't have mass drivers because they don't need them; at very close range, the AMM kinetic kill missiles do just as much damage with better accuracy. The Terran fleet can hurt Loroi or Umiak ships at close range, but the reverse is also true; the Terrans don't have any special advantage at close range.
CrimsonFALKE wrote:
TrashMan wrote:Sometimes just often enough superior technology doesn't mean a damn thing. Mig-17s out performed F-4 Phantoms, and had a massive kill ratio over US aircraft.
Unfortunately untrue. F-4's had a kill ratio of about 3.7:1 against MiG's in Vietnam, and the vast majority of the kills were against MiG-17's. The reason that the rates weren't higher had very little to do with the capabilities of the aircraft; rather, it was mainly a combination of the rules of engagement restrictions on the American pilots, and the fact that most of the American pilots (prior to the establishment of Top Gun and other tactics schools midwar) had been trained to intercept Soviet bombers with missiles, and had no dogfighting skills.
Yes towards the end of the war kill ratios improved however who won that war? It was the NV we held our own and fought valiantly but it wasn't enough. They sat in tunnels used US bomb fragments to make land mines and broke the will of the US to keep fighting. The F-4 Phantom isn't all that great I mean its a school bus of all things its fast but the turn rates are terrible, it can carry a ton of weapons but what good is it if can't turn to avoid gun fire? Hell most kills of the F4 came only after the ground crews attached 20mm cannons to their belly. If you look at the F-100 or F-105 they had a better air to air record the F4.

User avatar
sunphoenix
Posts: 1165
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2011 6:46 pm
Location: Indianapolis, IN

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by sunphoenix »

True. But we didn't 'win' in North Korea and Vietnam.. not because we couldn't have won.. we lost because we were NOT fighting a modern total war scenario.. like in WW I & II.

Not the same conflict when politicians are running the war and not the military.

To win all we would have needed to do is Nuke that peninsula until it was nothing but radioactive glass.

The Loroi would not have batted an eye at doing so if it was necessary to win... plus we did not even NEED anything from that land... adding weight to the fact if Loroi would have been running that offensive it would have been won.

To you specific point.. the F-4 {Phantom was not built to dodge gunfire..} you don't need to if your dropping nukes or shooting bombers carrying nukes down. Wrong tool, for the wrong job. We learned that quickly enough in those conflicts. Our military was only built {at that time} to fight a total war conflict scenario... not the kinds of 'limited wars' that have become the hallmark of this century.

This is not to say I am in ANY way approving or advocating use of indiscriminate nuclear destruction for ALL warfare... but just to point out that mankind has not fought a 'total War' scenario with Modern Weapons since WWI & II. We had other concerns in Vietnam and Korea other than killing the enemy.

We... wisely avoided use of such extreme measures as it would have escalated to a modern total war scenario and such a situation likely would have resulted in a nuclear holocaust!

We have only one planet after all, but the Loroi have many. They don't need our planet so there is no real incentive to preserve it if we should be unwilling to negotiate in good faith and fight them.

Were we fighting the Vietnam or Korea conflicts today... we would approach them totally differently. The failings in Afghanistan and Iraq were again.. not a matter of not enough firepower or a unwinnable scenario.. there were procedural flubs, planning mistakes, lack of cultural Intel and mismanaged steps that were taken that made those situations what they are now. Not any failing of weapons-tech. Anytime the insurgents stood and fought... they died... Our failing was not winning the populous over to supporting the rule of law and revealing the terrorist elements hiding among them.
Last edited by sunphoenix on Mon Dec 16, 2013 8:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
PbP:
[IC] Deep Strike 'Lt' Kamielle Lynn
[IC] Cydonia Rising/Tempest Sonnidezi Stormrage
[IC] Incursion Maiannon Golden Hair
[IC] TdSmR Athen Rourke

"...you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is Kill him."

User avatar
CrimsonFALKE
Posts: 404
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2013 11:31 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by CrimsonFALKE »

sunphoenix wrote:True. But we didn't 'win' in North Korea and Vietnam.. not because we couldn't have won.. we lost because we were NOT fighting a modern total war scenario.. like in WW I & II.

Not the same conflict when politicians are running the war and not the military.

To win all we would have needed to do is Nuke that peninsula until it was nothing but radioactive glass.

The Loroi would not have batted an eye at doing so if it was necessary to win... plus we did not even NEED anything from that land... adding weight to the fact if Loroi would have been running that offensive it would have been won.

This is not to say I am in ANY way approving or advocating use of indiscriminate nuclear destruction for ALL warfare... but just to point out that mankind has not fought a 'total War' scenario with Modern Weapons since WWI & II. We had other concerns in Vietnam and Korea other than killing the enemy.

We... wisely avoided use of such extreme measures as it would have escalated to a modern total war scenario and such a situation likely would have resulted in a nuclear holocaust!

We have only one planet after all, but the Loroi have many. They don't need our planet so there is no real incentive to preserve it if we should be unwilling to negotiate in good faith and fight them.
Well what made the Loroi's war one of extermination? I mean we are limited to means of extermination since we can't just Nuke the fuck out of a region and call it a day. we'd need camps or death factories. We can't use nuclear weapons period, take into account the fact we only have one planet, there is no way off the Earth to an other planet like Earth. Story wise I went off topic, humanity is barely in space with the story. 6 planets and what 26 ships capable of waging war but so ancient is laughable when you look at the Loroi. I am saying we would never survive an attack from them or the shells. Our best bet is to serve as fleet aids and possibly take Loroi technology and begin outfitting our own ships. In the hope we can build enough ships and make some form of a combat task group, or hide and hope both side kill each other off.

discord
Posts: 629
Joined: Thu Mar 24, 2011 7:44 am
Location: Umeå, Sweden

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by discord »

thrashman: and sometimes technologies are simply dead ends, see any steam powered cannons/small arms around? they work actually, just do not have the theoretical efficiency of chemically powered weapons...
again steam powered, but this time computers.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage thought up and proof of concept built a working mechanical 'difference engine' a hundred years before electricity and vacuum tubes actually made it practical.
and on steam powered cars....they could actually work, and decently well, oil derived is just that much better. electricity also works, but only in urban environment.

and on rail/coil guns, unless you can figure out some way to some serious cheating against the laws of physics, they ain't gonna be no good in space at any range for anything except lobbing things as transportation, or giving missiles/torpedoes initial velocity away from the firing platform due to basic physics and range.

crimson: actually we could 'nuke the hell out of them', the nuke scare is quite impressively overblown, they are horrible weapons, but at no point is it a practical physics reason unless something important is nearby that can not be hurt for (reason), it's PR, always PR that keeps the fingers away from that button....and that people actually believe the bullshit about what the bombs do.

detonate a serious warhead airburst over a city and a couple of weeks later you need a good breathing mask to check it out, a couple of months and it's a statistically noticeable increase in cancer risk to frikkin living there, a few years before moving in and you would need a good statistical check fifty years later to even notice increased mutation and cancer risk, fear mongering, it works.

User avatar
CrimsonFALKE
Posts: 404
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2013 11:31 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by CrimsonFALKE »

discord wrote:thrashman: and sometimes technologies are simply dead ends, see any steam powered cannons/small arms around? they work actually, just do not have the theoretical efficiency of chemically powered weapons...
again steam powered, but this time computers.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage thought up and proof of concept built a working mechanical 'difference engine' a hundred years before electricity and vacuum tubes actually made it practical.
and on steam powered cars....they could actually work, and decently well, oil derived is just that much better. electricity also works, but only in urban environment.

and on rail/coil guns, unless you can figure out some way to some serious cheating against the laws of physics, they ain't gonna be no good in space at any range for anything except lobbing things as transportation, or giving missiles/torpedoes initial velocity away from the firing platform due to basic physics and range.

crimson: actually we could 'nuke the hell out of them', the nuke scare is quite impressively overblown, they are horrible weapons, but at no point is it a practical physics reason unless something important is nearby that can not be hurt for (reason), it's PR, always PR that keeps the fingers away from that button....and that people actually believe the bullshit about what the bombs do.

detonate a serious warhead airburst over a city and a couple of weeks later you need a good breathing mask to check it out, a couple of months and it's a statistically noticeable increase in cancer risk to frikkin living there, a few years before moving in and you would need a good statistical check fifty years later to even notice increased mutation and cancer risk, fear mongering, it works.
I would honestly like to know exactly your source on Nuclear weapons? As for rail guns I do believe they have a very lethal effect as a CIWS.

Absalom
Posts: 718
Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 4:33 am

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Absalom »

TrashMan wrote:Imagine if you will, humantiy experimenting and by accident (or design) descovering accurate in-system jumping. The range and speed advantage of Loroi suddenly becomes moot as an entire human feet suddenly jumps in right behind the Loroi force, in spitting distance no less.

A single mass driver salvo and half of the loroi force will be either crippled or destroyed.

As the saying goes...if you can't win by playing by the rules...change the rules.
More credible than you might think, as Humanity apparently has abnormally powerful computers (and you thought that all of those FPSes weren't good for anything! :) ), but as I best recall Arioch has said that you'd need data that you likely wouldn't have.

CrimsonFALKE wrote:Yes towards the end of the war kill ratios improved however who won that war? It was the NV we held our own and fought valiantly but it wasn't enough. They sat in tunnels used US bomb fragments to make land mines and broke the will of the US to keep fighting.
This gets at the issue, but also fails to do such. Ho Chi Minh realized something that we didn't: he could win on the PR front. For us to win on the PR front, we would have needed to start instituting a massive improvement in the quality of the South Vietnamese government. Mind you, I understand that we partially succeeded by assassinating one of their presidents before we fully joined the war, but one bad leader's death does not a government fix.

In comparison, in WW2 we went in after the war and took over the area for a while. That is how you fix an insurgency problem: the brute-force way. Which is not enough to say that it's enough, because as sunphoenix said, you need to understand the cultural, economic, and other situations on the ground, and you need to manage things right. None the less, the real solution for those situations is to reshape the local system into a less aggressive form. The techniques for stabilizing an empire are directly comparable to the techniques for creating an ally (or at least someone that won't shot you in the face, purely so that they can later turn you over to shoot you in the back).


CrimsonFALKE wrote:Well what made the Loroi's war one of extermination?
The unwillingness of either party to live under the conditions resulting from failure, along with an enormous amount of anger (at least on the Loroi side, I don't know for certain what the Umiak reason for continuing the war was).
CrimsonFALKE wrote:I mean we are limited to means of extermination since we can't just Nuke the fuck out of a region and call it a day. we'd need camps or death factories.
That's just one direction that this sort of thing can go. Post-WW2 Germany or Japan is another. The Loroi simply happen to not currently be willing to mount an occupation.


discord wrote:crimson: actually we could 'nuke the hell out of them', the nuke scare is quite impressively overblown, they are horrible weapons, but at no point is it a practical physics reason unless something important is nearby that can not be hurt for (reason), it's PR, always PR that keeps the fingers away from that button....and that people actually believe the bullshit about what the bombs do.
But as Vietnam demonstrated, PR is itself a potent weapon.

discord
Posts: 629
Joined: Thu Mar 24, 2011 7:44 am
Location: Umeå, Sweden

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by discord »

crimson: to take railgun as CIWS first not enough rate of fire, and that is knife range anyways, so my point is still valid.

nukes? well a rudimentary understanding of the physics involved and extrapolation.....that and taking a look at data from test blasts, by the US military, most accessible data, don't have any links since i cant recall where i saw it. but it boils down to a few facts.
#1 modern nukes are MUCH more efficient in detonating the material, less fallout.
#2 modern implosion type bombs carry less material for the bang.
#3 airburst does not irradiate the soil and create contaminated material fallout anywhere near as much as ground blast.
#4 a good rain will wash away much of the problems with particles and air, biggest issue is depositing alpha radiating material in your lungs, so just a face mask or gas mask will take you a hell of long way.

radiation is nasty stuff, but just like vacuum, reality and the image of it does not overlap all that much.

nine out of ten drowning victims involve alcohol(or other intoxicants), ten out of ten involve water, BAN WATER NOW!

User avatar
Charlie
Posts: 257
Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2013 9:04 pm
Location: Somewhere in Middle Lane
Contact:

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Charlie »

Remember Dihydrogen monoxide is fatal if inhaled.

On Nukes, I would hope that they would be far more powerful to be used as weapons against alien ships. As I know they are far less powerful when exploded in space.
No sorcery lies beyond my grasp. - Rubick, the Grand Magus

User avatar
CrimsonFALKE
Posts: 404
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2013 11:31 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by CrimsonFALKE »

discord wrote:crimson: to take railgun as CIWS first not enough rate of fire, and that is knife range anyways, so my point is still valid.

nukes? well a rudimentary understanding of the physics involved and extrapolation.....that and taking a look at data from test blasts, by the US military, most accessible data, don't have any links since i cant recall where i saw it. but it boils down to a few facts.
#1 modern nukes are MUCH more efficient in detonating the material, less fallout.
#2 modern implosion type bombs carry less material for the bang.
#3 airburst does not irradiate the soil and create contaminated material fallout anywhere near as much as ground blast.
#4 a good rain will wash away much of the problems with particles and air, biggest issue is depositing alpha radiating material in your lungs, so just a face mask or gas mask will take you a hell of long way.

radiation is nasty stuff, but just like vacuum, reality and the image of it does not overlap all that much.

nine out of ten drowning victims involve alcohol(or other intoxicants), ten out of ten involve water, BAN WATER NOW!

Why have a high rate of fire when you can merely fire one shot and destroy a missile? Although a railgun is rather limited, ETC weapons are a better option. I think the shells maybe willing to exterminate the loroi because they feel that the Loroi started the war on a path of extermination and will not grant their foe quarter.

User avatar
Hālian
Posts: 790
Joined: Fri Sep 30, 2011 4:28 am
Location: Central Florida
Contact:

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Hālian »

CrimsonFALKE wrote:I think the shells maybe willing to exterminate the loroi because they feel that the Loroi started the war on a path of extermination and will not grant their foe quarter.
You misunderstand how a bug war works, sir. The ikkuhak want to exterminate the loroi simply because they're Not Bugs. ;)
Image
Don't delay, join today!

User avatar
CrimsonFALKE
Posts: 404
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2013 11:31 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by CrimsonFALKE »

Charlie wrote:Remember Dihydrogen monoxide is fatal if inhaled.

On Nukes, I would hope that they would be far more powerful to be used as weapons against alien ships. As I know they are far less powerful when exploded in space.
Well if you can get them within 1km of a ship the gamma radiation and resulting EMP should do plenty of damage to the ship's systems and sensors.

User avatar
GeoModder
Posts: 1043
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2011 6:31 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by GeoModder »

sunphoenix wrote:To win all we would have needed to do is Nuke that peninsula until it was nothing but radioactive glass.
I'm sure the South-Koreans, South-Vietnamese, Thai, Laotians, Cambodjians, Japanese and Chinese would've been thrilled by the prospect.
Image

Murica
Posts: 51
Joined: Fri Sep 20, 2013 1:56 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Murica »

GeoModder wrote:
sunphoenix wrote:To win all we would have needed to do is Nuke that peninsula until it was nothing but radioactive glass.
I'm sure the South-Koreans, South-Vietnamese, Thai, Laotians, Cambodjians, Japanese and Chinese would've been thrilled by the prospect.
Yep only a few communist infiltrators mixed in would disagree

discord
Posts: 629
Joined: Thu Mar 24, 2011 7:44 am
Location: Umeå, Sweden

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by discord »

crimson: well, considering that fire rate on railguns currently is counted in hours, might get that down to minutes, means you can get ONE shot off per gun, the extra effective range of the railguns higher muzzle velocity would be nice, but compare that to a chemical gatling, 0.5/minute(damn near dream levels of RoF.) or 4000/minute(currently available.), the second of the two is also a low power system and smaller, so you can have more of them....
i know which one i would prefer.

Post Reply