Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

[Cy83r]

hi hi

From what I understand, the Terran fleet was widely believed to be a waste of money and was in the process of being cut back before the Orgus showed up. The services they did provide were more like ensuring ships didn't deviate from their assigned trajectories, busting smugglers and providing assistance to craft in distress.

so, space cops

[Ktrain]

Well clearly pirates would have use their briny stench and rum soaked breath as a weapon

Humanity needs to make itself politically and economically indispensable to the Loroi. Piracy, even without it's practical/tactical limitations, does not help this goal. Smuggling and exploiting a black market/the Union's discontents who want to diminish the hegemonic power of the Loroi is mankind's best bet for achieving both survival and rapid technological advancement. The Historians, Bassam, and Nissek have an interest in diluting Loroi power as part of the postwar political paradigm. Terrans need to maneuver into the political gaps.


Also: If mankind was fortunate enough to capture an abandoned derelict wreck from either combatant intact, well let's just say:

so, space cops

And the government subsidized exploratory authority and power projection mechanism.

[Nemo]

Pirates don't need to be faster or better gunned than the military, just the civilians they prey on. Look at Somalia.

[LegioCI]

...Exploiting a black market/the Union's discontents who want to diminish the hegemonic power of the Loroi is mankind's best bet for achieving both survival and rapid technological advancement. The Historians, Bassam, and Nissek have an interest in diluting Loroi power as part of the postwar political paradigm. Terrans need to maneuver into the political gaps.

I think I like this idea even more. Only thing better than actual piracy is legal quasi-piracy.

[Trantor]

Pirates don't need to be faster or better gunned than the military, just the civilians they prey on. Look at Somalia.

Different situation. Doesn´t work in space.

[bunnyboy]

When spacetravel isn't for everybody budjet, pirates have only limited ways to operate.

They try get merchant ships land to their choice of places, where they can loot the ship and leave before response.
- Small (air or near orbital) fighters
- Bomb warning or extortion
- GPS hijack, hack or false update
- Insideman

Luring the ship with distress signal and
- Asking immediate rescue because their ship is doomed (low orbit, reactor fault etc)
- Ask for doctor/mechanic to board on their ship and keeping him hostage
- Asking to receive wounded man/men and then board on to ship

Being false planetary patrol or customs inspection

[Nemo]

Pirates don't need to be faster or better gunned than the military, just the civilians they prey on. Look at Somalia.

Different situation. Doesn´t work in space.

How so? USA is there, UK is there, Russia is there... basically everyone with a blue water navy has fielded warships. They aren't able to stop the attacks because they cannot react to every point in a timely manner, insufficient numbers. A military fleet can't cover the entire system. An empty civie cargo ship is faster than a cargo ship hauling a load. It just has to be able to threaten its target and transfer goods before the nearest TCA destroyer shows up. They have colonies on six worlds, but the economic sphere would be larger. The biggest difference is that in the real life example the powers are unwilling to go ashore and fix, or remove, the problem at its source. One need only create hypothetical reasons for why the TCA would be unable or unwilling to track down and destroy pirate anchorage.



Hey look! The TCA has devoted its scout corp outside Terran held space! /shifty

[fredgiblet]

One of the major differences is the cost/benefit ratio. In Somalia you can probably get a boat 5 guys and some AK's for less than the cost of a late-model used car in the states. If one in ten attacks nets a win you'll make tons of cash. In space you've got to get a spaceship (which WON'T be cheap) and a trained crew willing to risk their lives for a small chance of getting rich. Africans in Zodiacs are expendable, trained spaceship crews and spaceships are not.

As to your last point, a spaceship is a weapon of mass destruction simply by it's existence, ANYONE misusing one will draw the full attention of the appropriate authorities.

[bunnyboy]

It is hard to be pirate if every attempt will cost more than typical value of possible loot.
You need cut the cost for everything unneeded, like spaceship.

Radiomessage: "We have your wife on hostage and we wan't you land on to Nigeria. Also, if you don't follow our order, think what happened to Columbia, it wasn't an accident."

[Cy83r]

It is hard to be pirate if every attempt will cost more than typical value of possible loot.
You need cut the cost for everything unneeded, like spaceship.

Radiomessage: "We have your wife on hostage and we wan't you land on to Nigeria. Also, if you don't follow our order, think what happened to Columbia, it wasn't an accident."

I recall reading a conclusion like this in several scifi rpgs that made as many attempts as possible to treat everything with utmost realism while still being fun: "A spaceship is either a target to be destroyed by weapons fire, a setting for the characters to adventure in, or both."

[Mjolnir]

How so? USA is there, UK is there, Russia is there... basically everyone with a blue water navy has fielded warships. They aren't able to stop the attacks because they cannot react to every point in a timely manner, insufficient numbers. A military fleet can't cover the entire system. An empty civie cargo ship is faster than a cargo ship hauling a load. It just has to be able to threaten its target and transfer goods before the nearest TCA destroyer shows up. They have colonies on six worlds, but the economic sphere would be larger. The biggest difference is that in the real life example the powers are unwilling to go ashore and fix, or remove, the problem at its source. One need only create hypothetical reasons for why the TCA would be unable or unwilling to track down and destroy pirate anchorage.

But in space, they *can* cover the entire system. It's quite likely that nobody passes through an inhabited system without being tracked from entry to exit, and pirates have to deal with those six worlds or various stations to reap any benefit from their piracy. Attacks happen in plain view, ships regularly coming from systems where other ships have just been lost and unloading cargo they didn't set off with will quickly draw attention. With basically all traffic going between a handful of fixed points, no way to hide traffic going from place to place, and the capability to electronically track every single ship arriving or departing, it's near impossible for a pirate ship to disable a cargo ship, steal cargo, and sell it themselves. If a ship goes missing and its cargo turns up, every ship that could have been involved in piracy related to the disappearance is quite clearly identifiable.

About the only way I see to do it is to keep your armed craft well away from inhabited systems, never getting close to one of the chokepoints that can be easily policed. Base them somewhere out of the way, and make every effort to capture ships intact and undamaged so you can press captured ships/crew into service in transporting stolen goods to the ground...keep hostages and/or provide enforcers to make sure they keep quiet and unload your stolen cargo to your dirt-side contacts. And such an arrangement is very fragile, should the military ever find the base of operation you invested so much in setting up.

[Karst45]

Radiomessage: "We have your wife on hostage and we wan't you land on to Nigeria. Also, if you don't follow our order, think what happened to Columbia, it wasn't an accident."

To that they answer, but my wife is right next to me...

P: oh... sorry then, wrong number.

[javcs]

Also, as for "areas" than can and cannot be covered ... the Jump Points are known (more or less); the locations of the destination planet(s) are fairly obvious, as are destination Jump Point(s) (if simply passing through the system). The patrolling forces do not need to be able to cover the entire system - only the parts where ships are going to be. Add in the lack of stealth in space and the fact that ships are going to be radiating heat and other indicators that will be distinct from the baseline background of space, and it's fairly simple to cover the areas you need to.

Mix in that there aren't really all that many ships, plus the kind of data storage that's available, and you're looking at a situation where the patrol ships are going to (essentially) have the records and identifying features/marks/etc for every ship in their database, and it's going to be more or less impossible to run a functional piracy operation.

[bunnyboy]

Waiting in empty system that someone goes through is very desperate, boring and disappointing.
The arrive point may be in anywhere. Your target ship is likely to appear an 1 light hour away of you, sees you and makes next jump away before you even know it has come.

It works much better with near habitated planet will corrupted government/other elements. Just after lift off, when they are going on to trajectory or just before landing.
you can hide yourself on to traffik.

[Mjolnir]

It works much better with near habitated planet will corrupted government/other elements. Just after lift off, when they are going on to trajectory or just before landing.
you can hide yourself on to traffik.

Hide in traffic? Do you really think starship tracking systems are going to be that easily confused?

As for corruption, a government corrupt enough to ignore piracy happening in plain sight right outside their doorstep isn't impossible, but I seriously doubt the capability of such a government to run a starfaring nation for any notable period of time. Why would traders keep going there?

[Ktrain]

It works much better with near habitated planet will corrupted government/other elements. Just after lift off, when they are going on to trajectory or just before landing.
you can hide yourself on to traffik.

Hide in traffic? Do you really think starship tracking systems are going to be that easily confused?

As for corruption, a government corrupt enough to ignore piracy happening in plain sight right outside their doorstep isn't impossible, but I seriously doubt the capability of such a government to run a starfaring nation for any notable period of time. Why would traders keep going there?

Blue space babes, duh.

[bunnyboy]

It works much better with near habitated planet will corrupted government/other elements. Just after lift off, when they are going on to trajectory or just before landing.
you can hide yourself on to traffik.

Hide in traffic? Do you really think starship tracking systems are going to be that easily confused?

As for corruption, a government corrupt enough to ignore piracy happening in plain sight right outside their doorstep isn't impossible, but I seriously doubt the capability of such a government to run a starfaring nation for any notable period of time.

Before Somalian pirates the biggest and bloodest place of piratism was Malacca strait near Singapore, which is 2.8 km at narrowest. Before China succumbed to capitalism, it is said that most of the disappeared ships were driven to coast of China with sanction of chinese coast patrol. And there was not other route between China and Europe, if the captain want keep his pay. The shipping companies don't like delay & extra fuel cost for other routes and if something happen, insurance will pay.

There is lot of stuff in the orbit of any planet, where is live and space traffik. Satellites, other merchant ships, spaceturists taking their minutes in orbit, maybe even some depris cleaners. You may wan't to wait for clean space, but you can't keep your launch window open for infinity. And you pay to the tower for the every minute.

Why would traders keep going there?

Maybe because there are no other way to the planet.

[Silvereye]

The arrive point may be in anywhere. Your target ship is likely to appear an 1 light hour away of you, sees you and makes next jump away before you even know it has come.

A typical jump is stated to arrive at 4-5 AU from the star, so that is indeed somewhere around a light-hour if they jump in on the opposite side of the system. However, a quirk of FTL in Outsider is that it seems only slightly easier to jump back to where you came from than to go somewhere else entirely. When you emerge from hyperspace and decide you want to go back the way you came, you'd need to cancel out your existing momentum and build it up again in exactly the opposite direction, and that still takes time.

If they're going to pass through the system to a different jump point, that takes days. Pirates will probably have less powerful drives than military ships, and over that time the advantage will add up quickly. Even if you can't catch the pirates in this system, you can tell where they're going by which jump point they use, and then you can resume the chase in that system. Your technological advantages will probably help with both the jumping and the pursuit, and you might even scare them into making a risky jump: doink, and they're never seen again.

There are setting where pirates will be able to thrive, but Outsider does not seem to be one of them.

[DevilDalek]

Okay...

Well, Pirates and all that aside.

Say the Terrans do make a modular starship design and a supply ship design to compliment it.

What are we looking at here, shall we say a light Cruiser of 250 meters in length and 50,000 tons?

2 heavy missile / drone tubes,4 medium module slots, 2 large module slots and 6 small module slots plus a single mission module pallet?

(Im looking at the small modules being PDW and light weapons mounts, Medium being standard well, medium weapons, heavy is heavy etc. the tubes are not modular, as all they would need is to make sure the new missiles and drones are to spec to fit through them.)

What else should be on board?

As to the supply ship, looking at something larger maybe.

300 meters long with a dry weight of 60,000 tons, full recreational facilities, a folding dock for the large scale jobs, possibly 6 or so PDF slots..

What do you think?

[discord]

DD: you are missing the engineering parts, engine/power plant/computer support/sensors which are every bit as important to change in this case....basically creating a wire frame with hard points and volume set aside for different things.