Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

[Arioch]

The pitch and catch of hyperspace entry and exit generally requires two masses. The idea is that the gravitational pull of the departure star behind you is part of what keeps you from being pulled into the center of the destination star; two two stars pull in opposite directions along the vector between them, but in the "nth" direction (the additional dimension of hyperspace), both stars are pulling the ship in the same direction, toward realspace. In general, if you enter hyperspace without escape velocity from the mass nearest to you, it's a one-way ticket to hell.

However, even if you could safely perform a one-mass jump in toward the star, you'd have to do it from so far away that it would be impossible to hit anything. Assuming you can even see the target peering directly into the star from shallow interstellar space, the position information will be hours old. Even if you had some kind of FTL comm and could exactly determine the target's location, jump exits are not precise enough to hit anything.

(Something to consider is that the jump drive concept is specifically designed to prevent the kind of exploitation you're attempting.)

[Voitan]

(Something to consider is that the jump drive concept is specifically designed to prevent the kind of exploitation you're attempting.)

Is it merely a computational or engineering issue that prevents someone from making a calculated short jump of this nature?

How about the other way around? Is this more feasible?

[In system star] --- [you] ----> [Umiak] --------------------------- [Distant system Star]

[dfacto]

(Something to consider is that the jump drive concept is specifically designed to prevent the kind of exploitation you're attempting.)

Is it merely a computational or engineering issue that prevents someone from making a calculated short jump of this nature?

How about the other way around? Is this more feasible?

[In system star] --- [you] ----> [Umiak] --------------------------- [Distant system Star]

Computing the exact gravitational pull of an entire star isn't exactly a small matter. In fact it's probably impossible.

[Voitan]

(Something to consider is that the jump drive concept is specifically designed to prevent the kind of exploitation you're attempting.)

Is it merely a computational or engineering issue that prevents someone from making a calculated short jump of this nature?

How about the other way around? Is this more feasible?

[In system star] --- [you] ----> [Umiak] --------------------------- [Distant system Star]

Computing the exact gravitational pull of an entire star isn't exactly a small matter. In fact it's probably impossible.

Yes, but if short jumps are possible, then make an incredibly short jump in relation to the distant star, and then use that data to see where your jump vector will pull you along, then go for the actual kill shot.

Practice shot if you will.

Granted, I doubt it's going to be very accurate still, but we are talking about a desperate gambit afterall. Just the only thing I see that can give either super power a nasty short lived suprise.

[TrashMan]

I can see only 2 ways humans could do anything to Loroi/Umiak. At all.


1) Find out the location of Loroi/Umiak planets. Build Huge-ass mass drivers. Calculate and fire, then scuttle them so the enemy never knows you fired them. The Loroi/Umiak will kill you, but in a hunderd years or so their worlds will be glassed by a deadly rain.


2) Build defense stations. Nothing more than powerfull targeting computers, heat sinks, generators and about 100 mass drivers. Or even better, a swarm of smaller gun platforms, each with 1-2 mass drivers.
Either place them right on top of the langrange points
OR
place them far away, in some place with lots of interference. Preferably outside Umiak/Loroi sensor range. Place a netwok of spy sattelites that feed all info back to those stations.
One the enemy enters and starts heading towrds Earth, calculate and fire.
The enemy will not even know you fired and won't change course or speed. In a few hours, if your'e lucky, you'll score a few hits and blow a few ships up.

[Majincarne]

I think you may be miss interpreting the manner in which the FTL works in outsider.

As I understand it your normalspace velocity has some effect on the destination exit point but most of the exit window is determined by the masses of the two(or more if they are close/binary systems) stars in the vector of travel. I think your velocity relative to the vector between the stars determines in which way you travel in a survivable jump; sorta a push between two slowing forces, miss one of them and you keep on sailing. And that there is no little or partial jumps you either make it to the other star or exit into realspace in the center of the originating jump points star.

It seems as though you could make a jump to a spot outside of the gravity wells of either stars as long as you are in the vector between than but with the outsider ship tech this is probably an unsurvivable jump as you will probably not be able to make a good jump the rest of the way and run out of supplies if you go the rest in realspace. I think it may be possible to have an exit vecror that undershoots the arrival star yet put you out far enough that your fall back into the origins stars gravity exits you safely in the star system, however it seems like it would be a very slow jump velocity far far out in the area post interstellar bow shock from the origin system. Probably only the historians could make a jump like that and maybe even they cant. It would take some very precise jump calculations to do that.

Also if you have balls of unobtainium, its just large gravity wells that you jump in between, so anything of sufficient mass is go. Black hole hop scotch anyone? But I think all we will see is star to star jumps as thats where all the useful stuff is to galactic empires.

This is all based on rough guesses so feel free to clarify if I messed a part.
------------
Also the only human tech missiles I see being functional are ones using bomb pumped lasers. Make a missile with enough purloined alien tech to out boost their ships so that you can get the weapon to just outside intercept range. Then calculate a likely trajectory and light off a nuke laser. I believe they should still be damaging at longer than plasma focus intercept range, just tricky to hit a target with. As the targeting comps gonna be smaller than a full ships. you should still be able to light the warhead off at a shorter range than a full ship would be hit at so the light lag will at least be less.
Since it seems unlikely that humans in outsider would be able to make a missile with a strong enough engine to close hard and fast enough to prevent interception. this design lets a much slower missile still be possibly effective and lasers are not greatly affected by the shield tech in outsider so the weapon system would be deadly on hit even with how wasteful a bomb laser is.

[Rosen_Ritter_1]

1) Find out the location of Loroi/Umiak planets. Build Huge-ass mass drivers. Calculate and fire, then scuttle them so the enemy never knows you fired them. The Loroi/Umiak will kill you, but in a hunderd years or so their worlds will be glassed by a deadly rain.

Human mass driver projectiles travel under 10 km/s. Humanity is a hundred light years from Loroi/Umiak space. The Loroi and Umiak planets will be bombarded by your deadly munitions in about three million years.

This seems incredibly impractical.

2) Build defense stations. Nothing more than powerfull targeting computers, heat sinks, generators and about 100 mass drivers. Or even better, a swarm of smaller gun platforms, each with 1-2 mass drivers.
Either place them right on top of the langrange points
OR
place them far away, in some place with lots of interference. Preferably outside Umiak/Loroi sensor range. Place a netwok of spy sattelites that feed all info back to those stations.
One the enemy enters and starts heading towrds Earth, calculate and fire.
The enemy will not even know you fired and won't change course or speed. In a few hours, if your'e lucky, you'll score a few hits and blow a few ships up.

Why are these mass driver batteries outside of Umiak/Loroi sensor *range*? Isn't the predominant form of Loroi/Umiak sensors just going to be scanning around with thermal scopes? It seems to me the Umiak/Loroi (particularly the Umiak, since they deal with Loroi ambushes more) would make a habit of thoroughly staking out any system they jumped into.

(we again go to the relative horrible speed of Mass driver rounds. Even if the rounds went 100 km/s, it'd still take months for your rounds to hit if you truely fired them from somewhere out of the way).


I'm not trying to be overly dismissive here. But I'm just trying to convey that this is a pretty substantial tech difference humanity is trying to hypothetically overcome here.

[TrashMan]

1) Find out the location of Loroi/Umiak planets. Build Huge-ass mass drivers. Calculate and fire, then scuttle them so the enemy never knows you fired them. The Loroi/Umiak will kill you, but in a hunderd years or so their worlds will be glassed by a deadly rain.

Human mass driver projectiles travel under 10 km/s. Humanity is a hundred light years from Loroi/Umiak space. The Loroi and Umiak planets will be bombarded by your deadly munitions in about three million years.

Well, granted, I didn't check the distance. But it's not supposed to be practical. It's supposed to be damaging.A gaint act of defince.

Why are these mass driver batteries outside of Umiak/Loroi sensor *range*? Isn't the predominant form of Loroi/Umiak sensors just going to be scanning around with thermal scopes? It seems to me the Umiak/Loroi (particularly the Umiak, since they deal with Loroi ambushes more) would make a habit of thoroughly staking out any system they jumped into.

(we again go to the relative horrible speed of Mass driver rounds. Even if the rounds went 100 km/s, it'd still take months for your rounds to hit if you truely fired them from somewhere out of the way).


I'm not trying to be overly dismissive here. But I'm just trying to convey that this is a pretty substantial tech difference humanity is trying to hypothetically overcome here.

Nah. Their range isn't that great, especially depending on the location (looks at loroi sensor range in the polyphioid). You dont' even have to place them in Sol..Regardless, systems are big. They're no going to detect several gun platfroms that are hidden well enough. It might take hours for the rounds to hit. It doesn't matter. It will take the Loroi/Umiak far longer than that to reach Earth. You're not dodging a bullet you don't know is coming. I'm talking about vriant 2 here.


Frankly, varriant 1, sticking mass driver platforms 10000km from eachother in a box-like pattern all over the jump point, sounds like a better approach.
Sure you're gonna need a LOT of them, but since they are just rudimentary and automated, their cost and construction time will be just a fraction of any warship.
Sure, the Loroi (or especially Umiak) will swat them down like flies. But each platfrom is one gun and you got hunderds, thousands of them. The overall loss of firepower for losing them individually is tiny.

At least with setting up such sentry guns, you will at least be able to take out a ship or two, sicne only the Wave-loom packs more punch.

[Mjolnir]

Well, granted, I didn't check the distance. But it's not supposed to be practical. It's supposed to be damaging.A gaint act of defince.

Aside from mass drivers being an incredibly poor way to perform STL interstellar bombardment (even today we Terrans would do...have done far better with self-propelled projectiles)...how is it supposed to accomplish anything? Your target civilization and possibly several successor civilizations are likely to have come and gone before your projectiles reach their system.

Nah. Their range isn't that great, especially depending on the location (looks at loroi sensor range in the polyphioid). You dont' even have to place them in Sol..Regardless, systems are big. They're no going to detect several gun platfroms that are hidden well enough. It might take hours for the rounds to hit. It doesn't matter. It will take the Loroi/Umiak far longer than that to reach Earth. You're not dodging a bullet you don't know is coming. I'm talking about vriant 2 here.

Uh...no. First, they will be visible across the system. Systems are big, but almost all of them are also very empty, extremely cold and quiet. Something with a powerplant capable of running a large, long-range mass driver weapon will be visible. Even if you managed to thoroughly disguise one as a random asteroid or non-military installation, it would become obvious as soon as it fired...it would also be obvious it had just fired a shot, and it's quite plausible that the shot itself will be visible on active or passive sensors, especially since they'll have a decent idea where to look. And your mass driver platforms need sensors too...ones capable of not only detecting the enemy, but of tracking their trajectory with enough accuracy that you can hit them with a ballistic projectile...you want Terran sensors to do this from beyond detection range of Loroi or Umiak sensors?

Second, it's going to take 13 hours for a Terran mass driver projectile to cross even just the Loroi/Umiak maximum weapon range. An hourly evasive maneuver isn't going to substantially cut into either side's delta-v budgets. Even if their sensors were damaged or impaired by an unusual environment like the proplyd and you had unimpaired sensors and a mass driver with sufficient accuracy in aim and launch velocity, you couldn't hit them.

Third, even that assumes they'll even be going slow enough for your projectile to overtake them. Terran mass drivers don't even have enough velocity to escape solar orbit from 30 AU out. Even Terran vessels transiting a system will do so at such high velocities that a mass driver round fired at their backs from a fixed defense would only fall behind. A defense station would have to be positioned close to the target's planned trajectory to have any chance at all of doing anything. Randomizing trajectories to prevent such an ambush is straightforward.

Frankly, varriant 1, sticking mass driver platforms 10000km from eachother in a box-like pattern all over the jump point, sounds like a better approach.
Sure you're gonna need a LOT of them, but since they are just rudimentary and automated, their cost and construction time will be just a fraction of any warship.
Sure, the Loroi (or especially Umiak) will swat them down like flies. But each platfrom is one gun and you got hunderds, thousands of them. The overall loss of firepower for losing them individually is tiny.

You're wildly underestimating the cost of such an endeavor. Filling a 1 AU^3 volume with such defenses would take 15000^3 = 3 trillion platforms.

[Grayhome]

This has most likely been covered before but based on our current knowledge of FTL drives in the Outsider-verse, would a warship that jumped into a system be detected the second it came out of hyperspace, or would it need to activate it's main engines before it was noticed? Does entry and exit from hyperspace cause a detectable phenomenon, is my question.

[dfacto]

A flash of light proportional to ship size/speed I believe. Nothing major.

[Arioch]

You need two masses to help govern your ballistic path through hyperspace, and the start and exit points have to be fairly close to these masses. The pre-jump velocity and distance from the departure mass will help determine how deep the exit point is within the destination mass' well, but you can't short-jump to another point within the departure mass' well. Sort of like lobbing a tennis ball into a stiff wind, if you don't escape the departure mass' well, you're going to be sucked back into it.



Jumps and exit points can't be calculated exactly, because the exact geometry of the hyperspace-time "curve" you'll be traveling on can't be directly measured. The n-dimensional curvature of hyperspace is chaotic and is affected by many sources, from the gravitation of nearby stars, planets and interstellar gas and dust, to the rotation of the stellar masses and their electromagnetic fields, not all of which you can measure accurately, so there is always an uncertainty factor to account for in your calculations.

Does entry and exit from hyperspace cause a detectable phenomenon, is my question.

Hyperspace-realspace transit causes a burst of light that is relatively easy to detect in most circumstances.

[Grayhome]

Ahh, I have a better grasp of it now, thank you for the speedy response Arioch.

[Rosen_Ritter_1]

Well, granted, I didn't check the distance. But it's not supposed to be practical. It's supposed to be damaging.A gaint act of defince.

It's a rather silly act of defiance all things considered.

Frankly, varriant 1, sticking mass driver platforms 10000km from eachother in a box-like pattern all over the jump point, sounds like a better approach.
Sure you're gonna need a LOT of them, but since they are just rudimentary and automated, their cost and construction time will be just a fraction of any warship.
Sure, the Loroi (or especially Umiak) will swat them down like flies. But each platfrom is one gun and you got hunderds, thousands of them. The overall loss of firepower for losing them individually is tiny.

There's a problem. A jump point remains stationary relative to the star. A cluster of defensive satellites will orbit the star. You'd need to constantly expend fuel to keep them in place. Which necessitate's countless fuel ships to keep them running.

[Mjolnir]

There's a problem. A jump point remains stationary relative to the star. A cluster of defensive satellites will orbit the star. You'd need to constantly expend fuel to keep them in place. Which necessitate's countless fuel ships to keep them running.

That's not actually much of an issue...remember, it takes decades to centuries for the sun to bend the trajectories of the gas giants around in a full orbit. Even at 10 AU around Sol, after a day they'd only be off by 220 km, it takes 5 weeks for them to fall a light second (0.002 AU) toward the sun. At 30 AU (orbit of Neptune), it's 25 km after a day, 110 days to fall a light second. Small, simple ion engines could easily maintain position for years on end.

The real problem is simply sheer volume of space that would need to be covered.

[fredgiblet]

The enemy will not even know you fired and won't change course or speed.

Assuming for a moment that they wouldn't know you fired (that's already been covered), they most likely WOULD change course AND acceleration/velocity regularly simply as a matter of policy. Such a change would have minimal cost and can prevent embarrassing (though extremely unlikely) incidents like the one you are proposing. A change of course of .5 degree or a change in acceleration of .1g would be far more than sufficient to end any chance of a super-long range mass driver round impacting.

[TrashMan]

Uh...no. First, they will be visible across the system. Systems are big, but almost all of them are also very empty, extremely cold and quiet. Something with a powerplant capable of running a large, long-range mass driver weapon will be visible. Even if you managed to thoroughly disguise one as a random asteroid or non-military installation, it would become obvious as soon as it fired...it would also be obvious it had just fired a shot, and it's quite plausible that the shot itself will be visible on active or passive sensors, especially since they'll have a decent idea where to look. And your mass driver platforms need sensors too...ones capable of not only detecting the enemy, but of tracking their trajectory with enough accuracy that you can hit them with a ballistic projectile...you want Terran sensors to do this from beyond detection range of Loroi or Umiak sensors?

Ahem..In real life. Yes. But this is sci-fi. Where vessels can sneak up on you (enemy vessles got within 60km of Bellarmine, Loroi couldn' detect Umiak until lafter tehy exited the cloud. And I can guarantee you those superheavies put out a LOT more power than a single mass driver platform)

And no, I don't think ship sensors can detect such small objects. If they did, they'll be beeping constantly, given that there's more than enough of micro-metoeries, dust and garbage in systems..especially popualted ones..

And no, the terran gun platfrom don't need longer-range sensors than loroi. Remeber that part about spy sats linked with the platforms. Basicly forming a information chain that transmitts targeting data to the platform.

Second, it's going to take 13 hours for a Terran mass driver projectile to cross even just the Loroi/Umiak maximum weapon range. An hourly evasive maneuver isn't going to substantially cut into either side's delta-v budgets. Even if their sensors were damaged or impaired by an unusual environment like the proplyd and you had unimpaired sensors and a mass driver with sufficient accuracy in aim and launch velocity, you couldn't hit them.

You sure your numbers are correct? 13 hours for 1 LS? That can't be right.

[Rosen_Ritter_1]

Ahem..In real life. Yes. But this is sci-fi. Where vessels can sneak up on you (enemy vessles got within 60km of Bellarmine, Loroi couldn' detect Umiak until lafter tehy exited the cloud. And I can guarantee you those superheavies put out a LOT more power than a single mass driver platform)

It's been pretty well established that the Naam system is unusual in the concealment that it offers to starship. And even then. The Bell's encounter came off as more freak chance than anything you could try reliably.

And no, I don't think ship sensors can detect such small objects. If they did, they'll be beeping constantly, given that there's more than enough of micro-metoeries, dust and garbage in systems..especially popualted ones..

I'm talking about the gun batteries in question. All the enemy needs to do is run a thermal scope over one of your mass driver batteries to detect it. Because if it's running it is going to be pumping out detectible heat.

And no, the terran gun platfrom don't need longer-range sensors than loroi. Remeber that part about spy sats linked with the platforms. Basicly forming a information chain that transmitts targeting data to the platform.

The Terran gun platforms are out of the range of being observed by thermal telescopes?

You sure your numbers are correct? 13 hours for 1 LS? That can't be right.

A Terran mass driver round goes 6 km/s. A Loroi/Umiak beam weapon goes 300,000 km/s. Why wouldn't their be a huge disparity in the time it took a mass driver round to a target that a beam weapon could hit almost instantly?

[Mjolnir]

Ahem..In real life. Yes. But this is sci-fi. Where vessels can sneak up on you (enemy vessles got within 60km of Bellarmine, Loroi couldn' detect Umiak until lafter tehy exited the cloud. And I can guarantee you those superheavies put out a LOT more power than a single mass driver platform)

The Naam system is an exception. Humanity can't defend their territory with systems that only work in dense proplyds.

And no, I don't think ship sensors can detect such small objects. If they did, they'll be beeping constantly, given that there's more than enough of micro-metoeries, dust and garbage in systems..especially popualted ones..

Why would anyone design their spacecraft systems to do that? They don't need to "beep constantly" to detect threatening objects on collision course with the ship.

And no, the terran gun platfrom don't need longer-range sensors than loroi. Remeber that part about spy sats linked with the platforms. Basicly forming a information chain that transmitts targeting data to the platform.

So you're also filling space with a massive targeting network. How many trillions of sensor sats will you be using?

Not that this matters, there's plenty of other things that kill the idea.

You sure your numbers are correct? 13 hours for 1 LS? That can't be right.

13 hours, 52 minutes, and 45.41 seconds. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+ ... 2F6+km%2Fs

[fredgiblet]

Ahem..In real life. Yes. But this is sci-fi. Where vessels can sneak up on you (enemy vessles got within 60km of Bellarmine, Loroi couldn' detect Umiak until lafter tehy exited the cloud. And I can guarantee you those superheavies put out a LOT more power than a single mass driver platform)

As has been established repeatedly over MANY threads, no stealth in space unless you've got "terrain" to help you.

And no, I don't think ship sensors can detect such small objects. If they did, they'll be beeping constantly, given that there's more than enough of micro-metoeries, dust and garbage in systems..especially popualted ones..

And if they DIDN'T then it's just a matter of time before a pebble punches a hole through their ship, any successful space-faring race MUST have high-resolution radar or else they will lose MANY ships to random space debris.

You sure your numbers are correct? 13 hours for 1 LS? That can't be right.

Without doing the math myself it's certainly the right ballpark, and that's 13 hours with an enormous firing signature that will draw quite a bit of attention.

Look, we've had this discussion before, multiple times. Mass drivers suck, period. Humans suck, period. MAYBE in a few years that second part won't be true anymore, but the first part will always be true until the application of a significant portion of handwavium takes place.