Well of Souls Forums

RedDwarfIV wrote:Besides, it's a small spacecraft. A lot of stuff would be between the hull and crew spaces, for radiation shielding if nothing else. And there is an observation room at the back of the main hull. It's the yellow bits with white shading.

Ah, now I know in what size I have to see it (hadn't seen the first pic on the previous page when you posted it). I first thought of lots of oversized weapons, but if its a rather smallish hull...

RedDwarfIV wrote:Have you heard of the Rocket Equation? Larger ships need more fuel to move their mass, so carry comparitively larger fuel tanks. As for the engine nozzles, well, smaller engines have higher specific impulse. When you don't need a lot of thrust to accellerate quickly, why not have high fuel efficiency too?

The ship's mass must be quite different before and after launch of the missile/torpedo layout. Slow(er) in the assault phase then the "run for your life" phase after launch?

GeoModder wrote: Ah, now I know in what size I have to see it (hadn't seen the first pic on the previous page when you posted it). I first thought of lots of oversized weapons, but if its a rather smallish hull...

97 metres. It's a corvette - in fact, it would be the smallest Terran military spacecraft, barring shuttles and fighters, going by the Terran Warship Classes page.

GeoModder wrote: The ship's mass must be quite different before and after launch of the missile/torpedo layout. Slow(er) in the assault phase then the "run for your life" phase after launch?

Yes.

I like the general design look to crimsons ship however its has some serious turret field of fire self masking issues. And I would just continue the forward what looks like missile bays right on back into the main hull so you have better structural bracing against maneuvering stress. I doubt any separation of that system would greatly reduce any damage from a detonating hit as its right up against what appears to be the tactical section of the ship.

I finished the spacecraft. It's too late at night to draw a background for it though.



Since the TCA can't miniaturise their particle weapon technology, I suppose the main cannon on this will have to be something less advanced. Perhaps a wide-beam laser, the type that's supposed to warm the enemy to death rather than drill holes in the hull.

Why not just build a shit ton of disposable drones with PD Gauss cannons/mass drivers. I would think they would be much easier to manufacture in massive quantities and easier to deploy (fuel-wise) than frigate and destroyer class vessels. Even if the drones had a terrible survival rate, I would expect a crap load of Gauss cannon holes drilled through even the toughest of Umiak/Loroi vessels would present a catastrophic problem.

Also, since there seems to be only a few routes into and out of the isolated bubble of Terran space, they could be easily deployed in mass against any attacker from any direction. They do not necessarily have to destroy an invading craft, just cripple the engines so it cannot engage it's FTL drive to move it into Terran populated systems. Cheap and efficient.

Why not just build a shit ton of disposable drones with PD Gauss cannons/mass drivers. I would think they would be much easier to manufacture in massive quantities and easier to deploy (fuel-wise) than frigate and destroyer class vessels.

Even if Humanity had the time and resources to make the staggering number we would need to cover the jump zones effectively (keep in mind that those are 1 AU across at least). The ships in outsider are far too fast for point defense mass drivers to hit. You would have to literally blanket the entire jumps zone in all three dimensions to the density of 300 or so meters apart for effective system denial. I'm not denying that it might work, heck if we could incapacitate some ships and harvest the tech it would be great. I just don't think it's realistic.

@ RedDwarfIV That thing looks sick man! Huge respect for being able to draw something like that (I know I couldn't ).
I can sure imagine it in the picket lines for the TCA.

What kind of speed is it capable of ?

Have you tried drawing any of the official ships ?

Its engines are designed for high-efficiency so it can get the most out of an interplanetary burn. It's slower than the larger TCA spacecraft.

I haven't tried drawing the canon ships, no. It might be interesting trying to work out what they look like just from their silhouettes though.

discord wrote: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.

I disagree. Remember, the scenario is one in which you can close in effective range.

Missiles will always be limited. They are - as ordinance - more expensive to produce and bigger. Also, they can't survive the same acceleration or stress a pure sabot round would.
After all, the sheer amount of electromagnetic force would wreak havoc on missile guadance system and any electronics. Not to mention that such rapid acceleration might frak up various other internal components.
A slug has no such thing. You can launch it at far greater speeds and in the end get a lot bigger bang. Altough you reach a point of diminishing returns.
If you can one-shot a loroi ship with a current big mass driver, dumping more energy into the mass driver does seem wasteful.

TrashMan wrote:

discord wrote: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.

I disagree. Remember, the scenario is one in which you can close in effective range.

Missiles will always be limited. They are - as ordinance - more expensive to produce and bigger. Also, they can't survive the same acceleration or stress a pure sabot round would.
After all, the sheer amount of electromagnetic force would wreak havoc on missile guadance system and any electronics. Not to mention that such rapid acceleration might frak up various other internal components.
A slug has no such thing. You can launch it at far greater speeds and in the end get a lot bigger bang. Altough you reach a point of diminishing returns.
If you can one-shot a loroi ship with a current big mass driver, dumping more energy into the mass driver does seem wasteful.

I agree, they would be great if the TCA ships could get close enough to use them. I've been bashing my head on that for a while, and all I could come up with is that if the slug were some sort of bomb-pumped laser they might get us somewhere. At least they'd have to shoot them out of the sky before they got in range to explode and douse the alien ships in X-rays. I also tend to think rail and coilgun firings wouldn't be as evident as particle beams (slight heat-up of the ships vs shower of high-energy radiation). Finally I don't think a civilization explores all technological avenues throughout it's history. Take the repeating crossbow, the girandoni air rifle or steam car (be aware that steam engines ARE more efficient than gasoline or older diesel engines). Opportunity and societal cost is just as important as industrial cost.

Rail/coilguns would let off an enormous EM signature when they are fired.

found this fighter concept from many years back could be a idea for the terran fighters.

CrimsonFALKE wrote:
A railgun not good as a CIWS would largely depend on style and tracking, most Anti ship weapons can do close to mach 8. the only only thing that can fire in a similar speed is a rail gun.

Name one anti ship weapon in service today that travels at mach 8. You cant. Nothing like that exists today.

The MTHEL laser battery travels at the speed of light, can knock aircraft, rpg, drones, artillery shells, etc out of the air.

Let' smash some myths here:

1) ASMs do not reach mach 8. The fastest conventional ASM to my knowledge is some version of the Raduga, meant to carry nukes (lower precision). Mach 6 I believe. The fastest (and newest) conventionally armed one is the Brahmos. There are ASBMs, but those rely on their vertical vector and range rather than purely speed.

2) Lasers are highly problematic right now. Put an ablative material on a missile and spin it. The laser becomes less threatening. They will continue to evolve, and supplant conventional CIWs, but not now.

3)A railgun would have the limitations of current projectile CIWs. You need large volume of fire to achieve practicality. Which for a railgun means large energy consumption and strong barrel wear and heat ejection issues. Better for low rate, high range, high precision shore bombardment.

A question: could terran lasers (all variants) be used to shoot down incoming missiles? They seem to have an awful lot of them, and could be useful to the Loroi as screening, freeing up their heavier armament to allow them to engage the more important targets.

To RedDwarf: DAYUM! Mighty fine work.

If humanity were to play a any kind of roll in a Loroi battle group, I can see missile defense being something we could do pretty well. looking at the shipboard weapons page, you can see the Terran heavy laser has a not dissimilar range to the Loroi point defence laser. It also does much more damage then the PD laser as the distance to the target closes. while the range is still short, and You cant damage ships at the one light second optimum combat range, I wonder how well heavy anti ship weaponry would do against torpedoes? If we assume that humanity receives the know how from someone to make inertial dampers, and thus ships that can keep up with the Loroi, Humanity would right off the bat have a very good weapon for point defense. Small, fast (25-30gs of acceleration) ships of 50-75 meters, armed with a couple heavy lasers and powerful radars, or whatever sensors are being used for missile detection or targeting, would be optimal. this way smaller, less capable civilian ship yards could take part in their production, freeing larger military shipyards for capital ship production, and boosting ship count. large amounts of these point defense gunboat type things would be mixed in with a loroi fleet, and would free up more powerful Loroi weapons for anti ship work. even if humanity doesn't get any dampers, these gunboats could probably be drones, as they would be working in a net around a friendly fleet, at distances close enough for networked communication, even in space.

does anyone know if humanity could fit a power source for 2 heavy lasers into a 50m long hull? and would mass producing the engines to accelerate that hull at 30gs be a problem for the terrans?

The firing rate for the heavy lasers is much lower, Our torpedoes only get something like 12 g so I highly doubt a warship, even a highly specialized one, will be capable of keeping up.

Love the debate in this thread almost as much as I like the ship designs. Seems to me though that people are looking in the wrong place for humanity's relevance creating advantage in this conflict.

As races Loroi and Umiak have been fighting wars in space for generations. Hell there's probably evolutionary pressure by this point on top of the obvious war time philosophical focus. It's going to be hard to beat centuries of refined and battle tested methods for putting holes where your enemy doesn't want holes. Especially from the kind of waning military infrastructure TCA is working with.

So look to the frivolities, look to the trappings of peace. That's where humanity's hidden edge (if such a thing exists) could be found. For instance I might expect software to be a strong point from a healthy entertainment industry. It doesn't have to be as dramatic as being super hackers. Even something as simple as UI refinement can have more impact than you might think. If not for the Loroi then for the vassal races using hand me down technology. Stream-lining the bootstrapping process for not just humans but others would be a significant boost to the war effort.

On that topic, diplomacy and social sciences seem to be Loroi weak points. Human spin doctors and sociologists could stop entire races from ceding to the enemy.

And this might be a result of the elite nature of the scout corps but, Jardin is really darn competent as a lone agent. Were the tables reversed I question how effective a lone, random Loroi would be at first contact on a human vessel. They seem a great deal more specialized. It's just shy of trite but human generalism and adaptability might be surprising to other species.

All that considered, I expect future human ships to be relevant more for the culture bomb inside them than any external hardware. If I had any graphical skills I'd try to depict something like a spaceworthy newsvan crossed with an exotic caravan complete with neon holo-ads.

Yeah, a lot of people want a silver bullet that will make us top dogs by the end of the story. Not going to lie I think of them too, but realistically it's not going to happen.

Our short-term value is a resupply base and potentially a backdoor to Umiak space, we can provide basics like foodstuffs, water and untrained manual labor for base construction and maintenance. Long-term our value will likely be as court magicians as someone else put it, our technological prowess apparently outstrips the other races significantly so once we're brought up to par we should be able to move things ahead with relatively high speed. Waning isn't exactly the right word, the military infrastructure of the TCA has likely increased significantly in the last 2 years, while nowhere near the level of the main combatants it's only likely to grow.

Social sciences is an interesting thought. I can totally see humans becoming the face of the Loroi Empire, with the Mizol moving to a more exclusive spying role. Not sure how they would like that though.

IIRC, Arioch did say that humanity itself was not going to change the course of the war, although a 'turning point' will happen at some time in the story.

One thing humans could probably do is provide heavily armed transport craft. Fit a big cargo bay to a Mjolnir-equipped cruiser, and hey, you've got something that might just survive taking resources to the Loroi.

We don't really have anything worth transporting 200 light-years. We have things where it's useful that the Loroi wouldn't have to transport them 200 light-years, but unless chocolate turns out to be a safe narcotic or something I don't think there's going to be significant trade for a LONG time.