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That’s a good point. If the Emperor puts it to Alex in front of her ‘court,’ he’d be in a difficult situation. We’ve seen that Alex has a smart-ass side which he can usually but not always reign in.

As a Mizol, she might enjoy some verbal sparring. But the rest of Loroi High Command - who presumably aren’t all Mizol - might not.

On another note, how hard would it be for a human form to manufacture and ship fuel for the Loroi? Given the massive trade off between system transit time and fuel consumption, a quiet refueling stop could be a good strategic offering.

Edit: dang auto correct

kiwi wrote:That’s a good point. If the Emperor puts it to Alex in front of her ‘court,’ he’d be in a difficult situation. We’ve seen that Alex has a smart-ass side which he can usually but not always reign in.

As a Mizol, she might enjoy some verbal sparring. But the rest of Loroi High Command - who presumably aren’t all Mizold - might not.

On another note, how hard would it be for a human form to manufacture and ship fuel for the Loroi? Given the massive trade off between system transit time and fuel consumption, a quiet refueling stop could be a good strategic offering.

They use antimatter as fuel, don't they? Or some form of exotic matter? That's not gonna be cheap to make. :/

kiwi wrote:On another note, how hard would it be for a human form to manufacture and ship fuel for the Loroi? Given the massive trade off between system transit time and fuel consumption, a quiet refueling stop could be a good strategic offering.

They'd need to learn the technology and build the appropriate infrastructure. Although taimat production is not as energy intensive as antimatter production, I have to assume that it will require extensive energy allocation.

Perhaps off topic, but I couldn’t resist...
Gallen: “... I have never seen a Tiamat facility made out of struts and balloons before. What were you thinking?”
Engineer: “Well. We were in a hurry. And we thought it would probably explode at some point, so we should make it cheap. So we said ‘screw it, let’s go full Kerbol on it.’”
Gallen: “I’m requesting a transfer back to the raider fleet where it’s safer.”

No, wait, I can shoehorn it back on topic . Would a typical Gallen caste Loroi by impressed, bemused or horrified by an improvised bulk Tiamat facility? What might she ‘say’ to her boss?

kiwi wrote:No, wait, I can shoehorn it back on topic . Would a typical Gallen caste Loroi by impressed, bemused or horrified by an improvised bulk Tiamat facility? What might she ‘say’ to her boss?

What makes you think improvising is not be the usual state of affairs on a raider fleet?

If a Loroi division surprises an Umiak division by waiting on their arrival around their jump sector, how large would be the expected Umiak losses?

Werra wrote:If a Loroi division surprises an Umiak division by waiting on their arrival around their jump sector, how large would be the expected Umiak losses?

Umiak ships have an advantage in close-range combat, so I don't think it's usually going to be in the Loroi interest to be up close when an Umiak division comes out of jump. The Umiak will be disorganized and disoriented, but it doesn't take a lot of finesse to shoot at targets at close range.

If you could predict exactly where the enemy will appear and position yourself at maximum weapons range, you could do a fair amount of damage, but that would be very difficult -- a normal jump zone for a Sun-like star is as much as 10 light minutes (more than 1 AU) deep, and that's assuming the enemy isn't deliberately short-jumping or deep-jumping.

How many Loroi are there?

Warringrose wrote:How many Loroi are there?

IIRC, somewhere between 50 and 100 billion...

I don't have an exact figure.

I would assume each Loroi's figure is hand drawn and quite nice.

Ithekro wrote:I would assume each Loroi's figure is hand drawn and quite nice.

I think you'll find we all agree

How does acceleration as shown on the insider ship pages break down for the ships.
If it says 27g is that any direction or only a direction the main engines can push, if its only the main engines whats the average acceleration of the maneuvering thrusters?
Also what is the speed of rotation, are the big Loroi caps like fighters capable of turning 180 in a few seconds or are they more weighty taking like 20s to rotate?

MBehave wrote:How does acceleration as shown on the insider ship pages break down for the ships.
If it says 27g is that any direction or only a direction the main engines can push, if its only the main engines whats the average acceleration of the maneuvering thrusters?
Also what is the speed of rotation, are the big Loroi caps like fighters capable of turning 180 in a few seconds or are they more weighty taking like 20s to rotate?

The listed acceleration is for the main engines, so it applies to the direction that the ship is currently pointed in. Ships can pivot using their maneuvering thrusters and/or by differential thrust or thrust vectoring of the main engines. The pivot rate will be specific to each ship, depending on the strength of its thrusters, the thrust and positioning of its engines, and its mass and shape. Loroi ships usually have two main engines positioned out from the centerline, and so can pivot rapidly by differential thrust of the two engines, though this means reducing overall acceleration during the pivot, since one of the engines must be throttled down. Loroi ships can also do some thrust vectoring of the main engines (as seen on p.81).

Figuring out pivot rates for ships gets complicated, as working out torque and moments of inertia for irregularly-shaped objects is not very straightforward. But the upshot is that inertia increases with the mass times the length of the object squared, and so larger ships will have slower pivot rates even when they have the same net acceleration of the various thrusters. So a battleship can't maneuver as nimbly as a fighter, no matter how big its engines are.

And, of course, we're only talking about rotation here and not "turning" in the sense of a terrestrial ship or car; rotating a spacecraft does not change its momentum, and it's still traveling in the same direction it was before, but now with its nose pointed in a different direction.

I worked out some slightly abstracted pivot rates for the starship combat sim that deal in 60 degree increments and 80 second time segments: in general, the pivot rate for hull types are: destroyer = 3 degrees per 2 seconds, cruiser = 3°/4s, battleship = 3°/8s. (Fighters and gunboats pivot rapidly enough that in terms of the simulation, they can essentially point in any direction at will within the 80 second segment.) Of course, due to acceleration and angular momentum, the rotation rate is not constant, and a pivot of 120° will take less time per degree than a 60° pivot, but that's getting a bit into the weeds...

To take the Scimitar cruiser as an example, in the sim it can rotate 0.75 degrees per second using maneuvering thrusters alone, or up to 2.2 degrees per second using differential thrust of the main engines, in which case it is limited to half maximum acceleration during the pivot.

Umiak vessels have more but smaller main engines and will benefit less from differential thrust, but they tend to be more compactly shaped, and so will have smaller moments of inertia for the same mass than a Loroi ship.

Actually thought your ships used reactionless thrust for some reason so the mains worked as good in any direction and the "engine" nozzles was just for heat dissipation on Umiak and Loroi ships.
With those turn rates seems the mains would not do much to help avoid volley fire thats bracketing the area around a ship.
Whats the best acceleration each ship class could give out for say 30 seconds under emergency conditions to a right angle from original facing to try to dodge an area attack like the waveloom or kinetic projectiles?

Arioch wrote:

MBehave wrote:How does acceleration as shown on the insider ship pages break down for the ships.
If it says 27g is that any direction or only a direction the main engines can push, if its only the main engines whats the average acceleration of the maneuvering thrusters?
Also what is the speed of rotation, are the big Loroi caps like fighters capable of turning 180 in a few seconds or are they more weighty taking like 20s to rotate?

The listed acceleration is for the main engines, so it applies to the direction that the ship is currently pointed in. Ships can pivot using their maneuvering thrusters and/or by differential thrust or thrust vectoring of the main engines. The pivot rate will be specific to each ship, depending on the strength of its thrusters, the thrust and positioning of its engines, and its mass and shape. Loroi ships usually have two main engines positioned out from the centerline, and so can pivot rapidly by differential thrust of the two engines, though this means reducing overall acceleration during the pivot, since one of the engines must be throttled down. Loroi ships can also do some thrust vectoring of the main engines (as seen on p.81).

Figuring out pivot rates for ships gets complicated, as working out torque and moments of inertia for irregularly-shaped objects is not very straightforward. But the upshot is that inertia increases with the mass times the length of the object squared, and so larger ships will have slower pivot rates even when they have the same net acceleration of the various thrusters. So a battleship can't maneuver as nimbly as a fighter, no matter how big its engines are.

And, of course, we're only talking about rotation here and not "turning" in the sense of a terrestrial ship or car; rotating a spacecraft does not change its momentum, and it's still traveling in the same direction it was before, but now with its nose pointed in a different direction.

I worked out some slightly abstracted pivot rates for the starship combat sim that deal in 60 degree increments and 80 second time segments: in general, the pivot rate for hull types are: destroyer = 3 degrees per 2 seconds, cruiser = 3°/4s, battleship = 3°/8s. (Fighters and gunboats pivot rapidly enough that in terms of the simulation, they can essentially point in any direction at will within the 80 second segment.) Of course, due to acceleration and angular momentum, the rotation rate is not constant, and a pivot of 120° will take less time per degree than a 60° pivot, but that's getting a bit into the weeds...

To take the Scimitar cruiser as an example, in the sim it can rotate 0.75 degrees per second using maneuvering thrusters alone, or up to 2.2 degrees per second using differential thrust of the main engines, in which case it is limited to half maximum acceleration during the pivot.

Umiak vessels have more but smaller main engines and will benefit less from differential thrust, but they tend to be more compactly shaped, and so will have smaller moments of inertia for the same mass than a Loroi ship.

Arioch wrote:

Werra wrote:If a Loroi division surprises an Umiak division by waiting on their arrival around their jump sector, how large would be the expected Umiak losses?

Umiak ships have an advantage in close-range combat, so I don't think it's usually going to be in the Loroi interest to be up close when an Umiak division comes out of jump. The Umiak will be disorganized and disoriented, but it doesn't take a lot of finesse to shoot at targets at close range.

If you could predict exactly where the enemy will appear and position yourself at maximum weapons range, you could do a fair amount of damage, but that would be very difficult -- a normal jump zone for a Sun-like star is as much as 10 light minutes (more than 1 AU) deep, and that's assuming the enemy isn't deliberately short-jumping or deep-jumping.

Do jumps require the standard military ships in this conflict to dump heat, and recharge its batteries for shields, and weapons? If yes, is it a short time, or lengthy process?

hi hi

I think in the insider, it is said that the thrusters are semi-reactionless. They still require propellant, but they're able to get an effective exhaust velocity that is higher than the speed of light.

(Also, it's important to note that as long as a ship is moving somewhat perpendicular to the line of fire, they can do some dodging without any turning at all, just by varying their thrust.)

MBehave wrote:Actually thought your ships used reactionless thrust for some reason so the mains worked as good in any direction and the "engine" nozzles was just for heat dissipation on Umiak and Loroi ships.

"Reactionless" just means you don't have to use reaction mass; it doesn't necessarily mean that the thrust can be applied in any direction. The Loroi Floater drives and the Umiak Plastron drives aren't truly reactionless, but they both use inertial damping fields to amplify the effect of reaction mass; they're still blasting propellant out the back.

The Historian "Illusion Drive" is similar to what you described.

MBehave wrote:With those turn rates seems the mains would not do much to help avoid volley fire thats bracketing the area around a ship.
Whats the best acceleration each ship class could give out for say 30 seconds under emergency conditions to a right angle from original facing to try to dodge an area attack like the waveloom or kinetic projectiles?

To dodge incoming fire, you need to move away from your current predicted location at the time the shot arrives on target. You don't necessarily have to "turn" to do that; you can also increase or decrease your acceleration.

For example, if you're targeting a Scimitar that's running under full 30g acceleration, and she goes into a hard right pivot and throttles down the starboard engine, it will take about 40 seconds to rotate 90 degrees, during which time she will have cut her acceleration along the predicted path instantly in half to 15g and then over the course of that pivot shifting that 15g acceleration on a tangent away from the previous course. Between the reduced forward acceleration and the lateral acceleration as she rotates, her final position after 40 seconds will be approximately 150 km off the predicted position from her previous course.

Voitan wrote:Do jumps require the standard military ships in this conflict to dump heat, and recharge its batteries for shields, and weapons? If yes, is it a short time, or lengthy process?

Normal weapons fire is usually powered directly from the mains, so this doesn't depend on the state of the batteries used for jump. In Loroi ships, the main deflectors and the jump drive are tied into the same set of batteries, so jump does deplete this system, but only for a few seconds. (In most Umiak ships, they are separate systems.) The main issue for the heat system on most ships is dealing with the heat output from running the engines at full throttle, and this is something that it has to be able to handle continuously for hours on end.

Jump does stress the heat system, but usually not to great degree as regards normal engine and weapons operation. If Tempest tried to do something that further stresses the heat system (like fire her wave-looms) immediately after jumping, that could present a problem.

Ahh what?
15g has a displacement of 73.5m over 1 second, velocity is relative and completely irrelevant, a ship capable of thrust at 15g in any direction will have a sphere of uncertainty with a radius of 73.5m over its previously predicted location.
That holds true if its moving at half the speed of light or was stationary relative to the attacker.
Are g in outsider gravity of acceleration or something else?

Volley fire with a bracketed target could be say 3000 kinetic rounds spaced 250m apart against a Umiak Super Heavy.
Don't want to go into it to much because it has to do with Terran Fusion tech and don't want to drag this off topic.

The difference in tech level between the Historian and Loroi almost appears greater then the tech difference between the Terrans and Loroi/Umiak, when Umiak invaded historian space did they actually hit any worlds and recover tech databases or ships?
Seems like even a Historian cargo transport would boost significantly the tech level of the Umiak assuming they could understand it.

Arioch wrote:

MBehave wrote:Actually thought your ships used reactionless thrust for some reason so the mains worked as good in any direction and the "engine" nozzles was just for heat dissipation on Umiak and Loroi ships.

"Reactionless" just means you don't have to use reaction mass; it doesn't necessarily mean that the thrust can be applied in any direction. The Loroi Floater drives and the Umiak Plastron drives aren't truly reactionless, but they both use inertial damping fields to amplify the effect of reaction mass; they're still blasting propellant out the back.

The Historian "Illusion Drive" is similar to what you described.

MBehave wrote:With those turn rates seems the mains would not do much to help avoid volley fire thats bracketing the area around a ship.
Whats the best acceleration each ship class could give out for say 30 seconds under emergency conditions to a right angle from original facing to try to dodge an area attack like the waveloom or kinetic projectiles?

To dodge incoming fire, you need to move away from your current predicted location at the time the shot arrives on target. You don't necessarily have to "turn" to do that; you can also increase or decrease your acceleration.

For example, if you're targeting a Scimitar that's running under full 30g acceleration, and she goes into a hard right pivot and throttles down the starboard engine, it will take about 40 seconds to rotate 90 degrees, during which time she will have cut her acceleration along the predicted path instantly in half to 15g and then over the course of that pivot shifting that 15g acceleration on a tangent away from the previous course. Between the reduced forward acceleration and the lateral acceleration as she rotates, her final position after 40 seconds will be approximately 150 km off the predicted position from her previous course.

Voitan wrote:Do jumps require the standard military ships in this conflict to dump heat, and recharge its batteries for shields, and weapons? If yes, is it a short time, or lengthy process?

Normal weapons fire is usually powered directly from the mains, so this doesn't depend on the state of the batteries used for jump. In Loroi ships, the main deflectors and the jump drive are tied into the same set of batteries, so jump does deplete this system, but only for a few seconds. (In most Umiak ships, they are separate systems.) The main issue for the heat system on most ships is dealing with the heat output from running the engines at full throttle, and this is something that it has to be able to handle continuously for hours on end.

Jump does stress the heat system, but usually not to great degree as regards normal engine and weapons operation. If Tempest tried to do something that further stresses the heat system (like fire her wave-looms) immediately after jumping, that could present a problem.

MBehave wrote:15g has a displacement of 73.5m over 1 second, velocity is relative and completely irrelevant, a ship capable of thrust at 15g in any direction will have a sphere of uncertainty with a radius of 73.5m over its previously predicted location.

Volley fire with a bracketed target could be say 3000 kinetic rounds spaced 250m apart against a Umiak Super Heavy.

The Scimitar has a maximum acceleration of 30g, so the value would be 147m in one second. But for kinetic rounds to arrive with a delay of only one second, the firing ship would have to be at extremely close range. The AMM-250 at 400g can only displace about 7,000 km in one second, unless the firing ship had a very high additional relative velocity.

MBehave wrote:The difference in tech level between the Historian and Loroi almost appears greater then the tech difference between the Terrans and Loroi/Umiak, when Umiak invaded historian space did they actually hit any worlds and recover tech databases or ships?
Seems like even a Historian cargo transport would boost significantly the tech level of the Umiak assuming they could understand it.

The Loroi have very little information about what happened in Historian territory during the Umiak invasion. The Historians appear to have withdrawn from the attacked systems having offered very little resistance, and then retook most of the systems less than a year later, but it's not known what the Umiak found there or what they did during the time those systems were under their control. To this point there has been no indication of a spike in Umiak technology, and when pressed on the subject the Historian envoys would say only that it was not a matter of concern.