Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread
Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2019 5:27 pm
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?
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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.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?
IIRC, somewhere between 50 and 100 billion...Warringrose wrote:How many Loroi are there?
I think you'll find we all agreeIthekro wrote:I would assume each Loroi's figure is hand drawn and quite nice.
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).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?
Arioch wrote: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).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?
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.
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?Arioch wrote: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.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?
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.
"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.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.
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.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?
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.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?
Arioch wrote:"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.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.
The Historian "Illusion Drive" is similar to what you described.
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.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?
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.
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.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?
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.
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: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 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.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.
Arioch wrote: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: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 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.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.
Yeah, the projectile speed vs beam speed comparison is pretty damning. I can see two very small niches where railguns could plausibly kick arse:icekatze wrote:hi hi
Railguns continue to not be very combat effective weapons in the Outsider universe. (Or really any universe with effective beam weapons.)
Also, closing vessels don't need to have their main engines pointed in the axis of movement, they could rotate off axis and still close with their initial momentum.
icekatze wrote:hi hi
Railguns continue to not be very combat effective weapons in the Outsider universe. (Or really any universe with effective beam weapons.)
Also, closing vessels don't need to have their main engines pointed in the axis of movement, they could rotate off axis and still close with their initial momentum.