Won't help. The primary weapons in Outsider have been near-C weapons since (at least as I best recall) before Humanity entered space. Actual engagements happen at enough range that these weapons still often miss. Now, the highest-velocity theoretical mass drivers in Outsider should be around 30% of the speed of light at most. And you aren't having to worry about the surface area that you need to cover, you're having to worry about the volume. And ships can be accelerating. So, to find the volume that the target ship might be in, the most optimistic calculation is to take the velocity of the enemy, add a little for acceleration, multiply by 3, and then cube.Jakelope13 wrote:Very true, but seeing as how the war has become sort-of stagnant (Umiak send out a fleet, Loroi raiders perform hit-and-run maneuvers to whittle down the invading force, then Loroi defense fleets finish off the Umiak forces) I'd imagine that the Terran weapons doctrine would come as a 'breath of fresh air' and, hopefully, turn the tide of the war in the Loroi's favor.Absalom wrote:Mass drivers have approximately zero cost to damage when they encounter a shield, but also have approximately zero contribution towards combat-mode damage-per-second for the ship that carries them. They're very potent demolition devices, but about as useful for Outsider combat as a wrecking ball is for tank combat.
Heck, if the Terran mass driver rounds are coated in enough stealth materials, the Terran ships could effectively act as sniping vessels, firing rounds that hit the Umiak warships for devastating effect without the Umiak picking up on their weapons.
That's the optimistic perspective, and even that looks as nice as it does out of my laziness rather than anything else (I ball-parked figures instead of looking them up, and even then the Terrans aren't capable of building "best case" mass drivers; for a realistic number, look at Fredgiblet's "one hour to hit" statistic). And mass drivers don't do devastating damage (the Mjolnir does, but it's a particle cannon, not a mass driver). And Terran mass drivers have even lower projectile velocities than this implies, so it's a lot worse in reality than "multiply by 3". And Loroi and Umiak vessels perform minor random maneuvers during normal operations just for the purpose of screwing with anyone that thinks they can use a super-stealthy round to sneak-attack them, rendering sniping strategies ineffective as well.
Mass drivers are for utterly destroying stationary targets, and launching various self-propelled munitions so that their engines don't damage the ship, but they aren't appropriate for Outsider space combat. Maybe if the Loroi eventually mount a ground invasion again, the TCA can convert some destroyers or something into self-deployed Bolos, that's about the most you can get out of mass drivers in this setting.
I think that Arioch at one point said that Humanity represents a statistically meaningful production capacity when compared to the Loroi, though it was a good deal less than half. The real issue is that Human drives aren't fit for front-line use, so the only thing we can really contribute are freighters and supplies (if the drivers were up to snuff we could at least provide some kamikaze drones, but the drives can't do the job). Either of these is certainly convenient, but it's of the ignominious "deciding factors" category, not the heroic category that everyone likes.Murica wrote:Well another important question is what humanity industrial capacity ? In other words if we put our backs in it how many ships can we pop out a year?
I forget the details, but somewhere around 80-90% of Humanity lives on or around Earth. And Mars doesn't count towards the figures for Earth. If the UN was staffed, funded, and populated by 80-90% Americans, then it would be called the American Forum For The Nations (or something similarly ostentatious), instead of the United Nations.Jakelope13 wrote:Odd question, but what does 'ECS' stand for? Earth Colonial Ship? Wouldn't the TCA go with something that isn't so Earth-centric?