Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

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Philly
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Philly »

RedDwarfIV wrote:
fredgiblet wrote:Nah, the Loroi can do it faster than we can either way. We DO have our area mapped and one of the somewhat valuable things we have is our maps and the Orgus maps.
The Loroi can do it faster, yeah...

... but they haven't, despite having a lot longer to do it in. And now they're probably too busy building and crewing warships to be trying to get survey spacecraft operational.
Except for, if I remember correctly, the war is heading into Human space in the near future. The Loroi will map out what they can and just take from us what they don't have. The Human race can't offer anything to the Loroi since they trump us in every aspect.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

If I were a Loroi commander, I would be suspicious of any navigational maps that were taken by force from an opponent who knew I was coming. It would be enough to wipe the records out of spite, but option of faking records could be even more devastating.

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Cy83r
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Cy83r »

icekatze wrote:hi hi

One long hyperspace jump might be faster than a bunch of short ones, but it significantly increases the risk of missing your target and being lost in hyperspace forever. Or if you're slightly less unlucky, getting pulled out by a random star that just happened to be in your path, probably billions of lightyears off course.

The question is, was that by random chance, or by some ancient design? Dun dun dun. :P

In as much as space fighters are practical at all in science fiction, the Starfury is practical in all the same ways that the Gunstar is practical. They have some respect for Newton, but understandably no respect for Tsiolkovsky.

A more symmetrical design might be more effective in terms of maneuverability. A design with propellant tanks might be more plausible in terms of reality.
Tetships are overcomplicated for the limited redundancy they provide. Linear designs, I think, will see popular usage long into the development of spheroids and long after spheres are abandoned as a waste of structural bracing.

Proper space-fighters, IMNSHO, would be short-range attack drones, the archetypal 'lancer'; a small AWACS craft sits off at the edge of the engagement window (with escort) and holds the drone operations shed in a mission module section, possibly multiple sheds if the admiralty feels safe putting all their eggs in one basket. AWACS serve dual role as jamming and counter-jamming specialist craft in addition to being the primary operations platform for drone pilots. Think of it like an AC-130 except your guns are a flock of predator drones three hundred miles off your port window and your gunners sit in the spooky piloting them; there is also a large semi-offensive radome on the roof. Drone launch cradles optional. Your enemy is the russian version piloting a much larger cloud of long-range cruise missiles through your spooky's jamming cloud- the mission is to efficiently cycle your predators through the engagement zone as they launch missiles at missiles and return to an airfield to rearm while the airfield launches more predators to replace them before the remaining russian missiles can reach the airfield and hit sensitive buildings. If you're lucky, you will be able to take out the Russian Spooky before you run out of predator drones or time and be able to jam the weaker radars on the unassisted cruise missiles.

By the way, the russians have an arsenal ship over the horizon and are launching more cruise missiles to resupply their spooky operators. If either of your launch facilities are slightly off on their timing, especially your ground crews rearming, launching, and landing the predator drones, the other side will quickly gain numerical superiority and defeat the opposing AWACS craft and its escorts before moving on to the airfield/arsenal ship. The russians have logistical advantage, you have the endurance advantage.

Easy Mode: your enemy has only one flight of drones and no launch facilities to reinforce its combat cloud
Hard Mode: both sides have multiple AWACS groups trying to outmaneuver each other
Nightmare Mode: they also have multiple launch facilities
Bear Mode: Russian arsenal ships can launch all of their missiles at once, the war is now to beat their logistical chain of arsenals rotating out of the motherland's homewaters
Bugbear Mode: apply these concepts to two spacefaring parties where distances are longer, timing is critical, and communication is limited to what your personal taskforce can see through the lightspeed barrier. you still aren't the russians.

Welcome to to the Loroi/Umiak spacewar.

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icekatze
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

All the problems that Tetships have are exactly the same problems that the Starfury would have, only worse, since they're not symmetrical on all axes. I'm not even going to get into a discussion about what an actual realistic space fighter might be like, cause space is so vastly different than atmospheric engagements that trying to make comparisons is inevitably going to be silly. My only point, which I will reiterate, is that the designs were largely inspired by previous science fiction entries, with all the realism (proper RCS thrusters) and un-realism (Having the CIC on an exposed tower) that the past designs had.
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Whether this is homage or a rip-off, is also something I am not making a statement on. It does happen all the time in science fiction though.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Grayhome »

Has Arioch or anyone else mentioned how large/powerful Terran civilian vessels are? If there are any battleship size freighters which can be retrofitted into combat capable vessels, I would think that would help quite a bit.

I was just reading about Zheng He's Merchant Fleet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He

And specifically the massive size of his aptly named "treasure ships":http://5thworld.com/Paradigm/Postings/! ... 20Ship.jpg

I have to wonder how the Loroi/Umiak would feel if a few dozen 1000+ meter long, heavily armed merchant vessels suddenly showed up in their territory looking to trade.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by GeoModder »

Grayhome wrote:I have to wonder how the Loroi/Umiak would feel if a few dozen 1000+ meter long, heavily armed merchant vessels suddenly showed up in their territory looking to trade.
Elated because of the target practice? :lol:
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

I think that if humanity could start growing Loroi food, and start producing their brand of spaceship fuel, then humanity would have something valuable to offer. (Even if it isn't anything they didn't already have before, just more of it.)

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Philly »

Grayhome wrote:Has Arioch or anyone else mentioned how large/powerful Terran civilian vessels are? If there are any battleship size freighters which can be retrofitted into combat capable vessels, I would think that would help quite a bit.

I was just reading about Zheng He's Merchant Fleet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He

And specifically the massive size of his aptly named "treasure ships":http://5thworld.com/Paradigm/Postings/! ... 20Ship.jpg

I have to wonder how the Loroi/Umiak would feel if a few dozen 1000+ meter long, heavily armed merchant vessels suddenly showed up in their territory looking to trade.
From my understanding they wouldn't have to worry about anything really. Terran tech is way behind what the Loroi and the Umiak have. They would just pick them off at their leisure from a safe, maintainable distance. Terran space weapons can hurt them, but they have to get really, really close to have a chance of hitting which is unlikely since Terran engines can't match the other two at all.

Basically, the Human race can't offer anything in a fight except being decoy targets at best.

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RedDwarfIV
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by RedDwarfIV »

Philly wrote:
RedDwarfIV wrote:
fredgiblet wrote:Nah, the Loroi can do it faster than we can either way. We DO have our area mapped and one of the somewhat valuable things we have is our maps and the Orgus maps.
The Loroi can do it faster, yeah...

... but they haven't, despite having a lot longer to do it in. And now they're probably too busy building and crewing warships to be trying to get survey spacecraft operational.
Except for, if I remember correctly, the war is heading into Human space in the near future. The Loroi will map out what they can and just take from us what they don't have. The Human race can't offer anything to the Loroi since they trump us in every aspect.
That's the beauty of this. The Loroi won't have to devote resources and potentially lose spacecraft mapping out an area that they have already assessed has low prospects for colonisation. They could hand that job off to the Terrans, who are more experienced at doing longer jumps, and have people ready and waiting to do it. They can also readily produce spacecraft capable of doing the job, while the Loroi need to spend those resources on building war craft. And we could be doing this mapping if they asked us now right up until the war starts heading our way, while the Loroi would be stressed for time if they waited until there was no choice but to do surveys.

Point being, it's a job we're both suited for, and have the resources/technology to accomplish. The Loroi are less suited for it and lack the resources, so the way I see it is, it's a perfect way for Humanity to get into the war at the shallow end. Until they reach Loroi tech levels, they aren't going to be much use for anything else.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Razor One »

Tactically there's not much humans can offer the Loroi. Strategically is another matter.

If we take the viewpoint of the Loroi, humans can be useful in a strategic sense. They can be used as a staging point for deep strikes behind enemy lines. I seriously doubt they're guarding their borders along the wastelands as diligently as they are towards the Steppes. Using humanity in this manner does several things. If the raid is successful, it destroys the enemies capacity to wage war, cripples their industry (if not their morale, if that even applies) and eases pressure on the Loroi home territories, allowing them to push forward.

If not successful, it opens a new front on the war where the tyranny of distance works towards the Loroi's favour. The Umiak have to expend vast resources and manpower to defend a large front from which the Loroi can strike at multiple systems, drawing forces that would otherwise go to the steppes and thus weakening the Umiak defensive line as a whole. If the Umiak want to eliminate the Loroi presence attacking from this unprecedented vector, they'd need to cross a large and uninhabitable distance, where the Loroi's usual tactics and strategy work to their favour. Expenditure in such attacks would blunt offensives against the Loroi home territories at least and draw off defense fleets at best.

It doesn't really matter whether or not the Loroi are capable of attacking the Umiak on two fronts or not in either case. They just need to fool the Umiak into thinking that they can. This would cause them to sub-optimally distribute their forces, which in turn will give the Loroi the edge they'll need in their home territories.

It does earn humanity the Umiak's ire, but a token defense force and the tyranny of distance should provide an ample defense. Any force sufficient to conquer humanity will require resources be drawn off the from the front lines and exposed to a very long and exposed path where they can be easily interdicted. The rest depends on how much the Loroi decide to trust humans. They're distant enough that they likely won't come into a territorial conflict for generations, and are similar enough that such a conflict will either be completely inevitable or non-starter, it really does depend on how Loroi and Humanity interact on a macroscopic level. I figure that the Loroi would be wary of giving humans anything game-breaking such as the Plasma Focus or defense screens, but things that are more basic, such as entry level anti-matter-alike production and technologies that would ease logistical support of a Loroi garrison might be on the table. The serious stuff would be held back for a situation in which humanity prove to be a valuable asset in their war and are being seriously pressed.

Regardless, that's all in the long term, and it assumes the Umiak have actually managed to break Loroi farsensing instead of this being a local effect of the Naam system.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by fredgiblet »

Razor One wrote:They're distant enough that they likely won't come into a territorial conflict for generations
I'm not sure I agree. If the borders are not set by agreement during the initial alliance then humans would likely start pushing as quickly as possible to colonize and claim territory as close as possible. The more they can grab that better for humans in the long run. If the borders ARE set by treaty immediately then they'd still be well served pushing those limits as much as possible to get more territory.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Razor One »

fredgiblet wrote:
Razor One wrote:They're distant enough that they likely won't come into a territorial conflict for generations
I'm not sure I agree. If the borders are not set by agreement during the initial alliance then humans would likely start pushing as quickly as possible to colonize and claim territory as close as possible. The more they can grab that better for humans in the long run. If the borders ARE set by treaty immediately then they'd still be well served pushing those limits as much as possible to get more territory.
For what purpose? Setting up colonies and claiming territory in a barren region is an incredibly costly venture. The resources you can gain by mining those far off worlds can be more easily gained by mining closer to home, trade is pointless because we have a differing biochemistry and few things they want besides perhaps some degree of unskilled labour.

There's not much reason in expanding pointlessly and expensively unless there are reasons to do so. It would break the Terrans economically to do a land rush into the Wastelands. You could try and make the colonies independent, but without the necessary military force projection to patrol those colonies and the strength to defend them against external aggressors, they'd rapidly fall out of Terran influence and more likely turn to the Loroi for military and police protection. You could argue it on ideological grounds, but that will only take you so far, and it only makes sense if the systems you're colonising has something more attractive than Barren Rock #11919192284927.

No, the Wastelands are more or less the "International Waters" of space. You can certainly live in international waters if you tried, but it would be an incredibly expensive and uneconomical affair. If there were resources that couldn't be gained otherwise (unlikely) or habitable worlds in the intervening space (islands) then yeah, that changes things, but the intimation is that it's a barren region.

Humans are in a completely empty region and have massive buffer zones between themselves and anyone else of note. It's best to colonise the regions that make the most economic sense to do so. Habitable worlds and systems close to infrastructure and resupply, the low hanging fruit of the cosmos, are the order of the day. The Terrans best bet is to tech up as rapidly as possible, and once they have better information to go off, expanding their scientific and industrial base will be their best move, rather than joining the war directly.

In short, it doesn't make economic sense to colonise barren systems in that fashion. There are better prospects closer to home, there's nobody pressing the TCA's borders, and the Loroi are unlikely to claim those systems at any point in the future.

Even more shortly, colonising close to home trumps colonising afar, developing existing colonies further trumps new colonisation efforts.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by TrashMan »

icekatze wrote:hi hi

All the problems that Tetships have are exactly the same problems that the Starfury would have, only worse, since they're not symmetrical on all axes. I'm not even going to get into a discussion about what an actual realistic space fighter might be like, cause space is so vastly different than atmospheric engagements that trying to make comparisons is inevitably going to be silly. My only point, which I will reiterate, is that the designs were largely inspired by previous science fiction entries, with all the realism (proper RCS thrusters) and un-realism (Having the CIC on an exposed tower) that the past designs had.
What are you talking about?

The Starfury has it's engines and RCS thrusters at the tips of the wings. This is exactly how it should be for good mobility.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by fredgiblet »

Except that the Loroi are already moving towards human space due to the war. Full colonies aren't necessary or, as you point out, economical, however a land grab to ensure we have as much territory as possible is in our best interests as we will have more options in the future and will have a larger buffer between Earth and the Loroi. Setting up outposts suffficient to have a reasonable claim on the systems will be expensive as well, but owning territory is a good thing.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Razor One »

fredgiblet wrote:Except that the Loroi are already moving towards human space due to the war. Full colonies aren't necessary or, as you point out, economical, however a land grab to ensure we have as much territory as possible is in our best interests as we will have more options in the future and will have a larger buffer between Earth and the Loroi. Setting up outposts suffficient to have a reasonable claim on the systems will be expensive as well, but owning territory is a good thing.
Source on this? The map suggests some level of expansion in the anti-spinward direction, but none towards human territory, which is both coreward and spinward, in the opposite direction of the implied Loroi territorial expansion. Even so, the Loroi are focused entirely on war with the Umiak. Expensive colonisation missions are not on their agenda, since resources directed towards expansion are resources not going towards the war effort. Since the Loroi are described as being pressed, I'd wager that unless the conflict comes to a swift conclusion, any designs on expansion for the Loroi is going to take decades if not centuries.

Grabbing land only makes sense if you can actually hold that land and make good use of it. Reach isn't what matters for empires, grasp does. Any claims the Terrans make that the Loroi feel are provocative can be easily contested and burned if it comes to blows. Aggressively claiming territory for shits and giggles is more likely to earn an aggressive response than peaceful and careful expansion.

Terran space is itself about 35 light years across encompassing 40 stars, which the TCA presumably has a good handle on. What you're proposing is an expansion that, at the low end, trebles the size of Terran space for no other reason than to simply claim the land for reasons.

But let's run with that. The TCA has 60 combat capable ships in its fleet. Terran space expands from 35 / 40 (LY / Stars) to 135 / 160. This assumes an even distribution roughly in line with Terran space. Let's assume that the ratio necessary for Terrans to have a good policing handle on their space is a 3/2 ratio to the number of stars.

So, now instead of having to patrol 35 LY and 40 systems, they have to patrol 135 LY and 160 systems. The 3/2 relationship demands a minimum military expansion of 240 combat capable vessels, a quadrupling in size, to say nothing of the logistics necessary to support fleet movements, outposts, sensor networks and so on. Even for a war footing that's a massive expansion in the military.

I'm not seeing the logic of going for a land grab at this time. The Loroi aren't going to waste valuable resources on expansion when it could cost them the war. The Umiak are unlikely to swing by Terran space until they determine there's a threat, which can be avoided by not expanding too far towards their or the Loroi's borders. The Terran military is woefully outclassed, and if the Loroi ever got serious about territorial expansion, there wouldn't be a thing Terrans could do to stop them without matching technological might or trying for asymmetrical warfare and drowning them in numbers. Numbers which can best be generated via developing existing colonies and expanding as those colonies fill, not by trying to spread themselves thin. If there's a worry about future expansion, there's nothing in those systems except for barren and inhospitable worlds, a poor choice for expansion unless the Terrans are starving for resources, and there's plenty of territory in the Coreward direction with plenty of room for growth and a better prospect for habitable planets than a region known to be barren.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by GeoModder »

As said before, colonisation isn't really feasable for at the very least the Loroi. Not enough info on the Umiak to make a definite statement on their capabilities. Scouting outwards, and finding or blocking new approach routes to deny the enemy an easy way to invade the other's territory is what's probably done. And establishing some sort of outpost to 'guard' these new possible approaches the enemy could use, or as a depot to arm and fuel your own incursion fleet(s) if you think you found a new route into enemy territory.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by icekatze »

hi hi
TrashMan wrote:What are you talking about?

The Starfury has it's engines and RCS thrusters at the tips of the wings. This is exactly how it should be for good mobility.
What are you talking about? I never said anything contrariwise to the idea that having thrusters on a ships extremities would be good for mobility. In fact, I explicitly stated that it was the case.

I'm not sure how I can possibly be any more clear about what my argument has been.

As for the Loroi, I seem to recall reading that they are indeed actively seeking to colonize more worlds, so long as the process is not too taxing on resources. Most of the new colonies are probably still being set up though, and who knows how long it will be until they start being productive.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by RedDwarfIV »

They're also holding off colonising the Wastelands because they don't need to... yet. At some point they'll be forced into it, and if they're forced into it, they're not ready.

Out of interest, Arioch, how useful would Terran ships be as merchant shipping within the Loroi Union? A merchant spacecraft, above all, needs to be economical. Which means you want to use the least fuel, and the least expensive fuel.

Hydrogen and helium are pretty inexpensive if you can get a cloudscoop or atmocruiser system set up. Fusion drives may be out of their league against anti-matter drives when it comes to raw thrust, but antimatter drives are out of their league against fusions drives when it comes to economy.

Offering a merchant fleet might allow the Loroi to concentrate more on building warships, same as how doing surveys of the Wastelands for them would allow them to avoid spending resources on building and crewing survey spacecraft.


Since Humanity for the forseeable future doesn't have the warfighting capabilities to join the fight, there are still a lot of ways they could support it.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

If fusion drives made for more efficient merchant vessels, then wouldn't the Loroi already be using them?

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by RedDwarfIV »

Arioch wrote:If fusion drives made for more efficient merchant vessels, then wouldn't the Loroi already be using them?
Likely, yes. You've been telling me how this anti-matter analogue requires huge amounts of energy to produce. Fusion fuels, meanwhile, can be found quite easily in gas and ice giants. To get them out of the atmosphere you either use a cloudscoop (expensive to install, but only requires significant power to run pumps, and that power can be gotten with fusion) or atmo-cruisers, which are less expensive but could be lost easily if they suffer failures. Aerostats are a possibility, but only work in low windspeeds and can be hard to dock with. If either is in place, you can fuel a fusion-powered spacecraft relatively inexpensively.


The resources to build warships have to come from somewhere. If the Loroi can divert resources away from building and fueling merchant ships, they can use it to build and fuel warships. But there would need to be something to replace the merchant ships that aren't being built. That, the Terrans can do.
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