Good points
@Snowfire. It might just be that kinectic impactors like asteroids are informally banned in war because of the chance for catastrophic casualties if a sufficiently large asteroid impacts the planet behind the defenses with sufficient velocity. I'm guessing both the Empire and NASP want to rule planets and aren't pursing a victory at any cost doctrine.
Or to put it another way, given the fixed orbit of planets and the fact that ships could jump in near an asteroid belt and volley up literally thousands of asteroids for every planet in that system...even small forces could genocide an entire system. That may not be the kind of war NASP or the Empire want to fight. Does that make sense or am I totally missing your point?
Asteroids make
awful weapons. They are massive and have uneven densities and compositions. So for a given energy of attack, the asteroid is slow relative to a smaller manufactured munition and is at risk of breaking up during boost phase. Against an interplanetary civilization it's really dang easy to foil an asteroid attack and it's far more lethal to land on the asteroid, refine some iron railgun slugs on-site, and then shoot those at the enemy.
Attacking with an asteroid only makes sense against civilizations that are pretty pathetic (which, to be fair, most space opera civilizations are).
The Empire and the NASP in this setting don't seem pathetic to me.
Ultimately, i believe most sci-fi require a certain suspension of disbelief on some cases, I dont see why that would be different with this quest. I think Packrat would not enjoy writing a setting where all physics are consistent and space battles is done fully realistically. I doubt the questers would prefer seeing that compared to the napoleon-esque space combat.
To have Nelson-in-space, you do have to have some suspension of disbelief, it's true, since some made-up physics is required.
But there's really no reason why it can't be fun AND internally consistent. It's not like physics is a particularly difficult science and this isn't a quest that has a high level of detail to struggle to keep straight.
I would also add that shields add more distance to an attack and having maneuvering jets doesn't take away from battle stations purpose. You still cut out the FTL, scanners, a lot of communications, life support systems, and you have a stationary mobile platform controlled from a central location. Sensors could be geared more towards detecting movement that is counter to the relative movement of the system. So if something is coming in hot from out of the system it would flash big on sensors. That would also be a good reason why ships don't move at near C speeds to quickly move in and out of engagement radius, too easily spotted.
The fact that railguns are dodged so easily lends this idea some credence.
Even firing a "cold" object from a ship (let's generously assume the ship is about room temperature) is gonna stick out like a sore thumb against the cold as all hell microwave background radiation. Even with modern technology, an alien bullet fired at Earth would stand out like a hot coal in Siberia.
And the fact that railguns are dodged so easily and don't vaporize ships on impact points to munitions going pretty "slow" in this setting.
I'd be very surprised if anything we were firing was moving faster than 10% of light speed (which is still screaming fast) and probably railgun rounds are pretty small. Under a kilo probably.
I'm still extremely confused as to why battleships are barely as massy as top of the line military naval craft today, but that's a separate conversation. Seriously though, we've built cruise liners twice that mass, and if you've got the industrial capacity to curtain a planet in minefields, building bigger should be trivial. Given the systems present weapons wise, bigger is also almost certainly better.
It may be a limitation of the jump drives we use.
Bahahahahaha no. Our PC can probably 1v1 a battleship with his cruiser. 3 battleships? No. Not happening. Especially because they have support ships.
Yeah, the multi-attack bonus those 3 capitals could get against our cruisers would be insane.
I'm not too worried about Endeavour, but we could take painful losses to the rest of our fleet. And charging the BBs with Endeavour alone is probably unwise.
No. 110PC for a ship we can't keep is too high a price.
Betcha if we gave it to Adald we could get a PC refund.
If we could buy the BC now for 110PC, use it to smash the 3BBs over Imhotep, then give it to Adald and gain 55PC from the governor... Well, I'd say it was worthwhile.
But it looks like we will also get the BC at a discount due to the emergency. I think this works. We can still buy Reinhard his own BC later and give
Sword to a loyal captain.
[X] Harass. If you combine your ships with those of the newly arrived heavy cruiser squadron then you can try to pick apart the rogue fleet over Imhotep.
I am voting for harass because it seems we can get a discount BC for this and I want to capture a battleship. (Also, gutting the fleet over Imhotep will make next turn
much more manageable.)
@Packrat: Is there any chance we can get Hompsand transferred to our command in time to launch our attack on Imhotep?
[] Captain Dame Rynie Sarea Hompsand – Your XO in your previous command, she has just been promoted but not yet assigned. A member of a minor noble house, you mentored her extensively and she is, you feel, probably now one of the most effective ship commanders in the empire. (Diplomacy 11, Strategy 15, Tactics 16, Prowess 9, Subterfuge 13, Loyalty 16)
Having a subordinate with stats like hers would be
really useful right now.
fasquardon
