The Lords of Ruin -- Battletech/Killzone

me.me.here · Apr 3, 2021

armentho said:
and that logic its great untill you hit vietnam or afghanistan in space

Don't kid yourself - the Caliban situation is exactly what vietnam/afghanistan in space would look like in this system. It's the same sort of prolongued nation-building boondoggle that continually sucks up resources but isn't going to go anywhere without actually winning over popular/political support from the locals. Just because the insurgents with local support are blowing other insurgent factions up rather than our troops or the officials of whatever state we're trying to impose doesn't mean it's actually a significantly different situation.

There's a reason people are generally in favor of actually working with a local faction on New Oslo instead of galaxy-braining ourselves something way the fuck more complicated and involved than it really needs to be.

armentho · Apr 3, 2021

me.me.here said:
Don't kid yourself - the Caliban situation is exactly what vietnam/afghanistan in space would look like in this system. It's the same sort of prolongued nation-building boondoggle that continually sucks up resources but isn't going to go anywhere without actually winning over popular/political support from the locals. Just because the insurgents with local support are blowing other insurgent factions up rather than our troops or the officials of whatever state we're trying to impose doesn't mean it's actually a significantly different situation.

There's a reason people are generally in favor of actually working with a local faction on New Oslo instead of galaxy-braining ourselves something way the fuck more complicated and involved than it really needs to be.

welp i really hope it works if we do invade

it would be silly to repeat US mistakes of playing police officer of the world

DaLintyGuy · Apr 3, 2021

me.me.here said:
There's a reason people are generally in favor of actually working with a local faction on New Oslo instead of galaxy-braining ourselves something way the fuck more complicated and involved than it really needs to be.

Working with the local culture there is something I agree with. And if they have restless warriors on the world afterwards, well, we have places for them in Raven Interstellar or a "regular" state sponsored auxillia formation for whacking pirates.

silentorphan · Apr 3, 2021

me.me.here said:
Don't kid yourself - the Caliban situation is exactly what vietnam/afghanistan in space would look like in this system. It's the same sort of prolongued nation-building boondoggle that continually sucks up resources but isn't going to go anywhere without actually winning over popular/political support from the locals. Just because the insurgents with local support are blowing other insurgent factions up rather than our troops or the officials of whatever state we're trying to impose doesn't mean it's actually a significantly different situation.

Admittedly? When I first started reading this quest, I'd expected Portland to be the "eternal guerilla warfare" scenario. It was a bit surprising to see the situation develop differently.

Adventwolf · Apr 3, 2021

Caliban is the way it is because we took bad actions to deal with it and as such it has taken far more time and resources than it needs. We have an army deployed that is greater than the population after all. But we are stuck with it so there is noting we can do to change that now. Caliban is small enough and unimportant enough that no one cares that we invaded but we can't keep doing that or it will become noticeable. There is a reason we are colonizing worlds and building up our subject worlds to. We aren't going to spread out to a bunch of worlds at once we are doing it slowly so we don't stretch ourselves thin.

@Sloth Stalker Also no the CC does not have more forces than we do. We have 900,000 military members, thousands of tanks and heavy combat vehicles, hundreds if not thousands of Aerospace assets both atmospheric and space capable, defensive space and ground bases with weapons, and are able to rapidly deploy all over our area of influence. And that isn't even taking into account our Navy which has ships that can tank the hell out of anything the Great Houses can throw at them. No one in the entire IS has the power to take us out without killing themselves. We are the largest best-equipped military in the Periphery and would in fact be better or tied with the TDF for the best trained one as well.

cryptoam · Apr 3, 2021

me.me.here said:
It's the same sort of prolongued nation-building boondoggle that continually sucks up resources but isn't going to go anywhere without actually winning over popular/political support from the locals.

TBF, I think we are gaining support, at least as a neutral supportive party. If we try interventions, we need a valid reason that the people there will buy to keep our support.

Adventwolf · Apr 4, 2021

cryptoam said:
TBF, I think we are gaining support, at least as a neutral supportive party. If we try interventions, we need a valid reason that the people there will buy to keep our support.

Not really we are just breaking one faction down so we can spark a war that lets us steam roll them then force the Khan to agree to submit by that show of force since aside from some troops coming close to our perimeter they haven't done anything wrong.

Sloth Stalker · Apr 4, 2021

Adventwolf said:
Caliban is the way it is because we took bad actions to deal with it and as such it has taken far more time and resources than it needs. We have an army deployed that is greater than the population after all. But we are stuck with it so there is noting we can do to change that now. Caliban is small enough and unimportant enough that no one cares that we invaded but we can't keep doing that or it will become noticeable. There is a reason we are colonizing worlds and building up our subject worlds to. We aren't going to spread out to a bunch of worlds at once we are doing it slowly so we don't stretch ourselves thin.

@Sloth Stalker Also no the CC does not have more forces than we do. We have 900,000 military members, thousands of tanks and heavy combat vehicles, hundreds if not thousands of Aerospace assets both atmospheric and space capable, defensive space and ground bases with weapons, and are able to rapidly deploy all over our area of influence. And that isn't even taking into account our Navy which has ships that can tank the hell out of anything the Great Houses can throw at them. No one in the entire IS has the power to take us out without killing themselves. We are the largest best-equipped military in the Periphery and would in fact be better or tied with the TDF for the best trained one as well.

Hmm.. You do have a point there. But don't our potential enemies have the resources of dozens of worlds at the least to several hundreds? Even if we stomped them out they would just keep sending in wave after never ending wave. While our industry is amazing our resources aren't anything to the might of hundreds of worlds combined.

But you did make a good point about our star ships. They could have all the battle mech's in the IS and it wouldn't mean shit if they were blown up before reaching the planet. What are our spaceships in comparison to IS space ships. Would our best War ship be able to take out even their drop ships?

If that is the case, can the IS even produce Space ships anymore due to technological regression? Wouldn't every major power be on our ass, Especially com-star, for the ability to make ships alone? even if it was to a lesser quality?

Even if we have been hiding it people are going to be asking questions. Where are you getting those ships? what's that big thing in orbit that looks to be making ships? Your selling outdated ships and now have better looking ones?

And i know we could be keeping it on the down low but with all the government exchange programs it would be laughably easy to infiltrate the Helghast Republic.

silentorphan · Apr 4, 2021

Sloth Stalker said:
If that is the case, can the IS even produce Space ships anymore due to technological regression? Wouldn't every major power be on our ass, Especially com-star, for the ability to make ships alone? even if it was to a lesser quality?

Even if we have been hiding it people are going to be asking questions. Where are you getting those ships? what's that big thing in orbit that looks to be making ships? Your selling outdated ships and now have better looking ones?

I think the IS still has dropship manufacturing, albeit at very reduced capacity. And I don't see why selling obsolete equipment would be worth hassling about--practically all the BattleMech models that manufacturers offer for export sale (usually to the Periphery) are stripped-back versions of what the IS normally uses.

cryptoam · Apr 4, 2021

I think the issue here is that they are seeing us have export ships that can take an considerable amount of punishment. That implies that we have even better ships which could be a cause for concern.

Adventwolf · Apr 4, 2021

Sloth Stalker said:
Hmm.. You do have a point there. But don't our potential enemies have the resources of dozens of worlds at the least to several hundreds? Even if we stomped them out they would just keep sending in wave after never ending wave. While our industry is amazing our resources aren't anything to the might of hundreds of worlds combined.

But you did make a good point about our star ships. They could have all the battle mech's in the IS and it wouldn't mean shit if they were blown up before reaching the planet. What are our spaceships in comparison to IS space ships. Would our best War ship be able to take out even their drop ships?

If that is the case, can the IS even produce Space ships anymore due to technological regression? Wouldn't every major power be on our ass, Especially com-star, for the ability to make ships alone? even if it was to a lesser quality?

Even if we have been hiding it people are going to be asking questions. Where are you getting those ships? what's that big thing in orbit that looks to be making ships? Your selling outdated ships and now have better looking ones?

And i know we could be keeping it on the down low but with all the government exchange programs it would be laughably easy to infiltrate the Helghast Republic.

1. No they do not because again they would kill themselves trying to fight us. Do you have any idea the amount of troops,. supplies, and jumpships they would need to use to even try and take us out? The supply line alone would cripple the economy of the IS powers if they tried. And no we are not at a disadvantage manpower wise or resources wise. Unlike the IS we can support a much larger highly equipped military. We have only reached 1/18th the size of our military dude. And resources while they may have more worlds those worlds are spread out, mostly underdeveloped, and the limited jumpships available means they can't use them. We on the other hand have the ability to make full use and mine the hell out of the worlds in our control and from our much closer allies.

2. Our ships have capital grade armor that is ten times the protection of the normal armor used on dropships. Our ships are 500 meters long and at least a 100 meters wide they out mass and carry enough weapons to deal with anything in the IS. And our Petrusite weapons give us a counter to even warships.

3. And yes they can build ships on their own dude. They can build dropships and jumpships they never lost that ability. They lost the ability to create new designs for jumpships and the creation of warships is all.

4. First of all we don't build ships in orbit we build them on the ground. Second we don't hide it because people know we build ships but even with the armor they are still just oversized dropships as far as anyone is concerned.

5. No it isn't easy. We aren't idiots and keep track of and on the look out for spies and subversive elements.

cryptoam said:
I think the issue here is that they are seeing us have export ships that can take an considerable amount of punishment. That implies that we have even better ships which could be a cause for concern.

No the workhorse can't take a lot of punishment. It is a transport ship now.

me.me.here · Apr 4, 2021

cryptoam said:
TBF, I think we are gaining support, at least as a neutral supportive party. If we try interventions, we need a valid reason that the people there will buy to keep our support.

We are - it's just that 'neutral supportive party' means we aren't backing or being backed by any local groups, which is exactly why it's taking forever to gain the support we could have had in a fraction of the time. We had (and still have, so long as we're willing to accept the reasonable criticism of "why weren't these reasons good enough to act on 5 years ago") valid reasons to intervene - "Stop this warlord from conquering the locals and overthrowing the current leaders" and "Fight to end slavery" are perfectly fine causus belli, so long as you aren't throwing up your nose at whatever foibles your prospective local allies have.

Sloth Stalker · Apr 4, 2021

Adventwolf said:
1. No they do not because again they would kill themselves trying to fight us. Do you have any idea the amount of troops,. supplies, and jumpships they would need to use to even try and take us out? The supply line alone would cripple the economy of the IS powers if they tried. And no we are not at a disadvantage manpower wise or resources wise. Unlike the IS we can support a much larger highly equipped military. We have only reached 1/18th the size of our military dude. And resources while they may have more worlds those worlds are spread out, mostly underdeveloped, and the limited jumpships available means they can't use them. We on the other hand have the ability to make full use and mine the hell out of the worlds in our control and from our much closer allies.

2. Our ships have capital grade armor that is ten times the protection of the normal armor used on dropships. Our ships are 500 meters long and at least a 100 meters wide they out mass and carry enough weapons to deal with anything in the IS. And our Petrusite weapons give us a counter to even warships.

3. And yes they can build ships on their own dude. They can build dropships and jumpships they never lost that ability. They lost the ability to create new designs for jumpships and the creation of warships is all.

4. First of all we don't build ships in orbit we build them on the ground. Second we don't hide it because people know we build ships but even with the armor they are still just oversized dropships as far as anyone is concerned.

5. No it isn't easy. We aren't idiots and keep track of and on the look out for spies and subversive elements.

No the workhorse can't take a lot of punishment. It is a transport ship now.

Cheers mate, Cleared up a lot of misconceptions i had with the setting. Didn't know we made ships on the planet, making them in space must be an IS thing.

Still don't think your taking in the IS numbers right though, but I'll take your word for it.
In saying that if we are as highly advanced militarily as you say we are, we should 'Really' be worried about Com-Star, or at least finding out that they are a threat. I mean they have a tendency to assassinate anyone who utters the words "I've made a breakthrough" and when we complete double heat sinks next turn, well I wouldn't put it past them to fabricate an 'Incident' with the Taurians.

plotvitalnpc · Apr 4, 2021

Sloth Stalker said:
Cheers mate, Cleared up a lot of misconceptions i had with the setting. Didn't know we made ships on the planet, making them in space must be an IS thing.

Ships being made on a planet or in space tends to be a by-the-ship thing. Most dropships are generally constructed planetside, because it's easier and they're capable of taking off from a planetary surface.

Jumpships (and when they existed, Warships), meanwhile, are exclusively constructed in orbit or various other strange places in spess because they aren't structurally sound in gravity/atmo and (in the case of Jumpships) wouldn't have the thrust to reach orbit even if they were on a planet somehow. Plus, KF drives don't work in the gravity of the inner system anyways.

With us, though, our big ships are entirely capable of planetary operations despite everything.

Gmerguy · Apr 7, 2021

Adventwolf said:
1. No they do not because again they would kill themselves trying to fight us. Do you have any idea the amount of troops,. supplies, and jumpships they would need to use to even try and take us out? The supply line alone would cripple the economy of the IS powers if they tried. And no we are not at a disadvantage manpower wise or resources wise. Unlike the IS we can support a much larger highly equipped military. We have only reached 1/18th the size of our military dude. And resources while they may have more worlds those worlds are spread out, mostly underdeveloped, and the limited jumpships available means they can't use them. We on the other hand have the ability to make full use and mine the hell out of the worlds in our control and from our much closer allies.

2. Our ships have capital grade armor that is ten times the protection of the normal armor used on dropships. Our ships are 500 meters long and at least a 100 meters wide they out mass and carry enough weapons to deal with anything in the IS. And our Petrusite weapons give us a counter to even warships.

3. And yes they can build ships on their own dude. They can build dropships and jumpships they never lost that ability. They lost the ability to create new designs for jumpships and the creation of warships is all.

4. First of all we don't build ships in orbit we build them on the ground. Second we don't hide it because people know we build ships but even with the armor they are still just oversized dropships as far as anyone is concerned.

5. No it isn't easy. We aren't idiots and keep track of and on the look out for spies and subversive elements.

No the workhorse can't take a lot of punishment. It is a transport ship now.

I mean yes and no, we have gone over this before multiple times. The only reason we have more advanced material than any Great House is because of the mauling the Succession Wars have caused, a situation that is starting to change in at least the Fed Suns and most likely elsewhere as tech gets stolen and trickles down. Once that happens their sheer scale will put them ahead, but that would take a great deal of time. And even with being a shadow of their former selves the Great Houses still have far vaster reserves due to their sheer manpower and scale, the only one we are even close to would be the cappellans and they are the runt of the Great Houses. Their problem is that they don't have enough material and logistics to man their own territory and invade anyone else, with the caveat that the further away the target is the harder it becomes. What's keeping us safe is primarily is distance, with our martial power backing that up. If a proper House Fleet of Warships existed it would crush us as we are right now, we are fortunate that they both don't exist and that the opportunity cost of sending it our way is to high if it did.

Ferngolly · Apr 7, 2021

Wait, how is our armor better? It started out as inferior to the stuff on a pirate dropship, and we upgraded it, but we're still at IS levels for armor. We haven't researched Star League armors yet.

Our ships are about as durable as combat dropships.

Silversun17 · Apr 7, 2021

Ferngolly said:
Wait, how is our armor better? It started out as inferior to the stuff on a pirate dropship, and we upgraded it, but we're still at IS levels for armor. We haven't researched Star League armors yet.

Our ships are about as durable as combat dropships.

Sheer tonnage of armor rather the per ton protection

Gmerguy · Apr 7, 2021

Ferngolly said:
Wait, how is our armor better? It started out as inferior to the stuff on a pirate dropship, and we upgraded it, but we're still at IS levels for armor. We haven't researched Star League armors yet.

Our ships are about as durable as combat dropships.

Silversun17 said:
Sheer tonnage of armor rather the per ton protection

To be more specific, the way armor works in BT is that effectiveness per ton goes up the more advanced the armor is, at least until you get to the really advanced things, which is where you start having to make trade offs to eek out more performance. Structural materials follows the same trend.

Primitive armor, i.e. the armor we started with, is only 66% as effective as standard armor. Ferro Fib is 12-20% more, but takes up internal space. armor variants based on FF share its trait of trading slots for protection plus some other effect.

prometheus110 · Apr 7, 2021

Voting will close late tomorrow since the site being down messed with my planned close.

Adventwolf · Apr 7, 2021

Ferngolly said:
Wait, how is our armor better? It started out as inferior to the stuff on a pirate dropship, and we upgraded it, but we're still at IS levels for armor. We haven't researched Star League armors yet.

Our ships are about as durable as combat dropships.

Because we are building it for capital ships which give it far greater protection because of the armor scheme. Armor on mechs, CVs, ASFs, Dropships, Jumpshimps, and Warships all can and for the longest time did use the same kind of armor. Much more is just used on a warship and jumpship with a different armoring method that can only be done on the larger scale ships giving it capital grade points.

Gmerguy said:
Primitive armor, i.e. the armor we started with, is only 66% as effective as standard armor. Ferro Fib is 12-20% more, but takes up internal space. armor variants based on FF share its trait of trading slots for protection plus some other effect.

We started out with much worse than primitive armor. Our prototype which was still much better than our starting armor was only 50% after all.

Gmerguy · Apr 7, 2021

Adventwolf said:
Because we are building it for capital ships which give it far greater protection because of the armor scheme. Armor on mechs, CVs, ASFs, Dropships, Jumpshimps, and Warships all can and for the longest time did use the same kind of armor. Much more is just used on a warship and jumpship with a different armoring method that can only be done on the larger scale ships giving it capital grade points.

Not really, Only extremely outdated warships use/used standard armor and the majority that could be upgraded with new armor were (the Vincent is a great example), the vast majority if not all of modern/SLDF era Warships and aerospace fighters use Ferro-aluminum armor, Ferro-carbide armor, and their variants/improved versions which offers even more protection but is even more bulky than Ferro Fibrous armor, not to mention more expensive. But beyond that yes you can get capital scaling armor using standard, it just requires a tremendous amount of armor to do so.

Captain Hunt · Apr 7, 2021

[x] Research Groundwork, Spy games, and TV for all

Adventwolf · Apr 7, 2021

Gmerguy said:
Not really, Only extremely outdated warships use/used standard armor and the majority that could be upgraded with new armor were (the Vincent is a great example), the vast majority if not all of modern/SLDF era Warships and aerospace fighters use Ferro-aluminum armor, Ferro-carbide armor, and their variants/improved versions which offers even more protection but is even more bulky than Ferro Fibrous armor, not to mention more expensive. But beyond that yes you can get capital scaling armor using standard, it just requires a tremendous amount of armor to do so.

I am not talking about specific armor dude I am talking about why capital armor is 10x the point of mech scale armor. In a way that makes sense instead of just game mechanics.

plotvitalnpc · Apr 8, 2021

Adventwolf said:
I am not talking about specific armor dude I am talking about why capital armor is 10x the point of mech scale armor. In a way that makes sense instead of just game mechanics.

Actually it's mostly just a difference in how the points are summarized. They don't want people having to routinely work with numbers in the thousands or tens of thousands while doing naval combat math.

A 100kt spheroid dropship gets 6 standard scale AP per ton of standard armor, with standard armor. A 100kt jumpship or warship gets 0.8 capital scale AP per ton of standard armor (equivalent of 8pts standard scale). So while capital armoring schemes are 33% more efficient, mostly it's just that the points are being summarized on a different scale.

As for why it's easier to armor a capital scale craft than an equivalently sized spheroid? Well, maybe it's just slightly easier to armor a cigar than it is a sphere, in the same way it's easier to armor a sphere than a mega-sized plane.

However, a cigar is neither aerodynamic enough for aerodyne flight, nor is it capable of the sort of controlled descent and stable landing spheroids rely on, so the cigaroid structure is exclusively reserved for space-only vessels.

Gmerguy · Apr 8, 2021

...I have an idea, MAWLRs are really a defensive weapon only given there upkeep, we can make three of them in a single action, and we have three allies. We should totally 'gift' a MAWLR to our allies during our need major diplomacy push, yes we would have to pull the Petrusite Cannon and put in something else but i have a hard time seeing our allies turning down having a MAWLR to defend their capital. even if it cannot shoot down things in orbit

The Lords of Ruin -- Battletech/Killzone

building an 1980s encrypted protocol

building an 1980s encrypted protocol

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