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Department of Starship Design (Trek-ish)

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I still don't think aft T4s are going to be all that useful. We're only going to use the things against a serious enemy if the ship is completely surrounded, in which case we'd definitely be firing the main guns. If we're running away we probably want to jump to warp or cloak, and the T4s won't be all that useful in either scenario.

An enemy fast enough to always engage from its preferred angle isn't going to get caught in the arcs for a T4 battery unless we have one on every facing. A swarm of fighter craft or tiny ships are an issue for the T1 and T2 batteries to deal with.

Karugus said:
That is a crippling gap for a warship and I imagine most large warships are going to have at least 2 torpedoes stern. If we assume their torpedoes are more powerful- as we have WoG almost no one else is currently at even the basic starting techs from character creation, we'd probably want at least 6 prow photonic launchers to try and match 2 aft photon launchers.
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Do we have space to fit 6 prow torpedo tubes? It sounds like the best places to put torpedo tubes is fore or aft.
 
WGDragoon said:
I still don't think aft T4s are going to be all that useful. We're only going to use the things against a serious enemy if the ship is completely surrounded, in which case we'd definitely be firing the main guns. If we're running away we probably want to jump to warp or cloak, and the T4s won't be all that useful in either scenario.

An enemy fast enough to always engage from its preferred angle isn't going to get caught in the arcs for a T4 battery unless we have one on every facing. A swarm of fighter craft or tiny ships are an issue for the T1 and T2 batteries to deal with.
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They'd just be aft guns heavily focused on burst damage. And I don't think it's fair to say our big ships have to be surrounded in order for a smaller ship to get in its rear arc. Maneuverability is relative to the size, a high maneuverability 390kt is less agile than a high maneuverability 180kt. The T2s are a substantial amount of firepower and are probably enough even before the T1s enter consideration but there's absolutely room for our non-prow guns to be firing at times where the prow isn't.
WGDragoon said:
Do we have space to fit 6 prow torpedo tubes? It sounds like the best places to put torpedo tubes is fore or aft.
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We have the space in general and I can see 9 places we could mount torpedoes fore at a glance. We're obviously not going to do it, but there's at least 6 spots aft too.

6 launchers should be 27 spaces, about on the cusp of what we can afford with change left over- even if we do spend 4 spaces on T4s this vote. In a perfect world I would like 2 stern, but that's probably contingent on some of my own more radical proposals I'm saving for later.
 
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Negentropy said:
If you don't mind me asking @Mechanis, how many major planetary bodies (beyond Venna of course) were colonised or other significantly important and/or large colonies (in space stations, on planetoids, moons or minor bodies, etc.) established before the Planet Wars? And how many survived the Planetary Wars, and in what state? We know that Yenna was significantly (although not totally) depopulated and devastated, but were any of the colonies also impacted/damaged, or did they even survive the Planetary Wars?

While in the New Era Yenna has recovered significantly (although importantly not totally in terms of population), have the other colonies in the star system (assuming they were attacked and damaged or destroyed) also recovered, and if so, have they yet returned to or even potentially surpassed (especially if poor homeworld conditions encourage more to emigrate off-world) pre-Planetary Wars levels in scale/scope and/or development/sophistication?

I'm guessing that in-system colonisation and colonial presence remain significant considering the substantial interest and investment that the Stellar Union has poured into not only exploring other systems but also logistically and defensively preparing for extrasolar colonisation (which if I understand correctly is part of the purpose of the "Iron Road" class and the currently in development "Guardian" class, as well as providing faster intra-system transport and defence capabilities as well), considering that would seem to be both a cheaper, faster and overall easier priority if in-system significant colonisation targets remained unoccupied. Now that the Iron Road class is being rolled out, once the Guardian project is completed and has started to be built, and the Star Seeker has completed its maiden voyage and expedition (and presumably found some suitable or interesting candidates) - are one or more extrasolar colonies, outpost, stations, structures/elements/infrastructure, etc. being planned, or have they already begun being founded/constructed, for (long-term) habitation, scientific (eg observatories), economic (eg resource extraction/exploitation, trading, resupplying and repair, etc.) or defensive (eg monitoring, stationing forward elements, repair and resupply, weapons platform, etc.) purposes?

I'm guessing there's probably also a bunch of smaller colonies (asteroids, space stations, etc.), maybe dozens or even hundreds of smaller outposts on minor celestial bodies/objects that are probably beyond the scope of detailing too much at our level of simulation outside of considering them and their needs as a group (for instance, if all or many of them joined or didn't join the alluded above Outer Union), correct?

Thanks for any questions you can answer and thanks for creating such an interesting quest and setting - can't wait to see where you'll take us next!
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There are indeed a significant amount of in-system colonies and settlements, and they tended to have it at least as rough during the Planet Wars as the homeworld did. But to give an idea of the scale, the largest war memorial is the Cenotaph in Talassa, which lists every person known to have died in the Planet Wars on its surface. It's a spindle shape 500 meters around at the base, and goes smoothly to a maximum diameter of 850 meters about a fiftyith of the way up.
It's also five kilometers tall.
And those names are in, well, very small print. Counting second and third order effects, the pre-Planet Wars system had something on the order of eight to ten times the population which survived them, and the modern system still hasn't made even half that yet as of the Star Seeker's launch.
(The Outer Union is very defunct at this point, as it was a loose coalition of revolutionaries mostly unified by "Feck all them rich feckers downwell, living like kings while we're eating reprocesed algae and pills, and getting killed by shoddy lowest-bidder equipment and corner-cutting" and thus it fell apart fairly quickly)
But yes, as surmised, there are various moons and other planets colonized in the system, and a healthy heap of space stations as well (Senla Station alone is a good sized city in itself, not even considering the various nearby industrial platforms and independent habs, for example.) At some point I will finish that system write-up...
 
Roaming_Guardian said:
Thaaaaaat might be a bit excessive I'll be real.
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I mean, it was an unrestricted nuclear and KKV war. In a system well into the space age with loads of colonies and stations. The government that rose out of the ashes and rubble and Glass was understandably invested in creating extremely unsubtle reminders of why that can never be allowed to happen again.

Edit: basically, the various memorials to the Planet Wars are roughly as subtle as a cinderblock to the face very much on purpose, because the sheer scale of the death and destruction involved dwarfed pretty much any ten of the most bloody wars before then put together just in direct casualties, let alone second or third order effects from the devastation of infrastructure and environment. The Stellar Union has from the beginning in large part existed specifically to prevent the colonialism and political factionalism that lead to the Planet Wars to begin with, and especially in the early years they were not exactly subtle about it.
 
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Gavinfoxx said:
Star Trek is full of super-substances...
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In this case it's more super tech, since it's just a granite-crete casting held up mostly by gravity manipulation and structural integrity fields. But yeah, the Cenotaph is designed to be visible from orbit. It's surrounded by a fairly impressive flat plane of concrete too, because they filled in the crater that used to be the Old City and just left it as a flat plane to increase the Cenotaph's impact.

Because keep in mind, this is literally right in the middle of the Union's capital. Subtle, it isn't; the thing is designed so that nobody making decisions about the Union's future can avoid seeing it for more than an hour or two unless actively avoiding doing so.
 
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blankmask said:
I would say they succeeded in that at least. Holy shit that's a big monument. It's almost big enough to serve as a space elavator on its own.
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No, it is not, not unless we have a comically thin atmosphere. A five kilometer tall structure on Earth built directly on top of Mount Everest would still be in the troposphere for the majority of its height with roughly two kilometers in the stratosphere. A useful space elevator in geostationary orbit would be thirty-five thousand kilometers tall.
 
Mechanis said:
In this case it's more super tech, since it's just a granite-crete casting held up mostly by gravity manipulation and structural integrity fields. But yeah, the Cenotaph is designed to be visible from orbit. It's surrounded by a fairly impressive flat plane of concrete too, because they filled in the crater that used to be the Old City and just left it as a flat plane to increase the Cenotaph's impact.

Because keep in mind, this is literally right in the middle of the Union's capital. Subtle, it isn't; the thing is designed so that nobody making decisions about the Union's future can avoid seeing it for more than an hour or two unless actively avoiding doing so.
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The UFP would love and hate the monument in equal measure I think.
 
One thing that really does bum me out about trek is that space elevators are damn near useless. 99% of planets see their needs met by transporters, and a shuttle the size of a minivan can leave a gravity well with ease.
 
Roaming_Guardian said:
One thing that really does bum me out about trek is that space elevators are damn near useless. 99% of planets see their needs met by transporters, and a shuttle the size of a minivan can leave a gravity well with ease.
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Space elevators are just a type of (relatively*) cheap spacelift; if you have other means of cheap spacelift then that sort of thing is just a vanity project.

*They're fairly cheap to run, but very expensive to build.

anyway.
Adhoc vote count started by Mechanis on May 7, 2024 at 6:49 PM, finished with 78 posts and 16 votes.
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Hm.
Right then.
Mechanis threw 3 2-faced dice. Reason: 1 for gun, 2 for none, 2/3 Total: 4
2 2 1 1 1 1
 
I admit I was torn on this one. The firepower to cost math on the pair of batteries was pretty damn good. It's not what I voted for but I admit I did strongly consider it.
 
Mechanis said:
Space elevators are just a type of (relatively*) cheap spacelift; if you have other means of cheap spacelift then that sort of thing is just a vanity project.

*They're fairly cheap to run, but very expensive to build.

anyway.
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That's why you don't build a space elevator. You build an Orbital Ring or a Tethered Ring. Something with lots of other uses too.
 
Roaming_Guardian said:
Ya know I'll be real, I'm not sure if theres a benefit to an orbital ring like that. Not compared to a large number of smaller stations.
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Lots of space to use and build on, have tons of storage, and the industry be super compact that wont negatively impact a planets environment, not to mention every surface of it can have defenses on it so there is never a chance for the enemy to wait for a opening or gap. Not just good for industry but science as well, using the worlds largest particle accelerator for science. the ring can have sensors to see into deep space.

A station is isolated and have limited space compared to a orbital ring which also limits how much defenses they can have same for science and industry capacity.

Not to mention a orbital ring can assist in orbital lifting. To fleet storage capability, and I say fleets because a station can have maybe a couple ships in it to maybe half a dozen ships as dry docks, while a orbital ring can pretty much fit hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of ships inside its structure.

This is just a few things I can think can be a use for a orbital ring.
 
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Yes but its massively more complicated to build, and you can do pretty much the exact same things with a bunch of smaller stations.

And you dont have to worry about a war crimey enemy blowing it up and sending city sized chunks plummeting into the surface.
 
Roaming_Guardian said:
Yes but its massively more complicated to build, and you can do pretty much the exact same things with a bunch of smaller stations.

And you dont have to worry about a war crimey enemy blowing it up and sending city sized chunks plummeting into the surface.
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No you cant just do it with a bunch of smaller stations, stations have a size limit and a space limit around orbiting a planet, a planet with a moon would cut where a spacestation can go with things called Lagrange points which limits where you can put stations, while leaving gaping holes in your orbital infrastructure although I guess you can have lots of tiny satellites for defenses.

What Im getting at here is a orbital ring would be super to have for industry in all forms. As for war crimey enemy blowing such chunks out of the ring to rain on a planet they would require a lot of effort to breech such a structures defenses and security, not to mention sensors, and thats if we are the federation type to have so many aliens within our space that its not suspicious in seeing a alien just walking around.

But if a war crimey enemy willing to do such a thing to a ring structure, they will also be capable of doing the same to stations and create something called kessler syndrome which is just creating so much garbage that it affects orbitals to the point ships will have a hard time getting near without something punching a coin sized hole into the hull.
 
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Turn 3: Project Guardian, Weapons 6/7 (Point Defense)
  • Threadmarks
    • After intense debate on the subject, it is decided to go through with mounting a small number of Type 4a cannons covering the aft on both the dorsal and ventral surface. The last portion of the ship's energy weapons will be a collection of Type One Disruptor batteries, and here argument is fierce. While theoretically able to support up to seven guns per battery, power use and computer runtime projections are… Highly unfavorable to the ability to do so whilst having enough mounts for reasonable coverage. Reducing the number of guns per battery will allow more individual batteries to be mounted, helping to improve overall coverage by decreasing blind spots and reducing single point of failure issues, the question is how much—pairs should be the minimum, but three or four gun batteries in some locations may be desirable.
    There are 36 possible locations for batteries of Type One disruptors, 19 on the dorsal surface and 17 on the ventral surface; additionally, 3 more may be added to the secondary hulls. Each may hold between 2 and 7 individual mounts, with a general recommendation to avoid exceeding 4 in order to maintain sufficient distribution between batteries. Please ensure your plans include how many guns you wish to mount to a specific location.
    Dorsal


    Ventral


    [ ] (Write-in plan)
    The dorsal hull may mount 19 Type 1 batteries, the ventral hull 17. 3 may be added to the secondary hulls, one per hull. Each battery may carry between 2 and 7 guns.
    Please Vote By Plan ​
    One Hour Moratorium ​
     
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    • Lagrange points are USEFUL for space stations. But you dont need one for every single one. There is a near infinite amount of potential orbits for stations in a system as complex as our home.

    Hell, you can actually put stations in orbits around lagrange points.

    Orbit at different heights, different inclinations, the only real limit is how many you can build and eventually traffic concerns. In just a single orbital plane, you could have thousands of Trek style 'drydocks', strung like pearls around the planet.
     
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