Traveller, The Rise of Empire: A Naval Design, Procurement and Command Quest

The main problem with trying to insert spies is that they can see you doing it, unless you do a very slowboat crawl in system with maximum stealth and surreptitiously drop them in. And even then, not a chance I'd want to take.

As @Pyrelight writes long-range stealth raider would need to be defined as to what we want it to do - insert special ops? Boarding operations? In and out bombardment of enemy orbital infrastructure or hitting civilian shipping? Considering tonnage limitation on fuel, we'd have to specialize and choose. Going bigger helps a little, but not much since jump fuel is % of tonnage.
 
"Hello, fellow Menorbians. All this mess recently sure is terrible! Why can't big nations leave normal people alone? Heard anything interesting lately? Glory to the Daughter, friends!"

The best kind of spy is the one who comes in through normal trade channels and spends all her time reading newspapers and having boring mundane conversations and sending boring sappy letters home to the family.

Trying to parachute in someone who's completely foreign, ethnically and culturally, we may as well just mail them straight to enemy counterintelligence.
 
I played around a bit and you can make a 6000 ton stealth boat with 5 torpedo bays (large), some point defense batteries, and some laser turrets. All crew accommodations are barracks and it's only got M-6 drive, but it does have six jumps! And would let you throw a lotta torpedoes at orbital infrastructure.

Alternately could give it LMDCs to just yeet stuff like stations.
 
"Interstellar Cruiser" - 1000t
"Cruiser, Fast Attack" - 3000t
"Cruiser, Large Flagship" - 10,000t
for fuck's sake just call it a battleship
This cruiser inflation is getting silly.
I'll admit to doing it partially as a bit, partially because switching to "battleship" feels trite (we're not a navy), and partially because for the most parts these ships vaguely do fit the traditional niche of a cruiser, where the definition is doctrinal as opposed to "a cruiser is a ship that's smaller than a battleship but bigger than a destroyer". The CLF would be a mix between the cruiser role and the battleship role, but I am adamant that it not be called a battlecruiser or else I will use the nuclear option (the "is Iowa a battlecruiser" debate)
This isn't very "rules-based international order" but if you're a hegemon with thorough superiority to any possible rival you can get away with a lot of shit. The question is, are they overconfident from too long beating up on low-tech planets who can only muster a handful of light defence boats, or are we overconfident from never getting into a real fight and about to sign ourselves up to get facerolled by a squadron of 50,000t battlewagons?
We don't know, but we've also kinda passed the buck on doing the imperialism thing for a while now. We've been told that the primary mechanic for us to grow more capable is conquest, either military or some other approach. We've managed to fail our way into sphere-ing Cassalon and Xyri, but that's it. If we don't pick someone to push against eventually, we'll be at a greater and greater disadvantage.

I would note that they didn't immediately throw a squadron of 50,000 ton battlewagons at Menorb, despite us getting uncomfortably close to winning the "border conflict" there. The war plan we're thinking of is also to take things relatively slow, building logistics links north and connecting probing attacks, meaning if we do need to deescalate, we have options to do so.

And hey, if it really is an existential enemy, then the quest dies, we're all sad, and we bug Section to start a new one :p
For a "submarine", would it actually need to be big? You could probably do it on 500t I'd think.
So, just to be clear, there's two roles we're looking at here. One of them is a stealth boat that we can use to do unexpected things. The other is an extreme-range cruiser which can strike at rear areas. While they may overlap, there's also an argument that they shouldn't.

As for minimum sizes, stealth adds nothing to the tonnage, so we can make it as small as we want. The extreme jump range does impose some limits, but that gets into what we want it to do - it's possible to make something with 6 jumps of range on very low tonnage, but it'd have no ability to do anything when we get there.
Rolewise something like this would have a couple duties:
  1. Sneaky backline bombardment
  2. Commando raids on insufficiently-protected targets
  3. Wartime combat service
  4. Stealth recon
If you're just jumping in, creeping in-system, kicking some mass driver slugs down range, watching the impact and booking it you don't really need armour or much of a ship at all.

If you want to use it like the Lydians or specialise in commando ops or build something that can be completely self-sustaining in the field you might need a bigger ship but I'm not sure a full-size cruiser is necessary.
1 is a very viable use case, but it runs into questions of if there's something we want to be doing a hit-and-run bombardment of. If we can identify, for example, the enemy's orbital shipyards, then that could work.
2 is iffy. Commando raids require enough FLF troops to bypass automated defensive measures, which they presumably have, and then achieve a meaningful effect on target. Personnel suffer fatigue after extended periods aboard a ship, as well as large supporting infrastructure (e.g., FLF require armouries, medical bays, assault shuttles, and training spaces) that means that we'd be looking at a very large ship for what I think is a questionable role. Edit: also, you'd be alerting the locals that something jumped in, and if there's a high enough value target to justify deploying an expensive stealth ship, they'll probably be willing to defend it with something that will be painful if alerted.
3 isn't very worthwhile IMO. For one, we're unlikely to win a sensor/stealth fight against the Lydians. The ~2 TL advantage in sensors and software means they have to roll something like 3-4 lower than us for detection. Our current strategy of waiting for the Lydians to open fire, weathering the damage, and then hitting back hard enough to disable their now-revealed ships seems to be working out. Also, most of the fleet is designed around a 2-jump range, so a 6-jump ship wouldn't provide any benefit while interoperating.
4 might be surprisingly viable. To quote the rules, beyond 50,000 km, a jump flash is just a blip on the display that could alternately be a comet. If we jumped into a system, released a recon platform on an unexpected trajectory, then jumped out, it'd be very difficult to determine where that recon platform is and they'd need to waste a lot of time searching for it. However, such a platform is probably going to want to be unmanned to maximize how long it can stay in the system before the crwe goes insane, meaning it can't jump itself.

1 and 4 favour a jump tug combined with a stealthed payload. Jumping is relatively obvious and requires humans (which possibly suggests why the Lydians don't reinforce systems we've taken - they would throw away the stealth advantage). In case 1, we can save mass if we have a "weapons pod" that contains a supplementary J-drive, the fuel tankage needed to get into the system, and a torpedo or LMDC bay (A-5 Vigilante vibes). In case 4, we would want the smallest, stealthiest, longest lifetime sensor platform possible so that it's less likely to get intercepted.

2 and 3, meanwhile, are things I'm not as gung-ho about.

I also think this is missing option 5, which would be interdiction of enemy commercial and logistics traffic.
Features that would be good for one, as I see it:
  1. Range, of course, to fuck around outside the reach of supply lines. But how much? We could, for example, have a wolfpack staging out of deep space supply caches or linking up with flotilla ships. More than 6 jumps is probably a waste, and even then I'd probably want some of it to be droptanks.
  2. Armament - torpedoes are flexible and could be used in combat but can be intercepted; mass drivers are destructive but can't hit a movable target; mdcs are both murderously destructive (perhaps imbalancedly so?) and lethal in combat, but are relatively short ranged against a moving enemy.
  3. Sensors - a stealth craft probably shouldn't be using extendo-eyes or extension net drones but an on-board observatory could be very useful for target identification. Though would every ship have them, for solo missions, or would these operate as a wolfpack with one of the ships being a dedicated stealth surveyor?
  4. Defences including M-drive speed - a stealth ship's main defence is not being seen. Anything else is to buy time to jump away. Ideally you should never be in range of an armed opponent, so more than token armour and point defence is pointless. Though defence weapons don't weigh much.
  5. Reaction drive boosters are handy for making an escape or for keeping up with your own torpedoes while you fire multiple salvoes for a simultaneous impact but need fuel.
  6. Raiding capacity - cargo, marines, assault shuttles. Helping ourselves to vital intel or grabbing prisoners for interrogation could be useful, but heavy to carry and dangerous. Dumping a stack of mines onto someone else's backline might also be a trick, though damned unfriendly behaviour.
  7. Crew endurance - common spaces, RnR facilities etc. I know about submarines but we have a small population and most people aren't built for living in a tin can for months. Even if you tough it out, better facilities means better performance in the critical final moments of a mission.
  8. Self-sustainment - hydroponics, self-refueling drones and refineries, small-scale mining, refining, and manufacturing capacity to fabricate parts and either pad out supplies or perform missions of potentially indefinite length. Automating away crew positions makes hydroponics a lot easier.
Not to rain on your parade a bit, but I'm pretty sure it's not possible to include everything you've listed on a single hull. I did the math quickly, and you're using more than 100% of a hull. For example, a M-6 drive and its powerplant requires around 7.11% of the hull, added onto the 62.5% of the hull needed for the J-drive and its fuel. Reaction drives are even heavier. There are ways to get around this, but it's still going to be a very large spacecraft for what is, right now, an undefined mission.

I'd suggest that we try and pare this down to the bare minimum of what we intend for it to do. It's tough enough making a spacecraft that can do everything when 60% of the hull isn't already taken up by other things.

That said, the ideas are pretty good for their specific roles - if we want to engage in commerce raiding or use these ships as a "nuclear deterrent in space", for example, the stuff you list in 7 and 8 would be very useful.

I suspect it might actually be easier to make a spacecraft which has nice enough accomodations that the off-duty crew are on R&R time, and combine that with a ramscoop or fuel refinery and a small manufacturing facility to let it operate "forever", once we hit a certain jump range...
Droptank inaccuracy presumably only matters for the final jump, so if your target is 3 parsecs away and you have to make the whole flight alone you'd want a ship with 2 droptanks and 4 fuel internally; you'd arrive accurately using internal fuel, then return.
I've been toying with the idea of not having drop tanks at all. If we instead use an oversized jump drive and dock crewless spacecraft that are 99% fuel tank (and 1% small fusion plant) to the ships, we don't have to worry about the possibility of misjumps (with the horrific consequences) that drop tank usage brings. It'd also let you deploy your own fuel depots on the way in that you can rendezvous and tank off of on the way home.
Do we have Emissions Absorption Grids or are those the wrong edition?
That's been replaced by the lowest tier of stealth coating, and doesn't stack with other stealth stuff.
I think there's also some kind of half-thrust stealth M-Drive but I'm not sure what TL it is or if I hallucinated it.
CONCEALED MANOEUVRE DRIVE
Manoeuvre drives, whose function is described in
Ship Design on page 15, use thruster plates to move
a ship without the need for propellant. Manoeuvre
drive thruster plates are typically located on the outer
surface of a ship (facing aft is standard) where they
can perform best. While acceleration to their facing is
optimised, a ship may accelerate in other directions at
reduced thrust without turning the ship to a new facing.
For example, thruster plates can accelerate a ship at
up to 25% of their maximum thrust to port or starboard
and 10% to fore. Therefore, a ship with Thrust 4 could
exert one G of thrust to left or right and 0.4G to fore
without the need to turn the ship on its axis.
As such, thruster plates need not be exposed at all
and can optionally be concealed behind bulkheads.
This rather severely degrades performance but there
are some ship designs that are willing to accept the
trade-offs for added stealth. See the Sensors chapter
on page 55 for more information about features that
make a ship easier to detect, including the use of their
manoeuvre drives.
Concealed manoeuvre drives are contained within
ship bulkheads but must be within three metres of the
accelerating surface of the ship. Concealed manoeuvre
drives add 25% to the tonnage and cost of the drive.
The additional tonnage comprises a system that
contains and exhausts thruster plate ionisation out of
specially designed ports, reducing their detectability
to almost nil. Concealed manoeuvre drives cut
performance in half (round down), so a ship with Thrust
2 is reduced to 1 and so on. These drives are designed
to operate within confinement, so simply removing the
outer bulkhead does not add to their performance.
TL;DR, half thrust, 1.5x the cost, and they let us maneuver without being detected. Could be very useful for something we drop into the outer orbitals and then allow to coast around the inner system.
Settling into a cold war could still be expensive if we have to fortify our three main systems on the assumption that a stealth squadron could jump out of the black at any moment. Though we'd have to do that in wartime too.
We should do this anyways. It's also very cheap.

Greater strike range. If we had a supply point in menorb, for instance, we could strike anywhere in that exclusion zone Lydia has. With one parsec of jump range it restricts us to just the systems around Menorb. Additionally, Menorb is easier for the Lydians to strike in return, so my ship proposal would able to strike Lydian territory while keeping our logistics further away from them.
Strike range to do what, though? Is this a platform for us to bombard their planets? Attack their fleet? Target their merchants?
 
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I'll admit to doing it partially as a bit, partially because switching to "battleship" feels trite (we're not a navy), and partially because for the most parts these ships vaguely do fit the traditional niche of a cruiser, where the definition is doctrinal as opposed to "a cruiser is a ship that's smaller than a battleship but bigger than a destroyer". The CLF would be a mix between the cruiser role and the battleship role, but I am adamant that it not be called a battlecruiser or else I will use the nuclear option (the "is Iowa a battlecruiser" debate)
One version of the etymology I've heard is that it came from Line Of Battle Ship idk if it's real.

At the point where we're deploying them in massed battle fleets of half a dozen the CFAs won't really be "cruisers" anymore either.

You could do a Homeworld and have "Heavy Cruisers" that are the heaviest combatant in the navy but traditionally that's more about armament than size IE a proper heavy cruiser would be a CFA with a bunch of Large Mass Driver Cannons or whatever the proper name for the 100t non-prototype guns is.

Alternately you could do a late-war USN and have a battleship-in-all-but-name and call it a "Large Cruiser" for some reason, presumably to get it past congressional budget watchdogs vetoing real battleships or smth.

No, because it didn't instantly explode on contact with the enemy.

We don't know, but we've also kinda passed the buck on doing the imperialism thing for a while now. We've been told that the primary mechanic for us to grow more capable is conquest, either military or some other approach. We've managed to fail our way into sphere-ing Cassalon and Xyri, but that's it. If we don't pick someone to push against eventually, we'll be at a greater and greater disadvantage.

I would note that they didn't immediately throw a squadron of 50,000 ton battlewagons at Menorb, despite us getting uncomfortably close to winning the "border conflict" there. The war plan we're thinking of is also to take things relatively slow, building logistics links north and connecting probing attacks, meaning if we do need to deescalate, we have options to do so.

And hey, if it really is an existential enemy, then the quest dies, we're all sad, and we bug Section to start a new one :p

So, just to be clear, there's two roles we're looking at here. One of them is a stealth boat that we can use to do unexpected things. The other is an extreme-range cruiser which can strike at rear areas. While they may overlap, there's also an argument that they shouldn't.

As for minimum sizes, stealth adds nothing to the tonnage, so we can make it as small as we want. The extreme jump range does impose some limits, but that gets into what we want it to do - it's possible to make something with 6 jumps of range on very low tonnage, but it'd have no ability to do anything when we get there.

1 is a very viable use case, but it runs into questions of if there's something we want to be doing a hit-and-run bombardment of. If we can identify, for example, the enemy's orbital shipyards, then that could work.
2 is iffy. Commando raids require enough FLF troops to bypass automated defensive measures, which they presumably have, and then achieve a meaningful effect on target. Personnel suffer fatigue after extended periods aboard a ship, as well as large supporting infrastructure (e.g., FLF require armouries, medical bays, assault shuttles, and training spaces) that means that we'd be looking at a very large ship for what I think is a questionable role.
3 isn't very worthwhile IMO. For one, we're unlikely to win a sensor/stealth fight against the Lydians. The ~2 TL advantage in sensors and software means they have to roll something like 3-4 lower than us for detection. Our current strategy of waiting for the Lydians to open fire, weathering the damage, and then hitting back hard enough to disable their now-revealed ships seems to be working out. Also, most of the fleet is designed around a 2-jump range, so a 6-jump ship wouldn't provide any benefit while interoperating.
4 might be surprisingly viable. First off, there's a potential advantage (like the size reduction on our fusion plants) that can be taken for jump drives that lets them steaithily jump into the outer limits of a system. I'm not sure if you can combine disadvantages and advantages to get advantages at the base tech level, but if we can, then that would be an option. Alternatively, we could just gamble it - to quote the rules, beyond 50,000 km, a jump flash is just a blip on the display that could alternately be a comet. If we jumped into a system, released a recon platform on an unexpected trajectory, then jumped out, it'd be very difficult to determine where that recon platform is. However, such a platform is probably going to want to be unmanned to maximize how long it can stay in the system before the crwe goes insane, meaning it can't jump itself.

1 and 4 favour a jump tug combined with a stealthed payload. Jumping is relatively obvious and requires humans (which possibly suggests why the Lydians don't reinforce systems we've taken - they would throw away the stealth advantage). In case 1, we can save mass if we have a "weapons pod" that contains a supplementary J-drive, the fuel tankage needed to get into the system, and a torpedo or LMDC bay (A-5 Vigilante vibes). In case 4, we would want the smallest, stealthiest, longest lifetime sensor platform possible so that it's less likely to get intercepted.

2 and 3, meanwhile, are things I'm not as gung-ho about.

Just to rain on your parade a bit, but I'm pretty sure it's not possible to include everything you've listed on a single hull. I did the math quickly, and you're using more than 100% of a hull. For example, a M-6 drive and its powerplant requires around 7.11% of the hull, added onto the 62.5% of the hull needed for the J-drive and its fuel. Reaction drives are even heavier. There are ways to get around this, but it's still going to be a very large spacecraft for what is, right now, an undefined mission.

I'd suggest that we try and pare this down to the bare minimum of what we intend for it to do. It's tough enough making a spacecraft that can do everything when 60% of the hull isn't already taken up by other things.

That said, the ideas are pretty good for their specific roles - if we want to engage in commerce raiding or use these ships as a "nuclear deterrent in space", for example, the stuff you list in 6, 7, and 8 would be very useful. I suspect it might actually be easier to make a spacecraft which has nice enough accomodations that the off-duty crew are on R&R time, and combine that with a ramscoop or fuel refinery and a small manufacturing facility to let it operate "forever".
The list of stealth ship features was more of a menu - definitely wouldn't all fit in one hull.
I think 5 would be either combat-useful weapons (not mass drivers) or marines depending on whether you want to smash things or steal them. Yarr.

Recon/espionage and deep strike roles share a lot; if nothing else, a ship that wants to hunt backline infrastructure is going to need the ability to find its own targets in space where nothing else can go.

It could also be useful in concert with the scout fleet, making preliminary insertions to make sure nothing nasty is waiting.

For a long-term espionage craft endurance would be very useful, unless you're shotgunning a bunch of stealth recon probes through the system, heading back to an RnR ship, and coming back in a month or two to pick the probes up on the other side of the system.

And of course a deep survey craft with self-sustainment capabilities could head out on a five year mission to seek out etc etc.

But something built to creep around and watch things and sometimes carry out a sabotage strike or strategic interdiction mission would be better if we could have a bunch.

Honestly the espionage would be the main benefit.

I don't think anything truly stealthy could carry enough firepower to count as a true strategic deterrent in the sense we think of it today.

I think the best bet for something like that would be a fleet of habitat-ships and factory-ships and mobile shipyards that roam around in the empty corners of the map under conditions of maximum paranoia.

"You might overcome us, but in five years, or ten, or a hundred, our kin will make you pay in blood."

The problem then becomes 1. paying for all that and 2. keeping the Designated Exiles, who carry everything they need in their ships and who were probably cracked in the head to volunteer for this in the first place, from culturally diverging from the planet-dwellers and heading off to make their own destiny.

Maybe some big monstrosity with a spinal mass driver could work as a boomer-analogue, WoBS Erinyes style? Idk how Traveler does RKKVs and intercepting mass driver slugs. I don't think there's anything that can do it but I dunno about the canon setting.
I've been toying with the idea of not having drop tanks at all. If we instead use an oversized jump drive and dock crewless spacecraft that are 99% fuel tank (and 1% small fusion plant) to the ships, we don't have to worry about the possibility of misjumps (with the horrific consequences) that drop tank usage brings. It'd also let you deploy your own fuel depots on the way in that you can rendezvous and tank off of on the way home.

That's been replaced by the lowest tier of stealth coating, and doesn't stack with other stealth stuff.


TL;DR, half thrust, 1.5x the cost, and they let us maneuver without being detected. Could be very useful for something we drop into the outer orbitals and then allow to coast around the inner system.

We should do this anyways. It's also very cheap.


Strike range to do what, though? Is this a platform for us to bombard their planets? Attack their fleet? Target their merchants?
So using oversized jump drives and bigger drop tanks to carry them through the jump and safely discard them after arriving, or one big tank that can carry the ship and itself around for some combination of boosted and solo jumps?

Speaking of jump physics, is anything special needed to do a synchronised jump, or is it just that we haven't organised experiments or smth? Would have expected scattered arrivals to be a problem that got solved once we ironed out jump mechanics.
 
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Regarding the long range ship proposal, I think a six jumps of fuel is necessary, it provides a 3 parsecs range of penetration into enemy territory and then a return trip. Four jumps of fuel for two parsecs effective range may be enough for the Lydians, though I doubt they are two jumps from Menorb, but it won't be enough in the future when we may need to make our displeasure known in areas further afield. All this ship needs is fuel tanks, jump drive, engines, and missile/torpedo tubes. It is a highly specialized ship meant to damage targets of opportunity. It needs to be large to fling enough missiles to get past whatever of systems are ready, and I don't think a small vessel would have the capacity. As for putting refueling/logistics bases in empty space, it would work for a bit, but that is assuming that the enemy wouldn't start trying to find where the ships jumping in system, blowing stuff up, then jumping out again are coming from.

The more that we add to this ship, the less effective it will be at its intended purpose. The closest I can see this ship being multipurpose, is if we make several designs all based on the same hull. Anything more than that and it will be a ship with 60% tonnage taken by fuel, that can't fight peer opponents, and has two varied a weapon package to engage effectively at a given range
 
One version of the etymology I've heard is that it came from Line Of Battle Ship idk if it's real.

At the point where we're deploying them in massed battle fleets of half a dozen the CFAs won't really be "cruisers" anymore either.

You could do a Homeworld and have "Heavy Cruisers" that are the heaviest combatant in the navy but traditionally that's more about armament than size IE a proper heavy cruiser would be a CFA with a bunch of Large Mass Driver Cannons or whatever the proper name for the 100t non-prototype guns is.

Alternately you could do a late-war USN and have a battleship-in-all-but-name and call it a "Large Cruiser" for some reason, presumably to get it past congressional budget watchdogs vetoing real battleships or smth.

No, because it didn't instantly explode on contact with the enemy.


The list of stealth ship features was more of a menu - definitely wouldn't all fit in one hull.
I think 5 would be either combat-useful weapons (not mass drivers) or marines depending on whether you want to smash things or steal them. Yarr.

Recon/espionage and deep strike roles share a lot; if nothing else, a ship that wants to hunt backline infrastructure is going to need the ability to find its own targets in space where nothing else can go.

It could also be useful in concert with the scout fleet, making preliminary insertions to make sure nothing nasty is waiting.

For a long-term espionage craft endurance would be very useful, unless you're shotgunning a bunch of stealth recon probes through the system, heading back to an RnR ship, and coming back in a month or two to pick the probes up on the other side of the system.

And of course a deep survey craft with self-sustainment capabilities could head out on a five year mission to seek out etc etc.

But something built to creep around and watch things and sometimes carry out a sabotage strike or strategic interdiction mission would be better if we could have a bunch.

Honestly the espionage would be the main benefit.

I don't think anything truly stealthy could carry enough firepower to count as a true strategic deterrent in the sense we think of it today.

I think the best bet for something like that would be a fleet of habitat-ships and factory-ships and mobile shipyards that roam around in the empty corners of the map under conditions of maximum paranoia.

"You might overcome us, but in five years, or ten, or a hundred, our kin will make you pay in blood."

The problem then becomes 1. paying for all that and 2. keeping the Designated Exiles, who carry everything they need in their ships and who were probably cracked in the head to volunteer for this in the first place, from culturally diverging from the planet-dwellers and heading off to make their own destiny.

Maybe some big monstrosity with a spinal mass driver could work as a boomer-analogue, WoBS Erinyes style? Idk how Traveler does RKKVs and intercepting mass driver slugs. I don't think there's anything that can do it but I dunno about the canon setting.

So using oversized jump drives and bigger drop tanks to carry them through the jump and safely discard them after arriving, or one big tank that can carry the ship and itself around for some combination of boosted and solo jumps?

Speaking of jump physics, is anything special needed to do a synchronised jump, or is it just that we haven't organised experiments or smth? Would have expected scattered arrivals to be a problem that got solved once we ironed out jump mechanics.

Oh, if it's a menu, then yeah.

I still lean more towards a stealth submunition or parasite craft on a jump tug. Space is really, really, REALLY big; if we're jumping entirely into empty hexes, the odds of us running into someone within weapon range are effectively nil - if we are confined to a flat plane (which we aren't, there's a third, unrepresented coordinate), the odds of jumping to within distant range of someone are on the order of 10^-17. We can basically say that a ship jumping into an empty hex (or even jumping into a hex where there's a system, but doing so far away from said system) will never get intercepted. This means that the stealth craft only needs to be able to keep the crew going for a short amount of time and doesn't need to carry all that fuel and stuff.

5 isn't a good idea IMO, but I threw it in there for completeness's sake. It's very unlikely you'd be able to catch a ship transiting jumpspace (you can defend out to the 100D limit pretty easily), and while you could cause a mess if there's a lot of traffic between the inner and outer system, we can't guarantee that'll be the case and it makes more sense to target the non-maneuvering destinations of those trips with railguns than to try and hit things on the way. If we're ever in a situation where we don't have enough firepower to do that, we should leave; we do not have the population for long, attritional fights.

Agreed, but I think there's a slight difference in how they'd be put together that merits a deeper look.

The problem with using it as part of the scouting fleet is that ships are not stealthy when jumping. The Lydian ships are stealthy because they're (presumably) already in the system; if one jumped on top of our fleet, it'd be quickly detected and destroyed. You could use it to jump really far out in the system and then coast in while hoping nobody checks the jump flash, but that's slow and expensive and doesn't really gain much against an alert enemy (I hope we've not been ignoring jump flashes in our oort cloud equivalent).

I'd shotgun the recon probes and leave, then return later to pick them up. Jump flashes will be investigated, and I suspect most of the recon probes will be found. Losing a 35 ton probe is a lot less painful than losing a 300 ton recon vessel with its crew. We could even do the former with a few CFAs, since they could each carry 3 recon probes. If we wanted to get really fancy, we could even fit ramscoops to those probes so that they have indefinite endurance, lurking around the system and recording signals until a friendly ship pops back in to read them. Very Operation Ivy Bells.

A deep survey craft doesn't need to be stealthy, though. It'll be jumping as much as possible, which makes it very conspicuous.

We could make a strategic deterrent... if it were nuclear. It doesn't need to be that stealthy, it just has to hide in an empty hex perpetually, jump in to the 100D limit, throw a LOT of nuclear orbital bombardment torpedoes, and then accept you're not going home.

I mean, one solution to the cultural divergence is to get a bunch of octogenarian pilots and put them in low sleep until they get woken up by a virtual medic, and hopefully enough survive to launch the retaliatory strike.

We'd use an oversized jump drive, then dock the tanks to the ship and jump with them. We'd then empty a tank into the main fuel tanks, discard it, fly away far enough that it doesn't interfere with the jump, and repeat. That's opposed to drop tanks, which as far as I understand it, are discarded after the inflation of the jump bubble and carried in the jump bubble with you.
 
"Interstellar Cruiser" - 1000t
"Cruiser, Fast Attack" - 3000t
"Cruiser, Large Flagship" - 10,000t
for fuck's sake just call it a battleship
This cruiser inflation is getting silly.

If we are building the big warship with maximum (military hull) armour, then Interstellar Ironclad has a nice ring to it.

(Crystalironclad!)

As @Pyrelight writes long-range stealth raider would need to be defined as to what we want it to do - insert special ops? Boarding operations? In and out bombardment of enemy orbital infrastructure or hitting civilian shipping? Considering tonnage limitation on fuel, we'd have to specialize and choose. Going bigger helps a little, but not much since jump fuel is % of tonnage.

Why do we even need the 6-jump capability in real terms? If it is going through the empty sectors, then it's nearly impossible to intercept it there. Just send the normal-fueled ship and the FSS to refuel it on the road.
 
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13-2: Chasing Polyphemus New
Adhoc vote count started by 4WheelSword on Oct 26, 2024 at 5:48 AM, finished with 80 posts and 9 votes.

  • [X] OPLAN: Liberty Ship
    [X] Plan: Circle Four Service Replenishment Program
    -[X] Attempt to peacefully retrieve the diplomatic team from Menorb. While there, try and deploy stealthed spy sensors to collect information on Menorb, and if possible, embed clandestine intelligence assets. Also attempt to determine more about Menorb's willingness to voluntarily side with the Lydians after the Lydians have been ousted.
    -[X] Utilize the new surveyors and some moderate escorts to attempt a deep run around known Lydian space to try and get an idea of what's beyond them to the Galactic East and West, as range and logistics allow.
    -[X] Stations should be designed of standard "cells" that can link together. Fuelling, replenishment, mining, and manufacturing cells should be fully automated. Defence and recreation cells should be semi-automated.
    -[X] Purchase TL10 weapons and drives from the Aslan, in a repeat of the previous deal. Ask for a discount because we're going to be using it to deal with the Lydians, who they have had negative encounters with in the past.
    -[X] The MIC should assess the ongoing integration of Aslan immigrants into Home society.
    -[X] See if anyone else is willing to give us anything because they hate the Lydians and would be happy to see us fight them.
    -[X] Create a new organizational unit of the FLF based around a half-platooon.
    -[X] Reduce the number of crew on the CFA through automation. Scale medical bays, armouries, accomodations, assault shuttles, and common areas to the reduced crew in order to free up the necessary tonnage. Inquire with line captains and marines to see if a single shuttle would be appropriate if the second shuttle were replaced with a pair of lighter sensor drones.
    -[X] If possible, integrate improvements in weapons into the CFA Flt. IIs to further free up tonnage.
    -[X] Impress upon the Citizen's Council that we want to begin the buildup necessary to defeat the Lydians once and for all. They've been asking for us to fight the war, and this is it. Point out that, while it will take years and much sacrifice, following the liberation of the northern polities, there will be vast new markets for Home's goods to be sold at and we will make lots of money off of our investment.
    -[X] Clandestinely reach out to the Daughters to gain their support in this war.
    -[X] In addition to the defensive and logistics/R&R/manufacturing stations, begin drafting construction of new warships that can better make use of new technologies, including a successor class to the CFAs for escorting the fleet and a Cruiser, Large Flagship to lead the fleet and carry the mass drivers in turrets (with the hull forming the basis of an eventual fleet carrier).
    -[X] Draw up plans for a large-scale smash and grab raid on the "prison planet" utilizing the MAT and a converted modular conveyor for passenger transport and sufficient number of escorting vessels to deal with a force of stealth ships or potential orbital / ground defenses.
    [X] OPLAN: Liberty Ship
    -[X] Attempt to peacefully retrieve the diplomatic team from Menorb. While there, try and deploy stealthed spy sensors to collect information on Menorb, and if possible, embed clandestine intelligence assets. Also attempt to determine more about Menorb's willingness to voluntarily side with the Lydians after the Lydians have been ousted.
    -[X] Utilize the new surveyors and some moderate escorts to attempt a deep run around known Lydian space to try and get an idea of what's beyond them to the Galactic East and West, as range and logistics allow.
    -[X] Stations should be designed of standard "cells" that can link together. Fuelling, replenishment, mining, and manufacturing cells should be fully automated. Defence and recreation cells should be semi-automated.
    -[X] Purchase TL10 weapons and drives from the Aslan, in a repeat of the previous deal. Ask for a discount because we're going to be using it to deal with the Lydians, who they have had negative encounters with in the past.
    --[X] The MIC should assess the ongoing integration of Aslan immigrants into Home society.
    -[X] Reduce the number of crew on the CFA through automation. Scale medical bays, armouries, accomodations, assault shuttles, and common areas to the reduced crew in order to free up the necessary tonnage. Inquire with line captains and marines to see if a single shuttle would be appropriate if the second shuttle were replaced with a pair of lighter sensor drones.
    -[X] If possible, integrate improvements in weapons into the CFA Flt. IIs to further free up tonnage (notably non-prototype beam barbettes on the B design).
    -[X] Impress upon the Citizen's Council that we want to begin the buildup necessary to defeat the Lydians once and for all. They've been asking for us to fight the war, and this is it. Point out that, while it will take years and much sacrifice, following the liberation of the northern polities, there will be vast new markets for Home's goods to be sold at and we will make lots of money off of our investment.
    -[X] Clandestinely reach out to the Daughters to gain their support in this war.
    -[X] In addition to the defensive and logistics/R&R/manufacturing stations, begin drafting construction/design of new and existing warships. Revise the CFA-D into a Flt II design for future construction that takes advantage of new technology to improve capabilities and increase firepower. Begin design of a Cruiser, Large Command that provides command facilities for a formation and mounts powerful railgun weaponry as a primary armament and is capable of providing command and control to an entire fleet. This hull should also form as the basis for an eventual fleet carrier. Revise the patrol carrier design to carry autonomous strike drones (based on the same 10-ton light fighter chassis or similar vessel), using tonnage from pilot living quarters to install improved PD and improved sensor and computer capabilities.
    -[X] Draw up plans for a large-scale smash and grab raid on the "prison planet" utilizing the MAT and a converted modular conveyor for passenger transport and sufficient number of escorting vessels to deal with a force of stealth ships or potential orbital / ground defenses.
    [X] OPLAN: Colditz
    -[X] Write in: Focus our efforts on long-range recon and surveillance of Lydian space, culminating in a prison break of as many Lydian political prisoners as possible via an FLF Ranger drop alongside a simultaneous rescue operation on Menorb-as long as intelligence proves these freed prisoners can be trusted. Full retrofitting of our fleet to meet the inevitable Lydian response, and eventually launch a full liberation of their "rightful territory", should be conducted in concert with our Aslan and human allies in Xyri and Cassalon
    -[X] Non-automated platforms - we cannot trust a hackable computer.
    -[X] Write in: Rather than reducing crew comforts, reduce crew size via automation, freeing veteran spacers to crew new FFEs and CFAs as they are built.


OPLAN: Liberty Ship

Available Budget: 882.1375MCr
Current Dockyard Usage: 12,000/21,500Dtons + 7,400Dtons in civilian yards
Current Pilot Usage: 85/100



MIC Report on Aslan Integration
The Aslan on Home have come in several waves of immigration over the last five years, with a steady trickle of incidental immigration in between these major 'waves'. Emigration, that is the movement of citizens into Aslan space, has been far more limited without the state-incentivised resettlement that several Aslan prides have enjoyed. At this point, some 25,000 Aslan of all ages and genders live on or near home, almost ten percent of the population of Keoiri and an estimated 0.5% of the greater Aslan polity. A question is raised by the MIC, asking at which point the greater Aslan Hierate may consider this population abroad might be a significant enough bloc to raise queries about their treatment from the government.

The Aslan are studious, hard-working, devoted to industry, and fit comfortably into Home society. While they have caused some minor issues with the friction between Aslan challenge and formalised conflict culture and the more laissez-faire approach of Home's citizenry to interpersonal conflict, on the whole the Aslan have been model citizens and hard workers. Those industries that do employ these strong and capable workers report them to be committed and fierce, striving to excel and prove their place in Home's society.

There has been some additional friction with displaced workers native to home and workers coming in from Aslan immigrant populations - certainly, there is a kind of populist messaging that implies to the people that the lions will be replacing the immiserated worker at all levels of society and will leave the human populations to rot. They imply that the human population will simply be left to rot without any sort of government subsidisation of their survival. Perhaps fortunately, rather than being captured by fascists or other extremist thought, most of these proletariat populations have instead turned to the Daughter's charity for comfort and succor. However, as with all immiserated populations, it is likely to require greater observations and perhaps some work to reintegrate them societally in a way that provides them a less susceptible position to extremist positions.

We should expect the population of Aslan to more than double over the next five years, especially if we invite additional populations to emigrate. By 30y we should be seeing numbers of above 100,000 and a significant minority of Home's population will be Aslan. What this means for the future we cannot entirely say, but we should be seeking closer relations with the greater Aslan polity to better support these groups.

Post-script: The first Aslan males have begun volunteering to join the Home Space Warfare Service and internal review demonstrates them to both be excellent close-quarters fighters and confident sailors.



Purchasing Technology
The problem with buying a great deal of technology from a near-peer power is that it leaves you susceptible to diplomatic overtures that leave the junior party in a position that is, if nothing else, restrained. In this case, diplomatic outreach to the Aslan in order to acquire additional technology - weapons, advanced star drives and improved plant efficiencies - is met with a rather stern position from the technocrate. It is simple - in return for these advanced technologies, the Aslan would demand:
- Annual payments equal to between 10 and 20% of the budget of the HSWS.
- A combined defence treaty that benefits the less numerous Aslan military far more than it does Home.
- The deployment of a permanent guard force to Aslan space equivalent to that deployed in Home, half HSWS and half Aslan forces.

Given this push-back, the Citizen's Council asks the HSWS if it really needs more advanced technology and cannot simply make do with what it has. If the Aslan are not content with simply pushing additional immigrants into Home controlled space in a way that is controllable by home, then what other options are there?

Of course, we could always try to win these technologies using a short, negotiated conflict...

How does the HSWS respond?
[ ] We should sign a treaty in order to acquire these technologies.
[ ] We should make do with what we have for now.
[ ] We should discuss the idea of a war-for-technology with Aslan diplomats.



Mission Planning
The HSWS plans a concurrent three-pronged mission, all under the command of Vice-Marshall Adabayo. The operation will require the deployment of all three MMS's with a supporting escort of a pair of interstellar cruisers for two out of the three. The planned missions are:
- Operation Red - An MMS, an FSS and two ICIII's will head to the East side of Lydian space to explore what lies beyond.
- Operation Yellow - A similar task force will perform a similar operation on the West side of Lydian space.
- Operation Orange - An MMS and a pair of ICIII's will head for Menorb in order to attempt negotiation with the local populations and recover any imprisoned members of the HSWS or the diplomatic corps. They will also be accompanied by a Modular Conveyor fitted for fuelling and the transport of prisoners and hostages.

Meanwhile, the Expeditionary Flotilla with the Military Assault Transport attached will plan for a raid on the prison planet once additional information is returned from the Operation Yellow ships. It is expected that this operation will be carried out at the end of the year or the start of the next, and will be an opportunity for Vice-Marshall Gebara to return to her command with a clear mission and strong support.

The HSWS has the final say on these operations. What of them?
[ ] Give the go-ahead for both operations
[ ] Go on scouting, but wait for their return to give the go-ahead on the raid
[ ] Cancel both operations, the plan is underbaked and poorly considered.



The Daughters of Home
The Daughters have, over the last two decades, made themselves essentially indispensable across three different systems - or perhaps even five depending on their extent in Nova Refugio and Hexos. They have a broad base of popular support amongst the people and seem to have no real interest in any political power. They are, nonetheless, everywhere.

Their support in this war would be twofold - the first would be popular, spreading the word of the necessity of the conflict. The second would be recruiting nurses and lay preachers from amongst the Daughters to support their followers in the military. This would hopefully provide an improved level of morale amongst believers, but could potentially cause conflict amongst those who do not follow the daughters.

Which of the above seem appropriate:
[ ] Both options
[ ] Just the popular framing of the war
[ ] Just the nurses and preachers
[ ] As much as the daughters are useful to us, we cannot be alligned with them.



Please present votes as plans. Voting closes at
 
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I'd perhaps be willing to risk a war-for-technology, as the current Aslan offer is much too disadvantageous. Otherwise, I guess we'll just have to wait for some native breakthroughs in technology.
 
Can we barter down? A permanent guard force, for example, wouldn't be a big deal, and we could probably also squeeze in some commercial spaces that we use to trade with the locals.

I think both missions are fine?

I think we can do without the preachers, but otherwise the support of the daughters is good.
 
We can try the war option, in principle. To bid the omnimech Binary from our Icebreakeer Keshik and all that.
The downsides:
- Do we need to bet something from our side?
- This would set a precedent and Aslan in turn would be more willing to war-challenge us.

Scout missions seem ok. We could want to get refuel possibility in the border Noctocole colony - that would increase our range. There is no guarantee that Noctocole would be cooperative. But that would allow us a bit deeper penetration.

Daughters - maybe the popular framing of war. Not preachers, though, and not nurses too.
 
- This would set a precedent and Aslan in turn would be more willing to war-challenge us.
Considering that the ongoing possibility of a challenge would justify maintaining a large and modern active fleet even in otherwise peaceful times, I'm not sure this is necessarily a downside for us (or our budget)...
 
[X] Plan: Mercenaries for Tech
-[X] We should discuss the idea of a war-for-technology with Aslan diplomats.
-[X] Give the go-ahead for both operations
-[X] As much as the daughters are useful to us, we cannot be alligned with them.
 
[X] OPLAN: Waltz
-[X] Give the go-ahead for both operations
-[X] Just the popular framing of the war
-[X] We should make do with what we have for now.
 
[X] Plan: We only need the weapons
-[X] Provide a counter-offer to the Aslan - we are willing to provide the defensive installation they request following the conclusion of our current war, provided it is under joint HSWS command, in exchange for just the weapons and excluding the drive and powerplant technologies.
-[X] The above should be sold to the Citizen's Council by suggesting the possible trade opportunities presented by a permanent Home presence in orbit above the Aslan's population centres.
-[X] Give the go-ahead for both operations
-[X] Both options, although insist that they only be placed on stations and warships providing rest and recuperation (as opposed to combat warships), that nurses provide equal and secular services to all HSWS personnel, they are subject to HSWS regulations, and that the HSWS can insist upon the removal of specific personnel.

We cannot afford to fight two wars at once. If we lose a cruiser fighting the Aslan, it'd be a pyrrhic victory at best even if we get three techs out of it. Meanwhile, monitors and minelayers are very cheap, a permanent HSWS military basing is also a great way to reconnoiter the Aslan and sell things to them, and we really only want the weapons tech - the other two are fine to leave on the table at the moment.
 
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[X] Plan Ritual Combat
-[X] We should discuss the idea of a war-for-technology with Aslan diplomats.
-[X] Give the go-ahead for both operations
-[X] Both options

I would like to finally see what the ritual combat of the Aslan looks like. I doubt it'll be quite as destructive as a full on real war, but it will also be a way to gain some actual combat experience in lower stakes. Think of it as more of a live fire exercise with stakes on the line.

As for the Daughters I don't know why people are so reluctant to get closer to them when we were contemplating overthrowing the Citizens Council earlier. Do we expect to be able to do so without getting more connections to the Daughters with the popular support they have?
 
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