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Department of Starship Design (Trek-ish)

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[X] Enter hidden passage
Oof really do want to preserve all of it imagine using these sorts of stations to create interstellar "terrain"
 
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The Paths of Medusa : Part II (4)
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    • > Enter hidden passage
    This, too, holds an ancient research station. This one, however, rather obviously came under attack, and just as obviously used something that shouldn't have been—the twisted ruin of what were clearly the attackers and defenders both looking like they were clay models squeezed and twisted by a careless child. You can, at least, definitively say the attackers were a third party, however—as twisted as the wreckage is, it clearly isn't the sort of design used by the locals.
    Salvaging the station itself turns up little—whatever that device or weapon was, it has ruined the interior of the station just as thoroughly, even if it is seemingly intact on the outside. You do manage a partial image of a backup data core, which will hopefully have something interesting on it once you can translate it.
    To Be Continued​
    Part II will resume either sometime around or at tomorrow; in the former case I'll ping everybody with an Informational Threadmark around ten minutes before I open the voting.
     
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    • Jalinth's Loot Tracking for Part II (Part 1 Here)

    Mechanis said:
    samples of its shields especially, given their novel configuration, and of the strange not-Duotronics that seem common to these ancient stations.
    Curiously, while the station once boasted a formidable array of automated beam emitters that could have given you considerable trouble, all of them have been stripped heavily for parts—only the sheer, alarming (though on second thought perhaps not so alarming, given the sheer size of the station) number of them are what provides the many samples available.
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    Nothing super new but I see more computer tech, more shields (perhaps a revolutionary version), and bits for more weapons. Plenty of good stuff.

    Mechanis said:
    Salvaging the station itself turns up little—whatever that device or weapon was, it has ruined the interior of the station just as thoroughly, even if it is seemingly intact on the outside. You do manage a partial image of a backup data core, which will hopefully have something interesting on it once you can translate it.
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    Information. I can't wait to see what it is.


    Jalinth's Combat Observations

    Mechanis said:
    four couriscating green-white beams slashed through space, [snip] the fore heavy beams of the battlecruiser—so very different from the simpler mint-green spears of its secondary emitters
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    Mechanis said:
    the tiny gunships [snip] A single, stabbing blue-white beam lashed from the lead ship's port aft emitter
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    Mechanis said:
    he trio of gunships dove in—Cannons flashed, two of the ships throwing forest-green teardrops while the lead ship instead hurled anctic blue-white stars. [snip] beams lanced out from the pair of emitters mounted besides the cannons, [snip] again the lead ship's were a searing blue-white to the greenish spears of the other pair. [snip] the single emitter in each ship's nose, and these weapons were the same—a helical blue-and-green lance like the heavy beams of the battlecruiser in miniature,[snip]

    Exotic particles stripped away the heavy Duranium even as more conventional boiling, burning and blasting ravaged hull and underlying compartments alike
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    So it's clear there are more than one type of energy weapon being used here. Hard to say what exactly they are.

    There is a slight discrepancy here - The miniature version of the BC beams are blue&green while the heavy BC beams were described as green white. I'm guessing this is a mistake, so I'll not speculate on the matter yet.

    As for our Offense -

    Mechanis said:
    but a tick later, two photonic torpedoes detonated under the ship's wings, snapping her cannons like toothpicks, and the searing beam of a particle lance slashed across her engines and aft beam emitters, leaving smashed, half-molten ruin in their wake. The other two, less alert, didn't even manage that much—and one pilot's desperate evasion of a torpedo spoiled the solution of two particle lances, and shots meant to slash away engines and weapons practically sawed the ship in half, before it vanished in the sun-bright broil of a breached fusion bottle.
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    Mechanis said:
    The gunship reeled—shields sputtering as the powerful beam smashed into them with shocking force for a pure physics weapon. In a single hit that weapon had slashed away nearly a tenth of the gunship's best defense!
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    The Sustained Damage on a Particle Lance is 4. The Burst Damage on a Photonic Torpedo is 3.5 then doubled for the cloak.

    My guess is that the shields on the gunship have ~50 HP. I'd be happy calling 4 as nearly a tenth.

    I think the gunships have roughly the same endurance as our Defiant Blaze class Laser Corvettes (which are tiny and old, with 8 END) or our Torp boats both having 12 END. 2 Lance strikes for 8 damage, possibly a crit.

    The Photonic Torps seem to have worked very well in both engagements. I'm happy with them, even if new tech would be nice.

    The good rolls on the Particle Lances have really come through for us. I don't want to think about how this last fight would have gone if we were using the Particle Guns that do 1/4 the damage.

    For reference the Star Seeker has an END of 59. If my guess about how strong the shields are I now have a burning need for them. Even if we only get shield generators for a Star Seeker sized ship of the same strength as the gunships that will nearly double our hit points. Yes please!
    Other Observations

    Mechanis said:
    But even as melted as they are, they tell a story, for while many are clearly the same matter as the locals, nearly as many are very clearly not, the shapes all too different even after the centuries of abuse, even if they are themselves clearly of the same make.
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    This is important. The first signs we have of a different style of ship. My current theory is that they attacked the locals and were stopped by the strong fixed defenses of this place. Setting the area to spin cycle seems quite harmful to everything caught in it.

    It's also proof that at some point in the past there was another civilization operating in the area. I'm going to pencil them in as roughly on par to slightly superior to the capabilities of the locals of the time. I point to the fact that there are dead ships of both sides and the fact that the defenders decided to turn on the spin cycle. If the attackers had been crushed fairly easily why bother setting up the vortex?

    Mechanis said:
    the twisted ruin of what were clearly the attackers and defenders both looking like they were clay models squeezed and twisted by a careless child. You can, at least, definitively say the attackers were a third party, however—as twisted as the wreckage is, it clearly isn't the sort of design used by the locals.
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    This update dropped just as I was finishing up the rest of the post. So we've got proof that the attackers were someone else. Also proof that the attackers were scary enough that extreme measures were needed.

    If it wasn't already next on the docket I'd be screaming for a new warship. With what we knew IC I still feel that building the Iron Road was the right choice, although I may have gone for the polarized plate and more guns if I had known.

    EDIT - These newcomers might be the source of the different types of weapons. Possibly the more advanced weapons were salvaged from them. Pure speculation, but I feel it's plausible.
     
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    Now given how old this all is, it's quite possible the other polity is dead, ascended or really really old and powerful now. But given they didn't stumble on us and we'd easily be within thier warp range, they likely aren't in a position to bother us unless we poke them.
     
    CuriousRaptor said:
    Now given how old this all is, it's quite possible the other polity is dead, ascended or really really old and powerful now. But given they didn't stumble on us and we'd easily be within thier warp range, they likely aren't in a position to bother us unless we poke them.
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    Or they subscribe to something akin to the federations prime directive and ignore pre-warp species, letting them leave their home system on their own terms. Speaking of the prime directive, i wonder if that's going to be a thing for us?
     
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    CuriousRaptor said:
    Now given how old this all is, it's quite possible the other polity is dead, ascended or really really old and powerful now. But given they didn't stumble on us and we'd easily be within thier warp range, they likely aren't in a position to bother us unless we poke them.
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    My concern is that with 2 polities operating within ~30 light years of home implies things about the chances of running into someone else. The Galaxy is big. "The Orion Arm, also known as the Orion–Cygnus Arm, is a minor spiral arm within the Milky Way Galaxy spanning 3,500 light-years (1,100 parsecs) in width and extending roughly 10,000 light-years (3,100 parsecs) in length". Running into people this soon implies that intelligent life with FTL technology is fairly common. (Yes, OOC we know that it's a Star Trek inspired setting so there will be a bunch of people out there. But IC that isn't known.)

    So even if both of these turned out to be no threat to us at all, it still suggests that there could well be others for us to run into fairly soon. One of the two polities shot at us on sight, while the other was militant enough to choose to attack this site for whatever reason. This proves that it is quite plausible that anyone we meet could want to shoot at us. I'm not saying we need to go all Imperium of Man but a good warship seems like a very good idea. With how aggressive the Labyrinth Lizards are I consider it possible that they would attempt to attack Yenna. I don't think it's remotely likely, as I suspect they are too isolationist and resource strapped to make the attempt but I could be wrong. I certainly have guessed wrong before during this event.

    For how they've not met us? There are about 1500 stars within 50 LY of Sol. If this wasn't a direction they were operating in it would be easy for them to just miss us. If they didn't have a major need for more living space they may have looked at our homeworld, saw there were some steam engine primitives living there and just left it alone as more effort then it was worth. There doesn't need to be a Federation Prime Directive to explain it.

    Mechanis said:
    it was apparently brought online about fifty years ago¹, with an initial surge where it seems to have been building ships about as fast as it could, launching some fifty of those gunships and fourteen battlecruisers in only five years²; after which construction rapidly peters out—after that, in the time between then and its abandonment some sixteen years ago³, only three more battlecruisers and twelve of the gunships were produced.

    1: about 250 years ago, Terran time
    2: two and a half decades, Terran time
    3: 80 years previous, Terran time
    4: 115, 100, and 90 years prior by Terran measurements
    Note: yes, this does mean that it managed only 12 small ships and 3 large ones in 145 years, after the initial surge.
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    In 25 Earth years they built about fifty gunships and fourteen battlecruisers. From a single station that was using salvaged gear. That post puts a floor on the minimum number of ships they have at ~62 gunships and 17 BCs. Losses quite possibly have reduced those numbers but we also have indications that anchorage wasn't the only one building ships.

    Our fleet has 5 Silent Hammer and 23 Furious Wind torpedo boats as 'warships' worth considering even slightly. The laser corvettes aren't going to do anything except die. I can really see the people at home getting very nervous once they start thinking about those numbers. Again, I doubt the Labyrinth Lizards are going to move out to burn down our stuff. I just think that it's not 0% and even if it was the people at home would still be worried.

    The real debate is if we make a successor to the Furious Wind like I theory crafted or if it will be a heavy warship, something closer in mass to the Star Seeker or the Warbirds we've been avoiding picking a fight with. To be honest I think we'll need both. We just had a good look at how quickly the technologically inferior Star Seeker was able to stomp the gunships, even though the gunships got the surprise attack on us. So you can't count only on the small ships, but you can build a bunch of small ships for the cost of a monster like the Star Seeker. Not to mention that our Furious Winds have 5 of the same torps as the Star Seeker has 7 frontal mounts of. So with the cloak doctrine torpedo boats have a great deal of potential use.

    Obviously we can't make that decision until the start of next turn, as we don't know what options will be available. The technology we are able to unlock is going to be a huge influence as well.
     
    The Paths of Medusa : Part II (4.1)
  • Threadmarks
    • There are three possible destinations for you at this point: first is to explore the other passage out of the previously hidden space. Second and third is to backtrack to one of the other passages out of the large bubble that houses the disabled vortex generator.
    [ ] Leave by the other passage
    [ ] Backtrack to the shorter passage
    [ ] Backtrack to the longer passage
     
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    • [X] Leave by the other passage

    If it was hidden, then the salvage is likely to be less picked over, and the route itself certainly less likely to be guarded.
     
    [X] Leave by the other passage

    We don't have enough information to know what is where, so one thing is as good as another to me.
     
    The Paths of Medusa : Part II (5)
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    • > Exit by other passage
    The concealment features of this passage are fully intact, and it leads into a moderate length passage in a T intersection. The far end curves out of sight naturally; the nearer end terminates in the wall of another vortex, though it seems there is a narrow passage along its edge.
    [ ] Skirt the active vortex
    [ ] Head away from the vortex
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Skirt the active vortex

    Part of exploring is going where the enemy obviously doesn't want us to go :V
     
    [X] Head away from the vortex

    I'd like to see what else is out (in? around?) there, and I'd rather not take our large ship through the narrow passage made by the ship-destroying vortex.
     
    The Paths of Medusa : Part II (6)
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    • > Skirt the edge of the vortex
    The corridor here is narrow—enough so that you certainly wouldn't want to attempt combat here, though not enough to seriously threaten the ship. After about thirty degrees of the vortex's arc, the path diverges, spiraling inward to a distorted bubble of space—speared on a column of the nebula clouds is what is clearly the ancient version of the Anchorages you have already encountered; with sixteen sides and four coiling, serpentine statue-shapes draped over it—visible even after the centuries of particle discharge. More pertinently, however, is what appears to be a modern battlecruiser that ran afoul of the faux-lightening, and recently —within the last two, maybe three days.
    The hulk is heavily damaged, its patched-together systems even more vulnerable to disruption than your own, but from a tertiary backup drive, you are able to pull an extremely fragmented map. So fragmented, in fact, that your computer specialists wonder if it wasn't something the crew tried to delete, and didn't quite manage before the discharge ravaged the vessel.
    ​
    Based on positioning, both A passages lead into the expanded bubble of the disabled vortex generator. The other passages continue off the map.

    Of particular interest is fig. 3, which is the first marking on a passage you have seen, and fig. 4, which is a symbol that has appeared before, on the older map pulled from the larger Anchorage derelict in the unstable area. The ship is presently located at 1A.

    [ ] Investigate (Write in area)
    [ ] Travel off map at passage (Write in)
     
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