FUCK my inability to remember words bites me in the ass once more. I meant Fussball as in soccer or in the rest of the world football.
Traveller, The Rise of Empire: A Naval Design, Procurement and Command Quest
- Thread starter 4WheelSword
- Start date
- Original Art Quest Sci-Fi
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
Can somone remind me why -03-01 is in red, actually?
Do we even have a good football league on our cold arctic planet?
Let's challenge them to a game of curling.
It's a colony of Noctocole (earlier known as "colony of Plenty")
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
Hmm, I was wondering given that there's a solid chain of systems linking the Lydian group to there, if the Lydians might consider it part of their territory.
I mean any non-contact sport with very clear rules would do, with how Aslan "wars" work.
"Greetings idiots, fuckwits, dump-asses, and any other detritus of Lydia, you have our people in custody. here is our demands. release them. there will be no negotiations" -captain [placeholder] [mcplaceholder] of the FLF.
- Pronouns
- Him/He
A mutual defense treaty and payments seem very fair for what we're asking.
Given the large amount of systems here, and the possibility for more past explored space, it seems to me that keeping my raider proposal at 6 jumps would be the best, as that would allow it to reach any section of that chain of systems we know about.
Having done a bit of math, it's better to fit ramscoops in almost all circumstances. They're much lighter if you're willing to spend a day or two collecting interstellar hydrogen, and when we're usually lightyears away from the next closest object, it's astronomically unlikely that we'll be intercepted (it takes a week to jump, so even if they jump to our flash, they'll show up after we've left, and there's basically no hope of them catching us on M-drives)
As for the Aslan thing, the defence treaty is fine. The 10% of our budget forever is not.
Drafting a plan:
[] Plan: plan name
-[] Delay it temporarily, with an immediate focus instead on more passive intelligence gathering both around the prison planet and deeper into Lydian space.
-[] Refuse and counter-offer a defence treaty. Have the HIC create a detailed report on the likely effects of issuing a challenge for the technology and the proper rituals required to invoke said challenge.
-[] A slightly-upgraded Patrol Carrier, a new jump tug that's slightly smaller, and a 2200 ton defensive monitor. Civilian shipyards will be contracted to construct the first cellular station section, a 3,000 ton R&R facility to reduce crew fatigue.
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Why don't we inquire among our citizens of Aslan extraction as to what a challenge entails before we go nuts?
I was under the impression that fuel was collected from gas giants. If fuel can be gathered from empty space, why are we not putting ramscoops on every ship?
Those are regular fuel scoops, not ramscoops. They're lightweight, but require a fuel refinery to turn gas giant juice into fuel. Ramscoops are heavier, but directly produce fuel and can do so from everywhere.
As for why not put them on everything, first off, they're heavy - it's not efficient to throw them on spacecraft not intended to travel long distances. They also slow down transits slightly, since you need to stop and gather fuel before jumping again, which means they're not good if you want to travel quickly between systems or jump out shortly after jumping into a hostile system (both of which are important for our expeditionary forces). Lastly, learning that they were optimal required reading through the manuals, and nobody had done the math showing that until this current push for extreme range.
It would still be beneficial to have extra fuel, so a raider isn't stuck collecting fuel in a hostile system. I'm thinking either three or four parsecs worth of fuel, to allow for two jumps out, pausing for a refuel, while still having enough in the tank for an emergency jump if anything surprising happens.
Since there has been talk of what role to give the ship, is like to reiterate my idea for having the ship dedicated to jumping into a system, firing from extreme range at infrastructure that would support the enemies war effort, and jumping out before a response can be made. If we can take out the enemies shipyards, fuel depots, ordinance storage, etc, we can greatly limit their ability to attack us through those actions, or through the threat of those actions.
The more range we give this ship, the more the enemy has to worry about systems further from the front line.
I'd prefer that we followed-through on the prison-break operation. I'd prefer we ask the Aslan about a negotiated conflict.
I think proper defences for every large population under our care should come first in the budget. I'm against more jump tugs.
I'd prefer investing more in carriers (cos if our doctrine is to overwhelm point-defence with ordnance and small craft then we benefit from leaning-in on that) or in ships designed to take out or soften either static defences or the infrastructure they protect (perhaps something for jumping in at short range and causing a big mess before jumping out)
I think proper defences for every large population under our care should come first in the budget. I'm against more jump tugs.
I'd prefer investing more in carriers (cos if our doctrine is to overwhelm point-defence with ordnance and small craft then we benefit from leaning-in on that) or in ships designed to take out or soften either static defences or the infrastructure they protect (perhaps something for jumping in at short range and causing a big mess before jumping out)
That's quite costly, though, and a "hostile system" just means within 1.5 lightyears of a possible enemy responce. Space is really big.
As for the role, can that not be handled by a jump tug deploying an autonomous torpedo bus? Also, isn't it reliant on them having those installations located in ways that can be targeted from extreme ranges?
While I'm softly in favour of follow-up, if we need to commit half our fleet to a mock fight against the Aslan, I'd rather we delay the raid until after. Also, there's not much harm IMO to trying out some new recon techniques against the prison in advance.
I'll include "figure out how to issue a challenge since we would not want to offer insult given the highly ritualized nature" to get across what I'm aiming for more clearly.
Yes, but we have seen that jump flashes are really visible. If there were hostile ships jumping into one of our central systems and out again, we would search the nearby empty systems to see where they are coming from. It isn't that hard to see anyone else doing the same thing, in which case any fuel depot we put in an empty hex would be found and destroyed, depending on what warships we had stationed there at the time.
I am under the impression that we do not have access to that yet, as we don't have autonomous fighters or bombers for our carriers. Also, having jump tugs travel constantly from our home systems to the front line carrying a torpedo bus, deploying it in an enemy system, then jumping back home to get a new one seems pretty logistically intensive. Wouldn't it be better to just have a ship with torpedo tubes to do the same thing, except it could be resupplied the same way our main fleet is resupplied.
Each hex is around 3 lightyears wide, and I don't think you can see a jump flash throughout the entirety of a hex. Even if you can, that means you need to observe a spacecraft jumping in, then jump into the correct surrounding hex, and then hope that you jumped to the right spot in that hex so that you can shoot at the spacecraft in the time between when it shows up and when it leaves.
This also isn't about fuel depots, but instead having the spacecraft collect fuel with a ramscoop, which is what I'm now leaning towards. It takes an hour to jump and something on the order of a day to collect enough fuel with ramscoops. A ship with a 4 G acceleration advantage (i.e., we're probably going at 6 Gs, they're pulling 10) would need to be within 8x10^10 m in order to reach us before we jumped out. This seems like a lot, except the width of a hex is 3x10^16 m, utterly dwarfing it.
We can do that - that was the command & control upgrade we got recently. We just haven't rolled out the upgrade to everything.
If the transport vessel has torpedo tubes, then it needs to survive getting within torpedo range, firing, and then escaping. If we have a minimum-weight bus, we just have to worry about surviving until we fire, which is much easier. It also means we don't need to carry the torpedo system all the way back home, meaning the spacecraft can be smaller.
[X] Plan: Building the Warpath
-[X] Delay it temporarily, with an immediate focus instead on more passive intelligence gathering both around the prison planet and deeper into Lydian space.
-[X] Refuse and counter-offer a defence treaty only. Have the HIC create a detailed report on the likely effects of issuing a challenge for the technology and the proper rituals required to invoke said challenge.
-[X] A slightly-upgraded Patrol Carrier and a small defensive monitor. Civilian shipyards will be contracted to construct the first cellular station section, a 3,000 ton R&R facility to reduce crew fatigue. Attempt to squeeze other utility spacecraft into the remaining tonnage, such as jump tugs or updated modular conveyors.
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How many millions of credits in the budget are the lives of HSWS spacers worth? The Aslan are fine with it, battles means opportunities to win glory and step into dead lions' shoes.
But this isn't the Lydians or the standoff with Hermosa. This is a fight against our own approximate allies because high command wants to save money.
That money does mean more and better ships and defences for Home, true, and wars are fought for economic reasons all the time especially in an oligarchy, but I'm not sure it's a good precedent. Especially if we don't want Aslan dueling culture filtering into Home's zeitgeist.
The Apolake and Sekhmet had crews of 28 and were disabled in combat, with no radiation shielding.
The Ogun has a crew of 14 and was carrying approximately 63 crewmembers of the Segomo. It flew in-system and surrendered without a fight.
If we assume 75% of the cruiser crews died in combat or of untreated radiation poisoning, and that the half crew Gebara sent in system were wounded and half of them and the Ogun's crew died of natural causes too, and hell let's say the FLF guard on the Ba Kim decided to commit honourable suicide in their barracks rather than surrender, and that's still almost 90 non-diplomat officers and crew, a third of whom have no legitimate reason to be injured, much more than "a handful".
So: are the Lydians fobbing off "low-value" wounded and civilian prisoners and holding onto the ones who might know useful things and won't die under interrogation?
Or have these the only ones they hadn't murdered yet?
Certainly they haven't tried to repatriate the Ba Kim itself, which both surrendered undamaged and is completely technologically obsolete even by our standards much less the Lydians'.
@4WheelSword are these estimates reasonable/about right?
Which ships did the prisoners come from?
How do they report being treated?
But this isn't the Lydians or the standoff with Hermosa. This is a fight against our own approximate allies because high command wants to save money.
That money does mean more and better ships and defences for Home, true, and wars are fought for economic reasons all the time especially in an oligarchy, but I'm not sure it's a good precedent. Especially if we don't want Aslan dueling culture filtering into Home's zeitgeist.
The Ba Kim had a crew of 40 and surrendered without a fight.
The Apolake and Sekhmet had crews of 28 and were disabled in combat, with no radiation shielding.
The Ogun has a crew of 14 and was carrying approximately 63 crewmembers of the Segomo. It flew in-system and surrendered without a fight.
If we assume 75% of the cruiser crews died in combat or of untreated radiation poisoning, and that the half crew Gebara sent in system were wounded and half of them and the Ogun's crew died of natural causes too, and hell let's say the FLF guard on the Ba Kim decided to commit honourable suicide in their barracks rather than surrender, and that's still almost 90 non-diplomat officers and crew, a third of whom have no legitimate reason to be injured, much more than "a handful".
So: are the Lydians fobbing off "low-value" wounded and civilian prisoners and holding onto the ones who might know useful things and won't die under interrogation?
Or have these the only ones they hadn't murdered yet?
Certainly they haven't tried to repatriate the Ba Kim itself, which both surrendered undamaged and is completely technologically obsolete even by our standards much less the Lydians'.
@4WheelSword are these estimates reasonable/about right?
Which ships did the prisoners come from?
How do they report being treated?
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- Location
- Earth, Milky Way
Great quest, just caught up.
I feel that we should take the L on Lydia and leave them alone for now. We can crush them later.
Perhaps the reason Aslan keeps offering such terrible deals is that we haven't offered to go to "war", which to them is an extension of negotiations.
I feel that we should take the L on Lydia and leave them alone for now. We can crush them later.
Perhaps the reason Aslan keeps offering such terrible deals is that we haven't offered to go to "war", which to them is an extension of negotiations.
If your expensive economic/military assets can be killed by some asshole with a railgun from the outer system or whatever then I think they'd put some thrusters on them for a big enough random walk. Or big enough lasers to deflect even very fast incoming projectiles. Maybe the maths doesn't work out on that, but if it is a realistic attack on static infrastructure then it's a huge liability for us and our garrison admirals have been remiss in not highlighting it for us.
I think we find this out by just asking them. I don't think we need to micromanage the diplomats into not accidentally issuing or inviting a ritual challenge. If they can avoid that then they will. If they can't avoid it then no amount of hedging in the plan will avoid it, imo.
- Location
- Fort Worth, TX
[X] Plan: Building the Warpath