Realistic spaceships, mecha, and other sci-fi goodies

[JerkChicken]

I said G Gundam not Gundam big difference.

[Foster]

If the universe was so lopsided that annihilation tactics could work, then there wouldn't be much of an RP. For the most part, they don't have much place in RP... mutually assured destruction on a galactic scale, or at least making wars not worth fighting... billions of casualties is not acceptable losses.

In comparassion to total population, Russia, France, and Great Britian would like to have words with you regarding the great patriotic wars.

Britian: Over half the male population killed
France: Over 75% of the male population killed or crippled (missing two or more limbs), plus civillian war-reprisals
Russia: 50 million dead, utilized women-soldiers.

And lets not even get started on Japan during WW2... Nearly 90% of their male population was either killed, castrated, or rendered sterile by radiation.

Over 2000 nuclear detonations have occured so far. Over 1000 of these occured on US soil.

[Holeypaladin]

But... Britain, France, Russia, and Japan all still exist. And the world still exists.

And off of that land they live on is still capable of supporting life.

[Paingodsson]

That my friends is my mech, from battletech as is the elemental, as is the background of Jaimie wolf. I am hoping you people have read or heard of battletech/mechwarrior

[Holeypaladin]

The feet are bigger... helps to stabilize it a bit more. You need big feet to stay stable.

Inverse-shaped legs would give it higher ground speed.

So it's a sort of all-terrain light attack vehicle, by the looks of it. Legs allow it to traverse terrain normally inaccessible to tanks. More legs would make it faster and more stable, but at least it doesn't have silly hands (which are pointless on a mecha). Well, it's a more reasonable portrayal of mecha than the super-robot style mecha are.

Main weakness is that exposed cockpit.

[Foster]

Um... we have gotten tanks across the Himilayan mountains before (not the peaks, but still)...

It took what amounted to an ARV to do it, but it happened.

Other weakness: I see ammo, crew, and machinery, but no fuel.

[Paingodsson]

i don't see an ammo or crew, there is no crew after all, the only Mech in battletech that require a crew that i know of is the Ares and that was discontinued shortly after being made due to its lack of speed.

The ammo is inside the mech, dont ask me where cause idk that ha, but it is not exposed the only exposed things are the weapons

[Kadaeux]

A supercarrier is not a spaceship. Nor is it build like a spaceship.

Wow. You got that on your own...

Human propulsion technology, right now, sucks. It's expensive and inefficient. Not suitable for sci fi at all. Space battles CANNOT exist with modern technology, as proven by the space shuttle comparison.

Either your definition of Space Battle is highly inaccurate or you're highly ignorant.

There is no reason to believe that reactors, guns, or engines would have anything other than the same cost per ton. I don't see any complexity issue that makes them more expensive to provide the exact same efficiency at a smaller size. Perhaps you meant to post an example but didn't.

Wow. You REALLY aren't very good at this.

Empty space adds volume, and volume full of mostly air reduces the density, which has an effect on "price per ton" as you say it, but also "price per unit of volume." Displacement is a stupid term in space, as there's no water to displace... only volume and mass really matter.

No one has ever made a large ship in space, as far as I know. So yeah, the space shuttle sucks as a comparison. You can't compare spaceships to ocean ships... major fallacy, there. A rocket engine is more expensive than a turbine. Duh.

No fallacy exists. Your inability to comprehend the meaning of the analysis is doubly sad.

As for the turret vs. big guns analysis...

So your turret fires a 100 mJ particle gun at a battleship. Battleship's armor can completely ignore anything short of 1000 mJ completely. You fire 20 of those 100 mJ particle beams... battleship armor reduces the damage by 1000 per shot. No damage taken.

Failure to understand how both Particle Beams and Armour works.

Meanwhile, I fire a 2,000 mJ spinal mounted particle beam at battleship. Battleship armor reduced 1,000 of that energy. Battleship is destroyed by the other 1,000. Win for me. Big guns are better for taking on armored vessels. At the range at which space battles take place, it doesn't MATTER if your weapon is only pointed in one direction... it's not like you can dodge it any easier than you can a turret. As far as the ammo problem... just use energy weapons, then. Don't require explosive ammo. Problem solved.

You mean complete loss for you as you CANNOT bring your weapon to bear. When your enemy CAN SEE where your big gun is pointed 100% of the time they can avoid it 100% of the time. There is no realistic situation in which it would be possible for your magical battleship to ever line up a shot on another ship.

As far as the "ammo problem" Congrats. You're using 100% energy weapons. Your effective combat range is limited to 1-2 light seconds or less. Your Thermal Buildup is now significantly higher,

And Traveler is.. well, a lot less soft than a Dr Who, and a lot of other things I've seen. Soft vs hard is a sliding scale, you can't classify one or the other. If you could, there would be no difference between Star Wars and Starship Troopers (the book was better than the movie).

> The point.










> Your head.

A little numeric experiment with spheres and turrets. Let's say you have a 450 foot diameter sphere. Using 4/3 pi r^3, you can determine the volume to be roughly 36 million cubic feet. And using 4 pi r^2, you can calculate the volume as 636,000 square feet.

Now say you put all of the weapons on external turrets. Turrets need room to maneuver... a lot of it. So roughly 20% of your sphere's surface can be covered in turrets, or 160,000 square feet. Now you have an option between small point defense turrets (400 square feet each) and large weapons platforms (5000 square feet each). If you use entirely large weapons playforms, you can fit roughly 32 turrets on the ship, each turret supporting some 20,000 cubic feet worth of guns. And that's close to the maximum firepower of a ship that size's turret array.

Where the fuck are you getting such retarded numbers. A point defence turret should occupy NO MORE than about 10 Square feet. And your large weapons no more than about 100-200 Square feet. You really need to stop while you're behind pulling numbers out of your ass like this is going to rip your bowels to pieces.

Meanwhile, I alter the shape slightly, increasing surface area to 660k square feet... not a huge increase. I use nearly all of that surface space for external point defense turrets, for a whopping 325 PD turrets. And then I mount... get this... 6 MILLION cubic feet (out of 36 million) worth of spinal weaponry. So while your ship has 640,000 ft^3 worth of externally-mounted guns, my ship has 6 million ft^3 worth of spinal-mounted weaponry. It's pretty clear to see which can bring more firepower to bear on its target, and at long range... it really doesn't matter if you can only point your guns in one direction. You're fighting at thousands of miles, minimum. Probably not light seconds due to speed of light lag but... whatever range you can reasonably expect your shots to hit.

Yes. It is easy to see which ship has considerably more mass and will never ever be able to bring its gun on a target.

[Paingodsson]

Ok first things first calm down, because there is no reason for getting all up in arms over a discussion, secondly to say he gets the numbers out of his ass without even waiting for him to explain is almost like saying, "your wrong but explain, but in fact your wrong so don't tell me how." haha in all seriousness I'm just sensing hostility so let's keep from fighting here haha

[Holeypaladin]

You can tell where a turret is pointed 100% of the time as well... there's no difference. It's just as easy to tilt the angle of your nose a fraction of a degree as it is to aim a turret. Especially if your forward-mounted guns have as little as a 2 degree firing arc. You can't fight effectively at 2 light seconds anyway.. even a laser would miss most of the time when all you have to do is keep in motion. 2 seconds is plenty of time for that 450-foot sphere to move more than 450 feet.

And good luck shooting down a fighter with a 10 square foot turret. Oh wait... it can't. It's too small in comparison. A 10 square foot turret might be able to shoot down missiles... but not fighters. That 400-square foot turret is built with guns heavy enough to take down space fighters. Weaker guns won't work, when the fighter is built to sustain damage from guns that require a turret of that size. Unless your fighters use suck-tech. You can use suck-tech if you want, I'll use sci-fi tech in a sci-fi universe.

Armor is pretty easy to understand. It prevents damage up to a certain extent. Enough force will pierce it. But a million 7.62mm rounds will never pierce tank armor. A single gun with the firepower of a million 7.62mm round will destroy it in one shot. There's a reason people don't shoot AK-47s at tanks, but shoot anti-tank guns at them instead.

I've provided mathematical examples that prove that the amount of weapons mounted on turrets are limited by an inverse-square cube law of surface area, while the size of internally-mounted weapons are limited only by the volume of the ship. When I build my ships to withstand 6 million cubic feet of heavy weapons, an equal-sized ship with nothing but turrets will never, ever be able to damage it with said turrets. Ever.

I've noticed a problem with high sci-fi people is that they see in black and white. "If it's not hard, it's soft." Wrong.

Soft sci-fi people often see in black and white too. "If it's not soft, it's hard." Also wrong.

Soft people call me hard, hard people call me soft. You know what? There's a middle ground. There always is.

But seriously, the point of this topic is to give ideas for effectively designed ships and stuff for people who actually want to use them in sci-fi RPs. Let them keep their technology, their force fields, their lasers and plasma guns. Let them keep their missiles and space fighters and even let them keep their land-based mecha. But make them... reasonable. Not 40k huge, not hard-SF boring, but fun, cool, and effective enough to get the job done, without making me roll my eyes at how ridiculously long the ships are.