Hidden 10 yrs ago 10 yrs ago Post by WilsonTurner
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WilsonTurner AKA / OfWindAndRain

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this is taking forever and I'm suffering from a severe case of not-giving-a-shit-about-anything, so I think I'm going to put this here until I summon the interest.
Hidden 10 yrs ago Post by WilsonTurner
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*ahem*

Larger starships would have, in all reason, better speed than any fighter. That's simply because with advanced technology, it's less about the mass and the engines, and more about how you use it all. It may take a bit longer to get started up and everything, but a fighter is more dependent on engines and energy production constraints- they have RCS and actual engines. Most of my ships, if I were to ever get around to doing any of them, would not actually have any 'engines' as you would say, simply RCS pods and the like- for maneuvering. It'd simply be six sublight drives, each one set for a different direction. Up, down, forward, backward, to the left, to the right. The heat they produce forces them to be next to the hull, but they're still better hidden and less detectable than your great big shiny engines.

It's just that with more mass, the harder it is to change. When you're speeding up, it's like pulling on a rope that's frayed and not taken care of very well- gets easier as you go. The rope will eventually snap, and that's when I'd have my regular ships be able to use their FTL drives efficiently, with much less heat produced and the ability to cooldown faster and go again, when they exit. Simply put, I see speed more as acceleration, and it's hard at first, then gets easier. The smaller, the easier you start, and the faster you reach the easy-peasy zone. If it's a massive ship, it's harder to get started. Like rolling a boulder down a slight slope- hard at first, then gets easier. It's easier with a basketball sized rock, easier to slow down or change direction, and harder with a car-sized one.

That's my take anyways. I'm surprised I was interested enough to write it. Eh- writing's one of a few things I actually care about. I wouldn't say food is, but I really like... tasting. I like the flavors and the motion. I don't necessarily like food itself, just the properties and the like.

I'm stupid.
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Hidden 10 yrs ago Post by Keyguyperson
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-snip-


If we were being realistic, then the battles would look like something out of the Alliance-Union universe.

For those of you unfamiliar with Alliance-Union (So all of you), battles take place across seemingly insane distances at relativistic speeds. Battleships calculate where their enemy could be once their shot reaches them, and fires a volley in that area. You don't know if they've been hit until almost an hour after the fact, because of the time lag caused by the distance you're fighting at.

And that's why we're not being realistic. Instead, our ships stop when our engines are damaged and we fire broadsides without protecting the bottom half of our ship which is painted red. Our weapons look like giant WW2 battleship turrets even though they fire blue beams that really shouldn't work at all like they do, and our fighters bank because it looks cool.

Enemy ships firing red beams and wearing nazi uniforms is optional.
Hidden 10 yrs ago 10 yrs ago Post by Willy Vereb
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*ahem*

Larger starships would have, in all reason, better speed than any fighter. That's simply because with advanced technology, it's less about the mass and the engines, and more about how you use it all. It may take a bit longer to get started up and everything, but a fighter is more dependent on engines and energy production constraints- they have RCS and actual engines. Most of my ships, if I were to ever get around to doing any of them, would not actually have any 'engines' as you would say, simply RCS pods and the like- for maneuvering. It'd simply be six sublight drives, each one set for a different direction. Up, down, forward, backward, to the left, to the right. The heat they produce forces them to be next to the hull, but they're still better hidden and less detectable than your great big shiny engines.
Speed in space is a bit complex thing.
The context it's used here is "how fast X moves in combat?".
It's the best to assume space fighters have overspecced engines which can give them the best possible acceleration while larger ships try for the more consistent performance and fuel-efficiency. Afterall, they're the ones spending weeks and months in space while fighters are serviced and refueled at least once per battle.
That being said, yes, realistically there's no point in space fighters but hey, I'm just giving you a reason here.

It's just that with more mass, the harder it is to change. When you're speeding up, it's like pulling on a rope that's frayed and not taken care of very well- gets easier as you go. The rope will eventually snap, and that's when I'd have my regular ships be able to use their FTL drives efficiently, with much less heat produced and the ability to cooldown faster and go again, when they exit. Simply put, I see speed more as acceleration, and it's hard at first, then gets easier. The smaller, the easier you start, and the faster you reach the easy-peasy zone. If it's a massive ship, it's harder to get started. Like rolling a boulder down a slight slope- hard at first, then gets easier. It's easier with a basketball sized rock, easier to slow down or change direction, and harder with a car-sized one.
Yeah, that's why I'm actually scratching my head with all these "super-maneuverable" ships.
I don't ban them or anything but it does worry me.
This eliminates many cliche space battle tactics, including the space fighters of course.
Exactly for this reason I wonder how some of these "strike warships" even got to the battlefield.
Some of these may require even larger "ship carriers" just by going how compact and overspec-d they are.
I'd imagine an average ship would have 50 speed and 25-30 maneuverability.
Generally maneuverability stat less than what speed they have is more pleasing to my eyes.

The Hocklyn Slaver Empire

Stellar Dominion




Faction Overview
The Slaver Empire is that of what it says- in simpler terms, the Slaver Empire is exactly what the name says, and that is an empire of slavers. The Hocklyns take over worlds with primitive, modern, or advanced civilizations, and are absolutely ruthless in quelling rebellion, going from dueling their leaders and then stringing up their spines for their people to see, to nuking city after city for as long as they rebel.
Your faction is looking good.
We need the evil sneaky kind.


Checking your ship now:


Name: Commonly known as the "Sneaky Bastard," but officially known as the Cirrus-class Lightship.
Dimensions: 250m length, 100m from center of mass to farthest reach point [width]
Crew: 13
Battle Points: Unassigned

Spacecraft Attributes
  • Hull: 15 (most of it structural, very little to no armor at all, besides the stuff used against micrometeors and the like)
  • Powerplant: 95
  • Shields: 60/30/10 (Not firing and no stealth/ while steathy/ while firing)
  • Speed: 90
  • Maneuverability: 90
  • Sensors: 70


Weapons

Main Gun {Crippler ALS}
Count: 1
Power: 85
Description: Very high energy weapon, which uses any and all energy within whatever powers it to fire a devastating beam for a moment against any shield or hull- heavy damage to either, and is usually capable of taking down any shield save for the most powerful, and is likely to be the death of any ship out there.

Point-Defenses {Shield Pulsar}
Count: ~
Power: 11
Description: Boosts the shield of the ship to both protect the ship, and pulse waves of energy off of it, enough to scramble missiles, or disrupt energy bursts like plasma. Does not work with stealth enabled.
Well, mostly I only have issues with the bolded.
First, why is your ship so ridiculously overpowered? Not in a meta sense, I mean literal sense.
By your admission it's a light vessel with little space for much.
Yet they can mount a powerplant which dwarfs all other ships in this game for now (and probably will).
Neither you really need this. At worst if you wish to fire your main weapon rapidly you'd need 85 power.
But it's described as a hypercharged energy weapon so most likely you only fire it once in a while.

Second is your ship's maneuverability. Your ship seems to be a rocket with a reactor in the middle and an energy cannon fixed on the front.
I of course haven't told this before but maneuverability stat matching the speed means the ship can perform tight maneuvers at its full combat speed.
To perform that I'd imagine your ship would need engines about the same size to all directions, not just behind.
Granted, I have no clear say in your own business. If you want the ships to be like that, they're like that.

Lastly your main cannon. It's ridiculously powerful for a ship of this size and along with the powerplant makes somebody question why would anybody build larger vessels? Or more like why not build larger vessels and completely dominate everything?
I know that energy weapons can get away with things with more ease but when your counterpart is huge cannon mounted through the entire length of a vessel nearly a hundred times your ship's volume and should have nothing to do with differences in tech level, things get problematic. My suggestion is toadd some technobabble or two to it.

Overall the problem, well not mine but possibly yours, is that this ship is essentially a stealth dreadnought disguised as a small ship. Sure, it has several drawbacks but it gets moot when you also add nearly top level speed and stealth to it. If abused the way like I could, anybody only have a chance against you if: 1.) they asspull something, 2.) If they out-write you.
so either they force you to commit a mistake while absorbing large loses or asspull some gadget which nullifies your advantages and technically would violate the spirit of the Battle Point system.
There's a third alternative and that if they create "anti-ligtships" with lower point cost but stealth detection technobabble, enough speed and firepower to catch up to you and damage your ship.
That's the kind of arms race I'd rather avoid.
Then again, I won't stop you. I give all players freedom to develop their civs and ships.
This ship is only OP in a meta sense, at best.
So excuse me for my above rant. Your ship will be allowed regardless.

On the other hand with the current stats it'd probably cost nearly as much as a dreadnought. Dreadnoughts are better protected, have more weapons and their performance is consistently high, yes. But your ship mixes heavy anti-warship power with speedy stealth ambushes. In combat the two ship types would have circa 50-50 chance to win, up to the writing skill of both.
So if you're fine with your tiny ships being as expensive as monstrous battleships, you can keep these.
Otherwise you may want to try a few "rationalizations" for this design.

Other/Special
Two FTL drives are present- one is an emergency escape drive that is at the very rear of the central body, and it has its own separate batteries that allow it a short three-lightyear jump into Deep Space, in which it takes multiple hours for it to cool down and allow the ship to enter hyperspace again. The second is your regular, standard 15-lightyear average FTL jumper drive.

It's a lightship- the ship is primarily equipment and devices, most of it relating to electronic warfare, surveillance, or stealth. The majority of that equipment is dedicated to making the ship invisible- both on radar, sensors, everything. You can't even look out your window and see it, it's so sneaky.

Take a HALO Spartan, give him a Spartan Laser with infinite shots but a three-hour cooldown, and instead of armor he's just covered in sensors and cloaking devices and batteries and small reactors and all that, and you get the equivalent of a Cirrus-class Lightship.
How often or how many times you can use your FTL in combat? How precise you can perform these jumps? Any drawbacks?
And wait! Your main cannon has 3-hour cooldown? Well, that'd change things around a ton.
In 3 hours many of the space battles we fight would conclude, for example.
I'm speaking from experience in other such RPs.

Do slaves and lots of slave worlds and slave soldiers and stuff mean faster point generation? I think it should. Everyone else has wages and stuff, and I've just got lots and lots of aliens working under toil, in exchange for not being obliterated. Oh, and spider work bots who do stuff.
I call them "battle points" exactly because this has nothing to do with industry or economy but RP balance.
Unless there's a plot reason for it, nobody wants that one player has greater power than the other.
Your lightships for example may be realistically even cheaper than a standard warship yet because it's so abusable it's going to cost in Battle Points much more.
BTW, Battle Points aren't generated but determined for each battle scenario.
Smallish battles have circa 10,000 while big battles may be 100,000 Battle Points or even above.
Although I'm thinking on the idea that you can give your unused Battle Points to other player.
Say, you spent 9600 points and have nothing else you really want. You can give the remaining 400 points to one of your teammates.
This may not mean much but for certain builds that tiny boost could be meaningful.
Similarly, if one team has more players then the other gets more points per player.
Both teams generally have matching amount of Battle Points total.
Hidden 10 yrs ago 10 yrs ago Post by WilsonTurner
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Slaves was a joke

Cirrus is supposed to be that ship that comes in with three or four other ships, who sit at the very edge of the solar system as the resupply & command/communications (beam coms are less detectable than broadcast or FTL transmitter)

Cirrus is exactly that- a really big powerplant with some crew quarters and stuff stuck around it, with big engines and a big gun pointing forward. Very expensive, and they're likely to be really rare. But when you see that same task force appear on the edge of the system, and that ship suddenly disappearing, you're likely to start panicking, because omgwtfwasthat. Then the task force will either disappear or something will suddenly explode with a beam of energy spearing through it- likely through a weakspot.

Hard to detect, but then again, if you've got a planet with defensive satellites and a fleet in orbit with a standing flight of fighters and bombers constantly patrolling, the Cirrus will have a hard time moving quickly without giving itself away.

That, and it's kind of like a superweapon. Really expensive, because of all the expense for building it, servicing it, and keeping it working. But hten again, it can spy on most people without being detected and even shut down a dreadnought, by, say, shooting the engines and possibly hitting the reactor, causing any warship to recognize the ship was just severely and irreparably disabled, and activate a self-destruct to keep technology and the ship itself from falling into enemy hands. Ta-da, but then everyone'll be chasing the new-revealed Cirrus, who'll be rushing out of the gravity well and to safety.

And Cirruses are more of a pre-battle scenario. Say, most people have it as a offense-vs-defense, but perhaps there's a pre-battle, where you can take your Battle Points and spend a few of them to use beforehand, or perhaps just a pre-battle amount of battlepoints. They may or may not show in the actual battle, but you'd be scouting so you'd know the defensive forces.

A Cirrus has really really advanced stealth systems, a really big powerful reactor, three rather large engines, somewhat weak shields, another shield that tries to trap and escaping residue from engines/laser/reactor/stealth devices, and a big gun that kills stuff by channeling an insane amount of energy in one shot, which leaves it too overheated and pretty fried, so it has to cool down and get a bit of engineers' attention before it can fire.
Hidden 10 yrs ago Post by Willy Vereb
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@WilsonTurnerWell, this is kinda new to see somebody who's actually aware of this.
Yes, your ship is effectively a superweapon of sorts.
Although if can only fire in every 3 hours its point cost would drop severely.
There's also that while I can see it mission killing medium sized ships, bigger and more durable vessels may survive the attack with only moderate damage.
DEWs aren't particularly the best when dealing large-scale destruction.
Once they penetrate the hull, the rest of their energy is wasted.
Unless you have some kind of idea to deal with this issue, of course. (I have several options in mind)

Anyways, I don't plan a "pre-fight phase" in battles. Neither I think ou need them.
Just think of these ships as "nukes" which if you use well they can be devastating during the battle.
Also "realistically" I think 3 hours maybe even a bit excessive for cooling the guns. How about them exchanging "barrels" instead?
The carrier of the Lightships would would carry spares while busy cooling the used ones.
This may allow you to do more than one shot during battle.
Of course the said carrier would also cost points but it won't be horrendous in that aspect.
You don't need to worry about keeping the carrier on the "battlefield", either. I just need to be a bit more flexible when describing the combat zone, including some details even outside of it.
On the other hand I won't allow players to launch hyperspace-capable torpedoes and such from outside the combat zone. That'd be too cheap.
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Of no, of course not. The closest I'll be going with hyperspace missiles are Devastator 1/2s, the D1 being slightly more powerful than your standard nuclear WMD with a sublight drive attached, and the D2 being significantly more powerful with a sublight drive attached.

Obviously expensive, but they'd only be present on Dreadnoughts or Missile Cruisers. The majority of missiles will just be nuclear or Shrike (which are kind of like HEAT shells from a 76mm barreled tank as opposed to HE shells from a 150mm barreled tank- like HEAT from a Sherman tank as opposed to HE from a KV-2)

Cirrus-class ships are meant for espoinage and striking critical enemies- such as finding the weakness of the flagship, and then shooting that at an angle to try and hit where the reactors should be, because no reactors, equals no ship, really.

They'd be the one who finds out your fleet before I find out mine. Could there be like a special ability? Where if I send a Cirrus first, I can pick where I come out in relation to the enemy fleet, at a purposely advantageous position, because they can do that and still surprise them?

But multiple barrels would also be difficult. The barrel has to hold against extreme heat- like really extreme, from void-cold to vaporize-a-diamond in a couple seconds. The redundancy would obviously be useful, but that means the barrel isn't as firmly connected to the ship, which means there's more room of it messing up and malfunctioning, and tearing itself apart.

But the laser itself is really just a big hunk of electronics, lightly covered/armored with some really big cables connected to the reactor and batteries. Replacing the laser itself- perhaps each shot is so powerful that it actually fries the device- would be much more likely.
Hidden 10 yrs ago Post by Willy Vereb
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Of no, of course not. The closest I'll be going with hyperspace missiles are Devastator 1/2s, the D1 being slightly more powerful than your standard nuclear WMD with a sublight drive attached, and the D2 being significantly more powerful with a sublight drive attached.

Obviously expensive, but they'd only be present on Dreadnoughts or Missile Cruisers. The majority of missiles will just be nuclear or Shrike (which are kind of like HEAT shells from a 76mm barreled tank as opposed to HE shells from a 150mm barreled tank- like HEAT from a Sherman tank as opposed to HE from a KV-2)
Standard nukes would be 50 in power as for significantly more powerful, that's rather vague here.
Stats don't mean anything but that X is stronger than Y.
If you really try to imagine what they mean try some exponential scale.
Like that 10 points difference means 10 times, 20 points equal 100 times and so on...
As I said it isn't set but I do use a similar scale to this in my mind when evaluating the ships' power.

And don't worry, my torpedoes are basically cruise missiles or ICBMS in size and effectively they have the same technology as starships.
Thus many torpedoes are Warp-capable to travel interplanetary distances fast till they get closer to the target.
Torpedoes with their own point-defenses aren't exactly out of question, either. Though these are generally considered redundant.

Cirrus-class ships are meant for espoinage and striking critical enemies- such as finding the weakness of the flagship, and then shooting that at an angle to try and hit where the reactors should be, because no reactors, equals no ship, really.
Well, ships can also have redundant reactors (especially the kind which doesn't blow the whole vessel up in the process).
Still, disabling the main reactor reduces the enemy ship's fighting power considerably.
Since this is the second war, your crew might have knowledge on the weak points of most enemy vessels already.
Even if your civ would be newcomer to the war, I can't see the Dominion not instructing you how to employ your weapons the best against the enemy.

They'd be the one who finds out your fleet before I find out mine. Could there be like a special ability? Where if I send a Cirrus first, I can pick where I come out in relation to the enemy fleet, at a purposely advantageous position, because they can do that and still surprise them?
Well, in most situations finding the enemy fleet won't be too difficult.
I'd wager that most radars and sensors in general will be superluminal in this RP.
But let's say that you need tospot your targets.
I think you don't need explicit pre-battle phase to do this.
Just mention the Lightships scouting the area or even spying on the enemy fleet right at the moment.
Narrative would work well enough here.

But multiple barrels would also be difficult. The barrel has to hold against extreme heat- like really extreme, from void-cold to vaporize-a-diamond in a couple seconds. The redundancy would obviously be useful, but that means the barrel isn't as firmly connected to the ship, which means there's more room of it messing up and malfunctioning, and tearing itself apart.

But the laser itself is really just a big hunk of electronics, lightly covered/armored with some really big cables connected to the reactor and batteries. Replacing the laser itself- perhaps each shot is so powerful that it actually fries the device- would be much more likely.
That was another alternative I was thinking about but wasn't sure if you take that venture.
So the carrier would literally give you spare guns after each use.
Downtime would be equal to what you need for the switch and other repairs.

Hidden 10 yrs ago Post by WilsonTurner
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I guess that would work.

Like anti-material rifle that needs the chamber to be replaced after each shot, because the amount of power inside the shell leads to the barrel itself being damaged.

Also added a Dreadnought and Orbital Support Cruiser.
Hidden 10 yrs ago Post by Willy Vereb
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I guess that would work.

Like anti-material rifle that needs the chamber to be replaced after each shot, because the amount of power inside the shell leads to the barrel itself being damaged.

Also added a Dreadnought and Orbital Support Cruiser.


took a quick glance at them.
Even if it's too slow/inaccurate to be useful against ships you should include the mass accelerator for the light cruiser.
Speaking of which your light cruiser has the same stats as your Dreadnought.
I'd bet that was just a little oversight from you.
Hidden 10 yrs ago Post by WilsonTurner
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Yup, I copy/paste and edit from there
Hidden 10 yrs ago Post by Willy Vereb
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Speaking of which, I need to work on my ship profiles, too.
I at least want 2-3 fighters and 5-7 warships to my list.

On a different note we have 2 dominion, 2 FPA and one unaligned profiles.
If everybody made a decent number of ship profiles we can begin preparing for the first scenario.
Hidden 10 yrs ago Post by WilsonTurner
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Here are the basic Hocklyn designations for ships, from smallest to largest:

- Attack Corvette
< Yachts {Non-military}
- Frigate
- Destroyer
< Cruise Ships {Non-military}
- Light Cruiser
< Cargo ships {Non-military}
- Cruiser
< Heavy Freighter ships {Non-military}
- Dreadnought
- Carrier
- Superheavy Dreadnought

Unlikely I'll have a Superheavy any time soon. Looking for a good Carrier pic, though.
Hidden 10 yrs ago Post by Durandal
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@Willy Vereb

Shall I move my profile over to here now?
Hidden 10 yrs ago Post by Keyguyperson
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I finished my first ship!

I don't know why, because it's so insane that I'll never have enough battlepoints to use it.

Also, don't question my weapons classification system. It's something about lots of quarks. Or some BS like that. BIG NUMBERZ MEENZ BIG EXPLOSHUNZ.

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Meesa like.
Hidden 10 yrs ago Post by WilsonTurner
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lol

The Hocklyns would see it and jury-rig half a dozen Cirruses together so they can blast a hole through it.

The resulting beam would probably kill all the shields and then overload the third layer. Especially if the third layer was the only one up, and the ship wasn't expecting a battle, and the ship was using the conversion shield as solar panels.

It'd just be "whadafuckwadat" and then "whadafuckwadatshakin'" and then "whadafuckwhaiwe'splodin'?"

Or maybe one can just board the ship.

Or use a really powerful EMP
Hidden 10 yrs ago Post by Keyguyperson
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Or maybe one can just board the ship.


"Report?"

"We teleported into a waste disposal tank. My head is currently underneath five mauled baby dolphin corpses."

"What the fu-"

"Don't question it."

Meesa like.


That lance is a bombad boomba.
Hidden 10 yrs ago Post by WilsonTurner
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When somebody makes the technology to take a person's consciousness and put it on a computer, I'm going to volunteer. Life is crap.

js.
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Keyguyperson Welcome to Cyberhell

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When somebody makes the technology to take a person's consciousness and put it on a computer, I'm going to volunteer. Life is crap.

js.


I'd upload myself into a robotic body. Live forever, all that jazz. I'd divvy up processing power between working on shizz like warp drive, and use the rest to play video games. That way I can be lazy and wait for interesting things to happen, while helping those interesting things actually happen!

Plus, I'd live forever. So I could wait forever for interesting things to happen!

Or just go into standby mode while waiting for them!

TECHNOLOGY IS AWESOME!
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