The conventional railgun does normally fire solid ultra-dense slugs. If there are correctable railguns slugs, then the possibility of a knife fight is essentially null. Who ever has the best railgun wins, hands down every time. Your plasma arc will do nothing to the slug other than turn it into a cloud of molten hot metal still traveling as fast as it was before, if the arc even has enough time to act upon it. CIWS will not be able to intercept something so fast and a missile would face the same interception problem. A ship could not out run a self correcting round, at least not larger ships. I find the idea to be a bit OP.

@LokiLeo789 Ye, I saw that which is why I made sure to clear up that I didn't have all of Mars. Would you be willing to split it 50/50 or whatever else if there's someone else who decides they want a chunk o' Mars?

Also, nice to see you again Loki :>

<Snipped quote by ClocktowerEchos>

Likewise. Splitting Mars in half seems unfair in general. How about 25/25 to better offset possible interest?

<Snipped quote by LokiLeo789>

Fine by me mate.

@Willy Vereb Assuming a rocket with Lunar gravity acceleration, you can reach 200 km/s in 1 day and 10 hours over ~41 light seconds. Assuming Earth gravity acceleration, you can reach that in 5 hours and 40 minutes over ~7 light seconds. Given the inner system is ~46 light minutes across, repositioning units at these velocities isn't much of a tactical issue.

Combine this with modern railguns firing ~11 kg rounds at ~2 km/s for a mere 32 megajoules, packing dozens of tungsten rods in dispersal units, radiator vulnerability to lasers, rotating spacecraft minimizing direct laser strikes, having inactive stealthed missiles available to strike incoming targets, turning missiles into portable laser platforms, limiting military channels to quantum entanglement transceivers, and using enveloped fragments of comets as hulls and heat sinks, I'd say space warfare falls somewhere between a clusterfuck and a game of "who can make the most officers betray their superiors?".

<Snipped quote by Willy Vereb>
Just stating my observations.

<Snipped quote by Willy Vereb>
Considering fusion's unrealistically powerful in this roleplay, we could provide lots of hydrogen from Earth, Mars, Ceres, asteroids, outer system planetoids, and comets. We could also provide lots of helium from Mercury, Luna, gas giants, and Kuiper belt objects. If we add in all the statites, orbital tethers, other reactionless drives, aluminium oxide fuel from Earth and Luna, and methane fuel from wherever organic people live, we end up with most spacecraft almost always having enough fuel for constant acceleration, deceleration, course corrections, and spin gravity.

If the rounds are torpedoes, preferably multistage rockets that have their own railguns, they can reach higher speeds without needing excessively long cannons.

Are you sure they're only hot because of magnetic acceleration, and not also due to the friction from hypersonic motion through air? Even if they're still scalding when launched through vacuum tubes, I'm sure you could find a way to exploit that heat to generate extra thrust.

Normally, I'd agree, but

... quantum entanglement can transmit data instantaneously from one side of the solar system to the other.

Territory/Claims:

Martian Territories [+]

Aramas Prime [+]

The crown jewel of the Aramian Empire is carved deep into the base of Mars' Mount Sharp and sprawled across the Gale Crater, centermost of the Aeolis quadrangle. Founded as the military contractor firm's colony in the early 22nd Century, the once tiny settlement is now the focus point of an ever-growing empire.

Aeolis Quadrangle [+]

A popular landing sight in the early colonization era, is now the center point of the Aramian Empire. Expanding outwards, the armies of Aramas conquered its close neighbors in the region with relative ease in the early 23rd Century. Since then, a large number of smaller cities have dotted the region, most of which are military training facilities and barracks used to house the civilians of conquered regions.

Eridania Quadrangle [+]

Sought after in the years following the Aeolis Campaign, the Eridania Quadrangle stands as one of the richest and largest campaign in the empires history. Despite heavy opposition from opposing Mars based institutions, Aramas managed to rip cites out of corporatocratic control, destabilizing dozens of enterprises that established headquartered there. The Eridania Campaign is marked by the hostile takeover of dozens of companies in the region, earning Aramas subsidiaries in various industries. With the wealth gained from the campaign, the Eridania Quadrangle houses the vast majority of Aramas' mining complexes, military equipment forges and military ground transportation factories.

Elysium Quadrangle [+]

The sight of Aramas' most recent successful campaign on Mars, the Elysium Quadrangle lies southwest of the capital. The vast flat landscape is home to heavily populated metropolises and Aramas' brand new energy sector, marked by a vast sea of solar panels used to power the energy guzzling nation.

<Snipped quote by LokiLeo789>

>Aramas Prime
>Aeolis Quadrangle
>Eridania Quadrangle
>Elysium Quadrangle

Part of me thinks you should just rename your people to "Star Polygons" or "Square Aramas" at this rate =p

<Snipped quote by Willy Vereb>
If you were driving down the Autobahn with a nigh endless supply of gasoline, you could punch the accelerator all day. Every celestial body I listed has vast amounts of easily accessible fuel. I already calculated how little mass a statite network would have, relative to a typical comet. Since they balance the solar wind and gravity, they can move to any spot in the system that isn't in another gravity well. This makes refueling trivial for anything but incredibly fast and faraway vehicles, which could still sacrifice total received fuel for shorter refueling times. This doesn't invalidated other forms of combat, because you can provide tons of fuel for mines and missiles. Even with 1g acceleration, defenders will still need space and time to avoid an incoming barrage. Given enough processing and projectiles, you can overwhelm your target's maneuverability and defenses.

If the torpedo doesn't activate its rocket, then it's a kinetic projectile, which still makes the launcher a coilgun. If a torpedo is too massive, just split it into an impactor and rocket, and have the rocket catch and redirect the impactor. If missile sensitivity to acceleration is a serious problem, you can make its parts lightweight and flexible.

Would it help if you put a superconductive cryogenic envelope around the payload?

You could also combine the instant communication with time dilation, and end up violating causality by sending messages from the future back to the solar system. But, @Keyguyperson said that nobody has left the solar system yet, and I'm one to think that relativistic interstellar probes with stable ansibles have yet to be created by the setting's engineers.

I'm talking about spacecraft constantly firing their thrusters, regardless of whether they're populated.

My opinion is that it'd make battles more entertaining, given units can constantly course correct. If they're just slowly drifting, conflict resolution takes much longer. Not saying vehicles will always fire their thrusters, but that doing so isn't necessarily a big deal in areas with relatively nearby fuel depots.

Spinning missiles that randomly change direction and release submunitions can overwhelm a target's limited defenses.

Fair enough. I'm no material engineer, so I can't refute your claims about resistance to acceleration stresses.

As far as I know, torpedoes are self-propelled missiles launched by vehicle-based systems, and guided projectiles are weapons that hone in on their targets. These aren't mutually exclusive, and space torpedoes would do well to have guidance systems.

The "cryoshell" wouldn't necessarily be for stealth, but to prevent the heated rounds from causing the launcher to fail, and to provide the round with simple propulsion and defense systems.

If leaders and diplomats are using it, I'd expect officers and businesses to do the same. I guess strapping them onto inactive stealthed units that are remote controlled does seem a bit excessive, from a roleplaying perspective.

@Keyguyperson

How densely populated is Mars? Is it at Luna level or a bit sparse?

<Snipped quote by Keyguyperson>
Each of Mercury's orbital bands would have 607 statites, each of Venus's orbital bands would 1134 statites, each of Earth's orbital bands would have 1568 statites, and each of Mars's orbital bands would have 2383 statites.

(607 + 1134 + 1568 + 2383) * 3 = 17076 statites.

If each statite houses 1000 people, and this network is the entire faction's living space, they'd have a combined population comparable to the modern day Netherlands. Compared to the solar system's total population of 200 trillion, there's 1 citizen of Momentum for every ~11.7 million noncitizens. If each station has a mass of 1 teragram, or 2383 times the mass of the International Space Station, the entire network's total mass would be 7.7% that of Halley's Comet. You ask, "Why would Momentum build such a large network?" To the average citizen, the answers are obvious:

Living Space: If people don't stop reproducing so much, every asteroid and planetoid in the solar system is going to get overcrowded. Why live on these worlds, when you can live on one of many stations that generate thrust and rotation with sunlight, and can remain stationary at any distance relative to the Sun?

Infrastructure: People will want to travel, but direct transit can be dangerous and unreliable. Momentum has a relatively safe and reliable network close to each of the inner planets, and each station is an internet router. Why ride a rocket to Mars, when you can move to a statite and wait for Mars to come to you?

<Snipped quote by catchamber>Confused you with FrostedCaramel for the moment so pardon me on that.

<Snipped quote>Not even close. Just because you can replenish your fuel that doesn't mean you can freely waste it on full throttle. That and depending on fusion mechanism you can't even naturally replenish your reactor fuel. Similarly your propellant is cheap but not something you can ignore.
But this is almost irrelevant. What isn't is that if such were plausible then it'd invalidate almost anything but laser weapons from combat because there's no way a projectile or even a missile could catch up to them.
200km/s is a nice average value which is fast enough to be "interesting" thus viable for cool space battles and feasible space travel yet it isn't too much to invalidate much of the nuances and fun of the hard sci-fi.

<Snipped quote by catchamber>
And that's the torpedo. We talk about the "coilguns" or spinal guns here. I think you missed my list from the previous page.
Torpedoes could have railgun or coilgun mechanism giving them an initial boost but that's not our topic. It's about a gun launching a guided projectile with only the bare minimum of maneuvering capability. Adding a propulsion unit to this would be counterintuitive. Not to mention the ship is unlikely to have enough energy to launch such a projectile. I think you could at least try to make a few basic calculations on this why. Even the pure KE required to accelerate a 20kg slug to 200km/s is 400GJ and with waste it would approach the terajoule range. If you try to get an at least 2-10 ton missile to reach the same velocity you'd need more energy than the first atomic bomb.
That and again, these spinal guns fire relatively simple projectiles. They're far less sensitive to acceleration than a missile would.

That being said there are still some inventive methods which might make this weapon a bit more interesting. I am just saying you have a bit of misconception here.

<Snipped quote by catchamber>
Absolutely.
Look, firearms push the projectile with the expansion of gases at extreme temperatures and hypersonic velocities. Do the copper and lead bullets melt in the process? No. During the operation of the railgun you focus the magnetic fields on the projectile for repulsive force. You directly use energy to move it and this has certain inefficiencies which shows in heat buildup.

As for using that heat for extra thrust...it's plausible but you would lose much more in the possess. You'd have to add complexity which reduces the max acceleration the projectile can bear. You'd also need to add some kind of propellant because few hundred degrees won't provide enough radiation pressure for this to matter. Propellant which is a dead weight in the overall scheme of things.

<Snipped quote by catchamber>Wow, I think @Keyguyperson might need to nerf that since the potential for abusing this is huge and besides I think he only wants this for convenient "real time convos" between the governments of faraway factions.
As things are there's absolutely no reason why people wouldn't exploit this for interstellar conquest and to establish empires beyond the solar system.
... Or create super drones that can be controlled from any corner of the solar system. Equally problematic.
I know neither of these are Keyguy's intentions so this is why I tell you.

So what astral bodies are are not taken yet?
I am considering to have holdings at various parts of the solar system but nowhere being an absolute figure.
Moon colonies in the Von Neuman Crater, floating cities on Venus, Jupiter colonies and industrial plants, etc.
I might take the moon Europa if nobody did that yet, though.

Star Aramas [+]

Faction Name:

Star Aramas

Faction Government:

Stratocracy: The ruling political organization of Aramas is the 'Star Aramas', and it acts as the head of the military. In Aramas, the military controls every aspect of the political landscape; there is no separation between the warfare and politics. In fact, Generals stand as both the Board of Directors and the ruling body of 'Star Aramas', and is led by the 'Star General', whom in which is voted in by the his or her contemporaries.

Territory/Claims:

Martian Territories [+]

Aramas Prime [+]

The crown jewel of the Aramian Empire is carved deep into the base of Mars' Mount Sharp and sprawled across the Gale Crater, centermost of the Aeolis quadrangle. Founded as the military contractor firm's colony in the early 22nd Century, the once tiny settlement is now the focus point of an ever-growing empire.

Aeolis Quadrangle [+]

A popular landing sight in the early colonization era, is now the center point of the Aramian Empire. Expanding outwards, the armies of Aramas conquered its close neighbors in the region with relative ease in the early 23rd Century. Since then, a large number of smaller cities have dotted the region, most of which are military training facilities and barracks used to house the civilians of conquered regions.

Eridania Quadrangle [+]

Sought after in the years following the Aeolis Campaign, the Eridania Quadrangle stands as one of the richest and largest campaign in the empires history. Despite heavy opposition from opposing Mars based institutions, Aramas managed to rip cites out of corporatocratic control, destabilizing dozens of enterprises that established headquartered there. The Eridania Campaign is marked by the hostile takeover of dozens of companies in the region, earning Aramas subsidiaries in various industries. With the wealth gained from the campaign, the Eridania Quadrangle houses the vast majority of Aramas' mining complexes, military equipment forges and military ground transportation factories.

Elysium Quadrangle [+]

The sight of Aramas' most recent successful campaign on Mars, the Elysium Quadrangle lies southwest of the capital. The vast flat landscape is home to heavily populated metropolises and Aramas' brand new energy sector, marked by a vast sea of solar panels used to power the energy guzzling nation.

Interstellar Territories [+]

Olympus [+]

A subsidiary acquired during the Eridania Campaign, Olympus is a massive complex of orbital shipyards, refineries, construction facilities and space-docks in low areostationary orbit above the Eridania Quadrangle that churns out the bulk of the Aramian Empires various Fleet ships. It also doubles as Aramas' main interstellar base, training pilots and directing the Aramian Fleet.

Phobos [+]

Once a mining outpost, the largest and closest moon of Mars now serves as a military surveillance outpost, taking in vast amounts of information on the nations neighbors and doubling as a slingshot for Fleet ships into deep space.

Culture:

The citizenry of Aramas generally stands behind the principle that "only the strong survive", regarding the qualities of benevolence and compassion as signs of weakness. Strength begets strength, at least as far as the people of Aramas are concerned. This seeming cruelty, however, is not an indicator of chaos. As is naturally and necessarily the case with humankind, Aramas is an orderly nation, where rules protect the citizenry from harm... at least from their peers. In Aramas, however, those with power are clearly protected by the law more than those without it.

A nation of brutal expansionists, military service in Aramas is compulsory for a period of eight years, with all of its citizens retained as active reservists until their golden years. Active Aramian military personnel are afforded a higher level of citizenship in Aramian society; offering them Stewardship opportunities and familial acclaim, so it is not uncommon for most citizens to remain active in the military for fifteen or more years.

Once one completes his or her service, citizenship is normalized and freedom to pursue personal agendas are granted. Citizens can open businesses under the Star Aramas name, trading with the nations allies or selling within his or her community. Employment in infrastructure is also looked upon highly, especially in the militaries regard.

Children on the other hand, are prepared for future basking in the legacy of their nation at a tender age. From seven, children are sent to agoge, a rigorous education and training program mandated for all Aramain citizens. Training involves mastering stealth, cultivating loyalty to the Star Aramas, extensive military training, social (communicating) preparation, business management and advanced levels of math, reading, and language. At eighteen, the just turned adult is thus ready to begin his or mandated eight years of service.

As Aramas expands and defeats neighboring cultures and cities, it offers the conquered people a choice; swear loyalty to Aramas, and be judged solely on your worth, or be destroyed. This is not subterfuge or any kind of ruse; the Aramian are as good as their word, and many who have embraced their conquerors' way of life find their prospects greatly improved. But those who refuse to bend the knee are crushed without mercy and made nigh-slaves. Whether a city and company is taken by force or willingly swears fealty to Aramas, its warmasons immediately set to work in stamping the empire's authority upon the newly acquired territory. Flags are ripped of their masts and replaced, traditional garb is burned to ash and Aramian colors soaked into its peoples hearts.

Conquered peoples that swear loyalty to Aramas become part of its armies and add their unique strengths to the empire's war efforts. Thus, regimentation and uniformity are anathema to the Aramian way of life. Nevertheless, conquered peoples aren't offered a full-citizenship with regards to military enlistment; only a pseudo-citizenship that allows one to work until a required fifteen years of military service is completed, then full-citizenship is granted.

Those who refuse Aramas' generous offer are forcibly taken slaves and refused the right to earn a pseudo-citizenship unless one willingly joins the military and completes a full fifteen years of service, then full-citizenship is granted.

History:

Technology:

Military: