Adrian Laguna wrote:Saying that a starship's drive will be a viable weapon in space combat is like saying a bayonet is a viable weapon in an artillery duel. Are we going to have drives that can damage ships 10,000 km behind them?
Quite possibly? If I wanted to make sure the beam from my assgun was properly collimated, how would the fact it also doubles as the engine preclude me from this? What are you using, reactionless drives?
Engine wash is more than a little damaging, and if my vessel uses an antimatter motor for propulsion, I'm going to be turning reaction matter into a high-energy proton beam just for the sake of propulsion. A proton beam capable of shoving my fatass starship through space, and that's an awful lot more dangerous than a bayonet. If the magnetic nozzle is weaponized to the point where I can actually squench it down appropriately for distance collimation, I've basically just made an engine that is also a particle beam weapon. That seems exactly like what you would expect to shoot at people. Otherwise, just to spite you, I'll make it an Orion drive with an additional kinetic accelerator behind the pusher plate for when I'd rather lob them.
Covenant aint alone, Chamaran ships rip off the idea of wave motion guns. So the reactor, engine and beamcannons are all linked by conduits so that the fusion power can be used for exhaust, energy and beams of yellow sunbright death. The catgirls love their fusion. The only difference is that i like my attacks to come from the ships front, being able to aim and lastly thought that there was some good reason or other that you could optimize something as propulsion or as a weapon but not do both at once.
Also, am i the only person who notices Noble Ire making mention of his spacemonsters using Melee with claws as a spacewarfare weapon?
I tend to ignore most technology claims until the OOBs go up, at which point I can quote the things that are silly and continue from there.
Engines doubling as weapons are approved, of course, because it's just damn cool.
Do not meddle in the affairs of insomniacs, for they are cranky and can do things to you while you sleep. The Realm of Confusion
"Every time you talk about Teal'c, I keep imagining Thor's ass. Thank you very much for that, you fucking fucker." -Marcao SG-14: Because in some cases, "Recon" means "Blow up a fucking planet or die trying." SilCore Wiki! Come take a look!
Darkevilme wrote:Also, am i the only person who notices Noble Ire making mention of his spacemonsters using Melee with claws as a spacewarfare weapon?
Keep in mind, they've only been used against lightly armored civilian and pirate craft, and only then because their targets were taken completely by surprise. An enemy starship wouldn't have to worry about a Treader's claws unless they somehow got literally within arm's reach of the creature; if that happened, their claws would be equivalent to continuous, point-blank blasts from anti-capital ship energy weapons (the physical attack is a combination of ion-drive "backwash" and heat energy syphoned from the beast's "heart").
Biowank? Yes. Then again, when people started arming their soldiers with "axes", this STGOD got a bit less serious (I love the idea, though).
Functionally the Awesome can is equivalent to psychic abilities with really weird focusing methods. Still, this idea has been on the back burner since about midway through the last STGOD when I saw what some of the other people were coming up with.
Plus this:
Also, if you guys want I can post my current edition of my OOB so that it can be picked apart mercilessly.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
Hotfoot wrote:Engines doubling as weapons are approved, of course, because it's just damn cool.
It's the Kzinti Lesson. We're not the first to come up with the idea of using engine exhaust as a weapon.
"preemptive killing of cops might not be such a bad idea from a personal saftey[sic] standpoint..." --Keevan Colton
"There's a word for bias you can't see: Yours." -- William Saletan
Once more, with feeling.
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It was a big day. She couldn't hold in her excitement. Her, Laurel Danielson, was bringing a member of the Death Pact to Alibera's ball. It would be wonderful. She had worn her best new dress, a shimmering opalescent wrap that was semi-transparent in all the right places. Her jeweled and styled hair fell down her back like a blonde waterfall, fluttering lightly in an artificial breeze.
She pouted her lips a bit when she looked over at Darien, his black pants straight-legged leather, black running shoes, and a loose fitting sleeveless black T-shirt, emblazoned with a skull and crossbone symbol. It was... tacky, but she had to admit, you could see his large, taut muscles, and the pants where just the perfect kind of tight. Even the tousled black hair was different and refreshing from the perfumed ninnies that inhabited the party scene. She looked over to him, staring at the sky as they rode the A-grav platform to the penthouse.
"What are you thinking about, Darien?"
'The past. How I got here, where I should go...'
"Your thinking about the military aren't you?"
'yes'
"Can I ask you a question?" A small nod. "Have you ever killed a person?"
'Have you?' A chuckle, a bit cold though. 'Too many people. Although most where trying to kill me too. They generally did a good job of it.'
"Um..." It was uncomfortable. She didn't expect that kind of candidness, nor did she expect so much from the young man. "Uh, Darien, how old are you?"
'Old enough.' A shameless dodge. But the past was obviously painful. Laurel decided to drop the subject.
"So, you looking forward to the party?" Another nod, as he stared at the clouds. What did he see in that sky?
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Darien! Darien! Don't worry buddy, you can't see. Now don't freak out, but you took a plasma grenade. Your eyes aren't going to work, and your pretty beat up. We got you hopped up nice, and you should be dosing, so it shouldn't hurt. Don't worry, we'll get you back and better than ever. Now just breath shallow breaths. You're going to make it.
It was his first command. A minor riot on Cylex. Protesters with signs. "No tax from an Empire so Lax!" It was pretty lame. He had to do something though, so Darien Viest would step forward. 'Please, calm down! Disperse! No one wants to use force! Please file your complaints to the proper channels!' A rock bounced off the black visor of his powered suit. "No orders from faceless tools of the Empire." So that was how it is. He pulled the helmet off, leaving the black smart cloth face mask on. A single crack, a flash of light, and a splattering of red across his vision. Darien looked up from the ground. The crowd looked down, the explosive shell blowing the left side of his face off. Blood and ruined muscle covered the black carbon reinforced skull. The cybernetic eyes biological components pulped. 'Motherfucker!' A loud snap and a sick splash as the rock hit the sniper at supersonic speeds, a mist of blood raining out of the overhanging window onto the crowd. 'Do you stupid shits think I want to be here? I want to be at home, with my wife, with my son, but no, I am dragged to this fucking asshat planet to deal with a bunch of stupid fucking peasants who are unhappy with the Empire. No one is happy here, but I swear if you don't disperse I'll kill all of you so I can go home. The Empire doesn't care, that's why they sent us. Now either disperse and go home to your fucking families so I can too, or start lining up. The ammo comes outta our pay."
He was dead. Bri was devastated, of course. This was her fear. Their son had followed their parents footsteps. He was a fool like them. Everyone dies in the end though. No use being gloomy about it, he had a mission to do. Turbulence buffeted the drop capsule, and then a flash. It was a plasma missile. The outer-coat was wrecked, the grav-chute trashed, the secondaries ash. Brace yourself, brace yourself. A crash. Ablatives shredding away. Impacts. A tumble through a few hundred meters of hive tower. His neck was cocked and broken. He could look down at his body, legs shorn off, his left arm a mess of twisted carbon and pulp, his skull cracked, blood pouring out. His right arm was missing, as was his right shoulder, collarbone, most of his lung, the cybernetics, and his ribcage. Lastly, the twisted mass of rebar that held his entrails was kind of fascinating, a sculpture of rust brown iron, and the slick, shiny red and silver of his guts. Darien was glad he was paralyzed. No one could hear him scream.
"Welcome back to the world of the living, Darien. You made quite a mess of yourself this time. We had to bump you up to stage six. It was a lot of work, putting you back together again. But you'll find this new enhancement to work a lot better. You should be fit again in no time. Of course, with this enhancement does come your service requirement. We have you lined up to take up a tour in the Special Services. Darien the Undead in the Suicide Squad. Should be a sight to see. Oh, you don't believe me? Look, all better." The doctor held up a mirror. It was his face. A small grin spread. He really was the Undead. The doctor pulled a small surgical tray from behind himself. "We also thought we should give you a souvenir to commemorate this moment. We pulled these from your soft pallet. I hope its a nice memento." Darien smiled wider, a chuckle escaping. His grin continued to widen, as he stared at the tray full of his teeth.
An arm on Thricex. A leg at Halm. Lungs burned out by poison gas in the Crassi sector. Disemboweled at AT121. Fingers, toes, eyes, ears, spread around half the galaxy. Vat-grown parts always ready to pick him back up. The Undead. That was how he ended up. Them the dead, him the un.
==============================
He looked down at the lavish entrance. 'Lets party!' A grin.
A teenage girl is just a teenage boy who can get laid.
-GTO
We're not just doing this for money; we're doing this for a shitload of money!
Are we all doing 'lighthearted' empires now after I made one? What serious, gritty empires do we have left? I made one since it'd be fun to be one in a sea of 'there is only war'. But well... what's left?
Im not sure mine is "light hearted" simply "not gritty" My people are a very out of the way colony that has developed a fierce sense of self reliance and striving to achieve the best in all things. Sure I've incorporated a few light hearted aspects, (BusterMachines for one) But im still fleshing out the story behind them.
Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
"Congratulations, you get a cookie. You almost got a fundamental English word correct." Pick
"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan Read "Tales From The Crossroads"! Read "One Wrong Turn"!
Nephtys wrote:Are we all doing 'lighthearted' empires now after I made one? What serious, gritty empires do we have left? I made one since it'd be fun to be one in a sea of 'there is only war'. But well... what's left?
It's harder to get taken seriously when there's more then a couple of lolpires. We might wind up with a LOLTGOD this time around, but that's fine, we can work with it.
I am running a decaying, overindulgent Aristocracy, I killed the son of one of my main characters in the second post, as well as beating the ever loving shit outta him. The aristocrats are selfish, vain excuses for humanity with such overabundant wealth and power that their perspective is completely skewed. The military has served for so many years as shock troops in the Imperial Levee and have been rebuilt so many times that they are only spectres of people. My characters may interact humorously, but there is more than a bit of grit. The Lol-pires should even out as they are finalized.
A teenage girl is just a teenage boy who can get laid.
-GTO
We're not just doing this for money; we're doing this for a shitload of money!
Nephtys wrote:Are we all doing 'lighthearted' empires now after I made one? What serious, gritty empires do we have left? I made one since it'd be fun to be one in a sea of 'there is only war'. But well... what's left?
It's harder to get taken seriously when there's more then a couple of lolpires. We might wind up with a LOLTGOD this time around, but that's fine, we can work with it.
This is the problem for me too--I didn't want to do a lolpire, and nobody is going to take my dangerous creepy forces (whatever they are) at all seriously if the previous battle had me eeking out a victory against space rabbits or something. I wouldn't want to ban people who make humorous or lighthearted empires, since it seems like basically everyone has, but I really am not interested in a LOLTGOD. If that happens I'll just decline to make an Empire myself. I'd like to do something a bit more grim and gritty--sense there is a very common form of dark humor between soldiers in a world of shit that works just fine, and even giant space robots or battle-guitars of doom can be played in such a way as to maintain believability and keep the setting dark.
It just feels like we're straying from the dark setting we started with. It's like as if everyone in unison decided to be the one 'light in the dark' style of 'lighten the mood' nation.
So I'm still hoping to be gritty, but without a few other gritty factions too, it's just going to be misplaced and wierd. Eventually the humor and lighthearted elements reach critical mass and it ceases to be a dark universe at all--and you end up like a Space Marine in Sesame Street, looking like some sort of over-compnensating faux-badass.
So if nobody wants to be a grim, dark nation... why are we doing a grim, dark theme? Nobody seems to be following any vestige of the Imperial Policies anyway.
Lighten the dark... okay Covenant i'll tell you what my early first strike plans are and why just so you can take heart.
The chamaran mothership vats that provide food are no longer self sustaining and their efficiency is declining to the extent the entire Chamaran population is going to face a threat of starvation in six months.
This means I need to capture someone's world and hold it long enough to strip everything off it that is edible, you know, plants, animals, humans...
The only "lol" aspect of my empire is the rather silly names of my "ships" (and I can change that, too, if needed). Beyond that, the CDG will be fairly gritty and ruthless, reactionary to what should be a gritty and ruthless time.
I think you're overstating matters a bit, Covenant. There are only a handful of really "loltastic" empires scattered throughout this thread, and the rest could work well in this setting, depending upon how they're RPed. When people actually start posting in the OOB, we can make an accounting of how many of the powers seem to be in-keeping with the dark theme of this STGOD. If there's too much of a disconnect, we can try to do something about it, but until then I wouldn't worry.
Oh, don't worry Covenant, if you could manage to take fucking Tyrannosaurs in F-15s (that was emphasis for the Awesome by the way) and play them seriously, then I wouldn't worry too much. Plus, as the creator of the lead lolpire, let me point out that my guys are pretty dark and nasty in their own right. Sure, they are all funny on paper, but read some of the fluff again. They consider the heads of rival suitors an appropriate romantic gesture, and then hang those heads in their nurseries. They are into taking body parts as trophies, and enjoy smashing up planetary infrastructure and carrying people off as slaves.
Simply put, they're not nice. And the maiming and enslavement is to people they like.
I love learning. Teach me. I will listen. You know, if Christian dogma included a ten-foot tall Jesus walking around in battle armor and smashing retarded cultists with a gaint mace, I might just convert - Noble Ire on Jesus smashing Scientologists
Covenant wrote:Engine wash is more than a little damaging, and if my vessel uses an antimatter motor for propulsion, I'm going to be turning reaction matter into a high-energy proton beam just for the sake of propulsion. A proton beam capable of shoving my fatass starship through space, and that's an awful lot more dangerous than a bayonet. If the magnetic nozzle is weaponized to the point where I can actually squench it down appropriately for distance collimation, I've basically just made an engine that is also a particle beam weapon. That seems exactly like what you would expect to shoot at people. Otherwise, just to spite you, I'll make it an Orion drive with an additional kinetic accelerator behind the pusher plate for when I'd rather lob them.
I suppose you're right. It's just that I figured the engine wash would dissipate rapidly behind the ship, since trying to get it to stay coherent (ie, weaponizing it) would severely decrease its efficiency as a drive.
Really though, it depends on the drive, and you can be sure that it will be dangerous within a very wide area (when we're talking about a ship 6 KM long and 4 KM tall) at the accelerations we're dealing with, just out of volume of reaction mass. While the stuff is going to get diffuse, probably, pretty quickly, some engines are going to cause nasty crap to trail them regardless and at a great distance. Think of it like the Comet coma, it's not even reaction mass--it's just comet cook-off, but it gets HUGE and it trails very far. Just because something is diffuse doesn't mean it's not there. This isn't an issue in space opera, but then again we never see engines in star wars spew out lightsecond-long jets as they ramp up to lightspeed either, so it's a matter of setting.
Our setting was originally fairly gritty and not too technowanky, so I felt that an oldschool antimatter Torch motor would be the most likely candidate for our Imperial and Imperial-derived vessels. We've gone off the rails since then though, so I just don't know anymore.
Mostly, I'm not -worried- I'm just confused about the setting and where people want to go with stuff. If we want something more humorous, we could just do a setting that's more permissive of that. Just seems bizzare to have everyone breaking the mould. ;D Besides me, is anyone playing an Imperial loyalist faction that actually, somewhat, maybe represented a faction of the Empire tha wasn't constantly attempting to subvert the message and/or being pushed out to the lunatic fringe? Otherwise I'm basically playing the Empire, which is kinda odd.
As for the numbers, so far how many do we have? Not many have decided and made their OOB's yet, so we have a large amount of people without offical Empires, so they may seem more lolly than they are. The Empires that have beent the best fleshed out are the Catgirls, Haruhi Cultists, KISS Army (I do happen to love the idea of The Awesome, and would like to write it into Imperial Theme) and the Bentusi folks.
I'm just trying to influence the people who haven't written their OOBs, yet. It's not like we have to roll around in mud saying "Anger angst!" and "Depression grim reality!" and such to each other. All that needs to be done is acknowledge that the world is pretty awful. So far we've been pretty good at that, but I just keep stating it so that when all the armies are written up I can go "Well seems I was overstating things" and we'll all be cool. Better to be a broken record now than fight schoolgirls later.
A rough preview of my nation. Feel free to point out anything that won't jive with the storyline.
The Humanist Union
General Overview
The Humanist Union is a meritocracy run by its founder, a posthuman commonly called “Father.” It is a highly militant, expansionist nation marked for having a general hostility to foreign nations and a passionate dislike for alien organisms. Citizens of the Humanist Union believe that it is mankind's purpose and right to expand its reach to the ends of space, improving itself in all ways possible into the distant future. They further believe that it is up to each man and woman to earn his place in the future. All are judged, rewarded, and punished based on their actions and their value to society, regardless of social position. Father's status as an absolute dictator makes this possible; he can and does intervene whenever necessary to assure that his nation remains a meritocracy. Union citizens, naturally, embrace cybernetics and genetic modifications with unreserved zeal: many citizen-forms are barely recognizable as human. It is the Union's open belief that all of mankind deserve a chance to earn their worth, free from the parasitism of the luckily-born or the silver-tongued scum who make up the ruling classes of most human nations. Union dislike for alien sapients is cruel and simple: they are rivals.
History
The Humanist Union's founding Imperial Protectorate, the Khan Union, was an old and reserved state, a small league of planets ruled over largely by military tech producers and a myriad of research corporations. The main export of this protectorate included cutting-edge technology and, more significantly, military brawn. The Khan Union focused a great deal of its economic might on maintaining a large, powerful military that it regularly “rented” to the Empire proper and other protectorates in exchange for supplies of necessities such as foodstuffs, as well raw resources to fuel their massive industries.
As time progressed, military dominance of the Khan Union grew to the point where politicians had largely been replaced by or were controlled through hard-nosed, no-nonsense military commanders. Most of these men held strong ideas of merit-based rule and human advancement, and these tended to clash with the Earth-worshiping decadence of conservative Imperials and the profit motives of the heads of the Union's powerful military production and research industries. This, inevitably, lead to a clash within the highly militarized protectorate. “Orthodox” pro-Imperials included true believers in the Imperial creed, corporate heads who wished to maintain power, and those political officials who had come to resent the power of the Khan Union's military officials. “Progressives,” on the other hand, were not strictly anti-Imperial: indeed, such would have been suicidal. They instead rallied around a popular banner of “killing the parasites” they felt to be feeding upon and harming society. This faction consisted of the majority of the active commanding naval and army officers, as well as a huge portion of the public and a respectable portion of those in the research industry who felt that they were being exploited for their ideas or held back by moralistic regulations. The civil war itself was brief and savage: the Orthodox faction found itself almost entirely annihilated, those leaders who did not flee to other protectorates within the Empire killed by firing squads arranged by the victorious party.
The Progressive victory did not come easy: the vast majority of the charismatic, idealist military commanders that made up the faction's leadership were killed by their beliefs in battle. One of the few remaining ones, an extreme hardliner whose name is lost to time, observed the power vacuum and seized as much power as he could grasp, rooting out and executing those high-ranking officials left who showed even slight Orthodox sympathies. Few objected to his sudden position at the top of the Khan Union: indeed, he was easily the most experienced and successful of all living military commanders in the state. This man would eventually become the being known as Father. The Khan Union had been absolutely devastated by its civil war: countless numbers had died in the various battles, and billions now found themselves starving due to the lack of trade with prolific agricultural producers. The Progressive leadership of the Khan Union made a fateful decision: it formally declared the Protectorate a meritocracy, and then proceeded to strip the nation to the bare bones of survival, shedding the last vestiges of its bureaucracy. The man who would become Father was appointed at the head of the Khan Union, and he proceeded to brutally kick the nation back into shape. Necessities such as power, food, and water went to those individuals, worlds, and cities which worked the hardest towards reconstruction and produced the greatest industrial output. Many millions signed onto the military to earn their way to food. The Khan Union, formally renamed as the Humanist Union, resumed its role as an exporter of “military assistance” eagerly and with enthusiasm in order to assure the Empire of its loyalty and draw economic support through its actions.
As the Humanist Union stabilized it became increasingly isolationist in all ways that it could afford; hostility towards perceived social parasitism in the rest of the Empire and a belief that the Empire's citizens had grown sedentary bred growing resentment in the citizens of the Humanist Union, who had begun to embrace the idea of actively striving to move beyond mere humanity to as great a degree as possible. As the Empire deteriorated the unspoken hostility and desire for advancement grew, and the leader now simply as “Father” had become so much more than a human.
Last edited by Tanasinn on 2007-11-22 02:45am, edited 3 times in total.
Tanasinn wrote:THESE PARAGRAPHS ARE HUGE!
THAT MEANS THEY HAVE HUGE GUTS!
Can you add some more paragraphs plz? Via the edit function. I got it readable via MSword, but just for the sake of the rest of us. Otherwise, it's an interesting irony--disliking the power structure but understanding that even a stupid and cruel animal much larger than you is still much larger than you, and working for them in a military capacity in order not to get shot.
My faction is Imperial Loyalist. It's just realist, like every faction should be. All factions would be chafing under the oppressiveness that is Imperial Rule, even whilst enjoying the comforts. No one wants to be a puppet to a large uncaring bureaucracy, but that is all you can be under the Empire. However, you are safe, wealthy and able to live idyllically, if not completely free. Now, the universe is unsafe, your wealth isn't guaranteed and you have to try, but you can go your own way.
Besides, the Empire has provided stability for so damn long that factions are going to develop in ways that are unsustainable. The shear might of the Empire allowed for goofiness, because there was no threat of real war, so barbarians could live however if they stayed out of the Empires hair, and if you payed your taxes and delivered your levies, you could do whatever you wanted. Why is the Empire going to waste much time because Joe-bobs Colony allows you to marry farm animals. They pay up early and their troops are effective, if a bit distracted by sheep.
A teenage girl is just a teenage boy who can get laid.
-GTO
We're not just doing this for money; we're doing this for a shitload of money!
Nephtys wrote:Are we all doing 'lighthearted' empires now after I made one? What serious, gritty empires do we have left? I made one since it'd be fun to be one in a sea of 'there is only war'. But well... what's left?
Mine's not lighthearted. Now it's not hugely grim, either, though there'll be a bit of that there because they'll be convinced that the Inquest might come back for them someday and they need to be armed and ready.
Important question: It was determined that the Empire arose after slow-ass colony ships left Earth but before said colony ships arrived at their destinations. What was the political situation on Earth like before the rise of the Empire, specifically when the bulk of the colony ships were launched?
Well since you're offering: For my main heavy warship class, I'm looking for a Brick o' DOOM!™ somewhere between the Pillar of Autumn and the Deimos class corvette. For weaponry this time out I think I'm looking at retaining the spinal-mount railgun I usually use but going with beam emitters for the primary broadside weapons instead of more railguns. Missile batteries are also a must, but from the outside they'd just look like a series of hatches, since having missiles mounted externally is just asking for it.
Incidentally, I think I'll be using this for a fighter/bomber type again, since I've got it hanging around anyway.
What serious, gritty empires do we have left? I made one since it'd be fun to be one in a sea of 'there is only war'. But well... what's left?
