Makes one wonder, just how powerful -are- warpships going to be? With the exception of the monsterous Klingon and Romulan ships, warpships on the whole are much smaller than equivalent hyper ships (especially the E class, yeesh, Lionstone -is- a loon.... I want one)
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Ah, bigger d*ck foreign policy at work"
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I'm not sure yet. Once they're at the fight, a heavy warpship like the Galaxy or Negh'var can expect to flatten any one ship it finds there, up to but excluding a D class - but how that works out for the smaller classes isn't something I've taken the time to sit down and work out.
Blessed be.
-n
(Freud would have field day with Lionstone.)
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A Galaxy class is comparable to a Negh'var? Those Klingons are horribly inefficient then (check the size chart, the Negh'var is much larger). On a related note, damn, the D'Deridex is -how- big? yeesh.
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Imagine, if you will, an E class retrofitted with Pulse Phaser turrets and Quantum Torpedos"
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I was mistaken about -how- much larger the Negh'var would be, but I imagine it still is a bit, since the Galaxy isn't likely to be that much more mass than the Sovereign (despite what it looks like from the side, the 'neck' of the Galaxy class isn't all that meaty, being rather thin from front/rear viewing). I'd eyeball the Galaxy class at being between 1.3x and 1.5x the Sovereign in mass, where as the Negh'var easily appears to be 1.9x to 2.2x, depending on what they made it out of (now, mass is no indicator of power, as any viewing of a Sovereign in battle is likely to show, but...)
On a semi-sorta-related note, anyone else notice you could fit, oh, several dozen Defiant class ships into one E class, if you were of a mind to do so?
-={(Astynax)]=-
Hmmm, one -big- hypership as the carrier for a swarm of warpships, that's one hell of an ouchie.
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A] On a semi-sorta-related note, anyone else notice you could fit, oh, several dozen Defiant class ships into one E class, if you were of a mind to do so? [/A
If you had several dozen clean Defiants, you sure could.
Blessed be.
-n
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A] On a semi-sorta-related note, anyone else notice you could fit, oh, several dozen Defiant class ships into one E class, if you were of a mind to do so? [/A
N]If you had several dozen clean Defiants, you sure could.[N
Hey, as stated, it'd be one hell of a deployment system for small but potent fleets, and hey, if someone can -clean- warp coils, it is entirely possible someone can erect a temporary 'jumpgate transit system' field effect for fleet retrieval/deployment operations. (Heh, work with me here, I'm exploring the idea of a tech pack-rat/scavenger that manages to swipe ships here and there, as well as salvage certain large wrecks, and turn the technology acquired into... useful forms;)
-={(Astynax)}=-
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A] (It should be noted I'm of the opinion a Sovereign would still cream a Galaxy, since IIRC the Sovereign is much more a pure warship) [/A
A canon Sovereign certainly could. It's purpose built, and more advanced to boot. On the other hand, our Humanx already have an excellent survey and science vessel in service, the Cortez class, so our Galaxies and Nebulas are... less peacefull. A lot of their internal space is devoted to massive Marine complements and their associated landing craft, but they're still pretty straight out warships.
On the other hand, a Sovereign class BC is quite a bit -faster- than a Galaxy class DNF, and is better protected for its mass.
A] What if... some sick bastard with lots of time and money somehow combined a Sovereign with an E class? [/A
It wouldn't move. The D'deridex class is only possible because Romulan singularity power cores have a power/weight ratio than the dilithium/antimatter cores everybody else uses.
On the other hand, except for that, they're (singularity power cores) pretty lousy. They're expensive to produce, maintenence hogs, and if they -do- fail (which is quite often) you have very good odds of losing the ship with all hands. On top of that, they need to be outright -replaced- about three times as often as a M/ARA.
The Romulans use them because their cloaking system has... embarrassing... effects on dilithium. As in, it stops being dilithium. Which is bad, since you'll be running antimatter through the stuff to power your cloak in the first place. And how the hell did I end up talking about this, anyway?
Blessed be.
-n
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A] What if... some sick bastard with lots of time and money somehow combined a Sovereign with an E class? [/A
N]It wouldn't move. The D'deridex class is only possible because Romulan singularity power cores have a power/weight ratio than the dilithium/antimatter cores everybody else uses.[N
Well, for one, no one says you can only have -one- antimatter reactor. Also, warp craft have other advantages, it would seem (I could be wrong here, but from the tone thus far), such as their weapon and sheilding systems (Just how do phasers, pulse phasers, photon torps and quantum torps compare to the best of the rest anyway?). My personal vision is a ship with 300 odd dual barrel pulse phaser turrets, 100 odd torpedo launchers, a dozen or so standard phaser arrays, and shielding till the cows come home. (Now, how anyone could retrofit a carcass or construct from scratch such a thing I have yet to determine, but the idea just makes me grin way too much).
-={(Astynax)}=-
And your talking about this because, while we've laid a decent amount of groundwork for how Hyper tech works, warp tech is not totally nailed down in the Spiral yet, from an authorial standpoint (for one, I'm immersed enough in Trek to need a good bit of clarification, or more to the point an adapter to squish Trek tech into a moderately more 'realistic' universe).
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a) There is a canon Star Fleet ship with dual warp cores. I don't recall a canon class name but it's the one with Excelsior components in a Nebula configuration. There is a picture on the page linked off the top.
b) Star Trek weapons are nasty: photon torpedoes as of ST:TMP are second generation antimatter warheads etc and the ranges are millions of miles.
c) Star Fleet engineers don't know shit about shit when it comes to weapon systems. For example: take a small warp drive. Fit out as a torpedo. Kinetic kills at FTL speeds anyone? Against anything without shields, that's lethal. Or have a warp drive get close to a ship and activate the warp field. Get it right and you have the ship in an unbalanced warp-field - most likely tearing it apart.
Or my personal favorite: runabout packing four photorp launchers (the dimensions of a launcher are similar to the runabout's nacelles) with an estimated 9 torpedoes per launcher in revolver magazines. Deploy in squadrons of 6 (personally I prefer 7 squadrons of 6 = 42) and watch those Borg Cubes melt under successive waves of hundreds of antimatter warheads.
drakensis
Of each thing ask what is it primary motivation, what is it nature, and most importantly, what sort of damage will it cause if thrown at a Visigoth with great force. -- From the unrecorded Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
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A] Well, for one, no one says you can only have -one- antimatter reactor. Also, warp craft have other advantages, it would seem (I could be wrong here, but from the tone thus far), such as their weapon and sheilding systems (Just how do phasers, pulse phasers, photon torps and quantum torps compare to the best of the rest anyway?). [/A
Perhaps I phrased poorly - the amount of power generation equipment, in whatever configuration, neccessary to move and fight a warpship the size of an E class is about -double- the maximum that you could fit into the specified hull. The Vorlons could do it, the Jurai can do it, the Taiidani couldn't even hope to.
Phasers, I'm not sure yet whether we'll steal the canon explanation or simply say that they fire beams of coherent plasma. Pulse phasers are probably nothing more than a Cochrane upgrade of the good old fashioned plasma cannon. Except for their mounting warp sustainer coils, photorps and quatorps are reasonably conventional short range/high velocity missile systems. Their carrying antimatter warheads is unusual, but makes good sense in that antimatter weapons are rare mostly because they're bloody fucking dangerous to handle - and warpships have to deal with the stuff -anyway-, so they're not really taking any additional risks.
D] a) There is a canon Star Fleet ship with dual warp cores. I don't recall a canon class name but it's the one with Excelsior components in a Nebula configuration. There is a picture on the page linked off the top. [/D
Centaur, I believe. Multiple warp cores are technically possible, but won't work in series and are difficult to arrange in parallel - they have to be balanced just right, and that's a bitch in real world conditions.
D] c) Star Fleet engineers don't know shit about shit when it comes to weapon systems. For example: take a small warp drive. Fit out as a torpedo. Kinetic kills at FTL speeds anyone? Against anything without shields, that's lethal. Or have a warp drive get close to a ship and activate the warp field. Get it right and you have the ship in an unbalanced warp-field - most likely tearing it apart. [/D
Both of these are a bit -expensive- to use as a one shot weapon, and the destabilzer gadget would go acoherent too, so it would be just that.
D] Or my personal favorite: runabout packing four photorp launchers (the dimensions of a launcher are similar to the runabout's nacelles) with an estimated 9 torpedoes per launcher in revolver magazines. Deploy in squadrons of 6 (personally I prefer 7 squadrons of 6 = 42) and watch those Borg Cubes melt under successive waves of hundreds of antimatter warheads. [/D
Popcorn against anything with decent antifighter coverage. EXPENSIVE popcorn.
Blessed be.
-n
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So, the question remains, is the moon of the Terra template that Tenchi came from a Dahak equivalent? Someone said the Jurai are going to have Accultani trouble (or am I getting my Extraterrestrial Invaders mixed up here?).
-Griever
I may find myself missing more self-imposed deadlines - I've just picked up Neverwinter Nights. Sleep? Who needs sleep?
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The Imperium existed, yes. Their reasons for developing as they did were somewhat different - previously, the Accultanni have only invaded twice, and they failed miserably both times, having to face a rather more extensive field of foes than in canon. Both of these incursions occured well before the rise of the Imperium, and in fact there was no connection between the two.
The reason the Imperium built all those obscenely huge 'battleships' is the simple fact that massive grav fields have funky effects on local leylines. They pool them, merge them, tangle them such that even the most powerful hyperbeings (Tsunami, Big C, He-Whose-Name-Is-Not-Spoken-By-Anyone-With-A-Grain-Of-Self-Preservation, etc.) have a very hard time affecting the either the object generating the field or anything located close to its center. So, if Tsunami wanted to vape a planet, she'd have a much easier time gathering gobs and gobs of conventional energy to shatter it the 'conventional' way, as opposed to simply using her power to, umm, 'unmake' it or otherwise affect it directly.
So, Dahak and company are not only absurdly powerful in their own right, but they're also fairly resistant to high level god-power and completely immune to low level.
No, the Death Star doesn't come anywhere near close to being big enough for this. (although it occurs to me that the nature of the Sailor Senshi's relationships with their totem worlds might allow -them- to partake.)
Now, the Imperium -knew- that. They not only knew that their battle planetoids would be able to fight gods - but that was the entire -point-. See, they were -there- when Cthulu and Co. first arrived in the Spiral. They knew that the seal wouldn't last forever, and wanted to be -ready- when it came down.
So, time goes by, and eventually they develope teleporter technology on a scale and efficiency that can't be found anywhere in the Spiral outside the - ... Joker worlds. The Joker System contains the last survivors of the Imperium. That explains a -lot- - enhanced noblity, long lives, teleports... obviously they didn't keep -everything- after the Imperium fell, but they've got a lot, and have had a long time...
Anyway, the other thing they make the mistake of developing is a bioweapon intended to work against the various Lovecraftians.
Except of course, it works on -everything- else, too... and when it gets out, it spreads through the teleport net like lightning. Goodbye, Imperium.
Less than a thousand years later, while the entire sector is still under quarantine, a hyperadvanced extragalactic civilization will arrive, take over their former space and leftover hardware, and absorb all but one system's worth of the paltry fragments of Imperium society that survive.
Even at peak numbers, there were never more than a hundred or so battle worlds, and most will either be retired over the ages or destroyed in battle not with their intended foe, but rather a threat at once less powerful and far more virulent - the Straumli Perversion.
I'm not sure how many survive to Act IV or later, but it will definitely be in single digits, probably less than five. I'm also not sure where those end up.
Blessed be.
-n
(The Imperium was more advanced than the Jurai, if in an entirely different way, and somewhat less so than the Vorlon.)
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[warning, spoilers for Alan Dean Foster's recent novel, Reunion]
The latest Flinx and Pip novel shows that the Tar-Aiym also built bloody huge ships.
Flinx ends up in a very minor AAnn starsystem, and discovers that the moon of the outermost planet is actually artificial. It's disgused in a methane atmosphere and looks fairly ordinary.
Now the outermost planet is a methane dwarf, described as being the step between gas giants and brown dwarf stars, so it's fricken huge. The 'moon' is roughly the size of earth's moon, maybe a bit larger.
Flinx ends up awakening the ship's AI, and as he's departing, the moon begins moving, tearing away from it's methane shroud, and decending towards the methane dwarf. They they find out that the moon is actually a shuttlecraft or something because the planet's core is the mothership, which sucks up the methane atmosphere that was disguising it, and after the 'moon' docks, it departs the star system for points unknown.
Even accounting for the thick atmosphere, the mothership was probably the size of a smaller gas giant (like Neptune or Uranus).
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