Beyond Alpha Centauri: Discussion Thread

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by kassiopeia
Anyone heard of the Bussard collector (or Ramscoop)? It's famous from the Star Trek series.
It's a device that collects interstellar matter so that, primely the hydrogen free there, can be perused as fuel.
My point: Could we have it as accepted technology? I was thinking the new dreadnaught of the Coalition Navy could have a (experimental?) Bussard collector to increase operational range.

LMP has mentioned this. Up until now, it has been mostly a Pirate tech since they have no real fixed home ports that are out in the open. I don't see why anyone couldnt be researching it or even have working prototypes.

This leads me to my next question.

Planetary shields. I always thought that these were a tremendous advantage that Star wars had. I was going to write up a piece about the Spartans researching this. They will find out that it is possible but requires tremoundous amounts of energy and many large installations on the surface to generate. It would however be possible to shield small areas of a planet forceing attackers to actually land on a planet to take it like the Morgans did. If not someone could simply destroy important cities on the surface with their fleet and move on. Any thoughts on this? I think we all have orbital defenses around our planets, but once those are gone, the attacker sits up there and reduces your cities to ashes. This can be important in the future when someone tries to take a planet.

[Frankychan]

Sprayber,

Ok, I'll postpone the Hive ambassador's arrival until you let me know that it's ok to post. Just a reminder, the ambassador will arrive outside Spartan space and inside the neutral zone that buffers our two territories.

Plantary Shields

As for planetary shielding, I kind of like that idea. I was thinking that since Hive facilities are underground, only these area's will be protected under the shield. Hive planets and installations within designated Hive space are protected by stationary defense platforms and cloaked mine's.

So, Hive planets are enveloped by mines, weapon platforms and orbital satellites, but the planets themselves are littered with area's that an invading force can land on them. A grid is set up where areas with shielding are protected by more cloak mines and less platforms/satellites, whereas non-shielded area's are protected by more stationary platform's and less mines. So that if an invading force destroys these platforms, they have a relative clear-shot at landing on the planet (just trying to create weaknesses in the Hive defenses).

But getting back to the point, I think planetary shielding is a feasible idea. Just so long as there is a way to penetrate the shields whether by continuous bombardment, sabotage, or ground-based forces launching an attack head on.

BTW--->I think that the Hive planetary shields should be slightly weaker than everyone else's because their cities are below ground and are better protected by orbital bombardment/invasion.

[Sprayber]

like I said. It is a distant opportunity to have full planerary shields. Local shields for cities or military bases would be possible though. This would only protect from orbital bombardment. Ground attack would have to be defended the old fashioned way. troops against troops. and veichles

[[LordLMP]]

Ramscoops only work for the Pirates because it converts space matter into Antimatter for the Chiron FTL.... but COalition uses a Sol FTL, powered by Elerium-115 or whatever... so i can't how a ramscoop would work unless they make a Antimatter powered FTL...but the you would need the techs to make Antimatter cheaply like the Morganites and rest of the Chironians.

frank, it would depend on which clan your contacting and depends on the deal.... if you contact the Kane, or the wolverines in general... then, depending of the deal, can have the Pirates help out, depending............ Pirates doesn't generally know where Hive territory is.. but knows which area...... can say some past Pirate incursions in that area dissapeared :P so they generally avoid that area...... Pirates mainly among the Spartan, Drones, Morganites, Peacekeeper, University, etc... spaces.

If you want to play with shields of any kind, then it would be possible to have shields for ships.......... and i don't want shields for ships, because it makes combat lot more interesting........ may have some prototypes


anyway, g2g...........

-LMP

[Kassiopeia]

I really would not care with shields. At least on ships.
I designed the outlook of the Coalition ships with this in mind.

One could regulate the shields however, if they must be taken into play. It would have to require _tremendous_ amounts of energy, and be only placed on, say, the capitol of Sparta Prime for example. Or on the top of Geneva, though I doubt the tech would be at the Coalition's reach.

You see, my ship designs have what one of my friends would call "box symptom". This is how he used to call my space ships built of legos

This design is very bulky. It has *some* sleekness, but it looks more like a Borg cube then the Akira class in Star Trek.

First of all, the Star Trek ship type with a saucer, attached to a central structure with warp nacelles protruding from it is, if not constructed of very resilient and/or shock-absorpant materials, hazardous.

If the shielding fails, the ship can be easily taken down by a few shots in to critical areas, like the bridge. Any fairly good alien tactical officer would know where to place the shots to blow the bridge apart. Stupid, because the bridge location does not have to be visible, it could be inside the central structure without hindering effectiveness like in the Battlecruiser in BC3000AD.

Then there is the Star Destroyer sort in Star Wars. But that model's bridge is also very vulnerable to destruction, not to mention the docking port below which is almost asking for a torpedo or two.

These two ship types have been designed to rely on energy or deflector shields, which IMO at least when looking at scifi flicks are much too easy to bring down

So the Coalition ships have the central command, the bridge, where the captain and the navigation officers reside, is within the ship, and they have a very thick layer of armour.

Originally posted by [LordLMP]
Ramscoops only work for the Pirates because it converts space matter into Antimatter for the Chiron FTL.... but COalition uses a Sol FTL, powered by Elerium-115 or whatever... so i can't how a ramscoop would work unless they make a Antimatter powered FTL...but the you would need the techs to make Antimatter cheaply like the Morganites and rest of the Chironians.

Then what I had in mind is not a "Ramscoop", at least in Pirate sense. Maybe not calling the Sol one a "Ramscoop" or a "Bussard Collector" would make things simpler to understand.

This system spreads a magnetic field infront of the ship, as a sail or a fishing net. (This idea is from the book Tau Zero by Poul Anderson, and in there it's called a "Bussard collector".)

The sail is hit with interstellar hydrogen, which is directed to the fuel tanks for converting to energy for sublight drives or water.

It's at best when collecting released hydrogen of destroyed ships or from the upper layers of a planet's atmosphere.

So this has nothing to do with an Antimatter FTL drive.

It just uses a collection method as the Pirate ships but the processing of gathered matter differs.
And it's experimental, so you won't see it common on Earth ships, just the Solaris class dreadnaught.

I got some good pictures of Narn crusiers if you would like them. as well as a schematic of the star furies.

Gimme gimme gimme!
Put them trough on email, a.helin@phpoint.net , and if they are enormous, please zip them if possible. Or you could provide a link.

[Cybergod]

The story is posted! Kass, you could include the broadcast from Titan, made by Nicholas Popullos in your future posts! PLZ!

Misc things:

* Has anyone ever mentioned this project to the one of the administrators? This really shouldbe in the Apolyton News! At least to keep that section of the news with the living...

* We could make SMAC/AX factions out of this project! This would 1) determine what your faction has and doesn't to everyone 2) make it available for you to test tactics (miniscully - on Planet) against your opponents! Of course I am not sure hive, Spartans or morgan would change much

my 2 pennies

[Frankychan]

Pirates for Hire and other fun stuff

LMP,

I was thinking either Kane, or one of the more "sleazier" pirate clans that don't mind getting their hands bloody. I was thinking that Yang would first contact Kane (since he is the big chief) but if Kane declines-then Yang would probably seek out the more devious clans.

As for offers that the G.H.E. would offer...maybe supplies that the Pirate "Confederation" might need---food stuff's, light weaponry, armor, medical supplies. Or maybe even design spec's for capital ships....whatever that you think would be appropriate since I don't know how you picture the Pirate social structure and living conditions should be.

For communication purposes, how would Hive personnel get into contact with Pirate representatives?

Shields

One thought that i came upon while reading the diverse technologies that each nation/faction/empire/coalition has is that each factions technology differs somewhat than anothers. Chironian FTL is different from Sol FTL for example.

What I propose is that some factons have shields and other do not. Instead of shields, how about ablative armor, reinforced hulls, or simply no shields at all? For the Hive ships, I see them as having no shields, reinforced hulls, or ablative armor--depending on what type of ship it is. The Hive uses stealth and surprise as well as superior numbers instead of well armored or "high-tech" ships. That way, each of our chosen factions remain slightly different from one another but at the same time preventing one faction from dominating the rest.

[Silence]

Hi sorry for being inactive for a while,

I had an idea for my faction, I am slighty baseing my faction off the Friendlys from Childe Cycle by Gordon R. Dickson. Where they make money as mercianries.

So I was thinking would anybody want some to buy some Soliders of God for ground operations and that.

[[LordLMP]]

grrrrr, dislike missing words..... What I wanted to say is, I AM AGAINST Shields for starships.... because it makes combat seem lot LESS interesting. hey, Babylon 5 ships survive pretty well without shields :P

-LMP

[[LordLMP]]

a religious merceneries? for money? what religion do they believe in? since i have never read the book, i don't know...... if you want religious merceneries.... who have a small or medium size Pirate clan that is mostly comprise of crazy believer undesirables along with others which survives by doing some mercenary work.... i rather not see to many mercenaries groups as at the moment, i don't see much need of them except for simply escorting, raiding others, bounty hunting type mission, garrison, and etc..... depends on the what the mercenary group focuses upon.... Ground Warfare or Space Warfare or whatever.

-LMP

[Sprayber]

I'm talking about shields for planets. Or least for certain parts of planets. a shielding device would be too energy restrictive to put on even a large ship. Besides, Spartan ship hulls are made out of energy displacing materials. Very hush, hush stuff we developed with the Morgans and Drones. I even metioned it in my timeline way back when.

Silance, I belive the spartans will be interested in some of your soldiers for god. Since the dirty hiverians have went looking for pirate mercs.


Kass: I will put those pictures on my page and provide you the site. just take what you want. I'll put a little surprise on there i think you might like. I read somewhere you had a certain other ship from B5.

[[LordLMP]]

Again, it depends on the tasks the hive proposes... if it involves committing atrocities, Kane will decline, so will most of the dominant of the clans who currently following Kane and his Wolverines and because they are not into atrocities....... they may be called Pirates. but they generally still have a honor system that as no structure :P if it is a dirty mission may attract the Larionov Clan, the worse among the pirates or the Blood Eagles, which is almost just as bad, but with lot more discipline.

I could see University and the Cyborgs have some early primitive shields....which is why it is bit hard to raid their ships, if you see any outside of their territory. Cyborgs claim Lalande 21128, yet they don't allow anyone else to enter the system, even to trade, for some strange reason

as for the shields, i was thinking to provide some ships for the peacekeepers base on the ones in Independent War 1/2..... which i still have played, but the pics and some stats i found of the Corvette is pretty cool....... if anyone does have the game, please take some screenshots and send them to me or Sprayber if i can't put it up the site before i loose my comp coming weekend....... i plan to massively update the site saturday, don't worry...... just rush rush rush and busy with other things before i leave :P like high school :P

along with those ships, Peacekeepers may have something like shields, but base on the Photon Wave or whatever armor technology. it would help protect the hull of the ship, but won't eminate a bubble field like in startrek and so on.

-LMP

[Frankychan]

I agree w/Sprayber,

The generator to maintain an energy shield would have to be MASSIVE! Like, huge-mungous! I really like the "patchwork-shielding" idea!

So....Sprayber

Trying to drum up support for the Spartan war machine, eh?

Nah, I'm just kidding....I'm really looking forward to all of our collective threads put together in a compendium!

[[LordLMP]]

Sprayber, shields is shields :P possible to make smaller less powered version of planetary ones...... if your worried about planetary bombarment, then that could be not allowed in the new sci-fi version of the UN Charter. also, one must be able tp break through many of the spartans defences to even get in orbit of the planet :P so what is the point in making things harder? :P

also, one must be very genocidal and doesn't care of wasting rare habitable worlds just to eliminate the enemy :P

-LMP

[Frankychan]

uh...yeah...one must be genocidal and wasteful in order to eliminate an enemy....uh-huh