Beyond Alpha Centauri: Discussion Thread

[Frankychan]

Sprayber,

I like your post of spreading ionized gas in certain area's to try and find my..err..Hive ships. Never would have thought of that. Anyway, would it be alright if I posted the Hive ambassadors arrival?

[Sprayber]

Go ahead Franky. Sorry for the delay. I came up with that on the spot. It won't be 100% effective though.



Kass: Take a look and see if you can use these. If so just right click and save as on your computer.

http://www.geocities.com/kessel74/ForeignPage.html?1011173690060

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by [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

I'm just trying to get some nice ground combat going in the nice tradition of The Empire Strikes Back. Wasn't it cool that the Empire simply couldn't blast the rebel base from orbit and return before lunch.

I don't think that many of the factions would be paying attention to the UN charter too much when they are spread so far out. The Spartans wouldn't anyway. If they could destroy a city from space, and avoid having to land troops, they wouldn't care too much about what a piece of paper says light years away. They would simply blast every single city and building on a planet. And this is mostly for the benifit of outlying planets and colonies anyway. Can any of the factions afford to spread fleets out to cover all their territories? Syrma may be well defended, but smaller colonies may not be. Sol may be defended, but there may not be a fleet in sight for the protection of Capella. But like I said. If no one wants shields then that is cool with me. Cause the Spartans will be content to invade every small outpost and destroy them in a planet hopping campaign.

[Frankychan]

Ok, there's my post!

Mr. President!

It's good to hear from you again. I like your post. Right now Hive involvement with your planet will be minimal---no military units right now, unless you want a small engagement...?

I kinda wanted messages between us being bounced back and forth, kinda like a "cat-and-mouse" game. What do you think?

[Silence]

Originally posted by [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

You see in the book the governments of the two worlds the Friendly's live on, use the money to help buy stuff for the planet, and the draftees are a cheaper alternative to the Elite Mercs that people could hire in that univerese. The troops are designed to work in tandem with the hire nation and/or garrison planets while the regulars are out fighting.

[History Guy]

Woah!

Looks like a lot of new posts to read. Looks good everyone.

Silence, perhaps we could do business, eh? Morgan Interstellar has a pretty small army, and if it's to beat InEn, it'll need some help. I think some Soldiers of God will do the trick nicely.

Oh, and by the way, I want to do a post later today in which Marmion speaks to the captured magistrate, wounded soldiers are treated, and Morgan decides to try and get his boys off Callisto.

[Kassiopeia]

I'll look into the new posts. And then I'll probably post. Do not worry Cybergod, the transmission will be received in an orderly fashion.

Originally posted by Sprayber
Kass: Take a look and see if you can use these. If so just right click and save as on your computer.

Thanks!
You even have the two-seated model... *drool*

The Earthforce cap ships seem also appealing. I wish I had the ability to do CG-Imaging.

if your worried about planetary bombarment, then that could be not allowed in the new sci-fi version of the UN Charter

We should allow bombardment of military installations, but civilian targets would be off limits.
Of course, it is for the Spartan Federation's to decide whether to obey the agreement or not.
Also anything like the Ground Delta Zero* command in Star Wars ought to be prohibited.

*the Imperial Navy code for the bombardment of a planet so that it's crust's upper layer turns into molten rock.

[Sprayber]

Defense

I just think that if a fleet was pressed for time and didn't really want to go through all the trouble of landing troops and waiting for the ground battle to ensue, they could simply reduce the planet to ruin and move on to the next. You wouldn't even have to carry out the total obliteration of a planet. Just enough to render it sterile. The difference between military targets and civilian ones sometimes blur. What happens with the Spartans whose military and civilian sectors most often are one in the same. even in other factions, every building can be assigned some military value. Generators, life support, production facilities are all fair game. Other consideration may be alien defense. The aliens are under no such treaty restrictions. A well armed alien space fleet could pass through a system and perform independence day attacks with impunity. This whole idea of shields was meant to be a new technology that hasn't been fully developed as of yet. This may not be a concern to Sol who is far frome the Core. Or the Pirates who have no real planetary base. But the Spartans are located at the conjuction of Gorn-Hive-Bree- Unkown space. I think it would be smart to try and develop such technology. But if no one likes shields then we won't have shields.

[Sprayber]

As an afterthought

Doesn't anyone find it silly that in Star Trek, you have power for shields on a ship, but the technology doesn't exist for planetary shields? sure some have small shields for blocking transporters but nothing that would help in the defense against fleets. I think there is was one example from TOS in which an advanced race had a type of planatary shield to protect a less advanced race living on the planet. Sure a generating device for a planet would have to be large but there is room to build one on a planet.


For the Spartans this would force a would be attacker to deploy ground troops Which is an area that the Spartans would still be the best at. But then again defenders would have an advantage over attackers in most cases.

[Frankychan]

I think that we should have planetary shields at the most.

It would be suicide if the Spartans did not have some type of defensive mechanism against the Bree.....or Hive I think that I would only be fair if we had some sort of defensive shielding to protect our bases.

As I was thinking of this I began thinking of how Hive bases would be. Since all of our facilities are located below ground, the surface would act as a natural barrier to orbital bombardment. But our bases would also be protected by a slightly less effective shielding than, say, a Spartan city. Just my thoughts though.

History Guy,

Good to hear from you again. I hope I'm not pissing you off with all my Morgan bashing...

[Mr. President]

Originally posted by frankychan
I kinda wanted messages between us being bounced back and forth, kinda like a "cat-and-mouse" game. What do you think?

Sounds like good reading to me! You can see the fleet, but they can't see you and they don't even know who you are. Franco's gonna have to handle your messages on his own, 'cause Fleet Command would never believe his story about a disembodied message.

[Frankychan]

Dang, forgot to mention...

Sorry I forgot to mention some things,

In theory, ban's on things are all fine and dandy. However, when war does break out, treaties and bans seem to evaporate. Bombarding civilian targets may seem like a big no-no but don't put that past Yang. Whatever it takes to subdue the enemy.

Atrocities in war are going to happen, so if a war does break out between factions, I would not be surprised if, say, InEn ships obliterate a Morganite civilian colony or whatever else may occur.

[Frankychan]

Mr. President

Cool,

I was thinking the same thing. Since there are so many things going on with the Hive right now, I was thinking that the Hive commander over there would basically have to think for himself. But I think sooner or later Yang would some people over to investigate Drone activity further.

[Silence]

Actually there are two instances of planetary shieilds in the orignal series.

One of them was on a remote unimportant world, and it had shields that had could shrug off the Enterprises phasers. (which people at Spacebattles.com did the figures, and the weapons from the TOS are actually more powerfull then the other series.)

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by Silence
Actually there are two instances of planetary shieilds in the orignal series.

One of them was on a remote unimportant world, and it had shields that had could shrug off the Enterprises phasers. (which people at Spacebattles.com did the figures, and the weapons from the TOS are actually more powerfull then the other series.)

Yeah, the episode where the Peservers? had set up a colony of Native Americans from earth and had provided a shield to protect them. Also I guess the espisode where the ancient Machine Vaal was located that moderated weather and things in exchange for the primatives had to provide energy.

A substitue for shields on ship could be armour that absorbes and redistributes energy. Kind of like a shield does but the hull of the ship is actually does the work.