The gunboats/corvettes you’re talking about are called Hammer Assault Shuttles in the game.
This isn’t to do with game mechanics, but how I envision fighters (err… corvettes, cossacks, gunships):
Distortion: rated high 8-9, with fuel capacity sufficient for sublight cruising
CTA: also rated high
Hull Armor: very high
Power Armor: no
crew: 2-5 depending on mission
weapons: some hard-mounted weapons, but reliance on hardpoints for external stores: missiles, weapon pods, countermeasures, orbital mines, drones, nails, sensor packages, Drop tanks for HEx capability, etc…
I envision wings of these guys sporting an assortment of load-outs, one being an assault variant with enough troops to form prize crews. The emphasis is on flexibility, particularly on picking off vulnerable targets, pursuit (running down and immobilizing fleeing prizes), and rear area raids against lightly defended systems.
A secondary role would be as a “forlorn hope” in assaults on enemy capital ships that are hiding inside particle-rich zones, and dropping into the atmosphere to stage raids and drop special forces during invasions (this would be more in line with the Assault Shuttle’s role, I guess).
Plus, of course, countering all of these roles when on defense.
Carriers would range from small HEx capable 5-ship “Wing Carriers” to larger fleet versions, fitted out with fuel, repair facilities and every external store known to man, as well as an oak-panelled command room for the Forged Lord.
-Chris
Or rather, the Hammer Assault Shuttle is specific subtype of gunship/corvette designed to transport troops to a planetary surface and provide them supporting firepower. The Hammer Hussar (based on the Assault Shuttle) would then constitute a heavy firepower variant with no carrying capacity; we should probably Burn a non-Hussar version as well for forces without Hussar Trained pilots. Presumably there’d be a variant on the other end of the spectrum, with very little firepower but able to carry a lot of cargo and troops.
Whoops! Crossposted with Chris – but I think in line with him.
Let me see if I’ve got this straight: The major reason why corvettes/gunships (I’m still preferring “gunships”) don’t have full interstellar faster-than-light capability isn’t the additional mass and cost of a HEx-capable drive compared to a subliminal-only distortion drive – although there is some added mass and cost – but rather the additional mass of the fuel (and, secondarily, life support stores) needed to support weeks-long interstellar trips. Correct?
right on!
Okay, so I see there’s a definite mass-efficiency reason to choose subliminal-only and rely on HEx-capable carriers/motherships for interstellar.
Questions:
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How do distortion-drive ships maneuver once they get close enough to a planet that even subliminal expansion shut down?
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Specifically, are ships in “tight space”/“the well” close enough to a planet’s gravitational field to switch over to grav/pressor systems (which presumably any ship capable of landing on a planet has to have anyway), or do they need to switch over to auxillary chemical reactant thrusters, or is there some entirely different category of propulsion? And how expensive are such drives?
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Is it worth building a spacefaring vessel without distortion drives at all? Such a spacecraft would be hopelessly slow in any environment where distortion drives worked, but would be well suited to operating “in the well” around a planet where dust and gravity blocked distortion effects. The question is whether there’s a significant mass/cost advantage to building a ship specifically for this environment.
I’d say those are the monitors and anvil-craft, no? I’m getting the feeling that’s the big distinction between hammer and anvil craft… distortion drive. Without it, you’re tied to a planet unless you want to use chemical thrusters, which really, really suck (though interestingly, you can burn all the way to the target. no need to flip at the mid point, since you can use your vastly more powerful and efficient grav drives for braking.)
CTA or Grav/Pressor. You can use G/P to get down, but it’s really slow getting back out again. You can get into low orbit, but as the gravity tails off, so does the ability to gain “thrust” from it (in its pressor aspect).
You need CTA’s to take advantage of distortion drive, remember. Distortion just changes the value of time, it doesn’t provide thrust in and of itself. So you need to have CTA’s (even little dinky ones) to provide you with a vector that the distortion effect can amplify.
From low orbit to the planet’s surface, Grav/Pressor all the way. From low orbit out to the DD boundary, CTA is the most efficient way to go. Beyond that, some form of thrust is required, but it doesn’t have to be very profound. Distortion ships listed as having “no CTA” have small dedicated thrusters that serve simply to initiate vectors for the DD to amplify.
-Chris
PS- Mike I hadn’t considered the idea of using G/P to brake from a long CTA burn… huh. What are the ramifications of that?
Hey guys,
Any of you who are interested, email me privately (moellerc@verizon.net) and I’ll send you a word file with the Vaylen Wars rules. Vaylen wars was a strategic wargame I developed back in the '90’s as background for the comics. I wanted to know what form a Vaylen invasion would take: how the combatant’s different organizations would affect things, and what ramifications the different technologies would have.
Chris
Very helpful. So we have four categories of vehicles:
HEx (hyperexpansion distortion drive): Faster-than-light speeds for interstellar transit; requires very low dust densities (and thus very low gravity) to function, typically becoming ineffective by the time you reach the planetary disc of a solar system.
SEx (?) (subliminal expansion distortion drive): High sublight speeds for interplanetary, intra-system transit; requires low dust densities (and gravity) to function, typically becoming ineffective by the time you reach high orbit for a given planet.
A SEx drive can be converted to a HEx drive by adding a distortion tail and a large supply of fuel. Presumably it’s fairly easy to add “drop tanks” and a bolt-on tail to an intrasystem ship to enable it to travel interstellar distances.
CTA (conventional thrust array?): Low sublight speeds for circumplanetary transit (planet to orbit, orbit to planet, shifting positions within orbits). Slow and inefficient without distortion drives to augment it.
Any distortion drive (HEx or SEx) already incorporates a CTA, and military craft are going to need fairly powerful CTAs to give their distortion drive strong vectors to magnify for sharp maneuvers, so distortion-capable military ships are going to be highly maneuverable even when they’re close enough to a planet that they must rely on CTA alone.
However, a CTA-only ship is significantly cheaper, less massive, and easier to build, and the limitations of grav/pressor fields at orbital altitudes [BUT! See my Real Science Question below] mean that grav sleds can’t operate efficienctly even in circumplanetary space, so there is a commercial niche for surface-to-orbit CTA-only shuttles and for heavily armored CTA-only monitors.
Grav/pressor: Highly efficient, but requires gravity to push against, typically becoming ineffective by the time you reach orbit. Planetary surface and atmospheric travel only.
Any ship designed for planetary landings already incorporates grav/pressor systems – unless you’re planning on using really, really long landing strips.
BUT:
Real Science Question: Is a planet’s gravitational field actually that make weaker a few hundred miles out? Objects in orbit are in freefall, but I think they’re still falling at (virtually) the same rate they’d fall at sea level – they’re just moving fast enough, and starting out high enough, that they “miss the ground” and keep sailing around the planet in circles.
Wow sydney, you’re asking me to dig up stuff I haven’t used in YEARS. What you want to know is the difference in acceleration between two masses depending on distance? We’ll call one mass pmass (planet) and the other smass (ship)
Force due to gravitation = gravitational constant x pmass x smass/distance^2
So the distance between the planet and the ship is inversely proportional to… the square root of the force. Note, that’s from the center of the two masses, not the edge, so we’re measuring from the core of the planet. So the force due to gravity 1 planetary radius above the surface will be about 1/4 the force due to gravity on the surface.
Radius of the earth, for comparison, is 6,378 km.
Therefore, geosynchrous orbit is about 5.6 earth radi, and will experience a force of gravity about 1/30th of that on the surface.
I THINK this is right.
And chris, I’ll send you an e-mail shortly. I’m a space wargame buff =)
Wow sydney, you’re asking me to dig up stuff I haven’t used in YEARS. What you want to know is the difference in acceleration between two masses depending on distance? We’ll call one mass pmass (planet) and the other smass (ship)
Force due to gravitation = gravitational constant x pmass x smass/distance^2
So the distance between the planet and the ship is inversely proportional to… the square root of the force. Note, that’s from the center of the two masses, not the edge, so we’re measuring from the core of the planet. So the force due to gravity 1 planetary radius above the surface will be about 1/4 the force due to gravity on the surface.
Radius of the earth, for comparison, is 6,378 km.
Therefore, geosynchrous orbit is about 6.6 earth radi (from the center of the earth, not from the surface), and will experience a force of gravity about 1/40th of that on the surface.
Mike, if I were not already happily married, and male, and non-Canadian, I would gladly bear your brainy children.
=) Heh. None of those are insurmountable obstacles.
I’m Hoping that’s right. It’s been years since I’ve done that.
CTA – fusion, fission or whatever is a must for all ships.
Grav pressors seems ubiquitous and efficient enough to be installed on any ship that’s going to enter into a well. But deep spacers prolly wouldn’t carry them. Then again, Geil’s ship uses CTA to boost from the surface. So maybe they’re not as common as I’d like to think.
Distortion drives – what’s the drawback? You can zip about effectively FTL. You need CTAs to make yourself go. You need fuel for the Distortion Drives. Is the fuel bulky? Is it expensive? Is it volatile? Is it rare?
-L
EDIT: Actually, space is full of gravity wells. As Paul has noted, it’s an ocean of currents and depths. So maybe GPs would be universally useful.
Actually, here’s one way of framing it:
For a ship of a given mass (let m=1 in arbitrary units),
let h be the fraction of that mass required by drive components required only to achieve Hyper expansion of average speed (e.g. distortion tails) and fuel for one typical interstellar transit
let s be the fraction of that mass required by Subliminal expansion drives (not counting HEx-specific components, which are part of h above, and not counting CTA drives to provide a vector, which are counted under c below) of average speed and fuel for typical intra-system operations
let c be the fraction of that mass required by conventional thrusters of average acceleration
A ship capable of interstellar travel has HEx gear, subliminal distortion drives, and CTA, so its effective payload fraction (i.e. % of mass available for all non-propulsion systems combined) is whatever’s left over after the mass of all three systems have been subtracted:
Payload (interstellar) = 1 - (h+s+c)
A ship capable only of intra-system travel has no HEx-specific gear, only subliminal and CTA, so it only has to set aside mass for two of the systems:
Payload (intrasystem) = 1 - (s+c)
A ship equipped only with CTA drives – presumably a specialized short-hauler for operations “in the well” around a planet in the zone with gravity high enough that distortion drives cut out but low enough that grav/pressor doesn’t work – would have an even higher payload fraction:
Payload (circumplanetary) = 1 - c
Chris, in very rough terms, what are the values of h, s, and c?
Why does this matter? Because if h is relatively small – i.e. if a subliminal-only drive can be converted into a HEx-capable drive with a relatively small addition of mass for distortion tail and fuel – then there’s no point in building intra-system only ships; if h is relatively large – if the mass to support the distortion tail, or the bulk of fuel required for interstellar transit, or both, are considerable – then there is a point to building intra-system ships. Likewise, if s is relatively large, there’s a point to building CTA-only ships.
P.S.: Since Chris confirmed a page ago (and in the Vaylen Wars rules) that the big mass burden of interstellar-capable shipis not the HEx drive proper but the fuel, that raises the possibility of a whole class of ships that are fully HEx-capable but which require “drop tanks” (again, as Chris mentioned) to go interstellar. It’s still worth having HEx capability even if you have limited fuel, because if you’re trying to travel to another planet, you can head due “north” or “south” until you’re clear of the disk, engage HEx, and zip “above” or “below” the plane of the system until you’re close to your destination, at which point you return to the disk and slow down to subliminal speeds for the final approach.
P.P.S.: I get the impression that fuel is simply hydrogen, since Chris talks about ships refueling from gas giants if they need to. In that case, it’s not expensive – it’s effectively free for the taking – but the amounts needed to keep your fusion reactor going for light-years on end is still presumably damned bulky.
Thematically, it seems like the limitations on fuel for interstellar travel are very similar to the limitations on potable water on Age of Sail-era long ocean journeys. The water is “free” but you have to get to it and you have to haul it around.
Since the game already establishes that interstellar travel takes a maneuver to accomplish, everything that happens within that maneuver is pure color. I guess I’d be more interested in what sorts of things might come up during interplanetary travel, which in practical play is probably going to come up much more often. I’m hoping these narrative assumptions are correct:
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SubEx travel usually gets you from almost-here to almost-there without incident, unless you blow through an as-yet-uncharted debris field and get knocked out (ie you hit a sandbar or reef). The interesting stuff that happens, story-wise, during interplanetary travel is going to be unplanned stops, ship-board drama, and hijack/piracy attempts.
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There is no stealth flight in space, with the exception of very expensive and rare Dark Ship technology. For anything approaching an ambush-type scenario, you either have to be set up in a physically shielded place (radiation cloud, asteroid field, behind or inside an object), or have a Dark Ship (rare given the cost).
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In many/most other cases, setting up for a Conflict scene in space is going to involve plenty of foreknowledge. The only limitations you’d have on the fight would be what force you could bring to bear at a whim (i.e. Luke’s logistics/strategy roll prior to a fight to establish “superior numbers” dispo bonus).
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Buying, maintaining, repairing and operating ships is pretty expensive: probably on par with owning a large yacht at the very smallest civilian level, up to owning a large private jet at the highest civilian level. High-index tech might even be irreplacable. Attackers have an avid interest in siezing ships without harming them in most cases. For the same reason we don’t see mass drivers chucking asteroids at planets, the value of the spoils is such that total annihilation, or even extensive damage, is undesirable.
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Under what circumstances would total annihilation be acceptable? Shoot, I can even see an avid interest in capturing Vaylen craft and technology. Is there a cultural revulsion to even being near Vaylen stuff? It might all get vaporized on principle.
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Fortress worlds are possible, and even probable, because q-beam tech can so completely ruin the plans of many/most invasion attempts. Orbital pressor-lifted/maneuvered bases carry whatever firepower is needed to clean up anything that slips past the q-beams.
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Hammer has its own cultural parallel to Iron, and that is the gunship/corvette. It’s unfortunate that these are viewed as multi-person vessels, because that means it’s not a direct parallel. If these small, tough, super-flexible craft have an heirloom/artifact quality to them, how are crews chosen? Are these craft “owned” by their pilots like Iron-wearers own their Iron? Are gunships/corvettes fetishized the same way?
I think that’s all the random thoughts that popped into my head for now. I guess I’m now more interested in dragging all this back to the realm of useful story/game material.
p.
Analogy Brainwave: Q-Beams are roughly comparable to WWI torpedoes… admittedly, torpedoes are horrifically short ranged while Q-beams are horrifically long ranged, but the parallels still exist. Torpedoes, despite being terribly short legged and woefully innacurate, were deemed a legitimate threat to big battleships because a single hit could destroy the largest warship. Battleships and cruisers began mounting torpedo launchers simply against the day when they might be in a close quarters battle with an enemy capital ship… while ships could absorb hundreds of large caliber gun-hits, a single torpedo could crack a dreadnought’s back. The largest threat came from motor torpedo boats, which were tiny little fast vessels that could carry a few torpedoes, but were too small and fast to easily be targeted (Historical note, the term Destroyer is actually a shortened version of the proper name for the ship type… torpedo boat destroyer. An entire class of light, fast, gun armed warships was designed in order to combat the torpedo boat threat… then people noticed that these torpedo boat destroyers were as fast as torpedo boats, more heavily armed, and more robust, and destroyers began launching torpedo attacks on battleships themselves. ironic)
How this relates to IE. Q-Beams can obliterate the largest vessel with a single hit, but require many shots to generate a hit. The logical solution to this problem is to have as many Q-Beam batteries as possible, and mount them on as many small ships as possible, thereby reducing the damage done by a single hostile Q-beam hit. I see small, effectively unarmoured vessels with high distortion SEx drives built around a single Q-beam battery. Five or six of them would be as dangerous at long range as a battleship, and would be far more robust, as any hit the battleship might score on them would only eliminate a single Q-beam, while any hit the squadron scores on the battleship would win the engagement.
Edit: Chris, I am more and more convinced that THESE are your skirmishers. There is no real defense against them other than deploying Q-beam boats of your own to engage them at long range and screen your heavily armoured Tight Space battleships and transports. A small group of thse things could easilly hang about at extreme Q-beam range and keep a battlegroup tied up in a cloud of particulates. In tight space, manouver is difficult and weapons are accurate… armour and firepower of heavy ships is what keeps you alive in tight space. In open space, speed and numbers is life.
While I’m thinking on analogies, here’s another one. Smoke Screens. I could see a battlegroup deploying a mercanter in front of it to vent mist behind it, protecting the bulk of the battlegroup following it from Q-beam fire. Alternatively, an aggressor could divert a comet to make a close pass by the target planet, and the battlegroup could hide in its tail. A sufficiently coldblooded attacker could twitch the comet into the plate as it made it’s final approach, forcing the defenders to split their attention between dismantling the comet and destroying the assault force.