"First Contact" OOC

[Ra]

I'm gonna use this post to explain something about my universe's FTL stuff. We use space-folding, rather than warp or hyperdrive. Kinda like nBSG's FTL, it allows a ship to instantaneously travel over a certain distance.

Using the same technology, this allows the Sanet to make FTL transmissions; by creating a folded space pocket that allows the radio signal to "jump" to the receiving end. However, we have no means of FTL detection, simply because in my universe we don't have access to anything tachyonic. As the very existance of tachyons is just questionable theory, I left it out.

This means the only way to detect an incoming ship at FTL is to register its spatial distortion, which the Sanet can do very well. Every ship's space-folding, wormhole, Alcubierre, whatever drive will distort space somehow to "cheat" relativity and go FTL. This affect also generally precedes a ship by a scant few seconds, allowing the warship a little bit of early warning.

[Destructionator XV]

Is your FTL only long distance or can you make little jumps as well?

[Ra]

Smaller, tactical jumps can be made, but it becomes very inefficient power-wise below a million miles. I haven't worked out all the details, but I just didn't feel they should be constantly jumping around in battle, so I wanted a few limitations on tac-jumps.

[Destructionator XV]

Anything I did not quote I agree with....

But I guess you have made a point here: electronic transfer is merely an option in my STGOD Swivian Banking Cartel; an option that compromises secrecy somewhat, but most of my customers are paranoid affluents (asteroid dictators, space pirates, mafia Godfathers, etc) who rather travel in person.

Which would mean they spend a lot of time travelling, but certainly possible, especially if they travel anyway.

However, I haven't exactly thought where exactly the planet should be located. It's supposed to be in the same universe with the ASE, so I leave it to you where the planet should reside.

All right. Let's say it is a pretty big number of light-years out (since suitable planets are quite rare in my universe), but it is convinently only a small warp jump and speed adjustment away. There would probably be many factors, like time of the year that would impact travel time, but for simplicity, let's say it is a 2-3 day starship trip away.

This is some time, and starship trips are rather expensive (intrasolar ships are way more common and need less maintenance and fuel), but it is affordable for upper middle and rich class people.

Um, I haven't exactly thought about it either. I think its population, when compared to the ASE, is just like Switzerland (or maybe even Singapore) when compared to the US.

Well, let's give them a rather small population (sci-fi wise) - something like 60 million. That is about what France has in real life. Should be big enough, but not too big as to be weird given your government.

So to spice up the plot, what if we play it in such way that the A'millan Star Empire has been pressuring the Swivian Banking Cartel to change its policy?

A simple embargo would be a pretty big deal, but you could still trade with the other superpower in my universe.

Or if we wanted to, we could simply attack, but your safety is probably not from your own military but instead the other superpower and other great powers who all have much to lose if you were conqured or destroyed, so you would maintain safety due to informal alliances of a sort.

Well are the details above sufficient?

Yup.

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

Well, let's give them a rather small population (sci-fi wise) - something like 60 million. That is about what France has in real life. Should be big enough, but not too big as to be weird given your government.

Yup. My faction is supposed to be a small-but-rich country!

A simple embargo would be a pretty big deal, but you could still trade with the other superpower in my universe.

Er, I think nations generally don't resort to Embargo unless they absolutely have no other options. While European nations and the US were pressuring Switzerland to change its banking policy, I don't think they resorted to embargo either (correct me if I'm wrong though).

Or if we wanted to, we could simply attack, but your safety is probably not from your own military but instead the other superpower and other great powers who all have much to lose if you were conqured or destroyed,

Yup. The same thing that keeps the US from conquering, say, Singapore.

[Destructionator XV]

Er, I think nations generally don't resort to Embargo unless they absolutely have no other options.

You are right. I merely was throwing out ideas there. It probably won't come to that anyway in the game.

Anyway, I am working on my next post, but I got sidetracked by a rather length discussion on SDN the last few days and omfg the boobies in real life. I hope to get it up today or tomorrow, and hopefully, I won't have gaps this long between posts too often.

[Destructionator XV]

It isn't going to be long until we start sending probes or ships to each other. The way I think this should work is one player posts that a ship / probe has actually gotten there and what it is doing, then the player who just had a probe / ship show up give the details of what it sees.

Naturally, we then act out what we do in response to its presence and so on.

That is simply so we can give the descriptions of our own systems.

[Destructionator XV]

Ra, since your probe was already launched and we have gone some time without a new post, I am going to go ahead and write up it showing up.

edit: And for simplicity, I am going to assume our FTL systems are pretty much compatible. So my FTL radio can send and receive your FTL signals and they work basically the same way: instant jumps like nBSG.

I am also assuming my warp blocking bubbles block your ships and FTL signals, just like it would to mine.

[Destructionator XV]

Here is a rough map I just whipped up of the main places of interest in orbit around the planet Koreallia, home of the humans in my universe, and where most things of interest of the A'millian Star Empire are.



Of course, the real thing would be 3d, but this map gives you the main idea.

The purple line shows the radius of the K-sphere: the sphere of interest for the planet Koreallia.

The gray lines show the boundries of warp bubble shields. Inside these lines, no ship may go FTL and no FTL signals can be sent or received. And FTL initiated inside is instantly disrupted, and any FTL on the way in is stopped at the line. It is like a warp jamming field. They are generally spheres with a radius of about 2 light seconds, but maybe cones too.

So if you plotted a jump to the planet, you would instead appear at the outside gray line in a straight line from where you were when you tried to jump.

The green line tries to put a scale on it: it is about 1.5 light seconds. That is the distance between the moon (the gray dot) and the planet in the middle and the distance between the moon or planet and L4 and L5.

L4, the planet, and moon are supposed to form an equilateral triangle with sides of 1.5 light seconds. Same with L5, the planet, and the moon. I didn't measure the picture; I just eyeballed it, so it probably actually isn't perfect, but that is what it is supposed to be.

L1, L2, L3, L4, and L5 are all the planet / moon LaGrangian points. L1 doesn't really have much of interest at it. L2 has the far bubble shield, which acts as a redundant backup for the others and the lunar mass catcher: material from the moon would be shot to this point, then wherever it is wanted. The mass catcher and driver up there help maintain the orbit, since L1, L2, and L3 are all unstable on their own,

L3 is where the main FTL antenna is, that relays all FTL signals in and out of the sphere. Notice how it is outside the gray lines. Remember that the bubble shield stops all FTL signals, so if the antenna were inside one, it would be useless! The bad thing about that is if war were to break out, it could easily be one of the first things to be targetted: jump and blast it, or jump and turn on a bubble shield, also making it useless.

L4 and L5 have thousands of space colonies orbiting them. L5 is almost entirely the domain of the ASE, whereas L4 has some them and many other little nations.

The red line is another orbit. It is inclined, so if this was a 3d map, it would be at an angle. It goes between 2/3 the way to the moon and 1/3 the way to the planet. It is always inside the bubble shield line of the generator at L2, and coincidently, it is inside the lines at L4 and L5 as well. There are some colonies in this orbit, as well as an A'millian Starfleet base, which is home of the vessels that protect the sphere, and specifically, the FTL antenna, from outside threats warping in.


This obviously doesn't show all the details, but it is a start. This solar system as a whole is almost a copy of our real life solar system (Koreallia is my blatent Earth copy)

[Ra]

Posted. Sorry about the delay, but RL has been extremely busy lately.

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

Posted. Sorry about the delay, but RL has been extremely busy lately.

Me too. But I'll be back as soon as RL permits.

[Destructionator XV]

Jon, could you clear up what kind of acceleration your probe is capable of and how much fuel it has?

Also, can it just FTL to run away?

My warships all have a max of about 2-3 g peak acceleration and enough fuel to burn at full blast for about an hour straight. Normally, they would use smaller bursts though, and can operate normally for months on end.

Only the ships with 'cruiser' in their name can FTL.

I'm wondering if my ships could even keep up to your probe.

[Ra]

Sorry I didn't answer until now, I'm honestly still trying to figure out that.

In the STGOD I'm still thinking the relativistic speeds of Sanet craft should be thrown out. In the Second Star 'verse, that probe would be gone before you could say "hax". However, I may make it have a measly ~10 G acceleration. It's unmanned, and wouldn't need to account for crew needs; same with our combat drones, but that's still in "reasonable" territory.

[Destructionator XV]

All right, works for me.

Also, if it did jump up to relativistic speeds before I could say hax, that would quickly descend into a bloodbath. Suppose if a big mass were going that fast and decided to smash through some stuff. The kinetic energy would be BRUTAL!11!one and that energy has to come from somewhere and the materials must handle it, so it also would show your power generation and materials science are way advanced.

To ensure our own survivial, our best bet would be exterminate you before you get any ideas about exterminating us. And what fun would that be? (well, it could actually be really fun as PW III was showing for a while, but been there, done that)

Anyway, I'll be posting in character again maybe tonight or maybe in a couple days to keep the ball rolling.

[Destructionator XV]

You might be wondering why the hell a heavy FTL cruiser has a magnetic arm.

Well, so am I. Let's just say it is actually a probe collector (fancy long range recon ship?) that happened to be available.

Though why you would need to collect expendable probes is a question. Perhaps they are stealthy probes, that jump in and coast by, listening but not relaying the data (to avoid detection perhaps), then are picked up later. That has holes too.

A coast guard ship would be the most likely to actually have a magnetic arm, for picking up little things, but the coast guard would also have no need for a FTL drive. Unless they use it to try and catch fleeing criminals. Yeah, that seems to make the most sense.

So that ship is an Orbit Guard ship, not a Starfleet vessel. Would they still call them heavy cruisers? No, probably light. Time to edit.

[Ra]

Meh, a mag-arm would be a useful feature for even a warship if said arm was used for resupply. It could hook up with a support vessel if need be. Yeah, a support vessel would have a crane of its own, but it still kinda makes sense.

[Destructionator XV]

Another fact: I have decided to move more population out toward the asteroid belt rather than all being around the planet. There are still a great deal of people around the planet, but there are now probably even more out in the belt.

Naturally, they would be bubble shielded in rotating habitats as well.

This is due to a number of factors, and will have some pretty big implications, many of which I have not yet explored. But I have mentioned a college in the belt in my posts already, so just figure there are more people out there too.

The orbit guard ship jumped from the asteroid belt (and her reduced gravitational potential energy is why the radiators were glowing red hot), and is likely heading back there now, unless it is closer to the planet, in which case, it would be heading there, but from your post, it looks like it was in the outer system, so the belt would make more sense.

[Ra]

I suppose the question now is, how are we to continue this? We've obviously reached a bit of a bump, as any future posts of mine would merely show how Volisar (and Enmatal) would not want to risk further contact. You could send a probe or ship, I suppose, but the Sanet are very cautious about FC situations.

[Destructionator XV]

Well, I have a post half composed showing the split amongst us: some think it isn't for real (as in it is a trick from another government), and once the probe is investigated it will be shown.

I also intend to refuel it and let it go after taking the look at it; I just need to write it up. It is my hope that letting it go after the harmless look will be a good act that will make things nice again.

[Ra]

Pretty much. It would show you guys were merely curious, as is truly the case.

[Destructionator XV]

Well, I figure we could send unmanned probes to listen to each other's radio signals for a long time, and while it might be cool, it isn't feeling that way right now, so I am going ahead and jumping a manned ship in your direction. This should get things going a little more.

[Destructionator XV]

Just a heads up: I haven't been posting for a while in here, but I do have a few things planned to continue. I have just been busy with other things, and haven't gotten a chance to write it up yet. It might yet be another week until my next post in the game thread.

[Ra]

No problem here, I'm still trying to figure out how the hell I'm gonna get the Herasim to Koreallia, rather than make a huge boo-boo (and diplomatic faux-pas, likely) and send an unarmed ship to your capital.

[Destructionator XV]

It should be going to the capital actually.

[Ra]

D'oh. Got my planets mixed up again. I'll certainly never be an astrogation expert. What I meant is that the ship is going to Koreallia but not the capital. I'm still trying to figure out how to get it where you're going.

The problem of course is the fact that the Sannies only know the location of one system; and even if they could somehow chart where you're jumping (impossible), they wouldn't read the spatial distortion in the A'millian System until years or decades later, because the data propogates at lightspeed.

Don't worry, I'll figure something out...