Space thread

I'd post something new if I had made anything but I'll post some spac anyway.

I think I actually prefer this look to the new remake.

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>Does your party have their own space ship?
well, its "theirs" but some disagree on that matter

>whats it like
bespoke cruiser, some parts need some fixing up- but its a monster at this point

>whats it called
Deus Irae

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Warframe's ship designs are cool.

It's too bad they're so underused and the game is just...not fun.

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> Does your party have their own space ship? Most importantly, whats it called?

Let me tell you about our corvette Kyvynis. She was named after a planet that was almost consumed by an eldritch abomination. Our party had an indirect hand in destroying said abomination and saving what was left of it. They named the Kyvynis in honour of the planet, with the determination to never let another planet-eating monster be born. This is how our party came to get their own spaceship.

> Whats it like?

The Kyvynis is a corvette. She is a corvette of a civilisation that is Type III on the Kardashev scale - she dwarfs the cruisers and battleships of lesser civilisations. She is 550 metres long, 210 metres high, 340 metres wide. She is a fully sentient ship, so despite her size, she has a relatively small crew.

Three things of interest are thus: she is armed with six railguns able to fire slugs at 0.99c, she can travel FTL in regions where she shouldn't be able to and thirdly, her deflector shields are state of the art "Isolation Fields."

Her armoured railguns can fire 20kg ferrous slugs at 0.99c. A full volley from her six port and starboard railguns can inflict the equivalent of two nuclear holocausts and over on a planet. So far, she has only used her armaments to destroy a monster in a different dimension.

She has an FTL drive capable to piercing through an anomalous region a powerful race has otherwise rendered impossible to travel FTL through. This is relevant to her later exploits.

Her Isolation Field technology, in normal combat, essentially functions as extremely strong deflector shields that can take bites from elder god monstrosities in the local equivalent of the Warp, without any damage being inflicted on the hull.

Her recent exploits include:
* Slaying an eldritch monster in a different dimension
* Surviving said monster to begin with.
* Shutting down a 1984-style dystopia

That is Kyvynis.

So guys, realistic space travel rules, or narrative/cinematic space travel rules?

>Reactionless drives
Fuck, wrong page.

Depends on the type of game. I've yet to actually play a game where this is relevant, but where it is I'd like abstracted and easy to process rules based on reality. Like have a delta-v subway map, and simple, close enough rules like how many more times delta-v it takes to halve travel time.

Personally, I love the jovian chronicles ship design, there's something really nice about them.

Currently in my Black Crusade game my character owns a raider called The Corpse Flower, which he boards the party in because he finds them all interesting additions to his collection. He’s absolutely obsessed with collecting wild animals and strange plants, so many decks on the ship are little more than wildlife preserves or free-for-alls between various flora and fauna.

Big blocky troop transport they named Cool Runnings.

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How do you treat nukes?

Most sci-fi settings tend to either forget about nuclear bombs or invent some willy-nilly reasons for them to don't be usefull in comparaison to lasers(just use a Casaba-Howitzer bro) or space guns?

They're everywhere. Anti-ship missiles carry them for higher yield than kinetic energy would give them (actually, each missile carries thousands of nukes), defensive missiles carry them for when they can't achieve a pinpoint hit, civilians use them to push spaceships around in places where they lack infrastructure for more sophisticated and economical drives.

I thought that in most plausible mid-future scenarios, nukes *aren't* that useful. They can dump a lot of x-rays into something if they detonate relatively close to it. But if you have a missile that can get that close to your target, shouldn't you just hit that target with the missile itself, since it would have so much kinetic energy?

I almost see nukes being more useful as a defense measure - launch of a bunch bomb-pumped lasers (the real Ronald Raygun), and detonate them to lance swarms of incoming missiles without having to worry about waste heat melting your radiators.

>Does your party have their own space ship?

Yes, the PGF-1104 unclassed research vessel Hypatia, captained by a Fellpool binder. Her husband plays the engineering spiderbot. It's fun so far.

>How do you treat nukes?

Attack missiles all carry nukes to have some muscle. They are still treated as "soft" weapons because warships are armored against kinetic penetrators going at a considerable fraction of light speed. Nukes generally can't hold a candle against that, but they can always mess up exposed components (weapons, sensors, thrusters) and score a mission kill. it is also better to use a nuke to finish off a damaged enemy because those things don't overpenetrate so once they are inside of the shell, they are gonna fuck shit up good.

There is also a funny side scenario of having your ship penetrated with your nukes primed and prepped for launch. Way to go out in a blink, but that's space warfare for you.

What is best in a sci-fi companion?

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youtube.com/watch?v=3MMMe1drnZY

vega hjort a best

Nukes generally can't accidentally go off - they require a very precise series of explosions to achieve criticality. I suppose you could be using anti-matter or something, or there was a gas leak at the design bureau and you're using a bunch of Little Boys for some reason.

Of course, if your ship is breached where you have weapons loaded, you probably get to deal with a bunch of propellant explosions, and probably a chain of them. Are nuclear warheads generally designed to keep containment in case their delivery vehicle blows up under them?

I'm a sucker for biopunk and I'm quite amazed to find so many examples here since I'm not use to find so many after all(I only remember a CYOYA that was clearly biopunk and was about you waking converted into a monster but I lost it long ago)

Anyway:
>Tarva the Overwhelming
>Dr Flynn Dreen
>"David"
>Zeen-Tellwa-Ba
>"Xuit"

I do not expect having any other normal human relationship any time soon with this team, but at least there is a ton of room for improvement through biomodifcation.

who or what do you consider biopunk in this instance?

Dr Flynn is the only one that doesn't fit as much and is there for the required technical expertise in the matters.

>Tarva the Overwhelming; A giant worm employing only biological means to defend itself and also seems to also protect itself by excreting slime(which is pretty normal in the biological world) it also means that there is room for genetic modification by adding irritating proteins in the mucus it excretes, targeted to certain species
>"David" also seems to be based around biological means but its powers fall along the lines of mental manipulation, doesn't require any classical tech means to be powerfull just its natural abilities, the fact that it's an insect also gives room for biological modification in the form of a hard exosqueleton produced by itself.
>Zeen-Tellwa-Ba, says merchant and breeder, but the biopunk part is the breeder; he clearly designs biological tools through the selection of the desired offspring, perfect for using biological systems to enhance other biological systems easily which is bionpunk as fuck.
>Xuit it's an organism prepared to organically fuse with it's host and enhance him with the same means and through that it's pretty adaptable, it's like a conscious complex tool but based around biology, and it seems so adaptable that for now I don't know what could be biomodified but something might pop up for sure.

So, basically biological-organical(not always biological systems are purely organical) tools or totally biological creatures that do not rely on normal means but rather use these types of tools either because they were born with them or because they bred and modified the tools to their purposes.

It might seem like a mere aesthetic, but biological systems have their own advantages; adaptability, creating total relationships with all parts of the system and biochemical efficiency. So a person is made of cells, and all of those cells share the same basis but still specialize a lot.

Do landing ships count?

Is there a rpg setting where private individuals have it even worse than in traveller?
I want to play a wreck recycler in Freelancer or some similarly shitty job.
Like the guys in Duskers or Analog: A hate story.

i thought a lot about how would space warships look like.

couple of assumptions to this
>no ftl, no magic drives fission and fusion is best we can have
>lasers are largely useless outside of half lightsecond distance missiles are king at medium to long range engagements
>point blank fights like in movies don't happen ships barely register as a tiny dot on radar at engagement ranges.
>ships would try to minimize the armored area shown to the enemy and the detection surface his leads to a flat chisel like design
(spaced armor belt and frame is not actually shown on the layout graphics only the inside modules)
>continuous acceleration at 1g is the best way to provide artificial gravity, not under acceleration you can simply spin the entire ship to create some gravity to the crew quarters.
>ships mainly use huge fusion drives that are very fuel efficient and can run for years with the fuel cells onboard missiles use fission torches that are good for hours tops.

The formations and such were all nonsense, right?
I wasn't missing any of the tactical genius of arranging your ships in arbitrary shapes?

it's all about being close enough for mutual anti missile support and far enough for a single nuke not to get more ships than 1.

also angle of fire matters if no magic shields. concentration of fire matters anyhow so yes formations and maneuvers are definitely relevant.

the show oversimplified it to retards tho and they forgot all about 3d space and conservation of momentum.

If you don't want to rely on magic, you're gonna need some propellant for your fusion drives. Not even an antimatter drive is going to burn for years at 1 g without most of the ship being made up of fuel and propellant.

If you did want something downright unreasonably powerful and compact (if not lightweight), may I suggest using a contained black hole? I think that is going to necessitate ship masses around a million tonnes or more though.

>Does your party have their own space ship?
We’re playing the Star Trek Adventures RPG (STARPG for short), so yes.
>whats it like?
It’s an Akira II-class refit vessel outfitted for general exploration. Very heavily armed for a Starfleet vessel, but it’s current role is scientific exploration, research, and first contact duties.
>Most importantly, whats it called?
USS Murakumo, NCC-65590.
>also post spaceship and other space stuff art
Here she is.
Not pictured; it’s two Danube-class Runabout ships, the Willamette and the Columbia.

>Not even an antimatter drive is going to burn for years at 1 g without most of the ship being made up of fuel and propellant.
that's wrong tho, fuel efficiency of fusion is very fucking good. even fission would be workable for in system travel but more demanding for fuel payload. drive efficiency of course only has a theoretic max how close we can get is up to technology constraints.

Well, ours takes place in the Trek universe, so the destructive power of the weapons we have kind of way outstrips nuclear weaponry now.
Just last session we made contact with a somewhat hostile new species who opened contact with us by launching off a series of nuclear fusion missiles at us to pretty much no effect at all.

Our Engineer commented that the attack was “quaint”, while our Tactical Officer, somewhat less charitably, asked if “sticks and rocks were their next plan”.

>His ship doesn't have automated factories inside capable to manufacture whatever it is needed and perform repairs with the harvested materials.

i remember doing some calcs i went for 10% of theoretical fuel efficiency and still got very reasonably small fuel mass ratios even for the missiles. 100kg fuel for the 1 ton of missile is more than good it's insanely good compared to chemical. and it would last for hours at crazy accel. the ships too fuel stocks would be more limited by rationality than capability. storage units capacity is measured in kilo-tonnes while the fuel necessary to run for years is more in the hundred tonnes range.

The highest possible exhaust velocity I can find for a fusion rocket comes from proton-proton fusion, which can theoretically spit out fusion products at 11.7% of the speed of light.

Per the rocket equation, if this ship was 50% fuel by mass, it would have a delta-v of ~24 288 km/s or 8.1% of the speed of light. In other words, this would be the velocity it would reach if it burned continuously to depletion. If it accelerated at 1 g, it would last about 29 days before it runs dry. Most conceptual fusion rockets have performance much lower than this.

Without doing the math, just going from memory, I believe an antimatter-powered ship composed almost entirely of fuel could realistically accelerate at 1 g for perhaps a year.

What would a good system for a LotGH game be? If the players were admirals, for example, because playing as anybody lower on the scale than Poplan basically equals a quick and fiery death.

those are not even close to the numbers i got. hm... i guess i need to run down the calcs again.
i didn't use the rocket equation i just went for energy released for duration per mass of fuel and took 10% of that as converted to drive impulse on average.

yeah i redid the calcs it's fucking next to nothing 350 TJ/kg take 10% of theoretical max it's 35 TJ/kg while i need 27,58 TJ only, so less than a kg/second it get's me around 24 kilotons of fuel per year for 1g. and that's at a ridiculously drive bad efficiency. i could safely go up to 70% even for hard sci-fi.

but maybe i'm messing it all up.

also factor in that a complex fusion drive might also employ powerful lasers and magnetic fields to further accelerate the particles which of course makes it not exactly a simple torch rocket but a real fusion drive. which would put the fuel requirement down by a magnitude so let's say 2.4 kilotons per drive module per year. the 10kt storage of a frigate could support up to 2-3 years easily without supply ships.

Rogue Trader?

I really hate when people just kind of throw around high Kardashev numbers as if they mean anything.

A Kardashev 3 could be no different from a Kardeshev 2, just spent more time on the whole "dyson every star" thing. A K3 has a lot of energy at its disposal, but that doesn't necessarily translate to higher technology, and it certainly doesn't translate into magic space ships with FTL and super shields.

I'd be less annoyed if you said precursor civilization or something. That at least speaks of space opera. But using the Kardashev scale to talk about a space opera setting is stupid. By necessity a space opera has to ignore the rules that the Kardashev scale operates on, ie basic slow expansion, harnessing as much of the energy in a given system as reasonably possible etc.

Shaped nukes get around that problem.

Am I the only one who prefers "low" sci-fi like The Expanse and Battlestar Galactica?

I enjoy Star Trek, but too much of it is based off of technological fiat (ie. major plot points decided arbitrarily through technobabble) for my liking.

Given BSG and The Expanse are fairly major shows, no, you're not the only one. Not sure if it's a trend, but mainstream sci-fi in general is moving towards people vs people, rather than Trek's people vs alien.

8/10 trek aliens are just rubber forehead aliens though. 1/10 being ridiculous (e.g. Q) borderline fantasy, and 1/10 being actually alien

casaba merely roughly doubles effective range for a nuke of given yield directionally. but sure enough put on a missile it's good shit.

Given Trek's setup is human virtues (Federation) contending with human vices (Klingons being violence, Romulans being xenophobia, Ferengi being greed), it works for the stories they want to tell. Also, less of a drain on the special effects budget.

too bad expanse was so cheaply produced many details were off. could have been a great show.

Thats kinda my point though. The aliens are essentially extreme representations of human values (whether positive or not). They aren't really alien in the true sense of the word.

Cheap how? I know that the rooms are far larger than in the book, because you need space to move cameras around, and magnetic boots are added in to explain how everybody's sticking to the floor. And no radiators, but I don't remember the book even mentioning them at all.

Yeah, the difference between, say, Battlestar Galactica's production values and The Expanse's is night and day. It's definitely still a TV show, but I don't think I've seen a space show that's put that much money on screen.

>they forgot all about 3d space
No they didn't. I specifically remember a formation widening and then deepening "down".

Primo ship and drone killers, not for the blast but for the EMP that follows.

Don't you need an atmosphere or a magnetic field to get an EMP?

Nope, nukes generate their own.

one example: when they get to the no g parts it gets real bad. movements are off hairs and clothes still show gravity magnetic boot walking also wrong dynamics.

mostly maneuvering and tactical view was 2d ships always oriented in the same plane etc...

yes ionosphere
low altitude or space explosions generate negligable emp

Mostly, but they did have scenes showing 3d maneuvers and movement, even on the tac display.

i meant the expanse

i dont recall

Strictly speaking, it's all theoretical as not much thought was given to an emp attack off of Earth and no experiments exist on the subject.

nuclear explosion mainly releases energy as heat and ionizing radiation. the later turns into emp in high atmo.

I use them in star trek online. USS Skrilla Gorilla, ferengi D'Kora kitted with kentari nukes. If you ever see me, say hello

A nuclear EMP occurs at any altitude, however you get a greater spread the higher up in altitude.

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I've always wanted to run a game set on an ancient light-hugger from Revelation Space. Something about the massive ship that both is a means of freedom and a dungeon full of threat and mystery sets my adventure bell aringin'.

On topic, i have no party and will never play a deep sci-fi game...

We call it the Mola Mola after a fish. I don't remember why we cared about that fish in particular.

>mostly maneuvering and tactical view was 2d
ships always oriented in the same plane etc...

The ships are not oriented on the same plane - they tend to be arranged in "walls" or boxes.

Fleets are also usually deployed in depth, so ships can be retired to rest/rearm, but the successive squadrons and divisions can't be so closely stacked that the reserve units are affected by enemy fire passing through the leading squadrons, while being unable to return fire for fear of hitting the ships in front.

Yang's hemispherical formation that seems ludicrous is basically a front-loaded gamble that maximizes firepower by putting all his ships on the firing line at the cost of endurance (no reserves) to overpower an enemy deployed in depth. The enemy fleet can't effectively change its formation to match Yang's firepower due to overwhelming firepower (think about changing formation under fire in the real world), and therefore must retreat or stay put and continue to take losses. Note the outcome - Kempff withdrew.

The reason why no one "expected" to face this hemispherical formation is because Yang's fleet was exceptional in its ability to carry out complex formation changes, with much of the credit going to Admiral Fischer's skill at fleet deployments. Most commanders wouldn't even attempt it.

"Brilliant" 3d maneuvers at the distances involved in LoGH, involving thousands of ships with limited command/control/communications, are very risky and liable to backfire if the fleets fail to carry out the maneuvers effectively. The Free Planets' obsession with replicating the spherical total envelopment of the Imperial fleet by Lin Pao and Yūsuf Topparol at the Battle of Dagon, and their repeated failures, are a good example of this.

Current ship for current campaign. Provider of model pointed out it was intended to be a three deck affair, but that's not the only modification to the hull shape I made, so eh.

Questionably capable in combat, but long endurance. Since the party is out exploring ancient ruins, anything they meet in open space is liable to either be junk or outclass any modern ship anyway.

1 'pixel' on the deckplan is 1.2 meters or so, if I'm guesstimating right.

What program did he use to make the model?

Sketchup, believe it or not. I think he does the rendering in something else, or has a better rendering module for it, but I've never really asked.

Ubiquitous. Sub-kiloton warheads by the hundreds deployed on cheap interceptor missiles, with nuclear shaped charge flack warheads. Heavy point defense artillery with 105t shells. Larger nukes on heavier missiles for use against hard targets (generally for busting engines, optics, lasers, ect.)

I got you broski

A Rod from God propelled orion-style by nuclear charge? Hell yes.

What matters more is the type of story you want to tell with it. Even within those groups, people are very distinct and have their own ideas.

Also, don’t mess with the Klingon Intelligence Agency.

How is the game?

See, I like Biopunk but to me it needs to be an aesthetic of comparison, it can never usually be pulled off as the only present theme.

The way I see it, if we compare it with cyberpunk, where technology is changing the environment humans live in to a point where there is nothing natural to relate and only technology alineating everyone, biopunk is more about subverting nature to the ways humans perceive as more convenient, twisting it but not breaking it like cyberpunk, since humans are also part of nature this also means that unlike cyberpunk humanity is also part of this process of subversion.

For example; if you were to install create in the middle of a desrt through genetically modified plants, you are not destroying a natural environment to put cities or industries but rather imposing to nature your idea that a forest is more important than a desert and to achieve it you changed the essence of plants to grow where they should have never been able to, but this also work when you use genetically modified organisms to create a house; you did not destroyed a forest to create your house, you maybe twisted the forest to become your house in ways that you and only you saw fit, and that happens too with humans; when you give people the ability to have infrarred vision or more muscles you are twisting even the idea that humans have the same genus creating people that is only superior because we see those traits as much more favourable than people who are born and require glases later in life.

And as stated, there are some things that bionpunk allows you over more classical aproaches since biological systems are a very complex and interconected network of the same constructions units everywhere allows you to do very weird things.

So, I wouldn't stick with just an aesthetic, otherwise you are just creating something that has been done over and over again with a mask of biopunk on top.

Oh no I fully understand how Biopunk is supposed to be implemented and valued, I just feel as a theme it should more than often accompany the more traditional tech bases, not for practicality but a standard of comparision for the sake of grounded narrative.

Warframe is a good example.

>Crew in the hundreds

That's waaaaaay too much. Realistically, you would never need more than, say, a dozen crew members plus a dozen or so marines.

You are also forgetting EW and how it would affect missiles/drones (badly).

I mean, they worked for ewoks.

But you have fuel all around you. Space isn't vacuum, it's filled with hydrogen. If you go fast enough its density should be enough to keep you going if you just harvest it from the outside.

Donna Walsh
Rajata-Ambu Kulkarni
Bronze Torres
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