[OOC] Stellar Fleet: The War in Heaven (Wing Commander/Freespace inspired Space Opera)

[vietmyke]

@Kessir Tarkin Overall everything looks good. The only thing that sounds kinda off is his callsign honestly. Ionno, at least to me, 'Red Flag' doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily as 'Gramps' or 'Rama' or some of the other callsigns. The idea of one on one dogfighting duels is also interesting, and while it definitely is a passtime, one on one dogfighting doesn't necessarily translate to the full measure of a pilot. IE you wouldn't expect a pilot that specializes in bombers to prove themselves by 1v1-ing a guy in a interceptor- that are meant to shoot down bombers, you'd expect them to prove themselves by flying simulated strike missions, etc.

I mean, other than the callsign though, there's nothing worth complaining about. Consider Rezzik accepted.

[Kessir Tarkin]

@vietmyke sweet I'll think of another one and I will change the simulations to squad based missions where one player was in a ship with a number of AI units.

[Kessir Tarkin]

@vietmyke made the couple changes you recommended, take another look at it please to see that it works.

[vietmyke]

I like the nickname Bugger a lot, it's short, humorous, and distinct. Alrighty, that should be the entirety of our cast then.

[FrostedCaramel]

As far as ranks go, are you going to be assigning our characters their ranks?

[vietmyke]

@FrostedCaramel I'll be assigning ranks- more senior members like Travers will likely be a higher ranked lieutenant, while the rooks will be ensigns. Rank won't really play too much in this RP, as outside of commanding officers, respect is earned through reputation amongst the squadron and the battlefield.

[Naril]

I'm curious - are the mottos listed for the TSN ships specific to individual ships, or generic to the class? :3

[vietmyke]

I... Uh.. I dunno actually. I originally had written them up just for flavor for the schematics, but having Latin mottos for each individual ship would be quite fun.

Also, we should be getting started some time tonight.

[Naril]

Different mottos would be a lot of fun! I'm happy to help, too. I've been rediscovering recently that I really like writing about...well, space opera-ey stuff, and for some reason I really like coming up with dedication plaques. It's probably the Star Trek girl still in me. :3

[vietmyke]

Alright, IC is up, intros are relatively open for veteran pilots of the 144th Direwolves. Newer pilots- IE rookies, or those freshly assigned to the Squadron, such as Elizabeth, Kira and Clint, among others; have a slightly more regulated intro: Getting their 'shit' in order, and maybe bumbling around the halls of the ship.

Either way, everyone should end up in the briefing room at or before -0030

If you have any questions or need tips/ideas on getting started, feel free to ask.

Also, Flight roster has been updated to have links to individual characters.

[AngryBadger]

How do we sit in chairs in zero gravity?

[BingTheWing]

With seatbelts, of course!

[FrostedCaramel]

I'll get a reply for Travers up tomorrow after work is over, looking forward to what others may put up before then.

[BingTheWing]

I'm unsure how to continue with my character without being accused of cultural appropriation; if anyone finds anything in my posts offensive or disrespectful to the Indian or Hindu traditions, don't hesitate to tell me.

[Naril]

I don't think you'll need to worry - Anu is a man of Indian descent, acting (assumedly) within the traditions of Hinduism and informed by the values of his culture, maybe massaged by the fact this story is set hundreds of years in the future. The fact that you, the writer, are (I presume) not of that culture isn't really at issue; it does mean you have to do some research, but I'm getting the feeling that you're already doing that. The larger, pointier, and more salient questions of (mis)appropriation come up in different contexts. :3

[vietmyke]

@AngryBadger there's like a little lap bar thing that keeps you in place....

You know, I actually didn't think of that... I just thought the ship would be more interesting/realistic without gravity in most locations.

[Naril]

It can certainly lead to some interesting scenes inside the ship - although if you want to go fully 'realistic' (this is a setting with faster than light travel, after all), there's some real questions about what happens when the ship is under power. :3

Without some kind of artificial gravity / inertial compensation (which is basically Space Magic), when the ship is under acceleration / deceleration, the interior of the ship will experience "gravity" in accordance with that thrust. If the Galatia is moving at 2.2G of acceleration, that means we (and the strike craft, and the support equipment, etc.) are subject to 2.2G of weight opposite the direction the ship is moving in, until the ship's speed levels off (which necessarily must be engine cutout, since there's nothing to provide drag in space) or the rate of acceleration changes. Similar loads will apply if the ship is thrusting laterally (manoevering thrusters).

I think Dan Simmons in the Hyperion series did some fun things with this idea. I'm certain that there were some similar narrative considerations in some of Niven's books (maybe the Mote series? It's been a while). Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga deals extensively with how much artificial gravity technology changed space travel, which I liked.

I'm totally prepared to ignore all of that, and pretend the ship is always at a mix of zero-gee/1G in selected areas for "reasons," but there's a lot of really complicated things that happen if you want to be purely Newtonian about it. :3

[vietmyke]

I don't pretend to be a physics major, and know about as much about this newtonian stuff as high school taught me over half a decade ago

[Oni_]

@Naril is right about "weight" being produced from the ships thrust (which for 1G I calculated to be about 4.9GigaNewtons) although it's a bit different from the force of weight on a planet since it's down to inertia rather than us actually acceleration down towards the planet. The only place I've seen this played about with in fiction was Stephen Baxters "Proxima" but that was also only at the start.

This does lead to an interesting question of what would happen to ships during the transition into a jump? I mean, assuming we've made the jump to Vega from Earth and not somewhere else, that's 25 light years in 4 and a half hours? 14.6 Tetrameters per second anyone? That's a crushing force of 7.31 ZettaNewtons being applied to our poor pilots going in and out of hyperspace (assuming the acceleration into it takes a second, but still.) which is something like 1.8 million nukes of force.

I think worrying about gravity is the least of our worries, go with whatever floats your boat @vietmyke Newtonian physics doesn't account or allow for FTL travel anyway.

Which bring me to what I showed up for, I'll try to get a post up tonight. Funnily enough, I have a mechanics paper to finish off first.

[Naril]

@Oni_ - Haha! I was thinking of calculating the forces involved, but decided I'd rather do FEA on some of my robot parts instead. I guess I'm in a mood where pretty blue-to-red gradients are what my brain wants. The good news is that the part I designed can take the shock load I'm going to put on it! I probably should have made sure of that before I sent it to manufacturing, but cart, horse, Naril's laziness, inherent lack of sigmas in combat robotics, etc.

In at least one of the Hyperion novels, death from the crushing force of a relativistic jump (it might have actually been relativistic-to-FTL, I don't remember) was a necessary part of certain kinds of travel. There was a piece of Space Magic (the Cruciform parasite, I think?) that reconstituted and resurrected people after being liquefied during the trip. Sort of gruesome, but it's one of my favorite applications of Space Magic regarding faster-than-light travel.

I think our Space Magic is more akin to some kind of extradimensional bridge/folding the universe/that kind of thing rather than actual delta-V. Maybe we have a borrowed Culture ultraspace/infraspace traction drive. That should help avoid having zetta-Newtons of force acting on the ship over short impulses, I think. :3

I don't have any plans tonight other than taking myself to dinner, so I'll probably write something in the hotel.