ASTA

GEARS - Mecha Sci-fi with Anthro characters. RP in a detailed, story-driven world.

Won't get into a long-winded explantation of where I've been, but basically real-life decided to throw me a curve ball. This has resulted in me having severly limited internet access. However, I'm going to stick with the roleplay, and I'll see about submitting a post as soon as possible.

Galaxian Alliances - The Interstellar Chronicles

KabenSaal said
So, War sucks either way? You got a financial nightmare or a inhospitable planet of pot-holes? I wonder why people are all so eager to start one.

Because Rule of Cool.

Galaxian Alliances - The Interstellar Chronicles

I've been in a few science fiction NRPs; every so often, you get one or two roleplayers who seem adamant on believing that a synthetic fighting force is dramatically more expensive than an organic force.

This is wholly incorrect.

People seem to assume that humans are free and cost nothing. This is wrong. Let's use a real-life example. On average, it costs about 277,000 USD to raise a child from birth to adulthood in the United States; this cost does not factor in college or other expenses that are not required for a healthy upbringing. If the child opts to enroll within college, the cost for them to actually reach adulthood and obtain an enhanced education dramatically increases. You could easily be looking at a 330,000+ price tag for a single kid.

So let's say that our child wants to serve their country by shooting brown people in Afghanistan. Someone has to preserve the freedom of US citizens! Our child has opted to enroll within the US military, which means that their training, food, and equipment is not free. We shouldn't forget the medical bills either, because our child is bound to get hurt at some point doing PT, firing range exercises or hand-to-hand sparring drills. When they are finally done being trained in the art of warfare and killing, and after having racked up a training bill of several thousand dollars, they're finally deployed to Afghanistan, and will now proceed to be a logistical and financial burden on the US budget. 815,000 dollars or so per year, actually.

But that's real life. This is a roleplay. Realistically, and with advancements in robotics and manufacturing techniques, there's no reason why a synthetic soldier should be more expensive than a human soldier--especially if you're equipping your human soldier with powered armor which is really nothing more than a wearable robot to begin with.

EDIT: And if we look at this from a cost-effective standpoint, a robotic soldier beats out an organic simply because it isn't bound by the much stricter limitations imposed on the organic body. And no, powered armor does not mitigate these limitations. PA just gives you a strength boost and, to some extent, a protection boost as well, but run too fast in it, and your legs will still pull muscles and break bones.

Galaxian Alliances - The Interstellar Chronicles

KabenSaal said
A hundred robots, solid robots with EMP shielding, sufficent AI to fight and a power-pack that lasts more than half an hour, would cost an insane amount of high-tensile alloy, so they don't get blown apart by the first bullet. And you need millions. Plus, piracy and fleet's ambushing convoys takes about 20-40% of the income from other worlds, import prices will go though the roof because your at war and the exporter will bleed you for that very reason, and then you need to create air units, mechanical divisions, Space-ships, and the weaponry. The demand would be astronomical, and so even if you won, you'd have to strip-mine half your empire just to have forces to meet the enemy. So yea, the greatest enemy would be your own army.

>Implying an organic army is any cheaper.

Of Steam and Ambition -

Somewhat interested, but boy oh boy does it suck to see that everyone has absorbed all of the islands in the roleplay.

Galaxian Alliances - The Interstellar Chronicles

@ OP I'm not trying to pee on your parade or anything. This actually looks like a swell sci-fi NRP, and one of the few that I'm actually inclined to join.

Galaxian Alliances - The Interstellar Chronicles

Willy Vereb said
Imperium's firepower and weapons are pretty much medium grade in their setting.They go for quantity over quality.Their only special feature is the tachyon beam weapons and those are only broken against low tier/hard SF type defenses.Otherwise the only difference is that the beams reach a certain place faster than light. Which is actually pretty common in space operas if you take attention to the details.Anyways, if somebody doesn't want to deal with the Empire they just don't need to be in their neighborhood.The Empire's method of faster than light travel is similar to the Alcubierre Drive which warps space thus allowing an STL vessel to seemingly reach superluminal speeds.Even with that they're fairly slow, traveling roughly a few lightyears a day.This means via their standard drives to reach a civilization on the other part of the galaxy they'd need to travel for centuries.Really, getting scared because a large NPC civilization is actually strong?This game isn't just about space battles or duking it out with another race.You have to actually use your brain. Or jut go with the flow and enjoy governing your space civ.EDIT: Are you perhaps referring to the part where I mention imperial soldiers wear powered armors that can protect against less advanced weapons?Really?That's pretty much just how the advance of technology works. Their armor can protect against primitive firearms and less powerful energy weapons because otherwise they wouldn't be wearing it. A well-placed shot from advanced infantry weapons like phasers, blasters, railguns or whatever would take them out because there's no reason to design a weapon which cannot threaten an armor with comparable tech level.Seriously I don't know what's your deal here.

Firearm technology doesn't suddenly stop evolving just because lasers or railguns come on the scene. In actuality--and this is going to deal with some serious real-world physics here--a railgun doesn't exactly scale down well because of power requirements and general inefficiency (firing the equivalent of a full-powered .50BMG cartridge using a railgun would require approximately 20,000 watts of power, which suffice to see is pretty ridiculous when you're trying to fire hundreds of rounds like this per minute at hyper-velocity speeds). You could handwave everything and claim that you're using marshmallow-sized nuclear reactors to power your weapon, but if you're at the stage where you can cram fusion or fission reactors into that petite of a size, then you're pretty much well beyond petty space naval engagements. At this point, you're busting planets. With extreme impunity.

With caseless ammunition using highly volatile superformance propellants and some sort of special rocket-assisted bullet (like a miniaturized HEAP/gyrojet hybrid round), you pretty much have a direct analog to a railgun.

I'm going to ignore phasers and blasters. Those two weapons are pretty much made-up inventions native to science fiction that were created solely to function as high-tech and futuristic replacements for customary infantry arms because their creators thought that they looked cool and would wow the audience.

But all of the above nonsense is besides the point. This is a Space Opera, so that stuff doesn't really matter, but it really bums me out that I have to use tachyon beam weapons to avoid being instanta-conquered by one of several war junkies lurking about on RPG.

Seiryu said
You honestly have no clue what ST is really capable of if you think thishttp://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Red_mattercase in point

ST is pretty low on the sci-fi power scale. Warhammer 40k, Culture 'verse, Halo (Forerunners and Ancient Humanity), Xeelee 'verse, Star Wars (especially Star Wars) and old school BSG pretty much trash it in every category.

Galaxian Alliances - The Interstellar Chronicles

Oh, Star Trek technology. ST I never really liked--for a number of reasons. But that's neither here nor there.

At any rate, I figured this was your run-of-the-mill sci-fi NRP, but that tech set-up isn't really doing it for me.

Good luck with the RP I guess.

Galaxian Alliances - The Interstellar Chronicles

Would post a sheet, but there's just one issue:

If tachyon weapons are considered outdated, I seriously hate to see what 'advanced' weapons are supposed to be like in this RP. Additionally, I'm trying to figure out how a tachyon weapon effectively bypasses an electromagnetic field, a particle shield or 'classic' armor plating, because by this notion, you've effectively rendered most (if not all) standard sci-fi technology obsolete.

I mean off the bat, the GE pretty much sets the standard for this roleplay, and it's already set up to be a powergaming fest to be honest.

And, the resemblance to the IoM is rather similar. Love the IoM personally, but making a copy-cat nation is, for lack of a better term, weaksauce.

Question to all Chinese/British/Americans/French/Russians/Israelis/Indians/Pakistanis

Revans Exile said
Assuming no country was being dicks like Russia, everyone was playing nice and sharing like good little boys and girls:If I was the one solely in charge of the Nuclear Football, I would launch every missile at my disposal. Let the world burn.

Well aren't you just a little ray of sunshine~!