Willy Vereb

Stellar legacy

Yeah sure go ahead.

also, next time, could you PLEASE try to make your inquiries in a way more akin to "why is this and this done like so and so" instead of starting on the note of "You are doing this wrong and it should be like so"? Frankly the way you initiate these conversations is rather infuriating. I may have my own reasons and since I also see the sheets of others before you do I canput things into more context regarding game balance. That's why I initially yelled at you and accused you of trying to hijack - it looks that way. And it's why certain people I could mention who did the same thing are no longer allowed to participate in my games. I don't know whether my central/eastern European mentality is just this different from where it is you are form, but it really annoys me and apparently I am not alone. Just a food for thought.

@Forsythe

It's matter of writing style and the language barrier. English is my second language so I am not as keen on the difference at times. That and how I used to frequent debate forums which gives a certain edge to my writing style even when I don't try it.
Though ironically enough I am also from Central Europe. Not sure if there's a cultural barrier, it's a mixed lot here so even neighbors can be on different tune but I am certainly not that far away then.

Per Aspera Ad Astra - Sci-Fi Fantasy NRP

My NS is in progress for half a week now. Though I got distracted and also temporarily lost my comp so I don't progress very fast with it, I am afraid.

Stellar legacy

@ForsytheI see. Thought that was only related to power generation.
Anyways, can I post my profile in the character page?
It's of course unfinished but the rest of the details are flavour (though important flavour text to know Morte better) which shouldn't affect rules or balance (or more like you already know the meat of it).
It'd honestly make it easier to me to edit my profile rather than scrolling back.

The Great Cession

@Jpp188Will the Germans be a concern latter in the story, though.
Without America there's roughly fifty-fifty chance they win WW2 and come for the USA.
Though with USA split up perhaps they don't bother much aside from maybe supporting one of the factions.

Stellar legacy

@Willy Vereb They are not a list of energy sources, but rather technology bases/achievements/whatever you want to call it. Think of the whole bundle, form construction through power generation to weaponry.

@Forsythe

I feel that's still very context sensitive.
Antimatter reactors are damn simple though due to containment issues they might be more difficult than fission power. Granted, realizing chain-reaction was downright brilliant, without it fission would be around the same difficulty as fusion. Discovering some molecule whose electric fields can safely store antimatter without containment devices might also happen the same way.
Otherwise antimatter has just two concerns:
- building a heat powerplant to handle its energy
- radiation protection
Neither are that difficult compared to fission reactor concerns.
Antimatter can easily be described as "nuclear energy for dummies".
I don't bore you to death with other examples but I think I demonstrated my point.

Stellar legacy

fossil fuel < fission < fusion < antimatter < subatomic < exotic particles < subspace < singularity/gravity < ???

@Forsythe
I wanted to note this before but that list of energy sources is not quite in order.

Heat energy is generally what you can describe as fossil fuels, steam engines or even exotic plasma reactors are more or less this (unless they use electromagnetic energies). The method how they generate heat can vary but their yield is limited by the amount of heat energy they can gain.

Technically nuclear reactors are the same in mechanism but for obvious reasons we can talk about it separately. Nuclear fission and fusion roughly offers the same power yield and it's usually just the matter of design and choice of fuel. They are limited to a few percentage of mass energy. That's still far better than usually any classic heat engine, of course.

Subatomic and exotic particles may allow more efficient mass energy extraction so they could be higher up.

Matter-antimatter annihilation reactors can utilize up to 100% mass energy, though less efficient designs or simple uncontrolled pair annihilations are around 10% effective mass energy, IIRC. The best nuclear reactors approach or surpass the worst antimatter reactors.

Black holes as power source are classically not superior to nuclear reactors in output. Though it depends on the characteristics of the black hole. There's also the fact you need advanced gravity manipulation to make black holes portable and then you probably can alter the characteristics of the blavk hole, too. Ideally black holes can be close to antimatter reactors in energy efficiency (suppose you can freely alter how much energy the black hole releases) while your fuel sits in a compact spot and you can "recharge" it by just feeding any junk to it.

Subspace energy generation is unquantifiable since it's a fantastic world with different sets of laws. It can have power yields of whatever you find convenient.

The absolute top dog of known power generation methods is vacuum itself and how! Vacuum energy is just huge and it's present everywhere. While telling power output is impossible since no known mechanisms exist the power density of vacuum is estimated around 10¹¹³ joules per cubic meter! Well, according to one interpretation. There are five most popular ones ranging from zero to infinite. This is also called the zero point energy and if you watched Stargate you may be familiar with ZPMs.

That's it for now. Hopefully my explanations were helpful.

Stellar legacy

For a relic can I have a building that has the capability to shoot down objects, such as asteroids, when manned?

@Lauder

I am not the GM but I think that's too vague.
Can you elaborate a bit?
Do you mean some advanced weapon platform with technology and power beyond the norm?

Stellar legacy

GM, how plausible/reasonable would these relic concepts be?

1) A thermal borehole complex tapping the core of a barren world. While the facility itself is inoperable due to ancient active safety measures, concepts and technology derived from it enable lesser yet effective imitation thermal tap facilities for greater resource and clean energy production.
2) A ancient titan-size starship found floating in the asteroid belt. The ship is ruined beyond restoration or understanding of it's origins, but technology derived from it in the fields of gravity control, structural integrity, and self-repairing materials enable widespread mega-scale engineering and building very big.
3) A ancient sensor hub connected to a hidden network of nodes across the sector. Actually processing the flood of information coming in is a problem however, and dependent on finding and restoring the sensor relays to extend the sensor's reach.

Also, what is a good ballpark measure for starting spacefleet forces? I like to err on the side of caution when it comes to initial fleet sizes.

@Skylar

You can only have one relic at the start (or none at all, if that's your style). Though I suppose you are asking about these to keep your options open.

As for fleet sizes I think the first entry in the character sheets section also have fleet number. And that nation belongs to the Gm.
Though population-wise they are rather small so perhaps larger nations can have more ships? Not sure.
Personally I plan to have 250 warships. They are numerous but relatively small in size. Think more along the lines of naval vessels instead of 2km long behemoths.

Stellar legacy

@Willy Vereb
I already agreed to letitng you have that much.

Also I may rephrase the contact rule after this to "having no alien contact at the time of the start of the RP" - would that solve your problem?

@Forsythe

Morte made no alien contact in roughly the last 100 years... and they were happy for it.
BTW, I rewrote most of my profile now. Mind taking a look?

Stellar legacy

@Willy Vereb
1), 3) and 4) Then use the allowed tech in the savvy way. What's the difference between a gauss cannon and the grav gun anyway? They're both propellant-less kinetic weapons, only the earlier one is most likely more power efficient and cheaper to make in the first place. You can do pretty much what you want to do with what I allow. What you want is 'shiny' things that have the potential to go awfully wrong.

If it doesn't make sense to use gravity manipulation for something and not for something else, than the correct thing to do in this setting is to disallow all of it, not the other way around.

I am willing to talk it through, that's what we've been doing. You just don't comprehend that I'm not required to see things your way. Thus far I'm not convinced, and we can't talk about it forever either. If you don't like how I set this up, then I'm sorry, this really is not the setting you've been looking for.

2.) OK one or both of us is still out of the loop on this one. Could you describe the Kilonova in more detail then? From what I gather form your sheet, it only affected your system, which means that if the pirates' planet was destroyed by it they still fit the same definition as the Luxans, and 'driven out of the system' can mean they just were pushed out into the local version of the Kuiper belt? The odds of 3 sapient species evolving in one system are small but hey.

@Forsythe

Kilonova is when two neutron stars collide. This is a massively energetic event with energy thousands of times that of a supernova (hence it's name). Basically couple or even hundreds of years ago a kilonova happened and one of the fragments eventually reached the Morte sun.
Obviously it effected others in the vicinity and that's why in previous NRPs the stormlosweg sector was filled with deathworlds. The effects of the kilonova varied per system but all of them were catastrophical. Life on these systems either went extinct, left the planet or like Morte learned to mitigate the effects a bit and live in this unfriendly world.
We can tone down the effects of the Kilonova enough that it has certainly no effect on any of your locations. Or you can work with the concept into your plot. It's up to you. Writing freedom leaves you with infinite options.

As for gravitic accelerators, nah. I don't want shiny tech as much as with artificial gravity they make the most sense to develop. My grailguns and gravity shields come from that fact alone. Like you said they can be treated just the same. I find it an inconsistency to not use them which is why I do. I did away with my "shiny" part of the tech already and in process of rewriting the NS with that.
Again, neither technologically nor in sense of power balance these violate the game.Railgun or grailgun it roughly has the same power and capabilities. Though I admit I planned to use gravity fields to protect my crew from the neutron radiation of fusion reactors.

EDIT: My original response was a bit different but it seems we actually both on the same tune. Alright, I can technically scale down everything at least a notch since I developed them from existing electromagnetic mechanisms. Just let me keep the artifical gravity and the capability to erect forcefields to block the reactor's harmful neutron radiation and I am satisfied. I will just make the artificial gravity tech expensive otherwise. It could also give a reason to make my ships relatively "small" in comparison.