Spaceships and battles

Wed, 2016-03-30 04:04

#2

Armoured

Drone warfare

Interesting! My imagining of EP-level space warfare runs almost entirely counter to yours, being fighter/carrier-based rather than submarine based. To my mind, any dedicated transhuman warship should be a carrier for as many autonomous drone ships as possible. Effectively combat wasps from Peter F. Hamilton's Nights Dawn trilogy. I call these attack vehicles "fighters" but obviously they wouldn't be Battlestar Galactica-style aerodynamic craft. All that is required is a payload collection wrapped around a drive and fuel tank, sensors, infomorph crew, thermal shielding (for stealth), and swarmanoids or nanoswarms for repairs. Smaller infomorph-piloted fighters would be harder to resolve for targeting, and could maneuver (relatively) silently ahead of their carrier's trajectory using cold-gas thrusters to engage earlier than their mothership. Total payload would be lighter than a large ship, but if you are launching nuclear or kinetic-kill missiles, that doesn't matter so much. After engagement, fighters would require smaller dV reserves to rendezvous with their carrier. As engagement occurs away from the carrier, losses are taken on relatively cheap fighters. All of this is extremely reliant on exact technology levels of your EP setting. Varying qualities of sensors, armour, weapons and drives changes the equation of what is "optimal" and what would dictate what space combat would look like. I think this is why everyone has their own view, which is fine!

Wed, 2016-03-30 09:50

#3

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

There was a thread a year or

There was a thread a year or two ago about space ship combat. One person argued the point that ship combat is likely to involve QE comms to control the ships remotely. Let the AIs handle the day to day business, but have the "crew" take over remotely for combat situations. It'll save you the trouble of having the ships be crewed and staffed for however long the ship operates. Plus the actual crew could be doing something else while the ship travels.

Wed, 2016-03-30 10:17

#4

R.O.S.S.-128 R.O.S.S.-128's picture

Reply Hazy Try Again

It is difficult to accurately predict just how future space battles will take shape. Using the most simplistic assumptions, lasers or relativistic projectiles controlled by a computer would seem to be a highly efficient solution: there is (usually) no cover in space, meaning indirect fire will rarely be necessary, and a good telescope can treat half the galaxy as "visual range". As a bonus, unguided projectiles are exceedingly cheap and have good economies of scale (you only need to buy one targeting system, which stays on the ship). As long as your opponent cannot detect the incoming fire ahead of time and/or can't displace their future position by more than half their silouhette, just lead off their geometric center and you're good to go. The equation alters substantially though if your targets often have enough delta-v to displace more than their ship-length during your expected time-to-target, or you expect your enemy to routinely have something like a planet between you and them. In that case you need some kind of guidance system. Whether you use missiles or drones depends on which is cheaper for you: a disposable guidance system, or the extra reaction mass that you need to get your guidance system back in one piece. Both are valid situations and can even vary from faction to faction, it depends on your tech, your economy, and your combat doctrines (for example, recovery gets more expensive at longer ranges). If the guidance system costs more than the reaction mass, you can use a drone to approach a target, fire an unguided payload, and then return for a new payload so you can re-use your expensive guidance system. You will of course have to factor in the risk of losing the drone to point-defenses anyway to determine if attempting recovery is even worth the reaction mass. If the reaction mass costs more than the guidance system, then you use missiles because attempting recovery just isn't worth it. Better to just send your cheap guidance system on a one-way trip and not worry about it.

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End of line.

Wed, 2016-03-30 10:40

#5

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

On the question of civilian

On the question of civilian space craft, It will completely depend on who controls where she will berth. remember the Sol system is a mishmash of polities and ideals. Scum and anarchists will not think twice about an ice freighter armed with military grade mass drivers. Lunar Lagrange Alliance would object greatly. Engagement radia in space combat is going to be mostly determined by quality of sensors for targeting systems and weapon ranges. In the current state of David Weber's honorverse engagements between Haven and Manticore result in combat distances measured in light hours with stand off weaponry like missiles and Direct fire energy weapons measured in light seconds. As for engagement models of movement? I see a fleet engagement being more like a joust. both fleets flying at each other dumping their payloads in as short of span as possible and then retreating to lick their wounds. EP just does not have magical inertia compensators to make cinematic engagements viable and maneuvers even with infomorph only crews limited

Wed, 2016-03-30 12:25

#6

Lazarus

Tzimize wrote:. . .EP is a

Tzimize wrote:
. . .EP is a hard science fiction game. Leaving aside the fighters, i see the movement of ships such as submarines, not like our actual fighters (f-18, f-35...). I think the battle will not be with spaceships dodging gunfire, or in dogfight, i think that the battles will be fighting over long distances with little movement. . .

Yes and no. Dogfighting certainly will look nothing like modern air-to-air combat. ACM (aerial combat maneuvers) are based around such concepts as using the atmosphere to turn your vehicle rapidly while preserving speed. Because there is no practical atmosphere in space the only way to rapidly establish a new heading is through the use of your primary engine. Additionally weapons mounted on an aircraft usually have to be mounted parallel to the central axis of the craft because of the atmosphere. To have a pivoting turret would destroy the aerodynamics of a modern fighter. For a spacecraft there is no such problem. This greatly reduces the need to line up an enemy target with the central axis of the craft and minimizes the advantages that might be experienced from things such as getting behind a target. In addition to the craft's weapons being able to pivot and target you even though you are behind the entire craft can simply rotate in space in a fashion not possible to aircraft. That does not, however, mean that craft will be static and just slugging it out with one another. The best defense is always not to get hit and even with lasers there can be time for the attack to reach the target. If a target is 299,000 km away when I fire my laser I am already shooting using information that is 1 second out of date. It will take an additional second for the laser to cross back to the target and if I am shooting at a ship that has an engine capable of 3 Gs of acceleration that allows the ship to be vary its location by as much as 60 m over those 2 seconds, which in many cases will probably result in a clean miss. Even when it doesn't that can change a solid hit to an oblique hit which can drastically increase the laser's surface area and change an attack that was targeting the engines or weapons to one hitting empty fuel tanks. So ships will definitely be manuevering. It just won't bear any resemblance to modern ACMs.

Quote:
As such I imagine that the ships spend their "fuel" mainly accelerate and decelerate on their journey, nor leaving much to maneuver in combat.

Hitting first is life. Part of hitting first is making yourself harder to hit, so no, ships are going to manuever. All the remass (reaction mass) in the solar system does you no good if you're dead. Ask yourself this, which is preferable, being destroyed or surviving but not having enough remass left over and then having to try and figure out a solution?

Quote:
In addition, due to the high speeds they have (100 Km/s or more), and their inertia, even if they had backup "fuel", sudden movements would cause problems (g force) to their crews. I imagine well the movements of the spaceships?

Movement in space is deceptive. When you say 100 Km/s what are you referring to? The other ship? Those actually would be excessively high speeds, but you aren't likely to see those. Even if you did it doesn't really matter because all a shooter has to do is lead his target by the appropriate amount, and with the computers in EP that should be fairly trivial. Speed itself does not cause any G-force on the crew. The crew of a ship travelling on a ballistic trajectory at 100 Km/s is still at zero g. Fighter planes travelling at high speeds can experience high G forces during a maneuver, but that's because of the atmosphere. When a ship maneuvers the only force the crew will feel is from the engines (and the Reaction Control System, but that will be minimal). Even if a ship were to do something like slingshot around a moon the crew would feel no additional force. The only exception to this would be any form of external braking, such as aerobraking by flying through an atmosphere or portion of an atmosphere or lithobraking.

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Wed, 2016-03-30 12:48

#7

Tzimize

Thank you all for taking part

Thank you all for taking part on this, I am reading all your contributions

Lazarus wrote:
Movement in space is deceptive. When you say 100 Km/s what are you referring to? The other ship? Those actually would be excessively high speeds, but you aren't likely to see those. Even if you did it doesn't really matter because all a shooter has to do is lead his target by the appropriate amount, and with the computers in EP that should be fairly trivial. Speed itself does not cause any G-force on the crew. The crew of a ship travelling on a ballistic trajectory at 100 Km/s is still at zero g.

I know that gravity is given by the acceleration (not speed) and when the spaceships turn off the engine and remains constant speed is the moment when the crew is in zero-g. I was trying to say that with high speeds (see travel-distance-time table in corebook), if the captain suddenly want to "turn right" to avoid a shot, there are many problems in physics (in first place, g force and inertia). When an object is moving at 100 km / s, and suddenly want to change course, inertia makes it very difficult. Even with enough power to do so (ok, inertia is not a problem), the crew remains subject to the laws of physics, and it will be torn (g force) from their seats, slammed against walls, etc. In this context, G-force and inertia are the same, (I hope to explain adequately, my English is not very fluid), I mean inertia as "resistance of the ship to change its course", and i mean g-force as "inertia of the crew inside of the spacecraft" (going agaisnt wall :-) ). It is from this physical perspective from which I say that the ships will not maneuver so much

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My Eclipse Phase spanish blog http://transhumanismoono.blogspot.com.es/ [img]http://eclipsephase.com/sites/all/modules/ep-prod/profile_bars/images/tc...

Wed, 2016-03-30 13:25

#8

Noble Pigeon Noble Pigeon's picture

Are infomorphs and ALI really

Are infomorphs and ALI really going to be the only crew on expensive and hard to build spaceships? Wouldn't there be issues that would require being there physically (not including jamming bots)? And isn't remote controlling them via QE even more expensive? Maybe it's just a desire to see SOME familiar sci-fi tropes in a setting that does its very best to throw dense and unfamiliar concepts at your eyeballs, but I'd think the Jovians wouldn't be alone in wanting to have actual biomorphs with egos in them onboard ships, just in case.

—

"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.” -Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address

Wed, 2016-03-30 14:18

#9

GRAAK

Realistically speaking I can

Realistically speaking I can't think about space combat any way different from submarines fight. There is: - big inertial forces fo move the ship mass - big inertial forces to dodge and change vector: you have to turn your main engine in order to brake or to create another acceleration vector; of course you can use side thrusters but you would never achieve that starwars style manouvres that are instead typical of flying/swimming in a physical medium that creates friction - inability to hide: no cover, no way to conceal heat loss otherwise you'll cook inside the shuttle. Of course the option "a wizard did it" applied to sci-fi is always a viable option to overcome those objections, but I wouldn't handwave them in my games.

Wed, 2016-03-30 14:51

#10

Lazarus

Tzimize wrote:. . .

Tzimize wrote:
. . . When an object is moving at 100 km / s, and suddenly want to change course, inertia makes it very difficult. Even with enough power to do so (ok, inertia is not a problem), the crew remains subject to the laws of physics, and it will be torn (g force) from their seats, slammed against walls, etc. . .

That's just it, the crew won't be thrown against the 'walls' unless you've got a really weird ship design. Let's use a fusion drive ship for our example. It's carrying a bunch of Ultimates who were working a contract on Luna and who are heading back to Xiphos (in orbit around Uranus). The ship has massive fusion drive capable of 3 Gs of acceleration and 1/2 of the ship's total mass is remass. Xiphos is currently about 2.78 billion km distant from Luna. The plan is to fire the engines at 1G for about 8.5 hours then cut them off, spin the craft to produce gravity, coast on a ballistic trajectory for about 106 days, 18 hours, then fire up the rockets to decelerate. This should leave them with about 4.11% of their total mass as remass when they land so they have a safety margin. Ok, so why am I going into all this detail about the trip? Because it influences the design of the ship. At 107 days for the trip you aren't going to build the ship anything like an aircraft. It will be more like a small hotel. There's lots of different designs but let's assume it is cylindrical. That reduces the stress the hull would take when it is under power over something like a ring. When the ship is spinning the floor would be the surface in the direction of the outer hull. The walls will be those surfaces towards the fore or aft of the ship as well as radial surface (one's radiating from the central axis). The ceiling will be the surface towards the central axis of the ship. When the ship is not spinning and the engine is burning the floor is the surface towards the aft of the ship, the ceiling is the surface towards the fore of the ship, and the walls are the surfaces towards outer hull and the central axis of the ship as well as the radial surfaces. This means that the 'bed' is probably fixed to the surface in the direction of the outer hull (alternately it might be fixed to a surface and held parallel to the outer hull). The aft surface for any room will be a little bit odd. When the ship is under power it functions as a floor and people walk on it. When the ship is not under thrust and is spinning it functions as a wall. At a guess it might have some form of ladder built into it that is covered with a retractable surface that leads to an opening which is set up against the aft wall. Under power you walk on the surface and use the opening as a door. When spinning you can retract the cover, climb the ladder, and use the opening as a roof hatch. What about the forward surface? Does it ever become a 'floor'? Not really. That would only happen if you had large engines up front to slow the ship and there's no point to that. Doing that means you are using mass to build big engines to slow yourself down. It is much more efficient to just turn the ship around and use the primary engine. You will have tiny engines up front as part of your Reaction Control System (RCS) but they will produce tiny fractions of a G and are used for things like docking and turning the ship around so you can use the big engines to slow down. Ok, so we've got our ship in our mind. The Ultimates launch from Luna and after about an hour are going about 105 Km/s relative to their initial velocity. For some reason they need to change the ship's course so it is going at 105 Km/s at a relative bearing of 90 degrees (meaning relative to their current course which, since it is the reference, is 0 degrees). To do this the ship has to turn to a relative bearing of 135 degrees, which is further than the new heading. It fires the engines at a full 3 G's for a bit under 28 1/2 minutes. This decelerate's the ship along it's initial heading to 0 and accelerates it along its new heading to 105 Km/s. This is much faster than turning to 180 degrees and running the engine for 20 minutes and then turning to 90 degrees and running the engine another 20 minutes and it is essentially the sharpest turn the ship can make. What's really important here, however, is that in either case the passengers/crew experience a force of 3 G's pushing them toward the aft surfaces (which they perceive as floors) for the duration of the burn. They aren't 'thrown into' walls. As the ship turns the direction of force from the engine turns with it so to them it feels largely constant. It isn't an absolute. What you are really dealing with is vector math. If a passenger is at 0 g (the ship isn't spinning and the main drive isn't running) and someone runs the RCS they will experience a small feeling of gravity from that as the ship moves. The vector of that gravitational force has to be added to the vector of the engine's force when the engine is running to determine the 'true force' working on the person. However, since the RCS forces would need to seriously overwhelm the forces of the drive to 'throw' someone toward a wall. Even if they were half the force of the drive (which is fairly ludicrous) it would only result in the mathematical equivalent of tilting the floor 30 degrees, enough to make someone stumble into a wall but not enough to 'throw' them.

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Wed, 2016-03-30 14:53

#11

Tzimize

In addition (¡Jack could

Noble Pigeon wrote:
Are infomorphs and ALI really going to be the only crew on expensive and hard to build spaceships? Wouldn't there be issues that would require being there physically (not including jamming bots)? And isn't remote controlling them via QE even more expensive?

In addition (¡Jack could comment here!) the corebook says that - the fighters ARE piloted by infomorphs - in other ships the corebook (or any other) talks about zero- G, but it says NOTHING about infomorph´s crew or remote control. There isnt a single appointment insinuating this. Reading the corebook, or this is a great omission, or by default seems like the spaceships are not piloted by remote control. Read a rpg is not like studying the work of an historian or chronicler, but I think (being faithful to the setting, the background as the author thought) implicitly in the text we can be found tracks about how the things are or not. And nothing in the books insinuates that the spaceships are remote control. ¿Or not?

—

My Eclipse Phase spanish blog http://transhumanismoono.blogspot.com.es/ [img]http://eclipsephase.com/sites/all/modules/ep-prod/profile_bars/images/tc...

Wed, 2016-03-30 19:08

#12

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

informorphing and remote

informorphing and remote controlling warships by non biocon factions was a conclusion reached by this forum a year or two ago. in a highly transhumanist state it makes far to much sense. you eliminate a lot of life support mass cut down on volume and increase survivability

Wed, 2016-03-30 20:51

#13

Noble Pigeon Noble Pigeon's picture

...I mean, I guess if you

...I mean, I guess if you wanted to do space combat the boring, realistic way, and remove all the cool mental images of crewmen scrambling to put out that engine fire on deck 5 or Patrick Stewart gloating in the captain's chair, I guess :P Next you're going to tell me that space isn't cold!

—

"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.” -Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address

Thu, 2016-03-31 03:16

#14

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

I have a really long post I

I have a really long post I just wrote, but it rapidly ballooned to ~1660 words, and I don't really want to post the whole thing people aren't interested, as it'd break up the thread. I think that ships are generally going to be a crewed core (which might not be biomorphs, especially for Titanian warships, but often would be), surrounded by a halo of synth, info, or uncrewed subsystems providing weapons, sensors, and other combat support. They can't move a great deal compared to their weapons. I don't think space warfare is much like either carrier warfare, or submarine warfare, because stealth is so different, and "fighters" as in, reusable weapons which get close to the enemy and return, while moving much faster than their mothership, won't be common. I've been slowly working on some fan-rules for Eclipse Phase space warfare, but it's been hard to translate into rules without being really complicated, or not that fun, or even both.

Thu, 2016-03-31 04:46

#15

Tzimize

Hi Lazarus. I've been

Hi Lazarus. I've been thinking about this,

Lazarus wrote:
That's just it, the crew won't be thrown against the 'walls' unless you've got a really weird ship design. Because it influences the design of the ship. At 107 days for the trip you aren't going to build the ship anything like an aircraft. It will be more like a small hotel. There's lots of different designs but let's assume it is cylindrical. That reduces the stress the hull would take when it is under power over something like a ring.

In the absence of descriptions of spaceships, I imagine their shapes like the few illustrations in the books. When you look at the illustrations of spaceships, they are not rare forms. I know they are just drawings, but I think posthuman studios oversees the drawings to be as they want. For habitats, the books explains that there are types, cilinders, spherical , etc. For spaceships all that insinuates are the drawings. I imagine spaceships with "normal" forms, the kind that appear in the manual. But is ok, thats no problem, we do not have to imagine the same eclipse phase universe

Lazarus wrote:
This should leave them with about 4.11% of their total mass as remass when they land so they have a safety margin.

And also its their capacity to maneuver and reach either destination. They have an inertia of 8 hours (1.5 g). Accelerate was 48% os their remass, decelerate will be other 48%. It should take into perspective how much force can be a 4 % if 48 % is equal to 1.5G for 8 h .

Lazarus wrote:
When the ship is spinning the floor would be the surface in the direction of the outer hull. The walls will be those surfaces towards the fore or aft of the ship as well as radial surface (one's radiating from the central axis). The ceiling will be the surface towards the central axis of the ship. When the ship is not spinning and the engine is burning the floor is the surface towards the aft of the ship, the ceiling is the surface towards the fore of the ship, and the walls are the surfaces towards outer hull and the central axis of the ship as well as the radial surfaces.

I do not visualize well your design. When the ship is spinning, gravity is in the opposite direction to the engine. It does not matter how you have the ship. If the ship is constructed as a side lying building, when accelerating, the soil would be the ground, but when decelerating (We turn the spaceship in reverse) will be the ceiling.

Lazarus wrote:
That would only happen if you had large engines up front to slow the ship and there's no point to that. Doing that means you are using mass to build big engines to slow yourself down. It is much more efficient to just turn the ship around and use the primary engine. You will have tiny engines up front as part of your Reaction Control System (RCS) but they will produce tiny fractions of a G and are used for things like docking and turning the ship around so you can use the big engines to slow down.

Sure. And this does not seem to be a good maneuverability

Lazarus wrote:
What's really important here, however, is that in either case the passengers/crew experience a force of 3 G's pushing them toward the aft surfaces (which they perceive as floors) for the duration of the burn. They aren't 'thrown into' walls. As the ship turns the direction of force from the engine turns with it so to them it feels largely constant.

As you say, vector math :-) Your spaceship travels at 100 km/s in one direction, with inertia (8h, 1.5g). It holds 52% of remass, but 48 % would need to get home safely. Somebody say that the ships have good maneuver and are NOT AS submarines. Ok. So, despide the fact that the naval warfare are narrative element in EP, in their turn, the spaceship want rotated 90 degrees. They has 1 turn (or 5, or 50) to do so , (3, or 15, or 150 seconds). what about the force vectors with respect to the crew? What if we want to maintain the same speed when exiting the maneuver? What if we make it accelerating ? I said that G-forces are killer as counterargument to those who think that a ship can maneuver at those speeds in a way that allows dodge

—

My Eclipse Phase spanish blog http://transhumanismoono.blogspot.com.es/ [img]http://eclipsephase.com/sites/all/modules/ep-prod/profile_bars/images/tc...

Thu, 2016-03-31 12:54

#16

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

You can dodge things, just at

You can dodge things, just at a really long range, and dodging isn't really the right term, as the ship is just moving unpredictably. Have the ship make fairly high g-force orthogonal turns every so often, and it's a lot harder to target it with sensor data a second out of date. Something little, like a missile or fighter, which can pull 3+ Gs, can start to do some more reactive dodging, but will probably want to randomwalk as well.

Thu, 2016-03-31 14:23

#17

Lazarus

Tzimize wrote:. . .

Tzimize wrote:
. . . I do not visualize well your design. When the ship is spinning, gravity is in the opposite direction to the engine. It does not matter how you have the ship. If the ship is constructed as a side lying building, when accelerating, the soil would be the ground, but when decelerating (We turn the spaceship in reverse) will be the ceiling. . .

Hopefully this will help.

This is a rough image for a single deck of living quarters. The center wouldn't be empty and would be occupied by things such as the power plant, engines, fuel, electronics, stores, etc. but I'm not including those to help simplify things. Multiple decks would be stacked one on top of the other and you would have decks that contain things like machine shops that would have similar designs, the difference being that those decks might be a bit 'taller' and you would connect multiple rooms together into different rooms.

This is a closeup of one room. A is the surface towards the central long axis, C is the surface toward the outer hull, and both B's are what I termed 'radial surfaces'. There are also surfaces to the fore and aft of the ship that I'm not showing so we can see into the room. When the ship is under thrust those hidden surfaces function as the ceiling and floor. It doesn't matter if the ship is accelerating or decelerating, the foreward surface will be the 'ceiling' from the perspective of people in the room while the rearward (aft) surface will be the 'floor' from the perspective of people in the room. When the engines are turned off and the ship is spun the perspective of the room changes.

I didn't include the labels in this picture but now surface C is the 'floor' and surface A has become the 'ceiling'. Since the ship is spinning around its long axis centripetal force pushes people against the outside surface, creating a sort of artificial gravity. The hidden fore and aft surfaces are now viewed as walls. Just to be clear the physical structure of the ship hasn't changed at all. What has changed is that in the first example the force of gravity is provided by the engine while in the second case the force of gravity is provided by spin. Hope this helps.

Quote:
. . .As you say, vector math :-) Your spaceship travels at 100 km/s in one direction, with inertia (8h, 1.5g). It holds 52% of remass, but 48 % would need to get home safely. Somebody say that the ships have good maneuver and are NOT AS submarines. Ok. So, despide the fact that the naval warfare are narrative element in EP, in their turn, the spaceship want rotated 90 degrees. They has 1 turn (or 5, or 50) to do so , (3, or 15, or 150 seconds).

They can't. It's that simple (at least not without an external force). In the example I gave they have to turn to a relative heading of 135 degrees and fire the engine at 3 G's for 28 1/2 minutes to execute the turn (but see below). That is the fastest the turn can be made (incidentally, you changed some of my initial forces. I had them at 1 G for an hour to reach 105 Km/s and they had planned to burn at 1 G for 8 1/2 hours before they shut off their engines completely. If they burned 1.5 Gs for 8 hours they would be travelling at 423 Km/s. I made an error in my own math, however, and it would take them 3 hours at 1 G to reach 105 Km/s and 84 minutes to make the turn at 3 G's. This is really the fastest that turn could be made).

Quote:
what about the force vectors with respect to the crew?

It is 3 G's.

Quote:
What if we want to maintain the same speed when exiting the maneuver?

In the example I gave we did exit with the same relative speed, just along a new vector.

Quote:
What if we make it accelerating ? . . .

To make it accelerating all we would do is take a relative heading somewhere between 90 and 135 degrees and run the engines longer. The force on the crew remain at 3 G's the entire time. Here's the thing, to change direction requires force. Otherwise inertia keeps the object going in a straight line. When you turn your car that force is the friction between the tires and the road. When an airplane turns that force is the airplane pushing against the air. In space you don't have that. The only forces you've got are your engine and the gravity of any bodies near you. The gravity of bodies near you has a negligible effect on the passengers unless you happen to be near something like a black hole because it acts upon their entire body more or less evenly. A lot of people don't realize it but an astronaut on the ISS is still affected by something like 98% of Earth's gravity. They haven't gotten so far away that it doesn't affect them. They are simply in a constant state of 'free fall'. That means that for your passengers the only real force that matters is the force of the engine, which in our example means the heaviest force the passengers can experience is 3 G's, barring an external force acting upon them such as slamming into another ship or planetesimal.

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Thu, 2016-03-31 16:50

#18

Tzimize

Yeah, now i can see your

Yeah, now i can see your spaceship, thx

Lazarus wrote:

Tzimize wrote:
. . .As you say, vector math :-) Your spaceship travels at 100 km/s in one direction, with inertia (8h, 1.5g). It holds 52% of remass, but 48 % would need to get home safely. Somebody say that the ships have good maneuver and are NOT AS submarines. Ok. So, despide the fact that the naval warfare are narrative element in EP, in their turn, the spaceship want rotated 90 degrees. They has 1 turn (or 5, or 50) to do so , (3, or 15, or 150 seconds).
They can't. It's that simple (at least not without an external force). In the example I gave they have to turn to a relative heading of 135 degrees and fire the engine at 3 G's for 28 1/2 minutes to execute the turn (but see below). That is the fastest the turn can be made (incidentally, you changed some of my initial forces. I had them at 1 G for an hour to reach 105 Km/s and they had planned to burn at 1 G for 8 1/2 hours before they shut off their engines completely.

For this questions, werent questions as is, only thought for those who say that the ships maneuvered well, thanks :) I havent changed the numbers of your example, it has been only a misunderstanding, but I understand your cyphers and concepts perfectly ( I think) :)

—

My Eclipse Phase spanish blog http://transhumanismoono.blogspot.com.es/ [img]http://eclipsephase.com/sites/all/modules/ep-prod/profile_bars/images/tc...

Thu, 2016-03-31 19:28

#19

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

Lazarus you made my brain

Lazarus you made my brain hurt in a good way

Thu, 2016-03-31 21:35

#20

Lazarus

All the math or the way the

All the math or the way the room sort of turns on its side when it spins?

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Thu, 2016-03-31 21:44

#21

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

the math :P I've watched

the math :P I've watched enough babylon5 to have an intuitive understanding of toroidal gravity and spinships :P [size=10] not to mention crashing my ships inside starports in elite dangerous[/size]

Thu, 2016-03-31 22:16

#22

Lazarus

Heh. Yeah, I was first

Heh. Yeah, I was first exposed to spaceship movement back around 1980 with Traveller. Traveller is fairly hard sci-fi and the ships use Newtonian mechanics. I can't really tell you why but for some reason after reading their rules for handling ships on a map I was hooked on the idea of ships flying like that in space as opposed to the 'Star Wars' style (I think I just really liked the idea of being able to turn around and shoot 'backwards'). The past seven or eight years I've had a lot of fun playing with Orbiter which really helped me to understand orbital mechanics and I got to the point where I understand an awful lot of the things going on. I still hit things now and again that will cause me to scratch me head, like how a slingshot maneuver works (I couldn't figure out where the ship picked up speed since it seemed like it should lose all of it as it exited the slingshot), but I've gotten enough of a foundation now that I can understand the explanations pretty easily. I should point out that I'm still simplifying some things. The way I calculated the distance between Luna and Neptune was by using Celestia. I set the time for a date in 2147 since that appears to be the approximate time frame for EP based on various hints and then just measured the distance between the two bodies. To accurately fly between the two bodies I would also need to take into account things like Luna's current vector as it orbits Earth and the Earth orbits the Sun, Neptune's projected location since it is travelling, the curve that will occur as the ship orbits the Sun, the possibility of slingshotting, etc. Of course in EP you would have other things that would delay you as well that simply can't be calculated. Things like waiting for launch clearance, flight path alterations to deal with other ships and/or debris, possible restricted space around certain stations, etc. so I don't worry that my calculations aren't precise. All I'm really trying to do is get them close enough for a decent estimate (sort of like how you can figure that it takes 3.5 days to travel between two cities for a D&D game and you ignore things like traffic, varying road conditions, etc.)

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Thu, 2016-03-31 22:22

#23

Lazarus

BTW

I created a Google Docs spreadsheet a while back that I use to do my calculations. https://drive.google.com/open?id=120V_4N_g_Q-25WXygsOHtV3PMYmkeA7RcSUo-u.... It is shared so anyone interested can save their own copy.

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Fri, 2016-04-01 09:00

#24

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

The original question was

The original question was about whether civilian craft carry armaments. This varies depending upon where you are. If you're in a well-trafficked area, say within a few million kilometers of Mars or Titan, many ships are completely unarmed due to the watchful presence of military and security forces. In these areas, only police and private security craft are armed (this might include couriers shipping high-value cargo). If you're farther out, or in a dangerous or contested area like the Main Belt, everyone is armed. Anarchist polities encourage being armed as a collective security measure. Areas where crime syndicates are the only law likewise see civilian ships packing heavy armament. As far as what they carry, a few transhuman-portable weapons pack enough punch to minor damage to a spaceship (e.g., full-sized missiles). Although we don't detail them, presumably there are ship-mounted versions of all the weapons described in EP core, multiplied in size from their hand/wing/tentacle-carried equivalents (and therefore in range, DV, and AP).

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J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth! http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham

Fri, 2016-04-01 09:03

#25

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

Some Lightweight Space Combat Rules

As a followup on space combat, here's something I've been kicking around. This is excerpted from a scenario that includes a lot of combat in wide open spaces between suryas carrying drone racks and opposing TITAN drones. Running Drones Running drones is a mental action each Action Turn for the character doing it. Drone AIs act autonomously as they normally would if no one is running drones on a given action turn. Drone Positioning Phase This rule simulates long range, high velocity engagements where combatants rely on drones to act as screens against enemy drones and projectiles. At the beginning of each Action Turn, make opposed Profession [Drone Ops] tests between the TITAN drone and each PC running drones. Each PC's margin of success is the number of drones they have in the right position to take a hit for them or another PC that Action Turn. Thereafter, when a PC is attacked and fails their Fray test, up to that many drones in the surrounding swarm may make Fray tests on behalf of the PC. On a success, the drone takes the damage instead of the PC. Drones can instead help a lead drone on these tests, giving up one Fray attempt to add a +10 bonus. Given the difficulty of using Fray in firefights, this will often be a better strategy than multiple drones making Fray tests. Drones put in position to take hits can't attack; positioning is a Complex action. Drones not positioned to take hits can act normally under the control of their AI. Have players take turns rolling for drones acting autonomously.

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J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth! http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham

Fri, 2016-04-01 12:02

#26

Tzimize

Thanks, Jack! :-)

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My Eclipse Phase spanish blog http://transhumanismoono.blogspot.com.es/ [img]http://eclipsephase.com/sites/all/modules/ep-prod/profile_bars/images/tc...

Fri, 2016-04-01 12:07

#27

Lazarus

jackgraham wrote:. . .If you

jackgraham wrote:
. . .If you're in a well-trafficked area, say within a few million kilometers of Mars or Titan, many ships are completely unarmed due to the watchful presence of military and security forces. . . If you're farther out, or in a dangerous or contested area like the Main Belt, everyone is armed. . .

Did you mean Mars and Luna? Titan is in orbit around Saturn and is much further out than the Main Belt. Also, its citizens seem pretty heavily invested in the right to bear arms. Otherwise, yes, I would think that it depends a lot on where you are. Inner planets would probably be much more restrictive about ship mounted weaponry, limiting it to military ships, police forces, and licensed (and probably bonded) security. The Belt is probably a mish-mash based around the habitats claiming the local area (and with no real rules in the unclaimed areas) although probably with a fair amount of flexibility for ships that need to traverse areas such as cargo freighters (they may not really want them armed in their space but probably recognize that the ships need weapons when they are outside of their controlled space). For some reason I feel like the Jovians probably don't like non-Jovian ships carrying weapons within their space but again make some allowances for things like cargo freighters. My feeling is that their allowances are more draconian, possible limiting how close the ship can approach and then requiring it to offload to a Jovian ship (which also helps them prevent people from smuggling in things they don't want). I'm not super up on the Jovian's, however, so I could be way off. Ultimate stongholds like Aspis and Xiphos probably allow ship weaponry just based on the principal that they will blast anyone who gets uppity into dust.

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Fri, 2016-04-01 14:02

#28

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

mmmmm think of all the money

mmmmm think of all the money to be made smuggling in transhumanist porn into jovian space if the US bible belt is any indicator :)

Fri, 2016-04-01 19:54

#29

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

Lazarus wrote:jackgraham

Lazarus wrote:
jackgraham wrote:
. . .If you're in a well-trafficked area, say within a few million kilometers of Mars or Titan, many ships are completely unarmed due to the watchful presence of military and security forces. . . If you're farther out, or in a dangerous or contested area like the Main Belt, everyone is armed. . .
Did you mean Mars and Luna? Titan is in orbit around Saturn and is much further out than the Main Belt. Also, its citizens seem pretty heavily invested in the right to bear arms.

So Titan is an interesting case because the volume immediately around the planet is going to be very secure, but you'd want to be armed almost as soon as you left it. Titan orbits Saturn at a distance of about 1.2 million klicks, and they probably tightly control a volume with a similar radius around them. That volume might periodically contract as neutral or even hostile objects that also orbit Saturn come closer.

—

J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth! http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham

Fri, 2016-04-01 20:43

#30

Lazarus

jackgraham wrote:So Titan is

jackgraham wrote:
So Titan is an interesting case because the volume immediately around the planet is going to be very secure, but you'd want to be armed almost as soon as you left it. Titan orbits Saturn at a distance of about 1.2 million klicks, and they probably tightly control a volume with a similar radius around them. That volume might periodically contract as neutral or even hostile objects that also orbit Saturn come closer.

What about Titan's pro-weapon-ownership stance? Also, how would a ship be unarmed while near Titan but then arm itself when it got far enough away?

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Sat, 2016-04-02 02:26

#31

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

I expect that armed ships

I expect that armed ships approaching Titan are just really carefully watched. Those fortress moonlets are pretty scary. It doesn't seem practical to disarm them. That said, I think that personal weapons, and ship scale weapons are different cases, it's not very hard to allow small arms and open carry, and ban personal warships.

Sat, 2016-04-02 03:27

#32

Lazarus

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:. .

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
. . .it's not very hard to allow small arms and open carry, and ban personal warships.

Sure, it isn't that it would be difficult to ban one and allow the other, but what I'm saying is that the psychology of Titan seems to be one of personal responsibility and that they would allow people to do things like mount weapons on their ships (for reason of personal protection, of course). Undoubtedly they would have some rules like no nuclear warheads or weapons capable of producing more than X joules of force but it seems a little hard to believe that a society that allows everyone to walk around the cities with firearms (and which has quite a respectable portion of the population taking advantage of that according to Rimward) would demand ships to be almost completely unarmed.

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Sat, 2016-04-02 15:20

#33

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

Well, the worst thing you can

Well, the worst thing you can do with a personal firearm is force a bunch of resleeves, and get some muses working as therapists. A well armed ship going berserk in Titan orbit could destroy transhuman civilization on Titan. That's a pretty good reason to force ships to disarm, and/or keep well arms ship in distant docking orbits. Warships are packing hundreds of tons of antimatter for fuel and weapons, even a fraction of that, or something similar in nukes or KEWs is enough to turn cities to ash.

Sat, 2016-04-02 16:37

#34

Lazarus

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:Well

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
Well, the worst thing you can do with a personal firearm is force a bunch of resleeves, and get some muses working as therapists. A well armed ship going berserk in Titan orbit could destroy transhuman civilization on Titan. That's a pretty good reason to force ships to disarm, and/or keep well arms ship in distant docking orbits. Warships are packing hundreds of tons of antimatter for fuel and weapons, even a fraction of that, or something similar in nukes or KEWs is enough to turn cities to ash.

Pretty sure you are overestimating a lot of things there. While anti-matter engines exist I think the vast majority of ships (including warships) are suppose to be fusion or plasma drive. Ships that do have antimatter drives probably don't have hundreds of tons of antimatter. The whole point behind using the antimatter is that it means you can carry much less remass. I don't recall seeing anything about antimatter being used for weaponry but assuming it is I think you could lump that in with the 'no nukes' rule I was talking about. You don't need AM missiles to protect yourself. Those are strategic weapons. For KEWs are you talking about massive railguns or ortillery bombardments? Massive railguns are why I said there would probably be an upper limit to the number of joules a weapon can deliver. Again, you only need to throw small rounds at high velocity to defend yourself from pirates. A 55 m long railgun (bet you didn't know they needed to be that long to get speeds like the 10 km/s people like to throw around) shooting 2000 lbs rounds is a strategic weapon, not a tactical one. As for ortillery bombardment about the only planets that really works well on are Earth and Mars. It certainly doesn't work well on Titan. Ortillery relies heavily on gravity accelerating the round. Titan's gravity is 1/7th that of Earth's. What's more, that's with a surface that is 2/5th as far from its center of mass than Earth's so its gravitation field drops off considerably faster. From 200 km above the surface Titan's gravity is 1/8th that of 200 km above Earth. When you add onto that the fact that Titan's atmospheric pressure is 1.48 times that of Earth's the effectiveness of ortillery drops way off.

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Sat, 2016-04-02 17:15

#35

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

*artillery

*artillery ya he is being a bit hyperbolic on the AM compliment of a warship their primary drives are AM in order to have maximuim possible delta v. And there is strategic AM weapon stockpiles. In the fall one such missile was used to glass chicago. Also iirc in one of the books AM grenades were statted. the effectiveness of orbital bombardment is not about the delivery of joules, its the unrestriction of range and elimination of most forms of retaliation and counter measure.

Sat, 2016-04-02 19:14

#36

Lazarus

*ortillery

*ortillery Orbital bombardment functioning similarly (although with higher energies) than artillery. The standard 'rods from God' setup involves tungsten poles 20 feet long and 1 foot wide and weighing a bit over 8 tons impacting the Earth at around Mach 10. The steep vertical angle is one advantage but the bigger advantage is that such a projectile simply contains an awful lot of energy (around 100 gigajoules)

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Sat, 2016-04-02 22:54

#37

UnitOmega

Well, let's play realpolitik.

Well, let's play realpolitik. Titan's weapon's policy can be as much about the fact that every Titanian citizen is a militiaman ready to respond in case of T-Day as their views on personal freedom and transparency. Everybody who keeps a rifle under their bed is certified with it and has been through years of civil service which is often spent in military branches. And as said, worst you do is make a dent in their morph reserves. As a further note, the Titanians are not depicted as a "sure, you can carry a plasma rifle around in public" state. When noting that one of the services the St. Catherine Tong provides is illegal augmentations, this thus states there ARE illegal implants out there. Only reasonable thing to restrict in a technoprogressive state like Titan are implants with some combative or public safety element. If you're not actively in one of their defense or law enforcement departments, you don't really need poisoned razor-claws or the ability to react fast enough to catch bullets. Given the destructive scale of even the smallest spaceship scale weapons, or a collision run, Titan's very sizable, well funded and resourced Space Navy probably keeps a tight eye on anything going on, and really, you don't need those railguns on your LLOTV. Titan doesn't need a merchant navy, they have a perfectly lovely professional one. Microcorps who regularly send ships out into dangerous areas can probably go through some well regulated government agencies to get permission to bear weapons on their ships, but I would not see them as the kind of culture to be like "sure, put a missile rack on your rocket sled. That won't hurt anybody!". Plus, Titan itself is a body full of hydrocarbons (which I would consider "volatile") and it's major cities are in enclosed pressure domes. Don't need a high impact force to go causing a lot of trouble. On the other hand, as a faction with high transparency and who are trying really hard to be the "good guys" (even if that means they do some creepy shit, like Orchestra) Titan probably doesn't shoot a lot of random shuttles or couriers out of the sky, especially given we've just discussed their Anarchist "allies" views on defense. An unauthorized or non-vetted armed ship probably gets escorted or told to follow very well monitored routes through Titanian space. And then if you do anything crazy they might ask politely for you to cut it out before they blow you out of space. Ordinary civilian traffic probably doesn't need to pack a lot of armament though, because Titan would have a decent grip on their orbital.

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Sun, 2016-04-03 02:20

#38

Trappedinwikipedia Trappedinwikipedia's picture

The destroyer is nuke and

The destroyer is nuke and antimatter equipped and carries 150 tons of antimatter in a 2000 ton containment vessel. It's on page 348 of the core rules. Even fighters can carry nukes and antimatter missiles. Eclipse Phase space combat is strategic scale weapons employed at a tactical level. That means that even something like a Q-ship with a single nuke packing fighter or missile array can erase cities in minutes. I really can't see anything which remotely resembles a warship being allowed close to a planet or big hab. I can see a massive security apparatus in place to make sure ships are well screened before getting close. An atomic is the kind of thing a terrorist organization could build. A basement enrichment program seems possible (with a big basement). That said, there are several ships with vastly inferior weapons, like the pirate ship with nothing but some ship scale laser pulsers for weapons. Those are probably pretty nasty, as that ship has a pretty good energy budget (some old (official?) numbers give the fast fast courier a 20 GW power plant), which with some assumptions, gives 5 GW on target (half power to weapons, and near perfect laser efficiency), which is about a ton of TNT exploding per second. Not a WMD, but almost a continuous stream of Oklahoma City bombings. I would assume that there's been some pretty successful attempts to prevent super dangerous weapons from getting all over the place.

Tue, 2016-04-05 01:07

#39

Lazarus

UnitOmega wrote:Well, let's

UnitOmega wrote:
Well, let's play realpolitik. Titan's weapon's policy can be as much about the fact that every Titanian citizen is a militiaman ready to respond in case of T-Day as their views on personal freedom and transparency. Everybody who keeps a rifle under their bed is certified with it and has been through years of civil service which is often spent in military branches. . .

Except that there does seem to be an indication that their weapon progressive stance is more than just 'everyone is in the militia'. When you have a country with that policy you have everyone owning longarms but keeping them at home because a) you expect there to be some kind of warning that the militia needs to muster and b) pistols aren't really what you want for warfare. They are personal protection weapons. The impression that I have, though, is that it is far from uncommon to see a Titanian wandering around with a sidearm. I'm not saying that they are all packing like it's the Old West but for the most part seeing someone with a visible holstered handgun won't usually raise any eyebrows. At least that was my impression.

Quote:
. . .When noting that one of the services the St. Catherine Tong provides is illegal augmentations, this thus states there ARE illegal implants out there. Only reasonable thing to restrict in a technoprogressive state like Titan are implants with some combative or public safety element. If you're not actively in one of their defense or law enforcement departments, you don't really need poisoned razor-claws or the ability to react fast enough to catch bullets.

That's true, but that doesn't mean that all implants with combative or public safety elements are restricted. My guess is that the reason to go to the St. Catherine Tong is because of information. Titan is a reputation based economy with free access to nanofabricators. What keeps someone from running around to various locations on Titan and fabricating a pair of assault railguns with underbarrel seekers, a shredder, a pair of heavy pistols, and 10,000 rounds of ammo and going on a shooting spree? Information. Sure, they aren't breaking any laws by fabricating all that gear. There may be a perfectly good reason for it. Someone getting ready to go on a gatecrashing mission might look an awful lot like someone about to have a psychotic break. So when someone starts doing things like this it catches the attention of civic minded individuals who have routines constantly combing through Titan's data looking for things like these. They tag these people and gain a bit of rep for doing so, essentially making it their job. Now when someone else sees that person a little AR tag comes up in their entopics saying that the person has been tagged for having unusual activity. It's not a 'danger run away' sign but it alerts people and if people are interested they can expand the data and see that the person recently produced a large amount of weapons and ammo, police keep a closer eye on the person and might even question them. Of course all this only works if the guns that are produced are registered. I'm sure the St. Catherine Tong also sells illegal weapons, which might seem odd considering the legality of so many of them. However they have the advantage of not having a history. People don't know you have them and if there's a shooting and someone runs a report for everyone in the vicinity who owns a 10mm pistol you won't show up because according to the records you don't. My guess is that a lot of the illegal implants are about the same. You want to say they are restricted to people who might reasonably need them? Anyone on Titan can declare that they are a professional bodyguard and needs them. Who are you protecting? You get someone to declare that they are being threatened by person or persons unknown. Who is going to say that they can't hire a bodyguard?

Quote:
Given the destructive scale of even the smallest spaceship scale weapons, or a collision run, Titan's very sizable, well funded and resourced Space Navy probably keeps a tight eye on anything going on, and really, you don't need those railguns on your LLOTV.

The smallest spaceship weapons are only marginally more damaging than the weapons already available to the citizens. A railgun doesn't magically become a weapon of mass destruction because it's a railgun. They fire projectiles at roughly twice the velocity of a comparably sized gun, that's it. Even when you consider that to be anywhere useful in space you are probably talking about things that are 20mm rounds with high rates of fire you are only really able to 'make a dent in their morph reserves'. Anti-ship missiles like you would need to fight off pirates? Yeah, you could do some damage but you aren't going to vaporize a city. More like level a city block if you use a lot of those. In fact, the most destructive act you could probably take with a conventionally armed ship would be to crash it into a dome. Taking away a ship's weapons doesn't prevent that and since Titan already has to trust people not to do that (trust being an operational condition I'll talk about below) what's the harm with letting the ships defend themselves when they are away from Titan?

Quote:
Titan doesn't need a merchant navy, they have a perfectly lovely professional one. Microcorps who regularly send ships out into dangerous areas can probably go through some well regulated government agencies to get permission to bear weapons on their ships, but I would not see them as the kind of culture to be like "sure, put a missile rack on your rocket sled. That won't hurt anybody!".

Ok. I'm not saying Titan doesn't care about weapons on ships. I'm saying that it seems unlikely they take the tactic of 'no weapons on ships'. You just said yourself that Microcorps can probably go through government agencies to get permission to mount weapons on their ships. This is exactly what I'm talking about. A person goes to the responsible agency, shows reason why they feel the need for the weapons, fills out paperwork, and they are good to go (assuming things such as nothing pops funny in their background and the weapons are appropriate to the reason). Hell, I kind of assume you have to do that with the spaceship in the first place. You want to fly a fusion powersource around Titan? Why? Ok, we'll trust you, and by 'trust you' we mean you can do it with these restrictions. You have to run a transponder so we know who and where you are at all times. It has to be an approved transponder which means it is hard for you to change the ID and allows us to put it in a mode that makes it a handy targeting beacon for missiles. You also can't fly too close to population domes and have to land and take off from designated ports.

Quote:
Plus, Titan itself is a body full of hydrocarbons (which I would consider "volatile") . . .

Only in the technical definition of 'easily evaporated at normal temperatures'. Do you know what a candle used on the surface of Titan produces? Oxygen. It is probably composed of perchlorates or something similar and produces oxygen that combines with the atmospheric hydrocarbons to produce fire. It's the same reason you can't just fire a missile at Jupiter and ignite its hydrogen.

Quote:
. . .and it's major cities are in enclosed pressure domes. Don't need a high impact force to go causing a lot of trouble.

Actully, you do. The atmosphere on Titan is about 1.48 the pressure of Earth. My guess is that the domes run a pressure of about 1.5 that of Earth with a lower oxygen concentration and higher nitrogen concentration. You end up with the same partial pressure for oxygen meaning no problems with fire. This is the pressure equivalent to being at the bottom of a moderately deep pool, so that's not going to cause any problems. If the entire dome were to spontaneously vanish people's ears probably wouldn't even pop from the change as the atmosphere of the dome pushed out. You blast a hole in it like you would get from a conventional explosive missile and it will take hours for the pressure to equalize and until that happens none of Titan's atmosphere is getting in. Plenty of time for people to get to safety.

Quote:
On the other hand, as a faction with high transparency and who are trying really hard to be the "good guys" (even if that means they do some creepy shit, like Orchestra) Titan probably doesn't shoot a lot of random shuttles or couriers out of the sky, especially given we've just discussed their Anarchist "allies" views on defense. An unauthorized or non-vetted armed ship probably gets escorted or told to follow very well monitored routes through Titanian space. And then if you do anything crazy they might ask politely for you to cut it out before they blow you out of space.

That's actually pretty much my position. They don't say 'no guns'. They say 'ok, you can have guns (not anti-matter bombs or 100 GJ rail guns but the kind of guns you might need to defend yourself when we're not around) but be polite because we're watching you and if you do anything too twitchy we'll shoot you, recover your stacks, resleeve you, and if we find out it was our fault apologize.'

Quote:
Ordinary civilian traffic probably doesn't need to pack a lot of armament though, because Titan would have a decent grip on their orbital.

No, not a lot of armaments but even a little ship to hop around the surface of Titan for whatever reason my need some kind of gun to defend itself in case it stumbles into a pack of criminals. Sure, the Titanian authorities are suppose to take care of those guys but we already allow people to be armed in the dome in case they get put into a situation where they have to defend themselves, why would we forbid it outside?

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Tue, 2016-04-05 01:52

#40

Lazarus

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:The

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:
The destroyer is nuke and antimatter equipped and carries 150 tons of antimatter in a 2000 ton containment vessel. It's on page 348 of the core rules. Even fighters can carry nukes and antimatter missiles.

Yeah, that's true, but when you are talking about things like Titan's laws regarding weapons on ships you aren't talking about warships. Warships tend to be handled through things like treaties and the legal principle of Meus baculum est maior quam tua than by actual codified laws.

Quote:
Eclipse Phase space combat is strategic scale weapons employed at a tactical level.

Is it? I have a feeling it is strategic scale weapons employed at strategic levels and tactical weapons deployed at tactical levels. Remember, we have nuclear missiles that can be mounted to fighters today. That doesn't mean we use nuclear missiles to blast the crap out of enemy aircraft.

Quote:
That means that even something like a Q-ship with a single nuke packing fighter or missile array can erase cities in minutes.

Sure, but if that's the enemies goal it would be even easier to just get a regular freighter and put a nuclear bomb on board, which isn't to say that people would be blase about nuclear weapons. I'm just saying that 'no weapons in our space' doesn't really fix anything.

Quote:
I really can't see anything which remotely resembles a warship being allowed close to a planet or big hab.

Absolutely, but that may have less to do with the weaponry and more to do with encroachment. Even unarmed rescue ships belonging to one country's military often can't go into another country.

Quote:
I can see a massive security apparatus in place to make sure ships are well screened before getting close. An atomic is the kind of thing a terrorist organization could build. A basement enrichment program seems possible (with a big basement).

Sure, but again, that's looking for weapons of mass destruction, not all weapons on a ship.

Quote:
That said, there are several ships with vastly inferior weapons, like the pirate ship with nothing but some ship scale laser pulsers for weapons. Those are probably pretty nasty, as that ship has a pretty good energy budget (some old (official?) numbers give the fast fast courier a 20 GW power plant), which with some assumptions, gives 5 GW on target (half power to weapons, and near perfect laser efficiency), which is about a ton of TNT exploding per second. Not a WMD, but almost a continuous stream of Oklahoma City bombings.

Oklahoma City was an equivalent force of 5000 lbs of TNT, so you are only 40% of that, and that is with some pretty big assumptions. You can probably throw out perfect efficiency of the lasers. We have some laser diodes with high efficiency but you can't pump that much energy through them and even if you could they are only a portion of the problem. You'll loose efficiency to all your lenses, to your cooling elements (got do something to the energy that fails to transmit through the lens or those lenses will melt), etc.. And that's all accepting that you can pump half the ship's energy through one laser. I'm kind of suspicious of that. So you are probably looking at 10% of the Oklahoma City bombing every second. Now you run into the statement I originally made that there would probably be upper limits to the amount of energy shipboard weapons can run before falling afoul of the law. My guess is that the authorities would look askance at anything beyond the range of 10-20 MJ since that is probably far more than enough to punch a hole in an enemy ship (that's the approximate force of a 10-20 ton vehicle travelling at 100 mph).

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Tue, 2016-04-05 09:36

#41

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

well the air combat analogy

well the air combat analogy is bad. Air to Air Nuclear missiles would be a near perfect definition of mutually assured destruction. and SAM variant would be far to easy to evade at range if the missile has the endurance to avoid taking out what it is supposed to defend However we have nuclear artillery shells and the russians have nuclear torpedoes for taking out whole battle groups. however these are still considered tactical weapons because instead of being city busters they are block busters at most.

Tue, 2016-04-05 11:10

#42

Lazarus

And, perhaps most importantly

And, perhaps most importantly, while we have had them for a fairly long time we still don't use them. The air to air combat analogy isn't really all that bad. Yes, the current missiles, which are not meant for air to air would be mutually assured destruction. It would be entirely possible to produce air to air missiles with ranges like the AIM-54 or the AIM-120 that would not cause mutually assured destruction while still being within what one might term 'strategic' yield. Recall that the two times strategic nuclear weapons have been deployed they were from bombers and they certainly didn't have that type of range. I'm not sure how you think someone would go about evading one of those since it wouldn't need to actually strike the enemy aircraft and at those ranges a radar intercept officer could be used to guide the missile a substantial portion of the way. The fact remains that while we could go about equipping our fighters with such weapons for air to air combat we don't for an entire variety of reason.

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Tue, 2016-04-05 15:21

#43

UnitOmega

I think you've got a lot of

I think you've got a lot of good points there, and we're overlapping on some ideas anyway (though coming at it from different points). I think you're wrong about the nature of "illegal" weapons and implants, but there's not a lot written on the subject, so it could be interpreted that way. The text on the Tong use poison glands as an example, and just says "these are illegal on Titan". Now, obviously, this makes perfect sense. No conventional citizen needs the ability to produce active poisons - probably for offensive use (since they're usually paired with claws or a bite). I'd say this logic extends to heavier personal weapons too, there's no reason for a conventional citizen to own a plasma rifle or seeker missile launcher. Given Titan's deep desire for transparency, I'm sure if you actually had a reason to own those they'd let you, but at the same time I'm pretty sure open carrying a bandoleer of HE grenades down main street Nyhavn isn't allowed either. (On a more finer note, I'm not sure the Tong deals directly in black market weapons either, they seem more wrapped up in the subversion of Titan's medical and resleeving industry. But I'm sure people in the Tong and the Kartelyei know some guys to get you unmarked guns)

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Actually, you do. The atmosphere on Titan is about 1.48 the pressure of Earth. My guess is that the domes run a pressure of about 1.5 that of Earth with a lower oxygen concentration and higher nitrogen concentration. You end up with the same partial pressure for oxygen meaning no problems with fire. This is the pressure equivalent to being at the bottom of a moderately deep pool, so that's not going to cause any problems.

Well, I'm not seeing anywhere in the text which says that, but I'm also not seeing anywhere that says it doesn't, so we'll call that interpretational. Hazers don't have any kind of noted pressure or respiratory adaptation - which while probably not required for your idea leads me to believe the standard Earth conditions aren't played with too much. Describing the cities also notes that other environmental controls are tough, so I think the locals would be as concerned with loss of heat and humidity as straight oxygen. But, this is also Eclipse Phase, where people are noted to be paranoid about hull breaches even in situations unlikely to involve hull breaches. (And on a practical note, I'm not sure how fast one could move the millions of people in a Titanian dome if you put a big hole in it. However, it's much more likely that somebody could run up in a copter or air car and throw a pressure tarp over it. Really, enough grip tape and a big enough sheet would do.)

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No, not a lot of armaments but even a little ship to hop around the surface of Titan for whatever reason my need some kind of gun to defend itself in case it stumbles into a pack of criminals. Sure, the Titanian authorities are suppose to take care of those guys but we already allow people to be armed in the dome in case they get put into a situation where they have to defend themselves, why would we forbid it outside?

Well, for starters, the Titanian government basically admitting there are roving bands of criminals with anti-vehicular weapons out there is going to send Momo's ratings through the roof. I mean, if you want to glue a door gun on your copter, that's probably fine but I'm not sure you need a ship-scale laser turret to handle those problems. If you did, the plurality would be voting to solve such problems more aggressively. Well, maybe you do because an x2 ball turret laser pulser still isn't as effective as just leaning out the door and setting your space HK416 to full auto, but that's a mechanical constriction. But this conversation didn't start on atmospheric, cross-planetary transportation, it's about orbital and interplanetary defense. Titan has a pretty solid grip on their sphere of influence around Titan/Saturn. Any traffic is going to be highly regulated and monitored. Weapons will only appear on authorized ships, and unauthorized ships are going to get the side-eye. Now, again, Titan's real focused on transparency, so I assume groups or citizens with demonstrable need for weapons on their ships will get them. Which really, means this is only an issue for player characters who might not have a couple weeks to get registered for that missile rack before they scoot over to visit Kronos Cluster.

—

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Tue, 2016-04-05 16:53

#44

Lazarus

UnitOmega wrote:. . .I think

UnitOmega wrote:
. . .I think you're wrong about the nature of "illegal" weapons and implants, but there's not a lot written on the subject, so it could be interpreted that way. . .

You're correct. It is my interpretation. However, part of the reason for it is based below.

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Now, obviously, this makes perfect sense. No conventional citizen needs the ability to produce active poisons - probably for offensive use (since they're usually paired with claws or a bite).

Oh really? I don't know. This might actually be a fairly handy implant for someone such as a medic. A lot of poisons, such as atropine, actually can be used in beneficial ways. This is why a blanket law saying all poison/drug injectors are banned would probably be bad (as opposed to a law saying that they are regulated). Now there probably are some implants that are pretty much universally restricted but I would guess that the list is actually fairly tiny. Things like implants that are designed to hide your identity from the authorities and the like are probably pretty much illegal to anyone except special government employees such as undercover officers or people involved in espionage.

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I'd say this logic extends to heavier personal weapons too, there's no reason for a conventional citizen to own a plasma rifle or seeker missile launcher. Given Titan's deep desire for transparency, I'm sure if you actually had a reason to own those they'd let you, but at the same time I'm pretty sure open carrying a bandoleer of HE grenades down main street Nyhavn isn't allowed either.

That's actually a matter of interpretation, which is perfectly fine to do. The couple of pages dedicated to Titan in Rimward don't give full details. My own interpretation was that it was legal but you would basically never see it done because it would attract so much negative attention. Sure, it's legal, but that doesn't mean that restaurants and shops can't refuse to serve you. It doesn't mean that cops won't follow you around watching what you are up to. It's kind of like how you can legally walk around town carrying an axe as long as it is openly displayed. Its just a tool for chopping wood, after all, and perfectly legal, but try going to a movie theater with it. But again, that's my interpretation since we don't have specifics at this time.

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(On a more finer note, I'm not sure the Tong deals directly in black market weapons either, they seem more wrapped up in the subversion of Titan's medical and resleeving industry. But I'm sure people in the Tong and the Kartelyei know some guys to get you unmarked guns)

Fair enough. My real point was that even though it is trivial for a person to legally get a handgun on Titan I am still pretty sure that there are people dealing in illegal handguns.

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Well, I'm not seeing anywhere in the text which says that, but I'm also not seeing anywhere that says it doesn't, so we'll call that interpretational. Hazers don't have any kind of noted pressure or respiratory adaptation - which while probably not required for your idea leads me to believe the standard Earth conditions aren't played with too much. Describing the cities also notes that other environmental controls are tough, so I think the locals would be as concerned with loss of heat and humidity as straight oxygen. But, this is also Eclipse Phase, where people are noted to be paranoid about hull breaches even in situations unlikely to involve hull breaches.

The pressure of Titan isn't noted in the books but you can fairly easily look it up. Yes, the slight overpressurization of the domes is my own interpretation but one I would heartily encourage people to adapt. Even if you want to keep people on Titan in constant fear of a dome breach it seems like some engineer somewhere would notice all the advantages of slightly overpressurizing the domes (it also helps structurally because it is way easier to keep an extra .02 atm of pressure in than an extra .48 atm of pressure out). The Hazer biomorph doesn't have pressure or respiration adaptations because it doesn't need them. As I said 1.5 atm of pressue is the same as being at the bottom of a moderately deep pool and the partial pressure of the oxygen in the dome would still be equivalent to normal. People in real life have stayed at pressures like that for weeks and needed no decompression when they came back up. As a result any biomorph that doesn't have adaptations that prevent it from living in a 'standard' environment (morphs such as salamanders and hulders) wouldn't have any problem.

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(And on a practical note, I'm not sure how fast one could move the millions of people in a Titanian dome if you put a big hole in it. However, it's much more likely that somebody could run up in a copter or air car and throw a pressure tarp over it. Really, enough grip tape and a big enough sheet would do.)

Or people could just go home and put on a vacuum suit that they keep around for emergencies (with the assumption that there are probably some civic stores for people from out of town or who for some reason can't access their suit at home). :)

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Well, for starters, the Titanian government basically admitting there are roving bands of criminals with anti-vehicular weapons out there is going to send Momo's ratings through the roof. I mean, if you want to glue a door gun on your copter, that's probably fine but I'm not sure you need a ship-scale laser turret to handle those problems. If you did, the plurality would be voting to solve such problems more aggressively. Well, maybe you do because an x2 ball turret laser pulser still isn't as effective as just leaning out the door and setting your space HK416 to full auto, but that's a mechanical constriction. But this conversation didn't start on atmospheric, cross-planetary transportation, it's about orbital and interplanetary defense.

So Titan admits that there could be hazards inside the domes that might require you to have weapons but won't admit that there could be hazards outside the domes? That seems like suspect logic.

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Titan has a pretty solid grip on their sphere of influence around Titan/Saturn. Any traffic is going to be highly regulated and monitored. Weapons will only appear on authorized ships, and unauthorized ships are going to get the side-eye. Now, again, Titan's real focused on transparency, so I assume groups or citizens with demonstrable need for weapons on their ships will get them. Which really, means this is only an issue for player characters who might not have a couple weeks to get registered for that missile rack before they scoot over to visit Kronos Cluster.

I think we are pretty much in agreement here. Most likely our biggest disagreement is about how hard it is to get a permit rather than if they exist at all, and certainly part of that is going to stem from the fact that we have different interpretations of Titan's views on weapons. Your militia interpretation would make ship mounted weapons less of an occurrence than my personal responsibility interpretation.

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My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Tue, 2016-04-05 18:53

#45

UnitOmega

Quote:The Plurality has

Quote:
The Plurality has stopped short of allowing heavier weaponry, although it was considered in the aftermath of the Fall

This is mentioned at the end of the Judiciary section on Titan, when discussing the armament and equipment of the Militia (which also mentions the ability to use your militia gear in self-defense and how violent criminals lose their militia certification). Now, obviously, this is in reference to issued weapons, but the phrasing is still "allowed". Parse it how you like though, I'm not the Titanian Ministry of Gaming Correctness Police.

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Oh really? I don't know. This might actually be a fairly handy implant for someone such as a medic. A lot of poisons, such as atropine, actually can be used in beneficial ways. This is why a blanket law saying all poison/drug injectors are banned would probably be bad (as opposed to a law saying that they are regulated).

Eh, such a Medic would probably be a government employee anyway. And really, if you need your medics to claw open people to administer helpful medicines, I think you have different problems. I think I will use that image some time though; "Hold on I need to make out with the patient in order to administer the counter-agent to this poisoning!"

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So Titan admits that there could be hazards inside the domes that might require you to have weapons but won't admit that there could be hazards outside the domes? That seems like suspect logic.

Eh, it's a matter of scale. Yeah, there are criminal non-participants hiding in dark corners of Titan's domes and the citizenry are empowered to defend themselves, and a handgun or even a longarm will probably do you okay in the self-defense front, all citizens are sufficiently trained to use them. It'll probably do you just fine in the hinterlands, too. I'm questioning whether exists or Titan is willing to admit there are roving bands of criminals in the outside with MANPADS or technicals where a citizen will need to arm their vehicles with anti-missile lasers or AGMs or whatever. Practically, you should be just fine with whatever small arms you carry normally.

Spoiler: Highlight to view

That way, when the Async TITAN cultists do shoot down your helicopter in the middle of the Titanian wilderness with a MANPADS, it's much more surprising - but that's also an entirely different discussion

—

H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog http://ephrep.blogspot.com/

Tue, 2016-04-05 20:53

#46

Lazarus

UnitOmega wrote:Quote:The

UnitOmega wrote:
Quote:
The Plurality has stopped short of allowing heavier weaponry, although it was considered in the aftermath of the Fall
This is mentioned at the end of the Judiciary section on Titan, when discussing the armament and equipment of the Militia (which also mentions the ability to use your militia gear in self-defense and how violent criminals lose their militia certification). Now, obviously, this is in reference to issued weapons, but the phrasing is still "allowed". Parse it how you like though, I'm not the Titanian Ministry of Gaming Correctness Police.

Actually, after looking at a lot of the information on Titan more closely I think you are probably right. I was thinking about a section talking about 'the ubiquity of heavy armament' and thought that was referring to people owning weapons beyond their militia issued weapons. Now though I think I have made a bad assumption. I don't really see anything that supports the idea that Titan citizens are commonly armed with their own personal weapons.

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Eh, such a Medic would probably be a government employee anyway. And really, if you need your medics to claw open people to administer helpful medicines, I think you have different problems. I think I will use that image some time though; "Hold on I need to make out with the patient in order to administer the counter-agent to this poisoning!"

I highly doubt that all medical doctors are government employees. Yes, they have the Ministry of Biodevelopment which provides public health care but I kind of think that means that they provide it through organizations (hospitals and clinics) that aren't necessarily owned by the government. And I would assume that a doctor with an atropine gland probably uses a more medically appropriate implant to perform an injection, kind of the same way that modern doctors don't just slash open someone with a scalpel and then pour in the medication.

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Quote:
So Titan admits that there could be hazards inside the domes that might require you to have weapons but won't admit that there could be hazards outside the domes? That seems like suspect logic.
Eh, it's a matter of scale. Yeah, there are criminal non-participants hiding in dark corners of Titan's domes and the citizenry are empowered to defend themselves, and a handgun or even a longarm will probably do you okay in the self-defense front, all citizens are sufficiently trained to use them. It'll probably do you just fine in the hinterlands, too. I'm questioning whether exists or Titan is willing to admit there are roving bands of criminals in the outside with MANPADS or technicals where a citizen will need to arm their vehicles with anti-missile lasers or AGMs or whatever. Practically, you should be just fine with whatever small arms you carry normally.

Considering the fact that I am no longer sure that the government approves of you carrying weapons inside the dome to defend yourself I am likewise no longer certain they would approve of you carrying such weapons outside the dome.

—

My artificially intelligent spaceship is psychic. Your argument it invalid.

Thu, 2016-04-07 23:39

#47

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

Titanian gun laws & customs

Titanian gun laws & customs are inherited from Scandinavia. We don't usually go into this level of detail in the books, but I'd look at present-day Scandinavia and extrapolate, throwing in a bit of post-Fall Swiss attitude. Under a regime like this, you'd probably see gun permit apps carefully scrutinized, and the permit would stipulate the purpose for which the weapon is licensed. I.e., if you've got a gun licensed so that you can take it to and from work and carry it in your job as a private security guard, there might be questions if you're toting it around while you're off the clock. On the other hand, this legal framework, given that permitting is done by local cops and/or militia, allows for isolated areas to be less stringent than cities if they want. You can bet everyone living in a Titanian exoplanet colony where there's hostile xenolife is packing heat, all the time. Likewise, if you're a Titanian outpost in the lawless belt, people be packing. If you want to play them as way more libertarian in your campaign, though, go for it. Your combat wonks will enjoy the social experiment that happens when your game's downtown Nyhavn is an open carry paradise. Imagine navigating an extraction op when all of the people who'd be meat shields or innocent bystanders in another setting are armed with fully automatic rail pistols, an atheist-materialist worldview, and backup insurance. :D

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J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth! http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham

Fri, 2016-04-08 08:04

#48

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

Plasma Cannon = Maneuvering Thruster by another name.

I think the non-zero chance of Evil Robots combined with how hard it is to actually kill someone makes personal weaponry fairly acceptable. Shooting someone is more "Being a Dick" than attempted murder. Regarding ships - remember that all ships have a fairly hefty plasma weapon on the back to push them around.

—

In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few. But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?

Fri, 2016-04-08 10:12

#49

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

I have a detective here from

I have a detective here from the organic damage division here to speak with you :P

Fri, 2016-04-08 23:16

#50

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

Organic Damage? Isn't that a

Organic Damage? Isn't that a little... Biochauvanist? At least biocentrist?

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Sat, 2016-04-09 10:09

#51

Noble Pigeon Noble Pigeon's picture

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:I

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:
I think the non-zero chance of Evil Robots combined with how hard it is to actually kill someone makes personal weaponry fairly acceptable. Shooting someone is more "Being a Dick" than attempted murder. Regarding ships - remember that all ships have a fairly hefty plasma weapon on the back to push them around.

Pretty sure the core book mention that murder is still a horrible crime, not merely "being a dick". Resleeving sucks for the average transhuman (since most people have average stats of 15, which equates to a mere 45 on all the resleeving tests, not counting modifiers), remembering your death more so. Psychosurgery could deal with that, if you like the idea of people digging through your neural pathways AND have the credit/rep. I guess you might have those lunatic fringe habitats where casual murder is a thing because of some shitty "social experiment", but those would be the exception.

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