The United Republic of Starkland

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The United Republic of Starkland

Post by Czernobog »

The Republic of Starkland
Species: Human.
Language: English.
Full Name: The United Republic of Starkland.
Systems governed: 160 (not counting military bases, scientific research areas, or listening posts).
Population: 23 billion.
Government Type: Liberal democracy.
Derogatory names: Pinkskins, Blunderers, Human Idiots, Starkland Scum.
Motto: ‘Freedom for all, or injustice for none’.

History:

The Republic of Starkland has a long history, beginning with the twilight years of the Diaspora and the War of Revolution. For decades the colonists had been tired of sending immense taxes to an Earth that gave them no representation in its government and severely limited their autonomy, as the Diaspora slowed down and gloom began to hang in the air. It began with a protest in Welford Park, in the colony capital, unimaginatively named Capital, as the people demanded the right of representation on the UN Council. The protest began to turn into a riot, until all hell broke loose.

Sparked by this, the military immediately responded, mowing down the protestors with machineguns and sending in tanks and artillery. When news of this struck, the colony Governor, named John Adams, was forced by public pressure to declare independence. The military, many of them natives, split, with half its members joining the revolt and half deciding to fight for Earth. The fleet orbiting the planet also made its decision, the entire navy joining the fledgling country. The result was war. For five years the system was contested, the UN eventually giving up the nation because of the sheer difficulty of attacking a far-away colony (both in physical space and the graveddy network) and the not inconsiderable drain of the war on their economy. This inspired a wave of similar revolts, some successful, others not, that resulted in the end of the Diaspora and the many human polities scattered throughout space.

For John Adams though, he inherited a country damaged by war, its people bloodied by the fighting and still on the watch for guerrilla and terrorist attacks caused by the remnants of the UN military forces, who had been abandoned by the UN at the end of the war, trapped on a world they had originally guarded and protected.
His government saw a massive economic increase and the driving out of the last remnants of the UN army, but the relations between Starkland and the UN's successor are still bitter to this day.

Starkland rapidly expanded, claiming 16 systems and jumping at the chance to join the OAS. For them, the OAS was the guardian of liberty and freedom throughout the galaxy, and Starkland was founded on liberty and freedom, so why not join?

In reality the situation was different. C-WEB and the OAS offered to let Starkland join them – the OAS offered economic aid and help with recovery; C-WEB tried a straight bribe. Adams considered his options carefully – C-WEB offered 10 billion units of their money, but Adams discovered that, adjusting for inflation, this ’10 billion’ was just 99 million. Realising that C-WEB planned to rip him off, Adams angrily declared that he would rather join the OAS. Starkland officially joined the OAS a day later.

Starkland's history since then has largely been peaceful, with the occasional short bushfire war. But as the Solidarity Wars increase in tension and size, are things going to be the same for any longer?

Organisation:

Starkland is governed by a President, who is head of the Executive Office. There are two other offices, the Senate and the Court of Justice, each with checks and balances to ensure that power is not concentrated into one office or the other. The Forum has the ability to propose laws, the President to veto, and the Court of Justice to pass.
As well as its role in passing laws, the Court of Justice is Starkland’s supreme court, in which only the most important cases are discussed. Criminals are taken to the criminal courts, the lawsuits (which are uncommon, because of loser-pays legislation and other such laws) are taken to the Lawsuit courts, but only the most important lawsuits and criminal cases go to the Court of Justice.

The Senate is made up of Senators from the 160 systems that Starkland claims, each representing a single world or moon, except for those that are little more than listening posts, military bases, and scientific research areas.
Each system is judged as a Commonwealth – that is to say, it is larger than a single world (which is known as a County) but smaller than Starkland itself. All in all, Starkland is divided into 160 Commonwealths, each being composed out of one to a dozen Counties, the most important (and containing the capital) being the Starkland system itself.

There is an election every five years, the two main parties being the Conservatives and the Liberals, called Cons and Libs colloquially. There are other parties of course, but are so insignificant they do not matter much to the government, and are quite obscure, so much that barely any people vote for them.

Corporations exist in Starkland, but are not allowed lobbyists, to prevent the fate of America, which collapsed economically to the point where millions of dollars became small change and former billionaires starved in the streets, their business empires having collapsed overnight.

The Constitution of Starkland is quite long, and is revered in Starkland as the ‘cornerstone of liberty’, being enshrined in the country’s National Library.

Culture:


Starklandic culture is quite self-consciously based on Old America, but has evolved quite differently in some areas, most notably the suspicion of corporations and the distrust of guns. Guns are forbidden in most systems, the authorities not willing to take the risk. A strong atheistic streak runs through the country, with 45% of the population being atheists. Most of the remainder are, in order of percentages, Christian and Muslim, with a small number of Jews and Agnostics. There is a great respect for and idolisation of the military, and diplomatic solutions are mostly ignored in favour of violence.

Starklandic clothing focuses on fashion first and foremost. Military dress clothing is bright red and gold, covered with medals and gaudily over decorated, while civilian fashion mostly focuses on sober colours and dark clothes, in contrast to the military style. The teen subculture makes heavy use of long leather dusters and other such clothes, over black (most often with the name of a Burning Metal band) T-shirts, with blue jeans.

Starkland has a massive holo-vid industry, which is mostly used to make war movies and propaganda films of dubious quality. Action movies also predominate, and virtuo-games, which have never quite caught on amongst other polities, are extremely popular in Starkland.

The current predominant Starklandic music style is Burning Metal, which focuses on loud music, references to certain obscure horror, high technology, more loud music, and frankly incomprehensible lyrics. Examples of bands that use this style are Necronomicon Alpha, Nyarlathotep Number Nine, and Cthulhu 666.

Aliens are subtlely discouraged from immigrating to Starkland, and thus Starkland has a 99.9% human population, making the least diverse polity in the OAS.

Military Doctrine:

Starklandic military doctrine focuses on heavy use of powersuited soldiers. Known as the Pioneer Corps, these are used to assault an enemy position, followed by tanks and under the rolling thunder of ortillery. The core of this doctrine can be easily summed up in a few words: ‘there is no overkill’. Then, normal soldiers deploy and consolidate territory, while the Pioneer Corps continues its constant and steamrolling advance.

Psychological warfare is heavily used, and propaganda broadcasts are common, containing memetic viruses that drive enemies insane, as well as other weapons. When occupying territory, Starklandic troops use ‘non-lethal’ weapons, such as hallucinogen grenades, guns that manipulate the nervous system to cause intense agony, ‘softball’ ammo, and other such devices of dubious legality, justifying their use by claiming they’re what is needed to keep the peace. When defending, Starklanders use all kinds of dirty tricks, like nuclear landmines, meme-blasters, auto-defence drones and suddenly-appearing laser fences. Indeed, they often claim that fair fights aren’t actually fair, because you haven’t been stacking the deck in your favour.

Starkland makes incredibly use of neuro-cybernetic manipulators in its forces, to the point where practically every NCO has one, while they are forbidden to civilians. Cybernetics are often heavily used as well, being an easy way to restore a lost limb, compared to the slow-process of vat-growing and the lost functionality of reattachment.

The Operatives are the special forces of Starkland, highly trained, disciplined and given cybernetic enhancements, including neuro-cybernetic manipulators and experimental variations thereof. They have superb reaction times, what might be called telekinesis, access to Starkland’s best weapons, and highly advanced mesh armour making use of non-Newtonian fluids, all packed under a dusty black cloak. They are Starkland’s elite, the best of the best, sent to fight terrorists and assassinate enemy leaders. It is a rare mission indeed where they are not successful.

There is also the Commission of Intelligence, known colloquially as ‘the ghosts’, or just ‘spooks’. They have access to high-tech stealth suits, automated spy drones, and a small number of drone stealth-ships when major enemy targets need to be eliminated, as well as the power to do anything they wish when interrogating captured terrorists ‘in the interests of liberty’. They are accountable to only the President, though their power is thoroughly kept in check.

The agents are selected from the most patriotic and most intelligent applicants, as an attempt to ensure loyalty and quality. Even this is not foolproof – some agents go rogue, but their activities and (usual) deaths are hushed up to ensure the population does not panic. Where the Operatives are the Special Forces, the COI are the spies, the spooks who make sure that Starkland has knowledge of its enemies, within and without.

Homeworld:

Starkland (the planet) is earth standard, with the exact same gravity and distance from its star. Atmosphere is roughly the same, with an oxygen content of 28%, as a result of terraforming. It has two moons, called Liberty and Reason respectively. Each has major cities on it, often named after mythological gods and goddesses – for example the Luna Habitat – and are important in defence calculations. That is because both moons only appear on each hemisphere of the planet, and are never seen together in the same sky, thus allowing military defence bases (including mass drivers and immense nuclear silos) to defend each hemisphere equally.

Starkland has three major continents – named New America, New Pacifica, and New Britannia. New America is where Capital lies, and is the core of Starkland’s culture and government. The weather is mild and sunny, though inland it becomes heavily rainy and massive sea storms are often encountered on the southern coast.

New Pacifica lies south of New America, and is known for its deserts and thick jungles, which are incredibly inhospitable for human settlement. The air is so humid and damp that humans need rebreather masks, and paths have to be rehacked daily lest they be consumed by the thick jungle plants and the ever-devouring swamps. Still, the human population survives in some form, in the form of large hab-domes connected by long highways. The area saw the use of heavy jungle fighting during the War of Revolution, and is surrounded by military bases where memetic weapons and auto-fighters are tested.

New Britannia is the most uninhabited of the continents. Roughly the size of Europe, it lies east of New America and north-east from New Pacifica, such that it is on the opposite hemisphere. It is sparsely settled, with poor soil in most areas and constant raids from the descendants of UN guerrillas who have forgotten their cause and now just attempt to topple Starkland, a thing which is completely impossible to them.

As they are not much of a threat, the OIS allows their continued existence, most often just allowing them to sally forth from their caves and then run away when they actually meat real resistance, and thus they are considered a nuisance rather than a proper threat. As a result of the constant raids, gun control is more relaxed here than in other areas of Starkland, most families keeping a few shotguns for when the ‘unos’ come raiding, using them more to scare away the inexperienced and cowardly raiders rather than to actually hurt them, which these weapons are rather hard at doing.
Last edited by Czernobog on Tue Mar 24, 2009 6:07 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Starklandic Military Assets

Post by Czernobog »

Starklandic Military Assets
The Starklandic Fleet

Patriot-class Battleship

Length: 2 miles.

Number of ships: 9

Armament:

Series-9 missile armament, 10 torpedoes, each torpedo containing 100x100 nuclear-tipped AI-guided sub munitions, explosive yield 200 kilotons. Standard graser configuration, energy output high. 30 bomb-pumped lasers, power output high, can be deployed, and the ship has full electronic warfare capabilities, including counter-hacking and controlled viruses. Drone fighter numbers are approximately 160, each with nuclear missiles, anti-fighter weapons and anti-missile weapons. 140 coilguns, able to simultaneously fire (speed of the projectile is possible to control) are present on each side. Point defence lasers, 150 to a side, help defend the ship from missile barrages and fighters, helped by the ship’s not inconsiderable fighter complement.

History:

The first ship of the Patriot-class (named the Patriot) was launched by John Coleman, the current president, as a symbol of Starkland’s national pride and an ace in the hole should war break out. It was followed by eight others of its class, an expensive investment but one that has proved its worth multiple times. The eight other ships of its class are named Torch of Liberty, Citadel of Freedom, Strength of Reason, Will of the People, Magnificence, Umbris Potentas Est, Shining Flame and, simply, Justice.

They have proved to be complete overkill on the few missions they have been sent on, annihilating entire (admittedly small) fleets from light minutes away and holding their own in battles where they shouldn’t have won. How much of this is down to superior technology and how much to dumb luck is just speculation, but Starkland has six of these behemoths guarding its home system’s graveddy, so they obviously believe in their strength and ability to win a war.

Lady Liberty-class Battle cruiser

Length: 1.5 miles.

Number of ships: 56.

Armament:

Series-10 missile armament, 10 torpedoes, each including 10x265 armour-piercing AI-guided armour-piercing nuclear-tipped missiles. Standard graser configuration, energy output 100 kilotons. 100 drone fighters, using nuclear-tipped missiles and anti-missile weapons. 100 coilguns on both sides of the ship. The Lady Liberty-class has full electronic warfare capability, including viruses and anti-hacking capabilities, and the class also has access to experimental memetic weapons. The class has heavy point defences which serve as an effective missile screen along its length, which, including its fighters and shields.

History:

The Lady Liberty-class was commissioned by John Coleman in order to replace the aging Fortress-class, 19 ships commissioned as the beginning run, hopefully followed by 25 more later. The class is something of a test bed, mostly to experiment with armour-piercing missiles and memetic weapons. The original plan of producing 19 more after the initial run has been delayed, and the nineteen new ships are still under construction.
Last edited by Czernobog on Sun Feb 22, 2009 5:55 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: The United Republic of Starkland

Post by Heretic »

Shouldn't The Starkland military assets thread come into this one as well?
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Re: Starklandic Military Assets

Post by Destructionator »

I suggest you and everyone else just leave the numbers off. 200 GIGATONS and the sort are just laughable wankery; no one is going to care when it comes story time anyway.
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Re: The United Republic of Starkland

Post by Siege »

Heretic wrote:Shouldn't The Starkland military assets thread come into this one as well?
Yes.

Also, what the hell is this shield stuff? Didn't we just decide there wouldn't be shields unless we're dealing with 'really advanced polity X'?
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Re: Starklandic Military Assets

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

Destructionator wrote:I suggest you and everyone else just leave the numbers off. 200 GIGATONS and the sort are just laughable wankery; no one is going to care when it comes story time anyway.
Seconded. As others said physics concerns shouldn't get in the way of the story but since we've already decided on a degree of pseudorealism I don't think this kind of power output fits.
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Re: Starklandic Military Assets

Post by Mobius 1 »

Waaaank. Kamin, I'm sorry (but not really), but this whole thing is just one big pile of crud. I was going to step up to defend you and say 'well hey Siege man, the shields are Starkland's one big advantage, as every polity gets some cool tech speciality'. But then I read the rest of it. Barring your horrible inability to some up with anything close to good names (Oh man, look, it's John Adams. I mean, seriously?. But the real backbreaker is the ship name section. The entire thing should be prefaced 'simply'. Wait, I'm not done. It's kinda hillarious, because 'Welford Park' is the most imaginative name in the enitre article.), I can't find a flaw with these guys. It's giant wankstain. I mean, sixteen systems? Everyone wants them on their side in a fight? The big bad C-WEB evil guys with the useless currency (wuht)? The governmental organization thread is probably the worst part, as the whole 'perfected government' vibe doesn't jive with the 'hey we're really just a highly authoritarian douchebagatorship' (props for that word or what) given off in the military section.

I mean, I can see these guys, in their current form, getting their asses kicked, and hard. The galactic diplomatic sphere is probably even harsher than a singular planet sphere (in other words, OZWorld), and pissing off the wrongs guys would have pretty disastrous results. Perhaps a rework is in order. The idea of a polity stumbling upon workable tech (while not being a militarily strong enough power to assert their independence yet strong-willed enough not to be simply pressured into joining any alliance) with the big powers trying to grab the top dollar has merit. It doesn't take a genius to think the diplomatic give-and-take would make good drama, instead of the insultingly short paragraph the article gives it.
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Re: Starklandic Military Assets

Post by Destructionator »

speaker-to-trolls wrote:As others said physics concerns shouldn't get in the way of the story but since we've already decided on a degree of pseudorealism I don't think this kind of power output fits.
Definitely not, and I think going big like that would cause unintended consequences on the story if you actually followed through with them.

If those shields exist, unless you are going for a Dune like setting, odds are weapons exist to over power them.

Using my trusty energy conversion calculator:
http://arsdnet.net/ase/energy.html

I can see that 5 gigatons of TNT is about 2e19 joules. Taking that per second is thus 2e19 watts.

Take a gander at the wikipedia page to see what kind of power level that is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_ ... de_(power)

You're talking 100x more power than the Earth receives from the sun!

If that is commonplace, well, all I can say is wooooooow.



Again, I'll throw out an ase-verse note for what I consider to be more realistic: my large high tech battleships can at most generate something closer to 60 gigawatts from their generators. That's 6e10 watts. Around 1/1000000000 what 5 gigatons a second works out to be. (Which is about 14 tons of TNT per second. No kilo, no mega, no giga, just plain tons.)

A nuclear bomb can obviously do far more power (though I'm not sure why you'd want to go too big with them either - small nukes kill ships dead too), but it is also a quick event, not continuous over several seconds like the generators make or the shields in the OP are supposed to be able to handle.


Lasers and shields in my notes max out at around a terajoule. (250 tonnes of TNT if you will - direct nuke hits still overpower them with ease, but you might survive a near miss thanks to shields + inverse square law).



--------

That said, I'll once again say we should probably just leave such numbers out entirely. They aren't very relevant to the story and would likely be ignored for great drama anyway.
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Re: Starklandic Military Assets

Post by Czernobog »

speaker-to-trolls wrote:
Destructionator wrote:I suggest you and everyone else just leave the numbers off. 200 GIGATONS and the sort are just laughable wankery; no one is going to care when it comes story time anyway.
Seconded. As others said physics concerns shouldn't get in the way of the story but since we've already decided on a degree of pseudorealism I don't think this kind of power output fits.
I said megatons,not gigatons.
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Re: The United Republic of Starkland

Post by Czernobog »

SiegeTank wrote:
Heretic wrote:Shouldn't The Starkland military assets thread come into this one as well?
Yes.

Also, what the hell is this shield stuff? Didn't we just decide there wouldn't be shields unless we're dealing with 'really advanced polity X'?
Did I not mention, in the Starkland post, how they were one of the only polities with shields?
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Re: The United Republic of Starkland

Post by Siege »

Kamin997 wrote:Did I not mention, in the Starkland post, how they were one of the only polities with shields?
And what have they DONE to deserve this honor? What do they have that has ALLOWED them to build shield generators? Do they strike you as a particularly advanced polity? Do they strike you as the sort of 'holy shit, they're like Spaniards to our Aztecs' level Outside Context Problem guys we had in mind for this sort of technology?

Shields and artificial gravity should be reserved for REALLY FUCKING ADVANCED polities. Not for average-level guys like this.
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Re: The United Republic of Starkland

Post by Czernobog »

SiegeTank wrote:
Kamin997 wrote:Did I not mention, in the Starkland post, how they were one of the only polities with shields?
And what have they DONE to deserve this honor? What do they have that has ALLOWED them to build shield generators? Do they strike you as a particularly advanced polity? Do they strike you as the sort of 'holy shit, they're like Spaniards to our Aztecs' level Outside Context Problem guys we had in mind for this sort of technology?

Shields and artificial gravity should be reserved for REALLY FUCKING ADVANCED polities. Not for average-level guys like this.
Ok, I'll edit it to remove them.
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Re: The United Republic of Starkland

Post by Czernobog »

Done it.
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Re: Starklandic Military Assets

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Kamin997 wrote:I said megatons,not gigatons.
First off, you're a liar. Your shield statement clearly said 5 gigatons per second. If you're wrong about something, revising it is just fine. Editing it then saying you never said it at all is grotesque and dishonourable.


Anyway, megatons are still pretty silly. For a beam weapon, it is still orders of magnitude away from anything remotely realistic, and for missiles, you must ask 'why?'. I know a lot of you kids love to throw around xxxtons like it is nothing, but it is just silly, both for technical and military reasons.

The biggest nuclear bomb ever made in reality was 50 megatons, and that was basically international wankery - the ones that are meant to actually be used if the need arises (God forbid) are closer to 100 kilotons. They still destroy targets very well.

Smaller devices are much more efficient and can cause less collateral damage. If someone is using big bombs it means their delivery system doesn't work very well - with a giant bomb, you can be close rather than getting a good hit and still destroy the target, but they are of course wasteful.

Destroying a spacecraft is essentially a trivial task. Even armored, a nuclear bomb of just about any size hitting it will spell its doom. There is no need for a large device to score the kill.

This means the lower limit and ideal optimum value on the energy needed is indeed very low. Anything beyond that is to make up for misses; most likely, large numbers of submissiles to spam defenses, which you seem to have here. Bigger yields on each device would be a waste (a terrible one since your missiles are now also harder to maneuver); overpowering to get more distance out of them is futile since space is so big.

So to sum up:

Torpedoes with several submunitions - pretty good idea.
Submunitions with anything near a megaton yield - close to possible but huge waste.
Lasers with megaton shots - LOL.
(Similarly, coilguns on the ship firing RKVs - LOL.)


If you simply left the numbers off entirely, I'd have no serious objections.


Note the energy numbers aren't the only ones that I find outrageous. You list the number of ships - are you going to keep count as they get pwned in the story or something? If you run out, are you seriously going to care?
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Re: Starklandic Military Assets

Post by Czernobog »

Destructionator wrote:
Kamin997 wrote:I said megatons,not gigatons.
First off, you're a liar. Your shield statement clearly said 5 gigatons per second. If you're wrong about something, revising it is just fine. Editing it then saying you never said it at all is grotesque and dishonourable.
I assumed you were talking about the weapons.
Anyway, megatons are still pretty silly. For a beam weapon, it is still orders of magnitude away from anything remotely realistic, and for missiles, you must ask 'why?'. I know a lot of you kids love to throw around xxxtons like it is nothing, but it is just silly, both for technical and military reasons.

The biggest nuclear bomb ever made in reality was 50 megatons, and that was basically international wankery - the ones that are meant to actually be used if the need arises (God forbid) are closer to 100 kilotons. They still destroy targets very well.

Smaller devices are much more efficient and can cause less collateral damage. If someone is using big bombs it means their delivery system doesn't work very well - with a giant bomb, you can be close rather than getting a good hit and still destroy the target, but they are of course wasteful.

Destroying a spacecraft is essentially a trivial task. Even armored, a nuclear bomb of just about any size hitting it will spell its doom. There is no need for a large device to score the kill.

This means the lower limit and ideal optimum value on the energy needed is indeed very low. Anything beyond that is to make up for misses; most likely, large numbers of submissiles to spam defenses, which you seem to have here. Bigger yields on each device would be a waste (a terrible one since your missiles are now also harder to maneuver); overpowering to get more distance out of them is futile since space is so big.

So to sum up:

Torpedoes with several submunitions - pretty good idea.
Submunitions with anything near a megaton yield - close to possible but huge waste.
Lasers with megaton shots - LOL.
(Similarly, coilguns on the ship firing RKVs - LOL.)


If you simply left the numbers off entirely, I'd have no serious objections.
I'll try and fix it.
Note the energy numbers aren't the only ones that I find outrageous. You list the number of ships - are you going to keep count as they get pwned in the story or something? If you run out, are you seriously going to care?
Is it a case of too little, or too many?
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Re: Starklandic Military Assets

Post by Destructionator »

Kamin997 wrote:Is it a case of too little, or to many?
Does it really matter? Despite indulging myself in attacking the numbers, the point I'm really trying to make here is you should worry about making up the numbers one way or the other. You don't want to lock yourself into something ahead of time when it comes story time.

If you really want to know though, I think the quantity of ships is really small.
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Czernobog
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Re: Starklandic Military Assets

Post by Czernobog »

Destructionator wrote:
Kamin997 wrote:Is it a case of too little, or to many?
Does it really matter? Despite indulging myself in attacking the numbers, the point I'm really trying to make here is you should worry about making up the numbers one way or the other. You don't want to lock yourself into something ahead of time when it comes story time.

If you really want to know though, I think the quantity of ships is really small.
I have a story planned set about a bunch of terrorists destroying one of the Patriot-class, and the ensuing hunt for them, so I need to know their numbers. Think of the Patriot and its ilk as a result of runaway defence budget, something designed more to scare the enemy than actually wipe them out. They're most often used against primitives - people just getting out of the gravity well - in an attempt to intimidate them into joining OAS. They also represent a symbol of national pride, and should one be destroyed, let God have mercy on them, for the people of Starkland will have none...

And I increased the numbers of the Lady Liberty-class, given that it is designed to be a line ship.
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Re: The United Republic of Starkland

Post by Mobius 1 »

This doesn't really change the fact that the main article as a whole kinda sucks. But it's okay, ignore my suggestions and keep quoting massive chunks of text with only vapid one liners as responses.
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Czernobog
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Re: The United Republic of Starkland

Post by Czernobog »

Edited Starkland a little.
You have ruled this galaxy for ten thousand years.
You have little of account to show for your efforts.
Order. Unity. Obedience.
We taught the galaxy these things.

And we shall do so again.
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