Zakalwe
Inactive Member
Zakalwe:
It is necessary to give some degree of history and context with this submission - it is by no means new. Indeed I began to work on this a year ago and submitted it a month or so later. It was approved and then unapproved due to Cora raising some issues which I answered. It was, however, not approved consequently. I was going to leave the submission on the shelf, but Andrew has asked for me to put it up for approval so it can see use with the 5th fleet.
I do hope it doesn't cause too much concern, despite its rather complicated history most of it relies upon now approved technology. I'm actually quite proud of it.
https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=onslaught
Andrew:
I will leave this up for comments for a while, as that it would be bias for me to just approve it.
Tom:
This seems extremely, extremely powerful.
Extremely. DR 10 weapon? I don't want a star-system destroying weapon running around the universe...
Zakalwe:
It's interesting to note that the Blackhole Link weapon is actually effectively useless against any ship with a CFS device, given that SA ships have in the past used the centre of black-holes as perfect hiding places. I'm still fairly certain there's a fleet hidden in the three black-holes in the galactic West. However against Nepleslian, Elysian and Yamataian ships the weapon will do nothing.
It is however very good at targeting solar systems, that I admit, a black hole will do that for you. Although, in all fairness, the Legacy cannon allows the creation of a Black Hole - this works on a much more realistic basis, although it does have similar effects. Primarily I like the concept.
Alright - to be honest I don't want the hassle. I realise I'm going to have to fight ridiculously hard to get the Black Hole Link Device approved so I've dropped it. If anyone liked it or wants to hear about it contact me, but for the moment I've scaled it back and replaced it with the simpler weapon you see in the current text.
I hope that makes people happy.
SUBLIMEinal:
I think it looks pretty good for the most part. It's big and shoots things, which is always a plus. However, Carbon Ring armor is only DR 5, not 8.
Miss Strangelove:
Sub has a point. While buckypaper could, in theory, be employed in gigatnic multilayer sheers, it also suffers from the flaws of being a complex allotrope; a 5% rate of defects due to combat damage can reduce its conductivity and tensile strength by up to 50%. Raw buckypaper, without sufficient support, reinforcement, and covering, is hardly starship-grade armor.
Scribbles:
The dimensions of ship certainly don't seem to match up with what I'm reading.
Also are these the intended dimensions? If so it is certainly a massive ship.
They are listed as:
Length: 2000m
Width: 500m
Height: 125m
For those of you who are metric impaired that comes out to,
Length: 1.243 miles, or 6562 feet
Width: 0.3107 miles, or 1640 feet
Height: 0.07767 miles, or 410.1 feet
Which now points out a glaring problem, even with the armour, which in its entirety takes up 6 metres (19.69 feet) the ship is only listed as having 4 decks. If this is true and deck space is distributed evenly between the decks, each deck comes out to 29.75 metres (97.6 feet) per deck!
There certainly needs to be a change in the number of decks or in the height of the ship, because they definitely don't match up right now.
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Next issue, the speed is far too high. If the 150,000 CDD wasn't fast enough the hyper drive had an outrageously high 12LY/minute, which besides being ridiculously fast(especially considering at some point here was supposed to have been a drop across the board on FTL speeds), it is 50% faster than one of the SAoY's newest and most advanced ships, the Himiko-class light escort (better known as the class of the Miharu).
If these high speeds weren't enough the ship has a third method of FTL in the form of an inbuilt wormhole generator. Giving virtually unlimited speed akin to the old TTD(minus dimension hopping).
Miss Strangelove:
Hmm, not sure if this counts as critque per se, but I thought I'd voice it anyways. Recently there's been a trend from near-god-like tech to more "typical" sci-fi technologies, simply because former technology was so incredibly advanced it was nigh impossible for PC technicians to understand or operate starships without a GM holding their hand, so to speak. Hence everyone's either a combatant, or an inter-personal person (caretaker, medic, cook), while very, very few are mechanics. That's part of the reason Fred and Uso are taking Yamataian and Nepleslian designs down a notch, so people can actually understand the ships they serve on. The other may be, well, superweapons are just not much fun.
I'm afraid that with its currently ming-bogglingly complexity regard just about every system it won't really be usable by anyone but Zakalwe, and that its extreme complexity may undermine Fred's and Uso's efforts to lower the bar. And I sort of dislike the idea of unjammable teleporting rounds, and venting the inside of planet-sized fusion reactors at people.
Again, I know this isn't "hard" critique, so I'm uncertain if it's a viable argument against the ship.
Andrew:
Yes, I believe there is things about this ship that need to be taken down a notch. However, I must also say that there is a role for big ships in this roleplay-especially roles connected to my fleet where larger sized ships see play all the time. (Yes, I am a big fan of big mammoth ships, as my design record boasts Takumi, Hummingbird CDC and the Type D refit done to the Chiharu Design).
So I guess my point is that Zakalwe needs to continue working to tone down some things on this ship like the speeds, and other things. Additionally fixing the internal demensions info--it is understandable that there are going to be areas on the ship much taller than the average just as there is on the Takumi (bridge, engineering etc are larger open decks than span several usual deck heights.)
Jess-I think you could of worded that a little better, from my stance it really made it sound like Zakalwe's contribution is useless, when in fact it is a very important part of some aspects of the setting--especially mine.
(This is also not the place to discuss it, anything not pertaining directly to the ship can be brought to me directly.
Anyway Zakalwe keep working on this.
Abwehran Commander:
Personally, I find that a 2 kilometer length is a nice size for a space battleship. The Imperial Star Destroyer is 1.6 kilometers in length while the Mon Cal Cruiser is around 1.2 to 1.3 kilometers.
Now I have to admit that many other sci-fi universes prefer the 900 meter to 1 kilometer range for there battleships, but we also have to take into account the type of setting each sci-fi universe.
In SARP, I've seen most battleships range between 2 kilometers to 5 kilometers in length. Because of this, the Onslaught is actually one of the smaller battleships in setting. Therefore, it's size is pretty much on par.
Speed wise, I think it's pretty much unanimous that we want slower speeds. It's what a lot of us have been trying to do as a trend. Though I can't really say much considering I purposefully try to keep my speeds low due to where my designs go.
Technology wise, I don't see a reason for Zakalwe to decrease the tech he has on the Onslaught unless there are extreme cutbacks in his corporation. NovaCorp has always been a top-tier corporation technical wise due to its designs for Yamatai and itself. Personally, I like to think many of the new nations/corporations are making a trend of using technologies we all understand, leaving such higher tech devices to Yamatai. After all, most of us have figured that we can get the same amount of performance from lower-tech options than the 'god-like' technology seen in more older factions and corps. Plus, you could say that top-tier technology is for the corporations with much more funding and a higher initial tech-base than the newer corporations.
.....I seem to have gone on a rant, so I'll leave it here.
Miss Strangelove:
I didn't mean my earlier point as a personal jab against Zakalwe. I simply meant do you think that any PCs, or even other GMs, are going to know how to react to 100% infallible multi-million wormhole sensor grid, or how to operate/aim a teleporting cannon, or how the universal solvent grey goo weapon should behave in a given scenario, and so on. To use something of this sheer complexity will most likely require Zakalwe's personal guidance, or persistent questioning of him, is what I meant to say earlier.
As to the power level; while it may be justified, Matt, it still doesn't factor in that this seems to contain a lot (unintentional) powergaming. Given this was written a while ago, back in the era when starships were effectively demigods in their own right, the context was understandable then. But right now? I think it's grossly overpowered.
Let me cite some of it's devices:
An omniscient sensor system ("can therefore detect the presence of a object, despite any form of cloaking it has on it.")
A nigh undefeatable goo weapon ("designed to penetrate through shields using a variety of effects, including an inbuilt CDD generator, and energy sheathing", "will continue to devour a planet until there is nothing left but nano-bots") that will terminally wound entire planets or battleships with a single blow, unless they happen to carry very potent anti-nanobot nanobots.
A cruise missile that can hyperspace inside a vessel's shielding, which once you factor in the DR8 yield, is basically an instant-kill to anything without zesuanium composite, or ridiculously thick armor.
A swarm system that launches thousands of multipurpose diamond penetrator/anti-matter warhead missiles, which even carries its own shield generators. Also, due to the multiplication factor, these DR 6 weapons can easily become DR 9 or 10 when used en masse.
Ultrarelativistic antimatter railgun rounds that can teleport, but are immune to interdiction fields.
Not only does the vessel possess at least six layers of shielding (two rotating energy, one gravimetric, one hull energy skin, one spatial distortion), they can rip apart enemy ships with ease, yet have zero effect on its own fighters and guns. ("inside the huge repulsion effect, there are gravitic warps and shears, directed by the AI, and capable of ripping a ship apart")
The spatial distortion shielding is nigh invulnerable ("You can not use power to get through these shields, since as far as the attacks are concerned, the ship is not there.") except when the vessel is aiming/firing its weapons, upon which the accuracy and SD shields take a hit to effectiveness. Still, if fortified the vessel effectively has a defense DR 9+8+8 (spatial shielding, main shielding, hull).
A wormhole vent that can dump chunks of the inside of a star onto an enemy vessel. To put this into perspective, our sun is roughly the mass of 333000 planet Earths, releasing about 383 Yottawatts per second. The Onslaught's main energy shielding for reference can take a grand total of about 160 Yottawatts per square meter. It doesn't cite exactly how long the wormholes are open, but apparently it's long enough to release a "huge plume." Since this device can be used about once every three seconds, even if it releases only a tiny amount of the energy of a sun's core, it'll still fire hundreds if not thousands of Yottawatts per minute. And that's not even factoring in if this thing utilizes stars more powerful than Earths'. Realistically this is a DR 9-10 weapon, even without the quasar function available.
Now, add all 313 weapon systems together, and their damage per minute, and you have an anti-fleet weapon that makes Aether shock cannons look like spitballs. Even Yamatai battleships are complete knock-overs in comparison.
Zakalwe:
I've made updates to the battleship. I hope they address some of the issues, although the ship is now very slow compared to the Mishhu big-wigs.
Yamatai battleships are not weak in comparsion - look at the Yuumi and it's two main weapons that cause total destruction over a 20 mile region of space or total insta-kill on one ship. The Onslaught does not come close to that.
In addition to the Yuumi comes with 120 Mindy's whereas the Onslaught is rather unassisted. I think this comes down in the Yuumi's favour.
Uso:
I just have time to do a quick flyby attack on the tech but:
I have no problem with the power weapons. The stuff seems fairly well explained to the point that people could know how to interact with the weapons but I do have a few issues with the wording and some of the things Jess brought up such as overlapping systems that should inhibit each other. The ship not being there and still being able to fire out normally for example.
the "can therefore detect the presence of a object, despite any form of cloaking it has on it." isn't something that should be included on a ship. How the device works should be included and the effect should be determined in roleplay based on what tech it is going up against.
The same goes for "To prevent the wormhole being blocked simply it quickly changes the dimension through which it travels until it fines one that is not blocked and uses that to carry the shell". I dislike the certainty of the statement and would prefer it to say that it tries to find one that isn't blocked. As is it implies that the round is entirely unblockable and this isn't the case.
Zakalwe:
Alright, I'll see about changing those statements Zack. Thanks for your constructive criticism