Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[Arioch]

Did the quick nature of such combat reflect in uniforms for Teidar on ancient Deinar? I can't imagine it smart to have your Teidar stick out in that case.

Before spaceflight and the discovery of psi amplifiers, psychokinetics with enough power to instantly kill someone were much more rare, and so in many cases the early Teidar equivalents were used as much for defense and utility as they were for direct attack. In some times and places they were hidden among the troops, but in other times and places (such as when there were elaborate rules of warfare) they were deliberately conspicuous in their attire, and there were sometimes rules about who could attack them and whom they could attack.

Most of the recovered Soia-era artifacts tend to be from settlements of the various "subject" civilizations, and so are thought to be kind of "hand me down" technology. Not much is known about what the apex Soia tech was like, or how it was manufactured (no remains of the legendary "dread-stars" have ever been found).

Which sort of begs the next question: How much of the current Loroi tech base is

1. directly copied from what they dug out of some ruin one time (amplifiers may be one thing)
2. based on Soia tech, and simply scaled up or down to its current use (like jump drives, they found just one design, but incorporated it on various ship classes)
3. based on Soia tech, but adapted/improved to its current use (as in, they may or may not have made substantial changes to a design and used the result for a different purpose than it was originally intended to - think Sildenafil, it was originally developed to treat headaches and heartburn, but is nowadays solved to cure a completely different ailment)
4. completely invented on their own

This question may be extended to the other races as well and would be interesting to follow up, as it says much about the mentality of the given species.

Most of the major races at some point had access to either Soia or pre-Soia artifacts, or else contemporary examples derived from them. In most cases, precursor devices served mostly as an example to follow, since they were often far too advanced materials-wise to directly copy. For example, many hand-held Soia-era tools were made from ultra-tech superhard ceramics; the form and function of the tool might serve as an example to follow, but even by the late industrial age the Loroi still had not the faintest idea how to replicate the material. So you could say that a large percentage of the technology of the Loroi and others is inspired in some way by precursor examples, but in many cases the contemporary engineers had to adapt principles to lesser materials, or find entirely new ways of accomplishing the same effect. But just knowing that something is possible can be a huge help in development.

There are a few cases in which the Soia examples are copied almost directly, such as psi amplifiers. There are very few examples of ultra-tech Soia-era weaponry, so most of what you'll find aboard a modern Loroi warship is new tech, developed either by the Loroi or in conjunction with other modern races.

It's not always clear what ancient artifacts were intended to do, so it's hard to say whether a new use you found for it was what the designers intended.

[MBehave]

I made an account just to reply to this because its an example of expectation bias, because keeping a object near the ground or near Earth orbit stationary burns a lot of fuel you assume the same is true for keeping objects falling into the sun. I know this is a comic and rule of cool applies and real life doesn't matter but mines are viable.


You have ships jumping in at the systems edge, assuming thats at Neptune the suns pull is slightly more then 1mm/s
thats Milimeters a second and its not a typo.

After an entire year a "stationary" mine will have moved less then 20km towards the sun from its start point with no fuel. With an Ion drive a large object in the thousands of tons could easily be on station for a hundred years with just a few tons of reaction mass.

While an explosive mine does not make much sense, missiles mines that carry large missile payloads not only makes sense but provides a far cheaper system defence option then using manned ships.

Only a few things need to be true to make them not only effective but devastatingly so.

1.Acceleration profile of the drones is higher then the enemy fleet.
2.Their interception is linked to ensure all missile drones engage at the same time to overwhelm point defences.
3.They are vastly cheaper to produce then ships of the line.

Neither of the first 2 is hard to do, a few thousand missile drones covering a hundred light second grid can be activated and assigned targets and be accelerating towards an enemy fleet within 5 minutes of detection from a manned station that controls the mine swam. The drones would be setback off the expected jump in point to give them the ability to converge and the optimum distance is easily calculated from known enemy ship speeds and how many drones you want capable of making a combined assault.

Such Missile mines only require missiles/sensors and communication array/thrusters, everything else a starship needs they do not, such as jump drive, life support, inertia dampeners, and consumables from food to water. They would also have minimal upkeep maintaining a powered down state that would also allow them to blend into the background radiation and be extremely hard to detect until they went active. Further depending on how "cheap" the missile mines are you could make them move away from the engagement after launching their missiles so they can be serviced and rearmed or have them try to ram ships themselves. The missiles would also be most effective if they used a kinetic kill "projectile" of just plain sand in the terminal phase due to Outsider shields not deflecting mass rather then something like an antimatter warhead which requires extremely close detonation to do any harm.

I understand if you don't want mines and FTL siege points in outsider, but they are not only valid for your FTL system they make the most economic sense unless the cost of engines and warheads require the same or more resources then larger ships of the line equipped with all sorts of other equipment and far more mass(raw resources).

Is there any mine fields near important systems?

No. Mines don't really work well in space. Space is too big compared to the small area of effect of an explosion, mines don't stay put (they must orbit or will fall toward the nearest mass), and they are too easy to detect and avoid.

[Arioch]

What you're describing aren't "mines" in any meaningful sense; they're unmanned defense satellites armed with torpedoes. The combatants can and do put defensive infrastructure in the jump zones (hence Gora Relay and other stations), but these bear very little resemblance to mines.

Having station keeping engines isn't a problem for a satellite or station (we're talking Jupiter rather than Neptune distance for the jump zone of a Sun-mass star, but let's leave that aside for the moment), but it does mean that you can't simply flood the zone with debris (as some have suggested). If the defense satellite is launching missiles, then it either needs sensors and fire control systems or needs to be directed from a nearby control station. Since it must have engines, power systems, and at least communications systems, these satellites will not be particularly stealthy, and to keep them as cheap as possible they will have no defenses, and will therefore be extremely vulnerable to enemy fire (or sabotage, etc.). If you have to have a director station in the area anyway, I don't really see the advantage to spreading your torpedoes out in satellites like this, instead of concentrating them in battle stations which have some protection. The torpedo doesn't care where it was launched from.

[entity2636]

One thing people constantly ignore is that in space nothing is stationary. Everything moves both relative to the star and relative to everything else and solar systems also move relative to each other and quite fast actually. Neptune, for example, flies through space at 5.43km/s and our own Sun moves through space at ~200km/s. If you were to place a mine field in Neptune's orbit, in a few seconds it would be nowhere near where you intended it, when looking from the direction of the "incoming" hyperspace vector.

You not only need to keep your mine field from falling into the star, but also from being attracted by nearby objects (gas/ice giants, comets, 'roids, various dwarf planets, etc.). Also you need to keep your mine field in the same position relative to the star you expect your foes to jump from. All of that needs to be accounted for. Besides, space is HUGE, starships are comparatively TINY and mines and their explosion radii - even smaller, therefore one would need a from a practical perspective infinite amount of mines, all able to coordinate and correct their positions, to cover a jump zone. If that could somehow be achieved, you can always jump short or jump deep and avoid said mine field.

That is why traffic control stations are mobile, the Loroi ones have engine ratings comparable to those of TCA's battleships. Come to think of it, it gives the term "thrusters at station keeping" a whole different meaning.

[Zarya]

Thinking about mines... What about cheap, mass produced intelligent swarms that are nothing more than directed nuclear blast weapons equipped with thrusters, a given amount of fuel to put them on an intercept course, a brain and passive sensors as well as laser-based comms to coordinate actions amongst each other? (Dangerous? Yes!)

Swarms of devices like this would need to have some autonomy and intelligence to overcome delays that come with large distances, to make adequate friend-foe and intercept course decisions and to prevent tampering and shanghaiing by anyone nefarious. The sheer number would help to deal with countermeasures by enemy targets, while directed blasts can be fired from a standoff distance.

Swarms of Casaba Howitzers could lurk and keep guard near Lagrangian-points, or - in our solar system - where the Jupiter Trojans reside. The major headaches could be anything hostile arriving in a landing zone outside the plane of planets and effectively outside the range of a smart moveable minefield, a friend who can not be timely identified as such (Loroi, Orgus or any other non combatant vessels), or perhaps black hat foes with supreme hacking skills.

(Edit: one problem with nukes is that they don’t age well - can’t leave them out there for many decades expecting they’ll still work as advertised)

[MBehave]

In current nomenclature a automated weapons platform that is under the water is a mine or drone, they were coined mines before modern UAV shifted the term drone into common nomenclature, mines existed that could move and/or fire torpedoes or cokets before UAV's became viable.

As for "stealth"
Directed laser communications are considered effectively impossible to detect compared to the background radiation of space unless they are directed at you, if heat was a problem simply having heat generation at the back of the craft and cheap thermal insulation at the front would render it moot.

Having fully automated systems can be bad, having a manned platform is a good idea however its not required, spread out among the normal mines could be control mines that have advanced sensors and processing. A "human" kill switch even if just a frigate would make sense.

Not sure why mines(or drones whatever you wanna call them really) are vulnerable to enemy fire.

light speed limited targeting data against a 50m sphere that has 50g max thrust and is changing vector and velocity at a rate equal to its light second distance from target has the following hit box probabilities when targeted with a light speed non area effect weapon.(lasers,blasters etc)
1 light second: effectively impossible to hit, thousands of shots to score a single hit.
0.5 light second:1%
0.05 light second : 95%

If the Lori were able to equip their fighters with auto laser cannon they would be outside of point defence range and require main Umiak guns to target them with a 40-50 shots per kill average. A very effective way to draw fire from the capital ships
Your own weapon data suggests the mines would launch their salvos before they would start taking any significant losses with hundreds of main gun shots to kill a single drone.
As for sabotage, Lori can read minds and enemy ships give off a massive radiation burst when they exit FTL. While I would not say its impossible rendering them inactive would be hard, you would need to know where they are and fire on them while not being detected by the systems forces... something much harder then detected a powered down mine which you think is easy to detect. They are also the first line of defence and once the beach head is forced then yes they would be worthless but they should be expanded by that point.

Battlestations are manned and I assume consume vast amounts of resources to maintain operation with life support and food etc and not capable of projecting force outside of their current area. They are also easy targets and hit with a few torpedoes using sand will be wiped out unless your battlestations have thrust on level with your ships?

As I said, I get rule of cool wanting things to work a specific way but drones/mines whatever you want to call them are a simple and effective weapon system and capable of destroying far more tonnage in ships then they mass.

What you're describing aren't "mines" in any meaningful sense; they're unmanned defense satellites armed with torpedoes. The combatants can and do put defensive infrastructure in the jump zones (hence Gora Relay and other stations), but these bear very little resemblance to mines.

Having station keeping engines isn't a problem for a satellite or station (we're talking Jupiter rather than Neptune distance for the jump zone of a Sun-mass star, but let's leave that aside for the moment), but it does mean that you can't simply flood the zone with debris (as some have suggested). If the defense satellite is launching missiles, then it either needs sensors and fire control systems or needs to be directed from a nearby control station. Since it must have engines, power systems, and at least communications systems, these satellites will not be particularly stealthy, and to keep them as cheap as possible they will have no defenses, and will therefore be extremely vulnerable to enemy fire (or sabotage, etc.). If you have to have a director station in the area anyway, I don't really see the advantage to spreading your torpedoes out in satellites like this, instead of concentrating them in battle stations which have some protection. The torpedo doesn't care where it was launched from.

[SVlad]

You have ships jumping in at the systems edge, assuming thats at Neptune the suns pull is slightly more then 1mm/s
thats Milimeters a second and its not a typo.

The pull is acceleration, not just speed. Even for Neptune you get 82 600 km offset at first year.
And for Jupiter it would be 2 700 000 km.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(Newtonian+gravitational+constant)*(solar+mass)%2F(Neptune|+orbit+circumference)^2*(1+year)^2%2F2
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(Newtonian+gravitational+constant)*(solar+mass)%2F(Jupiter|+orbit+circumference)^2*(1+year)^2%2F2

[MBehave]

Quite right and what happens when you post in the middle of the night and decide to guestimate it while being half asleep
Also my guestimates of fuel use increase greatly, through not by a significantly important amount with fuel still being only a fraction of the total drones mass for a year of station keeping.

You have ships jumping in at the systems edge, assuming thats at Neptune the suns pull is slightly more then 1mm/s
thats Milimeters a second and its not a typo.

The pull is acceleration, not just speed. Even for Neptune you get 82 600 km offset at first year.
And for Jupiter it would be 2 700 000 km.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=( ... ear)^2%2F2
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=( ... ear)^2%2F2

[icekatze]

hi hi

...if heat was a problem simply having heat generation at the back of the craft and cheap thermal insulation at the front would render it moot.

There are lots of reasons why this isn't viable.
• The size of the potential combat area: you don't know exactly where the enemy will enter the system, and therefore cannot aim your insulation at them ahead of time.
• Station keeping thrusters cannot be insulated: drive plumes will extend for kilometers. (The mass ratios involved with background temperature gas are insane.)
• Blocking the heat isn't enough, you need active refrigeration, which creates more waste heat, which requires more surface area, which requires more shielding, which requires more active refrigeration, etc. I know people have run numbers on this before, and it isn't pretty.
• As soon as they start maneuvering to intercept their target, they're going to lose their stealth anyways: station keeping thrusters can't be insulated, and Type-A reaction drives really can't be insulated.
• Insulators are bad at absorbing: If you can bounce your own heat back away from the enemy, the enemy can flood the space around it with some kind of multi-spectral Lidar and have it nicely bounced back to them.

Not sure why mines(or drones whatever you wanna call them really) are vulnerable to enemy fire.

Did you see how effectively strike group 51 dealt with a swarm of incoming torpedoes from an enemy force that was larger than it?

light speed limited targeting data against a 50m sphere that has 50g max thrust and is changing vector and velocity at a rate equal to its light second distance from target has the following hit box probabilities when targeted with a light speed non area effect weapon...

I'm not sure what you mean by changing vector and velocity at a rate equal to its light second distance. Distance isn't a velocity or a vector by itself.

Any missile weapon needs to approach its target, it can do some amount of maneuvering, but it cannot change vector entirely at random. It has to take a probabilistic course toward the target.

Battlestations are manned and I assume consume vast amounts of resources to maintain operation with life support and food etc and not capable of projecting force outside of their current area. They are also easy targets and hit with a few torpedoes using sand will be wiped out unless your battlestations have thrust on level with your ships?

Battlestations can move, this was established on page 132. It would take more than "a few torpedoes," putting the battlestation at the jump point forced the Umiak to send an entire division to deal with it.

Battlestations are manned and I assume consume vast amounts of resources to maintain operation

They would be easier to maintain than a swarm of equal tonnage. No need to visit a hundred thousand different unique locations to perform a single refueling operation.

As I said, I get rule of cool wanting things to work a specific way but drones/mines whatever you want to call them are a simple and effective weapon system and capable of destroying far more tonnage in ships then they mass.

Capital ship engines are not cheap or simple.

The Umiak use sub-munitions regularly in their tactics, and the Loroi have gotten quite good at blowing them up, whether they are gunboats, drones, mines, torpedoes, or whatever people want to call them. Using said sub-munitions is even less viable for the Loroi, because they have a major numbers disadvantage to the Umiak.

Once someone is paying the cost for this kind of acceleration and endurance, the difference in cost between a ship and a not-ship isn't really so big.

[Arioch]

Directed laser communications are considered effectively impossible to detect compared to the background radiation of space unless they are directed at you, if heat was a problem simply having heat generation at the back of the craft and cheap thermal insulation at the front would render it moot.

At the ranges we're talking about (light seconds to light minutes), "tight" beam communications are not so tight. Even a laser beam spreads over this distance; a communication beam pointed at a 50m satellite from a light minute away will paint damn near the whole thing (a 100nm UV laser dot spreads to ~35m), lighting it up to any observer. And pointing accurately will become harder the farther away it is; you'll need to keep track of its precise location, and even a tiny error will mean the message beam will miss.

There is also the question of what is controlling the satellites and directing fire. Unless they each have their own fire control (which requires active sensors, and so can't be stealthy), then they are dependent on a controller, which will be a single point of failure for the whole system.

light speed limited targeting data against a 50m sphere that has 50g max thrust and is changing vector and velocity at a rate equal to its light second distance from target has the following hit box probabilities when targeted with a light speed non area effect weapon.(lasers,blasters etc)
1 light second: effectively impossible to hit, thousands of shots to score a single hit.
0.5 light second:1%
0.05 light second : 95%

If these satellites have nothing more than stationkeeping thrusters, they will have very little ability to maneuver. I don't know how we got from stealthy minimal weapon packages to heavy super-fighters with 50G thrust.

Your own weapon data suggests the mines would launch their salvos before they would start taking any significant losses with hundreds of main gun shots to kill a single drone.
. . .
Battlestations are manned and I assume consume vast amounts of resources to maintain operation with life support and food etc and not capable of projecting force outside of their current area. They are also easy targets and hit with a few torpedoes using sand will be wiped out unless your battlestations have thrust on level with your ships?

A station (usually) already needs to be in the jump zone for other reasons (traffic control and early warning, in addition to needing to provide fire control for the satellites), so the cost and survivability of the station is a secondary issue in terms of the effectiveness of the torpedoes; as you mention, the torpedoes will probably be launched before the launcher starts taking damage. Any combat station will obviously need to have sufficient maneuverability (typically up to 5G) to avoid ballistic kinetic attacks.

Or better still, the same torpedoes could be placed aboard more conventional ships based farther in-system. These would be more mobile and flexible, and more easily moved to where they are needed. There's an argument to be made against putting too much military hardware in the jump zone; the advantage is that you an attack the incoming enemy while it's still affected by jump sickness, but the disadvantage is that you don't know the size of the force that you're facing until it's already on top of you, and so anything you place there has to be more or less expendable. Torpedoes are an expensive and limited resource to the Loroi; they never have as many available as they would like. Allocating many hundreds or thousands to static defenses which may or may not ever be attacked, and which cannot easily be redeployed (or easily maintained or even checked on) doesn't seem like the most effective use of these resources.

As I said, I get rule of cool wanting things to work a specific way but drones/mines whatever you want to call them are a simple and effective weapon system and capable of destroying far more tonnage in ships then they mass.

I've yet to hear you make a convincing case that spreading weapons out in this unnecessarily elaborate manner offers any significant advantage over just launching them from conventional stations or ships, which is far simpler, more reliable, more flexible, and less expensive. "Rule of cool" has yet to enter into the matter.

[MBehave]

The backscatter on the laser communications is not detectable not unless it hit a planets atmosphere or such like, It was an example of how hard detecting objects that emit radiation away from you in space is. Once a fleet is in system and the mines activate they are no longer trying to be stealthy, the entire point of stealth would be to stop kinetic projectiles from another jump point in system they are not covering targeting them.

You have stated previously that a FTL incursion emits massive amounts of energy, have you changed this do they no longer emit a large amount of energy?
Why would the drones require a active sensor system? they are in a friendly system with plenty of sources of active radar, further the enemy ships are known from the start and IR/Thermal passives for ships of the size and thrust would be a dead giveaway at a few light seconds even for current day thermal sensors such as used at solar observatories. I also mentioned you could have command mines that have sensors etc spaced out among the cheaper dumber mines, since torpedoes in your universe already easily track things across a light second Im not sure why you now want to argue its hard when the sensor in a torpedo can do it?

As for cost...
How expensive are conventional ships to build and keep in operation in the outsider universe and is it comparable to Earths current navel ships and costs to GDP? My understanding is the Lori have a serious material and manpower shortage for its fleets compared to the Umiak. Having a system defence that requires little manpower in resources/deployment/maintenance in comparison to its firepower is a significant advantage.

Things mine/drone does not need which ships do.
Energy Weapons
Life Support
Shields
Inertia Dampeners
Internal spaces for crew
Consumables
Jump drive
Large Power generation for its guns life support and shields(not just engines and sensors)

A modern manned fighter compared to cost effectiveness of a UAV with the same AA weapon system is already in the 5:1 in operation cost, around 11:1 to purchase price. Even if you made system defence ships that lacked everything bar life support and internal crew spaces you would still need to resupply the personal and relive them. It doesn't matter if your torpedo ships move back to a base or other ships are used to supply them, either way you are vastly increasing upkeep costs including fuel and system wear and tear over mines unless your races have some technology that autorepairs and recycles ships parts or they never break down due to use?
I can only go on real world cost savings of removing the life support and human interface equipment from actual real world vehicles as a basis for my assumptions on mines being cost effective. .

As for engines.
A mine has no life support and no internal crew spaces, it requires far less material and has less mass giving a higher thrust to weight ratio compared to a ship you would use to carry the same number of torpedoes but also has crew and all the other requirements previously mentioned. I stated having dual drive system and faster drive speeds from the start, I didn't tack it on after the fact like you seem to imply. Real life Ion drives even today provide the endurance and mass efficiency required while your ships have power generation that is off the scale so powering them isn't a problem, NASA Ion drive tests have been shut down not because the drives were no longer performing but because they had already surpassed the mission requirements of any space mission expected of them, with a continued burn time I believe for the NEXT ion drive of over 5 years and showing little degradation and requiring no upkeep.

Laying mines in a grid is not elaborate its a simple process with about as much or less complication as putting a fleet in lax formation which I am assuming the Lori are capable of doing? Sand/dust as Kinetic kill weapon was proposed since the 70s for space warfare because once the warhead deploys the cloud ensures a probable hit even against a maneuvering target, beam weapons would be rather useless against it in its terminal phase.
The only problem with such a system at the speeds your torpedoes can reach is they could seriously other infrastructure in system, when engaging a fleet that has just jumped in they are facing outwards and with the clouds easily having system escape velocity they would never represent a threat to the local systems infrastructure or shipping.


At the end of the day its your universe.

What the total mass as a % the lori Intruder assault shuttle and BS3 battle station have dedicated to the following systems?
Energy Weapons
Life Support
Shields
Inertia Dampeners
Internal spaces for crew
Consumables
Jump drive(neither has them I assume)
Large Power generation for its guns life support and shields(not just engines and sensors)

What is the cost of these systems in resources/construction time/upkeep compared to an unmanned hull with passive sensors an ion drive and stood down main engines/smaller power system/torpedoes?

How effective is a BS3 battle stations armour against high velocity mass, will 100 kg of sand moving at 650kms(3kiloton impact) cause them serious problems? This is from an assumed Umiak XHSR Torpedo with 1000kg sand warhead assuming only 100kg(10%) impacts and max terminal velocity reduction based on 1 ton of fuel(total mass) replaced by sand.
You have stated previously that Terran weapons are very destructive if they could hit, and the Terran GWS HS-200 has a damage rating of 53 in your charts which puts it above all standard weapons used by all more advanced races and an actual real world energy output of 3.8 kilotons.

Once I have hard numbers I can prove/disprove its efficiency in the Outsider universe setting(its efficient in the real world in relation to manned systems already). One assumption I made on its efficiency is both sides already use torpedoes simply using explosive warheads which require near hits and have to go against point defence systems, so resource cost of torpedoes has to be low enough to make building them worth while over buildings more ships which puts an upper limit on the costs compared to ships or neither side would bother using them all and as mine drones are almost as simple as torpedoes themselves the wriggle room to try to make Torpedoes cost efficient over building actual starships while mine drones are not is almost non existent.

PS: I just remembered the Lori already have weapon system near identical to my suggestion the Loroi DX Armored Blister and I assume it tracks targets to get itself into range and then provides such targeting data to its torpedoes. The only thing it does not do that my suggested mines does is have 50g thrust and have an ion drive(which is rather cheap resource wise).

Its pretty much what I have suggested except you would have control mines with the targeting sensors instead of every DX Armored Blister having its own sensors and you wouldn't worry about armour instead using the higher velocity to increase lifespan.
Is 10g greater thrust and an ion drive really that much more expensive when you reduce the number of sensor systems to say one out of every 10 and remove the armour(which will increase the speed by itself to some extent)

Or are Loroi DX Armored Blister completely cost inefficient and the Lori would be better off not building them? if so why do they build them?

Directed laser communications are considered effectively impossible to detect compared to the background radiation of space unless they are directed at you, if heat was a problem simply having heat generation at the back of the craft and cheap thermal insulation at the front would render it moot.

At the ranges we're talking about (light seconds to light minutes), "tight" beam communications are not so tight. Even a laser beam spreads over this distance; a communication beam pointed at a 50m satellite from a light minute away will paint damn near the whole thing (a 100nm UV laser dot spreads to ~35m), lighting it up to any observer. And pointing accurately will become harder the farther away it is; you'll need to keep track of its precise location, and even a tiny error will mean the message beam will miss.

There is also the question of what is controlling the satellites and directing fire. Unless they each have their own fire control (which requires active sensors, and so can't be stealthy), then they are dependent on a controller, which will be a single point of failure for the whole system.

light speed limited targeting data against a 50m sphere that has 50g max thrust and is changing vector and velocity at a rate equal to its light second distance from target has the following hit box probabilities when targeted with a light speed non area effect weapon.(lasers,blasters etc)
1 light second: effectively impossible to hit, thousands of shots to score a single hit.
0.5 light second:1%
0.05 light second : 95%

If these satellites have nothing more than stationkeeping thrusters, they will have very little ability to maneuver. I don't know how we got from stealthy minimal weapon packages to heavy super-fighters with 50G thrust.

Your own weapon data suggests the mines would launch their salvos before they would start taking any significant losses with hundreds of main gun shots to kill a single drone.
. . .
Battlestations are manned and I assume consume vast amounts of resources to maintain operation with life support and food etc and not capable of projecting force outside of their current area. They are also easy targets and hit with a few torpedoes using sand will be wiped out unless your battlestations have thrust on level with your ships?

A station (usually) already needs to be in the jump zone for other reasons (traffic control and early warning, in addition to needing to provide fire control for the satellites), so the cost and survivability of the station is a secondary issue in terms of the effectiveness of the torpedoes; as you mention, the torpedoes will probably be launched before the launcher starts taking damage. Any combat station will obviously need to have sufficient maneuverability (typically up to 5G) to avoid ballistic kinetic attacks.

Or better still, the same torpedoes could be placed aboard more conventional ships based farther in-system. These would be more mobile and flexible, and more easily moved to where they are needed. There's an argument to be made against putting too much military hardware in the jump zone; the advantage is that you an attack the incoming enemy while it's still affected by jump sickness, but the disadvantage is that you don't know the size of the force that you're facing until it's already on top of you, and so anything you place there has to be more or less expendable. Torpedoes are an expensive and limited resource to the Loroi; they never have as many available as they would like. Allocating many hundreds or thousands to static defenses which may or may not ever be attacked, and which cannot easily be redeployed (or easily maintained or even checked on) doesn't seem like the most effective use of these resources.

As I said, I get rule of cool wanting things to work a specific way but drones/mines whatever you want to call them are a simple and effective weapon system and capable of destroying far more tonnage in ships then they mass.

I've yet to hear you make a convincing case that spreading weapons out in this unnecessarily elaborate manner offers any significant advantage over just launching them from conventional stations or ships, which is far simpler, more reliable, more flexible, and less expensive. "Rule of cool" has yet to enter into the matter.

[icekatze]

hi hi

Here we go again.

Things mine/drone does not need which ships do... *snip*

Every one of your points about mine/drones applies symmetrically to ships. Ships need or do not need these things every bit as much or as little as mine/drones.

This is not a rule of cool, but a law of narrative interest. Just like having FTL at all, which is almost certainly something that will never happen in reality, it is necessary to have a story. No characters, no story.

The backscatter on the laser communications is not detectable not unless it hit a planets atmosphere or such like.

Citation needed. Visible light and other wavelengths are entirely capable of detecting small objects in space.

Why would the drones require a active sensor system? they are in a friendly system with plenty of sources of active radar.

• Light speed lag
• ECM

further the enemy ships are known from the start

Actually it is the opposite. The mines/drones are known from the start, because their light has already reached the jump point no matter where the jump point is, however the enemy's light will take time to reach the mines/drones.

...torpedoes in your universe already easily track things across a light second Im not sure why you now want to argue its hard when the sensor in a torpedo can do it?

No one ever said that torpedoes track things easily. They have massive sensor packages easily visible in the artwork, because it isn't easy. There is a difference between detecting something and getting a firing solution.

Real life Ion drives even today provide the endurance and mass efficiency required while your ships have power generation that is off the scale so powering them isn't a problem.

Real life ion drives do degrade and sometimes have major problems, especially when confronted with heavy solar winds. The Hayabusa space probe suffered major degradation to its ion engines during a solar flare, and only made it back to Earth by tying the neutralizer from the otherwise destroyed engine A with the ion generator of engine B.

Sand/dust as Kinetic kill weapon was proposed since the 70s for space warfare because once the warhead deploys the cloud ensures a probable hit even against a maneuvering target, beam weapons would be rather useless against it in its terminal phase.

A cloud of sand isn't going to be more effective than a total matter conversion explosion, which is what they currently use. Beam weapons, it turns out, are not useless against micro debris. There are already plans to use lasers to clean up orbital debris, and a particle beam would be even more effective.

[MBehave]

Yep, here we go

The difficulty at detecting the extremely low levels of backscatter in space is common knowledge and is SELF EVIDENT FACT, that does not require me to provide any sources. Its a basic problem in astronomy with detecting pulsars and other directional events even if they are close to Earth is effectively impossible unless they travel though a dense region of space. Further the impossibility at effectively detecting low powered lasers even in Earths atmosphere at any reasonable distance has been one of the two primary reasons(second is near immunity from natural/friendly/enemy EMI) for laser communication systems development by all major military powers on Earth.

After telling me effectively how easy detecting backscatter of near vacuum is you have then made a statement tracking ships for light seconds that are emitting massive amounts of thermal energy from engines capable of accelerating those ships at 30+g is hard... Do you even comprehend the order of magnitude in difficulty between these two things?
Lets at least try to be consistent and not move goal posts in your very same post, which do you want to go with.. is tracking a million ton ship with shields/engines/sensors active hard? or is tracking back scatter of photons in a near vacuum light seconds away easy?
I was also using the laser as an example of how hard it is to detect backscatter and that insulting the front of the drones means their minimal upkeep thermal waste heat could be emitted away from the jump point.

Which is completely moot once they go active with main engines as they are no longer trying to retain stealth and they do so outside of energy and even most torpedo ranges of the enemy fleet.

I made two statements in my OP, the mines would need to be offset BACK off the jump point and have higher thrust then the enemy ships.

The only possible response a jumping in fleet could have is to launch their own torpedo salvos and unless they are also using a carrier system much like the mines themselves the torpedoes could very well be skirted by the mines, either way the attacking fleet to expend their own torpedoes is a win and it would effectively be a torpedo for a torpedo. The attacking ships at best lose a torpedo for every one of the defenders, no idea how effective such a system would be as a interception system so lets go with at best. The Attacking fleet would have had to carry those weapons from their launch point or been resupplied on route and the total resources put into those torpedoes even if they were the exact same make would be greater and even a 1:1 due to supply chain issues for the attacker is a win.

As for light lag, I was not aware their was any FTL sensors in Outsider, so how exactly does light lag require active rather then passive sensor systems, how is a IR tracker inferior to a active lirdar system when tracking ships that are often 100+m long and gave themselves away upon entering the system? Why exactly does light lag require active sensors to be on the mines?


Now on to energy weapons targeting clouds of sand.
You may wish to actually look into how the laser system to clean up near earth objects actually is supposed to work, it knocks them out of orbit not destroys them outright and its not even suggested it be used on sand/dust.

Additionally the amount of energy to vaporize(vaporising it isn't enough) and knock off course a ton of sand spread out over hundred square meters requires more energy then the weapon systems in outsider except for the waveloom are capable of delivering.(which apparently breaks down atomic bonds so its a different beast all together)

If we assumed they did have the energy required and could fire a diffused beam to target wide area they would be IMMUNE TO TORPEDOES COMPLETELY!
If we go the beams can fire so fast and so rapidly they can target each clumps of sand

Now on to the suggestion that antimatter/matter explosions are good weapons in space, they are not, they are one of the worst and least efficient weapon systems imaginable. As for proof its self evident fact but since that isn't enough for you, its called the Inverse-square law.

Using kilotons is not a good way to do this but its workable.
Loroi LR Torpedo(most destructive Lori torpedo) has a max damage output of 300*10=3000
This assumes NO FUEL USED for thrust.
A terran Heavy railgun does 53 damage and given its mass and speed we know it equates to ~3.8kilotons.
3000/53 leaves us with 215 kilotons as the most destructive detonation of a torpedo possible.
This is about 17.1kilotons of gamma rays per square meter at 1 meter distance.
At 1000m detonation range you only have an energy density of 1.3e-6 kilotons per square meter. About 4000 times more energy per square meter over a second then the sunlight at Earths orbit. Sounds like a lot, its not.
With no shields a 1cm thick iron armour plate that starts at ~30c will melt but not boil under that amount of energy.
If the Torpedo has used even 10% of its fuel the iron armour will absorb the energy, I have completely ignored any reflected gamma radiation which would actually make a 1cm thick iron plate survive even a full fuel torpedo blast at 1000m.
While such a blast would cause problems for a ship and degrade its weapons/sensors its unlikely to actually end the ship and the weapons and sensors in shadow from the blast will still function.

However...
Outsider ships have shields that reduce energy damage and its also logical to assume they have armour far better then simple iron is in use, armour that has both a higher melting point and better gamma reflective properties.

IF we assume the following.
33% fuel left in the torpedo.
Armour that can absorb/reflect double the energy of pure iron.
Shields that reduce damage by 1/2(given in the weapons stat page)
You need ~200m or less to get a kill and by kill I mean disable the ship, its highly likely most of the crew will still be alive.

Comic wants rule of cool, boom boom is cool, clouds of sand or antimatter not so much, but don't argue simple explosive devices even antimatter/matter based are anything but utterly inefficient in real life. Adding a laser/railgun weapon to a torpedo would be more efficient. An omni directional energy blast is simply not a good way to try to kill in space, and thats all an antimatter explosion effectively is, an omnidirectional gamma ray laser.

As for Ion Drives...
Ion drives are proven to be long duration and reliable, this does not mean they cannot fail for any number of reasons. If you have data on Ion drives being unsuitable for use in space and their proven benefits are negated in vacuum and all previous research and testing was incorrect/inaccurate/mistaken then please provide a source. I really don't see any point to your statement on a failed ion drive rather then to argue for arguments sake, systems can and do fail no claim was made ion drives cannot.

hi hi

Here we go again.

Things mine/drone does not need which ships do... *snip*

Every one of your points about mine/drones applies symmetrically to ships. Ships need or do not need these things every bit as much or as little as mine/drones.

This is not a rule of cool, but a law of narrative interest. Just like having FTL at all, which is almost certainly something that will never happen in reality, it is necessary to have a story. No characters, no story.

The backscatter on the laser communications is not detectable not unless it hit a planets atmosphere or such like.

Citation needed. Visible light and other wavelengths are entirely capable of detecting small objects in space.

Why would the drones require a active sensor system? they are in a friendly system with plenty of sources of active radar.

• Light speed lag
• ECM

further the enemy ships are known from the start

Actually it is the opposite. The mines/drones are known from the start, because their light has already reached the jump point no matter where the jump point is, however the enemy's light will take time to reach the mines/drones.

...torpedoes in your universe already easily track things across a light second Im not sure why you now want to argue its hard when the sensor in a torpedo can do it?

No one ever said that torpedoes track things easily. They have massive sensor packages easily visible in the artwork, because it isn't easy. There is a difference between detecting something and getting a firing solution.

Real life Ion drives even today provide the endurance and mass efficiency required while your ships have power generation that is off the scale so powering them isn't a problem.

Real life ion drives do degrade and sometimes have major problems, especially when confronted with heavy solar winds. The Hayabusa space probe suffered major degradation to its ion engines during a solar flare, and only made it back to Earth by tying the neutralizer from the otherwise destroyed engine A with the ion generator of engine B.

Sand/dust as Kinetic kill weapon was proposed since the 70s for space warfare because once the warhead deploys the cloud ensures a probable hit even against a maneuvering target, beam weapons would be rather useless against it in its terminal phase.

A cloud of sand isn't going to be more effective than a total matter conversion explosion, which is what they currently use. Beam weapons, it turns out, are not useless against micro debris. There are already plans to use lasers to clean up orbital debris, and a particle beam would be even more effective.

[icekatze]

hi hi

The difficulty at detecting the extremely low levels of backscatter in space is common knowledge and is SELF EVIDENT FACT, that does not require me to provide any sources.

Ahh, I see. I had mistaken this for a discussion.

Have fun with your monologue, but I don't think you're going to get much traction with anyone.

[Zorg56]

But what about a droid attack on the wookies?


XD
My question about mines was a mistake.
Please, stop.

[SVlad]

One of Russian readers asks:

Is it possible to understand telepathy mechanics by comparing Loroi and human brain?

[Arioch]

One of Russian readers asks:

Is it possible to understand telepathy mechanics by comparing Loroi and human brain?

I don't think so. Telepathy is an emergent property of consciousness, rather than a property of the physical brain.

[Zorg56]

So, you can brainwash people into telepathy?

[icekatze]

hi hi

So, you can brainwash people into telepathy?

I'm sure the Loroi have experimented with training people into being able to use telekinesis and more advanced telepathic abilities. But I don't think any non-loroi that anyone knows about ever became telepathic.

[Zorg56]

If you need to be loroi to use telepathy then it means that it is somthing in their biology (brain or other parts)?

Arioch says:

I don't think so. Telepathy is an emergent property of consciousness, rather than a property of the physical brain.

Then we just need to use psychology(or somthing else, even computer implants) to reach their type of consciousness, no?