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Since this comic portrays the best space battle I've seen in any kind of media since banner of the stars (and this one is still better), and I need to satiate my Scifi addiction, I'm trying to figure out what ships were the Loroi using in the battle that starts on page 74-75. I'm using http://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider074.html, the 4th panel of page 78 http://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider078.html and successive pages as reference; and of course, the Loroi fleet reference page: http://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/fleet_loroi.html

28 ships+Barsam courier.
Vanguard/frontline group: 2 Rapier escort cruisers, 4 warhammer destroyers. Joined later by a 3rd Rapier escort cruiser (Winter-tide, RIP, leader of the vanguard).
After the first battle they are joined by Torrent.

Right flank: 3 Scimitar Mk3 heavy cruiser, 3 Warhammer destroyers. Joined later by 1 Katana warcruiser (Black-razor, commanded by Ashrain, leader of the right flank).

Left flank: 3 Scimitar Mk3 heavy cruiser?, 3 Warhammer destroyers. Joined later by 1 Swift Vanguard battlecruiser (Tsunami: commanded by the Loroi with 2 braids and a moon symbol on her hair, leader of the left flank).

Center: 2 Scimitar Mk3 heavy cruiser? 4 Warhammer destroyers?. 1 of these ships, most likely a Scimitar, should be Torrent, commanded by Short-Spiky-Purple-Hair commander, in charge of this formation while Stillstorm commands the whole strike group.
Also joined by Stillstorm's Tempest, which I think is a modified Swift Vanguard battlecruiser.

Rearguard group:
Formed by 4 command ships: Stillstorm's Vanguard, braided loroi's Vanguard, Ashrain's Katana, and Winter-tide (Rapier).

The red ship close to this group seems to be the Barsam courier ship.



References:
Stillstorm's modified Swift Vanguard battlecruiser:
Compare Tsunami's Swift Vanguard: http://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider082.html
With Stillstorm's Swift Vanguard, in particular the top center portion of it: http://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider076.html
Since Stillstorm is the more senior of the group I expect the modified ship is hers (although there are only 2 so we don't have many references), but they could be different versions of the same ship and not something in her honour. Or maybe I got it all wrong and they are different ships lol

Ashrain's Katana, a war cruiser class is the only example of this ship.
Seen in the bottom left of page 76: http://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider076.html, bottom of page 81: http://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider081.html and 7th panel of page 83: http://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider083.html.

8 Scimitar Mk3 heavy cruisers
Seen in the bottom right of page 76: http://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider076.html and maybe the 4th panel of http://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider078.html

The rapier class (3 in total) is seen in much detail as it is the only ship that got destroyed, and the Warhammer destroyer is clearly visible in all maps (12-14 of these).


Thanks Arioch for making a comic worth analyzing haha

Yeah... when I read those pages, I was very impressed, because I'd never seen a comic depicting space combat that wasn't either a) totally arbitrary about every aspect of it, so in other words, space combat was nothing but a tool to create dramatic tension; or b) such extreme hard science that several times as much panel space went to explaining why there was no action than to anything resembling action, and ended in a sudden anticlimax which also got at least a page of justification. Space combat in tabletop RPGs tends to follow the same pattern, and that's when it isn't just like a videogame.

So, yeah, this gives an idea of how to do it right! Now, granted, it probably takes more work to do so than is feasible for running a space combat in real time during an RPG, but it's a good enough demonstration to give me an idea of how to run one at a rate of one combat turn a day, and that's pretty cool!

I'm not entirely sure about all the analysis, I'm very sure Winter Tide was in the Vanguard group and there were several ships of the same class (but Nova's is the only one we really see). I'm also not sure what other examples of Stillstorm's ship there are, but it's one of the few ships of its class to survive the Semoset campaign.

Ashrain's ship is unique here, since its more usual duty is escorting the imperial flagship. That's what the black stripe on it denotes. I think the red dot is the wreck of the Bellarmine, the courier should be well clear. It's very close to the Tempest, and the vector seems to line up with the missile launch at the end.

Maybe someone else can help more with the specifics, I remember there being a list of ships in the strike group for the battle at Naam... somewhere.

Thanks, I'm glad that you enjoyed the detail and pacing of the battle. I think the use of the tactical display is key to give the reader a sense of the unfolding situation with a minimum of narration. This is the style I plan to use for battles throughout the comic.

The strength of Strike Group 51 at the beginning of the second Naam battle was: 1xGCS, 1xBC, 1xCW, 8xCA, 4xCLE, 13xDD. This was down 7 ships from the previous day's fighting; in the initial ambush 1xCW, 1xCA, 1xCLE, 4xDD were destroyed or damaged and withdrawn. A further 1xCLE (Winter Tide) and 1xDD (Thunderbolt) were destroyed in the second battle.

The other two groups that entered Naam ahead of SG51 were strike groups 37 and 56. Both took heavy losses and the surviving ships withdrew prior to the second battle.

The squadron breakdown of SG51 during the second battle was:
Van: 3xCLE (including Winter Tide (Nova)), 4xDD
Center: 1xGCS (Tempest (Stillstorm)), 2xCA (including Torrent (Arclight)), 1xCLE, 3xDD
Left Wing: 1xBC (Tsunami (Moonglow)), 3xCA, 3xDD
Right Wing: 1xCW (Black Razor (Ashrain)), 3xCA, 3xDD

I did actually go so far as to assign names to every one of the 28 ships in the group, but I realize this is silly misallocation of name resources, and so I'll hold on to them as I'll probably want to reuse some for more important ships later in the story.

Tempest is a Vortex-class command ship, whereas Tsunami is a Vanguard-class battlecruiser. They are similar designs, but the former is significantly larger.

Namaphry wrote:I think the red dot is the wreck of the Bellarmine, the courier should be well clear.

That's correct. Mozin's courier (Prophet's Reason) probably hadn't jumped yet at the start of the battle, but it would have been nowhere nearby.

Ooooh, thanks for the clarification, makes sense for a GCS to be there, and the red ship being the derelict. Also explains how the interior of the ship is so freaking huge Alex almost had 2 heart attacks walking to the bridge lol

Yeah good choice on not showing more names, not only was the space battle itself great, the style in which it was portrayed was very easy to follow. Whatever creative licenses you took were on point too -as you explained, in a real battle we wouldn't clearly see more than 1 ship per pannel, but it would look lazy and empty-

Do you have a name for the captain of Sirocco?

Turrosh Mak wrote:Do you have a name for the captain of Sirocco?

Soroin Torret Tipot ("Azure").

It may not be very correct to ask this question here considering it is the competition, and if so please erase it Arioch as I don't want to disrespect you nor your effort put into both the comic and forum.

Here goes: does anyone know of any media portraying space battles elsewhere? proper space battles, with tactics and such, not hero saves the day in a fighter against whole fleet kind of space battles.

Apart from banner of the stars which has some nice battles (way inferior to Outsider mind you), ender's game has some sort of tactics but the actual space battle tactics are dumbed down to make them laughable. Galactica has some space battles but they are mostly shitty skirmishes by Outsider's standards. Any other examples you guys know of?

Books, Comics, Manga, Series, Movies, whatever it is will be appreciated... I need my scifi fix XD

The Lost fleet book series by Jack Campbell, some liberties in regards to FTL and ship accelerations but otherwise very 'realistic' in its approach to space combat and tactical oriented.

EDIT:

Arioch wrote:

Turrosh Mak wrote:Do you have a name for the captain of Sirocco?

Soroin Torret Tipot ("Azure").

That better become a joke later on.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes (anime) is all about large-scale fleet combat.

Starship Operators (anime) is a little bit silly (academy kids hijack a battlecruiser and conduct a reality-TV war against the Evil Empire), but has some well-thought out and interesting tactical battles.

Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (anime) takes the classic series and updates it with a significant dose of plausibility. If Outsider was animated, this is what it would look like.

CJ Cherryh's Downbelow Station and Pride of Chanur novels (set in the same universe) have some good fleet battles and strategic starship operations.

Niven & Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye (novel) has only a few small-scale battles, but some very interesting combat mechanics.

EE Smith's Lensman series (novels) is a tough read, but it's got some really interesting and creative utra-high-tech space combat mechanics. I recommend starting with Galactic Patrol.

dragoongfa wrote:That better become a joke later on.

It's unlikely that the name will ever be said in the comic.

Arioch wrote: It's unlikely that the name will ever be said in the comic.

Dangit, I really hoped to see Soroin Torret Tipot be served tea with an azure teapot.

I think bab5 tries at times, admittedly don't remember all that much. Particularly in the scenes with the human-minbari war of extermination.

Which is actually in some ways comparable to a potential human-loroi conflict. Due to the differences in tech levels and unscrupulousness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeNBJ5o-b7s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crest_of_the_Stars <--- some dislike it, personally it's a old favorite, some pretty decent space tactics in it though... some pretty crazy ones too, and so noted in show.

Ran across this image in the temp directory:

Argron wrote:Here goes: does anyone know of any media portraying space battles elsewhere? proper space battles, with tactics and such, not hero saves the day in a fighter against whole fleet kind of space battles.

I'd very much suggest the Honor Harrington series of novels. Originally inspired by the Horatio Hornblower series they follow the title character from captaining a light cruiser policing maritime shipping lanes all the way through to commanding huge fleets during interstellar war.

As for the space battles and tactics think wooden tallship naval combat on the 2d surface of the water (long sailing approaches on the sea punctuated by hellish barrages of cannonfire once the ships reach each other, broadsides, crossing the T, 'ships of the line', shooting for the sails to prevent an enemy from escaping etc.) only now it's translated to starships in 3d space (hours of multi-g accelerations to approach the enemy from the other side of a star system, hellish barrages of missiles with nuclear-bomb pumped x-ray laser warheads, laser cannon broadsides, down the throat shots, 'ships of the wall', and hyperspace travel).

Oh and there are treecats.

The genre for space battle descriptions: http://www.goodreads.com/genres/militar ... ce-fiction

There's also the Antares trilogy by Michael McCollum, which focuses on inter-stellar war and space battle tactics.
The tactics revolve very much around the FTL-technology in this book, which is similar to a kind of wormholes, so that enemies can only "appear" at very specific places in your solar system, meaning that you have a good chance of defending that point in space where they must come through.
But there are some battles described where one fleet is making a whip-maneuveur around the sun, and the others wish to intercept them.
Hours preparation and speed gathering to fight only a blink of a second before the converging fleets pass each other.

The Antares trilogy also explores the psychological differences between Humanity and an Alien Species, which due to different ways of thinking react completely differently, although otherwise the logical reasoning they use seems to make the races very similar to each other. (Same problem? same solution. Except for the problem of how to handle meeting an Alien Species.)

smilr wrote:

Argron wrote:Here goes: does anyone know of any media portraying space battles elsewhere? proper space battles, with tactics and such, not hero saves the day in a fighter against whole fleet kind of space battles.

I'd very much suggest the Honor Harrington series of novels. Originally inspired by the Horatio Hornblower series they follow the title character from captaining a light cruiser policing maritime shipping lanes all the way through to commanding huge fleets during interstellar war.

As for the space battles and tactics think wooden tallship naval combat on the 2d surface of the water (long sailing approaches on the sea punctuated by hellish barrages of cannonfire once the ships reach each other, broadsides, crossing the T, 'ships of the line', shooting for the sails to prevent an enemy from escaping etc.) only now it's translated to starships in 3d space (hours of multi-g accelerations to approach the enemy from the other side of a star system, hellish barrages of missiles with nuclear-bomb pumped x-ray laser warheads, laser cannon broadsides, down the throat shots, 'ships of the wall', and hyperspace travel).

Oh and there are treecats.

I actually like the Hverse, because there are no Alien civilisations that are on a level to be comparable to humans. The dicks and antagonists are all human starting with the ancient by now incredibly decadent sol colonies, to backwards religious fundamentalists to a combination of nazi germany/communist regime (required expansion like nazi germany, but had a soviet mindset to work)

"The expanse": set in a far future where travel within the solar system is rather fast and reliable, where Mars and the Moon are colonized, plus other smaller colonies elsewhere in the Solar System and beyond (so far, mormon pilgrims lol) and people have diverged enough to consider themselves fully martians or fully belters, with clear physical and social differences. The story is great, there's no bullshit star trek pseudoscience and instead we get a pretty believable universe. More to the point of the thread, there is a space battle and while it is pretty small its still friggin awesome, with torpedos that take a long while to arrive instead of the usual 5 seconds to impact, railgun shots that cause damage like a real railgun, point defence guns, boarding parties, the works.
And it's only the third episode. Looking really epic, probably the best Scyfy series they ever produced.


PS: Sorry about the necromancy, this is the last thread I remember about this theme and didn't want to open further topics about other media in the forum.

smilr wrote:

Argron wrote:Here goes: does anyone know of any media portraying space battles elsewhere? proper space battles, with tactics and such, not hero saves the day in a fighter against whole fleet kind of space battles.

I'd very much suggest the Honor Harrington series of novels. Originally inspired by the Horatio Hornblower series they follow the title character from captaining a light cruiser policing maritime shipping lanes all the way through to commanding huge fleets during interstellar war.

As for the space battles and tactics think wooden tallship naval combat on the 2d surface of the water (long sailing approaches on the sea punctuated by hellish barrages of cannonfire once the ships reach each other, broadsides, crossing the T, 'ships of the line', shooting for the sails to prevent an enemy from escaping etc.) only now it's translated to starships in 3d space (hours of multi-g accelerations to approach the enemy from the other side of a star system, hellish barrages of missiles with nuclear-bomb pumped x-ray laser warheads, laser cannon broadsides, down the throat shots, 'ships of the wall', and hyperspace travel).

Oh and there are treecats.

Ehhhh. It's been pointed out on the Sufficient Velocity forums that HH really isn't a good portrayal of Age of Sail (In Space). None of the ships use tactics unless they're on their own, Manticore should be using Dreadnoughts to Haven's Superdreadnoughts if they're going to be Britain-expies, and all of this is pretty much flushed out the airlock when missile pods roll around. There's no historical comparison for those.

red: Problem with tactics in space is there aren't really that much to it since there is very little terrain to make use of(which is were tactics really comes in), pretty much the whole thing is get real sneaky(and do things that could go wrong spectacularly) or keep your fleet clustered for larger volley fire and combined point defense, there really isn't much more to it.
How to run efficient ship/fleet is a totally different matter, and morale, logistics and discipline are all touched on during the story.

I will say what I usually say about Honorverse it is not high literature but a pretty decent read none the less, focus is more on world building as compared to character development, but I like it.


Side note, expanse looks awesome! good sets, good acting, not entirely sure I like the choices for how the story is progressing, seems to be some serious shortcuts being taken as compared to the books but the writing is pretty good so might work out in the end.
Cautiously optimistic is my verdict on the tv-series, the books I really like.

I wore out on the mainline Honorverse when Honor started feeling a little too Mary Sue.