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[Karst45]

it stays silent and looks like a random bit of drifting space junk.

That oddly seem to have a pattern you dont want to have them drift away or there will be more calculation involved (and hardware) to have them send the signal to the next one.

That or if they drift too much they may get lost.

Makes me wonder how effective telepathic semaphore could be.

Just wire up your crew's brains so you can rapidly put them to sleep and wake them up to blink out the message to watching farseers.

Has sleep ever been confirmed as a means to suppress a farseen contact?

well unless you suppress all brain activity, i think they could detect something,

maybe a minimal crew in put into a coma could make it hard for the farseer to detect the said ship. but such ship wouldnt last long against the loroi patrol.

[bunnyboy]

So instead of giving scouts everything they need from best of available,
you wan't send them around in cheap rustbuckets and write "message in bottle",
which some actual war-space-ship can come pick up?

[Mjolnir]

That oddly seem to have a pattern you dont want to have them drift away or there will be more calculation involved (and hardware) to have them send the signal to the next one.

Uh...what? So far as that makes any sense at all, it doesn't seem related to the idea being discussed. We aren't talking about a network of communications relays or anything that has to do any sort of complex calculations.

That or if they drift too much they may get lost.

Get lost where? How far do you expect it to go in the time periods involved?

[bunnyboy]

Lost in space.

Even if it is beeping, it isn't easy to find. Bigger than football, smaller than car, in somewhere in whole solar system.
You don't know its location, speed or path. You can send your activation signal and hope that isn't behind star or planet and get answer before someone else get interested of you.

It's like:

Caeser call one of his scouts and tell him.
"Go on Siberia and write everything you find out, on to tree and come back. Then, even if you die, I can send a legion to retrieve your message.
Also. We have new and warm jackets. We don't provide one for you to keep expenses low, but be happy that every soldier will have one."

[Mjolnir]

Even if it is beeping, it isn't easy to find.

Yes, it is.

Bigger than football, smaller than car, in somewhere in whole solar system.

And the only thing in the entire system that is transmitting messages at your ship.

You don't know its location, speed or path. You can send your activation signal and hope that isn't behind star or planet and get answer before someone else get interested of you.

Do you have any idea how absurdly unlikely it is to be behind a planet even for one attempt, especially if it's in or near a jump zone? And if that miracle occurs, for it to remain behind a planet for multiple contact attempts from a ship transiting the system? Or that, given the fact that they're going into a warzone, they might decide some redundancy is in order and launch two or three buoys?

It's right out in plain sight. The only reason it isn't picked up by random passersby is that it looks completely uninteresting until you ping it with the right command. It could be programmed to react to identification embedded in the radar used by the ship it was left for, point a dish at the ship when it comes by, and announce "I am here".

Caeser call one of his scouts and tell him.
"Go on Siberia and write everything you find out, on to tree and come back. Then, even if you die, I can send a legion to retrieve your message.
Also. We have new and warm jackets. We don't provide one for you to keep expenses low, but be happy that every soldier will have one."

...no, it's not even remotely like that in any way.

[Arioch]

A long-range scout starship is a very expensive, cutting-edge piece of hardware, especially for Humanity. Traveling these distances is not routine for humans; they don't have any cheap "rust-bucket" starships that can travel farther than any human vessel ever has. The people manning these ships are the best and brightest, because their mission is critical. They are doing hazardous duty, and losses are expected, but they are hardly "expendable." Humanity has only 10 such ships (well, 9 now), and no replacements in the pipeline.

Even if you did have some kind of cheap run-down trash ships that you could send... I don't think such rust-buckets would make a very good first impression on the aliens you're attempting to contact.

Heh, well, no worries, Arioch, do you have a sample of what the human military ships textures are like?

Not really, but there's a closer shot of the cruiser in a few pages; I'll show you a color version when it's done.

Grats on starting a brand new chapter Arioch!

Thanks!

[sunphoenix]

Yeah Arioch... I hope our enthusiastic support of the forums have inspired you to more frequently publish new pages!

Its a small part that we can do but I, at least, hope it helps!

[Sprawl63]

A long-range scout starship is a very expensive, cutting-edge piece of hardware, especially for Humanity. Traveling these distances is not routine for humans; they don't have any cheap "rust-bucket" starships that can travel farther than any human vessel ever has. The people manning these ships are the best and brightest, because their mission is critical. They are doing hazardous duty, and losses are expected, but they are hardly "expendable." Humanity has only 10 such ships (well, 9 now), and no replacements in the pipeline.

Even if you did have some kind of cheap run-down trash ships that you could send... I don't think such rust-buckets would make a very good first impression on the aliens you're attempting to contact.

Heh, well, no worries, Arioch, do you have a sample of what the human military ships textures are like?

Not really, but there's a closer shot of the cruiser in a few pages; I'll show you a color version when it's done.

Grats on starting a brand new chapter Arioch!

Thanks!

Is that '9' left an official number or yet to be declared?

[Cy83r]

Ah I see now. So say two ships jump closer to friendly lines and then fly in separate directions to a predetermined distance. This could clearly be used to communicate something or other. There are all sorts of variations you could plan off of manoeuvres like this. Complex orders would still need a courier but you could easily have enough "symbols" to convey important points.

Farseers have difficulty distinguishing ship crews from planetary populations in the same system...

The operative word here is "jump" not "fly". Long-range maneuver-based Farsensing communications would require synchronised binary jump/no-jump patterns across multiple systems. Alternately, one or more fast couriers could perform jingle-jangle style maneuvers between two adjacent systems, hopping back and forth rapidly within certain time-windows. Even with just a series of couriers, forming up, jumping, setting up for the jump back (aka canceling your inertia and then reversing it), and repeating would be excessively time-consuming.

Forced comas followed by revivals are also likely, but I'm just guessing here, to be medically unfeasible unless you had some sort of simple, psychically-active, cyborg brain attached to a coma-switch; such biotech might 'burn out', possibly rather quickly, and require replacing a more-or-less disembodied and fatally abused sentient brain. And I'll take a further guess and presume that the Loroi might find this idea a little abhorrent.

[Trantor]

Even if you did have some kind of cheap run-down trash ships that you could send... I don't think such rust-buckets would make a very good first impression on the aliens you're attempting to contact.

Well, they were´nt too much impressed by the bell, too...

[Trantor]

Yeah Arioch... I hope our enthusiastic support of the forums have inspired you to more frequently publish new pages!

Its a small part that we can do but I, at least, hope it helps!

Don´t you ever do that again!

[NOMAD]

A long-range scout starship is a very expensive, cutting-edge piece of hardware, especially for Humanity. Traveling these distances is not routine for humans; they don't have any cheap "rust-bucket" starships that can travel farther than any human vessel ever has. The people manning these ships are the best and brightest, because their mission is critical. They are doing hazardous duty, and losses are expected, but they are hardly "expendable." Humanity has only 10 such ships (well, 9 now), and no replacements in the pipeline.

Is that '9' left an official number or yet to be declared?

yep, 5 Bennet class scout ( two modded/refitted to Yorktown class specs, one complete the other is in the shipyard ) and 4 Yorktown (as built)

check the insider terrain class page:

http://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/fleet_terran.html

[Mjolnir]

Forced comas followed by revivals are also likely, but I'm just guessing here, to be medically unfeasible unless you had some sort of simple, psychically-active, cyborg brain attached to a coma-switch; such biotech might 'burn out', possibly rather quickly, and require replacing a more-or-less disembodied and fatally abused sentient brain. And I'll take a further guess and presume that the Loroi might find this idea a little abhorrent.

It wasn't a serious suggestion, not for the Loroi anyway. I've pointed out before that the Umiak would get a lot more out of telepathy...

Now, if they figure out that bottled Loroi brains can be used for instantaneous interstellar comms, they might hold back on exterminating the species, and settle for complete subjugation instead. Sure, the brains might burn out fast...but Loroi breed fast.

[Karst45]

Still even with all that i think it kind of ridiculous to just leave boey behind.

There some many thing that could go wrong. Damage from radiation / debris to getting picked up by the wrong hand. not to forget you have to send another ship to pick it up.

[fredgiblet]

Radiation isn't a concern, debris is only a tiny concern. If it's set up like Mjolnir suggests then the chances of it getting picked up by someone else is miniscule. As for retrieving it the setup Mjolnir is suggesting wouldn't need to be retrieved, all you'd have to do is jump in, ping it, receive the data and jump out. Self-destruct systems would likely be standard to prevent tampering and to provide for elimination of evidence once their purpose is served.

[Mjolnir]

Radiation isn't a concern, debris is only a tiny concern. If it's set up like Mjolnir suggests then the chances of it getting picked up by someone else is miniscule. As for retrieving it the setup Mjolnir is suggesting wouldn't need to be retrieved, all you'd have to do is jump in, ping it, receive the data and jump out. Self-destruct systems would likely be standard to prevent tampering and to provide for elimination of evidence once their purpose is served.

Exactly. We've already got all sorts of probes and satellites operating in space for decades on end, here in the real world...they'll have had the needed technology for about two centuries. Radiation isn't a problem, debris is only likely to be a concern in a system like Naam...you might want to launch a few buoys, but that's fine, they'll be dirt cheap, probably cheaper than mass driver rounds. They're incredibly unlikely to get picked up by the wrong people, and could easily be built to destroy anything of value if tampered with.

So none of the given downsides are actually of any significance, and such buoys would greatly assist coordination and scheduling by removing the need for ships to be in the same system at the same time, and allow for records of any findings to be recovered in case a ship is lost. Doesn't fit my definition of "ridiculous".

[bunnyboy]

So, you have a scout ship seeding space probes in different systems. It is actually good way to study many systems with low resources.

But it's still better to equip the scout ship with all edge of technology and have they pick it up themselves.
When they have launch timetables and rudimentary knowledge of heavenly bodies of system, they can pick it up back easily even after of years.

Just for the remember the opinion involved.

I doubt the scouts themselves got any upgrades. Scouts are by defintion expendable. No reason to spend resources on it. A single scout cost less resources to build and mantain. And you're going to send it into hte unknown to make contact with a potentially hostile alien race. Makes more sense to spend resources upgrading your true warships with state-of-the-art tech, not the scouts.

I'd immagine Bellarime makes periodic reports, or can leave navigational bouyos of some sort. It's not like humanity is sending scouts wiht the purpose of expansion anway. Note that a replacement scout can be built a lot faster than a replacement heavy cruiser. And if the native turn out to be hostile, you want your best tech on the heavy hitters, not scouts. Better use of resources and you don't show the potential enemy your best cards.

And when the natives turn out to be hostile, how you know it, when your exploration is involved to have some losses and the plan for gathering any information is have someone else picking up their "thrashes". This is a bad plan. Bad plan. Bad plan!

[bunnyboy]

Tried little math for drifting. Because I can count with paws only for 4, I write up a program do it for me.

SpoilerShow

Code: Select all

<HTML>
<HEAD><SCRIPT>
function start() {
	spd = 0;
	r = 150000000000;
	for (i=0; r>700000000; i++) {
		a = 134000000000000000000/(r*r);
		r = r - spd*60 - a*1800;
		spd += a*60;
	}
	time.innerHTML = i/1440;
	dist.innerHTML = r;
}
</SCRIPT></HEAD><BODY onload="start()">
<FORM name="laskuri" action=""><TABLE>
<TR><TD>Time</TD>    <TD ID="time"></TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Distance</TD><TD ID="dist"></TD></TR>
</TABLE></FORM>
</BODY></HTML>

It says that object with no speed at all, will collide on sun in 65 days if they are 1 AU distance.
It was only to highlight that everything moves in space and if you don't know where your buyo is going, in time it gets harder to find.

[Mayhem]

It says that object with no speed at all, will collide on sun in 65 days if they are 1 AU distance.
It was only to highlight that everything moves in space and if you don't know where your buyo is going, in time it gets harder to find.

Just toss it into an elliptic orbit with the star at 1 focus and the other in the middle of the jump zone.

[fredgiblet]

You don't NEED to find it. All you need to do is ping it with the code and it'll tell you where it is.