Armor values

[Arioch]

Remember that armor is only a second-tier defense; armor is only there to mitigate the damage that gets through the defensive screens. There is only so much materials science can do to resist such terrific energies.

The problem with having your main weapons point backwards is the engine outlets. The engine exhaust ports are essentially openings to the most vulnerable part of the ship; they're very hard to armor or protect with defensive screens (as in the Loroi case I imagine electromagnetic screens have got to interfere with the fields that the Loroi are using to accelerate the exhaust). Also, the engines produce a large, bright plume that is going to make sensor operation through it (especially when tracking very distant targets) problematic. So the last thing you want to do is present your tail to the enemy.

So, Loroi vessels have their defensive screens oriented mainly forward, housed in the prongs and the forward sections of the nacelles, which are also the most heavily-armored portions of the ship. The main weapons are all oriented to fire forward because you have to keep your nose pointed at the enemy to present your best defense (and also the smallest cross-section). We use Newtonian physics here, so you don't have to have your ship pointed in the direction of travel. The only reason the Loroi didn't run ahead of the torpedo barrage is that the necessity of defending a point required them to hold a fixed position.

Umiak vessels have their screens and armor spread more evenly around the ship, but they are still more vulnerable in the rear quarter than the front.

Also a quick note on the effectiveness of defenses against different weapon types: defensive screens have reduced effectiveness against lasers and kinetic weapons. Armor has reduced effectiveness against particle beams and plasma weapons.

[dfacto]

The problem with having your main weapons point backwards is the engine outlets. The engines are essentially openings to the most vulnerable part of the ship; they're very hard to armor or protect with defensive screens (as in the Loroi case I imagine electromagnetic screens have got to interfere with the fields that the Loroi are using to accelerate the exhaust). Also, the engines produce a large, bright plume that is going to make sensor operation through it (especially when tracking very distant targets) problematic. So the last thing you want to do is present your tail to the enemy.

In space you can get away with very weird designs, so having your turrets well away from the engines and able to cover a 180+ degree dome wouldn't be a real issue. Your concepts seem to fuse the pulse cannons with the engines, so maybe there's a power related reason they have to be in contact, but that still doesn't preclude a placement that puts them in position to fire forwards and backwards unimpeded.

We use Newtonian physics here, so you don't have to have your ship pointed in the direction of travel.

But it is very very important whether you can fire backwards while accelerating forwards, or whether you can only fire backwards while moving forward at a set velocity. If you can accelerate away from your target while firing backwards you can pick off torpedoes and gunboats much more easily, and then decelerate to close with the enemy again.

The best weapon placement for the Loroi would be large turrets on each side of the ship, each with a full 180 degree fire arc (with engines more centrally placed), and CIWS laser turrets on those turrets. This would let them fire all weapons in all directions as needed. With their superior speed it would be a cakewalk to interdict a Umiak fleet and slice it to pieces from any side. The only precaution necessary would be to dodge potshots.

And this is exactly what I think humanity would do with Loroi tech. They're unlikely to get it, but if you give Terrans Loroi pulse cannons the Umiak would be toast.

EDIT: quick mockup of what I mean


Near complete coverage with the ability to concentrate fire from three turrets forward or backwards, and two turret coverage for any given side. Just stay out of Umiak range and go to town.

[discord]

actually i think the armor value might be a combined shield/armor value thingie, just giving a indication of how difficult the ship is to hurt.

and remember the fuel issue, since it is a VERY significant one, loroi have faster acceleration, but the umiak have significantly longer 'range' at full speed.
actually you could compare lotus elise and the Bugatti veyron, the veyron is MUCH faster, but it needs a pit stop for fuel every 100km or so, whereas the elise would probably have longer range....if i recall correctly, at full throttle the veyron runs out of gas in under 15 minutes.

[Arioch]

The "baffles" created by the engine exhaust extends well behind the ship; putting the turrets out on stalks won't solve this problem. You still have the problem of vulnerability of the engine outlets, and by moving the engines closer together you reduce the maneuverability provided by differential thrust of the engines. Your design is still going to be at optimal effectiveness (both offensive and defensive) with the nose pointed at the enemy, and I don't agree that full 360 degree fire arc coverage is as important as you claim. It's not that hard to momentarily change the heading of the ship to bring your weapons to bear without significantly affecting your acceleration.

When designing the tactical system, in order to make maneuver meaningful I had to make the weapon fire rates relatively low -- otherwise the ships pound each other to dust the moment they're in weapons range. So the cooldown for most heavy weapons is pretty long, more than a minute. But with the differential thrust of their two main engines, the Loroi can pivot very rapidly. So even in the rare case when you want to fire on a target that's opposite to the direction you want to accelerate, you can pivot, fire your weaponry, then pivot back and continue to accelerate (while the weapons cool down) with very little loss of acceleration. But this is a fringe condition; there are very few circumstances in which the Loroi would want to present their vulnerable tails to the enemy.

[Rosen_Ritter_1]

Except the Loroi strategy IS already to stay out of range for as long as possible and *go to town*. That's what they've been doing throughout the majority of the war. I'm not sure this is as big of a deal as you're making it out to be. Because frankly, the ability to accelerate away from the Umiak at full burn constantly without having to shoot seems to be of marginal usefulness for a number of reasons.

Limited fuel capacity
-You're ship has limited fuel, especially compared to the Umiak who have more efficient engines. It's like a sprinter VS a Marathon runner. The Sprinter can't ever adopt a strategy of running nonstop against the Long distance runner pursuing him, cause he will lose the Stamina battle.

Strategic goals
-The Umiak ships AREN'T going to obsessive compulsively pursue your ships. In this current stage of the war, Loroi ships aren't the Umiaks interest. They're interested in the destruction of Loroi Union planets. If the Loroi raiders don't attack the Umiak fleets aggressively, those fleets will feel free to simply ignore them and carry on through the Steppes to attack the Loroi defensive line where the Loroi won't have a choice but to stand and fight, else allowing the Umiak to attack industrial worlds/naval bases unmolested.


And again. I'm sensing a degree of humanity is special vibe here. I'm not necessarily against the idea of arguing that certain universes could have better designs ,you probably could use the tech in most Gundam series to create more effective weapons than giant robots. What I'm wary of (especially in a relatively well designed universe like Outsider) is making the assertion that artistic portrayals of technology by the aliens is some kind of indicator that the aliens are idiots desperately in need of genius humans to help them out. Especially considering that half the time humanity indulges in the same kind of design quirks you see in sci-fi tech.


edit: And Arioch makes a very good point. These are VERY powerful reaction drives here. Sticking a gun on a stalk away from the engine body isn't going to move you away from the effects of the buisness end of the drive.

[BattleRaptor]

Rosen_Ritter_1
I didnt post what you are responding too...

I couldnt be bothered after your claim about weapons.. despite the fact Terran ship specs show the cruisers carry mostly railguns.. while the Heavy cruiser carries 2 more heavy lasers then heavy railguns, but the railguns shoot 8 times faster.

[Rosen_Ritter_1]

Rosen_Ritter_1
I didnt post what you are responding too...

Whoops. My bad.

I couldnt be bothered after your claim about weapons.. despite the fact Terran ship specs show the cruisers carry mostly railguns.. while the Heavy cruiser carries 2 more heavy lasers then heavy railguns, but the railguns shoot 8 times faster.

But you felt bothered enough to say you couldn't be bothered?


And cruisers don't carry *mostly* railguns.

Centaur Class cruiser
04 Heavy Laser
04 Heavy Mass Driver
04 Point-Defense Laser
02 Missile Tubes
01 Anti-Missile Launchers

America class cruiser
08 Heavy Laser
06 Heavy Mass Driver
08 Point-Defense Laser
04 Missile Tubes
02 Anti-Missile Launchers

Even if you discount the point defense lasers, it seems that only a couple of the lighter classes carry more mass drivers than they do laser batteries.



Though I'm not sure what your point about the railguns rate of fire is. Yes. That's quite useful, but that doesn't really make the weapon all that more effective at the ranges these engagements are happening in. Not when even an Umiak battle group can camp out at a hundred thousand kilometers away from you, kill all your ships, take a four hour nap and still have over half an hour to evade your incoming rail gun salvo.

[Ktrain]

Not when even an Umiak battle group can camp out at a hundred thousand kilometers away from you, kill all your ships, take a four hour nap and still have over half an hour to evade your incoming rail gun salvo.

Umm (digression)? I thought Umiak went weeks without sleeping, would they even be capable of napping?

[Rosen_Ritter_1]

Umm (digression)? I thought Umiak went weeks without sleeping, would they even be capable of napping?

Ok, that was a lie. They're really watching episodes of My Little Pony Friendship is magic. The philosophy of friendship being magical greatly suits their collectivist friendship valuing mentality.


The Loroi will soon be seeing some rather strange markings on newly constructed Umiak warships.

[icekatze]

hi hi

The power of friendship, humanity's greatest weapon cannot be stopped by armor or screens.

[BattleRaptor]

95-98.5%(besides missiles) of the damage output of Terran ships comes from Mass Drivers.

Railguns are Terran ships Primary Weapon

[Ktrain]

(I should be studying real analysis right now but naaaa.)

[Rosen_Ritter_1]

95-98.5%(besides missiles) of the damage output of Terran ships comes from Mass Drivers.

Railguns are Terran ships Primary Weapon

95-98.5% of the theoretical damage output of a Terran ship comes from it's Mass Drivers. In practice I severely doubt there'd be many conditions where a Terran ship could get close enough (even against another Terran ship) to manage a hit with a Mass Driver round.

(I should be studying real analysis right now but naaaa.)

FUCK YEAR!

[NOMAD]

(I should be studying real analysis right now but naaaa.)

Ktrain, you just made my day, thx mates

[TrashMan]

You shouldn't really put any values under too much scrutiny.
Blaster (beam cannons) should have just as big range/damage problems as lasers, but the description mentions the Loroi found a way around it. If he chose to, he could have just as easily written that humans found ways to get rid of all friction in mass drivers...or something.

While Arioch has demonstrated he has ample knowledge of physics, he IS writing a story about hot space-elves. His story is sci-fi, so certain liberties will be taken here and there. Nothing major tough.
I'd rate Outsuder to be somewhat harder than most sci-fi comics/stories out there. So relax and enjoy the story...which just got VERY interesting..

[Rosen_Ritter_1]

You shouldn't really put any values under too much scrutiny.
Blaster (beam cannons) should have just as big range/damage problems as lasers, but the description mentions the Loroi found a way around it. If he chose to, he could have just as easily written that humans found ways to get rid of all friction in mass drivers...or something.

No. Not as easily. Since the premise for the story is that humanity is technologically inferior to the Loroi/Umiak.

That's one reason why I DO like sitting down and thinking about the Outsider background extensively. Because Airoch HAS managed to achieve a high level of consistency to his partially realistic tech.

[dfacto]

The "baffles" created by the engine exhaust extends well behind the ship; putting the turrets out on stalks won't solve this problem.

I don't see how this matters. You won't shoot your own engines, and with the extreme ranges we're talking about you would still be able to put all three turrets on targets within a wide cone (past a certain intersect point of the fire arcs.

As for the engine disturbance, unless that's an implicit way engines work in outsider, I see no reason why you would have any significant particle/EM backscatter in a vacuum, especially backscatter so intense that it would blind your sensors even if they are placed well away from your engines.

by moving the engines closer together you reduce the maneuverability provided by differential thrust of the engines.

The current Loroi configuration would mainly give rotational (and translational) mobility around the y axis and, assuming the baffles can thrust vector, rotation around the z axis. A 30g acceleration for that kind of limited maneuverability is extreme overkill and not a serious design consideration. You could get more than enough thrust, and in all necessary directions, from attitude jets placed around the hull.

I assumed that the engines were placed wide apart to prevent the destruction of both engines in case of explosion, but the Wintertide's fate seems to make that a moot point.

It's not that hard to momentarily change the heading of the ship to bring your weapons to bear without significantly affecting your acceleration.

I would agree with you if it weren't for the massive missile spam the Umiak employ. That makes it impossible to just fire off a few shots and get away clean, so having the ability to run and gun would ensure very low/nonexistent hit ratios.

there are very few circumstances in which the Loroi would want to present their vulnerable tails to the enemy.

And I have to ask for the specifics of why. Is this table canonical? http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/6957 ... 937078.gif

If so the Loroi can cruise outside of Umiak range with absolute impunity, and pick them off without worrying about their engines being vulnerable. The maximum range of the Umiak weaponry is under 300,000 km, while the Loroi pulse cannon's effective range is 300,000 km. The Umiak can only hope to chase the Loroi away with missile spam and then run. If they don't the Loroi kill them. HARD.

The fact that the Loroi have been going back and forth with the Umiak for years, sustaining heavy losses, shows that either A) They aren't too bright, or B) The weapons ranges aren't canonical.

[discord]

dfacto: in a run and gun scenario you are depicting you are correct, the loroi would be able to inflict massive amounts of damage that way, BUT(and as some say, everything before the 'but' in a sentence is pointless) the loroi would run out of gas before the umiak would, leaving them dead in space, so if they could not annihilate the entire umiak taskforce, the loroi would lose the engagement...

that is also not considering that you would have to match velocities, something that is a non trivial task if the other side is not cooperating, keeping a specific range(in this case 300 thousand km give or take ten thousand, to stay outside the umiak range while staying inside reasonably effective range of their own guns) which might sound easy....it's not.

and again, this would leave the support ships in a bad situation, since they have lower acceleration....which removes the loroi ability to refuel....meaning that even if the loroi kill ALL the enemy ships, the taskforce doing it would be lost due to fuel problems.

as the old saying goes, amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics.

and just to poke YET another hole in the 'run and gun' theory, umiak gunboats are just as fast as loroi ships(or in some cases faster), which creates a 'outrunning a pack of dogs' situation, volleys of umiak torpedoes would damage and slow down loroi ships, giving the command crew the choice of either leaving the damaged ships defenseless, or stopping the run and gun tactic, neither very palatable, and the more armored and gunned side is the front, so the ships would have to flip rather often to engage with defensive fire against torpedoes AND actually shooting back at the hostile ships, that lowers acceleration....

basically, the theory is sound and simple, but actually doing it is not so easy.
or to quote clausewitz.
“Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war.”

[dfacto]

Fuel: The task force has been operational in the Naam system for some time, has already engaged the Umiak once, is currently engaging them again, and will have enough spare to leave the system. Whatever the Loroi fuel reserves are, they must be enough to implement hit and run tactics effectively or else they wouldn't be able to implement any tactic effectively.

Logistics: So the Loroi will be hamstrung by the logistics of refueling, but the Umiak will not? The Loroi can outrun the Umiak heavies at partial acceleration, while the Umiak will need full thrust, thereby expending more fuel. Yes, the Loroi may need full thrust to stay ahead of torpedoes and gunboats, but then again considering the perfect kill ratio in the last panels they may also simply accelerate away just fast enough to stay ahead of the heavy hitters.

Maneuvering: Yes, it's a tall order to stay at just the right ranges and at just the right location, but the ranges we're talking about here are up to 100,000 km, and the Loroi have a clear edge in positioning due to the Farsensing device.

Are your observations valid? Absolutely. Are they absolute? No way. As with all things, the truth would probably lie between both extremes. And if it did the Loroi should still be in better shape than they currently are. (By which I mean in the meta-story, not the last few panels. I know that's a strategy taken of necessity)

EDIT: Actually, checking the max acceleration again it looks like the Loroi and Umiak are more or less even. This makes it harder or impossible to outrun the Umiak, but accelerating away from the enemy at the same speed as them would still greatly increase the time in which you can engage them at beyond their maximum range.

[Rosen_Ritter_1]

Fuel: The task force has been operational in the Naam system for some time, has already engaged the Umiak once, is currently engaging them again, and will have enough spare to leave the system. Whatever the Loroi fuel reserves are, they must be enough to implement hit and run tactics effectively or else they wouldn't be able to implement any tactic effectively.

That doesn't necessarily mean they can afford to base their entire strategy around non stop 30G acceleration away from the enemy.

EDIT: Actually, checking the max acceleration again it looks like the Loroi and Umiak are more or less even. This makes it harder or impossible to outrun the Umiak, but accelerating away from the enemy at the same speed as them would still greatly increase the time in which you can engage them at beyond their maximum range.

This is only a useful tactic if the Umiak strategy is purely to destroy Loroi ships. The Umiak are on the offensive, and the Loroi are defending. A Loroi raiding force can't afford to just boost away at 30G

Logistics: So the Loroi will be hamstrung by the logistics of refueling, but the Umiak will not? The Loroi can outrun the Umiak heavies at partial acceleration, while the Umiak will need full thrust, thereby expending more fuel. Yes, the Loroi may need full thrust to stay ahead of torpedoes and gunboats, but then again considering the perfect kill ratio in the last panels they may also simply accelerate away just fast enough to stay ahead of the heavy hitters.

It's not as big of a deal since Umiak warships have about twice the max acceleration time as the Loroi. And as you noted earlier, there's only actually a 4-6 G acceleration difference between the two sides ships. Loroi ships don't outrun the Umiak by that large of a margin and they're still at a significant fuel economy disadvantage.


Here's the problem with this completely evasive strategy.

-Loroi fleet Approach's Umiak
-Umiak attack Loroi fleet with skirmishers
-Loroi accelerate away at 30G to gain more time to gain more room to shoot at the Umiak
-The Main Umiak fleet carries on their objective to attack static Loroi positions
-The Loroi now have to burn an equal amount of fuel to stop as they did to speed away from the skirmisher screen. They need to burn even more to catch up with the Umiak.
-If the Umiak turn around, the Loroi have to again cancel their velocity and start accelerating in the other direction

This is a VERY fuel intensive process. And while the Umiak are certianly going to take casualties, their ships are very tough and they have allot of them. And the Loroi will have to stop maneuvering like this at some point. Either when they run out of fuel, or that gigantic horde of Umiak warships starts descending on a target that can't run away.