Alien Ships

[Graham Kennedy]

They're a bit militaristic for the Coalition's taste, but they could potentially be a very useful addition. It would give the Coalition a much increased capability to project power into the Deep Range.

The Gelch are almost fanatical about their independence, though, given their history. They'd have to moderate a lot before they would even consider it.

[Teaos]

Kind of looks like a sting-ray.

[Captain Seafort]

Interesting looking ship, reminiscent of a Hammerhead class cruiser lying on it's side. However, looking at the design, surly it would have 4 AMP cannon, not two. Or do twin barrels count as a single weapon in early designs?

[Graham Kennedy]

Yes. AMP cannon fire streams of matter and antimatter particles. One cannon needs two barrels - one for each stream. Later designs combine the two barrels within one casing, but all AMP cannon need the twin streams.

[MetalHead]

Can you imagine a pilots exam for that Zaketh Monster?

AND NOW YOU WILL DEMONSTRATE THE THREE POINT TURN WITHOUT TOUCHING ANY OF THE...MOONS. GO!

[Tsukiyumi]

Can you imagine a pilots exam for that Zaketh Monster?

AND NOW YOU WILL DEMONSTRATE THE THREE POINT TURN WITHOUT TOUCHING ANY OF THE...MOONS. GO!

[Monroe]

Can you imagine a pilots exam for that Zaketh Monster?

AND NOW YOU WILL DEMONSTRATE THE THREE POINT TURN WITHOUT TOUCHING ANY OF THE...MOONS. GO!

haha. Now imagine the space docks that could build such a behemoth.

[MetalHead]

Just thinking about the crew allotment + what iota I know about the Zaketh, it makes ALOT of sense to have huge amounts of internal politics aboard such a ship, given the size of it...it could easily have a crew of millions...or, so I'd like to belive. Graham, what kind of crew size are we looking at and how crazy are the internal politics on such a vessel?

[Graham Kennedy]

Crew size would indeed be in the millions. The politics would be... complex!

Roughly, it would be like this...

The Captain would be a high ranking aristocrat, the Zaketh equivalent of a Lord. His department heads - chief engineer, say - would be relatives, most often cousins, who ranked almost but not quite as highly as the captain. All would be vying for political power, trying to form alliances and swing enough influence to go to the Emperor and push him into having the command transferred to them instead. Such maneuvers would be complicated by the dynasties on other ships; there is often intermarriage between ship crews, and so other ships might weigh in to support one faction or oppose another in order to try and increase their own influence by proxy.

The more junior officers would be the younger members of each family; brothers, sisters, and children of the department head. A post like assistant chief engineer would be strictly assigned on hereditary lines. As a result, there's no motivation whatever for the people to actually learn anything at all about their jobs. It wouldn't even occur to an officer to wonder whether his subordinates were competent or not; they'd be far more concerned with their standing in the family, how eligible they were to marry into another good family, etc. The over-riding concern for the entire officer complement is to grow their numbers large enough that they can get another ship built and shift their surplus population over to start a new dynasty off.

As a result of all this the officers have very little to do with the actual running of the ship; the entire officer complement are essentially parasites. Because of this nominally civilian crews are hired to supplement the actual crew and do the work.

As you can imagine it's a horrible system. For instance say you want the ship to respond to an emergency. The first concern of most of the families on board would be "is this a trick to try and get me away from my political base?" Half of them would make excuses to be unable to launch until they had all their various family members on board, a process that could take quite a while (weeks, maybe months). The Zaketh fleet moves with glacial slowness most of the time. If the Coalition or most anybody else ran their military that way they wouldn't last five minutes before somebody came in and picked them off. The Zaketh get away with it because they're so big and so powerful that they are all but impossible to take down, no matter how incompetent or absurd they act.

[MetalHead]

that IS slow, and the idea you listed is just one...

an emergency...

"We're under attack!"

"...hey f**k you buddy, you're not getting my job!"

speaking of slowness...can you imagine how long it would take a ship like that to rotate 180 degrees?

[Monroe]

May take forever by our line of thinking and our background of seeing ships turn around but these guys are so advanced I wouldn't be surprised if they could move like a star fighter-- if vastly increased in size of the arcs.

So I take it on a ship like the huge 96km one the entire crew nearly would be the red race of the species while on less important ships you'd have the less important race mixed in?

[Teaos]

These ships dont move, the universe moves around them.

[Monroe]

(This post makes sense in the last paragraph)
So I was playing Magic the Gathering the other day with my brothers and Green and Goblin Red decks by comparison to say a white equipment deck rely on swarming units. With most decks you have some big heavy hitters but not with Goblin Red or Green (The way we've set up ours). Our decks have the ability to put out 50 creatures that attack at once compared to say our black deck that can put out one creature that attacks an 8, flies, and has a nasty special ability.

The point is, I'd be interested in seeing a swarming style fleet. While our Magic the Gathering Hypnox could put some serious hurt to the other player a few Thalids or Horde of Bogarts could easily over realm a creature. So I'd like to see a race that doesn't rely on battle ship kilometers long or what not but millions of fighters that may have a nil amount of fire power but can over run any enemy fleets.

[Teaos]

I Believe GK covered awhile ago that such craft are near useless vs Battleships due to defences against them.

[Monroe]

I Believe GK covered awhile ago that such craft are near useless vs Battleships due to defences against them.

Can't be too useless or we wouldn't see any fighter crafts.