Gateworld Virtual Fleet 4.0 - Discussion thread

[Princess Awinita]

An interesting thought struck me. It concerns starships, their crews, technologies, and overall sizes.

I admit first and formost I am inspired by the Tron films and also Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying and Battlefleet Gothic to come up with this thought pattern.

Let me explain; in the original TRON and also in TRON Legacy, the 'ships' and 'fighter craft' were unique and made of light, which reminded me greatly of the K'nex building system. Rods were defined by lines of light, the floors and walls were made with the panels. Its a interesting thought. In Warhammer 40,000 the starships and fighter craft are massive. In some cases requiring as many as 100,000+ crewmembers, most of which never set foot on a planet, much less a space station.

So now my thought comes to this. A Carrier from TRON or TRON Legacy needs merely three crew members plus a captain then could hold as many as a million or more troops with proper space requirements, since this is a digital world, inside the computer, space can be compressed to fit more programs onto the craft. In 40K the ships are more limiting in their space requirements. And most crew members never see planet fall. And many are born onboard the craft in the first place. To pilot a craft in 40K requires dozens of crew on the bridge. As far as I am aware, it takes as many as fifteen people, each assigned a set task, maybe assigned two set tasks, to acomplish a goal set by the captain.

Now, lets get to the technology.

In TRON and TRON Legacy everything is made of light, and in some manner, steel for flooring, everything works as it is designed to do. When a carrier is damaged or needed it is simply created from nothing, maybe a master program or some such. In 40K the ships are made of stone and steel, and in some cases a mix of both. Plasma drives are used in 40K to propel the ships through space, and Warp Drives to push the ships into the Immanitarum.

Now, I wonder; With how the stargate program developed and starships were crewed, what were the crew requirements, how many crew members were actual crew, not including passengers, or soldier personell, just actual ship crew, be it cooks, janitors, etc. Do we have defined numbers ? Caldwell said and I quote "Our resources are finite" Did he know something we do not ?

[thekillman]

Now, I wonder; With how the stargate program developed and starships were crewed, what were the crew requirements, how many crew members were actual crew, not including passengers, or soldier personell, just actual ship crew, be it cooks, janitors, etc. Do we have defined numbers ? Caldwell said and I quote "Our resources are finite" Did he know something we do not ?

the 304's had some 200 crew, the Prometheus some 150.

The 40k figures you give are slightly ridiculous, as automation would be a necessity and not a luxury with such ships.

There was a military guy commenting on the Death Star (yea that happened) and said that a shaft running from the surface of the ship to it's core would be a very real design mistake, as nobody would be able to have oversight on a project that large. (it was a plea against "death stars" or basically, huge projects with debatable advantages).


Realistically speaking, i think the future spaceships will have 0 crew.

[Princess Awinita]

Thing is, in Warhammer 40,000, the ship sizes are insanely large. The backbone of the Stellar Fleets is known as the Lunar Class cruiser, a 4.5KM long craft, in warhammer everything is designed to be big, even the cities on planets. Crammed with people.

In 40K the ships do have what are called Servitors, I think I mentioned them before. These are normally soldier type servitors, or drone servitors set to particular tasks, for example so may be piloting the ship itself, guarding a certain areas of the ship, used for boarding enemy ships, etc. There are plenty of human crew as well. Merchant vessels have less crew total though in order ot have more cargo space.

Going with no crew scares me

[thekillman]

Thing is, in Warhammer 40,000, the ship sizes are insanely large.

This is an argument FOR automation, not against it.

Going with no crew scares me

Well at one point mind uploading or emulation might make it so there's no real difference. At that point the AI is a human being and the "crew' is virtual.

I don't see why you're so troubled by it tho: the real world is filled with automated systems. In most cases, the crew is a synonym for "maintenance". Our economy is largely computer-controlled.

[Gormagon]

http://www.weylandindustries.com/energy

http://www.weylandindustries.com/david



Hey killman I found this website a few days ago, its still being built but it has almost 2 dozen pages that make for interesting reads, most notably the two I posted in links. The top is about futuristic energy sources and the second is about a class of android and its technology.

[thekillman]

wow i did not expect any reply to this thread anymore.


thanks ill review them


EDIT:

i flipped some pages but it doesn't seem to hold much stuff. I've had much more inspiration from Crazy Tom's Orion's arm & Atomic Rocket. That and nowadays i regularly keep up with current engineering and science.

TBH, in retrospect, Crazy Tom was right about a ****load of things. Well i was aware of it at the time i just didnt want him to be right .

However, from a basic level, Stargate makes little sense and it's fairly obvious it was completely made up as they went along. Doesn't have to be a bad thing but for more serious Fanfic it is.

So far i've been trying to imagine various permutations of SG, but the fundamental problem remains that the Hyperdrive tech is too good, and that too few restrictions exist (mostly plot-based) to have fun and interesting scenarios.

Something i found interesting is Discovery's "Evacuating Earth" documentary. Basically it covers what would happen if Earth collides with a Neutron star 75 years from now and what kind of challenges we face. Which, interestingly, gives some hints about what stargate revelation might do, and what we really can do from an engineering perspective.


EDIT 2:

"Cold fusion" article

[immhotep]

I got bored. I need a hobby again. Anyone want to work on something? Reboot/something new? No ideas just yet just wanting to see if this could become active again?

[thekillman]

I got bored. I need a hobby again. Anyone want to work on something? Reboot/something new? No ideas just yet just wanting to see if this could become active again?

*rubs eyes*

IM NOT ALONE!

TBH i am not sure if my ideas are the stuff you like. In truth, I have come to agree more and more with Crazy Tom. Well, except for two things:

-his use of overly long and descriptive words.
-How he tried to combine Orion's Arm levels of technology with Stargate.

I have been building my own little version of Stargate in my head whenever i need to kill some time and i like the thought experiment.

In short however, what i've been cooking up can be described by a few key features:

-Technology closer to us. Less use of magitech, like shields.

-Less use of overly powerful races and more focused on similarly tech'd races.

-More focus on the size of our galaxy and how this leads to all kinds of difficulties, e.g. how do you communicate across 100.000 lightyears (answer: you don't).


In style, it's mostly a cross between SG1 (early) and SGU: more characters, less white knight attitude, limited gate range and even more limited FTL ranges.

In terms of staying stargate: i would stick more to the core of what Stargate represents, which is ultimately staying close to current day in terms of time, featuring imperfections and problems and the limits of what we're really trying to do.

In terms of ships etc (which is IMO half the fun), i would keep a focus on a handful of classes per race, but more clearly defined, although still broad, roles.


E.g:

Goa'uld:

Ha'tak'ko: the Baseship of a System Lord. Rare (less than a dozen in existence). Has no rival in power, but is also scarcely put in the frontline.

Ha'tak: Baseship. used for all sorts of control tasks. uses Tel'tak and Al'kesh to enforce their power. Only gets in a fight if it has to.

Goa'uld Cruiser: Takes on the battle portion of the Ha'tak in the shows: versatile workhorse. Good at destroying a variety of stuff. used extremely commonly.

Al'kesh: Used as a long-range enforcer. Still has it's turret but also has other turrets for 360 coverage. Used to oppress, destroy specific targets (whenever a cruiser is overkill) and usually a sign of a Ha'tak being near (as it only has a limited supply of food and air).

Tel'tak: reconnaissance ship. Can still cloak. Valuable places (Any sufficiently powerful underlord or a ha'tak/ha'tak'ko) can detect cloaked tel'tak but most ships are not that well-equipped.

Death Glider: In my opinion an artifact that most goa'uld are ashamed of, although maybe it'll be used as a layer of defense for goa'uld worlds.


Goa'uld:

In my opinion the Goa'uld were the best enemies ever because we could realistically defeat them. In my Stargate revision i would use them as the main enemy. However, there is no real collection or collaboration of system lords. There's a strongly feudal system where the System Lords mostly thoroughly enjoy their position and lavish in wealth. Their generals take care of most of the work, although even that mostly comes down to letting the local goa'uld solve it.

I would focus more on the underlords: Minor goa'uld would take up all the important positions in stead of (for some reason) jaffa like in the series. Underlords commonly mimic their System Lord, but in general each SL represents a certain way of doing things. Some, Like Sokar and Anubis would be far more terrible, militaristic goa'uld, while Ra would be far looser in his way.

Jaffa:
The Jaffa would number in a couple of billion. They are taught in reading and writing (quite essential in terms of communication methinks), and would not be kept as stupid as they sometimes were in the show. it just makes no sense. Jaffa are brought up on exclusively jaffa "spartan" worlds, where the strong represent their god and the weak serve the strong.

Slaves:
Similarly to the Jaffa, slaves are kept on slave-worlds. These vary from production worlds, where -althought strictly kept apart- various components are made, to various assembly worlds where starships and weapons and gear is made. Perhaps cliché, but the Jaffa do the final assembly on their staffweapon and Jaffa, similar to our own army, are taught to take it apart and piece it together.

By specializing and localizing this, slaves are only ever taught that which they have to do. One could conquer a production world yet never ever learn how to make the product: thousands of marked pieces of technology are shipped to other worlds where only the knowledge of how to piece them together exists. it would take extensive conquering to capture an assembly line and since perhaps a hundred worlds are reliant on such a production chain of worlds, the Goa'uld would instantly notice.

[Princess Awinita]

I got bored. I need a hobby again. Anyone want to work on something? Reboot/something new? No ideas just yet just wanting to see if this could become active again?

Sure, if you want to bounce ideas off me, go ahead. Personally I've been working on some of my own races recently and even a massive clone army, {which I may make in LDD at some point}

[dboy-2007]

Its been a long time since I posted here but I'm definitely up for starting something new been dying to for ages but every time I check the forum there has been 1 post in the last week!

[thekillman]

cmon guys stop pulling MMD's

[Princess Awinita]

cmon guys stop pulling MMD's

I read that as WMD's.....

[fugiman]

Hi guys. Long time since I've been here so just saying hi and seeing how the fleet has been going.

[thekillman]

Hi guys. Long time since I've been here so just saying hi and seeing how the fleet has been going.

hello
i seem to be the only one regularly visiting this forum

[fugiman]

Well Killman it's good to see you are still around.

So did the fleet ever go anywhere? or are you guys still a little stuck?