Skiiran
September 23rd, 2007, 04:04 AM
I am personally striving to be a writer, and I think I have a universe that I want to stick with, but I want to see what other people think of it. I have a timeline and detailed descriptions of the technologies of the second-and-fourth great wars for your reading pleasure.
Read & Review at your leisure.
BASICS:
-MSA: Many-Star Alliance, a partial democracy created by the ancient race that call themselves Thulhians. The Thulhians believe that only they know what true order and peace are, and thus lure younger races in with false hopes of democracy to, purportedly, keep them safe. They have come under fire from their member races for allowing Humanity to continue the enslavement of the Suthra, a race that the humans engineered to do their bidding.
-Crown Royal of Santhia: a monarchy based off the world of Santhia, home to several billion freed Suthra. Their wish to remain independent conflicted with MSA philosophies and mantras, and thus the planet led the Great Separation, which, in turn, led to the First Galactic Conflict.
TIMELINE:
-Timeline removed, guys. I'm sorry, but I just can't risk anyone using to make the real stories non-canon. To make up for it, I've put up the starting and ending dates of the 2nd and 4th conflict.
Description of the technology and MSA ships of the second conflict:
-Took Place: 4010 ET-4173 ET
Weapons:
-Mass Driver: one of the oldest weapon systems in existence, these projectile weapons use magnetic rails or coils to hurl rounds at speeds that allow them to still be powerful medium-range weapons. Usually, the weapons fire their ammunition at speeds near 70% c, speeds fast enough that if enough cannons fire on the same location, the resulting failed shield, cracked hull, or molten hole in the planet’s surface signals the end for the enemy. Currently, the most powerful mass driver systems are the Santhian Arms TX-4280, a Gatling system designed to bring down shields, and the Havelock HMD-01, which fires smaller rounds of super-dense Neutronium at 90% c, and is effective against most everything.
There are also various companies that provide mass drivers that use the mass of the round, instead of its velocity, to provide most of the damage. These systems are instead called torpedo drivers, and are usually only found on Battlestars and Dreadnoughts.
-Particle: these weapons fire streams of a select particle at c, and are the most common weapons in existence, used by both sides extensively as both long-range strike weapons and broadside exchange pieces. The Thulhian ion cannons, generally accepted to be the most powerful conventional weapon in the galaxy, are the best-known example of this technology. Such weapons as the ion cannon can level planetary surfaces and carve crevices several miles deep, and are also famous for vaporizing starships without them knowing the weapon had been fired.
Despite the ion cannon’s fame, it is hardly the most common particle weapon. Most particle weapons, in fact, have only half the range of the famed aforementioned weapon.
Certain, more exotic particle weapons are found only within the borders of the MSA. An example of this is the Sun cannon, which has the unique ability to cause any matter it touches to explode in an atomic explosion.
-Laser: a weapon almost as old as the mass driver, the laser was once used in thousands of famous combat encounters and conflicts. Today, only the Santhians, armed with their spinal Xraser weapons, use them to great extent for purposes other than point defense.
-Antimatter: a pulsed beam of antimatter used in broadside engagements, these weapons are mounted in grids or dual-barreled turrets, and have a range limit of half a light second. They are most effective when shields have been dropped and they are free to ravage the hull.
-Plasma: balls of self-sustaining excited gas fired in a bolt form. Generally, these are mounted on ships designed around fire support, due to their relatively limitless potential to cause pain. Their electromagnetic properties can short out shields and power systems, their heat can cut through dozens of meters of hull plating, and a single shot can, potentially, de-crew a ship. MSA ships mount double-barreled turrets, with each barrel being able to fire three-shot-bursts in an alternating fashion, giving the illusion of automatic fire.
-Missile: projectile weapons with a warhead and driven by a fusion drive. Absolutely the oldest form of weaponry in any current arsenal, they are only kept due to the wide range of warheads that can be fitted on them. Current versions are only fast enough to be used in broadside, and are made harder to hit by quantum chaff which confuses point defense circuitry. There are four warheads that are most commonly used:
Fusion: a straightforward gigaton-level nuclear missile. This is the most common missile warhead.
Antimatter: a container of anti-hydrogen is suspended in a pool of liquid hydrogen which detonates in the low-gigaton-level. They are more compact than fusion warheads but are harder to build and yield far less radiation damage.
Tide-Space: a missile which contains a normal fusion warhead and a one-time-use Tide-Space drive that allows it to slip right past shields. Officially, these missiles are banned galaxy-wide; unofficially, all Santhian and MSA ships carry at least ten in the cargo bays.
Gravitic: a warhead that creates an instant gravity well that crushes hull sections and literally drains contragravitic shields. These are the most powerful legal missiles known to the galaxy.
-Energy Discharge: weapons that harvest pure excess energy produced by fusion reactors and bacterial generators via Gravitic and magnetic fields. There are two types of these weapons: constant stream and wavering. While constant stream deal less damage, they are easier to target with, and can be easily mounted in spinal positions for chase combat (there are some reports that spinal weapons of other empires can be overpowered to a point where they are nearly twice as powerful as an ion cannon, but this has never been confirmed). Wavering weapons deal far more damage per impact, and can be pulsed to overload shields, but targeting is made more difficult by the fact that, when the target is changed and the turret rotates to target, the beam curves off-course for a second. These are usually found near plasma batteries, since plasma batteries have backup fusion generators that power both themselves and the ship if the main core is hit.
Propulsion:
-Fusion: these engines use the plasma created by a fusion reactor and force it out of the ship as exhaust. They have the fastest normal-space acceleration rates, and can reach up to 1/15th lightspeed.
-Particle: these engines force streams of particles out the back as exhaust. They have a gentler acceleration rate, and cannot reach the speed of a fusion drive, but are more reliable and easier to maintain.
-Tide-Space drive: devices that open a temporary rift to a dimension caused by the stress between universes. This dimension allows for faster-than-light travel, and it is estimated that the maximum rate of travel is 2 hours per light-year. Because of the intense radiation, hulls that are directly exposed to Tide-Space slowly ablate, and thus must be covered in liquid hydrogen before entering Tide-Space. Tide-Space drives are available to anyone who can afford one, but civilian drives generally tend to have a planet-side “jammer” so that authorities may arrest them, should the need arise.
Power Systems:
-Fusion: hydrogen molecules are magnetically fused into helium, and release tremendous amounts of energy. While there are many experiments into the field of power generation, currently fusion is the only available generator.
Defensive Systems:
-Tantalum Hafnium Carbide: the first layer of armor defense, this refractory compound has the amazingly high melting point of 4488K. It is produced mostly in asteroid chain facilities, many hundreds of asteroid mines physically linked together for easier transport.
-Woven Carbon Nanotubes: carbon tubes that have great tensile strength and ductility. These act as physical impact damage reducers.
-Tungsten-Lead Alloy: an alloy that combines the high melting point of tungsten with the radiation protection and density of lead, this is usually the last layer of armor defense. The layers generally go as such: Tantalum Hafnium Carbide, Carbon Nanotubes, THC, Tungsten-Lead alloy.
-Point Defense lasers: the only lasers to be considered permanently part of every arsenal; these are primarily used to strike down missiles before they hit the shields, in case they are Gravitic.
-Plasma Shields: a magnetically-maintained rectangular field of super-hot plasma. These stop all attacks except laser strikes, until the shields get overloaded and temporarily drop.
Communications:
-Radio: the oldest and easiest-to-build communications equipment, it is the primary tactical communications system due to millennia of EMP hardening.
-Laser: tight-beam lasers used to transmit valuable information between ships and planets. The most widespread use of this system is the communication of ship systems updates.
-Tide-Space hyperlink: various nodes are used to transmit radio-or-laser transmissions across Tide-Space, allowing for FTL-communications that take mere seconds to transmit anywhere within 500 light-years.
Ship Classes of the MSA:
Kaiser-class Dreadnought
-20x quad-barreled 240mm Constant Discharge cannons
-11x 109mm Wavering Discharge cannons
-40x 15cm Wavering Discharge cannons
-80x 40-barreled 5.2mm antimatter grids
-45x dual-barreled 112mm antimatter turrets
-20x 56mm dual-barreled Plasma cannons
-26x 9mm dual-barreled Plasma cannons
-10x 4cm dual-barreled Plasma cannons
-30x assault missile tube grids, each carrying 160 fusion missiles, 60 antimatter missiles, and 40 Gravitic missiles
-125x 20mm particle cannons
-16x quad-mounted Ion cannon turrets
-10x Tide-Space missiles hidden in the cargo bays
-2x Fixed-forward 10m Torpedo drivers, each carrying two magazines of 20
-10x broadside-fixed 4m Torpedo drivers, each carrying two magazines of 40
-200mm THC top-level armor
-120mm Woven Carbon Nanotubes
-250mm THC lower-level armor
-95mm Tungsten-Lead alloy bottom-armor
-5x 100GT-withstanding Plasma shields
-300x point-defense lasers
Often associated with fear, astonishment, power projection, and MSA pride, the Kaiser-class is the most-recognized ship in the fleet, its wedge-shaped 2km long blue-gray hull making even the hardiest species shiver in terror. Although its firepower output is somewhat less than that of other dreadnoughts in the fleet, it alone maintains the honor of boasting the powerful 100GT-withstanding Plasma shield, the most powerful ever conceived by Squid architects. This powerful shield often means that two-or-three are assigned to cover the escape of other ships with their massive shields.
Dresden-class Dreadnought
-14x 82mm Wavering Discharge cannons
-57x 6.9mm antimatter grids
-10x dual broadside 4cm antimatter cannons
-6x 6cm dual Plasma cannons
-30x 10mm quad-barreled Plasma cannons
-18x 20mm Mass Drivers
-2x 93mm Mass Drivers
-2x Fixed-forward 12m Torpedo drivers, each carrying two magazines of 20
-14x broadside-fixed 4m Torpedo drivers, each carrying two magazines of 30
-77x 10mm tri-barreled particle cannons
-8x quad-mounted ion cannons
-10x assault missile tube grids, each carrying 200 Gravitic missiles
-200mm THC top-level armor
-65mm Woven Carbon Nanotubes
-100mm Tungsten-Lead alloy bottom armor
-6x 400MT-withstanding Plasma shields
-100x point defense lasers
Named after the first ambassador for Humanity to the MSA, the Dresden-class dreadnought possesses incredibly large and powerful plasma and mass driver weaponry, compared to its size (1.8 kilometers). Shaped into a more broadened wedge than is traditional, the Dresden-class is in its element during medium-range standoffs, in which all of its weapons can be used.
Acolyte-class Battlestar
-12x 40cm Wavering Discharge cannons
-20x quad 15cm Constant Discharge cannons
-4x 20cm fixed-forward Constant Discharge cannons
-100x 5.5 antimatter grids
-16x dual 6cm Antimatter cannons
-4x quad 4cm Antimatter cannons
-20x dual 7cm Plasma cannons
-20x quad 2cm Plasma cannons
-12x dual 4m Plasma cannons
-2x 18cm Mass Drivers
-6x 6cm Mass Drivers
-4x Fixed-forward 12m Torpedo drivers, each carrying two magazines of 20
-14x broadside-fixed 4m Torpedo drivers, each carrying two magazines of 30
-250 assault missile tube grids, each carrying 300 fusion missiles, 100 antimatter missiles, and 80 Gravitic missiles
-2x 1 Teraton warheads
-2x Special Warhead missiles
-300x tri-barreled 3cm particle cannons
-100x broadside 6cm particle cannons
-24x quad-mounted ion cannons
-270mm THC top-level armor
-100mm Woven Carbon Nanotubes
-150mm Tungsten-Lead alloy bottom armor
-250mm THC lower-level armor
-7x 600MT-withstanding Plasma shields
-400x point defense lasers
The most powerful ship aside from the flagship, this is the only ship in the standard fleet that can comfortably withstand a constant missile battering for hours on end. Much of its internal workings are secret, however, and the only things known for certain about them are that they are 5 kilometers long and possess the above weapons and defenses. It is rumored that, when not being used in campaigns, these ships are used as slave transports for the human Suthra-slave industry.
Nephilim-class Cruiser
-6x 80mm Constant Discharge cannons
-2x 72mm Wavering Discharge cannons
-24x 8cm antimatter grids
-4x fixed-forward 16cm Antimatter cannons
-8x dual 2cm Plasma cannons
-10x quad 1cm Plasma cannons
-30x tri-barreled 10cm particle cannons
-10x quad-barreled 30cm particle cannons
-1x dual ion cannon
-200mm THC top-level armor
-60mm Woven Carbon Nanotubes
-120mm Tungsten-Lead alloy bottom armor
-2x 400MT-withstanding Plasma shields
-100x point defense lasers
As the longest cruiser in existence (902m long) and filled with enough weaponry to rival small dreadnoughts, the Nephilim-class has a reputation for being nasty towards everyone who hasn’t sworn allegiance to the blue-and-red stripes of the MSA flag. Although many have criticized its fixed-forward large antimatter cannons as a linear design flaw, it has been shown time-and-time again to be the turning point weapons of any battle.
Rand Eclectic-class Cruiser
-8x Dual 80mm Constant Discharge cannons
-3x 20cm Wavering Discharge cannons
-4x fixed-forward 12cm Constant Discharge cannons
-10x dual 40cm Plasma cannons
-40x dual 20cm Support-Fire Plasma cannons
-14x 10cm Mass Drivers
-60x tri-barreled 15cm particle cannons
-40x dual broadside 25cm particle cannons
-150mm THC top-level armor
-65mm Woven Carbon Nanotubes
-123mm Tungsten-Lead alloy bottom armor
-1x 100MT withstanding Plasma shield
-200x point defense lasers
This was the first design in a series designed by Fleet-Masters to fit their own personal styles of combat. The Rand Eclectic-class Cruiser, designed by Fleet-Master Deus, is a close-range fire support cruiser filled with more weapons than a rational person would probably ever come close to. While it could bust a hole in a ship twice its size (807.98 meters), its pathetic shield and lack of antimatter weaponry means that it usually takes up position behind Kaiser-class Dreadnoughts, jumping up every once-in-a-while to unleash a hellish rain of fire.
Due to budget constraints, the rest of the series was unfortunately cut short, and only half of all Rand Eclectic-class ships were ever completed, making even one a valuable asset for close combat support.
Insincere-class Cruiser
-16x tri-barreled 20cm particle cannons
-60x dual broadside 10cm particle cannons
-2x dual fixed-forward Ion cannons
-10x dual 16cm Mass Drivers
-10x 5cm Three-Shot-Burst Mass Drivers
-6x fixed-forward 3m Torpedo Drivers, possessing 20x Specialized Fusion-warhead Torpedo Driver rounds
-15x assault missile tube grids, each armed with 600 Fusion missiles and 20 Gravitic missiles
-100mm THC top-level armor
-50mm Woven Carbon Nanotubes
-123mm Tungsten-Lead alloy bottom armor
-1x 100MT withstanding plasma shield
-100x point defense lasers
The Insincere-class was designed around the ideas behind ancient Humanity’s ‘Marksman,’ who focused on deception and long-range combat, by only using weaponry with half-light-second ranges at least, and also being flatter and stubbier than most other cruisers, to give LIDAR systems the idea that it is simply a stray destroyer. At exactly 650 meters, most captains would simply expect a slightly oversized destroyer, and an easy piece of prey. This makes them bring their ships in closer to deliver the kill, allowing the cruiser to let loose its array of weaponry. However, its lack of armor, powerful shielding, plasma or discharge cannons means that it has no strong close-range weaponry, and must stay behind the main fleet. Often these ships will be grouped with Rand Eclectic-class cruisers into fire support groups, relying on each other to make up for their respective shortcomings.
Description and Background of the Fourth Conflict:
-Took Place: 5001 ET-???? ET
Background:
After the Humanoid – Thulhian war, the two sides meshed back together to defend against an incursion of four trans-galactic exploratory ships, each manned by Andromedan humans, and each more than a match for twelve MSA dreadnoughts. Although no ships are destroyed, all four are badly damaged and are forced to use their Casimir Drives to return to Andromeda. Fragments of their highly-advanced technology, including geometric particle defense shields, dark energy weaponry, and highly advanced metals that only more powerful and specialized nuclear warheads or a constant antimatter barrage could destroy enough to make a ship, were salvaged from blown-out ship decks and sections and used for research into refitting entire fleets. Human scientists also began the long process of reverse-engineering the Andromedan medical equipment (surprisingly, it seemed to have been already partially reverse-engineered, as if to aid the scientists in their research). The successful creation of permanent and safe mind-A.I. fusion, along with options for bionic skin and artificial body parts, opened humanity’s door to the Transhumanist movement, which led to the average lifespan increasing from 200 years to over 900 years. This technology was also used to create the Transhuman Infantry, an elite fighting force even more powerful and well-trained than the famed Wakizashis (addendum, 4893 ET: about fifty years after the end of the movement, the Wakizashis were officially absorbed into the Transhuman Infantry). By 5001 ET, the MSA and Human Empire were relatively convinced that they could take on the Andromedan humans and whatever allies had helped them advance so far in such little time. Using ancient Terran schematics, the MSA was able to build an enormous Casimir Gate at the edge of the Milky Way. This gate could throw waves upon waves of Human-or-MSA ships into any point in Andromeda, which would then use their Tide-Space drives to move from system to system, searching for their targets.
New Defensive Technology:
-Geometric Particle Defense Shields: magnetic fields that form super-dense particles in front of an incoming projectile or beam to block, deflect, or even absorb it. Depending on the size and/or power of the weapon, sides will be added or subtracted to the geometric shape, i.e. while a Neutronium round of x size might call for a hexagon, a meson beam might call for a decagon, et cetera.
-Heavy Pacification Armor: a super-dense blue-gray metal created by native Andromedans. Heavy Pacification armor can take direct hits from smaller nuclear weapons and still be able to shrug off many particle beams, lasers, plasma rounds, and even dark energy pulses before being ripped apart. Due to atmospheric exposure required in the finishing process, HPA may only be built on worlds that are habitable to nitrogen-oxygen breathing life forms, and thus makes taking-and-holding habitable worlds a primary goal of both sides. Layers of this are often meshed with older-but-reliable Tantalum-Hafnium-Carbide armor to save funds without compromising integrity.
New Faster-Than-Light technology:
-Casimir Drive: with the addition of raw HPA, the Casimir effect can be used to create stable, instantaneous-travel wormholes to any location relatively close to the drive’s activation location. While this means that for shipboard drives, an intergalactic journey may require several jumps, larger ‘Gate’ devices can sling about ships between galaxies with ease.
New Powerplant Technology:
-Plasma-Annihilation Drive: while technically similar to the older fusion drives, the PA Drive introduces the plasma into an environment that is 99,999 parts water and 1 part antimatter. The subsequent reaction creates more plasma and increases thrust.
New Weaponry:
-Dark Energy Pulse Cannons: these weapons use the gravity of a small singularity to sling about pulse-beams of dark energy at a given target. The targeted hull area will subsequently become horribly gashed from the attack.
-Dark Energy Torpedoes: Super-dense missiles fired from large tubes that attract dark energy around it in a spinning convoluted mess that slowly consumes the projectile itself, but sends the ball of dark energy streaking at the target. The target gets drilled through by the ball until there is nothing left of the round.
-Singularity Cannons: particle accelerators that create small singularities either on or near the target. Either the radiation caused by it or the singularity itself will cause grievous damage to the ship.
Self-Notes:
-As you may notice, the further along this series goes, the further into the realm of soft sci-fi it descends. This was intended; I just think that some soft sci-fi battles are more epic than some hard ones.
-Those numbers are accurate. An estimated 1 trillion soldiers died during the last battle for Earth alone in the Human-Thulhian War. The number of planets that are destroyed in each conflict also drastically decreases each time; this is because civilians voice great outrage at the destruction of planets, and, since the MSA needs to keep them happy, it goes to great lengths to NOT destroy planets. By the fourth war, however, habitable planets are a great resource due to the fact that only planets with a certain atmosphere can produce HPA (Heavy Pacification Armor), a key element of the Milky-Way-Andromedan shipbuilding race.
EDIT: MSA-VERSE (C) ME 2007.
Read, review, and comment, if you please.
Read & Review at your leisure.
BASICS:
-MSA: Many-Star Alliance, a partial democracy created by the ancient race that call themselves Thulhians. The Thulhians believe that only they know what true order and peace are, and thus lure younger races in with false hopes of democracy to, purportedly, keep them safe. They have come under fire from their member races for allowing Humanity to continue the enslavement of the Suthra, a race that the humans engineered to do their bidding.
-Crown Royal of Santhia: a monarchy based off the world of Santhia, home to several billion freed Suthra. Their wish to remain independent conflicted with MSA philosophies and mantras, and thus the planet led the Great Separation, which, in turn, led to the First Galactic Conflict.
TIMELINE:
-Timeline removed, guys. I'm sorry, but I just can't risk anyone using to make the real stories non-canon. To make up for it, I've put up the starting and ending dates of the 2nd and 4th conflict.
Description of the technology and MSA ships of the second conflict:
-Took Place: 4010 ET-4173 ET
Weapons:
-Mass Driver: one of the oldest weapon systems in existence, these projectile weapons use magnetic rails or coils to hurl rounds at speeds that allow them to still be powerful medium-range weapons. Usually, the weapons fire their ammunition at speeds near 70% c, speeds fast enough that if enough cannons fire on the same location, the resulting failed shield, cracked hull, or molten hole in the planet’s surface signals the end for the enemy. Currently, the most powerful mass driver systems are the Santhian Arms TX-4280, a Gatling system designed to bring down shields, and the Havelock HMD-01, which fires smaller rounds of super-dense Neutronium at 90% c, and is effective against most everything.
There are also various companies that provide mass drivers that use the mass of the round, instead of its velocity, to provide most of the damage. These systems are instead called torpedo drivers, and are usually only found on Battlestars and Dreadnoughts.
-Particle: these weapons fire streams of a select particle at c, and are the most common weapons in existence, used by both sides extensively as both long-range strike weapons and broadside exchange pieces. The Thulhian ion cannons, generally accepted to be the most powerful conventional weapon in the galaxy, are the best-known example of this technology. Such weapons as the ion cannon can level planetary surfaces and carve crevices several miles deep, and are also famous for vaporizing starships without them knowing the weapon had been fired.
Despite the ion cannon’s fame, it is hardly the most common particle weapon. Most particle weapons, in fact, have only half the range of the famed aforementioned weapon.
Certain, more exotic particle weapons are found only within the borders of the MSA. An example of this is the Sun cannon, which has the unique ability to cause any matter it touches to explode in an atomic explosion.
-Laser: a weapon almost as old as the mass driver, the laser was once used in thousands of famous combat encounters and conflicts. Today, only the Santhians, armed with their spinal Xraser weapons, use them to great extent for purposes other than point defense.
-Antimatter: a pulsed beam of antimatter used in broadside engagements, these weapons are mounted in grids or dual-barreled turrets, and have a range limit of half a light second. They are most effective when shields have been dropped and they are free to ravage the hull.
-Plasma: balls of self-sustaining excited gas fired in a bolt form. Generally, these are mounted on ships designed around fire support, due to their relatively limitless potential to cause pain. Their electromagnetic properties can short out shields and power systems, their heat can cut through dozens of meters of hull plating, and a single shot can, potentially, de-crew a ship. MSA ships mount double-barreled turrets, with each barrel being able to fire three-shot-bursts in an alternating fashion, giving the illusion of automatic fire.
-Missile: projectile weapons with a warhead and driven by a fusion drive. Absolutely the oldest form of weaponry in any current arsenal, they are only kept due to the wide range of warheads that can be fitted on them. Current versions are only fast enough to be used in broadside, and are made harder to hit by quantum chaff which confuses point defense circuitry. There are four warheads that are most commonly used:
Fusion: a straightforward gigaton-level nuclear missile. This is the most common missile warhead.
Antimatter: a container of anti-hydrogen is suspended in a pool of liquid hydrogen which detonates in the low-gigaton-level. They are more compact than fusion warheads but are harder to build and yield far less radiation damage.
Tide-Space: a missile which contains a normal fusion warhead and a one-time-use Tide-Space drive that allows it to slip right past shields. Officially, these missiles are banned galaxy-wide; unofficially, all Santhian and MSA ships carry at least ten in the cargo bays.
Gravitic: a warhead that creates an instant gravity well that crushes hull sections and literally drains contragravitic shields. These are the most powerful legal missiles known to the galaxy.
-Energy Discharge: weapons that harvest pure excess energy produced by fusion reactors and bacterial generators via Gravitic and magnetic fields. There are two types of these weapons: constant stream and wavering. While constant stream deal less damage, they are easier to target with, and can be easily mounted in spinal positions for chase combat (there are some reports that spinal weapons of other empires can be overpowered to a point where they are nearly twice as powerful as an ion cannon, but this has never been confirmed). Wavering weapons deal far more damage per impact, and can be pulsed to overload shields, but targeting is made more difficult by the fact that, when the target is changed and the turret rotates to target, the beam curves off-course for a second. These are usually found near plasma batteries, since plasma batteries have backup fusion generators that power both themselves and the ship if the main core is hit.
Propulsion:
-Fusion: these engines use the plasma created by a fusion reactor and force it out of the ship as exhaust. They have the fastest normal-space acceleration rates, and can reach up to 1/15th lightspeed.
-Particle: these engines force streams of particles out the back as exhaust. They have a gentler acceleration rate, and cannot reach the speed of a fusion drive, but are more reliable and easier to maintain.
-Tide-Space drive: devices that open a temporary rift to a dimension caused by the stress between universes. This dimension allows for faster-than-light travel, and it is estimated that the maximum rate of travel is 2 hours per light-year. Because of the intense radiation, hulls that are directly exposed to Tide-Space slowly ablate, and thus must be covered in liquid hydrogen before entering Tide-Space. Tide-Space drives are available to anyone who can afford one, but civilian drives generally tend to have a planet-side “jammer” so that authorities may arrest them, should the need arise.
Power Systems:
-Fusion: hydrogen molecules are magnetically fused into helium, and release tremendous amounts of energy. While there are many experiments into the field of power generation, currently fusion is the only available generator.
Defensive Systems:
-Tantalum Hafnium Carbide: the first layer of armor defense, this refractory compound has the amazingly high melting point of 4488K. It is produced mostly in asteroid chain facilities, many hundreds of asteroid mines physically linked together for easier transport.
-Woven Carbon Nanotubes: carbon tubes that have great tensile strength and ductility. These act as physical impact damage reducers.
-Tungsten-Lead Alloy: an alloy that combines the high melting point of tungsten with the radiation protection and density of lead, this is usually the last layer of armor defense. The layers generally go as such: Tantalum Hafnium Carbide, Carbon Nanotubes, THC, Tungsten-Lead alloy.
-Point Defense lasers: the only lasers to be considered permanently part of every arsenal; these are primarily used to strike down missiles before they hit the shields, in case they are Gravitic.
-Plasma Shields: a magnetically-maintained rectangular field of super-hot plasma. These stop all attacks except laser strikes, until the shields get overloaded and temporarily drop.
Communications:
-Radio: the oldest and easiest-to-build communications equipment, it is the primary tactical communications system due to millennia of EMP hardening.
-Laser: tight-beam lasers used to transmit valuable information between ships and planets. The most widespread use of this system is the communication of ship systems updates.
-Tide-Space hyperlink: various nodes are used to transmit radio-or-laser transmissions across Tide-Space, allowing for FTL-communications that take mere seconds to transmit anywhere within 500 light-years.
Ship Classes of the MSA:
Kaiser-class Dreadnought
-20x quad-barreled 240mm Constant Discharge cannons
-11x 109mm Wavering Discharge cannons
-40x 15cm Wavering Discharge cannons
-80x 40-barreled 5.2mm antimatter grids
-45x dual-barreled 112mm antimatter turrets
-20x 56mm dual-barreled Plasma cannons
-26x 9mm dual-barreled Plasma cannons
-10x 4cm dual-barreled Plasma cannons
-30x assault missile tube grids, each carrying 160 fusion missiles, 60 antimatter missiles, and 40 Gravitic missiles
-125x 20mm particle cannons
-16x quad-mounted Ion cannon turrets
-10x Tide-Space missiles hidden in the cargo bays
-2x Fixed-forward 10m Torpedo drivers, each carrying two magazines of 20
-10x broadside-fixed 4m Torpedo drivers, each carrying two magazines of 40
-200mm THC top-level armor
-120mm Woven Carbon Nanotubes
-250mm THC lower-level armor
-95mm Tungsten-Lead alloy bottom-armor
-5x 100GT-withstanding Plasma shields
-300x point-defense lasers
Often associated with fear, astonishment, power projection, and MSA pride, the Kaiser-class is the most-recognized ship in the fleet, its wedge-shaped 2km long blue-gray hull making even the hardiest species shiver in terror. Although its firepower output is somewhat less than that of other dreadnoughts in the fleet, it alone maintains the honor of boasting the powerful 100GT-withstanding Plasma shield, the most powerful ever conceived by Squid architects. This powerful shield often means that two-or-three are assigned to cover the escape of other ships with their massive shields.
Dresden-class Dreadnought
-14x 82mm Wavering Discharge cannons
-57x 6.9mm antimatter grids
-10x dual broadside 4cm antimatter cannons
-6x 6cm dual Plasma cannons
-30x 10mm quad-barreled Plasma cannons
-18x 20mm Mass Drivers
-2x 93mm Mass Drivers
-2x Fixed-forward 12m Torpedo drivers, each carrying two magazines of 20
-14x broadside-fixed 4m Torpedo drivers, each carrying two magazines of 30
-77x 10mm tri-barreled particle cannons
-8x quad-mounted ion cannons
-10x assault missile tube grids, each carrying 200 Gravitic missiles
-200mm THC top-level armor
-65mm Woven Carbon Nanotubes
-100mm Tungsten-Lead alloy bottom armor
-6x 400MT-withstanding Plasma shields
-100x point defense lasers
Named after the first ambassador for Humanity to the MSA, the Dresden-class dreadnought possesses incredibly large and powerful plasma and mass driver weaponry, compared to its size (1.8 kilometers). Shaped into a more broadened wedge than is traditional, the Dresden-class is in its element during medium-range standoffs, in which all of its weapons can be used.
Acolyte-class Battlestar
-12x 40cm Wavering Discharge cannons
-20x quad 15cm Constant Discharge cannons
-4x 20cm fixed-forward Constant Discharge cannons
-100x 5.5 antimatter grids
-16x dual 6cm Antimatter cannons
-4x quad 4cm Antimatter cannons
-20x dual 7cm Plasma cannons
-20x quad 2cm Plasma cannons
-12x dual 4m Plasma cannons
-2x 18cm Mass Drivers
-6x 6cm Mass Drivers
-4x Fixed-forward 12m Torpedo drivers, each carrying two magazines of 20
-14x broadside-fixed 4m Torpedo drivers, each carrying two magazines of 30
-250 assault missile tube grids, each carrying 300 fusion missiles, 100 antimatter missiles, and 80 Gravitic missiles
-2x 1 Teraton warheads
-2x Special Warhead missiles
-300x tri-barreled 3cm particle cannons
-100x broadside 6cm particle cannons
-24x quad-mounted ion cannons
-270mm THC top-level armor
-100mm Woven Carbon Nanotubes
-150mm Tungsten-Lead alloy bottom armor
-250mm THC lower-level armor
-7x 600MT-withstanding Plasma shields
-400x point defense lasers
The most powerful ship aside from the flagship, this is the only ship in the standard fleet that can comfortably withstand a constant missile battering for hours on end. Much of its internal workings are secret, however, and the only things known for certain about them are that they are 5 kilometers long and possess the above weapons and defenses. It is rumored that, when not being used in campaigns, these ships are used as slave transports for the human Suthra-slave industry.
Nephilim-class Cruiser
-6x 80mm Constant Discharge cannons
-2x 72mm Wavering Discharge cannons
-24x 8cm antimatter grids
-4x fixed-forward 16cm Antimatter cannons
-8x dual 2cm Plasma cannons
-10x quad 1cm Plasma cannons
-30x tri-barreled 10cm particle cannons
-10x quad-barreled 30cm particle cannons
-1x dual ion cannon
-200mm THC top-level armor
-60mm Woven Carbon Nanotubes
-120mm Tungsten-Lead alloy bottom armor
-2x 400MT-withstanding Plasma shields
-100x point defense lasers
As the longest cruiser in existence (902m long) and filled with enough weaponry to rival small dreadnoughts, the Nephilim-class has a reputation for being nasty towards everyone who hasn’t sworn allegiance to the blue-and-red stripes of the MSA flag. Although many have criticized its fixed-forward large antimatter cannons as a linear design flaw, it has been shown time-and-time again to be the turning point weapons of any battle.
Rand Eclectic-class Cruiser
-8x Dual 80mm Constant Discharge cannons
-3x 20cm Wavering Discharge cannons
-4x fixed-forward 12cm Constant Discharge cannons
-10x dual 40cm Plasma cannons
-40x dual 20cm Support-Fire Plasma cannons
-14x 10cm Mass Drivers
-60x tri-barreled 15cm particle cannons
-40x dual broadside 25cm particle cannons
-150mm THC top-level armor
-65mm Woven Carbon Nanotubes
-123mm Tungsten-Lead alloy bottom armor
-1x 100MT withstanding Plasma shield
-200x point defense lasers
This was the first design in a series designed by Fleet-Masters to fit their own personal styles of combat. The Rand Eclectic-class Cruiser, designed by Fleet-Master Deus, is a close-range fire support cruiser filled with more weapons than a rational person would probably ever come close to. While it could bust a hole in a ship twice its size (807.98 meters), its pathetic shield and lack of antimatter weaponry means that it usually takes up position behind Kaiser-class Dreadnoughts, jumping up every once-in-a-while to unleash a hellish rain of fire.
Due to budget constraints, the rest of the series was unfortunately cut short, and only half of all Rand Eclectic-class ships were ever completed, making even one a valuable asset for close combat support.
Insincere-class Cruiser
-16x tri-barreled 20cm particle cannons
-60x dual broadside 10cm particle cannons
-2x dual fixed-forward Ion cannons
-10x dual 16cm Mass Drivers
-10x 5cm Three-Shot-Burst Mass Drivers
-6x fixed-forward 3m Torpedo Drivers, possessing 20x Specialized Fusion-warhead Torpedo Driver rounds
-15x assault missile tube grids, each armed with 600 Fusion missiles and 20 Gravitic missiles
-100mm THC top-level armor
-50mm Woven Carbon Nanotubes
-123mm Tungsten-Lead alloy bottom armor
-1x 100MT withstanding plasma shield
-100x point defense lasers
The Insincere-class was designed around the ideas behind ancient Humanity’s ‘Marksman,’ who focused on deception and long-range combat, by only using weaponry with half-light-second ranges at least, and also being flatter and stubbier than most other cruisers, to give LIDAR systems the idea that it is simply a stray destroyer. At exactly 650 meters, most captains would simply expect a slightly oversized destroyer, and an easy piece of prey. This makes them bring their ships in closer to deliver the kill, allowing the cruiser to let loose its array of weaponry. However, its lack of armor, powerful shielding, plasma or discharge cannons means that it has no strong close-range weaponry, and must stay behind the main fleet. Often these ships will be grouped with Rand Eclectic-class cruisers into fire support groups, relying on each other to make up for their respective shortcomings.
Description and Background of the Fourth Conflict:
-Took Place: 5001 ET-???? ET
Background:
After the Humanoid – Thulhian war, the two sides meshed back together to defend against an incursion of four trans-galactic exploratory ships, each manned by Andromedan humans, and each more than a match for twelve MSA dreadnoughts. Although no ships are destroyed, all four are badly damaged and are forced to use their Casimir Drives to return to Andromeda. Fragments of their highly-advanced technology, including geometric particle defense shields, dark energy weaponry, and highly advanced metals that only more powerful and specialized nuclear warheads or a constant antimatter barrage could destroy enough to make a ship, were salvaged from blown-out ship decks and sections and used for research into refitting entire fleets. Human scientists also began the long process of reverse-engineering the Andromedan medical equipment (surprisingly, it seemed to have been already partially reverse-engineered, as if to aid the scientists in their research). The successful creation of permanent and safe mind-A.I. fusion, along with options for bionic skin and artificial body parts, opened humanity’s door to the Transhumanist movement, which led to the average lifespan increasing from 200 years to over 900 years. This technology was also used to create the Transhuman Infantry, an elite fighting force even more powerful and well-trained than the famed Wakizashis (addendum, 4893 ET: about fifty years after the end of the movement, the Wakizashis were officially absorbed into the Transhuman Infantry). By 5001 ET, the MSA and Human Empire were relatively convinced that they could take on the Andromedan humans and whatever allies had helped them advance so far in such little time. Using ancient Terran schematics, the MSA was able to build an enormous Casimir Gate at the edge of the Milky Way. This gate could throw waves upon waves of Human-or-MSA ships into any point in Andromeda, which would then use their Tide-Space drives to move from system to system, searching for their targets.
New Defensive Technology:
-Geometric Particle Defense Shields: magnetic fields that form super-dense particles in front of an incoming projectile or beam to block, deflect, or even absorb it. Depending on the size and/or power of the weapon, sides will be added or subtracted to the geometric shape, i.e. while a Neutronium round of x size might call for a hexagon, a meson beam might call for a decagon, et cetera.
-Heavy Pacification Armor: a super-dense blue-gray metal created by native Andromedans. Heavy Pacification armor can take direct hits from smaller nuclear weapons and still be able to shrug off many particle beams, lasers, plasma rounds, and even dark energy pulses before being ripped apart. Due to atmospheric exposure required in the finishing process, HPA may only be built on worlds that are habitable to nitrogen-oxygen breathing life forms, and thus makes taking-and-holding habitable worlds a primary goal of both sides. Layers of this are often meshed with older-but-reliable Tantalum-Hafnium-Carbide armor to save funds without compromising integrity.
New Faster-Than-Light technology:
-Casimir Drive: with the addition of raw HPA, the Casimir effect can be used to create stable, instantaneous-travel wormholes to any location relatively close to the drive’s activation location. While this means that for shipboard drives, an intergalactic journey may require several jumps, larger ‘Gate’ devices can sling about ships between galaxies with ease.
New Powerplant Technology:
-Plasma-Annihilation Drive: while technically similar to the older fusion drives, the PA Drive introduces the plasma into an environment that is 99,999 parts water and 1 part antimatter. The subsequent reaction creates more plasma and increases thrust.
New Weaponry:
-Dark Energy Pulse Cannons: these weapons use the gravity of a small singularity to sling about pulse-beams of dark energy at a given target. The targeted hull area will subsequently become horribly gashed from the attack.
-Dark Energy Torpedoes: Super-dense missiles fired from large tubes that attract dark energy around it in a spinning convoluted mess that slowly consumes the projectile itself, but sends the ball of dark energy streaking at the target. The target gets drilled through by the ball until there is nothing left of the round.
-Singularity Cannons: particle accelerators that create small singularities either on or near the target. Either the radiation caused by it or the singularity itself will cause grievous damage to the ship.
Self-Notes:
-As you may notice, the further along this series goes, the further into the realm of soft sci-fi it descends. This was intended; I just think that some soft sci-fi battles are more epic than some hard ones.
-Those numbers are accurate. An estimated 1 trillion soldiers died during the last battle for Earth alone in the Human-Thulhian War. The number of planets that are destroyed in each conflict also drastically decreases each time; this is because civilians voice great outrage at the destruction of planets, and, since the MSA needs to keep them happy, it goes to great lengths to NOT destroy planets. By the fourth war, however, habitable planets are a great resource due to the fact that only planets with a certain atmosphere can produce HPA (Heavy Pacification Armor), a key element of the Milky-Way-Andromedan shipbuilding race.
EDIT: MSA-VERSE (C) ME 2007.
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