Any updates? Even if you aren't ready to publish the final ruling, could we at least read what team B wrote?

Any feedback on the idea of having a separate message board for the wargame?

Mispeled, on Nov 14 2005, 12:39 PM, said:

Any feedback on the idea of having a separate message board for the wargame?
View Post

Yeah I just finished a lot of homework, running on 2 hrs of sleep in the last 36 or so.

CF and I independantly came to the conclusion that Team B wins in a fairly one-sided fight. We haven't had any opportunity to talk (he's just never around it seems), but here's the two strategies...

Team B = http://www.geocities...Plan.html?20054

Team A is as follows:

Strategic plan:
Planets are almost completely soft targets. Outer rim planets are neglected, large planets are neglected. Habitable planets (or nearly so) will contain our population and the bulk of our research. The expenditures on said planets are 60% infrastructure 20% research and 20% military. The infrastructure development funds deep crust mining bunkers, fast evacuation procedures (entire cities buring themselves building by building in a matter of hours), industrial complex adequation, anti-propaganda, and, primarily consumer goods. Following percentages are out of the 70 percent used on infrastructure, so 3% would actually be more like 3*.7= 2.1% of total GPP(gross planetary product).

15% Deep crust mining bunkers(DCMBs) have two purposes. Their primary reason for existence is mining for uranium/plutoniom for breeder reactors. Then, when a certain pocket has been mined clear, and the area is cleared of radiation, it is converted into self-sustaining fallout shelter, replete even with military production facilities (though small, and recycled from updated ones on the surface). Every attempt is made to be as environmentally friendly as possible, the usage of dug up rock is later. Minimal surface damage, as few holes as far away as possible. Satelites in Geosynch (or just above) use nanofiber cables to pull the rocks out of the ground while minimising any surface damage.

15% (includes both implementation and wasted productivity from evac. drills)Fast evacuation procedures are just what they sound like. Cities are built with huge redundant networks beneath them connecting to vastly separated DCMBs, protecting the population from any sort of attack. They might not be expecting anything from planet B, but there have been a few close calls in a few to many systems. As people like being together, and like the outside, cities are towers and terraces with lush greenery and a mix of modern and anachronistic housing. Evacuation drills are held every few months (say, twice a year), so cities can empty pretty quickly.

20% Anti propaganda includes such things as every possible attempt to boost morale ever, full biometric registration, free market protection, forced licencing of civilian trade vessels, large percentage of time dedicated to elitist theology ceremonies. Monopolies are a thing of the past as quick and easy borrowing, company registration, and negotiation mean that not only are you competing with every other business out there, you are also competing with everyone with a computer that has half an idea what they are doing. Programs such as this increase faith that our government is the perfect govt. Useless crap dug out of the mines is used to create gigantic monoliths in honor of the greatness of the empire. Sites are chosen for visibility from cities and techtonic stability. This is extremely expensive, but serves as a permanent reminder of the power of the <tn>.

50% Consumer goods: as of the first round, the economy is geared towards consumer culture. 98% is in the form of of intellectual property, or production of means to produce IP (things like building the 400th generation of video cameras, research into bio implants to impart info directly into your skull, etc). Materialism is a thing of the past, nearly a full third of the culture dedicates their time to creating art, and a huge portion of the time is spent consuming it. There is not yet a technology that allows full VR, but every sense can be stimulated for stuff like super awesome video games (but it still all feels 'flat' to the rest of the world, in the way that a computer monitor looks like a single meaningless point of light to these people.) Life expectancies are extended, everyone has a bioengineered tapeworm (courtesy of Brian Aldiss ~Supertoys Last all Summer Long). There is a fair production of civilian ships, but this is way underrepresented.

===Research:===
Most of our research is in the realm of making stuff cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. We are looking for production methods that allow on-the-fly programmable assembly lines to still be terribly efficient.

===Military:===
All of the planets military expenditures are dedicated to building factory ships. These factory ships mostly build other factory ships, and stockpile missiles. Factory ships also build an array of relays spread around en masse through the system that communicate on a ultrasecure P2p network. This was originally designed for traffic control, but the military coopted the technology and now uses these relay stations to search for enemy ships. Processing power is so cheap they just take full 360 photographs with gigs and gigs of resolution, then compare them to previous photographs. Even the slightest silouhete on a minor star/galaxy far away will show up, and the info will be relayed to friendly missiles/ships in the area.

Our Fleet

The fleet is composed entirely of asteroid miner/builder combos. Copied from discussion:

The articles this is based upon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/asteroid
http://en.wikipedia....C-type_asteroid
http://csep10.phys.u...omposition.html

We see that 75% of asteroids in systems approximately as old as ours
(ie whos suns have gone through as many life cycles) are C-Type.
C-Type asteroids are composed of basically the same thing as the sun,
minus the helium, most of the hydrogen, presumably nearly all of the
neon, plus a fair share of oxygen and nitrogen. This results in an
asteroid composed primarily of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen bonded
together randomly with silicon, magnesium, iron, and trace quantities
of other minerals. The iron can be used to build our actual factory
ships. The carbon, oxygen and hydrogen (hydrogen exists in many
minerals as water. Only the free H2 boils off) could probably be
reconstituted into nutritional carbohydrates. Also, they can be used
to make plastics that we then coat in some reflective material and
use as giant mirrors to focus the sun's energy onto certain points in
the asteroid belt. These points contain solar collectors that store
the energy in one form or another which is then relayed to the factory
ships. The ships need the energy to run the centerfuges, which is
really the only way to refine ores in space. The silicon, naturally,
is used to create the semiconductors we need to guide our missiles.
It can also be used to coat our ships in aster cells, but these are
used mainly in emergencies.

As I said, every ship is a modular factory that harvests
asteroids and turns them into missiles as quickly and as cheaply as
possible, while still maintaining computer controlled flexibility. If
one style of missiles is not working as best as it should, many other
designs are made availlable for factories to switch to automatically.

Ah, right, the other types of asteroids are primarily silicates and
primarily metals accordingly, so these can be used to make the ceramic
casings and build the heavy slugs for the kinetic missiles,
respectively.

As for propulsion, each of our ships will have a large number of arms
of various size, precision, and strenght (useful when construction larger
ships/missiles/for repair). The two heaviest legs push off from the
asteroid, while many of the smaller legs hold onto bits of debris. in
order to change course, the smaller legs fling their debris as
appropriate. In a pinch, bits and pieces of the ship itself can be
used to change course, but only in emergency.

We leave our planets as completely soft targets. It will
be very clear that we have no military installations
there, and that the only thing they can accomplish is the murder of
civilians and the destruction of natural biospheres (which is not
something to be done lightly). Our asteroid belt missile troops will
be able to break any siege, and are not themselves vulnerable to
siege. As the enemy gets closer, the missiles produced will change
designs to ones with smaller and smaller fuel capacities, cheaper
materials, and faster production capacity. If the enemy gets within
accurate railgun range (difficult, as thrashing claws holding/flinging
heavy debris would provide ample renewable delta V), ships could even
produce their own 'close range' rail guns, particle beams, and
possibly lasers (assuming the enemy doesnt go retroreflective).

As for the missiles themselves, there are a large number of variables our commanders will already be briefed upon. Asterisks indicate 'default' option (ie the missiles that will be stockpiled before the enemy arrives, and the missiles that will be produced until we get battlefield data)

@@Defensive options:

Dark skin (you know, standard stealth)

*Retroreflective coating (like bicycle reflectors. They shoot lasers at the missiles, the beam reflects exactly into the weaps array.
Can be combined with the dark skin for missiles that look dark, but when fired upon, burn off the dark leaving only the reflectors.
The standard mirrors will be 99% reflective to every wavelenght. If they use only a certain color, we can manufacture mirrors that
reflect it perfeclty. If they dont use laser PD, the very second wave of missiles will not have reflective coatings)

Arms similar to those of the ship, for adding only temporary delta V without changing center of gravity (for dodging railguns)

Thick shell (vs flak)

Farraday Cages (vs emp)

*Ceramic construction(vs mag)

Ferric construciton (if they arent using anything magnetic, it would be cheaper to build the shells with whatever)

@@Offensive options:

*Kinetic (Just a cross of a missile and a railgun with a simple computer that adjusts for some target movement while the missile is in flight.)

Nuke (a few will be tossed about in the beginning just to test their farraday shielding. If it sucks, which i doubt, they will be massed)

Rail gun toting missile:
http://en.wikipedia....ssion_generator
(Using the one shot powersource in conjunction with a one shot weapon, the missile travels at fairly low speeds until it gets within rail range of the ship, at which point the back half detonates, generating power, which the front half uses immediately to fire a slug through the enemy ship. Theres two versions: close range shotgun, and a longer range used only rarely, trying to cut through two ships at once. The latter only if the enemy groups tight.)

@@point defense missiles:
These missiles are all smaller than the above. The logic is that missiles are the best thing against missiles, so we are going to try to overwhelm their missile based point defense system using smaller, cheaper missiles to blow out their larger missiles.

Sandbags: missiles that just spew clouds of sand in the path of an enemy missile. Easy to aim, fairly easy to armor against.

*Nuke: a small nuke at close range (tactical, like the size of a hand grenade. These already exist) explodes as close to enemy missile as possible. Faraday shielding something like a missile is kind of silly, so this would probably fry enemy electronics.

*Flak: Tried and true. Like nuke, but cheaper. Can probably make it faster.

@@Guidance systems:

*IR signature search: if they shield too well, this unit is removed to conserve space.

*radar: every retroreflective missile is already easy to see, so why not make them glow on their own?

satelite guidance: (note these are satelites of the sun, really). As i explained above, we will have tons of little listening posts spread around our
system. We keep the channel so secure it is difficult for a missile to decode it, but if the enemy is using heavy stealth, the listening posts will watch for sillouhettes and transmit the info to our missiles.

@@Propulsion:

*mini rail pellets: Missiles use some kind of electromagnetic accelerator and a little pile of gravel to get where they want.

chemical: cheaper, we will use this if the enemy gets closer.

===Tactical Plan===

As for overal strategy, I put it at the end because we didnt talk too much about it. We will just build these self sustaining factory ships in every system. Asteroid fields should be nearly saturated with them. Make it hell for the enemy to enter, but not going on the offensive until we are really prepared for war. Planets bunker up when the enemy arrives. Under no condition would the ships leave the asteroid field. As the enemy gets closer, the produced missiles get cheaper and cheaper, mixing perahps a few railgun or laser modules onto the factories, just to stir things up. All of the complication comes from our generals selecting which missile is best suited for which task. Missiles are fired in bursts, such that a large cloud of big missiles will be mixed in with smaller missiles (this cloud is extremely sparse by any normal measure). The smaller missiles fly ahead and destroy any enemy point defense missiles. When the large missiles approach their target, they do so from every direction, in order to overwhelm any laser/rail defense.

This post has been edited by Koshinn : 14 November 2005 - 11:47 PM

Side by side analysis

Overview of Team A

Strategy
R&D in the direction of cheaper products and into the mass production of said items.
Implementation: Creating self-sustaining factory ships in asteroids which build other factory ships. They "entrench" and create a stronghold in asteroid belts which are basically impossible to attack.

Technology
Power: Breeder reactors. Fission reactors that produce Pu basically.
Propulsion: Legs? Chemical engines, rail guns?
Sensors: Visual detection with extremely powerful cameras.
Offense: Lots of cheap missiles with an interesting variety including stealth, reflective coating, thick skin, and ceramic defenses on the missiles themselves.
Also, rail guns, nuclear missiles and... missiles with railguns on them.
Defense: Nuclear warheads, sand bags, anti-missile missiles, and flak.

Bonus points: Detailed description of your society. Tapeworms. Very unique strategy.

Negative points: Do you really expect to be able to turn raw carbon, hydrogen and oxygen into carbohydrates within 200 years? I highly doubt that'll happen in 500 years. No scientific proof to back it up, so Judge's call stands.

Notes: EMP doesn't work in space, you don't need faraday cages.

Overview of Team B

Strategy
Fight guaranteed battles against static targets with little defenses, planets. Lower morale and reduce their war-making capability.
Implementation: Avoid contact with enemy fleets.

Technology
Power: -
Propulsion: Solid-fuel (for short range missiles), Orion-style engines for ships.
Sensors: Probes with active radar and passive EM sensors.
Offense: Fusion warheads, neutron warheads, emp weaponry, flare ships. Possibly stealthed (see footnote at the end). Launched with rail guns (seemed unsure... METAL GEAR?!)
Defense: -

Bonus points: Propaganda. Raising warriors from birth. Logistics. Assault plan. Flare ships.

Negative points: Not enough detail about your society, although it seems entirely geared towards war. No description of power or defense systems for ships, so assuming fission reactors and metal hulls. 8-12g maneuvers... You want pancake crew members?

Notes: Nuclear weaponry won't shrink much, if at all in comming years. They're basically bare bones as it is, barring a major technological brakethrough in guidance or propulsion they'll stay the same size. Neutron bombs don't necessarilly cause minimal collateral damage. You need a lot to saturate an area and the shockwaves would annihilate unreinforced buildings.

Conclusion

Strategies If you read both, it should be pretty obvious right here why team B wins. Team B's fleet has orders to head for the planet(s) and avoid enemy fleets, while Team A's fleet is a bunch of factory ships that, while formitable, are in an asteroid belt and have strict orders not to leave. That gives an open door for Team B to inflict as many civilian casualties it takes for Team A to surrender. Team B states a willingness to attack civilians for their cause. It's for these reasons alone that Team B wins.

Technology Fairly even mathced, with interesting innovations on both sides but nothing that really matters because of the aforementioned strategies. If both sides were to somehow meet in battle it would be close... but I'd have to say Team A would be victorious due to their defending and their emphasis towards a war of attrition that Team B could not keep up in, especially with Team B's lack of defenses against missiles. Nuclear weapons are no where as effective in space as in an atmosphere due to the lack of a shockwave. Even though Team B is MUCH more mobile than Team A, the circumstances would favor Team A if they were defending their asteroid belt.

So in conclusion, given their strategies, technology and societies, in this particular situation, Team B pulls off a resounding victory with little resistance.

Note: I don't know how this happened, but Team B's strategy happened to perfectly foil Team A's strategy. I think A relied on the humanitarian aspects of an opposing government while B went for a total victory regardless of the consequences. This wasn't the outcome I was hoping for, I was hoping for less of a battle of strategies and more of inventive technology. Unfortunately, due to the extreme nature of Team A's strategy, not much has been learned in terms of the direction of future space combat except that defending an asteroid belt and hiding behind a treaty/convention won't work.

This post has been edited by Koshinn : 15 November 2005 - 12:15 AM

I would like to volunteer for the next round, if possible.

This post has been edited by Emmit Gandlodder : 15 November 2005 - 12:52 AM

Koshinn, on Nov 14 2005, 07:42 PM, said:

8-12g maneuvers... You want pancake crew members?View Post

Yes, actually. With the crews raised in 2g's, they should be less affected by high accelerations, but I do expect them to black out for the duration of the pass. If that acceleration is determined to be too high for the crewmembers to survive, it could be reduced. I doubt it would need to go much below 8g's for a few-hour pass.

Koshinn, on Nov 14 2005, 07:42 PM, said:

Notes: Nuclear weaponry won't shrink much, if at all in comming years.

I only trimmed a couple kilos off of the neutron bombs, although I did quite a bit of cutting for the fusion devices. However, with the power of the ship engines, it wouldn't be that much of a problem to increase the weights by 50-100%.

Koshinn, on Nov 14 2005, 07:42 PM, said:

... but I'd have to say Team A would be victorious due to their defending and their emphasis towards a war of attrition that Team B could not keep up in, especially with Team B's lack of defenses against missiles.

I agree with this, thus the attack on civilians. If you cannot out-produce the enemy, and are forced to attack them anyway, you must strike to kill as fast as possible. An attempt to engage ships in space is risky, and if it succeeds it will probably lead to heavy losses on both sides. The bigger economy can recover faster (in their specific case, they probably would have won handily with little economic impact).

Now, I might have put Team A as being slightly more effective- our ships might not have been able to out-run all of their missiles (although anything trying to hit in the rear would be fried).

And finally:

TeamBPlan.html said:

<!--And yes, I am an evil, heartless bastard. Just so you know. ;-)-->

Edwards

Koshinn has pretty much outlined the whole thing, but a few points from me:

To be honest, I think that Edwards may have thought his out more carefully. A's plan was all very nice, but it struck me as a little unfocused - it seemed to be trying to cover all angles while at the same time missing out on a few things. Looking over the history of these plans' creation, I realise that this is probably the result of Edwards pretty much going solo for B, while all of A went into thier plan.

As for a straight firefight between A and B, yes, A would win in a straight battlefield. But the speeds that B would be coming in at would mean that they could just blast right through the middle and shower the factory ships with nukes. Reduced effectiveness or not, get a fusion warhead slam into you will do a lot of damage. With a little luck and forward planning, A's force would be decimated with ease for little response to B unless A detected the incoming gunships and were able to lock on beforehand.

Final point: what was your secret weapon, Qaanol? The suspense is killing me...

I also think that both teams had very different interpretations of the game and its rules. Team A saw it as more of a long term strategic war, where being able to keep a steady flow of resources is important. It seemed like Team B's plan was more geared toward a swift encounter; kill the enemy before they kill you. I think next game would be better if we were each given a bit of background about the civilization to work off of, rather than working from a clean slate.

Team B was geared up for a Blitzkrieg–the same type of tactics the Germans used in World War II. It is an odd coincidence that our strategy virtually negated yours, though

Mispeled, it's more interesting if we have to develop it ourselves, though.

Chrome Falcon, on Nov 15 2005, 01:28 AM, said:

As for a straight firefight between A and B, yes, A would win in a straight battlefield. But the speeds that B would be coming in at would mean that they could just blast right through the middle and shower the factory ships with nukes. Reduced effectiveness or not, get a fusion warhead slam into you will do a lot of damage. With a little luck and forward planning, A's force would be decimated with ease for little response to B unless A detected the incoming gunships and were able to lock on beforehand.

I don't think that high speeds would do much good in an asteroid field. I agree that in open space, Team A would be decimated. But in a battlefield of their choosing, the asteroid belt, they'd annihilate team B. I believe it's the reason that Team A chose all their technology, based on that one battlefield. I can't help but give them every advantage in that situation. Even Edwards/Team B knows that if they engaged Team A, they'd lose. But that's why Team B's entire strategy involved strategic attack instead of space superiority.

Quote

Final point: what was your secret weapon, Qaanol? The suspense is killing me...
View Post

Please do tell

Edwards said:

Yes, actually. With the crews raised in 2g's, they should be less affected by high accelerations, but I do expect them to black out for the duration of the pass. If that acceleration is determined to be too high for the crewmembers to survive, it could be reduced. I doubt it would need to go much below 8g's for a few-hour pass.

They could survive 8gs definately, since they're raised in 2gs. It would just take a few generations before they were used to the 2Gs I believe.

Edwards said:

I only trimmed a couple kilos off of the neutron bombs, although I did quite a bit of cutting for the fusion devices. However, with the power of the ship engines, it wouldn't be that much of a problem to increase the weights by 50-100%.

I know, it didn't matter much. That's why it was a note.

Hmm... I agree that team B would take the planet, but that was also sort of not the point. Team A is completely self sustaining in the asteroid belt, indefinitely. And no matter how well team B is raised in space, team A's missiles could go faster, simply because they don't need warriors. Sure, B takes the planet. But what does it do with it? Team A would NOT surrender the asteroid fields because they lost the planet.

Anyway. How are we going to procede from here? Should both teams alter their strategies to compensate for what the other team did? I can think of a few minor complications that would tilt the war back in our favor.

While I submit I did not sufficiently explain harvesting food from asteroids, team B gave NO explanation at all as to how humans are expected to survive in 2g with absolutely no genetic manipulation or anything of the prosthetic sort. Indeed every NASA study to the effect has reiterated the fact: humans cannot adapt to 2g. The blood vessels in our brains, the valves in our arteries, everything is designed for 1g and only 1g. Never in our evolutionary history have we had to face more or less than that for a duration greater than a moments acceleration. While it was a clever idea, it has no basis in fact.

The judges also forgot about our city evacuation procedures, I think. Our cities are very fortified and good at hiding themselves. Neither team really described what would happen with a raiding party, once team B decides to land.

But it was certainly interesting, and overall I do agree that team B found the strategy that perfectly counters team A. I still think the judges assumed planets are more important than everywhere else, and we assumed that control of the asteroid belt was most important (huge rescources without a gravity well to get them out of).

And what exactly are you doing to our planets? Our entire population live in fallout shelters... and we don't have all that many satelites (just those mining transporters). EMPing our surface won't attract any attention at all. The absolute worst thing you can do is render the surface inhabitable, but our population will be safely buried, and there will be a perpetual swarm of intelligent guided missiles coming from the asteroid belt at all times. From the moment you enter the system until the moment you die. (also note, our factory ships naturally would never leave the system)

The evasive defenses also assume that your ships are being fired on by railguns or beams, our guided missiles obviously have the capactity to compensate.

This post has been edited by NebuchadnezzaR : 15 November 2005 - 02:01 PM

Neb, even if your ships could infinitely sustain themselves (which I think is bull, because a planet would provide you with far more resources than all the asteroids) your people would still surrender if we bombarded them into submission–your ships wouldn't matter.

And if we knock out your escape routes with EMP weapons (I'm assuming here that your escape routes into the rock involve things like elevators) they wouldn't work, as the EMP would knock them out.

Because we would have no heads up during the three weeks it took you to get to our planets, right? I'd like to remind you of that little piece of your strategy where you come through the gate with blindingly bright ships. Within 8 minutes, evac procedures begin. Within an hour or two, entire cities have been retracted under the surface of the planet, spreading the population evenly across the surface of the planet, many many miles below. Bombard that all you want, it isnt going anywhere. Turn the surface into magma, will you? Fine. That isn't a victory for either of us, except that my team still has an entire intact economy pouring missiles into the center of the system. We are fighting ships that do everything they can to stay away from us, then hit us and run again. Our propaganda will cleanly lable you as heartless cowards. The war will not end with the fall of our planets, and your ships cannot face us in the asteroid belt.

Our ships are also quite capable of sustaining themselves. Sure its inneficient, but you have just reiterated why basing an army off of a planet is a bad idea.

To harvest food from an asteroid: First, I assume you can break an asteroid up into its elements. Now we have a bunch of oxygen, some hydrogen, and plenty of carbon. Burn it. Now you have water and CO2. Add some plants, and there you go. Infinite food for the price of a bit of energy and some asteroids. And we will obviously recycle bio waste. That is already a modern tech, no reason to do away with it.

Missiles will be flying at you from all sides, all the time. You can go fast, but you will not have infinite fuel. We can run you out just by firing an endless cloud of missiles your way.

Okay, so where to we stand? Team B attacked one system of ours. Our cities retreated and our defense grid (asteroid field ships) opened fire. The attacking fleet is unable to leave the system, as we can bombard it if it comes too close, which it will if it tries to reach the hypergate.

Now what? All our systems still have their asteroid field ships still in place. One of our planets' population (the planet in the system at the top of the circle, adjacent to Team B's home system) has gone subsurface. Either the attackers engage us in the asteroids, or they keep bombing the planet until they're out of ammo, or they just drift around. They still have a fleet back in their own system.

Sounds like everything's set up and round two is about to begin...

Koshinn, on Nov 14 2005, 11:42 PM, said:

Negative points: Do you really expect to be able to turn raw carbon, hydrogen and oxygen into carbohydrates within 200 years? I highly doubt that'll happen in 500 years. No scientific proof to back it up, so Judge's call stands.

Notes: EMP doesn't work in space, you don't need faraday cages.
View Post

To the first, our ships have hydroponic farms. Neb was supposed to send an update with that, about 10 minutes after he sent the original report.

To the second, how, then, is the (very high) energy of a nuclear explosion dissipated, if not as light? Entirely as the kinetic energy of the bomb itself (ie, fragmentation)? No heat (heat is infrared light—electromagnetic radiation) is transferred into the material that shrapnels away?

Or maybe I'm missunderstanding what "EMP" actually means. Regardless, Faraday cages also protect against radiation in space. Like, you know, from stars. If our ships didn't have Faraday-type shielding then their crews would be irradiated and probably killed.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 15 November 2005 - 05:22 PM

I didnt think the food thing would be that big of a deal, I thought assuming hydroponics wasn't a leap worth another seperate email. Eh. We can be anally specific this time.

On a side note, I am pulling out the big guns

I've mailed my grandfather regarding eating asteroids and living at 2G. He works at UW, and is the most cited scientists in astronomy, nearly the most cited overall. He'll know whats up

-------
Ok, as for next round: Our team was grand, perhaps if we get one new member and you guys get everyone else (to see if you can get a discussion going)? Sound good?

I'll take Sylvanus if he is still interested. And wants to help the underdogs.

This post has been edited by NebuchadnezzaR : 15 November 2005 - 07:32 PM

I did go ahead and started setting up an invisionfree board.

When you first register, you're only able to see two forums... a forum for the rules, sign-ups, discussion of the game, and so on; and an archive forum. There are also three that you can't see: a private forum for each team and a moderator forum for the judges.

Each time we start a game, I will manually use the admin account to give each player access to the appropriate team forums, so they'll be able to see them and post. After the game is over, the threads from all three hidden forums (team discussion and the moderator discussion) will be moved to the archive forum so that the public can read them.

Awesome. Thanks, sounds neat.

So are we moving on to a new scenereo or continuing this one?

Am I in or not, and in what capacity?

Inquiring minds want to know...

Mispeled, are you going to PM those of us participating with links to the forum, or is a link in your profile?

Qaanol, on Nov 15 2005, 02:14 PM, said:

Okay, so where to we stand? Team B attacked one system of ours. Our cities retreated and our defense grid (asteroid field ships) opened fire. The attacking fleet is unable to leave the system, as we can bombard it if it comes too close, which it will if it tries to reach the hypergate.

Now what? All our systems still have their asteroid field ships still in place. One of our planets' population (the planet in the system at the top of the circle, adjacent to Team B's home system) has gone subsurface. Either the attackers engage us in the asteroids, or they keep bombing the planet until they're out of ammo, or they just drift around. They still have a fleet back in their own system.

The point of a government is to serve its people. The point of a military is to defend the country's interests. Their interest would be to survive, I would think. But anyway, Team B has much longer to accelerate than Team A's missiles do, so yes Team B could technically outrun Team A's missiles. Also, space isn't 2d. One can go around an asteroid belt. Yes you could stay in the asteroid belt basically forever, but your planet is under attack. Basically it comes down to this, if the buildings could burrow under ground, that means they have a way to come up. If they do, they won't be terribly difficult to attack. Nothing survives a direct hit from a nuclear weapon. They'll get hit eventually, Team B has tons of missiles. And although you might have missiles with a range of 10 light minutes or so, by that time Team B could have done any number of things to avoid them. Hell, Team B could invade Team A's planet without any resistance whatsoever. No military on the planets, remember? Then again Team B didn't bring an occupation force.

Quote

To the second, how, then, is the (very high) energy of a nuclear explosion dissipated, if not as light? Entirely as the kinetic energy of the bomb itself (ie, fragmentation)? No heat (heat is infrared light—electromagnetic radiation) is transferred into the material that shrapnels away?

Or maybe I'm missunderstanding what "EMP" actually means. Regardless, Faraday cages also protect against radiation in space. Like, you know, from stars. If our ships didn't have Faraday-type shielding then their crews would be irradiated and probably killed.
View Post

Yeah you did. You're right that electromagnetic light is given off by nuclear explosions. Most things give off electromagnetic light (no, not everything). But an EMP generated by a nuclear explosion in an atmosphere doesn't occur in space.