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Originally posted by Slug:
**A wormhole is a natural and more stable version of it, yes.
**

Natural yes, stable no. Most wormholes exist for far less time than it would take to traverse them, and anyone attempting so would be destroyed in the singularies, unless negative energy in sufficient quantity was pushed in to "wedge" the hole open.

This is all from "The Physics of Star Trek", a very handy guide to wormholes, tractor beams, antimatter, etc.

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Originally posted by Fleet Admiral Darkk:
Natural yes, stable no. Most wormholes exist for far less time than it would take to traverse them...

That's sorta what I meant. Any wormhole that actually exists long enough to be noticed is there to stay.

Sorry, I left that out.

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
-Alduran Outlaw Rick Blazer
StarLance

I see gateships as mobile jumpgates. That's all there is too them. They can open a jumpstream to another jumpgate or another gateship, or vice versa.

I see jumpstreams as the next level up from hyperspace. As was mentioned, hyperspace is an area of space which, being travelled, means that you move very little in hyperspace and go a long way in realspace. Your FTL or standard drives can propel you through hyperspace and your hyperspace drives push your ship 'up' or 'down' in and out of it. A jumpstream is simply a level up.

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"Anything that can be achieved using magic can be achieved using technology." -Salrillian Illegal Publicist ekt-Herna in his last message to the Salrillian public.

Carm: Carm is an elderly Cantharan pirate, commanding a mixed-species pirate force using salvaged Nijayias ships. His brother was a famous pirate by the name of Nep Lek, killed in a skirmish with a Nijayias border patrol.
Carm wants to conquer territory, having an insatiable appetite for power. He also wants to avenge his brother.

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Error: target is violating the laws of physics
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After some playing, I have an new theory. It seems to me that ships in Ares are limited deployment vessels. If you notice, its possible to exhaust an entire HVD's Energy supply in a few minutes.
I don't think any ship has the capability to move between systems on its own, let alone survive in open space for extended periods of time(except for perhaps carriers)

Moving between systems can only be accomplished by useing gateships, which are the only ships capable of travelling at many, many times the speed of light. What gateships seem to be able to do, is either form a bubble of normal space around them in hyperspace, or whatever, to let fleets follow them around, or they can project jumpstreams. A gateship needs to be relatively nearby, say a few lightyears(still pretty distant) But the ship can project a portal to wherever it wants to send ships. Of course, a Jumpgate makes this easier, and much more stable, but for example, the gateship keeps sending you asteroids in level 20, even though there is no gateship to be found, also, remember how they only managed to squeeze you in with great difficulty? Or how about when the transports arrived in "clear the way" no gateship there either.

In yo ho ho, I think that the Sals are getting sent in by one of their gateships, as they arn't about to use a jumpgate that your gateship has connected to, so that it can pull that huge Cruise liner through safely. Or, alternatively, they are near sal space, so they can use a Sal Jumpgate to project a jumpstream. However It seems that most jumpgates(ex: the one in yo ho ho) are much smaller than gateships, and are only used for short distances, or to provide stable anchors for projected streams from gateships)

Comments? Questions?

{we probably should ignore this in the RPG, relying on gateships and Jumpgates tends to cramp a pirate's style.}

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I'm pretty sure you're right on all counts. The thing about building them in a small amount of time (even if time in Ares is compressed) is a clear indication of that too. (They do both come from the same source, so if you can argue one's a gameplay concession, I can argue the other one is too.)

There are ships that take forever to exhaust their energy besides gateships: Bazidanese (and maybe Obish) battleships. I heard it took 2 hours of firing to drain the Bazidanese battleship.

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Error: target is violating the laws of physics
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Error: unable to determine if target exists or not
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Quote

Originally posted by Captain Pharris:
After some playing, I have an new theory. It seems to me that ships in Ares are limited deployment vessels. If you notice, its possible to exhaust an entire HVD's Energy supply in a few minutes.
I don't think any ship has the capability to move between systems on its own, let alone survive in open space for extended periods of time(except for perhaps carriers)

I agree that the ships in the game are limited-deployment, but I imagine that the majority of civilian ships are capable of long-use and have a reasonable range. I also think that some, modified ships are able to switch between a low- and high-range mode, much as a 4 wheel drive car does, with the low-range mode designed for combat.

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Moving between systems can only be accomplished by useing gateships, which are the only ships capable of travelling at many, many times the speed of light. What gateships seem to be able to do, is either form a bubble of normal space around them in hyperspace, or whatever, to let fleets follow them around, or they can project jumpstreams. A gateship needs to be relatively nearby, say a few lightyears(still pretty distant) But the ship can project a portal to wherever it wants to send ships. Of course, a Jumpgate makes this easier, and much more stable, but for example, the gateship keeps sending you asteroids in level 20, even though there is no gateship to be found, also, remember how they only managed to squeeze you in with great difficulty? Or how about when the transports arrived in "clear the way" no gateship there either.

I think you're mostly correct here, but I don't think they'd be the only way to get around. I think omnidrives and hyperdrives are perfectly viable solutions, but only in "high-range mode", if they are equipped with it. Also, gateships are able to project jumpstreams ONTO ships, 'pulling them out' as put in Chapter 2.

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In yo ho ho, I think that the Sals are getting sent in by one of their gateships, as they arn't about to use a jumpgate that your gateship has connected to, so that it can pull that huge Cruise liner through safely. Or, alternatively, they are near sal space, so they can use a Sal Jumpgate to project a jumpstream. However It seems that most jumpgates(ex: the one in yo ho ho) are much smaller than gateships, and are only used for short distances, or to provide stable anchors for projected streams from gateships)

I believe now that gateships can project jumpstreams anywhere into nearby systems, but they are of a limited SIZE, meaning that the liner needed to go out the gate, or the gateship would have to come into the system, and 'escort' it out. The Ishimans didn't seem keen on bringing gateships into combat zones.

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Comments? Questions?

Well...

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**{we probably should ignore this in the RPG, relying on gateships and Jumpgates tends to cramp a pirate's style.}

**

Well, I think my 'corrections make for a more civilian-oriented society, anyway. It make sense to me, at any rate...

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"Anything that can be achieved using magic can be achieved using technology." -Salrillian Illegal Publicist ekt-Herna in his last message to the Salrillian public.

8 Lightnings
A strange and mysterious man, 8 appeared in this universe through a Quasispace portal generated during a Salrillian weapons test. His craft show up as 'unknown types' on most scanners, as they do not come from this universe. Also, their hyperspace drives work much differently, making them more difficult to trace.

He is a cyborg, with modifications to make him faster and more 'durable'. In his right arm is a pair of weapons: the Lightning Cannon, and a small pulse cannon. In his left arm is a Thunderbolt Cannon. His eyes are modified to allow him to zoom in and out, and he can also use multiple scanners to gain a subatomic view of an object. He is able to link directly to his fighter by means of a small connector in his left arm.

8 LightningForce
A small fleet commanded by 8 Lightnings. The fleet, to begin with, consisted of eight Lightnings, five Obish Escorts and one Elejeetian cruiser. They have a base established on the planet Tetrik V. Further description of this follows. A new ship was soon collected, known as Endurance. This will be described further also.

During the StarLance battle, four of the Escorts were destroyed, and most of the fleet was disabled. The ships that were still flyable after the battle were: Endurance, Surge III (the Obish Escort), and Eagle (the Elejeetian cruiser). 8 Lightnings was able to get one Lightning repaired. These ships made a strike on a Salrillian carrier, capturing it. A second Lightning is now under repair, and three Archangel fighters have been added to the fleet.

8 LightningForce Base, Tetrik V
Tetrik V has a large number of ancient ruins of an unidentified race. These have yet to be investigated. The 8 LightningForce base is built near these ruins, and has landing fields, hangar bays, living areas and a large command centre. The base appears quite like a small city with an abnormally large airport.

Endurance
8 Lightnings found the Endurance while flying a Salrillian fighter and being chased by a squadron of Cantharan cruisers. He docked with a station and heard the Cantharans boarding. His fighter was destroyed. He checked the records and found that one other ship was at the station. He found it and escaped in it. It took quite a pounding for a fighter in the process, so after the escape the fighter was named Endurance. The controls are very alien, so only through a direct computer uplink is 8 able to fly the ship. It is armed with some form of beam weapon like Lepton, and a cannon similar to an Onas Pulse gun. It also has stealth fields.
8 LightningForce have been able to translate some of the computer information, finding that the ship's class is called Khada , and have noticed that the language is the same as that inscribed on the Tetrik V ruins. 8 Lightnings hopes to both return to the station where he found the fighter and explore the ruins someday.

Lightning
A CDX StarWorx fighter with a class 7 Ion Drive. Nothing like it has ever been seen in the Ares universe. It is like a military vessel, but can be used for long periods of time with it's huge energy reserves. The 8 Lightnings in 8 LightningForce have been modified with stealth fields, and during their repairs, may be modified further as necessity dictates.

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8 Lightnings

Fleet: Lightning I, Eagle, Surge, Endurance, Alecto, Magaera, Tisiphone, Voltare

"CRUISER DESTROYED. 91 remaining" -Ares, chapter 9, Hand Over Fist

(This message has been edited by 8 Lightnings (edited 12-05-2000).)

Nijayias Lenkk Class Barrage Destroyer: These are large, sleek yet rectangular (like the human carrier or Eleejeetian ships) ships about the size of Sal carriers. They have upper and lower shipflack cannons with about 1/2 the combined fire rate of the ones on flack drones, 80 ammo, 150 missle pods, and rapid tacyon turrets that need no energy due to the enourmous power output of the destroyer.

I've posted 3 images of my quick-and-dirty model. I am not completely satisfied with it, but oh well.
(url="http://"http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/nijayias/images/Lenkk1.jpg")http://www.angelfire...ages/Lenkk1.jpg(/url) (url="http://"http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/nijayias/images/Lenkk2.jpg")http://www.angelfire...ages/Lenkk2.jpg(/url) (url="http://"http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/nijayias/images/Lenkk3.jpg")http://www.angelfire...ages/Lenkk3.jpg(/url)

The spherical things are the flack turrets (I have no clue what they're supposed to look like), and the cubes store the missle pods. Also, the tacyon turrets are on the foreward flat pannels.

Missle Pod: These start as beveled cubes with thrusters on the 4 rear corners. They break into 5 missles that each do 3/5 the damage of concussion missles.

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(This message has been edited by Fleet Admiral Darkk (edited 12-04-2000).)

When you visit the links, hit reload after the "hosted by Angelfire" image comes up.
BTW the Lenkk is far more boxy than other NPM ships, which have no right angles. It was made this way for efficiency of construction (barrage destroyers usually take forever to build). Ordinary ships that build faster due to size have much smoother lines.

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Error: target is violating the laws of physics
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(This message has been edited by Fleet Admiral Darkk (edited 12-04-2000).)

Talon medium patrol and attack fighter:

The Talon is the primary fightercraft of the Phylydion Imperium, and the most capable. Phylydion Fighters are much stronger than the fighters found in the Ares game and have more capabilities. They play a larger role in combat since the capital ships are not designed for maneuverability. The Talon is the most flexible fighter of all Phylydion designs. It has medium shielding and armor plating. It has long range sensors and a sophisticated, long-range communications array. Additionally, it is the only Phylydion fighter with an Omnispace drive. Armaments: Two flare bolt cannons, fire-linked, Two capsule missle launchers, one launcher capable of holding most medium missle classes.

Burst cannon: Light, rapid-fire cannons used in turrets and mounted on fightercraft. Simple weapon firing shaped plasma bolts. The cannon draws from a plasma fuel cell, compressing the plasma into a small sphere and energizing it. It spits the bolt out from a thin tube that gets narrower, making the bolts slightly ovoid and increasing their speed. The cannons appear as a simple hole in the side of a ship, as the apparatus is contained inside. Burst rifles are the standard infantry weapon.

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-Traek Cicion of the Taeskor
"Never tell me the odds!"
-Han Solo
"Then we'll do it real quiet-like."

Impact Kinetics: A fighting art only a few Phylydions have ever mastered, Impact Kinetics is the technique of keeping the energy of your fist/leg/etc. coherent when it enters the air instead if having it disperse. Involves punching the air, and doing it in such a way and with just so much force that the air molecules vibrate in a straight line and the energy doesn't go off every which way. This creates a straight "beam" of force that hits whatever object is within range with as much force as the impact that the fist itself would have. Most experts in this combat art can make an impact travel for about thirty feet before it finally disperses. This art also allows one to destroy objects that one would not ordinarily be able to because the pain of one's fist hitting something is not a problem.

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-Traek Cicion of the Taeskor
"Never tell me the odds!"
-Han Solo
"Then we'll do it real quiet-like."

There's no room in the plot for all that, Carn.
I'm sorry, but you might want to rethink that (unless Sargatanus approves, but I don't think another empire can fit in, unless it's a relatively new one; maybe they could be arrive just now?).

There are hundreds of smaller races who are either living under the protection of the Ishimans or the Domination of the Cantharans, and I think it is implied in the game that the Ares Universe is not at all limited to who or what you see in the game. Sure, there are probably not that many Cantharan federations or Phylidion Imperiums, but there is plenty of room for small, one to five system governments out there. Now what gets me is Why are all the races bound together? I know humans would never join all together under one government. Odds are, somebody would go and take half the planets, and then there would be a tremendous war over it. That's Human nature, not even alien threats can take that away from us.

You guys have got to remember that Planets are absolutely HUGE it is not possible to overrun a planet in a matter of days, even with spaceborn support. Think about it. While it may be more advanced, a cruiser can't really do much more than two or three present day fighter/bombers. It took NATO months to kill 50% of Saddam Hussein's army in Dessert storm. It payed off, but it took time. Now, Imagine trying to establish a beachhead from where to take over the Earth. That's almost absurd. Even if you just spent several weeks in space just circling and levelling, it would still take ages just to clear out the rubble. Planets are HUGE.

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I think most planets simply surrender to avoid orbital bombardment.
Of course, you never actually see the capture of a whole planet.
They might just use massive nerve gas attacks if they really wanted to invade.

I'll edit it.

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To Escape Velocity: Nova and Beyond!
--------------
Millennium. Its coming, prepare for it.
Coming to the (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiaSW.com/games/ev/chronicles.html")EV Chronicles(/url).

Quote

Originally posted by Captain Pharris:
**There are hundreds of smaller races who are either living under the protection of the Ishimans or the Domination of the Cantharans, and I think it is implied in the game that the Ares Universe is not at all limited to who or what you see in the game. Sure, there are probably not that many Cantharan federations or Phylidion Imperiums, but there is plenty of room for small, one to five system governments out there.
**

Such as Colonel D'mana's Agvar.

Quote

You guys have got to remember that Planets are absolutely HUGE it is not possible to overrun a planet in a matter of days, even with spaceborn support. Think about it. While it may be more advanced, a cruiser can't really do much more than two or three present day fighter/bombers. It took NATO months to kill 50% of Saddam Hussein's army in Dessert storm. It payed off, but it took time. Now, Imagine trying to establish a beachhead from where to take over the Earth. That's almost absurd. Even if you just spent several weeks in space just circling and levelling, it would still take ages just to clear out the rubble. Pl

(/B)

One of the things we agreed on in Trash Talk was that when a planet was captured in Ares, it involved capturing the Spaceport and vital military facilities; a long battle could ensue afterwards, during the capture of the entire world.

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The Fury

"If I had a rocket launcher, I'd make somebody pay. And my fighter has a rocket launcher."

I know, I read the thread, but people describe planets being overrun in days by the Dark. I don't care how superpowered they are, it would take a while for them to overrun an entire planet.

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That would depend on how many of them hit the planet. If, say, 20 billion Dark hit a small planet, they could conceivably wipe out it's population in a matter of a few days. Never underestimate the power of numbers.

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8 Lightnings
Fleet: Lightning 1, Surge, Eagle, Endurance, Voltare, Alecto, Magaera, Tisiphone
"CRUISER DESTROYED. 91 remaining" -Ares, chapter 9, Hand Over Fist

The Dark :

While the Elejeetians may call them Talos (their word for utter terror), the name of The Dark has become widely used to describe this swarm of nightmarish creatures. While they have only recently been encountered, they have been in existance since the dawn of time. Caught in a cycle of travel and destruction throughout the many dimensions and universes, the Talos return to this galaxy every nine-hundred million years, destroying all that has arisen and leaving, to let the universe to rebuild itself again.

The Dark themselves are xenomorphic creatures of pure energy, evolving over time to reach the state of near-sentience. Mindless killing machines. Feeding off of their victim's worst nightmares and recreating them on a grand scale, the Dark cause their prey to literally die of fright, after absorbing all of their neurological energy.

The Dark are caught in a cycle which gets stronger every loop, as they continue to evolve and learn. However, they have advanced to the maximum level their state allows: barely hovering on a single consciousness. In order to complete the missing chain in their evolution, The Dark must ressurect and merge "the great one" in order to gain the vital elements of sentience:
•Self-preservation
•Emotion
•The ability to believe the inexplicable

Should they find The Great One and merge with him, The Dark would become a nearly impossible power. They would be able to break the cycle and do what they only can: Destroy...

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
-Alduran Outlaw Rick Blazer
StarLance