Ambrosia Software Web Board: Clarification - Ambrosia Software Web Board

One thing I've been wondering: What exactly do Philydion and Nijiayas ships look like? Explanations, anyone?

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"You can get much further with kind words and a loaded gun than you can with kind words alone."
- Al Capone

All I've heard from Cicion is they're rectangular, grey, flat, fast, have lots of guns, and are practically invincible. I would make a mesh for them, but Sargatanus told me Sundered beat me to it.

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

Nijayias ships are black and sleek, not lumpy like many Sal ships. I'd make graphics for them but my POV-Ray skilz aren't, uh, extant! They're also equally wide and tall (not counting the wings they usually have, which would make them wider than they are tall), but are longer than they are wide or tall (see sleek).

The Riaxx Gunships have visable guns (the fluctuation cannons) and the frigates have visable missle tubes.

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Ok. It'd definately help to see an image of one, but I get the point. Now for the Philydion ones.

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"You can get much further with kind words and a loaded gun than you can with kind words alone."
- Al Capone

No, I said they were slower and less maneuverable than standard Ares ships, and have more shielding and turrets to make up for it. They are grey and blue, and basic shape(VERY basic, there are many variations) is a rectangle with short wings near the stern. The bridge is always in the nose. The Kiojea class is a prime example of basic shape. Some time, I'll get a picture of one.

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

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Actually, Sundered Angel is yet to work on those particular ships. The only ones I'm mapping out are the "unique" ships, and Angel-design Salrilian vessels. If you want a crack at those two races, feel free.

Oh, and Darkk- might I suggest using Strata 3D for ship design rather than POV-Ray? The graphical interface is a must when attempting to lay out a ship.
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Sundered Angel,
The One and Only
Ares Webboard Moderator, and all-around Nice Guy

[This message has been edited by Sundered Angel (edited 11-20-2000).]

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I'll check it out. As for a graphical interface, that's what "graph paper" is for. I like having explicit mathematical control.

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The SV Andalusa

This is Captain Pharris' new ship. Initially, it was a Riaxx Class Gunship, however, it has been improved greatly. On the outside, it looks much like the Riaxx, except that there are additional turrets. There are large swivel mounted guns on the top, bottom and sides. The Side mounted ones are just ahead of the wings, and can swivel anywhere from straight ahead to 30 degrees off of straight aft, as they are limited by the wings. The top and bottom swivel mounts are set back a bit from the side guns, and seem a bit out of place, as they were added by Pharris's Engineering team, and clash with the sleek Nijayais design. The top turrets each contain a large Railgun, which fires depleted uranium/titanium slugs at near the speed of light, as well as 2 fluxuation cannons. The side mounts still contain the original HardRad launchers, As well as a vamped Tachyon Beam. The forward guns are still the full sized fluxuation cannons.

Also, the crew driven Tachyon turrets have been replaced with a dozen or so radar guided fighter/missile defence guns. These are small, but they have an extremely rapid rate of fire, and can fill the space around the Andalusa with low power photokinetic beams. These are connected to the ships ECM system, and can automatically track and engage hundreds of incoming targets with little or no Human control. These are capable of stopping less advanced missiles easily, but they are much less effective against high speed missiles, and are not quite powerful enough to disable fighters on their own.

There are also three long range, forward firing Torpedo tubes. The ship holds a total of six torpedoes. These are extremely long ranged. capable of superlight, have a vary large payload and are very complex, they can carry everything from probes, to EMF warheads, to nukes, to high yeild conventional weapons. These are very expensive, so they are rarely used, but they are quite useful for putting in a little extra punch when engageing large capitol warships.

There are also missile racks, these carry short range missiles(not big ones like on the HVDs), but because of space constraints, they do not fire dead ahead, they fire outward from the ship, (on the top, and bottom) The missiles are launched by a small charge of air from the ship, sending them out at high speed. They fly out for around two hundred feet(less than a second) by which time their guidance system orients them and fires their engines. These, once again are linked to the ships sensor/targeting systems, and are "fire and forget weapons" allowing the ship to drop them out, without having to slow down to aim.

To provide power for these systems, the Andalosa has the four original antimatter reactors, as well as two new Fusion reactors, these provide the extra power for the additional energy weapons, as well as the FTL and Hyperspace drives.

Pharris preferrs the Hyperspace system to the traditional Nijayais system of Jumplinks, not so much because of any advantage, simply because it is what he has always used in the past.

The four main engines have been replaced with five new drives, capable of a slightly higher maximum speed(surprising considering the increased mass of the ship) as well as an improved set of reaction control thrusters. The RCT system is incredibly overpowered, but many of the thrusters have double or triple redundancy, to maintain manouverability even after battle damage.

The ship now has a more centralised computer control system. There are very few specialised consoles in the ship, Only helm, tactical and the gun stations have truly specialised terminals, but only because they have specialised input devices(joysticks, etc) Most of the other terminals are relatively standard, and the crew can acess almost any ship function from any station. Everything is run through a standard GUI(which looks surprisingly like Mac OS X), and the terminals can be customised to do almost any task needed. This means that the ships controls are not limited to the bridge, but that the ship can even be "dialed up" and controlled remotely, assuming somebody can get the codes out of Pharris.

Of course, the ship has been modified to proviide a stable platform for EVAT operations. It has airlocks all over, but most importantly, it has an extendable docking collar, that can extend seventy feet below the ship. It is a hollow transparent tube with a flexible pressure collar at the end that allows the Andalosa to connect to even slanted or curved surfaces, and deploy EVATs.

I know you may think that I made the Andalosa a super ship, and I do admit that it does have a lot of guns that are meant for mostly bigger ships, but I'd like to say that most military ships are not expanded to their full capability, as numbers are often more important than individual power, when operating as a fleet. Also, I'm useing a lot of cutting edge equipment, a lot of which is stolen or purchased off of the black market. I also had a lot of money hidden away, though I spent most of it on this ship, which takes away a lot of my freedom as a character, as now I can't rely on a stashed fortune to pay for fuel and wages during bad spells.

-Captain Pharris

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Nijayias HyperMissle: These are used on the new frigates and cruisers, and are possibly the most dangerous mass-produced projectile weapon around. They look like long, silvery tubes with blue-glowing slots in the rear. When launched, they use their superlight engines to accelerate to high speeds and do damage by transfering their pseaudo-inertia into the ship (for small ships, like a person being shot with a robar; for large ships, like one battleship putting shell holes in another). Alternatively, they can transform that directly into energy, and exploding. The second mode is useful for stuff that is weak but there's a lot of.

Nijayias Swarmers: An attempt to build an automated defense system, these consist of 2 components: the swarmer builders and the swarmers themselves. The swarmer builders are bulk freighters (same size as a carrier) and mine asteroids, processing the ore into swarmer subasembalies, which are snapped together quickly in combat.
The swarmers themselves are very fast and have a LRPK cannon, but posses limited computational abilities individually (together they form an integrated AI, still well below that of Audemedon systems) and have no shields (if this does become a plug, technically 1 unit due to them having SOME mass).

BTW, hardrad clusters look like really tiny green asteroids. Hmmm...

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Voltron: One of the six automated-operations AIs on the StarLance. Primary functions (non-classified): Military maneuvers, Extra Terrestrial extermination, Alien Computer Hcking.

It is rumored that when Audemedon Core Unit 6742 was hacked, a nineteen-terabyte transmission was logged in the Audemedon Collective, shortly before the transmission logs were deleted. Over the next several years, The Audemedons began the initial stages of self-awareness......

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

ok, just a simple and sort of stupid question...what are the capacities of a gateship? to me, the name implies that it can warp in ships from another section of space (like the starcraft arbeiters) and is a very large vessel. but here, it seems like its use is mainly a big battleship...please clarify this for me...as most people here know, i am relatively new to the ares universe...

...and is there any chance that...ahem...magic could be trasported into this universe due to the starlance thingy? naw, forget it...just be funny seeing some guy floating through space without a pressure suit without any hand weapons taking out a fleet of ships with just a wave of his hand and intoning a spell that everyone can hear even though sound cant travel through space...but that would be impossible, wont it?

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"Those the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad! bwahahahaha (maniacal laughter)" Xanthos from Baldur's Gate

Ok. First the gateships: Nijayias gateships ARE battleships. They do bring in ships, but they also serve as mountings for a variety of heavy weapons. Ishiman and Cantharan gateships mostly just bring in reinforcements. I wouldn't know about Salrilian gateships or Audemedon gateships (although I would assume them to be heavilly armed).

As for magic, 2 words: Verasi Artifacts. Probably not "floating in space casting spells", but none the less dangerous. In addition, the Nijayias, the Phylydions, the Duploi, and Sundered Angel have psychic powers. This will be important.

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Capsule Missile: A simple projectile weapon, the capsule missle is a very long, thin oval with a dull chrome color. An unguided, extremely fast missile, it works by a simple high-powered ion thruster with a range of a few hundred klicks. Of course, it was not designed with ranges anywhere near that long in mind. When the missile strikes a target, the sudden halt of its incredible speed causes great internal stress. Capsule missiles are filled with an extremely high explosive chemical known as CVE-14. Similar to nitro-glycerin but far more powerful and requiring a much larger jolt to set off, this substance explodes with tremendous fury when the missile hits its mark. Capsule missles are standard armament for fightercraft and most capital ships have either capsule missile launchers or capsule missile turrets.

Darkk's Personal race, the Nijayias, use gateships as big war machines.
Otherwise gateships are not big battleships. Everyone assumes that every faction uses Gateships, which we don't know to be true. Stop assuming!

The Audemedons, Salrilians, and Elejeetians probably don't have/need them. Gateships are what primitive races use to transport their fleets. They're all warp-assemblies, and only a few guns so it isn't totally defensless

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

Well, Sargatanus apparently makes them. Check for Pharris's raid in The Buildup.

Oh, and StormBreaker is a special case. He was origionally a giant battleship, then had a jump system added. 2 of our normal gateships survived the war, but are currently nonfunctional.

An earlier one is being used as Carm's personal flagship. It's armed with long-range ion turrets (pale blue-white kinetic beam shots), plasma dispersers (purple zig-zag beams), and electron packets (look like and guided like atompulses, but larger). His destroyers use heavy electron busters, ion blasters, and PK turrets. His gunships use PK turrets and ion blasters. The cruisers he got use PK cannons and proton packet launchers (sort of like electron packets, but smaller, the opposite color, less damaging, and unguided).

All the ships in Carm's fleet have about 2/3 the shields of equivilant Ishiman vessles.

[This message has been edited by Fleet Admiral Darkk (edited 11-22-2000).]

He has a huge fleet, though.

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

Gateships for the sake of having transportation would be a bit of a waste of resources when you could build jump gates (unless you can't, in which case the Gateship is your only choice). For the more advanced/industrialized species gateships are probably multi-purpose ships. And because of their high tactical value and ability to make an excelent weapons platform, they could easily make a decent battle wagon.

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Throughout their history these "unenlightened" beings have continually opposed and fought abuses of power wrought by their own bretheren. We, as the prophets would do well to learn from these Humans.
-Final statement of the Salrilian reformist Sirthis shortly before his execution.

Jumpgates work for fleet movement, yes, but most fleet movements require you venture into systems that you don't have jumpgates in (ie: enemy space).

I agree, though, that Gateships are maybe multifunctional, but not for combat. They're just too tempting a target in combat situations. As we know they are capable of putting out increadible power, seeing as they're veritable flying cities.

They are big ships with big shields, so they must have advanced sensors and advanced propulsion systems. Maybe a robotics bay here or a hydroponics plant there. In times of peace they could be used for chartering and colonization.

Or if there's a particularily large mearchant fleet they could be used to boost jumpgate signal strength.

I know for a fact that the Salrilians and Audemedons don't use gateships because in Yo Ho Ho and The Left Hand the ships were able to enter the system on their own. Not sure about the Obish or Elejeetians.

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

[This message has been edited by Slug (edited 11-22-2000).]

The way I see it, there are a few ways of travelling across space, and they are used by different people(sometimes interchangeably, sometimes because of personal preference)

normal engines: Your ship spits stuff out the back, and goes forward.

FTL/ Hyperlight: moves the ship at or just above lightspeed, somehow overcoming Einstein's rules. These are still slow, but they can move ships around a system wicked fast.

Hyperspace:moves the ship onto another level of reality, or hyperspace. Basically, allowing the ship to bypass the laws of physics and travel really fast. I almost see this a running "under" real space, forces in hyperspace can affect things in normal space, and vice-versa, so Gravity wells, and ionised nebulas, and reactive asteroid fields are bad news for ships in hyperspace. This is relatively fast, travelling light years in seconds.

Omnispace: Basically an even more extreme level of reality to travel through, but this seems to create a much bigger disturbance in normal space when used by large masses at high speeds. Also, this is more sensitive to conditions in normal space, and it tends to do more damage to the fabric of space than Hyperspace drives.

Quasispace: I think this was made up to bring in the starlance, but basically an even more extreme version of Omnispace, puts a lot more stress on space, but the ships really move with quasispace.

Jumplinks: Some sort of Nijayais invention, but is seems to only work along plotted routes(maybe the computer has to know certain things about the route before launching, so the hyperlinks need to be surveyed before they can be used) I guess this is sort of like the EV method of travel, sort of limiting, but faster than the other drives, assuming you're going through plotted space.

Jumpgates: Used to transfer a large ammount of material through space instantly. When you have two jumpgates, they bend space together, so that the gate acts as a direct link between the two places. This means that once you have constructed the jumpgates, you can just fly stuff through them, and it gets to its destination instantly. These are probably expensive, so they are used to connect "Hub" systems, and ships can use hyperspace from the hubs.

Gateships: I see these things as basically gigantic, mobile jumpgates, which can be connected to either another gateship, or a stationary jumpgate, to provide rapid transport of troops to most locations. The gateships themselves must be capable of moving very rapidly, so they probably have some sort of way of projecting themselves across space near instantly, and in previous RPG's, I've seen them able to perform "Dimensional recall" in which they can pull ships to them from across the galaxy without trouble. Obviously, these technologies are either Expensive, Large, or power consuming, which is why most races only have them on Gateships. Also, most races would only have the ones that they know about, and the ones that are compatable with their currents system of moving ships around.

-Captain Pharris

Uhh, I never said anything to indicate the Nijayias don't use anything but normal superlight, jumpgates, and gateships. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I'm pretty sure we use no special propulsion.

The only thing special is we USED to have a large (reletivly) number of gateships.
Oh, and we have superlight in our fighters (mentioned so earlier that you probably never heard it), and now some superlight missles (no warhead, just pseaudokinetic impact).

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What about the Ishimans? In Level 16, 6 Ishiman ships entered the system but you don't see the gate ship either.

I believe the gate ship doesn't necessarily needs to enter the system along with the other ships. Perhaps it can stay in hyperspace and open up a rift, allowing the other ships to enter. It is also safer for the gate ship this way.

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"Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam"

Actually, I always thought Gateships could project jumpgates, with no need for any destination apparatus, or origonation apparatus if calling in reinforcements.

Yeah. There's nothing for the freighters to come in in Make Way, and I've always thought the Ishiman gateship projected a jumpgate. The ships in Yo Ho Ho that came in were brought in by a trio of jumpgate modules.

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"You can get much further with kind words and a loaded gun than you can with kind words alone."
- Al Capone

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In order to bypass Einstein's laws, one would have to "warp" the space around oneself so it is in a state the Steven Hawking was quoted "Plyable" meaning that you could travel faster than light, but then how much faster depends on the amount of "warping" you do to the space.

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Hyperspace exists above normal space and the universal laws there are "accelerated" if you will. Steven Hawking told us: "In hyperspace the speed limit is raised.". 'Nuff said.

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Space that has been badly warped to an extreme can stay warped and turn into an inversion, where all the layers of reality are badly jumbled in certain regions for an amount of time. Omnispace is just a fancy name for this. I suppose the Phylydions, in all their advancement, have somehow managed to control this and use Omnispace to gain access to other layers of space, perhaps those above Hyperspace.

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Quasispace and Omnispace are interchangable terms. I just didn't want Cicion accusing me of stealing his technology.

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It's the system EV/O uses. By placing two singularities at certain locations apart, they'll 'dig' into space in the same way a black hole makes that very big gravitational well. If they are focused enough they'll bend their gravity wells so deep, they at one point make contact because the universe is not an open universe. GW-wise it is saddle-shaped so the two gravity wells aren't paralell. They'll connect like bubbles do, and pull tight, making an arc-shaped tunnel below space. Any ship entering one of the ends will be pulled (by gravity and it's momentum) through to the other side very quickly indeed.

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See above. Only that Ares doesn't use them for military movements.

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Gateships can do the following: Bend space so they can go anywhere they want, create jumpgates to any location within a certain range and send the fleet to locations without other hardware there, pull ships to it's location, and boost jumpgate signal strength.

Gateships are used for moving fleets into systems when there are no friendly jumpgates to use.

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But if you look at the level in Hera, you'll see it creates a "JumpGate Effect Large" when those ships enter the system. Apparently there is a jumpgate end. Also the Audemedon device is a "JumpGate Inhibitor", meaning it disrupts JumpGates. I conclude they entered through a JumpGate.

Remember the G.C.S. Caretaker in Chapter 3 (While the Iron is Hot)? Would you believe the Gaitori had a Gateship? *snicker*

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

[This message has been edited by Slug (edited 11-23-2000).]

"Jumpgate ends" can be made by jumpgates or gateships.

Where the **** did jumplinks appear? I do most of the "making Nijayias tech", and you claim it's a Nijayias system. Additionally, the technique you described wouldn't work. There would be no way to know before the link was made where it would come out.

As far as I know, the Nijayias use plain, ordinary, jump gates, hyperspace, and gateships.
If I used the term "jump link", I was probably referring to the connection between 2 jump gates.

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[This message has been edited by Fleet Admiral Darkk (edited 11-23-2000).]