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Planning for the Gbaba

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Re: Planning for the Gbaba
Post by Nathan C.   » Wed Aug 12, 2020 1:55 pm

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Bruno,

You could probably hide it after a fashion. If you had heat sinks you store the waste energy in and only radiate it out when you are not facing the system that would work for things looking for active emissions. Or if you have it on an asteroid belt you can put the vast majority of the belt between you and the sensors to block any mining. Asteroids fields are not very dense but they do have a fair bit of dust and it wouldn't take that much force to tidally lock an asteroid to keep one side facing out of the system and away from the planet (assuming the belt is outside the planet).

The comments on rocks gives me an interesting idea. If the orbital defense platforms are laser defended just through a bunch of rocks at them at high speed. Even if you break up the rocks you will not be able to impart enough energy to stop the mass. You can make the interception in such a way that nothing should come back to safehold in populated zones. You might even be able to set it up so that the rocks hit the platforms as soon as they crest the planet decreasing their time to get shots off.
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Re: Planning for the Gbaba
Post by Jeslis   » Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:25 am

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SKimming the last few posts...

I think the logic here against doing any system related mining/industrial setup is;

Why risk it?

Either Gbaba found them, or didn't (hence the 300 year moratorium)..

That passed, Gbaba didn't find them..

Additionally, ~700 more years have passed....

So whats an additional even 100 MORE years before venturing out if it doesnt risk:
- Temple waking up
- Detection and destruction of vessel leaving planet
- Loss of resources

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Dont get me wrong; I see the benefit of getting more industrial modules up; obviously it speeds up the process.. and would be great if they had 20+ already out in the system when the Rakuri were destroyed...

but it's not 'required' to succeed.
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Re: Planning for the Gbaba
Post by Nathan C.   » Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:17 am

Nathan C.
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Jeslis,

So I see a couple of possible advantages that would be worth the risk of setting off the temple.

1. Having redundancy in industrial modulas away from the planet so that if everything goes wrong they don't lose everything.

2. It may allow for them to make more pica's since they are out of those key resources and have them stashed.

3. If they get enough of an industrial system going they may be able to put some humans on ice so that if the planet does get destroyed the human race does not go with it.

4. The temple is supposed to wake up and do something and having not only the additional resources that the additional industrial modules would provide but also the gravitational high ground could be of immense importance. It gives you the ability to through rocks that can't be stopped at the temple. This at a minimum ensures mutually assured destruction. Which may be able to suppress the Temple AI from killing everything.

The other question I have is the Rakuri a single platform that has a blind spot at times as it rotates the planet? IF so could you go durring that blind spot?
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Re: Planning for the Gbaba
Post by Mark Time   » Thu Aug 13, 2020 12:12 pm

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Jeslis wrote:SKimming the last few posts...

So whats an additional even 100 MORE years before venturing out if it doesnt risk:
- Temple waking up
- Detection and destruction of vessel leaving planet
- Loss of resources

--------------

Dont get me wrong; I see the benefit of getting more industrial modules up; obviously it speeds up the process.. and would be great if they had 20+ already out in the system when the Rakuri were destroyed...

but it's not 'required' to succeed.


Actually, my idea was more about destroying the Rakurai than building an infrastructure for the future. I don't see how the Rakurai can be destroyed without Federation level technology. The purpose of setting up an industrial infrastructure in the asteroid belt would be to create the technology to destroy the Rakurai.

Of course, RFC might introduce some way to disable the Rakurai using something in the Temple or whatever. But absent that, if they need to be taken out physically I don't see how that can be done with Safehold-based resources. Building nasty weapons far away where the Rakurai can't see them or can't get to them seems like a plausible way to solve the problem.
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Re: Planning for the Gbaba
Post by Bruno Behrends   » Sat Aug 15, 2020 3:20 am

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Whether it is too risky or not I can't judge.

However what I like about the idea is its elegance:

It skips the planetbound problems by going out of the current box. An innovative solution.
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Re: Planning for the Gbaba
Post by Daryl   » Sat Aug 15, 2020 6:06 am

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I'm of a generation that read Asimov's Foundation series, so just wonder if there isn't a longer plan here.
Is it possible that the Temple AI will actually decide that sufficient time has passed for the Gbaba to have left the galactic neighbourhood, along with enough technological development to have happened, for the Rakurai to just be switched off? Plus for this to have been the plan all along?
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Re: Planning for the Gbaba
Post by Mark Time   » Sun Aug 16, 2020 3:32 pm

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In the course of doing a Google search I found that my idea of using off-planet resources to destroy the Rakurai has been raised before. There are at least two such threads from 2014 and 2015. If anyone is interested one is titled "Can Merlin build a base off planet" and the other is "Taking out the Rakurai".

I still think it's a good idea.
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Re: Planning for the Gbaba
Post by Michae   » Wed Aug 19, 2020 6:57 am

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I believe there were a few posts about whether hacking the OBS was possible as well and disabling them that way.
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Re: Planning for the Gbaba
Post by Isilith   » Tue Aug 25, 2020 5:02 am

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Dilandu wrote:
Erls wrote:1 - I believe it was established in the books that the Federation had pulled close to even, if not slightly better than, Gbaba tech at the time Earth fell.


Er, if I recall correctly, during the operation Ark deployment, it was stated that Gbaba still have a tech advantage, albeit it is less prominent than before.


You would be wrong, from Off Armageddon Reef: "It wouldn't have mattered." Pei shook his head sharply. "Were in a virtual dead heat with them technologically right now, Joe. Right now, and how old are their ships?"
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Re: Planning for the Gbaba
Post by Nathan C.   » Tue Aug 25, 2020 12:10 pm

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Just thinking as an engineer there is always a bottleneck. Sometimes it is in production, sometimes, in raw material, and sometimes it is in the available information. My guess was that the bottleneck for building a fleet that could take the war to the Gbaba was technology and data. Is that right?

Safehold has a population of around a billion if I remember correctly. The highest population growth rate ever recorded on earth was just over 1.8% per year. So if safehold could maintain that they would have a population of about 3.3 billion in 100 years or 20 billion in 250 years.

Safehold is denser then earth was, so the mineralogy is obviously different. Which may mean different material will be limiting factors.

My thought is the longer that humanity is in space the more likely the risk of detention. So where can Merlin spend effort in order to minimize the high risk period for humanity?
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