Starship Construction

[projectsunfire]

Apologies for the first OP, I hope this one is more clear and in depth.

Some things to look at first.

Ship building history-
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipbuilding

Starship ideas-
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship

Pictures-
www.star-ranger.com/Minis.htm

The idea here is to work on making starwars Retro Ships for member use in the story lines that have been progressing.

All thoughts and ideas are welcome here just be sure to think conservatively. There are many ideas in this Era that do not exist and can't due to technology restrictions in this Era. Cloaking fields are a good example.

Luckily for us we have a few examples from which we can work.

The Era is slightly more advanced than KOTOR, about 500 years more advanced if I recall correctly.

We have the imagery from KOTOR and Pre-Kotor imagery to go from, as far as advancement is concerned. I would assume we would be leaning in the direction of KOTOR, far more than the technology we see around the Battle of Yavin.

I think thats sufficient for now. Discuss, question, etc...

[Xaojii]

What do you mean?

I think there is a rule somewhere on the forum stating that you can make any ship you want on here as long as it is approved by the mods. The ships would have to be realistic in stats of course. We as an administration have a responsibility for the good of the players to prevent the all to often realities of people who god-mod and such. Intentional or not.

For me it's pretty much look at a ship, find someway for it to branch into our universe we created, look at who makes it, make up parts with cool and realistic sounding names.

But if you want to go really in depth with the process I can tell you everything made starts with an idea on paper. Then you start by putting the pieces together, slowly forming it to what it's supposed to be.

You may want to look into real life shipwright work, and how they build modern ships today. I'm an industrial kind of guy who likes this kind of stuff, but I'm still not very keen on the subject.

[projectsunfire]

Strange I thought I had written an explanation. Apologies.

Yes, I am aware of the rules as far as Mod approval goes. I would have hoped that with my anal retentive nit picking, that I do with new character details, would have given you the right idea about how I prefer people to handle their God-Mod tendencies.

I think a little modification would do the OP some good. I'll get to that.

[Gabriel Sumigato]

-Slides in a little spherical Droid that projects an Image of himself-

Alright, heres some of what I have discovered in all of my little travels and research.

Cloaking devices in Star Wars, are...What was the word Palpatine used, Unreliable...No thats not it.

Anyways, there are two types of things classified in Star Wars Cannon as cloaking devices.

The first are a set of Crystals which absorb and deflect sensor transmissions. This is NOT a cloaking device, we use a similar technique today, with the materials which we make our F22s and Stealth Bombers out of. Its called Radar Absorbent Materials. Which are quite effective. They fall under a technical term called Sensor Countermesures, or in Modern Terms, Electric Counter Measures, or ECMs. These are actually quite fun and work better than a Cloaking device in my opinion as the Options you have are nearly endless, and its so much fun to use in a fight, draws it out and makes a Kill so much more enjoyable.

The Second type of Cloaking device, is a really annoying cloak. Its nothing like what you see in Star Trek. Star Trek Cloaks are what we call one way Blind. They cant see you, but you can see them. There are problems with these type of cloaks as well. It basically makes you into a Submarine. If you have any Emissions at all, and yes Sensor's count, they give you away. Try and Scan and the enemy knows your there. You can still target Visually though, without the aid of the firing computers, course make those first shots count, cuz you dont have any sheilds, and if they have automated guns of any kind, and they are warmed up, your toast. It also makes you rather susceptible to Space debris, which can ruin your day, since you dont get Navigational Sheilding.

The Double-Blind Cloak SUCKS ASS in my humble oppinion. It makes it so you cant see out either
which is why I loath it. Even a window ruins the effect, no way in or out. Fine for a short ranged surprise assault. Not too good for long term cloaking, unless you are setting up a secret base...which is awesome really.

Now in my opinion go with the ECM's, and these are easy for any smuggler to jury rig something up. Im not gunna give away all me secrets but heres a few. Instead of having One Massive Power core, Split it into two, one for engines and one for the rest of the Ships Systems. Or hell even more. This takes up Much more space yes, so its not always possible on smaller ships, but it does allow you to power down unused Power Core's and it lowers your EM Signature. This can be used to fool enemy ships into thinking your simply not as powerful as you are, and Fusion Cores really only take seconds to power up again in Star Wars, the small ones found in Frigates and small Cruisers, well unless you get hit with an Ion Cannon. The Large ones like the ones on Destroyers, Carriers and Space Stations.

Second trick, turn off your Grab Plating, it lowers your Mass, or tune them (this takes a while of tweaking but is possible theoretically) so that they cancel out your mass. Many of the Simpler Sensor Suites, Like those found on Civilian transports or so called Dumb Missiles, are simply Mass and EM detectors. Fool these and your golden.

Lastly, and this is my favorite and its the cheapest. Paint your ship Shiny, Metalic Black. It reflects space where you need it to, and it fades into the background of Space easily enough. This is perfect for fooling most casual observers, manually scanning the surrounding Space, and if you power down completely, most sensor Systems will catolog you as a piece of Space Debris. (For you techies, recalibrate any Stock Sensors to report anomalies like this....I personally like to have me Character's have a custom built Sensor array, sure without regular maintenance it breaks down, but you can do sooo much more with it.)

Well I hope some of this Information is Helpful, not meaning to rip into anyone, just sharing what I have learned in my Research in hopes it helps others out.

[projectsunfire]

<jaw hits the floor>

[Corstar]

Even if you power down, you still have a heat sig. You can't get rid of that unless you've been powered down a very long time or you've got some major coolant systems. Even then you're still disturbing space.

It'd work in an asteroid field or near a planet but farther out you are, the chances are if it's a complete scan it won't help you much.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

otherwise, nice.

[Gabriel Sumigato]

All True, but they were meant to be things that Everyone Could do, instead of Pining over a Cloaking device. Simple little things are often enough. And if you powered down a ways out, you would just coast in, powering up and slamming into high attack mode. Especially if you used certain Planetary bodies gravities to speed yourself up....

Okies before I give away more of me tricks Imma nod and agree, cuz yes you are right, and take the compliment and Smile. Thanks Myn

[Corstar]

don't get me started on Star Wars physics.

We'll get into slinging asteroids instead of proton torpedos, and how it's a more effective use of energy

[Gabriel Sumigato]

Just cuz Sheilds dont protect well against things that Size....Course if you Lace that Asteroid with Nuke's...Sure not as much Damage, but you get an EMP discharge AND way Cheap to make, and easy as hell to Jury Rig...


OH and I found something out. Crew Required numbers. A lot of Wookiepedia Ships come from the Imperial Era, and a lot more stats are built on that. I have one problem with this.

The Empire, the Emperor in specific, did not like Droids. So they did not automate Half of what they could have, and after the Droid wars, neither did anyone else except some of the Rebels.

According to my Imperial Sourcebook, the average length of a Crew Member's shift was six hours. So one Astromech, which does not need to power down, merely get hit by the Power Droid every so often, or hit up a Power coupling, would replace 4 crew members. Often you can replace the Gunner's with Gunnery Droids, which I believe are Military Regulated and very hard to get, though this is before the Droid War so maybe not. Can replace most of the crew, with the Addition of a Loader droid. (And unless you give these Droids Only Ion Cannon, they begin thinking Killing people is good, and we enter into a Asimov's worse Nightmare...So might want to keep the droids capable of Killing to PCs)

Then there are simple Automation Computers, and if they have Droids they can have simple and even complex AI. I belive its Class I or is it Class V Droids that are autonomous, like R2 and C3PO....

Hmm Any Droid Characters yet?

[projectsunfire]

This is after the first Droid Revolution. So there is still a Droid phobia. Besides crewman are easier to get, and easier to replace if they die (Yeah you don't want me as captain )

I don't recall which class of droid R2 is. Wish I hadn't packed that friggin book...

Anyway, coincidentally we have a few droid characters, but the Mechanics running "Lost Odyssey" have been looking for one for some time now.

[The Conman]

Ok, about gunnery droids. Easy as s%^# to make. I've made robots out of DISCRETE PARTS that will follow a heat or sonar signature around a room, and I've built two robots that will chase each other around, dodge obstacles, AND fire laser pointers at each other, and catalog the hits on a counter. The core logic consists of 4 NAND gates, and the targeting logic consists of 6 NAND gates. ( The counters are PLC's cause we ran out of time and I couldn't finish the design ) Implementing the ability to judge distance with the laser pointer and signal attenuation and have it fire a projectile would probably take a grand total of MAYBE 8 NAND gates, and thats being rather liberal. So if some guy in his 5th year of high school can build a rather crude, but workable, targeting system, I think that trained mechs should be able to hack something together that can do the job of a targeting droid.

Next, you guys are completely forgetting about Magnetic Anomaly Sensors. Regardless of all your EM jazz and such, if the ship has metal in it, it will create a corresponding magnetic field. As such, if you have the " Magnetic map" of the system uploaded, you can pretty much know what things are * supposed * to look like, and then look for variations. You gotta remember, that if these ships are capable of hyperspace travel, and calculating the jumps, it implies that they can actively scan for mass shadows so, looking for a mass shadow in the middle of a magnetic anomaly SHOULD be standard procedure for the crews of any ship. So, unless you have a way to make you ships mass zero, which IS impossible without causing gravitational lensing, then your getting found if somebody is looking for you. The biggest thing, is to NOT give somebody a reason to look for you. Not showing up on passive sensors is relatively easy, as soon as things get active then your pretty well screwed, and it turns into a war of who's got better ECCM.

Which brings me to my next point. The best kind of cloak is one that generally screws up the sensors of the other ship. IE, an active ECM that assesses what its being looked at with and generates waves of proper amplitude and frequency to cause destructive interference, Skin on the ship ( a simple microfiber mesh of light sensitive diodes) to detect lasers, and then hit the receiver ( which is generally rather close to the transmitter, to minimize parallax ) with a short, extremely high intensity transmission of the same frequency that is being sent. Little nasty things like this, so they know your there...just not exactly where.