Mythril Aces (Re)Union: Real Robot RP Discussion Thread

• Federation RP Thread
• Centauri RP Thread
• Signup Thread
• Old RP Thread
• Old Discussion Thread
• Old Signups Thread

Welcome, folks, one and all, to the reboot of the roleplay Mythril Aces. We hope you enjoy your stay. Any questions should be directed towards myself, Parable, or Fauxlosoph, either in P Ms or here.

edited 13th May '14 8:20:48 PM by Hydrall

Ha! 18000 posts on the old one? Ha! NOW I'M ON THE FIRST PAGE, BITCHES! AHAHAHA.

Oh and uh, yeah... cool. I'm working on a dude.

Can we actually die in this one?

You're first.

Provisionally expressing curiosity, depending on a number of factors. Blame Rena.

What sort of factors are those?

Primarily my own spare time and posting schedule, as well as the details of the setting (in other words: hooray for Wikia walks!). It'd be a shame if I got myself excited over coming up with a tactical role based on swarm deployment of drones, or a missile carrier on the Osa patrol boat line, or even a dedicated electronic snooper/jammer, only to find that they aren't feasible roles in this 'verse.

edited 7th May '14 4:48:08 PM by SabresEdge

Get in line.

edited 7th May '14 4:48:35 PM by RenaTheArchmage

Well, I can't do much for your spare time and schedule except for berate you if you're too slow. The other questions, however, I can help with if you explain what you're requesting. If you're asking to play a carrier or ship, though, I'm gonna have to warn you that the answer's almost certainly no unless you can really sell me on it - especially for being a carrier. Playing as something vital to the story literally moving forward as the carrier we all travel on and having an irregular posting schedule is a bad thing - We learned this firsthand in the previous game.

As far as a Corvette or Frigate goes, it's mostly a matter of me having not really banged out the rules for ships on a ship-to-ship scale. I have ideas for it, but seeing as this is a mecha roleplay first I haven't gone too far with them. Again, if you have tons of ideas on that front and really, desperately want to play one, we can talk it out and see.

Also, the wiki is currently about half out of date thanks to the reboot changing huge swathes of the setting and backstory. The general idea of a lot of it is still true, but specifics have changed.

edited 7th May '14 4:55:47 PM by Hydrall

Basically assume any of those pages Hydrall didn't link to are likely to change a lot.

Well, except these two he forgot. Details on the military forces of both sides.

Centauri Armed Forces.

Federation Armed Forces.

edited 7th May '14 5:00:40 PM by Parable

Oh god no, definitely not carrier bridge crew for me. My schedule slows down if I have to process a lot of things as a GM (as people can attest), but as a player I move substantially faster.

I take it that the Frames are essentially the spaceborne equivalent of a carrier's strike wing—needs somewhere to base, but fast, mobile, and hits hard? That'll be a likely choice for me (albeit possibly in the support role as opposed to the bruiser role—think EA-6B or EKA-3B Electric Whale as opposed to the strike craft), but I wonder if the role of an escort frigate—or a shuttle/scout plane/etc. deployed from the same—might be open.

Sabre's Edge: introducing unneeded complications in RPs since 2010!

edited 7th May '14 5:02:47 PM by SabresEdge

I'm on the first page!

...and that's all I'm doing for now, because I'm already in the middle of writing a chapter of my novel before my writers' group tonight, so I'll come back and make some actual contributions (and my character) later tonight.

Oh, right! I'll add those in immediately.

Frames are essentially that, yes. There's a lot of factors going into it, but tl;dr: Starships created systems called Shield Projectors. These create a huge planar field that can deflect and absorb most forms of attack, save for thermal lasers, making combat much more difficult. Frames (and the Carriers that carry them) are small, maneuverable vehicles designed to get past the shields and up close and personal with enemy ships, taking out vital systems and weapons before retreating back into hyperspace. Unlike an actual aircraft carrier, Frame carriers have to carry them into battle - as Frame sized Flow Drives are not yet feasible.

I did leave a link to the list of frames in the signup, after all. The Support roles might fit what you're asking, although there are a few changes I need to make for the Light and Medium Supports. As far as escort ships go... Hm.

There are four weight classes for ships - Corvette, Frigate, Capital, and Supercapital. There are also three major roles for them - Driver, Flanker, and Bombardier, with other ships being Shieldships (unarmed but carrying the massive shield projectors that made Frames necessary), Factory Ships, and Electronic Warfare Ships. I've come up with plenty of stuff, but the thing is... Piloting a ship would be pretty hugely confusing. You'd have to deal with your turrets and frames trying to shoot out your radiators and such.

Also, you would never, ever be able to take part in ground battles.

Break a pencil!

EXCITEMENT!

Also. This is robot piloting RP! Signup as robot pilot! Ships can't use swords, they're useless! :3

edited 7th May '14 5:24:40 PM by Satinel

Possibly less confusing if I'm driving what amounts to a missile boat, or maybe some equivalent of a Pegasus hydrofoil; these barely would qualify as ships at all. The thing is, I'd need to see how a battle typically goes before I can commit to one role or another. Napoleonic Wars had ships form line of battle, tack and maneuver to gain the weather-gage, then close in for broadside-to-broadside or raking attacks as possible; WWII carrier battles had recon, strike, interception, and all of that. Modern naval warfare is a whole different kettle of fish again.

Given that, I'd need to see the general flow of a battle in this 'verse before I can commit. Otherwise it'd be like jumping to take the controls of the fastest, shiniest battleship in the IJN...just in time for Midway.

(I'm also okay with not taking direct part in ground battles. C4ISTAR is a needed role anyway, and a shuttlecraft can act as a ground-support fighter if it has to.)

edited 7th May '14 5:37:19 PM by SabresEdge

Some Centauri ships actually have bow-mounted beam weapons for ramming attacks. These have never been used in standard combat; some nobleman-captain just demanded they be installed, despite being a waste of space and a drain on the generators.

Battles are different from any 'real' naval combat - For one thing, they're in space and not water. Ships move in battle-groups behind shield projectors, trying maneuver so the whole group can flank or otherwise get around the enemy. Driver-type ships use powerful engines to simply fly past the enemy shield once close enough, raking them as they go and sailing on out of range to turn around for another pass before returning to cover - They don't have long lifespans. Flankers are maneuverable but slower, their role primarily being to counter Drivers and outmaneuver the enemy fleet. Bombardiers carry extremely high-power weaponry but are rather sluggish, with their main purpose being to bombard enemy shields in hopes of overloading the generators temporarily. Vaguely similar to Napoleonic tactics, I suppose, but without any reliance on weather. And I don't think Napoleon had massive energy shields protecting his fleets - He might have won then.

There's also a lot of crap about orbits and transfers and such, which are mostly too complicated to ever be involved in an RP that you don't need an astrophysics degree / 150+ hours of KSP to play. Space battles are nothing like real world combat, to be honest, though I'm simplifying it a lot for this RP.

Why would a shuttlecraft be armed and taking part in combat operations, though? Or a 'hydrofoil', although what that concept could possibly be applied to in space, I can't imagine. Even Corvettes don't take frontline roles except as patrol ships and the like, instead being relegated to support roles behind the protection of shields during large battles - which you wouldn't have, by the by. That's the entire point of Frames and Carriers - Hit and run attacks using their superior mobility and short-range hyperspace jumps. Carrier jumps in, spits Frames out, then jumps back out ASAP - only returning once the target is sufficiently disabled or a long enough period without contact from its Frames (the 'comms jammed' kind, not the 'everybody died' kind) occurs. They then take all frames aboard and leave, once again, ASAP.

The point I'm trying to stress here is that while playing a corvette or frigate is certainly possible, unless you only arrived and left with the carrier you'd likely be torn apart by whatever large ship it was the Frames were attempting to disable! Or its allies, at least. You'd be left there, not as maneuverable as a Frame, completely isolated and unprotected from the enemy's weaponry. Which would be a rather brief and unhappy way to play, all things considered.

Or you could stay with the rest of the fleet behind the shields, being completely separate from the rest of the players. Which is something I'd prefer not to happen either.

edited 7th May '14 5:56:34 PM by Hydrall

In other words, battle revolves around maneuvering in Frames to knock out key enemy assets behind their shield globe. Carriers—which sound a lot more similar to APCs now in terms of providing battlefield mobility and in terms of not being designed to sit and slug it out—are designed to dart into a shield-globe with a short precise jump, drop off its payload, and scramble out, while the payload does damage behind the shield globe?

In that case, it sounds like we're begging for a tech development based around fast, passive-homing swarm-intelligence missiles that a carrier can deploy into a shield globe alongside—or even in place of—its frame payload. Said missiles overwhelm enemy point defenses and target the shield generators; they're faster than frames, might carry their own payload of decoys. Then the really big guns mounted on the capital ships are presented with a defenseless target.

Still, there'd definitely be a job for scout frames, possibly configured as multicrew UAV carriers...oh, the ideas.

Bottom line, this is an RP about giant robots. If you don't want to play a giant robot pilot, this RP probably isn't going to work out well for you. :/

You're more or less right. Frames are almost a weapon in and of themselves - shot out of a carrier at enemy starships. The difference is that you can pick them back up agian.

The reason they don't use drones entirely is... Because the RP would be really, really boring. We want epic mecha gunfights in space, not sitting on the other side of a star system watching cameras.

Don't overanalyze the tech level too much, or it all falls apart as being utterly preposterous. Why do conventional guns do as much damage as a particle beam rifle? Why hasn't everyone just shot asteroids at the opponent's capital yet? Why can they travel through hyperspace? Why are they using mechs in any way whatsoever?

15ft-22ft sounds more like a rather unconventionally-configured fighter craft than a giant robot. That I can deal with. I'd just be using a different set of tactics, but I do want to figure out their viability before I end up making an unintentional suicide rush.

If all of that doesn't quite work out, I'd be happy to play as a scout-model Frame, or something else similarly light and fast; I'd have to browse the options a little more for the exact details.

(But I probably will end up prioritizing enemy shield gens to let the rest of the fleet get tore in; my immediate reaction upon hearing that they were unarmed was "ooh, high-priority targets easily worth sacrificing an entire flight for.")

edited 7th May '14 6:20:23 PM by SabresEdge

Well, yes, that's what Frames are primarily used for. Popping shield generators and ruining everyone's fun. There's nothing like watching an entire battle group hyperspace in random directions after the shields abruptly fizzle out.

IIRC that's pretty much how big they are. Not 15 meters like they were in the original RP.

No hyperspace interdiction tech available, then? If shield gens are relatively easy to replace, it'd be extremely hard—nigh impossible in fact—for a fleet engagement to be decisive.

edited 7th May '14 6:24:34 PM by SabresEdge

There is, but it tends to be of the 'don't hyperspace bombs into me' kind. It involves breaking down Flow Gates as they open - which is difficult to do from far away. Shield generators are not easy to replace, however.

Also, opening the Flow takes a good amount of time - and there are things Frames can aim for to make that time take even longer. During that charge time the ships tend to be nearly sitting ducks with most of their generator power going towards the Flow Drive, letting allied ships pound into them.

edited 7th May '14 6:27:30 PM by Hydrall

So—and correct me if I'm wrong—a typical engagement goes like this.

• Forward screens sortie and fight to establish reconnaissance superiority and to determine enemy fleet composition, location, intentions, etc; counter-recon assets attempt to deny that information to the enemy.
• Battlefleets jump in. Most heavy combatants form up behind shield globes to protect them from enemy fire; lighter flanking contingents without shields try to probe around enemy shield globes and to inflict damage from the flanks. Fire from battlefleets "pin" enemy forces behind their shields and make it impossible for them to sortie out—establishing fire superiority.
• Fast frame carriers—with rapid hyperspace generators, I assume—jump into closely-clustered battlefleet to deploy their payloads when possible (what conditions would these be?), which work at targeting shield generators and flagship assets.
• Once fleet flags and shields are down, the defeated force attempts to jump out and flee the engagement; the winning side has a limited amount of time to exploit the victory and maximize the damage they inflict before the defeated fleet escapes.

Does that sound about right? And are there any points that need detailed explanation?

edited 7th May '14 6:40:04 PM by SabresEdge

Yeah, basically. You explained it in better words than I could honestly, most of my science fiction space military knowledge comes from [[Video Game/Homeworld Homeworld]]. It's usually not two big shield globes, but instead one main shield globe and two or more shielded battle groups - The main shield globe guarding the support ships and flagships of the fleet, while the battle groups skirmish. Things proceed as you described after that, though, when battle groups get near each other.

I do explain the hyperspace thing on the 'guide' page, but you have the right of that too more or less. Long-range hyperspace jumps are fairly easy compared to short-range 'skips' - For various reasons, the most important being that you need to be a hell of a lot more precise. When jumping to another system, there's less of a problem if you're a hundred kloms off the mark - but the same difference in close combat... Is bad.

Narrowing the exit point that much takes time and power, and fitting every ship with that would be far too expensive when both factions' economies are mostly staying upright by luck and lies. Instead carriers and a few specialized other ships only are given them.

edited 7th May '14 6:48:42 PM by Hydrall