Monday, April 9, 2012

The Saga of a Galaxy at War: A Brief Introduction

First of all, I would like to thank Jollyreaper and Thucydides for the inspiration. Though it took me a while to figure out how to work the "Blogger Page" feature......

Anywho, in case there are those of you who are wondering, this is simply a page where I place my other ramblings of my thoughts in a space opera idea that I had developed mentally and with aid of other sources such as Tabletop Game engines since I was a young lad in the year 1995-6 or so of the Common Era Calendar. It's a story based mostly on my own passion for anime, but reinforced in key locations with the convention of hard sci-fi to at least give some scientific and technological plausibility all thanks to the Atomic Rockets website and the Rocketpunk Manifesto blog. A setting that I had dubbed the Crongus Wars.

Okay, it's not the most original of titles, but like I mentioned earlier, it's a work in progress.

Oh, and before I do forget, though I am opening my chaotic thought process of this little hard space opera setting of mine, there are a few key topics that are considered off limits to discussion whatsoever.

1) There is a saying that goes along the lines of "Causality, Relativity, FTL travel: chose any two." [1]. I, however will pick all three thank you very much. How I will answer the relativity and causality issues I will describe in later entries.

2) It has been argued that space fighters don't make any sense from a military, scientific, and economic point of view [2].  My response to such a thing is simple: My story, my rules. I may bend, alter and even omit certain aspects of my Space Opera setting, but there are such things I will not remove under any circumstances so don't even think that you can convince me to do otherwise. Besides, I have my own ideas on getting around that little problem that I'll address in future entries.

3) It has also been argued that giant robots, especially those found in the media of Japanese Anime (aka Mecha) make even less sense than space fighters even on the ground [3][4]. And I would not only say "my story, my rules", but also that not only did I mention that much of the flavor of this setting is derived from what anime I have seen and would be rather difficult to replicate what I have witnessed without them (not impossible, just not my style), but that it kills the dramatic tension of the lone soldier against the odds. Besides, not only would I be following the Rule of Cool, but I just also wasted hours of your time from those weblinks alone. That's what you get for trying to change my mind.

So long as these commandments are adhered to, we shall have peace.



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5 comments:

  1. I'm interested to see what you come up with!

    The thing I say about disbelief is it's ok to suspend it but quite another thing to hang it by the neck until dead. While I don't grok all the physics involved in FTL=time machines I do get enough of the space fighter debate to see why they're just like combat mecha, romantic ideas that don't work without special pleading. So I will restrict commentary on that to how well you plead your case.

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    1. First of, thank you for the courtesy of leaving a comment on my little space opera blog.

      As for the issue with space fighters (they ain't "Star" fighters unless they got FTL drives themselves in my book), well other than my third Commandmant I do have at least one possible solution that I outlined in my FTL Blog Entry that should at least solve the DeltaV and distance problem for spacefighters. It also gives a slight insight to the history of my setting.

      On a minor note, I didn't really see that reply option, so that's why there's two replies from me but one deleted. Didn't even know you could do that....

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  2. Yeah. Blogger's got some changes that are pretty weird to deal with.

    In terms of my own terminology, I define things as follows:

    Spacecraft: Common term for a spacefaring vessel incapable of interplanetary flight. Spacecraft are used for the transfer of goods and passengers between larger vessels in orbit or to and from a planetary surface. Spacecraft can be as small as personnel shuttles or as large as the massive lifters used to move bulk cargo into orbit.

    Spaceship: Common term for a spacefaring vessel capable of interplanetary flight via realspace or hyperspace. In common practice, freighters and bulk cargo carriers travel in realspace and passenger vessels will use hypersails.

    Starship: Common term for a spacefaring vessel capable of interstellar flight.

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    1. Interesting lexicon descriptions. Personally I try to avoid the whole "ship" lendword for anything remotely orbital. Though now I think about it, I wonder if I should use the slang of "can" as reference to the habitat module in the same use some old type pilots would call their planes "crates".

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    2. And now that I thought about it, there should be a particular lexicon/jargon/whatever to differ not only military machines from civilians, but also interplanetary and interstellar.

      Spacecraft - A common term for any orbital spacecraft, either orbital or planetary in DeltaV budget. Typically civilian.

      Starcraft - A common term for any spacecraft that has the ability to travel interstellar destinations no matter the process or phenomenon. Typically civilian.

      Stellar Warcraft - A common term for stellar defense combat spacecraft, typically military but can also be utilized by PMCs.

      Expeditionary Warcraft - A common term for a combat worthy starcraft, typically military but can also be utilized by PMCs that can afford such machines.

      Thoughts?

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