(NERV Game Site – Official DAtS Offline Forums)
Number5Alive, Golddigger, BurtBacharach, CrazyCelt, M.Mollen, DoYouEvenLyft?, MarcoPolo, MightMakesRight, l44tpally, Bennie, SEA-TAC_Sweetie, Lord_Kickass, Requiesce-in-Pace, MacD, HaveGunsWillTravel, Guardian, GunKitty, Chummer, Dolcett, Inquisitor, SemiSolidSnake, ElfMama, Not_the_Face!, Anonymous3, Anonymous4, Anonymous9, AggregatorOfSorrows, WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot, Dolcett, Backlog, DarkAvariel, Knocker, Hullu_Kapteeni, GrimDark, BloodForTheBloodGod, Queen’s_Bitch, BackDat@55Up, DoYouEvenDPS?, MajorTom, Parca, and DarkAngel are in the chat.
Knocker: Holy shit, have you seen the official game footage of the battle at Edena?
Backlog: Come on, it is a nice cinematic, but no way that’s real. Ten to four on superdreadnoughts and the Impies lost to some rebels?
Not_the_Face!: Dunno. Seems that the Emperor is short on flankers and screening craft.
Anonymous3: Where’d you get that from?
Not_the_Face!: I’m playing Confed navy. They’re giving advanced training and quick promotions to those who have enough faction rep. Flip side is that you get the first nod for suicide missions, since you can’t die. We’re changing the way people are thinking about war in this game.
Backlog: But what good are little screening craft against a big-ass superdreadnought?
M.Mollen: For one, they can help screen against fighters and small craft that might be able to cripple big ships while they’re focused on duking it out with other heavyweights. Even an ultrafeatherweight can take out a superheavyweight if he gets a good hit to the balls.
l44tpally: Did not need that image, thanks.
CrazyCelt: So what’s the word on this supposed superweapon that pretty much obliterated several ships right at the start of the battle?
GunKitty: KE=1/2mv2.
MacD: For those of us who don’t speak math?
MajorTom: She’s talking about ballistic weapons. Railguns, then?
GunKitty: Ground Control to MajorTom, you wanna help teach this one?
MajorTom: Hah. Yeah, I’m a retired Marine in RL, so I might not know all the science, but I can sing a few bars.
M.Mollen: Where you based?
MajorTom: The Nimitz. You a Jarhead?
M.Mollen: Navy, retired on a medical. Send me a message if you’re looking for work in game. I may have need of some field expedient mayhem.
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MajorTom: Well, now you’re talking my language. Let me send you a message, and we’ll see what happens.
CrazyCelt: So, railguns?
MajorTom: Right. Basically, you take a very powerful magnet, and use it to send a projectile at insane speeds. Like taking a 7lb (3.2kg) projectile and throwing it at Mach 7. That spells certain death for anything hit by it. Navy could never get it to work well enough to make it practical in atmosphere. And, well, the Star Wars program ended a long time ago.
M.Mollen: Close enough, only the weapons in question are sending a 20 kg projectile about 125x faster.
MajorTom: Mother of God.
M.Mollen: And when the first shots were fired, they were fired from ships going close to .5c, on a collision course with ships going close to .5c. So when the shots hit, they had a relative speed of damn near lightspeed.
Guardian: So, going back to the math, KE=10kg*c2.
CrazyCelt: And what is the defense against something like that?
HaveGunsWillTravel: Be somewhere else.
Parca: Well, some of the heavy ships took multiple rounds and were still able to fight. Superdreadnought shields can stand up to at least two simultaneous impacts. Could probably take more if you gave them time to recover.
SemiSolidSnake: You were there, Parca?
Parca: Hell yeah I was there!
Hullu_Kapteeni: It was a good fight. My ship did good.
M.Mollen: Parca would be Ghost Leader, squadron leader of the first all-Nomad fighter squadron in the game. Hullu is the skipper of the BSS Simo Hayha, one of our Assassin-class corvettes.
Golddigger: Our?
M.Mollen: Well, the Black Star Fleet, of course.
Inquisitor: Hold up, I’ve seen the sensor logs of that battle! There were no other ships other than the Empress’s forces until the very end, when a ship looked like it warped in quiet and blasted the Bismarck out of existence.
M.Mollen: There were no other ships registering on whatever sensors you were reading, yes.
Inquisitor: Bullshit! The Cattie-Brie may be civilian, but I paid for milspec sensors!
M.Mollen: And the Black Star Fleet was designed to be invisible to military sensors. When we choose to be.
SEA-TAC Sweetie: Well, that’s impressive.
GrimDark: What are your plans moving forward?
M.Mollen: Well, the Black Star Fleet has been contracted to aid in this little civil war thing going on right now. But that is going to be more than simply taking out enemy ships.
Requiesce-in-Pace: What do you mean?
M.Mollen: You know the Usurper’s little cult he’s building? The one starting with all the key people in Sol and the Navy, and working down and out from there? Cross-reference with popular fiction for the date 12/19/2059.
Chummer: What? I know that date… Oh. Oh no.
M.Mollen: Oh yes.
Chummer: Is this confirmed?
M.Mollen: Yes, multiple sources, including info taken from a cult member spreading the word on Choson Ring.
Chummer: DREK!
GrimDark: Clue the rest of us in?
Chummer: We have a renegade AI taking over the Terran Empire.
Guardian: Even better, it may have given some of the cult members the ability to ‘respawn’, like Nomads.
DarkAngel: So even if the Emperor dies, he might not stay dead?
BloodForTheBloodGod: Do I root for chaos, and in so doing root for the Emperor, or hope for the Emperor’s downfall, and halt chaos’s work? I’m torn.
GrimDark: And the Empress is unaffected?
M.Mollen: Confirmed.
GrimDark: I need to get in touch with the others. Malleus was going to meet with a member of the cult today…
M.Mollen: If he comes back with new implants, shoot on sight. He won’t be him any more.
GrimDark: Damn it.
DarkAvariel: Is there any GOOD news?
Parca: Well, we’re fairly certain that killing off enough of the AI’s supporters quickly enough will allow us to force them out of power, and limit their ability to affect the Empire. If we find a way to kill the AI, we might be able to take it out for good, and everyone in its control with it.
M.Mollen: We just have to find the thing, first.