Prologue: The Reckoning
The Outer Worlds were considered to be the frontier of human existence, and still beyond it lay Out Space, waiting for colonization or conquest. For immeasurable time, Selekus had been on the periphery of the reaches of Mankind. A speed bump for numerous alien races lusting for the riches of Terra and the Core Worlds. None had passed through Selekus for aeons, who had adopted the role of guardians of the inner worlds, first fighting for survival against unspeakably rapacious hordes who could decimate planets faster than thought, and then eventually fighting back, burning worlds into hulks unsuited for more than resource harvesting. The mission evolved from survival by necessity to the patronizing role of guardians. It was easy to catch broadcasts of the Inner Worlds and their decadent life of riches, showered and pampered with all things imaginable, inured to the peaceful way of life and forgetting that beyond their worlds, men were dying to support their Calligulan lifestyles.
As such, Selekusians did not deserve to die for the ideas only *they* held dear. Protecting the Inner Worlds which had forsaken and forgotten them was becoming an untenable idea, and eventually was seen as a vestigial tradition that could not survive the onslaught of cultural revolution. Selekus looked out for it's friends, and Mankind was not carte blanche friend any longer...
The worlds of their enemies had been laid bare, an endless mosaic of ripe worlds, many terraformed and developed, but emptied, depopulated, still smoking from the ashes of victory. Space colonies, traveling worlds on FTL were diverted to settle many of the planets, but it would be some time before the worlds were developed and capable of contributing to Greater Selekusia. Regardless, the resources of these worlds were put to use immediately, feeding the forges and shipyards of Tripolitania. Years had passed from those bygone days, and Tripolitania grew prodigiously, but the star systems remained fickle and troublesome to fully develop into "star systems" of their own. Regardless, the empire grew wealthy and powerful, disproportionately than their ten star systems, with more on the way in due course of time.
The legions and armadas of Tripolitania pushed outwards into the stars, moving well beyond their ten system periphery. The outwards movements began to slow, and soon calls to halt and consolidate won out. The empire strengthened it's outermost reaches, fortifying prodigiously against new assault, and began shifting it's legions.
There was a new mission, with the old parameters: Conquest. Instead of the Outer Worlds, the Core. "Trantor" especially. Trantor stifled mankind in luxury, and would cause the species to wither on the vine. Tripolitania would prevent this from happening. Mankind pushed itself to excel only when challenged, not when the world was given to them. Mankind would not survive this hostile wasteland of the galaxy, confined to less than a thousand systems in a sea of hostile stars. It had to learn to fight. It couldn't if cogs of the machine were so...soft. And bad cogs had to be fixed. Thrown out. replaced. One of the three, and so they would start by fixing.
---Present Day
Tripolitania Command probably had an abstract idea of how many ships flew it's banner. With warfare and the constant state of flux on the frontier, reports were frequently out of date and scattershot, even in the good years. The fleet rallying points indicated by Tripolitanian Command in the inter-system spaces had been organized under the assumption that Tripolitania maintained a particular number of ships, which was quickly exceeded as battlefleets that had not served together in centuries began to rapidly populate the designated rendezvous points. The worlds had been running at peacetime since the end of the last wars, but in the end previous wartime production and low attrition had led to a much more numerous fleet. Tripolitania did not want for ships, and baseline production levels remained unchanged. The countless shipyards were well-fed from the conquests, running brisk levels of production at all hours for all rates of vessel. Tripolitania marched to the beat of the drums of liberation, and soon the Core Worlds who stood against them would be free of oppression...
Interludes: On the Selekusian/Trantorian War
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5 posts • Page 1 of 1 Interludes: On the Selekusian/Trantorian War ( )
by NTS on Fri Jul 11, 2008 8:02 am
Last edited by NTS on Sat Jul 12, 2008 7:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Interlude: The Reckoning ( )
by NTS on Sat Jul 12, 2008 7:37 pm
The First Part, Reforging the Sword
And so war came to pass in the realms of Tripolitania. Old ships would have to be mobilized from their timeless sleep in the hundreds of storehouses of deep space. The Modular Design Doctrine of ages past, combined with the non-deprecatory effects of deep-space kept hulls viable well into the centuries, provided their onboard technologies were not painfully obsolete.
And so Modular Design came into the fore. The automated shipyards that watched the storehouses began the work of upgrading. Some ships were already pre-prepared; they had been de-skinned, and obsolete modules for Drives, Weapons, Power Systems, Computers, Life Support, Thrusters, Engineering, Bridge, Fire Control Centers, Damage Control Centers, Turret Rings, magazine feeds, Boat Bays and Bridge Bays torn from the aging hulls, exposing the insides of the hulls like a flayed corpse, ready for study on a dissection table, and parked together in preparation for the day they would be upgraded.
Normally it was prohibitively expensive to upgrade every ship if un-needed, and thus when new parts arrived, a gutted ship was fully upgraded, with less obsolete vessels kept until they became obsolete enough to warrant an upgrade. Thus the storehouses kept the vast fleets somewhat up to date enough that they could be used in battle, to varying degrees of competence.
There was a steady demand for old hulls in the Frontiers, so ships were already being upgraded at a frenzied pace and deployed to the front, and "obsolete" ships sent back to be upgraded in turn. Two production lines existed, one for the processing of hulls for upgrade and the other for upgrading hulls. Parallel production lines existed to strip each component in a ship hull and one to strip /everything/ from a hull for a mass upgrade, and others existed for the installation of a particular part in a ship hull.
Dozens of crew modules were torn out by the machines in the empty hulls, superseded by advanced automation of the later years. The insides of the ships would be completely refashioned in accordance to old plans, whereby engineers had painstakingly taken every class of ship that still remained in storage, and attempted to engineer their Modules into their interior hulls. Satisified with their working plans, they had saved them for a rainy day such as this.
The storehouses began to work quickly. Thousands more of old ships had to be brought to spec, and spaceborne machine arms and assemblers connected stored modules together like building blocks, feeding, feeding them to production lines that would fit them . Turret rings were removed and replaced with their newfangled replacement. Structural support beams were tested and replaced as needed, with upgrades as identified by the primary contractors where appropriate.
Priority was given to cleaning out the queues of pre-gutted ships, as the parts had been pre-positioned for the upgrades in preparation for rapid wartime upgrading or eventual peacetime upgrade. On "down days" the older ships would have their parts incrementally upgraded with not-so-obsolete parts, so that an emergency deployment could bring at least second or third-tier vessels into the fight as opposed to something even older.
As the military planners had already stockpiled the newest upgraded parts with the most gutted and ready-to-work-with vessels, at least the production lines would not suffer from parts shortages. On a daily basis the factory ships would crank out fresh parts and recycle the obsolete ones, all part of ensuring the Tripolitanian warmachine remained up-to-date. Scrap from heavily damaged warships was thrown into the mix as well, along with materials from the civilian world and raw mats from countless mining operations, as recycling was eventually a losing proposition.
Completed ships rolled off the lines, were manned and then deployed on shakedown cruises. The sudden declaration of war would require full activation of plant facilities, to clean out the queue already in storehouse and then to accommodate every ship currently on the line for rapid upgrade to the newest of systems when they were free. The storehouses weren't running at full shifts, and with the urgency of the situation, they would be.
And so war came to pass in the realms of Tripolitania. Old ships would have to be mobilized from their timeless sleep in the hundreds of storehouses of deep space. The Modular Design Doctrine of ages past, combined with the non-deprecatory effects of deep-space kept hulls viable well into the centuries, provided their onboard technologies were not painfully obsolete.
And so Modular Design came into the fore. The automated shipyards that watched the storehouses began the work of upgrading. Some ships were already pre-prepared; they had been de-skinned, and obsolete modules for Drives, Weapons, Power Systems, Computers, Life Support, Thrusters, Engineering, Bridge, Fire Control Centers, Damage Control Centers, Turret Rings, magazine feeds, Boat Bays and Bridge Bays torn from the aging hulls, exposing the insides of the hulls like a flayed corpse, ready for study on a dissection table, and parked together in preparation for the day they would be upgraded.
Normally it was prohibitively expensive to upgrade every ship if un-needed, and thus when new parts arrived, a gutted ship was fully upgraded, with less obsolete vessels kept until they became obsolete enough to warrant an upgrade. Thus the storehouses kept the vast fleets somewhat up to date enough that they could be used in battle, to varying degrees of competence.
There was a steady demand for old hulls in the Frontiers, so ships were already being upgraded at a frenzied pace and deployed to the front, and "obsolete" ships sent back to be upgraded in turn. Two production lines existed, one for the processing of hulls for upgrade and the other for upgrading hulls. Parallel production lines existed to strip each component in a ship hull and one to strip /everything/ from a hull for a mass upgrade, and others existed for the installation of a particular part in a ship hull.
Dozens of crew modules were torn out by the machines in the empty hulls, superseded by advanced automation of the later years. The insides of the ships would be completely refashioned in accordance to old plans, whereby engineers had painstakingly taken every class of ship that still remained in storage, and attempted to engineer their Modules into their interior hulls. Satisified with their working plans, they had saved them for a rainy day such as this.
The storehouses began to work quickly. Thousands more of old ships had to be brought to spec, and spaceborne machine arms and assemblers connected stored modules together like building blocks, feeding, feeding them to production lines that would fit them . Turret rings were removed and replaced with their newfangled replacement. Structural support beams were tested and replaced as needed, with upgrades as identified by the primary contractors where appropriate.
Priority was given to cleaning out the queues of pre-gutted ships, as the parts had been pre-positioned for the upgrades in preparation for rapid wartime upgrading or eventual peacetime upgrade. On "down days" the older ships would have their parts incrementally upgraded with not-so-obsolete parts, so that an emergency deployment could bring at least second or third-tier vessels into the fight as opposed to something even older.
As the military planners had already stockpiled the newest upgraded parts with the most gutted and ready-to-work-with vessels, at least the production lines would not suffer from parts shortages. On a daily basis the factory ships would crank out fresh parts and recycle the obsolete ones, all part of ensuring the Tripolitanian warmachine remained up-to-date. Scrap from heavily damaged warships was thrown into the mix as well, along with materials from the civilian world and raw mats from countless mining operations, as recycling was eventually a losing proposition.
Completed ships rolled off the lines, were manned and then deployed on shakedown cruises. The sudden declaration of war would require full activation of plant facilities, to clean out the queue already in storehouse and then to accommodate every ship currently on the line for rapid upgrade to the newest of systems when they were free. The storehouses weren't running at full shifts, and with the urgency of the situation, they would be.
Re: Interludes: On the Selekusian/Trantorian War ( )
by NTS on Tue Jul 15, 2008 4:43 pm
Weapons Tests
The main battle tank rumbled across the proving ground, and once crossing the line of departure, the first nuclear artillery barrage began to range in on the lone crew. The artillery shells flashed briefly on sensors once they crested the horizon and disappeared. Infantry targets began to present themselves, disappearing in a blizzard of particle beam fire. For the grand finale, the tank stopped, switching it's gun into howitzer mode. The gun travelled up to an angle appropriate to a mortar, and firing a particle blast into space. First, a laser flashed briefly, followed by the invisible ingot of rapidly fusing material.
The target, an old space hulk beyond saving disintegrated. The onboard shield generators had failed, exploding in showers of lightning and fire that shrapnelized deck plating, presaging the fireballs that coursed through the halls from the hits.
The main battle tank cycled another shot. The fusion bottle failed, and briefly a twinkling star occupied the horizon, casting it's pallid gloom on the proving ground as the tank retired...
The main battle tank rumbled across the proving ground, and once crossing the line of departure, the first nuclear artillery barrage began to range in on the lone crew. The artillery shells flashed briefly on sensors once they crested the horizon and disappeared. Infantry targets began to present themselves, disappearing in a blizzard of particle beam fire. For the grand finale, the tank stopped, switching it's gun into howitzer mode. The gun travelled up to an angle appropriate to a mortar, and firing a particle blast into space. First, a laser flashed briefly, followed by the invisible ingot of rapidly fusing material.
The target, an old space hulk beyond saving disintegrated. The onboard shield generators had failed, exploding in showers of lightning and fire that shrapnelized deck plating, presaging the fireballs that coursed through the halls from the hits.
The main battle tank cycled another shot. The fusion bottle failed, and briefly a twinkling star occupied the horizon, casting it's pallid gloom on the proving ground as the tank retired...
Re: Interludes: On the Selekusian/Trantorian War ( )
by NTS on Thu Jul 17, 2008 9:58 pm
"And so, Merkur missiles..."
The first missiles launched from the ground platform into space. The rail launchers kicked them from the ground, and the missiles accelerated without any sign of rockets. It was possible antigrav was involved, but within a half-hour the missiles had gone beyond a significant gravity well where antigrav could be used to repel against an object, and in deep space the test missiles halted...literally. In defiance of Newtonian mechanics, the missiles flew sideways at maximum speed, before performing other test maneuvers and self-destructing.
The first missiles launched from the ground platform into space. The rail launchers kicked them from the ground, and the missiles accelerated without any sign of rockets. It was possible antigrav was involved, but within a half-hour the missiles had gone beyond a significant gravity well where antigrav could be used to repel against an object, and in deep space the test missiles halted...literally. In defiance of Newtonian mechanics, the missiles flew sideways at maximum speed, before performing other test maneuvers and self-destructing.
Re: Interludes: On the Selekusian/Trantorian War ( )
by NTS on Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:28 pm
News Announcements
"On this glorious day, Tripolitania announces the increased production of front-line units. Automation systems mean ten or hundredfold reductions in crew size, which when combined with ForgeWorld operations, that ship buildup rates are suitably enhanced. We will drown our enemies in our technology might. Glorious Selekus will show the way."
"On this glorious day, Tripolitania announces the increased production of front-line units. Automation systems mean ten or hundredfold reductions in crew size, which when combined with ForgeWorld operations, that ship buildup rates are suitably enhanced. We will drown our enemies in our technology might. Glorious Selekus will show the way."
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