Author Topic: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol  (Read 3554 times)

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Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
Hello!

Since I'm making good progress with my campaign (just 2 more missions to go), I'm collecting ideas for a possible 2nd part. Therefore I need some more detailed information about the rebuild portal/jump node that's connecting Sol with Delta Serpentis.

1. a) Can it be activated from a ship? (With the right codes/commands and an intersystem jump drive etc...)
Or is there some kind of gate keeper that unlocks it for them?

2. Is it possible to jump close to it? Or does the node "prohibit" this like it is mentioned in the wiki (so that escort missions to jump nodes would be senseless).

My idea is to send a convoy of war refugees during the Blue Planet-scenario through the portal to escape from the civil war in Sol and to search for a new home within the other solar systems. It should at least be relatively logical... I'm thinking about making 3 quick jumps: 1) towards the node very close to the portal. 2) jump through 3) jump away from the exit-side of the node as soon as possible. Which leads to the third question:

3. Is there some information about the size of military forces on the Delta Serpentis side?

Would this just be suicide for a small convoy containing of max. a dozen ships?

Alternatively, I could let them use some unstable node that suddenly appeared, but this is not my first wish  :p

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
I think your best bet would be to exploit military ROE on the far side of the portal. Going in, there'll be GTVA defenses around the Sol end: civilian ships would be assumed to be a Trojan horse, but you could exploit ethics by making the ships very transparently unarmed and full of people.

Once you hit the DS end, I suggest immediately declaring yourself refugees and requesting Vasudan asylum. Any jump you make will be swiftly vectored, so you'll need some kind of fancy trick to evade GTVA tracking.

 
Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
Well the problem is: These aren't exactly civilian ships (Damn, even a refitted Sanctus is with them  :lol: ), which makes the point "transparently unarmed" very hard  ;)

They also won't want to give their fate into the hands of people who are responsible for most of the chaos in my first act, so declaring themselves refugees isn't a good option either. That's why I'm thinking about "Making a run"...

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
How about having a decoy ship, unmanned, that jumps in from a side vector of the node.  Have it filled with as much of that damage-sealing epoxy so it survives longer.  While blockade ships move to engage, the real refugee convoy jump in near the node and transit.  The lead ship in the fleet could also be a sacrificial ship, unmanned, but loaded with EMP explosives.  It returns to normal space on the Delta-Serpentis side, then blows up, knocking out targeting systems long enough for the refugees to enter DS and then jump away with the GTVA units unable to track them.
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Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
I'm not part of the BP staff, but I think I can answer your first question. The Sol gate is based off Knossos technology, which just stabilizes a natural jump node; any ship capable of using a jump node can use a Knossos or the Sol gate. (This is in contrast to the UEF intrasystem gates, by the way, which are basically intrasystem jump drives in reverse.) The only relevant command codes were the ones the NTC Trinity used to activate the dang thing in the first place (which, hm, could make for a cool campaign premise, but I digress). Remember also that shutting down a Knossos doesn't immediately do anything, or FS2 would have ended at A Flaming Sword, so the Alliance doesn't have the luxury of toggling the gate to control access.

The gate does, however, mount beam cannons.


Strictly speaking, canon doesn't rule out the possibly of jumping in or out right next to a jump node, but since that makes nonsense of so many missions, it's widely assumed to be impossible.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
There's one canonical reference to a Knossos distorting the Psamtik's arrival coordinates (although it's also a coverup to keep the Psamtik far enough away that the Sath can jump in, decelerate, and still have room to beam it).

 

Offline -Norbert-

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Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
If you want to go in balls-deep with the BP canon, there's also the problem of UEF ships not being able to immediately execute a second jump, so you'd have to make up something for that part too.

Maybe say that they are overriding the safties and have one or two ships blow up on the attempt of the second jump, along with mentioning that this double jump will burn out most of their jumpdrives and requite quite some time to replaced the burnt out components once they are away from the DS jump-node.

 
Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
Hello,

thanks to all of you for your responses!

@ Trivial psychic: Yeah, I thought about something with a decoy, too. Seems to be the most logical variant until now.

@xenocartographer & General Battuta: One more question though: Are UEF ships capable of using Jump nodes? I mean they were trapped inside Sol for more than 50 years... Do they still have the ability/engines to use the nodes?

@-Norbert-: Wel, technically it will be a triple-jump :p 1. to the gate 2. through the gate (but using the intersystem jump drives) 3. the third jump away from the DS-portal...

Yeah, really sounds like suicide now  :D

 
Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
Some kind of political excuse to coerce the GTVA into holding off from an engagement could work, though I've no idea what it could specifically be. You could get a tense standoff in the mission like that, a la For The Wrong Reasons or What Binds Us.
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Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
I don't think there's any explicit canon either way, but there are a couple hints:
  • Al-da'wa mentions jumping Ansarii through the node. If the stealth fighter can do it, it stands to reason that larger ships can, too.
  • In Morrigan in Shadow, Laporte's Uriel makes an unassisted intersystem jump. The Morrigan stories aren't canonical, but they are official BP fic.
  • During FS1, fighter-scale intersystem drives were prohibitively expensive. By FS2, they'd become standard-issue. While the Feds don't have as much motivation to develop subspace tech, they do use it to get around Sol, and have developed subspace tracking on par with the GTVA's and an intrasystem gate network unlike anything seen in GTVA space. This suggests that they have a similar level of subspace sophistication, including the ability to mass-produce intersystem drives. (Keep in mind also that the Feds have some concern about new nodes forming and letting the Shivans in, so it's not like they have no reason to care.)
  • UEF civilian ships don't always have jump drives, period, using the gate network as a cost-saving measure. The Kadmos entry, however, includes a mention of refitting them with intersystem drives en masse, suggesting this is possible.

This suggests to me that your Fed convoy would either have the ability already, or can be upgraded with it. Your safest bet might be to mention some of the older ships (eg. a Kadmos) undergoing that upgrade while leaving the rest ambiguous.

 

Offline The E

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Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
One of the background assumptions we made, based on the speed and ease with which intersystem drives were refitted into great war-era fighters, is that the technology necessary for fighters to traverse nodes is not a huge line item for military vessels by the time of WiH. Even though Sol has been cut off from interstellar travel for some time, building true interstellar drives into fighters and larger vessels just doesn't cost that much extra when compared to the rest, and will come in handy when the situation changes.
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Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
Ok, thanks for the responses.

I think I found a way to get my convoy through the portal without being too "off-canon". It's good to know that almost any ship will be able to use the intersystem travel routes.

@ Phantom Hover: Yeah, I found a way to prevent the GTVA from firing, at least on the Sol side. Since my convoy isn't completely defenseless, they might be able to survive a few minutes on the other side before the jumpdrives are back online.

Yeah, now I know a way to get this to work, nice  ;7

 

Offline Buckshee Rounds

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Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
This is a cool concept, I look forward to seeing it in action!

On a related note:- what kind of defences does the GTVA have deployed on both sides of the node? I'd imagine the Sol side would be protected and the Delta-S side would have Mjolnirs and all sorts, correct? Don't they have a dedicated Battlegroup too, I remember reading that somewhere. The Arcadia must be providing supplies and support to all of that?

 

Offline procdrone

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Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
Hm, and what about, jumping a ship with a jump drive to the Sol-DS node (maybe even hijacked old orion hulk if they are still available, or any other larger transport ship), after that, launch en-masse on escape pods or smaller transports and jump through the node.

With so much Alliance presence in Sol I believe that only small fighter patrols are present on DS side (I wouldn't work my crews so hard on the "safe side" without any warnings about any incoming attacks).

Scrambling a pursuit would take time, One pod could be even loaded with EMP bombs to scramble any sensor locks.
Now, that leaves a lot to say about vectoring the escaping pods out of the jump gate area, but maybe, small pods are small enough so they can't be exactly ventored in without AWACS assistance?

If they are crazy about escaping, such a crazy plan... could theoretically work. I think.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2017, 12:09:40 am by TheHound »
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Offline Mito [PL]

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Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
Or you could just go and stuff two or three jump drive units onto a single ship.
How do you kill a hydra?

You starve it to death.

 
Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
These are some nice ideas here  :D
But since the Act 1 of my campaign gave me some "tools" to use to get my ships through the portal, I think I won't need escape pods :) But yeah, the EMP variant is also in my head  :)

 

Offline -Norbert-

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Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
If the ships have strong enough subspace engines, they might be able to tow other ships of the same size through a jumpnode with them.

So at the beginning of the journey, all the crew and passengers are put into one ship (let's call it A) and then two ships of the same class get docked to that (B and C).

B and C are rigged in a way that they can be remote controlled from A, which is sandwiched between the auxillary vessels.

The first jump is made by using only ship B's jump-drive. The strain of making it big enough for three ships will completely burn out the jumpdrive after a single jump, so after the successful jump ship B is undocked and A+C fly on.

The same is done again for the 2nd jump with C being abondoned and A flying on alone.

The auxillarly ships with their burnt out jumpdrives could also be used as decoy or suicide ships depending on how you want to design the mission.

Sounds a bit complicated, but I hope you get what I mean.

 
Re: Question about Portal Delta Serpentis - Sol
Well I'm not sure how many ships the convoy will have right now and if I can "sacrifice" that many... But I think this is a nice idea, I experienced this once by making a mission and letting a boarding pod jump away while I forgot to undock the cometary habitat earlier. It just got pulled away by the much smaller boarding pod and warped away with it  :lol: