Expect my ships to be in full contact with one another and capable of sending messages to Wes, though he may or may not be able to reply depending on what you all agreed upon but I haven't read.

Able to be in full contact yes, able to be in full constant contact during the heat of battle with ability to perfectly understand what is being said, no. Remember the limits.

Yeah, I have no issue with hardlight coms, but it is much more limited in terms of how you communicate because you need to be in formation and moving at the same speed, thus, it's mostly not usable for at manuevers updates on orders and situations.

Did you ever consider that the lasers could just be on swivels? Capital ships at sublight aren't hard to track - fighters at high speed, however, will be nearly impossible to pass orders to.

And relative to the other ships, your shieldships will be off the charts gravity wise, and pulses of gravity will be clearly seen emanating from them.

1. Are the recievers on swivels too? :P

2. Uh, not really. The interdictors are probably putting out much stronger localized gravity than the shield ships, given the gravity nesscessary to stop a ship from jumping to hyperspace.

The way I picture it, you're giving out directionality pulses of gravity, right? So even though they're not as strong the passing of gravity between ships is not a highly normal phenomena and would stick out.

Hey Kach, lemme ask you this...

If Line-Of-Sight or Hardlight communications were able to accomplish exactly the same thing as regular communications, why would anyone bother with regular communications if LOS/Lasers not only worked as you suggest, but were un-jammable?

Kach...

the bulk of the hundred or so Imperial S.S. Ships emerged from hyperspace

With an urgency brought upon them by their desperation, the remainder of the fleet – around 100 ships

Uh, wtf?

And it's in the same paragraph, man.

Reports of this plight came over the comm, broadcast by line-of-sight lasers from the distant fleet.

It's funny; given your post in this thread preceeding your actual IC post, Ahnk and I were discussing how badly you would abuse the two subjects you mentioned in an abusive sort of way - CGT, LOS.

First paragraph in.

Faith.

I have none.

Why?

Because...

Another voice came over the comm, this one General Vos thinking aloud: “Nobody should have shields that good. Nobody! But then again, if they have that much power against turbolasers…”

Second paragraph. SECOND PARAGRAPH!

And you know what makes you a douche? You didn't even establish LOS communications, you just 'moded them in to having somehow already been established.

Established with Wes.

Vos, who is conducting his ships, dealing with the fact that he just jumped out of hyperspace in to a fleet and badly out of position. Wes who happens to be, in your own words, "Hundred of miles away from Wes and his fleet"....

Blatant Godmoding, imho.

You assume Vos has nothing better to do. You assume he is already EXPECTING your LOS communications. You assume that there is nothing between your position and his. You assume he is not moving. You assume NO ONE is moving...

I know they say that, "when you assume you make an ass of you and me."

I disagree.

You're just making an ass of yourself.



Next...

“Look at the CGT readout,” the Lieutenant told him, Lieutenant Mischel.

I want R&D proof that whatever-the-hell ship this is has a CGT. I want proof that this ship has one.

Why?

Because the CGT is, as described as a "rare and expensive type of sensor."

Because I bet Ahnk that you would abuse the hell out of the supposed CGT(s) at your disposal. That you would assume their presence on numerous ships and so on.

Because we figured you would badly over-estimate their functionality.

“I see it, Lieutenant” he said without giving it his full attention, before something caught his eye – the enemy fleet was seated within an ocean of gravitational pulses in what would be normally calm space. Like a sea, the very fabric of space time was covered in flowing waves and ripples emanating in weak but visible pulses out of a number of ships in the center of the formation.

A rare and expensive sensor which Kach has taken the time to learn how to read, apparently. But then I bet he knows every system on every one of his ships inside and out. Knows their names, serial numbers, and who they're dating.

overlaid over one of the CGT readouts.

Support for my abuse bet. Why?

"overlaid over one of the CGT readouts"

Do you mean that you have multiple "readouts" for a single CGT, or multiple readouts for multiple CGTs?

Over the intercomm came General Vos' voice again, “Gravity, he shouted, probably unconsciously if the tone of voice was any indication.“They’re using gravity as a shield.

OMGWTF!? I was wrong?!

See, I thought it would be in Vos's next post that he would put the pieces together. I guessed that he would at least...

... but no! Kach to the rescue. "I'll just have Wes put it all together in MY POST so that we can start to win teh dya! r0x0rz!"

And then Kach can act on your smart(ass)ness, right Vos?

“Lieutenant, pass word to Commodore Brandt, General Vos, his captains and the Borderland compliment that the enemy vessels are gravitationally shielded by the large ships at the rear center of the formation, approximately 2,800 meters long.

"How shall we pass the word, sir? We are jammed"

Kach, "Use our magical swiveling LOS laser beams. I'm sure they have super computers that can compute trajectories and well... do all the stuff I need to have done to make this make sense... sensors. You know?"

"Uh, yes sir. You mean the GMS?"

"GMS?"

"God-Mode Sensor, sir."

/facepaw.

“Captain, I want you to signal the Dictators and activate one of them. The enemy isn't letting us talk. I don't think that it's fair we let him talk too. He was tempted to ask if they could find a way to get through the fighter band jamming, but jamming was jamming and if it was easy to get through what would be the point? From the reports he'd heard the enemy jamming was one step short of impenetrable, just like that of their own Dictator.

They jammed you. Now you get to jam them back, right? Cool!

But wait...

If they have jammed you, and now you want to jam them back, but the only reason you are able to accomplish that is because of your mighty LOS communications which seem to provide the same functionality of your other communications, what makes you think they don't have the same miracle LOS communications which will render your jamming moot?

More over, how can you even signal your other ships to start jamming unless you can communicate with them in crystal clarity? Oh, right... I forgot about your GMS.

Shadows jutted across the room, projected by the edges of consoles and control panels and explosions and turbolasers flashing outside the room, making the shadows flow eerily like the gravity field she had seen on the ship's CGT display

So, that's at least two CGT's present.

I'm guessing all your Reign's have CGT's right? Good R&D'ing there. A rare and expensive sensor, is the CGT. But then, when you built your ships the Empire held sway over, "thousands" of systems right?

All of a sudden there was an eerie whistle, static and white noise all mixed together that caught her attention – communications were back online but overwhelmed by enemy jamming.

WTF does that even mean?

That's like saying, "My breathing seems to be working again even though I am overwhelmed by being under water."

After a few moments it was entirely gone, leaving what was now clearly the fighter pilot band open and adding to the surrealness of the situation. Noting the return of communications, pilots used the chance to say whatever needed said quickly.

Did I fucking miss something?

Ahnk; did your dudes switch off their jamming?

Kach; do your fighters also have GMS hardlight comms? Cos if they do, I want some. They seem to be able to track, broadcast, recieve... these are some sort of lasers... on fighters, dog-fighting, no less.

“Contact Coruscant.” Kach ordered. “Tell them they need to get their planetary shields operational again, now! I don't care if high command has been killed, they've got to have a back up command set up someplace by now, and do it installation by installation if you have to!”

Beam a laser pigeon at them!




Other then that your post had some good points.


/lie

You know what would work?

Good old naval know-how.

You get one dude to stand at a window and flash his light at another ship, and on that ship is another dude with binoculars or something and he's reading the flashing lights (it's called Morse Code) and then giving that information to his commander who in turn gets that dude to flash his light back at the other dude... and so on.

Or... you can just have miracle lasers.

Fleet size: Error. The fleet going in was probably around 120 ships (Wes has 60 in his fleet, I think, so my compliment would probably double that). If he lost 25% of them – which is what he said – that would bring him down to 90. So that will be changed.


LOS: Assuming makes an ass of me, Beff, because you don't need anyone else to make an ass of you.


I assumed our ships would automatically get in touch, sort of like how my Kubuntu automatically jumps on the nearest unsecured LAN. Your argument about this is pointless and I'm not debating it. We're Imperial ships in the same system with Comm jammed. In a combat situation the fleets would link up automatically because there isn't time for anything manual.


The second paragraph thing: Vos was thinking those lines in his last post, I just mentioned he was thinking them out loud unconsciously to give Kach a view into the situation. I figured as the task force's commander anything he said would automatically be broadcast on Kach's bridge.


Ship movement (LOS): Both the US and Chinese can put a 1m Laser onto the cameras of a satellite in orbit moving at 8000 m/s (OV). Provided the ships are currently moving on a constant path (which mine are) Wes' fleet will have no problems sending LOS signals to me. At closer ranges even if a receiving capital ship is moving wildly it wouldn't be an issue. Since the lasers would be on a turret so they could rotate, the motion of the transmitting ship wouldn't matter.


CGT: General Fleet Upgrade IV. Ships ISD sized and larger have mini-CGTS, similar in size and cost to a coalition Graviton detector, though probably a bit more expensive.


And did you ever consider why CGTs are considered so rare and expensive?


Maybe because cloaked ships were, well, not exactly common before the Thrawn era. Nobody NEEDED a way to detect cloaked ships, so there was no production and thus they were massively expensive. You drive a car, no? Maybe an accord? Imagine if Honda produced three Accords per year. There's no enough demand for a factory and automation, so they have to be made by hand with expensive production techniques. These three Accords would cost as much as a Lamborghini. It's called Economies of scale, I believe.


Throw in mass production and we could put them out for the cost of a TIE Fighter.


Overestemated functionality? Do you know what a CGT does? Nobody really has a perfect idea except Timothy Zahn because it's never really described. But what I pictured is a sensor that creates a map of the gravitational fields around a ship for a certain distance (something NASA can do with space telescopes, btw, so it's not too difficult). Thus, the conclusion Kach reached is not at all out of line or impossible to make. And quite easy to read. It would create a 2d map along a plane of gravitational fields in 2d or a simple map with hills and valleys, I picture. Like a topographical map. It seems to me like a simple piece of equipment to understand.


Damn, Beff. It takes years to learn how to read a topographical map. Army generals are forced to rely on their subordinates to read their maps for them because they can't read a map showing basic changes in elevation.


The overlay thing isn't that complicated. It's like putting roads on top of a topographical map - I think Google Earth can do that, can't it?


And one readout means nothing. I could have one or five or ten monitors displaying the exact same data in different ways if I wanted to. It doesn't mean I have a lot of CGT's or Kach understands all of them.


Wes: Once again, I just took the words from his post. I didn't write these things for him.


They jam us. I jam them. Easy conclusion, and something I would have done anyway. BTW, read the Centerpoint series where the Bakurans jury rig the exact same system I'm using right now with fairly good results. The Empire would have had months, at least, to get this right.



Cree'ar Jamming: I was just trying to describe the sound of jamming to human ears. It means nothing. I figured if the Cree'ar wanted to broadcast they would have to lift a frequency but the fact it was the fighter band is meaningless to me. I have no problems with taking that out if you'd like, your mightyness.


Coruscant: You're actually right. I wouldn't be able to contact them so I'll take that out.


That Morse code thing is exactly what we're doing, except with binary and lasers. And I actually used that in a post once with ship's runninglights.

Kach, I have to agree with Beff here.

1) My ships are not equipped with the same lasers yours are, and Vos isn't thinking about that now. Maybe your Reigns, the ones attached to Vos's fleet (there are at least 8-10, btw, or were before the jump - I'd say 8, and we lost two during the hyperspace catastrophe, so six left, before we lose four more to Ahnk's superweapons) are so equipped and in a state of mind to communicate while Ahnk is shooting the crap out of us, and in the disorganization after hyperspace, but there is no way you can hear what Vos is thinking while he's on the Tyrant.

2) I was accused of putting pieces together too quickly, and I argued it because I simply used logical steps and tested a few theories (the missiles into the gravity area to see if they had particle shields, watching the missile's flight and thereby deducing that they were using gravitic shielding). That was worked out, and all parties involved agreed that those parts of my posts posed no problem. Your post, on the other hand, doesn't even do that. You use my thinking to discover things. You don't test theories, you simply fiat that you know everything.

3) I don't take issue with the jamming. It had to be lifted, at least for a minute or two, to allow what's-his-face leading the Cree'Ar to deliver his ultimatum.

4) I do take issue with the link somehow inserted in the middle of your post, and the RL Note, though I agree that the Science of Star Wars is a good article.

5) I also take issue with you contacting Coruscant, if Ahnk reinstituted the jamming.

6) I agree with Beff re: the CGTs.