warships and troop transports disguised as grapeships

[m.ellis]

Note that a ship length of 2400 meters means that the wormhole will need to be of greater than 1200 meters radius (significantly greater actually) in order to accommodate the ship. Otherwise, the ship will be shredded when the wormhole throat (which shrinks in all three dimensions when you are passing through it) contacts the ships and the resulting tidal forces spagetify it.


Human assault battalions really don't make any sense in OA.... Vecs might be better in terms of physical capability, but dedicated automated hardware of tremendous capability and intelligence, but without sophonce is likely to beat the more generalized intelligence of a vec pretty easily as well.

There's also the question of how any of this is supposed to beat a transapient. Bear in mind that a single S1 can destroy entire solar systems and slaughter modosophonts by the quadrillions with only minor effort (and the modos will be utterly unable to stop it). You've mentioned that there will be transapients on the attacking side, but how are you going to depict that battle? And who is this General Nakamura? Certainly no modosophont can hold anything other than a ceremonial position of command in any kind of real military in the setting.

Todd

The grapeship article suggests that the pods separate from the stem and enter the wormhole separately. The non-virtual population of Helios system is probably a few billion, so an occupation force of several million might be adequate. I don't need the 6 billion that my original calculations spit out.

I assumed 'vec assault units, but I see your point about automated hardware.

The battle between attacking and defending transapients will have taken place before the invading fleet is in position. Basically, this is a war of manuever, and the invading transapients get the upper hand. As I mentioned earlier, all the protagonist knows about the war is street rumor and propaganda bulletins. I don't have to actually depict the fight between the transapients.

Jane Nakamura is a transapient. I chose the name to make a pun out of "Jane's Battleships." Nakamura is not of any specific gender, though ta may have started out as a female, but that no longer matters.

Footnote. I tend to use the Chinese word ta for a personal pronoun that doesn't necessarily identify gender instead of e. I'm quirky that way.
Also, variations in language are bound to occur considering the size of Terragens space.

[m.ellis]

Like Rynn I don't think this [billgated] is an appropriate name for the OA setting. The basic assumption it makes is that the 20th and 21st century is somehow of any real relevance to people living 10,000yrs from now. And we probably do too much of that already. Definitely not something we want to see any more of unless a hugely compelling argument can be made for it.

Todd

No problem. I'm not married to the term. Sometimes I can't help but jot down every stupid pun that comes into my head. Like "Genghiz Kant: Critiques of Pure Reason and Military Strategies by Appointment Only."

[m.ellis]

I have 5 and 1/2 pages describing the invasion of Helios star system typed up and ready to post. Where would I do that?
I'm assuming the "Creative Writing Forum" is the place.

[Drashner1]

Yup, that's the place

[m.ellis]

Domo abrigato.