Here you go, Gary.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Tuesday, November 03, 2020 - 04:14 pm: Edit

Thank you kindly!


Since the four Omega-Paravian ships in Captain's Log #54 are antiproton variants, I thought it worth taking a look at other Omega empires which make use of antiproton weapons (namely the Ymatrian Horde, the Worb Technoocracy, and the Zosman Marauders), to compare and contrast with how things work here.

The antiproton beam is a single-mount, two-turn direct-fire heavy weapon. It has a 2+3 arming cycle, holding for one point of power. The antiproton beam requires two centerline adjacent option mounts, and cannot be (safely) mounted on a ship smaller than Size Class 3; it has a 2+2 arming cycle (holding for 1) if armed as a lance, but can be armed as an antiproton beam also.

The key to the APB/LNC interaction is that each lance doubles the damage output of up to 3 beams fired from the same ship on the same impulse - but only in the front centerline. Thus, at a 2:1 APB-to-LNC ratio, one can get the same damage output as 4 unaided APBs for the cost of just under three; at the optimal three-to-one ratio, you get the equivalent of 6 unaided APBs for the cost of just under four. Again, only if you line up the "hex row of death".

On the one hand, there is the question of how exactly one lines up said "hex row of death". The Ymatrians, Zosmans, and Omega-Paravians have realatively agile ships; the Worb, in contrast, rely on turrets to do much of the turning for them.

On the other hand, there is the matter of how many weapon mounts need to be taken up in order to make the APB/LNC dynamic work. The Ymatrians are crazy enough to overgun their leader variants and suffer the resulting shock effects; I might suggest that the Omega-Paravians are not quite so insistent in that regard. So, they would be in the same boat as the Zosmans and Worb. In the former case, the limited number of heavy weapon mounts on the current crop of playtest Zosman warships make mounting the lance on a ship smaller thn the heavy cruiser counter-productive. In the latter case, I don't think it's a coincidence that the Worb waited until they fielded their heavy cruiser (really a heavy battlecruiser) to arm any of their ships with antiproton beams, as it is the first Worb ship with a turret large enough to fit two APBs and a LNC.

In addition, there is the question of what to do with antiproton phasers. AP-1s and AP-3s are quite dangerous at close range, but fall off quite markedly at medium and long ranges. The Broad Worb argue that antiproton phaser boats are the best option; the Zosmans operating in Worb space (or, perhaps, in Omega-Paravian space after their own antiproton variants enter service) can consider this option for themselves.

For the Omega-Paravians, I might argue that they might be better suited to "double-down" on AP-1s and AP-3s on their antiproton variants, in order to leverage the short-range firepower provided by their antiproton heavy weapons.

But, of course, if there are other arguments in favour of a different approach which work better than my own, well and good.

By Nick Samaras (Koogie) on Wednesday, November 04, 2020 - 07:04 pm: Edit

I had envisioned the Omega Paravians as having more of a mix of weapons (retain some phaser-1s, QWTs) rather than go all anti-proton weapons.

One question that needs to be resolved is how the Omega Paravians had "full power" warp engines when they left the Alpha Octant with Early Years engines. Like the Tholians who arrived in the Milky Way, where did the Omega Paravians get the number of personal and skill base to build shipyards and crew fleets of starships?

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - 06:53 pm: Edit

For what it's worth, my thinking was that the Omega-Paravians would consider deploying mixed squadrons of quantum wave torpedo and antiproton variants once the latter types enter service, rather than trying to spread the heavy weapon mounts on their warships too thinly by deploying "jack-of-all-trades" mixed-technology duelists. Particularly in terms of trying to leverage the APB/LNC dynamic.

For comparison's sake, the Trobrin navy routinely mixes up their bolt and torpedo variants, but only their larger hulls have the luxury of considering a mixture of implosion bolt and implosion torpedo armament. (Plus, that "luxury" is at the cost of a reduced number of phaser mounts when compared to other Omega empires.) Aside from the frigate leader, their Size Class 4 units have to make do with distinct bolt- and torpedo-only loadouts.

But that's just my own approach; if the "final" versions of these hulls are better served in other ways, fair enough.

By Jay Gustason (Jay20) on Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - 08:04 pm: Edit

What happened to there quantum wave torpedoes

By Jay Gustason (Jay20) on Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - 08:05 pm: Edit

When they. came to the omega sector

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - 08:41 pm: Edit

It has not yet been stated in print one way or the other, but my personal preference (again, for what it's worth) would be for the Omega-Paravians to develop the same "modern" quantum wave torpedo launchers as outlined under (FQ1.0) in Module C6.

Further, since (FQ1.143) makes QWTs available to the Orion Pirates of C6's "Paravian timelines", I would also suggest making them available historically to the Zosman Marauders, once any Marauder cells operating in or close to Omega-Paravian space have enough time to capture working samples of this technology type.

By Nick Samaras (Koogie) on Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - 07:49 pm: Edit

I would have liked for them to keep the split turn modes from the Early Years, to be further different then what was seen in Module C6.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, November 20, 2020 - 06:10 pm: Edit

For my part, my preference would be to lean into the Module C6 material - and, by extension, the Lost Empires Preview Pack for Federation Commander - so as to leverage certain pre-existing SFB (and FC and Shapeways) materials as would be appropriate to do so.

For example: if it turned out that the Omega-Paravians deployed a war cruiser which happened to look like its "lost empire" counterpart in SFB (and in FC) - with notes that the Omega version does not get advanced shuttles, and that it first enters service in, say, Y192. That would then allow the Omega-Paravians to use it as the basis for the antiproton war cruiser seen in CL54. And, conveniently, would allow the pre-existing CW SSD (and Ship Card and Shapeways miniature) to be made use of in the Omega Octant.

Or to put it another way, given that "real estate" for non-Alpha SSDs (and Ship Cards) is at somewhat of a premium, I'd prefer to see valuable space used in a future non-Alpha project be reserved for those hull types and mission variants which would be unique to the Paravians in Omega - to include flotillas of "volatile warp" gunboats (both standard and antiproton types).

By Jay Gustason (Jay20) on Monday, December 07, 2020 - 09:44 pm: Edit

Anti proton quantum wave torpedo that would scare the measron empire

By David Finan (Bbanzai) on Tuesday, December 08, 2020 - 08:57 pm: Edit

Im actually working on a story and timeline to submit that bridges the early years Paravian with the Omega ones. Its just taking a long time to sort through he early year, omega and C6 timelines settle on the right one build the story of how they got from here to there. Once I do Ill send it in to ADB, may not get used but its a fun project to work on.

By Shawn Gordon (Avrolancaster) on Friday, May 13, 2022 - 02:28 pm: Edit

What does the Paravian Jihad field between Y90 and Y207? Is anything printed?

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, May 13, 2022 - 11:33 pm: Edit

Bear in mind that there is, as yet, no official name for the Omega-Paravian "empire"; the event set to kick off in the Eighth Cycle of Omega history is its own separate thing.

In retrospect, I wonder if a less politically-charged name for that event might have been a better choice to go with. Something like "the Conflagration", perhaps. But anyway...

-----

At the time of writing, there is no "update" file available for the Omega-Paravians in print, akin to the ones offered for the Zosmans and the FRA in Captain's Log #52 and CL53 respectively.

The Omega timeline speaks of a "quantum wave mine" which is deployed starting in Y174, after the capture of Nucian tactical mine samples in Y172. The problem is, since it's not known what exactly the Nucian tactical mines are in the first place, it would be difficult to work up a QWM ruleset in their absence. But, for what (little) it's worth, I would sidestep the issue for now by saying the Omega-Paravians only deploy the QWM - whatever it happens to be - from their minesweeper variants. (And even then, I would not make it a universal refit, so that "standard" minesweeper variants could still be used in their absence.)

Also, while this has yet to be confirmed one way or another, I could well imagine the Omega-Paravians using the four "Mæsron-type" civilian units printed in Captain's Log #20 - with phaser-1s, phaser-3s, and/or QWTs in their respective weapon mounts. But that is the sort of thing one might have to wait for a potential "update" file to say for sure.

By Nick Samaras (Koogie) on Sunday, June 01, 2025 - 12:05 am: Edit

The background for the antiproton heavy cruiser mentions the original heavy cruisers as being the fastest and most powerful cruisers in the Omega Sector. However, these would have been the Early Years designs and the opposite would have been true.

This also leads to the question of how a few ships with a small population of only military personnel and no civilians or scientists went on to create General War era technology and an empire in so little time.

They could not have had many ships to begin with or surely they would have been discovered along the journey. I imagine no more than 10 ships which would be about 3-4 thousand people, and even that seems like a stretch.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Sunday, June 01, 2025 - 09:17 am: Edit

At some point, I hope that an "update" file, akin to the one printed for the Zosman Marauders in Captain's Log #52, or for the Federal Republic of Aurora in Captain's Log #53, can appear in print which, among other things, can resolve the various questions surrounding the Paravian exodus to the Omega Octant. To perhaps include further outlining what role Marengo Firecloud Wildfeather's hidden colony world of Wingatha (as noted in Module C6) might have played in all of this.

On a related note, I had proposed elsewhere that the Size Class 2 hull (or hulls) reported to have been built by the Early Years Paravians in the SFB Y-modules was (or were), in fact, an early Raid Mothership (or ships) - and that this class of ship found itself playing a key role in this overall story.

Although, I had wondered for a while if one option could be to lean into the use of a Vortex, of the kind seen in the cover story for Captain's Log #38. As in: perhaps an exodus fleet left Wingatha in Y111 (as suggested in the C6 preview PDF) only to run into a Vortex, which placed them in the north-west corner of Omega a hundred, or two hundred, years in the past? This might give the exiles an extra century, or two, to build up a new home world's population and industrial base - something which the Paravians, who are noted as being able to hatch a large number of eggs if needed, would be able to take advantage of.

So, by the time they emerged as an "active" Omega empire in Y170, they would have managed to reach the equivalent Middle Years technology level to that seen for the "Mapsheet P" Paravians in C6 - with perhaps a bit of room here or there for certain "modern" equipment types, such as range-1 detectors for mines and transporter bombs, to have been lifted from the wreck of the Trobrin ship that stumbled across them in Y164.