Introduction and Project

Steve81

Steve81

Spaceman
Hi folks,

Long time fan of the Wing Commander series here (as I'm sure most of you are); I started with WC2 when I got my first CDROM drive way back when, and have been obsessed ever since. I've read all the books (own most via Kindle), and they still bring me joy to this day, as does WC Saga.

Anyway, I've recently been through some life-altering events, and now find myself with the time and resources to attempt a personal moonshot: write a book. I'm currently retired, and I did spend some time as a writer / editor for a science-based A/V equipment review & educational site. I've got a pretty active imagination, and determination not to fudge the science and the numbers more than necessary. Sadly, some sacrifices will have to be made in order to reach the stars. I'm also wondering if there is anyone I could contact so I could potentially pay homage to one of my favorite franchises.

All the best,
Steve
 
Hi LOAF, and thanks for the welcome! Basically I’d just like to be able to drop an Easter egg or two without getting sued, say a Ralatha class destroyer or some such. The story line isn’t going to bear a lot of resemblance to the WC series (though if Jukaga had been Emperor at the start of the war, it would be more in line with what I have in mind). If nobody cared, the bad guys could even be feline, though it makes no particular difference on my end. A predatory species of some sort makes sense as a bad guy though for a variety of reasons.
 
Greetings! Very much looking forward to seeing your work.

You mentioned the character Jukaga, and I have a strong interest in him, so please allow me to talk a bit more about some of my own thoughts on the character, and related creations. I hope this will be useful to you.

I wonder what you think of Jukaga's characterization as a political figure. My impression of him is that he's a character with a lot of substance, but if you're going to write such a character as the Imperial Emperor at the beginning of the war, then the plot in question is going to need to be different enough from the WC series.

Jukaga personally doesn't know politics, and is actually a scholar, not a politician. From my reading experience, I don't think he realizes this himself, instead he confuses academic talent + pedigree with the ability to fight politically, leading himself to serious miscalculations and poor decision making. We don't even need to read what comes after, just the prologue of Fleet Action to come to this conclusion. He was completely taken advantage of by the emperor, an old fox, and used the resources he was good at to help the emperor's family out of their predicament.

In terms of Jukaga and his clan's political and cultural position as well as superior resources, there was really only one viable path before him, and that is to join forces with the Confederation to overthrow the emperor's domination. But it is unrealistic for him to want both victory in the foreign war and success in the internal struggle.

Judging by the content of Action Stations, both his father and his son are way better than him.

So, with that in mind, if you are writing a character similar to Jukaga and is in the capacity of emperor, I would think that the political situation in the empire under his rule would be unstable, and that such a person wouldn't have enough political maneuvering to stabilize the various factions of power. Thus, the geopolitical situation before and after the war and how the war came to full fruition was a plot worthy of careful design.




To expand on that, I wonder if you're going to write a sort of patterned old-school SF war-novel, a character oriented adventure story, or try something different? If the latter, then I'll try to suggest some ideas for you that are different from the design of the WC series.

1. As much as possible, the Empire should not be stereotyped, especially not as “barbarians”. Many of the story elements in the WC series have a pattern of imagined “alien” portrayals. This often leads to plots that drift into underage cartooning.

2. Characters' behavior should be based on their ideological motivations, and a story design with less OPPORTUNISM would be better. I'm going to harshly criticize WC3's script at this point.

3. When depicting Imperial characters, especially some of the higher lords, it is important to think in terms of the interests of such classes, rather than using our values for behavior design. For example, I'm pretty much against the idea that "Hobbes is going back to the Empire because he can't stand the idea of humans destroying the planet Kilrah". On the contrary, I think there is no turning back for him since he chose to be part of the Ghorah Khar resistance.
 
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Hi Emu. Regarding the good Baron, it’s more his plan to lull the Confederation to sleep before striking that makes sense to me. In the WC Universe, the Kilrathi are immediately hostile with the destruction of the Iason, which makes launching a surprise attack in the vast expanse of space a rather difficult thing to pull off.

I also agree that motivations should be more than “we’re just bad guys”. One of the reasons a predatory species would work IMHO is that they would tend to need more space for food production; it takes a lot of meat to feed tens of billions of large obligate carnivores. With that in play, the bad guys don’t necessarily need to be an evil empire.

As to the story itself, think more Action Stations than End Run. Of course, if I have some modest success in this, I’d certainly consider more (hence why I’m starting at the beginning, chronologically).

As far as the tech goes, it’s going to be a lot more “real world” though, and that has a lot of implications for the story. There aren’t going to be any shields as such. Main ship-to-ship weapons will be vacuum UV wavelength lasers since they’re well absorbed by matter (hence the name vacuum UV) and yield a reasonable, but not ridiculous range. Missiles will be fairly long ranged since they’ll have good acceleration and plenty of delta V, but point defenses will also be better; warheads will be boosted fission and two-stage thermonuclear devices. IR/Electro-optical sensors plus lidar for ranging vs radar will extend detection ranges by quite a lot, and involve a bit of sabotage on the part of the bad guys to actually gain the element of surprise.

Regarding propulsion, things are going to be quite a bit slower as well. I have to cheat of course, but only by a factor of a million or so :P That’ll be adequate for an acceleration in the 1G range for a capital ship, and a total delta V of around 5000-10000kps for a full load of propellant. However, since you don’t actually have brakes in space, you’re going to have to burn to actually do anything other than continue traveling in the direction you’re already heading, so useful velocities will be a lot less. Given that, I figure total “universe” size for the moment will be a couple sectors in WC terms.

Hopefully this answers your questions.
 
Steve81 said:
Regarding the good Baron, it’s more his plan to lull the Confederation to sleep before striking that makes sense to me.
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Roger that.

I think in WC universe... as currently depicted, empire is barely capable of running this way. The Empire doesn't run like that externally. So even if he has such intentions, they may not materialize. It's hard for me to imagine how Jukaga, with his character and abilities, could both keep the Confederation off its guard while keeping political stability within the Empire.

Alternatively, a similar design could have not just two highly unified powers, but two roughly loose groups of civilizations. For example, human colonies in remote areas are at odds with the inhabitants of the solar system, while rich colony planets on the edge of the empire are contemplating breaking away from the empire's rule, while some other intelligent species are engaged in political balancing between the two powers, and so on.
 
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EmuMusicFan said:
Roger that.

I think in WC universe... as currently depicted, empire is barely capable of running this way. The Empire doesn't run like that externally. So even if he has such intentions, they may not materialize. It's hard for me to imagine how Jukaga, with his character and abilities, could both keep the Confederation off its guard while keeping political stability within the Empire.

Alternatively, a similar design could have not just two highly unified powers, but two roughly loose groups of civilizations. For example, human colonies in remote areas are at odds with the inhabitants of the solar system, while rich colony planets on the edge of the empire are contemplating breaking away from the empire's rule, while some other intelligent species are engaged in political balancing between the two powers, and so on.
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In terms of the world at large and politics, I do have a couple thoughts.

As humanity is concerned, I’m thinking a total population of about 10-20 billion, with the vast majority in the home system. My Earth “history” will largely be positive: we actually clean up the planet, robotics will lead to a future where basic resources like food, housing, etc. are essentially free, and people are free to pursue whatever interests they care to engage in. I personally haven’t thought of a system better than a constitutional republic (unless you make me king 😂), so I’ll be running with that.

Given the above, motivation for expansion is more about exploring than some big need to get out of a dirty, overpopulated hellhole or search for resources. There will be a couple small colonies (population in the millions), and various star bases for logistics, a few major defense installations at key points, and so on. OTOH, given an abundance of raw materials available in the home system and a presumed mastery over it, there’s not a lot of point shipping millions of tons of ore through a dozen jump points.

As the bad guys go, they’ll be a bit more civilized internally. I’m thinking they’ll basically have had at least a Magna Carta moment, making it look more like an oligarchy. Since food is going to be their driving issue for expansion, population will be larger and growing, vs the sustainable world humanity has built.

It’s definitely different from the WC universe, but I’d like to think it all makes some rational sense and is actually believable.
 
Steve81 said:
As the bad guys go, they’ll be a bit more civilized internally. I’m thinking they’ll basically have had at least a Magna Carta moment, making it look more like an oligarchy. Since food is going to be their driving issue for expansion, population will be larger and growing, vs the sustainable world humanity has built.
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Then I guess there would be quite a few felines, especially the lower classes, who would choose to come and live on the human side, especially when they find out that a good portion of the human population will come forward to offer free food and water and a safe place to live. 🐱

In all seriousness, a civilization that can have a Magna Carta moment should already be considered to be on the doorstep of a modern contractual society. And if there is an oligarchic social structure, there must be some classes complaining about not enjoying enough resources, right? Then they are likely to be envious of the human side of life.
 
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EmuMusicFan said:
In all seriousness, a civilization that can have a Magna Carta moment should already be considered to be on the doorstep of a modern contractual society. And if there is an oligarchic social structure, there must be some classes complaining about not enjoying enough resources, right? Then they are likely to be envious of the human side of life.
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Some definitely, especially more ambitious felines from the lower classes. Still, if it is a true minimalist society, having a different evolution path, then lower classes may actually be more content than the corresponding ones on Earth, although certainly not totally happy.
 
kingmakeress said:
Some definitely, especially more ambitious felines from the lower classes. Still, if it is a true minimalist society, having a different evolution path, then lower classes may actually be more content than the corresponding ones on Earth, although certainly not totally happy.
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I don't think so haha, because ...... that kind of hierarchical society will always have people who are dissatisfied. If resources are allocated by power, they are allocated according to the amount of power.
 
Absolutely true! There are bound to be dissatisfied felines. My observation was that the number of dissatisfied persons and their discontent level will be probably lower on average because of the particular conditions of the Kilrathi society. I wouldn't be surprised if the priestesses of Sivar could easier convince warriors that hardships are the true way compared to orthodox and catholic priests in medieval Europe
 
Additionally, the empire has been more or less constantly at war, so discontent can be channeled there --not to mention that prominent, emerging, or even perceived opposition leaders can be "volunteered" for suicide missions
 
kingmakeress said:
Absolutely true! There are bound to be dissatisfied felines. My observation was that the number of dissatisfied persons and their discontent level will be probably lower on average because of the particular conditions of the Kilrathi society. I wouldn't be surprised if the priestesses of Sivar could easier convince warriors that hardships are the true way compared to orthodox and catholic priests in medieval Europe
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If we are talking about WC universe, then WC2 and Freedom Flight already tell us that the colonies on the fringes of the empire are already revolting, and that it is precisely the priestess class that is playing a major role in it. Priestesses and other civilian officials in the fringes are also members who are dissatisfied with the status quo in the Empire and see joining the Confederation as a better option.
 
Back to the topic of this post. I think that the bottom commoner class, since they don't have the guaranteed paychecks of public employees such as the warrior class, filling their stomachs is the number one priority, which would drive them to move to more affluent human communities.
 
Well, I got in touch with the folks at Baen; just going to keep it to generic names for now. I’m partial to British warship names like Vanguard, Warspite, Indefatigable, etc., so no biggie. Now I just need to start typing :P
 
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