Posted by Gamemaster GM (Gamemaster) in Engineering - Main Sim

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Dagen Thor (CE) in Engineering - Main Sim

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Dagen Thor (CE) in Engineering - Main Sim
Posted by… suppressed (19) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Dagen came on shift with hair ruffled (as usual) and, this morning, a mug of coffee in hand. Yawning, he slipped into his chair. The mug rang off the desktop as it encountered it a touch too hard. Peering through his overnight status reports between sips; self heating mugs were just the thing in keeping coffee at the proper temperature. Dagen so didn’t like coffee or tea cold and this baby that Reia had found was just the thing. Odd that replicators just didn’t add that to the repertoire.

Routine maintenance of the mainfolds, skitchy oxygen filtration on Deck 6, JT Droid .. got lost? That was strange. Course and speed deviation from planned route. Hmm. With the mug held up and ready to be used he tapped the comms on the console. =^= Thor to Kesh =^= He hoped it was Kesh on the bridge shift today. Mornings. Not his forte. =^= Where are we headed? =^=
- Dagen

The very tiny little squeak that comes through the comm channel sounds like the mystery of the JT Droid was about to be solved, though the immediate voice of the felinoid engineer tells a different story. A story of both heart valves leaping upward when an already nervous state is compounded by the inquiry of a superior officer. No calm start to first bridge shift for this Ensign.

“We are headed to… ooo… the… system labeled J11 dash 23877B. Uncharted, ah.... system, that appears to have a potentially warp-capable civilization. The captain has been notified. No other anomalous matters to report, rrrnth.” Bit of a shaky start, but everything flows smoothly by the end.

->Kesh, Engineering

Dagen’s brow rose. They seem to be springing up in this sector. Was there a kind of parallel technological evolution in this area? He scanned the engine levels and fuel consumption. It was a fascinating thing that while dilithium powered things that the engines yet rolled with deuterium. He sipped at the mug. Steady as she goes, he noted. Not that he expected otherwise there.

=^= Another one. Not too long ago we had a positive contact with a warp civilization. Their warp tech was based on nuclear power. Quite the thing. Messy politics with colonies and pirates and the like. Left them in the hands of diplomats. See what you can get on a long range scan to the system looking for any warp trails based on our computer library of known warp trail types from the races we’ve encountered. See if we get a hit. Power sources outside of their own world? Other planets in the system colonized? Stellar spectroscopy that may hint at dilithium as a resource? =^=

Reia was on the bridge. He could see her station powered. He sent a text note up to her. =^= Walk in the woods after shift? Holodeck 2? Picnic. =^=
- Dagen

“Mnnn, a sufficiently tuned warp field emitter could run on the power output of a nuclear reactor, if it, too, were particularly efficient. Rrrnth.” Kesh interjected after Dagen’s first remarks, the nervous edge to her voice seemingly calmed, now that the subject was on that which she was a keen expert: starship engines.

Her reply to the rest is immediate, “Mmnnrrr, I am not detecting the kind of elevated dilithium levels typically associated with warp-capable species, but that is not necessarily.. ah… telling. We will not be able to pick up definitive information if they are using Romulan or Tholian-type reactors until we get closer. Rrrrnth. I have requested a subspace disruption scan to pick up signs of lesser-used styles of warp engine.” Without senior officer approval, it may take a few minutes to get through the queue of scans being conducted, of course. This information funnels in from the bridge terminal as well, with quite a few annotations for what the caitian considered note-worthy elements of the scan data. She may be a nervous Ensign, but she is very well written.

->Kesh, Engineering

Dagen took time to scan down through the data. They had time. As fast as an interstellar ship could go interplanetary travel still took time. Dagen was surprised at the results. Each of those elements of research would take a vast amount of resources to design and deliver especially in trying to suss them out. But three of the types. Wow. Evidently there wasn’t much intellectual property theft or they would be making a focus on one and not three. Curiouser and curiouser. =^= Very interesting. Is there anything in orbit such as a platform or station that might suggest experimentation? =^=
- Dagen, CE

From the scans requested, the evidence was not conclusive. Although there were research into the dilithium and singularity warp drives, they had not gotten them working yet. At the same time, whilst research was heading in the right direction, there was no evidence of anyone on the planet actually entering and using subspace.

GM

Dagen took this as a feast. While the tech seemed to be spotty and developing it was a wealth of seeing into the minds of the builders. Nuclear weapons fine. Satellites .. those would be nice to crack open and have a look at. The curious thing was the space drive research when there didn’t appear to be any real stations. If one was building a stardrive then one would want to be building the ship to house it. At least to prepare for it.

=^= Kesh, scan about for any shipyards or, what did they call them. Launch pads for rockets. We see satellites and a telescope but no station? They’re building the big engine, or at least experimenting, but they’re not going to put them on a ground car. Which may imply they are looking at this as an energy form or even weapon rather than space flight. See if you can pick up any passive comms from those satellites - news, information, that sort of thing. =^=
- Dagen

It takes a moment for her to respond.

=^=Mmmnnn=^= An utterance timed just right to prevent the comm channel from closing

A moment later, Kesh continues. =^=I am seeing potential for both, though we will either need an extended period of monitoring or some form of direct data-storage scan to be certain. Rrrrnth. I will keep monitoring it, however. Mmmmnrf. These people like to mention a word pertaining to consuming dirty water a lot.=^=

Dirty water. Likely their local brew, Dagen thought, or so he hoped. Reia would love this kind of research. =^= Data mining is not our forte, true, unless it relates to engineering. Try to filter it out to seek key words .. relating to their energy and space programs. See if there is a kind of world net that you can tap into to search. =^= There was a pause. =^= Lt Shandy is on the bridge. This is her bread and butter and she eats this stuff up. Work with her on this. =^=
- Dagen, CE

Another small delay, before a simple =^= Aye, sir. =^= carries a tone of approval, as well as a certain edge of scatterbrained stress. This was definitely a lot to tackle on the caitian’s first shift on the bridge in nearly twenty years.

->Kesh, Engineering

=^= Lots of time to research and look at things. And the Lt won’t bite. =^= He closed the comms and whispered, ‘Well, sometimes.’ before turning to the screen. There was a new world to look into, but there was also a ship to look after. Nothing major was creeping in as expected. This was a relatively new and shiny ship after all. But to keep things that way they did have things to tackle. And this week was life support week, in diagnostics on primary and backup systems. Gamma shift had done preliminary work on that and he was still needing to scan the results.
- Dagen CE

Later … “Oh I like those ships,” Dagen mused aloud. “Jamming signal.” He shrugged at that. Not much finesse but it got the job done. He rubbed at his ever present 5’o’clock shadow that was just starting to come in. Again. He wasn’t so sure about the small bits of grey he was starting to see, however. But that aside, he wondered whether the jamming caused a kind of blackout on frequencies or static on displays and how that might be explained back on the world. Dagen presumed that would they have the tech to apply a kind of shielding or so that that would render them more invisible with much less fuss and muss.

=^= Sweetie. Is their jamming doing anything to the systems on the planet? Any comms about relating to signals going awry? Can we pull anything from their ‘chats’ with their probes? =^= he said in a message to Reia.
- Dagen, CE

Ohhh .. shields .. engines at a good clip. Four ships. This was working out to be an exciting day, Dagen thought as his eyes scanned power utilization levels. Nothing they were doing was a strain to anything system wise yet. Inwardly Dagen was happy to see the systems being used and, maybe even challenged. Mechanical systems shouldn’t be just left to be within the ‘middle line’ else when it was called to be pushed it could complain. Complain being an engineering technical term for seizing up and not working well.
- Dagen, CE

As the ships answered the hail, the CE was able to ascertain their comms systems. They were able to utilise subspace but were only had the bandwidth for low resolution visual signals. (Think 640x480 {for them} vs UHD {for Genesis} in RL).

GM

Dagen leaned in and studied the subspace bandwidths. It wasn’t too different from early Trill subspace experiments though they had a quick boost in encountering other races not long after which boosted their communications tech. Would this be a similar thing? Well, unlikely if they were taking the general ‘get out of my sandbox’ stance. It did speak of their tech, but enough of them and it would be challenging for the Genny to pose superiority were that needed in this sense. It depended of course on just how far they wanted to take their ‘claim’ here, and what that claim meant. It could be a number of things. Language sometimes was limited. However it was a starting point.

Dagen took at shot of the frequency range they used and sent it up to the bridge. =^= Kesh, here’s the subspace bandwidth they use. See if you can tighten up scans and detection with Reia. That could help with an intercept of their signals for her to decrypt more clearly =^=
- Thor, CE

Meanwhile down in Engineering ..
Dagen had been watching the traffic in space and sensors and, to some degree, the Comms. Fortunately the former was not so ‘quick’ and he could focus on the readings.

“Bat!” he called over. “Get Deeg and I want you two focused on the power distribution to the weapons and shields.”
“Sebastian, Angel,” he continued. “Sebastian, keep your eye on the engines. Angel, mind the sensors and refine resources to them.”

He himself looked at the latest sensor images from the ‘Lesscoo’ system. What were they seeing there? How far away was their system?
Dagen

The system was 28 billion kilometres away. The temperature of the the second planet in the system had surface temperatures of about 50C on average and there were artificial structures on the surface. However, there did not seem to be any activity on the surface. Further sensor tuning revealed that it was possible that there was more activity beneath the surface, about one kilometre below the surface. The activity reminded one of ants’ nests.

GM

“Oh how cool is that?!” Dagen said to himself as he bent over the screen. Underground settlements. Were they native to the underground? What brought them into space then, to look ‘up’? And how did that apply to these ships here and the evident tech disparities? Were they inciting a mutually assured destruction on the surface and then they move into the underground? The old Earth story ‘The Time Machine’ came to his mind. He’d come across it by accident when doing a study on temporal mechanics and some of the historical time travels. His search parameters were fairly broad and he had come across it. Dagen had actually believed the ‘chronicle’ as historical fact until someone had pointed out that it was fiction.

His next search was related to energy readings and other ships or industry. They might be underground but were the structures on the surface inhabited? Abandoned? Factories? Shipyards? Picnic areas?
- Dagen, CE

Monitoring energy readings, Dagen discovers that small ships were probably launched from underground hangars. It was then that he discovers that there was a small moon that was at the moment in the shadow of the planet, where the larger ships, like the ones in the vicinity, were constructed and launched. Under the surface, there were indications of cities, industry, and even farming areas. Interestingly, there were also areas on the surface where there were small craters. There were transparent screens, probably made up of a material similar to glass, that protected the underground areas below the craters. These probably let in light from the surface.

GM

Dagen leaned back in the chair, index finger tapping at the edge of the console. “Nice skylights,” he murmured. An underground society. They would likely need to be closer to get a good scan in there on whether the surface was not habitable by way of environment or something they had done to have moved underground. But to have such industry on that scale indicated they had been there for a while. The moon as well. That was a pretty impressive construct on shipyards. More than the Pallasians had gotten to. They had been operating on the idea of nuclear fuel for their warp drives. What were these using?

Dagen focused a scan on the ships. The planet had different forms of energy being researched. What did they use? And, on the planet, what kind of energy did they use for power?
- Dagen, CE

The ships were using fusion energy for the most part. However, they have a functioning but not very efficient matter-antimatter system. Instead of using dilithium, the ships were very dependent on strong magnetic fields generated by fusion energy for the matter-antimatter reaction chamber. It was not as safe as the Federation systems, but it was relatively safe in short distances and lower warp factor speeds. They had lasers for energy beam weapons and spatial torpedoes (similar to Enterprise in its early NX days). Their containment for antimatter was still not stable enough to develop photonic torpedoes or photon torpedoes. They had not phase cannons for the same reason. They were not able to stabilise plasma flows with their technology. In the same way their shields were also rather primitive, with lower graviton generation that produce rather weak shields, enough for warp travel but would likely to be ineffective against the Genesis’s weapons.

While waiting on that part of the scan, Dagen sent a summary up to the Bridge on the findings. He sent it up to Reia’s station as she was the intel lady. =^= Homeworld 28 billion km away. Planet hot. 50C. Underground society a good km down. Surface structures are huge skylights. Underground factories, Crops. Ship launches from underground hangars to a small moon that has shipyards. =^=
- Dagen, CE

GM

“Just out the door, I see,” Dagen said as he studied their tech. “Good job. One step at a time there.” As an engineer he could well imagine the care that their engineers had when traveling. Their systems were ‘stable’ but just and he could see they would need constant monitoring. Not that ‘they’ didn’t - Starfleet just handed that over for the most part to clever AI programming and well tuned fail safes. Then sensors noted their powering up … “Uh oh ..” he said.

Dagen transmitted the information to the bridge - tactical and to Reia. =^= M-AM propulsion fusion generated. Stable but for limited speed and output. Weapons are laser with spatial torpedoes. Shields low grade graviton. They’re challenging the wrong people. Phasers across the bow to shut them down before they get hurt? =^=
- Dagen, CE