Technology of the Star Fleet Universe

[Nerroth]

There are a few use cases for Neutronium in the SFU, though mainly among factions that (at this time of typing, at least) are still in playtest.

In the Alpha Octant, the Nicozian Concordance are a species native to the crust of a non-rotating neutron star; each "individual" Nicozian is about the size of a sesame seed, while their heavy cruiser is around three metres in length. And yet, due to the incredibly dense material they (and their ships) are comprised of, the latter use "full-sized" SSDs in Star Fleet Battles terms. They make use of Neutronium in a number of ways, to include in their main direct-fire heavy weapon, the subspace auger. Data for the Nicozians in SFB is currently found in the playtest Module R107.

Meanwhile, over in the Triangulum Galaxy, there are four empires currently in playtest; three of these, the Imperium, the Mallaran Empire, and the Arachnid Worlds of Unions, make use of a defensive system known as micro-thin Neutronium armour. Marked as hemispheric blocks on the playtest SSDs so equipped, these provide an ablative effect against incoming weapons fire that rolls to hit certain critical systems on the Damage Allocation Chart. The current crop of playtest rules and SSDs for the empires of M33 are, for the most part, provided in SFB Module E2 and in Captain's Log #23.

 

[Sgt_G]

Three meters in length ... I presume they get a small-target bonus.

 

[Nerroth]

Under their current playtest SFB rules, Size Class 3 Nicozian ships have the same ECM bonus as nimble ships do under (E1.7); whereas Nicozian ships of Size Class 4 have the same ECM bonus as admin shuttles do under the same rule.

 

[mithril]

Then what do you get?

if you are replicating the conditions (pressure, gravity, etc) of a neutron star to keep the material from exploding? just more neutronium.

if using some sort of scifi handwave tech to make the stuff metastable so it can exist outside the conditions that create it, either nothing would happen because there is nothing for the atoms to interact with (chemical reactions and bonds like required for alloys exist because of chemical bonds and atomic attraction, which occur due to electrons and protons, a mass of just neutrons is about as inert as you can get), or you might get the nuetrons being stripped off the mass of nuetronium to enter the nucleus of whatever atoms you are attempting to add.. producing a new isotope of that atom with an extremely high atomic mass.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

if you are replicating the conditions (pressure, gravity, etc) of a neutron star to keep the material from exploding? just more neutronium.

if using some sort of scifi handwave tech to make the stuff metastable so it can exist outside the conditions that create it, either nothing would happen because there is nothing for the atoms to interact with (chemical reactions and bonds like required for alloys exist because of chemical bonds and atomic attraction, which occur due to electrons and protons, a mass of just neutrons is about as inert as you can get), or you might get the nuetrons being stripped off the mass of nuetronium to enter the nucleus of whatever atoms you are attempting to add.. producing a new isotope of that atom with an extremely high atomic mass.

But wouldn't combining Neutronium with other elements produce interesting alloys?

Stuff that isn't easily made or discovered?

Isn't that part of the joy of being a Materials scientist?

 

[mithril]

alloys are the products of the chemical bonds between atoms giving rise to molecular structures that alter the traits of a material. with neutronium such chemical bonds are impossible since all chemical bonding is reliant on interactions between protons and electrons. you can't produce alloys with it because it quite literally can't do any of the things required to make alloys.

 

[Sgt_G]

all chemical bonding is reliant on interactions between protons and neutrons

I think you meant protons and electrons, no?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

alloys are the products of the chemical bonds between atoms giving rise to molecular structures that alter the traits of a material. with neutronium such chemical bonds are impossible since all chemical bonding is reliant on interactions between protons and neutrons. you can't produce alloys with it because it quite literally can't do any of the things required to make alloys.

But what happens if Neutronium is shoved into a existing Metal Alloy to modify it's properties?

Like Neutronium-Alloy Fiber.

 

[StarCruiser]

Fundamental problem - Neutronium is just a lot of very tightly packed neutrons. That's it, there's nothing else to work with.

Otherwise, it's not Neutronium.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Fundamental problem - Neutronium is just a lot of very tightly packed neutrons. That's it, there's nothing else to work with.

Otherwise, it's not Neutronium.

That's why in most cases, they shove Neutronium into something else, very rarely is it used naturally by itself.

The TOS Dooms-Day Machine was one of the "Very Rare" Pure Neutronium Hulls.
I'm sure StarFleet has that safely hidden somewhere until the day they can dismantle it and use it's valuable Neutronium Hull into something more useful.

The Dyson Sphere that Picard's Enterprise-D found had it's structure made of "carbon-neutronium alloy and was impervious to phaser fire."

The Iconians had mastered the use of neutronium, and used it on a ziggurat containing a gateway on the planet Vandros IV. This was discovered by the Dominion in 2372 and was destroyed by a joint Starfleet-Jem'Hadar team before a group of rogue Jem'Hadar could use the gateway.

The Dominion had begun using neutronium by 2375 and used it to protect the entranceways on Dominion Headquarters from weapons fire.

By 3189, Starfleet had the ability to produce neutronium alloy in the form of "Neutronium-Alloy Fiber"

The Vidiians made a Artificial Asteroid composed of Neutronium Alloy.

The Think Tank's vessel was made of Neutronium Alloy.

 

[StarCruiser]

Actually - I'm sure the Doomsday Machine probably turned into a rather modest sized, but REALLY dense, ball of Neutronium after it sat around for a while without any power to keep it in any other form.

Most likely - it's odd "Cornucopia of Death" shape was due to a lack of fuel while in transit to the Milky Way. It almost certainly depended on some kind of a force field to keep it's form.

Kind of a safety feature, if you think about it. If your enemy disables one, it collapses into a ball of Neutronium and you can't get at the tech. That's all crushed into oblivion in the process....

 

[Sgt_G]

If you could make bullets out of hyper-dense neutronium, just how much gunpowder would you need to fire it to normal sonic speeds? Imagine the recoil that would have.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

If you could make bullets out of hyper-dense neutronium, just how much gunpowder would you need to fire it to normal sonic speeds? Imagine the recoil that would have.

And that is why I wouldn't want to use it for that purpose.

That's a serious waste of Neutronium IMO.

Just use it for Armor / Skeletal Framing of your vessels or whatever you need to keep the room safe by lining the outter & inner surface of the room from attack.

 

[Nerroth]

As a reminder, any references to Neutronium from the post-1979 Franchise is outside of the scope of the Star Fleet Universe.

But, if it helps, I might take a "skip" back to the Alpha Octant for a moment here, and talk about the Nicozian Concordance in more detail.

Before I go on, I should note that the Nicozians are still a playtest faction. Any data to be found in Star Fleet Battles Module R107 is liable to be adjusted - due, perhaps, to a timely review of the "Air Force data tapes" between now and whenever (or if-ever) this factions is brought to formal publication.

So, with the above caveat in mind:

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As a species, "individual" Nicozians are about the size of a sesame seed. However, they are somewhere between 150 to 200 kilograms in mass. I type "individual" in quotation marks, since it appears that their species operates as an aggregate group mind. Their "home world" is a non-rotating Neutron star somewhere in the Alpha Octant, its exact location ha yet to be determined by the other Alpha empires, though it is believed to be somewhere in the "off-map" zone coreward of the Federation and Empire hex map, in the direction of the Storm Zone.

The first problem for the Nicozians is that their home star is adjacent to a red supergiant, which is set to go nova in the near-to-mid future. Thus, it is imperative for them to find a new home star to move to - which is hugely difficult, since picking out low-emission neutron stars is a major challenge.

Alas, the second problem for the Nicozians is that, once they send survey ships to search for such stars, their crews - being detached from the group mind - inexorably lose their sanity. Which begs the question: even if they were to find a new home star, how are they going to transplant their population there in anything like a viable manner?

In any case, Nicozian encounters by other Alpha empires - which first took place during the General War - tend to be akin to random "monster" encounters; while "random" broadcasts from Nicozisn survey ships have been intercepted and deciphered, no-one has been able to establish any kind of communication with the crews of these ships.

In short, are the Nicozians ultimately doomed as a species?

-----

In terms of technology, the Nicozians are arguably the most divergent of "native" Alpha species. Indeed, they have one of the most distinct forms of technology seen anywhere in the broader SFU.

Their ships are smaller than Alpha Octant drones, yet are incredibly dense: their heavy cruiser is about three metres in length, but is still represented as a "full-size" SSD in SFB terms. This means that their ships cannot board, or be boarded by, non-Nicozian ships; however, there are playtest rules in place to support Nicozian "civil war" scenarios. They can "land' safely on the surface of a suitable Neutron star, but not on any other kind of surface. Notably, Nicozian ships have very poor Turn Modes; even their frigate has a Turn Mode of E

Their ships and drone-like seeking weapons use a "skip-warp" movement system, unlike anything seen in use by other empires, Alpha or otherwise. The "skip speed" is double the standard speed generated by warp power; or rather, the ship effectively "skips over" one hex in order to arrive in a second hex in the same SFB Impulse. However, Nicozian ships tend to have around half as many warp engine boxes as "standard" warp engines do. There are certain interactions that only take place in the "skip-movement" hex, and others that occur in the "destination-movement" hex. Sounds confusing?

It is possible for a Nicozian ship (or missile) to use "standard" warp movement; this is necessary in certain situations; for example, it's impossible to land or take off from a neutron star using skip-warp.

As a by-product of the incredibly dense material with which they are built, Nicozian ships have an innate form of "Collapsium" armour. Instead of the Excess Damage boxes seen on most other empires' SSDs, Nicozian ships have forward and aft hemispheric banks of Collapsium armour. On the one hand, these reduce the damage scored by each volley that makes it past the shields, by the number of active Collapsium armour boxes in that hemispheric arc. On the other hand, as Excess Damage hits are scored, the facing bank of Colllapsium armour is reduced accordingly.

Nicozian ships are so small that it was impossible for the species to develop shuttles, fighters, or gunboats.

-----

While the Nicozians have no phaser-1s, they do have a unique type of phaser that can be fired either either as a single phaser-2, or as two phaser-3s, in the course of a single turn.

Their direct-fire heavy weapons known as subspace augers. They are a "fire/cool" weapon; in other words, they can be armed and fired in a single turn, but need a "cool-down" turn before they can be armed and fired once more. Their firing chart is rolled on 2 dice: they do their listed damage against shields, but three times the listed damage as internals! And yes, Andromedan power absorber panels count as "unshielded" for this purpose.

Their "skip-warp" missiles have a variety of warhead options. yet they must be set to use "standard" or "skip-warp" movement when the missile is launched. The most common warhead is for anti-shield use; they score no internal damage. (Against Andromedans, they score two points of degradation, but do not fill the panels with energy.) Other warhead types exist, though some of these are restricted in terms of availability. Unlike most types of Alpha Octant drone rack, skip-warp missile racks have hemispheric launch arcs.

And in case all of that was not enough, they also have a unique warp field distortion mine, which can be taken in place of a transporter bomb. When activated, these pull all objects with an active warp field within a three-hex radius towards them. Bases and other units without warp engines (such as "sublight" Romulan ships) are unaffected. Any warp-powered units that are dragged into the hex the mine is activated in score a level of damage based on how large, or small, they are. Fortunately, they self-destruct after four SFB Impulses.

-----

Of the four playtest "survey" ships in Module R107, the largest is the Nicozian heavy cruiser.

This ship, which has a Turn Mode of H (as bad as that of a Seltorian Hive Ship or Battlewagon), is armed with eight Nicozian phaser mounts, four subspace augers, and four "skip-warp" missile racks. It is also equipped with a pair of special sensors (so as to help search for those all-important Neutron stars).

Ordinarily, these ships have no boarding parties, which are useless against non-Nicozians. However, there are circumstances in which they can have a certain number of Marine squads for use in "civil war" scenarios: be this for battles in open space, and/or involving "failed" research sites on the surface of various Neutron stars being evaluated as potential colony sites.

Against local Alpha Octant starships, the onus might be on battering down shields using skip-warp missile launches, and then scoring devastating internals via subspace auger fire. As noted above, however, combat against the Andromedans would have a different tempo: the Nicozians would have to lean more heavily into the use of their subspace augers, plus their range of non-standard skip-warp missile warheads, in order to fill up PA panels,

 

[publiusr]

The tetraneuron is said to be element zero—and there has been talk of femtomatter.

The reason I bring up heavy slugs is that I could see such shrapnel guns as being worse than disruptors—something villains might use.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

The tetraneuron is said to be element zero—and there has been talk of femtomatter.

The reason I bring up heavy slugs is that I could see such shrapnel guns as being worse than disruptors—something villains might use.

And how would you mass produce those materials?

For me, what I would make if you want a "Ultimate Bullet" is make Anti-Lead + Lead & use Dilithium Crystal Nano-Particles to seperate the Lead + Anti-Lead.

On Collision, 1 bullet can be packed with so much energy that you can create crazy explosive bullets with the power of far larger bombs IRL.

And don't forget that you can use a teleporting bullet Sniper Rifle like the TR-116 and transport bullets to appear where few people expect it.

Any Transporter Relays will help with Transporter range & angle.

 

[Nerroth]

Before making a return trip to the Omega Octant, there is a territory located along the Galactic Rim of the Alpha Octant which is of note: namely, the Vudar Enclave.

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The reptilian Vudar are native to a world in Federation and Empire hex 1619, close to the Galactic Energy Barrier, with is exposed to a higher than average degree of radiation than most Class-K/L/M/N/O planets. Thus, while the Vudar themselves - who, after all, evolved in this environment - have no problems with this, most other species have great difficulties surviving there.

Thus, when the Klingons arrived in the system during the Early Years era, they found themselves obliged to enter into a looser system of suzerainty over the Vudar, as opposed to the norm imposed on most other subject species of the Klingon Empire.

Over time, this "satrapy" arrangement was expanded and built upon. The Vudar, who were found to have a particular knack for building and operating impulse engines, offered a steady supply of these drives as part of their tribute to the Empire. In return, the Kiingons permitted the Vudar to operate a number of Middle Years ships, which were tailored to operate close to the Barrier in ways the Klingons themselves found more of a challenge. Gradually, the Klingons turned over more and more territory for the Vudar to patrol (with half of these areas' economic income going to Klinshai as tribute), as well as permitting the Vudar to field more and larger ships in their fleet.

Late in the General War, as the tide began to turn against the Coalition, the Klingons launched a diplomatic gambit: using some "creative" record-altering, they made it seen that the Vudar, having used a hidden shipyard to build more ships than had been permitted, succeeded in breaking away from the Empire and establishing the Enclave as a neutral power - one which, conveniently, happened to hold three of the Hydran Kingdom's pre-war provinces, plus a part of the pre-war Hydran/Klingon Neutral Zone. In truth, no such hidden shipyard existed: the Enclave remained a loyal satrapy of the Klingon Empire, albeit with perhaps a bit more autonomy than the more traditionalist groups within the Empire proper might have liked.

While the Hydrans were not fooled, they nonetheless accepted this political fiction, as it shortened the front line between them and the Klingons at a time when they were still struggling to liberate their capital world. The Federation, it seems, was more taken in by this gambit, or at least wanted to believe it long enough to convince themselves to spend the next major strategic effort against the Romulans rather than against the Klingons.

The ISC didn't appear to be fooled either. While they considered the Vudar on the "old" Klingon side of the border to be an internal matter for the Klingon Empire, they insisted that the Vudar withdraw from the pre-war Hydran and NZ space they still held by the time of the Pacification. There wasn't much the Concordium could do about this before the Andromedan invasion swept in, however.

The fate of Vudar-Klingon and Vudar-Hydran relations post-Unity remain to be decoded from the Air Force data tapes at this time of typing.

-----

As noted above, Vudar ships have certain benefits - as outlined in Federation and Empire: Minor Empires - when operating close to the Galactic Barrier.

Beyond this, they use a combination of Klingon technologies (such as Klingon-type engines on their ships) and systems of their own design.

They have a unique capacity to "ionize" energy generated from sources other than impulse or APR boxes; this is needed in order to operate certain Vudar-specific technologies, as noted below.

Their primary heavy weapon is the ion cannon, which is a two-turn arming weapon. In terms of effectiveness, it sits somewhere between a Klingon disruptor and a Federation photon torpedo. Notably, it requires at least one point of "ion" energy (from impulse, APR, or "ionized" power from other sources) to arm; as a result, while Orion Pirates in Vudar space can make use of these weapons, they seldom bothered to do so. Vudar fighters had a smaller version of this weapon known as the ion pulse cannon.

As a support system, their ships have ion pulse generators installed. All of the energy used for the IPG must be impulse, APR, or "ionized" power, though each generator has its own built-in capacitor. It can be used in one of two modes: to "produce a "jamming" effect (three points of "natiral" ECM per point used), or to produce a defensive ionic wave (which impacts nearby shuttles and drones).

Bases - be they "deep-range" facilities with active positional stabilizers, or facilities placed on atmosphere-less moons or asteroids, can be given large or small ion storm generators. When activated, large ISGs produce an "artificial" ion storm 61 hexes across; small ISGs "only" produce one that is 25 hexes across. Both types can fire a "directional" burst of energy, in which case it scores damage against all units within range and arc of the generator so used. (It was the timely deployment of these generators which was leveraged by the Klingons in order to explain why the Vudar were supposedly successful in gaining their independence from the Empire.)

Other Vudar weapons and systems, such as phasers, fighters, and PFs, are more or less in line with "standard" Klingon technologies - though the Vudar preferred to operate their own attrition units rather than "importing" Klingon designs.

-----

A good case of Vudar starship technology is their heavy cruiser.

In certain ADB art works, the Vudar are shown with their own type of warp nacelles; as had been shown on Shapeways, however, the Vudar CA in fact had Klingon-esque warp engines.

As for weaponry, the fully refitted CA has six phaser-1s, two phaser-2s, two phaser-3s, four ion cannons, and two ion pulse generators. It has a Turn Mode of C, making it closer to a Lyran or Hydran cruiser than to a Klingon D7 in terms of agility. In keeping with the need to produce "ionized" power for said ion cannons and IPGs, this ship has a relatively large number of APRs to supplement the power provided by its impulse deck.

While the CA is a capable ship of its type, there never were very many of them; the bulk of the Vudar fleet was comprised of smaller warship designs.

 

[CaptChris42]

But what happens if Neutronium is shoved into a existing Metal Alloy to modify it's properties?

Like Neutronium-Alloy Fiber.

Partly to cover these ambiguities, Christopher L. Bennett's Star Trek novels invented the term 'hypo-neutronium' to describe alloys that either replicated, or included in some way, elements or particulates of neutronium. It was left otherwise vague how the process worked though.

But the implication was that most onscreen references to 'neutronium' was not pure neutronium, but an abbreviation of this term instead.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Partly to cover these ambiguities, Christopher L. Bennett's Star Trek novels invented the term 'hypo-neutronium' to describe alloys that either replicated, or included in some way, elements or particulates of neutronium. It was left otherwise vague how the process worked though.

But the implication was that most onscreen references to 'neutronium' was not pure neutronium, but an abbreviation of this term instead.

I also agree with Christopher that you couldn't make pure Neutronium, but you have to alloy it with other Elements to make it work.
Exact formulation & understanding of how to do it would be considered a guarded secret, but it would be very important.

Given how strong most Neutronium Alloys are & how rare it seems to be, I don't think they can be easily mass produced via Replicators, it has to be a more old school process of manufacturing, something that takes a long time for a very small amount of the stuff, like Carbon Fiber is today.

It's a very time intensive & resource intensive process just to make a small amount of it, ergo the very specific use cases for it.

 

[mithril]

Partly to cover these ambiguities, Christopher L. Bennett's Star Trek novels invented the term 'hypo-neutronium' to describe alloys that either replicated, or included in some way, elements or particulates of neutronium. It was left otherwise vague how the process worked though.

But the implication was that most onscreen references to 'neutronium' was not pure neutronium, but an abbreviation of this term instead.

actually that's incorrect.. it's not 'alloys incorporating neutronuim", and Bennet didn't invent it. hypo-neutronium comes from Diane Duane's Rihannsu series, Bennet just explained it in direct fashion (Diane Duane never came out and did a technobabble drop about it. she seemed to avoid technobabble exposition in general in fact.)
Bennet borrowed it for a book because of the same issue that led to Duane Duane to invent 'hypo-neutronium' in the first place.. the fact that real neutronium is too massive to work with, can't exist outside the crushing gravity of a collapsed star, or be alloyed with other metals.


from "Buried age" where bennet explains it:

“Getting in won’t be easy,” Stefcia told the others as they stood together in the large notch they’d dug into the canyon wall, staring at the expanse of crumpled, dusty metal their work had exposed to sunlight for only the second time in the past quarter-gigayear. “That sucker’s made of neutronium.”
“Neutronium?” Coray asked.
“Well, hyponeutronium, I should say. The real stuff would sink to the center of the planet.” Coray only seemed more puzzled, so Stefcia elaborated. “It’s a name we use for alloys of heavy transuranic elements. Their nuclei are mostly neutrons, and with the right alloy mix they can become some of the densest materials outside of collapsed matter. Hence, ‘hyponeutronium.’ But sometimes we get lazy and drop the prefix.”