• Member Since 16th Jul, 2012
  • offline last seen Feb 24th, 2017

Appy


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[Fore note: Absolutely NO knowledge of FTL is required to enjoy this. All that will get you is an occasional, "did he just make THAT into a pony pun?"]

Captain Ditzella "Derpy" Doo of the HMS Lunar Wrath has "acquired" information of vital importance in relation to the Rebel fleet's weakness, and the Rebels will stop at nothing to prevent it from spreading.

Derpy, along with her friend Engineer First Class Carrot Top and daughter Weapons Officer Dinky Doo, have made it their mission to deliver this information to the leaders of the Skylar Federation. The Skylar Federation, a collation of the Society of the Silver Moon, the Shining Liberators of the Sun, and several other different galactic governmental forces, is fighting a losing battle against the Rebellion. The information Derpy and her crew have, unbeknownst to the Federation, could turn the tides of the war in their favor. Now if only they could deliver it without needing to go through a hostile and unforgiving galaxy, while a fleet of angry Rebels is tailing their every move.

They're going to need all the help they can get.


---


Rating changed to Teen due to somewhat graphic content and minor swearing.

My undying gratitude goes out to TimeBaby and Grif for prereading and editing my mess, and helping make it more bearable. Thank you!

And thank you to my friend Coco, from whom I commissioned the new cover!

And many thanks to my friend Naxts, who created the new names for the NLR and SE. I changed them for a slightly more original approach to the story.

Chapters (5)
Comments ( 28 )

I don't know what to say. :moustache:

I haven't played FTL, so there's probably some references here I'm not getting. Still, I thought this was fun. I like the relationship between Dinky and Carrot Top.

Here's my criticism, if you want it: the tense change when describing the layout of the Lunar Wrath made it feel like that part was written before (maybe for notes) and just copy-pasted into the final version of the story.

Looking forward to more. :derpytongue2:

Well that was fast! Thanks for the criticism. If anything seems odd or off about the narrative like that, it's because I don't have any pre-readers besides myself who comb the story for any possible errors. :derpyderp1: I go over it at least 4 or 5 times, but it will always seem "right" to me because I just get so used to reading it like that.

The friends I have who I would like to have pre-read it only go "its good," so you can see how incredibly helpful that is. I wouldn't mind getting a pre-reader or 2 to help me out a bit.

FTL rocks. Ponies rock harder. Together, they rock harder than Tom.

1779268

Glad you like it! Next chapter is about half way done, then I'll ship it off to my prereader, Timebaby, and make any changes necessary. Sorry it's taking so long, I just have a lot to keep up with, especially with all my finals and the semester coming to a close. Should get more work done over the winter break, though.

1779402
Sir yes sir! Now to attempt to conquer the Rebel Flagship, and probably fail yet again.

Captain Derpy. They're doomed.

Is there going to be any nebula or asteroid belt conflicts?

1828025

Well there technically was an asteroid conflict in the first chapter, but yes, I had planned on it in the future. We'll see how it goes, though.

Very nice chapter! Can't wait to hear a full backstory to the journey.:twilightsmile:
Also, I caught this. "...dealt with an Engi or two..."
and later "...peace and tolerance to Equis, "
Not sure if Equis was supposed to be a planet, or if you meant to punnify Engi into Equi.

Wait, nine to ten ponies. Side characters only Im guessing. Derpy, Carrot, Dinks, Vinal, Octy, the CMC, then its foggy. Maybe snips and snails to try to even out the guy ratio and get it to a even 10 or maybe Trixie and Gilda to get the bitch and non-pony factors.

1870162

No no, the Engi are still Engi. You must have accidentally passed Lyra's clarifying comment. Equis is what I called the pony homeworld.

time for a review!!

I love sci-fi stories and as such, I kind of am strict when it comes to those stories.... I also know FTL... and as such, elements from FTL itself won't be over-analyzed.....

So first: good use of the FTL universe for the story, although I definitely am unsure about you using pre-existing ponies for the crew and other characters (oh well, at least they're the background ponies). Second, since FTL is a roguelike and you usually get events that kill off your crew and stuff.... I'm expecting NO plot armor (aka the ability of one character to ALWAYS stay alive/wins even when everything is against him/her) which would basically be, a possibility of Derpy, Dinky or Carrot to actually be killed OR critically injured making her unavailable for the remainder of the story (and this is a reason OCs are usually a better choice even though they are harder to create since you got to create them from scratch)

Third, I dislike how Out of Character Derpy is. We know her as a klutz (which has been confirmed with "The last roundup"), so I have difficulties believing she was actually able to perform an orbital entry jump.... which leads to my fourth and fifth points. FTL's Jump Drives more than likely do NOT work how you seem to explain them as well as the drives having LONG recharge times. And fifth, a FTL starship CANNOT drop to atmospheric flight.

Now my reasonings for these.... FTL's jump technology is centered around 2 main pieces: the shipboard FTL engines and the space-based jump beacons. Now, it is safe to assume that in their early exploration age, they used their jump drives without the beacons BUT since beacons seem to be "rally points" that constantly transmit their navigation data in real-time, it would mean that jump drives are extremely hard if not impossible to properly aim and as such jumps would have been to random spots in space. SO, a jump to a planet less than one light-second away would be impossible considering factors like drift and the higher speeds.

And my reasoning for atmospheric flight, the ship would explode upon entering the atmosphere, why? because, FTL's ships are NOT heat-proof and decelerating from light-speed to real-time speed in a high-friction environment would result in the hull plating vaporizing (especially with a large ship) and EVEN if ships wouldn't melt after such a deceleration..... those ships aren't space fighters, they are bulky, slow and generally take a couple minutes to complete their helm order, basically this means that the ship would have crashed way before it reached its "3 meters above everypony's else heads" and stuff. Finally, the last thing that would have destroyed the ship? Its size, a 400+ meters ships is kind of hard to "swerve between buildings" when two skyscrapers can be as much as.... 15ish meters away.

Sorry for long post but basically....
the FTL feel? you got it pretty much covered.
Story: still not sure how it's going to go (besides knowing how FTL goes),
other sci-fi elements: just stop.... a starship is NOT a jet fighter
Score: still unsure how to go with this one

2166831

Thanks for the feedback! Always appreciated. Now, to respond to your points,

You're assuming I'm writing this in a by-the-book manner strictly following FTL lore, which I am not. I'm using FTL as a skeleton, if even that, for me to piece together the actual flesh and blood of the story.

While, yes, FTL is a rougelike, what I do with the characters in my story shouldn't be determined by that factor. That said, I do have plans which I don't want to get into for spoiling late-story elements. Regarding the characters themselves, this has an "Alternate Universe" tag for that reason. I build the characters in my story off the canon/fanon personalities they have been given already, tweaked to my liking for this universe. I use preexisting characters, like Derpy and crew, and creatures to connect with the fanbase more.

Regarding Derpy's klutziness, or lack thereof, I feel that's my decision as an author, entitled to artistic interpretation. The Doctor Whooves radio plays depict Derpy as intelligent and well-rounded. I have yet to give Derpy many chances of being a klutz without completely ruining the mood or scene I've played out, in any case.

Now, on to the jump drives. The working theory I have, and based the story on, is that they only use the beacons to direct ships. The beacons are a safety precaution, to prevent ships entering and exiting FTL speeds from crashing into each other, and to alert any ships of any obstacles in their paths when exiting FTL. And those "long" recharge times? A minute, two at most. The amount of dialogue and events I describe, I feel, would exceed that small time frame, meaning the drive would have had time to charge by then.

The Lunar Wrath is not a large behemoth of a ship. It is small, agile, and easily maneuverable. I picture it maybe just a bit narrower than the distance between two sides of a street. And, that's not mentioning the fact that the "city" they jumped to was small and sparse, not a major settlement, and it did not have buildings packed as tightly together as, say, New York city. As for Derpy's ability to "eyeball" the jump location from orbit and still make it into the city she wanted? Call it luck.

We can also assume ships don't go from zero to FTL in less than a second. I'd imagine there would be a sort of "warm up" period where the ship, while going incredibly fast upon triggering the FTL jump, is not literally in FTL speeds yet. This gives Derpy room to make the jump.

Ships in Mass Effect had atmospheric capabilities, and while that was explained with "Mass effect fields" I can easily do the same, considering the universe, with "magic," or maybe even some sort of magitech. The ship doesn't necessarily have to be enchanted for that to work, it could be a device that uses magic. I haven't gone too far into detail of how advanced they are at this stage, other than to say that they have access to space travel and FTL speeds.

FTL, as I recall, had an event in which your crew pulled the ship down into a planet to investigate a monument of some sort. A nebula encounter. While they didn't puncture the atmosphere by going FTL speeds like Derpy did, that still indicates that they do have the necessary plating and technology to make atmospheric entry and exit with minimal effort. Disregarding the fact that I never said that the Lunar Wrath lacked those, anyway.

Nowhere did I indicate the the Lunar Wrath was "400+" meters wide. I specifically described how it was, in fact, a small ship. More of a civilian transport ship outfitted with military weaponry and shielding than a full-blown military cruiser.


Hope this helps quell any doubts you may have.

2167002

ok, I can understand most of your counter-arguments.....
however, my argument about the whole deceleration into orbit still holds. After all, even if Derpy WAS able to eyeball the distance, turning on and off a FTL drive got a lag, even with the best technology, were looking at 0.01-0.1 seconds of lag between the orders during which the drive "spins up" and "spins down", assuming a charge-up delay of Star Trek level where the ship accelerates to light-speed in about 2ish seconds.... it means that the acceleration is of 150,000 km/s, now, a ship needs the same time to decelerate as to accelerate so with an acceleration of 0.1 seconds, you'd travel about 30 thousand kilometers before you drop out of FTL. And sure, as such a ship 30008 km away from a target would probably manage to drop in. but only barely. And you DEFINITELY need to compensate for the potential data lags as well as light lag (although with this last one, it doesn't matter on distances less than 300 thousand kilometers).

And another argument I can try challenging a bit..... in space, no matter how aerodynamic your ship is..... unless it's a space-fighter with a lot of RCS thrusters + its main engines. It's not manoeuverable enough to Barrel Roll, you might be able to dodge the brunt of the shot.... but it will still be a hit just not direct. There's a reason Civilian Cargo ships in sci-fi media are so easy to destroy, they (usually) got no shields and their mass is too big/poorly organized for RCS thrusters to have an effect. And if the Wrath's design IS based off a cargo ship design (which seems to be the case since the Federation was all about PEACE), it should have similar limitations.

oh.... and one more thing about Jump drives.... they DO have large charge times in the realm of hours. FTL just happens to be a SIMULATION where times are accelerated greatly. And when you defeated an enemy in there, the drives would finish charging as no enemy would pop up afterwards leaving your crew with a few hours of peace to charge up the engines.

2167131

I counter your counters with the following:

You're assuming the ship was right above the planet, in orbit. You're not accounting the distance from the jump beacon they entered from to the planet.

You do bring up a valid point here, which led me to develop the idea that the Lunar Wrath was not a bulky cargo ship, but a civilian ship designed for acrobatic space performances. Think the Wonderbolts of spaceships. This would provide it with all the necessary extra thrusters, engine power, and perhaps even improve their FTL recharge time, if the performers ever used it in the same manner Derpy did, but for "death-defying" stunts rather than a short-term jump to a planet.

While civilian cargo ships don't usually have any shielding or weapons of any sort, I did state that the Wrath was retrofit for militant purposes. I'd assume cargo ships such as we're discussing are only traveling between well known locations that are under a constant guard of some sort, and thus, providing ships with presumably expensive shielding would be cost-prohibitive when they would likely not need it. As I said, the Wrath was retrofit for combat, and provided necessary systems like shielding and weapons.

As for FTL, I imagine that all combat does take place in realtime. Assuming you can avoid destruction long enough, your FTL drive does charge up in the time frame I previously described. Even so, it could still boil down to artistic interpretation, if that doesn't satisfy you. It may seem a cheap, unthoughtful, cop-out explanation, but that doesn't make it any less valid.

2167197

ok I can "dig" with the concept of the Wrath having been built with way more RCS thrusters which were placed to allow much better control.... oh and I didn't say the Wrath shouldn't be armed or shielded, just that it was BASED on the frame of a civilian ship.

And yes, I did take into account the jump beacon.... I also took into accountsensor efficiency. The normal distance between a beacon and a "point of interest should be about 200-400 thousand kilometers to take into account jump drift. Unless you can have sensor tech that can see 200 000 km away, they wouldn't know that the colony is being attacked and as such wouldn't make a dangerous jump. And if 200 000 km is your "combat range" then I fear for the weapons actually missing 10 times out of 10......

Bugger. I knew I shouldn't have put off writing my own version of FTL.

Putting this on my bookmark.

2169231

Heck, if you're still interested in writing an FTL crossover, we might be able to work out something that could cross over my current story and the one you'd write, while making both fit in the same universe. Send me a PM if you wanna talk further about it. In any case, thanks for the interest!

Authors Note:
At long last, the elusive Chapter 4 is finally completed! Sorry it took so long. Hope you enjoy it! But at least I can count to three, unlike some video game company heads I can think of...
Don't think the next chapter will take even half as long as this one did. It's already typed up and sent to the ever-wonderful TimeBaby for his magical editorial eyes to pry apart my silly mistakes. Expect it sometime soon.
And as a side note, I commissioned a cover from a close friend of mine! He showed me the progress, and I like it so far. Can't wait to show you guys, too. And thanks for telling me why you don't like the story, guy-who-thumbed-down.

First line of Authors Note:
reactionface.info/sites/default/files/images/1310516148484.jpg
Final Line: I agree with that statement. I hate it when people don't explain why they dislike it.

And thus ends the backstory! On to the game itself!

2231317

Actually, I'm still unsure about that. I feel like there's more I could add to the Flashback sequences, but I don't want to detract from the main story for too long. I could end the Flashbacks here, but does it seem too abrupt an end to this particular arc? I could wrap up any in-betweens rather easily with a short quip from Derpy in the next chapter summarizing quickly what happened between then and the two weeks that led them to the station, if anything.

What do you guys think? Should I go back to the main story, or finish off the Flashbacks with a final chapter?

I also neglected to mention in the Author's Note, and have just now rectified that problem, the fact that both the New Lunar Republic and Solar Empire have undergone name changes. This influences absolutely nothing and is merely cosmetic.

The New Lunar Republic is now the Society of the Silver Moon, while the Solar Empire has been changed to the Shining Liberators of the Sun, for future reference.

2231433
I think you could stand one more chapter between here and the actual game start. Perhaps explain how the entire fleet is now on their tail (I mean let them find out about it) and set up their plan of action. I don't know what sort of story you have in your head, but outside of it I can only see one more flashback being too useful.

Make a chapter called "It's always the red wire"

I really liked hiw this began... it reminds me so much of the stress i recieved when first stumbling into a friggin asteroid feild. God i hate those things.... but i have a question though, when did derps become a frickin sadist? I mean yeah suffocaye them to save ammo but jeez have some decency. And they had lasers they didnt even need to save ammo, so why the saddistic action?

Also... i will say one thing... in the afterlife? I hope you come across a town called MERCY ;)

Just how rich is this captain????? I mean holy shit!! Also... methinks that derps wasnt the first captain... the krestel cruiser should be manned by four should it not? But there were only three mentioned... and then theres that guy derpy mentioned a chapter aho... hmmmmm

Theeeeeeeeeere we go... backstory..... much better

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