The Central hub ( Lore Idea )

[mlangsdorf]

I didn’t think I was disagreeing with Kevin, just quoting the existing canon per the Old Guard Rep.

The fleet is obviously a short term measure. A CVN is big and makes an excellent fortress against zombies - because even swimming zombies are probably not smashing their way through 0.5" of Special Treatment Steel hull nor are they climbing 5+ stories from the waterline to the aircraft elevators. But the flight deck is less than 3 acres and you can’t feed more than 30 people off of 3 acres. If you put hydroponics in every nook and cranny of the CVN you’re not increasing that past 300. And the CVN and any SSNs/SSBNs are the only ships in that armada with nuclear power - everyone else is going to run out of gas and therefore electricity relatively soon, so no hydroponics for the other ships.

The 2nd Fleet is a temporary refuge for Old Guard dependents for about 6 months, and then 95% of it is going to have to be shut down and the people pushed on shore to the hopefully fortified farm settlements. The CVNs are going to stay off-shore to provide a secure haven for the Old Guard leadership.

The Old Guard Rep, being a glorified contractor in zombie country, doesn’t know a lot of this and wouldn’t tell you, some rando he’s hiring to do dirty work, even if he did know. The Old Guard gets a lot of legitimacy for being the successor to the US government, but they lose a lot of that if they admit they’ve got no better solution to the zombie problem than dig some trenches, put up some barbed wire, and start farming - which is the same solution that everyone else has. They’re not going to casually admit that the 2nd Fleet is a temporary haven and the footholds are basically the same thing as the Refugee Center and the Tacoma Commune.

[Litppunk]

Hmm between the crews of specialists (with the additional help of a botanist, or perhaps an already on board marine biologist minor or something) could certainly hook up power to adjacent ships and set them up to be hydroponics ships as well.

It would almost certainly result in faster wear & tear/ rust buildup, and require importing dirt… but the focus would likely be on NOW solutions. (plus warships don’t degrade THAT fast, even with a little neglect.

Most likely reason I can see for this NOT happening is leadership fearing attack/ raids and wanting nuclear subs/ other battle ready ships to be ready to patrol/defend the fleet from other governments/ independent groups.
This could also become a point of contention for those in the know, wanting the ships to be purposed differently.

[mlangsdorf]

In theory you could hook ships up like that, but the USN is not going to want to hook up ships afloat because things are going to get messy when the weather goes bad. At some point they might dock a CVN and use it to provide power and clean water for a settlement - that’s standard practice for emergency relief - but at that point, it’s part of a settlement.

I don’t think the warships would degrade within 6 months. I do think that even an Arleigh Burke DDG burns 100+ barrels of fuel/day just to provide station keeping and to keep the lights on. A lone scavenger can siphon fuel from cars until all the gas goes bad, and a small community mostly can do the same, but when you’re talking about an “armada of ships off the Atlantic coast” that are keeping station in bad weather, you need a modern technological infrastructure to keep that going. Post Cataclysm, you don’t have that infrastructure, so sooner or later the ships are going to dock in some harbor and people are going to move onshore. The ships will remain as emergency refuges in the face of overwhelming zombie hordes, but most people are going to want to live on land rather than a cramped and unpleasant military houseboat.

[Litppunk]

good points. Didn’t think about just how much fuel the non-nuclear vessels would use.

I did say Warships don’t degrade THAT fast, even with people virtually poring dirt and water on the decks + neglect. Or at least that is what I meant.

Something that would be noticeable if player ever visits the fleet for some reason, or hears some kind of comments about them. Any vessels being used for hydroponics/relief efforts, may well become disgusting, rusting disease filled warships.

It will be a LONG time before they become un-seaworthy or even waterworld battleship level neglected, but the drop in maintenance will be NOTICABLE if the crew isn’t still maintaining the ship around refugees and hydroponics.

This seems likely to me, since most if not all of the crew is going to want to check on loved ones/bring them aboard at the first opportunity, and any crew members that lack in loyalty/crew pushed out of loyalty by overbearing disorganized command structure may be prone to desertion/mutiny; especially with loved ones dead, or in danger on the mainland.

[kevin.granade]

It will be a LONG time before they become un-seaworthy or even waterworld battleship level neglected, but the drop in maintenance will be NOTICABLE if the crew isn’t still maintaining the ship around refugees and hydroponics.

I wouldn’t be so sure, my understanding is those things are in a constant state of falling apart and being repaired, and if they go unmaintained for just a little while they’re going to take a huge amount of time and effort (and spare parts, oops) to return to operational.

[mlangsdorf]

Museum ships that are moored in a harbor don’t experience significant structural integrity issues for 30+ years, and even then it’s more “the bottom of the hull is nothing but rust and barnacles” than the superstructure collapsing.

Ship machinery is really fragile and does require constant maintenance, even before you start installing megawatts worth of grow lights and hydroponic plant beds in all the corridors. The nuclear reactors are comparatively robust in that they’re intended to run all the time for 15+ years, but they do require constant maintenance. The diesel generators aren’t going to run that long without overhauls, but there’s not enough fuel for them to run that long anyway so it’s not a big deal.

Shipboard nuclear plants produce a lot of power (550 MW for a Nimitz CVN) so the Old Guard is definitely going to make an effort to keep them running. The CVNs are much more likely to have trained operators available than some onshore installation.

[QuietCoyote]

Haha, you guys might have to get a new topic for this discussion, just a lil’ off topic but it’s cool to see some discussion between you two, feels a lot more rare than it should be…

[kevin.granade]

Museum ships that are moored in a harbor don’t experience significant structural integrity issues for 30+ years

The HULLS should remain ship-shape for much longer than it’s feasible for a dda game to make sense to continue playing. I was thinking of the engines and the plumbing and environmental gear and drives and weapons and…

Shipboard nuclear plants produce a lot of power (550 MW for a Nimitz CVN) so the Old Guard is definitely going to make an effort to keep them running.

HA, I’ll say, keeping a team dedicated to keeping the reactors running even if the ship is permanently berthed would probably be the absolute smallest manpower expenditure to get that kind of power output I can think of.

[Litppunk]

So at this point it looks something like:
Hull/decks - Looking bad, but outlasting the game
reactors - the most critical, Old guard leadership make sure maintenance teams don’t leave
Hydroponics - Require constant attention and maintenance, probably always falling apart
Water/electrical systems - constant maintenance, always falling apart
Desalination Systems - Runs autonomously, but, requires constant maintenance? Always falling apart? and costs a lot of energy (3-10 kWh per cubic meter of water)
Water systems might need an upgrade as well to handle all the water needed by the plants on top of the remaining crew/refugees?

[mlangsdorf]

I really don’t think they’re going to bother with hydroponics. There are just more useful things to do with the hull space than fill it with pseudo-gardens.

A CVN’s nuclear plant is an enormous water purification plant, just from the waste heat of the reactor. A quick Google search puts in on the order of 200,000 gallons/day, and it really is SOP for the USN to park a carrier in a disaster zone and use it as a water purification plant.

[nameless_survivor]

What about the Cheyenne Mountain Complex where NORAD is housed, or the Raven Rock Complex? They were built to withstand nuclear attacks, and have big ass vault doors that close to seal off the facilities completely in the event of nuclear war or other emergency conditions. They are also stocked with boatloads of supplies, equipment, etc for these contingencies. No way the military didn’t go to DEFCON 1 and seal the place up the moment portals started opening up, or even before that happened once the government knew things were starting to get out of hand.

If there was any kind of command and control or organization that was going to happen after the Cataclysm, these are some of the types of secure places it might be organized out of or based around, and there are LOTS of them; the US was rather concerned about decapitation strikes during the Cold War. There is almost no way all of them got knocked out or overrun. I doubt even a zombie hulk could bash through an 8 foot thick hardened steel vault door. And it would have been completely retarded to put secret laboratories with portals or other hazardous things in them, because you would not want to risk your continuity of government facilities being potentially compromised. Probably why they built them underneath everything else instead.

United States federal government continuity of operations | Facilities

Cheyenne Mountain Complex | Other systems

Raven Rock Mountain Complex

DEFCON

[mlangsdorf]

Neither Cheyenne nor Raven Rock are in New England. Raven Rock is in Maryland, but that’s a fair haul from Boston. While the 2nd Fleet is in the Atlantic, literally off the coast.

[BushElito]

I think, if we are going to get these hubs, they should generate like settlements in Dwarf Fortress - few years in.

Having right away kinda doesn’t make sense.

[nameless_survivor]

Of course, but those are just examples. There are similar facilities scattered EVERYWHERE across the United States, and god only knows how many are not public knowledge. Bound to be one or two you could visit.

Also, even having only these two specific facilities intact and secure (even if you can’t visit them in-game) opens up a lot of options for the Old Guard strategically and logistically speaking, not to mention in terms of resources. Easier to secure a port or other foothold for the 2nd Fleet to use to resupply or launch other operations from if they can call in support from secure facilities, say a bunker filled with tanks and APCs or something. Not to mention the ability to work with the satellite network, control drones, etc.

And this is not even counting all the little tiny bunkers already in game. If survivors were going to start building a settlement they would make a hell of a place to build one around/inside.

[Mr.Denton]

Sadly i dont think the games engine allows for advance stuff like that.

Maybe instead you could have the premade hub spawn after a certain amount of years? and then its location would be avablr thoufh a quest.

[Litppunk]

If generating a playable ma off of geo sat data is being looked at as doable, I don’t see any reason that the world couldn’t be simulated before play… Eventually. A good future project if the devs see it as a viable addition to the game and want to take it on.

It would increase load time, probably significantly, so it may not be viable in the sense of resources used / content gained ratio.

Late spawn would probably be the faster way to do it, or do it the same as current ‘late’-game stuff spawn it relatively far from player and have quests to it/ that reveal its lcation

[horribleflesheater]

There are old NORAD facilities here though. If you want some real crazy lore, I used to deliver archival material to this building in Western Massachusetts -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Attack_Command_and_Control_System_Facility,_Hadley , it’s a NORAD bunker that’s now a book repository. A hardened infinite stash of textbooks taken over by the old guard would be hilariously in line with player goals ingame.

[Trivega]

Funny, I drive by the notch everyday for work. Small world.

[TheZoneWizard]

That mountain base is only able to withstand a 10 megaton blast. Everything made today that goes boom, kinda does a whole lot more than 10 megatons. More like. If it were an actual secret that wasn’t a literal target for such high intensity war devices. It might stand after the out wave hits. But even then. That assumes the doors are shut and the locks are locked. Which…takes a fair amount of time to close. Irony.

My thoughts now on farming. If one were to farm. Using the floor of the ship alone would be a huge waste of space. The more modern approach would be hanging plants from racks near to the ceiling. Many edible plants can grow in this manner and produce 4 times the amount of food simply by using the extra space. Tomatoes are fast growing and easy. Potatoes only use minimal amounts of soil if you use plastic trash can and use shredded paper and other organic refuse as filler. Cut a bin in half and put a sheet of glass down the cut side. Now you know when to pickem.

The ships heat can allow for almost any plant like oranges to be grown all year long. Seeds would be a commodity.

May seem like a funny/silly idea. But I thought about something if I were really wealthy. It also applies if I had people and time and could essentially run amok taking whatever I wanted too I suppose. Try this idea for just thinking about…

Since everyone is dead and you can take everything. I thought about having my own island. But then…what if I could make my own island? How? Ya ever see those steel shipping rectangle crates? Thousands all over a shipping lane and a harbor. Take a bunch of those big honkin ships that just need operators. Fillem up with crates. Go out to sea and dump everything in the oceans. Not heavy enough? Fill the crates with random stuff. Literally everything you can shove inside of them and you have a lot of people anyway. Give them a job doing this. Eventually that crap would pile up and make an island. Scuttle ships on their last leg. Tie crap together with chains. Braided wire, etc. Think weird! Even swimmer zombies walking along the ocean floor would be hung up till they rot from all the jagged crap down there lol

[horribleflesheater]

I had considered it might survive since it’s not an active military installation for decades and thus wouldn’t be a target, but it would make sense that surviving military officials would know of it. Additionally, it wouldn’t need to survive a direct hit- it’s 20 miles away from the closest logical target. Realistically, since the cataclysm is early on, I feel like a central hub should result from doing missions- ala the ranch for the free merchants. Reclaiming a military installation or perhaps a river town/port supplies can be delivered to. Instead of more trade you could get ample weaponry or access to well armed and armored followers