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Nano-disassembler Weapons Discussion
Nemmerle	#81 Posted on 06-10-2005 06:07
Posts: 113 Joined: September 16 2005	Quote Inert wrote: That is not true. If a ship gets hit too much, its systems are knocked offline. Thus the "blue" bar. But this is not necesarily due to the EMP wave. You've got a combat zone in which thousands of nukes are going off like popcorn along with god only knows what else and yet it's only direct hits to the hull that effect the ship's effectivness, this suggests that it is not the EM enviroment that is to blame for the "blue" bar effect. Quote Inert wrote: Then how would you "clean" this room after? No waiting period? You'd turn the nanites off again. Quote Inert wrote: Codes can be cracked, just like everything else. Yeah, they can. my point is however that if you can seize control of the computer to a sufficient degree to turn the nanites off the ship has been lost anyway. Quote Norsehound wrote: As Inert said, codes can be cracked. And there's nothing stopping Vaygr technicians with some Hiigaran systems experience from identifying what they need to cut to terminate the 'mystical nanite defense system'. if this were SFB, it would be one BIG target to slam with my hit and run raids (hence it becomes a high value target). The thing you'd have to hit would be the computer system, (assuming they did it that way,) which would considering the technology of the era amount to a mission kill anyway. As I mentioned to Inert, if you can crack the computer system then you've taken the ship anyway. I don't imagine for a minute that they've set the computer up in such a way that it may be reprogrammed from a remote source, the core systems, the final stages of fire control, nanite defences, etc, would be isolated from the rest of the system. Quote Norsehound wrote:If it has the 'tiniest of holes' then it isn't much of an anti NBC suit. Holes can be made, at which point you're right it's not much good as an anti NBC suit.


TelQuessir	#82 Posted on 06-10-2005 06:19
Posts: 2598 Joined: August 30 2005	I have told Inert numerous times that the blue bar is a representation of the ship's systems integrity. Massive damage taken in a short period of time, or constant heavy bombardment can thus disable a vessel. Simple as that.


Inert	#83 Posted on 06-10-2005 15:36
Posts: 388 Joined: September 08 2005	I know that Tel, I even looked it up in the 6.1 tactical manual to make sure. I didn't say anything about EMP. (I was not clear, I apologize.) I meant to say that even if the system itself that controls the nanites are not knocked out by EMP, then by all means it should be at least should stop functioning if more important systems fail, such as power supplies. Then the nanites would be under no control, and that would be more or less dangerous. "You'd turn the nanites off again." And they'd just fall to the ground, useless?


Thorin	#84 Posted on 06-10-2005 15:43
Posts: 414 Joined: September 02 2005	I would like to ask...how is it even plausable to make a nanomachine that is electronic?


Nemmerle	#85 Posted on 06-10-2005 15:47
Posts: 113 Joined: September 16 2005	Quote Inert wrote: I know that Tel, I even looked it up in the 6.1 tactical manual to make sure. I didn't say anything about EMP. (I was not clear, I apologize.) I meant to say that even if the system itself that controls the nanites are not knocked out by EMP, then by all means it should be at least should stop functioning if more important systems fail, such as power supplies. Then the nanites would be under no control, and that would be more or less dangerous. And that would be why you always have fail-safes, somehow I don't think the default setting of an uncontrolled nanite would be to kill everything that moved. Quote Inert wrote:And they'd just fall to the ground, useless? As useless as your computer, or any other such thing for that matter, is when you turn it off. Although I imagine it would be easier to have them return to a box on a shelf or something before you shut them off rather than treading on them all the time. Quote Thorin wrote: I would like to ask...how is it even plausable to make a nanomachine that is electronic? Well we could always assume quantum folding or the like for packing more electronics into a smaller space, but that's just a happy dream really. We could assume that materials technology has advanced to a level where you can play with that sort of thing, after all in what world is it practical to make that kind of armour? That said they could just be little slithers of metal or whatever being manipulated in a artificial-grav field or something for all we know. Edited by Nemmerle on 06-10-2005 15:53


Inert	#86 Posted on 06-10-2005 23:46
Posts: 388 Joined: September 08 2005	I'd rather pack their metallic selves into a grenade and toss it for all the good that might come out of it. Nanites as a defense mechanism is not faring well at all. I recommend we move onto other usages. Nanotechnology does not restrict itself to merely nanites. For example, pants that won't get wet. (modern-day) Or socks with steel particles imbedded into them for longetivity. I can probably see nanotech in use for generating compound armour in ships, for example.


Norsehound	#87 Posted on 07-10-2005 02:30
Posts: 26 Joined: September 07 2005	Compound armor is a good idea. The only application for 'nano-technolgy' was, of course, nanites. But I'm fine with moving on to other subatomic ideas. How about uniforms that are created on a mollecular level to be NBC capable if a helmet and gloves were added? Or, perhaps, better flak protection for crews? Resigned.


Nemmerle	#88 Posted on 07-10-2005 06:04
Posts: 113 Joined: September 16 2005	Quote Inert wrote: I'd rather pack their metallic selves into a grenade and toss it for all the good that might come out of it. Some people would rather fight guns with swords simply for the honour of it. What they'd rather is not really a great argument against guns though.


Inert	#89 Posted on 07-10-2005 06:15
Posts: 388 Joined: September 08 2005	But if the bullets were no more less trouble some then a stun baton, they'd probably melt it down to form at least a knife. But as I've said, nanites are not the sole purpose of nanotechnology. Things such as strengthened hull plating or more heat-tolerant ceramic plating can benefit from nanotechnology.


Norsehound	#90 Posted on 07-10-2005 07:48
Posts: 26 Joined: September 07 2005	Seconded. This thread wasn't really made to discuss the possibilities of nano-machines. It was meant to discuss the possiblities of nano-sized operations and technology. That being said, how small can we make a computer? And what of it's components? Resigned.


Fu	#91 Posted on 07-10-2005 11:15
Posts: 34 Joined: September 04 2005	Yes, a usable level, however dont assume that their tech base as all at that level. Remember that they reverse-engineered a lot of HS tech from the core, on Kharak. (Anyone know if the Vag did the same with their core and the HS gates?). "But trust is the color of a dark seed growing, Trust is the color of a hearts blood flowing, Trust is the color of a souls last breath, Trust is the color of death." -Robert Jordan , Wheel of Time


Inert	#92 Posted on 07-10-2005 23:33
Posts: 388 Joined: September 08 2005	No, they did not reverse engineer a lot of technology from the core. In fact they did not reverse anything from the core. Their analysis of the core allowed them to use hyperspace, and just that. The only salvaged two things from the Khar-Toba in total. First was the hyperspace core. Second was a fusion power plant.


JustinWick	#93 Posted on 25-10-2005 06:23
Posts: 18 Joined: September 24 2005	Some quick thoughts on nanotechnology: (disclaimer - my scholarly and professional research does not include this topic, however I'm reasonably familiar with the relevant issues). For nanotechnology to be used as a weapon, the nanites would have to fit the following characteristics: Type R - Replicating 1. Able to harness energy from the environment 2. Able to harvest materials from environment 3. Able to construct additional nanites (or somehow "grow" in a more biological sense, perhaps using fractal-like repeating structures) 4. Able to communicate directly or (more likely) indirectly to coordinate damaging behaviors. 5. Able to locomote at significant speed Type N - Nonreplicating 1. Able to harness energy from the environment 2. Able to harvest materials from environment 4. Able to communicate directly or (more likely) indirectly to coordinate damaging behaviors. 5. Able to locomote at significant speed Type R has the benefit of reducing the payload size (in theory a very small number of nanites would replicate exponentially or at least quadratically in number, making the initial starting size fairly unimportant for most purposes). It also relies much less on communications because brute force swarming algorithms can be employed - the damage being caused doesn't have to be nearly as smart, and the communication can be highly local in nature. Also each unit can be much "stupider," with the exception of its ability to reproduce. Type N has the benefit of not having to use available materials. This should highly reduce energy usage, making energy harnessing also much easier. The down side is that the number of nanites in the system is monotonically nonincreasing and therefore a very scare resource - communications would be vital to the survivability of those nanomachines. Now lets look at what it'd take to do all four steps: 1. Able to harness energy from the environment I don't think there's any question that these devices would have to be powered by electromagnetic energy... I doubt it's possible to control even nuclear excitations (gamma radiation is not easily harnessed at that scale), and gravity is far too weak. I'm going to dismiss the possibility of nanites using nuclear bonding forces because that would certainly involve exotic matter (such as muons, ala muon catalyzed fusion) even if it were controllable. 2. Able to harvest materials from environment This means that the nanites must be able to use only the available atoms to replicate - I think it is highly unlikely that all of the different atomic types that the nanites need will just happen to be around in the armor of the ship, or a conduit, etc. I'm very skeptical about the ability of this to work in even fairly ideal conditions because the nanites must expend large amounts of energy to un-bond complex molecular structures to harvest these atomic units. 3. Able to construct additional nanites (or somehow "grow" in a more biological sense, perhaps using fractal-like repeating structures) This is not so difficult, however it greatly constrains what the nanite can doe and how it must be designed. A large amount of the nanite will likely involve this system (although it can probably multitask as a generic manipulator, so this may not be entirely a huge problem). 4. Able to communicate directly or (more likely) indirectly to coordinate damaging behaviors. There are many ways this could be accomplished - most likely the creation of chemical markers that serve as digitally-encoded "pheremones" to pass information. Electromagnetic induction, or physical EM force transfer could be used between units in extremely close proximity, however each has significant problems, and signal processing at those scales may be very diffcult to do. It is possible that simple semaphoric communications methods could be designed to reduce the required signal to noise ratio, and allow for very simple encodings. 5. Able to locomote at significant speed This is perhaps the most ridiculous problem of them all. Idiotic pseudoscientific novels aside coughPreycough macro-scale locomotion of nanites is utterly ridiculous. Small nano-sized cells which are capable of swimming (for instance, sperm) can only move at about 140 microns per second. At that speed, penetrating a 1 meter distance would take approximately two hours. Of course it is unlikely that the nanites will have convenient holes in which to move about, they will most likely have to burrow through solid material - even if they had the appropriate energy output to do this, they would most likely be so slow as to be completely unusable. In short, IMHO nanotech weapons are entirely useless in terms of infiltrating and destroying enemy ships, etc. I do, however, feel that they would be useful for physically "hacking" microcircuitry and computers, and possibly for biological uses (medical technology/boosting of human abilities). I don't see anything wrong with them being used in manufacturing processes that involve very small objects, or perhaps repairing hairline fractures in hard material (like armor or drive crystals, etc). I think that the fundamental physics of these systems comes down to something much like using bacteria - they can eat metal, etc, but it takes YEARS not seconds, and it's not terribly useful. Sorry if I duplicated anyone's thoughts, I didn't make it through reading the entire thread yet. =================================== Who would sup with the mighty must climb the path of daggers.


yasotay	#94 Posted on 25-10-2005 20:37
Posts: 637 Joined: September 09 2005	Justin, wow! Thats neat stuff. Other than you shatter my vision of the future with fact. :sigh:


Glacialis	#95 Posted on 25-10-2005 21:01
Posts: 368 Joined: September 02 2005	The use that just popped to mind is using a spray of nanites to physically infiltrate data lines without having to find an access port. Whether you've got a human onboard the nearest support vessel (assault frigate) or a portable processor block with a semi-AI on it exclusively dedicated to hacking doors open and the like, the nanite spray could allow very quick access to data feeds without having to crack open a bulkhead.


JustinWick	#96 Posted on 26-10-2005 01:42
Posts: 18 Joined: September 24 2005	I do support the use of nanites for physically hacking information-based technology. You would still probably want to use cutting tools, etc, to make the process quicker, but maybe they should best be thought of as a special kind of "goo" that can spontaneously self-organize on contact with a data line. The most exciting use is actually the physical rebuilding of a computational component in-situ, which would allow physical hacking of the processing unit and/or data storage devices (ala Deus Ex). Another, related use, is the establishment of a manual override on a control structure. Failing everything else, marines could nano-splice control components directly to things such as reactor cores, etc. A final possibility is that they could be dispersed throughout energy or communications conduits in a ship in such a way as to cause significant disruption during and after a raid. I'm not sure how this could be more damaging than a small, self-contained explosive device but there could be interesting covert uses. Do keep in mind that ships would most likely be built in ways as to make this difficult to do - maybe a nano-defense module could be something that could be built in a ship to make it more difficult to be turned against the original owner (either requiring more marines, more time, or both). =================================== Who would sup with the mighty must climb the path of daggers.


Berrik	#97 Posted on 31-10-2005 06:13
Posts: 34 Joined: September 10 2005	Any use these could concievably fit on the PDS battlefield are already done well enough and likely more efficiently by other things, in my opinion. Antiship stuff? No reason. There's already a well developed family of weapons that do that job just fine. Infiltration stuff? Why bother? Not every console and computer will be super duper encrypted and safeguarded. The normal crew need to use them without a great deal of hassle, after all. Countermeasures against your ship's computer systems being compromised and taken over (thus rendering it captured by your side-- hey, I just came up with a more plausible way for how capturing ships in HW works considering the same sized assault ship is always used no matter what it's capturing!) are best dealt with by the self-destruction of the vessel if the ship's allies (or the ship's gunnery officers) can't get rid of the infiltrator fast enough. Ships that tend to be dedicated to producing many different things would have larger, more powerful, and more secure computer systems, rendering them too difficult to capture in a reasonable amount of time with the usual methods, unless you have a ridiculously powerful intrusion suite on hand to support the effort. (example: Karan Sjet would assist the crews with taking over the shipyard in the SP missions since the mothership has far superior data processing capabilities than any other ship.) Consider this an RP explanation for not being able to capture most production craft.


Cobalt Shiva	#98 Posted on 06-11-2005 14:46
Posts: 118 Joined: September 07 2005	It wouldn't matter how much physical or software security you had on your systems if intrusion nanobots could literally rewire the computer. "This is tactical control..."


Glacialis	#99 Posted on 06-11-2005 16:21
Posts: 368 Joined: September 02 2005	Systems themselevs might have counter-intrusion nanotech, but I wonder how prohibitively costly it would be to add such methods to data lines themselves? And if you have control of data lines, does it matter if the computers have these methods?


Ryanman	#100 Posted on 13-11-2005 21:33
Posts: 7 Joined: November 13 2005	If you did nanobot stuff, you could model it like the good ol vaygr boarding frigate did(smaller tho). I thing that nanotech would be more effective at destroying subsystems and weapons then actually damaging a ship. Look guys, i'm not an expert on space battles(sorry). But I do know about homeworld. Give the kid a break!

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