View Thread
 Print Thread
Conclusion to "defense field" technology - by Glacialis
JustinWick
Out of curiousity, what is preventing you guys from using DEWs that are actually nonmaterial - things such as graviton pulses (alright so that's a little out there), photonic pulses (especially in the nuclear energy level regime, such as gamma radiation, etc), or some kind of misc hyperspace energy pulse? I mean if you're going to use it for shielding, why not as a weapon? If it can disrupt incoming matter, why not use it to disrupt the matter present in an enemy ship. For instance, I can imagine a "hyperspace lance" which would project a hyperspace "probability wave" or whatever you created to explain it in a single direction which can be used to pierce through a ship (possibly at close ranges).

Also neutrino beams could be very useful weapons - used to disrupt enemy computers by flipping random bits (useful mostly against photonic processors). Neutrino beams can pass through almost anything, but interact with matter so weakly as to only cause minor photonic emissions when passing through matter, enough to disrupt delecate systems but not enough to harm anyone.

Higher energy neutrino beams could conceivably be used to disrupt fissile material (by increasing the internal fission rate to the point of "fissling" the material, ruining its military use). Indeed there was a proposal to construct such a device in real life (http://www.newscientist.com/article.n...?id=dn3734) which, according to my knowlege of nuclear physics, would actually be quite practical (if somewhat bulky, at 1000km across). It's possible that something like wakefield linear accellerators could be used to produce the particle beam necessary to generate the neutrinos in a significant quantity.

Just curious as to why GRASERs and other staple energy weapons aren't around. I mean plasmas are cool and all, but many plasma weapons are trivially disrupted by strong magnetic fields, and reletivistic ion beams have range issues stemming from the fact that they are fundamentally unstable.
===================================

Who would sup with the mighty must climb the path of daggers.
 
Inert
http://penguin-mayhem.net/pds/modules...ght=graser

If the topic is still there, read up. We discussed GRASERs and neutrino weapons and all kinds of stuff. I'm too tired to explain right now, and I bet half the people here are too, as we discussed it somewhile back.

/made a link out of that /HomeBoy
Edited by Homdax on 24-09-2005 17:45
 
Glacialis
The problem with RU-transferring wormholes is that they are short ranged. I'm not saying it couldn't be longer range, but there's likely to be significant scaling issues.

And yeah...wasn't expecting Weber to make it right Smile. That said, gravity and hyperspace in that universe are intricately connected, and I think their grav pulse FTL comms were usable only because their primary sensors are gravitic in nature, and rode the border to hyperspace. Not sure. Still reading the released tidbits for At All Costs, haven't gone back to the first book with FTl comms.
Edited by Glacialis on 24-09-2005 13:13
 
Inert

Quote

Over a decade ago, while Kushan scientists were researching alternate methods of Faster-Than-Light travel, a curious micro-wormhole effect was achieved by charging two quantum plates and then separating them. While particles would pass instantaneously from a hole in the center of one plate to the other regardless of distance, the research led to a dead end. The first problem was one of power; even with large ground-based fusion reactors linked to the system, the wormhole effect could only be expanded to something the size of a fist. While this might have made for an interesting weapon delivery system, the other drawback was that whatever entered the wormhole emerged as a stream of undifferentiated molecules.


Wormhole canon. Read. Learn. Wink Note: "...regardless of distance..."
Edited by Inert on 24-09-2005 16:05
 
maw3194

Quote


Weber really did a number on Physics in his universe. We've effectively measured the speed of gravity in real life (using the moons of Jupiter), and, unsurprisingly, it is the same as the speed of light.

I thought the force of Gravity was instantaneous, so using gravity pulses would certainly be faster than light, I'm not sure where I learned that it was instantaneous, it was either in School or on one of these scientific discussions.
 
Glacialis
If it's regardless of distance, then why can't they pump RUs through from a planet? There must be a limiting factor. They say unlimited distance, but I don't think that works in practice. Fluff can be incorrect.
 
JustinWick
I thought the force of Gravity was instantaneous, so using gravity pulses would certainly be faster than light, I'm not sure where I learned that it was instantaneous, it was either in School or on one of these scientific discussions.

That's true in *classical* physics - the brand of physics that's been known to be wrong since the late 1800s. Under special relativity, the maximal speed of classical information flow (of a signal that could be used to cause an effect) is the speed of light. That limits the speed of gravity to being less than or equal to the speed of light.

Measurements in the last century have confirmed that the speed of gravity is roughly the speed of light (theories predict it is identical however there is still a small margin for error in current experiments).

Weber was just making stuff up. Now don't get me wrong, I really liked the books (I have some of his autographs, he wrote my brother a birthday card, he's a super nice guy) but realistic they are not. Without going into the total lack of sociological/economic evolution, half of the technologies in his future universe are so close to what we have in the 21st century as to seem "quaint" and the other half are based on completely made up physics (though to be fair, he does try and keep his FTL stuff to at least partially resemble modern theories about higher dimensions). The computing technology available in the future is BARELY more capable than what we have now, despite the fact that we are nowhere near the physical limits for hardware, and have barely scratched the surface of available algorithms to explore. He doesn't have anything that violates the laws of thermodynamics but his "inertialess drives" don't seem to mesh well with general relativity. Not to mention that they are contrived to exactly resemble naval conflict (it is unlikely that technology in 1000 years will have the exact same strategies associated with it, right down to their operating geometries - "sidewalls/sidebands" etc). Anyways the purpose of the books was to entertain, not to be "hard scifi" - he wasn't really trying to predict what things would be like in the future, just have a lot of fun with history repeating itself. So don't put too much stock in any of his science. (I will admit, however, he's almost certainly right on the money about the "biosculpt" idea - I'm sure at some point in the not-to-distant future everyone will be artificially good looking).
Edited by JustinWick on 24-09-2005 23:34
===================================

Who would sup with the mighty must climb the path of daggers.
 
TelQuessir
That statement on the Weberverse is true.

On the same note it is true for the PDSverse as well. We want to actually focus on the warfighting nonsense and having technology too far from what we know (and maybe love due to either profession or interest) will change the operating environment so dramatically that we'd need something better than the HW2 engine to simulate combat on the desired scale.

Already a lot of "excuses" are made to justify some aspects of PDSverse warfighting so they won't look too out of place in fiction writing - like extrapolating from HW2 weapon ranges presentation in fiction to have trans-orbital weapons firing and so forth.

In its entirety, outsourcing the science stuff and focusing the development team on perfecting the presentation of warfighting means that we can throw stuff into the public release arena for scrutiny much faster than if we bothered to make everything sound good scientifically while lacking the educational background to do so.

Thus, I'm more interested in seeing the practical product of such scientific discussions, than to see comments on how Weber makes stuff up. Everyone does to some extent.

But I don't want to downplay the enthiusiasm shown by all in these scientific discussions outside the wargaming topic - if desired I can start up a dedicated science forum so you may continue as usual over there, while this forum would be a specialised location for technical roleplaying (while the Science forum is a repository of what "works" in our present-day RL scientific knowledge).
Edited by TelQuessir on 25-09-2005 05:39
 
Inert
Glacialis that's a good point, why can't we sift resouces off a planet?

Possibly the fact that you have to charge the quantum plates and then seperate them. You know how inconvient it is to seperate the plates and then move one to the desired location, and one to mothership? Not to mention the mothership is perfectly capable of doing it herself?
 
maw3194
Why don't the Hiigarans put the quantum tunneling into the resource collectors so you don't have to dock them with the Mobile Refineries, or are the quantum plates so large that you can't fit them into the resource collectors.
Just a thought.
 
JustinWick
I agree with TelQuessir in that with all of the uncertainty we have about the future of combat, the best thing we can do is have a very "conservative" guess about what it will be like - preserving the fundamental tactical notions that we use today and converting them to a new environment - space.

I think a small number of reasonably easy to understand, non-technobabble type technologies can be envisioned to handle these questions. I think it will serve the unify the universe of PDS and may serve even as inspiration for new things to come (in later versions perhaps).
===================================

Who would sup with the mighty must climb the path of daggers.
 
MDD
I'm new here and i've got a question. Theres a lot of talk about targeting the projectiles/objects for the DFG, so i was wondering if it's possible to target an area of space? I know almost zilch about quantum physics, but it would seem to be easier to disrupt a certain area of space. Sort of like one of those rubber playground balls, where the rubber "field" is guarding the inside?
 
Cobalt Shiva
Clarify, please - I'm not quite sure what you're getting at.
"This is tactical control..."
 
MDD
Something along the lines of projecting a double hyperspace bubble around the ship. The diameter of the inner sphere would be slightly less than the outer sphere. Try to picture the in-game hyperspace gates wrapped around a sphere.

I was thinking that by somehow destabilizing that region of space, possibly by rapidly turning the field off and back on again very rapidly, i.e thousandths of a second, you could bleed away the mass of a projectile rendering it ineffective. I know the issue of where the mass goes was raised, as well as the issue of real-time relative targeting of the field, but what if the target was stationary, just some arbitrary point in space?

I have a weak understanding of QM so sorry if all of that's already been discussed.
 
Inert
@maw3194: Requires fusion plants of a capital ship class to produce the wormhole, obviously. Even large ground-based fusion reactors, wormhole = fist-sized.

@MDD: "Destabilizing space" can not be used when referring to hyperspace. It is a process, once again, not a dimension. I apologize if you get the wrong idea from the initial data, it wasn't supposed to be referred to as a dimension.
 
Glacialis
Whoa, hold on there -- we haven't decided that "hyperspace" isn't a dimension Pfft. All this talk of quantum physics is good and all, but until we can find an explanation that allows for interruptable, non-instantaneous travel, it won't fit the HW universe. Do we need to go into so much detail?
 
Inert
Yes. Smile

Guess you're right. But it's nearly impossible to find a defence field conclusion with the HSDF without describing hyperspace, and we all know that's pretty damn hard.
 
MDD
I missed out on all the discussion that was on the first forum, but perhaps the defense fields aren't hyperspace based? Theres got to be some other sort of field that would be effective...
 
Glacialis
Since we can't find anything based in real science that will do the job, we turned to hyperspace fields -- a technology that is already well known and somewhat understood in the HW universe. Because we couldn't find real-ish science, we decided to just make up something that is within their capabilities. The first few posts of this thread summarize the conclusions.

Some current facts about hyperspace and hyperspace travel:

1 - It is not an instantaneous method of travel.
2 - It is interruptable.
3 - Gravity wells make hyperspace travel very dangerous.
4 - Short range hyperspace navigation is difficult, thus the RU cost.
5 - Long range and good accuracy require a "far jumper", of which only three are known -- the Bentusi core, the Hiigaran core, and the Vagyr core.

Probably a few more but it's too early to expect my memory to function 100%.
 
MDD
Heres an idea, if the ships of homeworld are able to generate a "gravity well" wouldn't it follow that they posses some sort of artificial gravity device? I mean is there gravity onboard the ships? There is no evidence of centrifugal rotation, so im going to assume that they do have the ability to manipulate a gravitational "field". If they can do that, shouldn't they just be able to generate some sort of inverse gravity field? That would repel/slow down projectiles and explain its ineffectiveness against particle weapons.
Edited by MDD on 27-09-2005 22:05
 
Jump to Forum