Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

If you ever need someone to proof read (and add appropriate punctuation where necessary), just let me know and I'd be happy to do so.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

LOL thanks Renegade......I think http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Anyway I sort of explain the use of ground troops in my story as a sort of "WE always have and always will" mentality on the part of the Icarans because afterall sometimes the way you fight wars can become just as much of a "tradition" as your music and other cultural tidbits.

Also given Icaran weapons not being uh "precise" enough you don't really want an SD firing it's guns in "surface support" because you'd likely blow a LOT of stuff up that you didn't want to. (not that their sensors are bad it's just they don't have the mega adjustable phasers of ST)

Yet another good reason they deploy troops is because on a domed colony you can't really take out targets on the ground without killing everyone off.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

to help with the orbital bombardment debat, I thing taht you should all go here

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

I was going to suggest url=http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20040308.html]This[/url] as decent on ships drives and silly accel, and why you need compensation.

Then I realised that the entire Schlock archives is so great that you should just read all of it.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

I'm currently trying to read the entire archive and have covered nearly a year snd a half in three days. Only three more years worth of archives to go!!!

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Howdy folks new Tech questions:

Question 1: "Fusion Beam-AKA I-Laser" okay I was wondering if it is possible for an energy weapon to basically be so powerful that when it comes in contact with a physical material it is able to create an unstable fusion reaction (i.e a small fusion explosion).

Question 2: Okay so I know my shields are a little bizarre (I.e subspace wrapped around a ship) So how about this, a multi-layer shield system:

Layer one will be a "kinetic bubble" that pretty much uses the (gravity focusing generator) GFG to create a gravity field around the ship much like it does when it enters a warp point, except that this gravity field in normal space serves to slow down the incoming bullets to the point where they are no longer effective.

Layer two would consist of an energy field that renders what last kinetic force generated by the impact of a slug useless and provides protection against incoming energy fire.

Layer three is simple "rad shielding" to protect the ship from the high amounts of radiation that would no doubt be generated by space combat and energy weapons.



Okay now thanks to the nature of the energy shield when the energy of weapons and the shield collides you get a rather big "light show" basically as the two energies mix you get the occasional burn through that sends an errant strand of energy into the ships' hull causing damage.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Are you asking if theses would work in real life or for a fictional stroy?

For fiction, anything goes of course.

For real life (sorry to be so negative):

Q1: Unfortunately not. Most elements won't fuse to begin with [only those lighter than Fe are even possible], and adding lots of energy tends to make things fly apart whereas fusion requires containment with high temperatures and pressures. So, in short, no.

Q2a: We haven't the foggiest idea on how to manipulate gravity other than moving giant masses around so a gravity field generator is fictional.

Q2b: "Energy" field? Energy is a concept, not a physical thing in itself. It is a quantity which in essence means "the capacity to do work", and since it is not it is not a physical thing, it is meaningless to form it into a shield.

Q3c: This one is the closest to something that we could do. Some "rad" [radiation] is comprised of charged particles and thus can be shielded by a strong magnetic field. The earth is protected from nearly 100% of all cosmic radiation of this type by its magnetic field. There are uncharged kinds of radiation which would be unaffected by a magnetic field. Gamma (or any electro-magnetic) rays, neutrons, neutrinos, are some and there are many more examples. For most of these, some solid shield is required. Neutrinos, for example, are so penetrating that they could penetrate a light-year of lead; but on the positive side, they go right through you and your ship and cause no damage.

Now, of course the argument could be made that right now our understanding of physics is too rudimentary to perform these things and one day in the future we will be able do all these and more. If that's the approach you wanna take, then it falls back on fiction until we actually do figure it out.

As Jean Luc Picard once said: "Things are only impossible until they are not."

Personally, I'd prefer to read a fictional version which is made believable by providing some, but not exacting, detail such that the reader assumes it works by some not-yet-understood-to-earthlings technology. Just enough detail should be used so as to make the reader believe it is more than PFM. Most of the better SciFi writers approach future technology this way. I'd like to read the finished product.

PFM = trade language meaning "Pure F****** Magic"

edit: can you say a-b-c???

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

So a high energy say Graser would more or less tear something apart on contact on a nearly molecular level right? OR would it just cause a massive explosive reaction?

Because I was thinking since I have never really described the I-laser in my stories I could either make it just that a HIGH level laser with nearly 0 energy loss, I could make it a graser or something similar, or I could just make it a highly charged AP stream http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Q2a: Well this is assuming a race that knows how to manipulate gravity fields, in fact their FTL travel relies entirely on the field of gravity manipulation as they require a gravity field around the ship when it enters the warp (else wise nasty things happen to the crew), so I was thinking since their ships use GFGs in that sense they may as well generate a grav field around the ship to protect them in combat.

Q2b: I was actually thinking something along the lines of of an Electromagnetic shield or something like a force field except on a larger scale.

Another possibility is something similar to a shield I read about once where the shield "generators" basically used the energy of incoming fire to "recharge" the shield up to a point where it overloaded the unfortunate side effects of this shield system however was that when the shield "failed" it imploded, crushing the ship it's self.

Q2c: Thanks I was figuring a strong Magnetic field to prevent the radiation from killing the crew and at the same time explaining it within reason.


I generally hate PFM tech like "transporters" and "replicators" and a myriad other Star Trek tech (don't even get me started on Lightsabers) because I want to make a tech base that is obviously far more advanced then anything we could understand and build yet not so far out people think "bull crap" the second they read it.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Yeah, I really think the trick is in making it believable to the usually well educated SciFi reader without giving away too much detail that would let the reader realize that it wouldn't work, or would conflict with something else. This is harder than it seems at first. I would think the author should work out "the way things work" conceptually in the universe of his story before writing so that there is a consitency throughout as well as allowing future sequels/installments to pick up the story without having to reinvent all the technology. The story should focus on being a "good story" over the fancy techs. George Lucas once said that essentially if the story isn't good, it won't be saved by special effects. This is probably even more true in written stories over movies.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Well realistically are Anti-Proton stream weapons even possible according to physics?

The shields are easy enough to explain since I think I'll just stick to calling them "void shields" and just describe the multi-layered system that it functions on while not necessarily giving away all the hows and whys.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Anti-protons exist. Containing them is very difficult, but again, possible. And since they are charged, they could be accelerated into a beam pretty easily once you solve the containment problem, so yes, they are possible.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Thanks slick so from now on my I-lasers are now officially just extremely powerful AP stream weapons http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

There are a few major problems with anti proton beam weapons.

First, a stream consisting entirely of negatively charged particles will spread out very quickly if it has any significant density. This problem could easily be solved by making it a stream of anti hydrogen instead.

Second, and much more important, simply throwing antimatter at any sort of shielding system that can easily block purely kinetic weapons without resorting to just putting a big block of material (i.e. armor) in front of them will easily neutralize any stream of antimatter that isn't massive enough to penetrate the shield regardless of whether it's matter or antimatter. In particular, gravitic or any sort of energy or force field shielding will not provide any material for the antimatter to annihilate with. If you can send enough antimatter at high enough velocity to get through the shield, why not spare the expense of antimatter and just throw big rocks instead? You'd be able to throw a whole lot more of them for the same cost if you just used ordinary matter.

The only way to solve this problem is to send some matter along, too. While this solves the problem of how to get the energy release of matter-antimatter annihilation despite the enemy shields, it brings up a whole new problem of how to get it to happen at the target, rather than halfway there where it would dissipate harmlessly. There are two ways I can think of to do this.

First, send two separate streams of matter and antimatter, carefully targetted to intersect at the target. The problem here is that the two streams would have to be EXTREMELY tightly focused and incredibly precisely calibrated for range. Even if you managed to pull this off, the initial energy release as the tips of the streams intersect would almost certainly push much of the remaining material off course to where it would either not annihilate at all or would do so too early.

Second, you can send the containment system right along with the antimatter, set to fail on arrival. This is the only feasible sounding solution I can think of, and it would require improbably cheap, small, and efficient antimatter containment systems.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Hmmm idea here Antimatter stream contained within a matter stream with a "stasis" field of sorts keeping the two coherent yet not in contact until they hit the target? Remember a race 2,000 years more advanced then us with MUCH better energy focusing technology.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Actually, the comparison of a particle beam to any other 'matter' projectile is not necessarily accurate. The force of the impact is a combination of the mass and the velocity of the impact. Larger projectiles will of course do more damage at the same speed, but practical considerations of technology (and scale) might make it much easier to increase the total energy of impact by using a particle beam to get extremely high velocity with a tiny mass. Accelerating larger 'solid' projectiles to produce equivalent energies might be much more difficult, and the 'cost effectiveness' curve might be very different.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Well that and the fact that chucking a rock up to lightspeed would require a rather large barrel lol, especially depending on the size of the rocks being chucked.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Big rock vs stream of particles doesn't really matter. My point was that if you can get the stream going heavy and fast enough to penetrate the shield, it should be trivial to give it enough velocity over the minimum to do some major damage just from the impact. Adding the explosion from matter-antimatter annihilation is just extremely expensive overkill.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Not really "expensive" if you consider that by time this became a standard weapon it would probobly not cost any "money'per shot would it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Whilst there is no "overkill", there is a "waste of munitions" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

As a wise man once said "The best way to kill is overkill." or something to that effect either way the military tends to like overkill weapons for a reason they not only ensure the job gets done but they scare the holy bejezzers out of anyone who is in front of them lol

Thats like explosive bullets definately overkill yet they are the "wave of the future" lol

And no "waste of munitions" as the ship isn't firing off munitions it's just using energy which reactors can replace which is another good reason for all my ships to have mini reactors in the turrets http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Waste of munitions comes into play if I decided to use solid shot however, not to mention THAT would require money and the need ot buy more ammunition while with an energy weapon you buy it once pay for maint work and it's there for ever (until it's blown up) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Explosive bullets, being banned and all, probably aren't the wave of the future. :p

I'd also put money that the guy who said that wasn't paying for all the wasted muntitions and then got killed when he ran out of bullets. Now excessive force is good, but using a tac nuke to kill a tank is 'waste of munitions' for instance.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

They are not banned actually because they are being planned for the OICW (I don't know what it's X-number is) with air bursting and explosive rounds to peirce body armor.

And it's also the opinion of a lot of authors and even some "real" military people that like it or not explosive rounds are going to have to come into play to more easily bypass such things as body armor.....and those nagging terrorist types who are so hocked up on drugs you can pump a mag into them and have em still shooting at you heh. Can't do that when you explode http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Also 50-cal rifles fire "explosive" rounds.

Now White phospherous (Sp?) rounds were banned because they didn't increase kill they just burned horribly and crippled people in ways that are just not settling thinking about.


As far as "waste of munitions" well as I kind of said "waste of munitions" only counts when you have munitions if on the other hand you had a weapon with nearly unlimited fire then you wouldn't much care along those lines.
Thats like if you gave me a tank with an endless supply of ammo you can be darned sure I'm shooting every grunt, tank and mean looking rabbit I can with DU rounds hehe.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Depends what you call an explosive round. Hollow points are explosive rounds, as are mercury/glycerol cavity rounds. Both of which are out under the Geneva Convention.

Of course as that doesn't cover cops or spies, no problem.

On the other hand if by explosive round you mean 'small grenade' then your OK. The OICW is a standard 5.56 NATO ammmo gun, with an attached 20mm grenade launcher. This fires 20mm grenades. You can, I suppose, stretch that to be an explosive round, but its a grenade to anyone else.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

I remember reading that it fires "air bursting bullets" out of it's primary fire not it's 20mm grenade launcher. Possible that the author meant that it was 20mm AIRBURST grenades not "bullets" but I don't know.

And no I mean minni explosive warhead in a bullet sized package that some folks in the army are already working on, right up there with the "smart bullets" though I haven't found any info on either project in a while since some of what I read was a little overly mathfilled for my tastes hehe (I really don't want to know the physics of an exploding smart bullet lol)


i thought NATO was 7.62mm as that is what the M-16 fires?

Damn they just keep making their bullets more pansy as they go lol

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Sticking an explosive warhead in a bullet is very non-Geneva Convention. As in massively so. Still no reason you couldn't do it. Hell you could probably fudge around the convention with some legal kung-fu if you really wanted to. Or just issue it to cops and spies not the millitary.

NATO, and the M-16, are 5.56mm. The M-16 has always been that caliber, since the first prototype actually. :p

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

You are probably thinking of this:

http://mae.pennnet.com/Articles/Arti...0arms%20weapon

It fires 'programmable munitions' that will burst in mid-air at exactly the distance required, effectively letting soldier's shoot 'around corners' at enemies behind cover. When this becomes available 'urban warfare' will become a very dangerous activity indeed for anyone taking on US forces. It's interesting that they don't call it a 'grenade' but just a 'munition'. It's probably best described as a very small guided missile anyway.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Thanks for the info BM that's probobly why the guy's work I read just called it a "bullet" because the military its self doesn't call it a grenade.

M-16 is a pissy little 5.56? lol I got my AKs and my M's confused hehe the AK series fires 7.62 because the Russians prefer a heavier punch, interesting.

Oh and El-Phil as far as the subject of Kinetics vs Energy weapons goes I've done some reading inspired by your points and I find it interesting to note that in effect an "energy weapon" is still using Kinetic kill principles it's just different somehow.
I think a gravity based anti-bullet shield could slow down a bullet and reduce it's KE enough for the armor to stop the actual damage, however I do after reading agree with you that it could simply not stop ALL KE without using so much energy its self that the shield would require as much energy as the ship's entire systems.


Now on to the plausibility of shields using gravitic principals that doesn't actually require "physics defying" technology as it simply involves (not simply but you know what I mean) a race learning how to create an artificial gravity well around the ship. And I think you'd need to learn how to manipulate gravity to shoot a black hole at someone (and you said that's quite possible) so hehe.


As far as gravity without constant acceleration or rotation goes, no my ships don't have rotating sections but they are very often accelerating and the compensators drain off enough of the gravity effects to give the crew 1g on ship while the ship may actually be going 200 gravities.

However to not "fudge" that too much (using your favorite word lol) the compensators don't have infinite drainability and the faster the ship accelerates the more G force gets through to the crew so for an SD going 600 gravities the crew would be getting slammed with 5 G.

I know the very principal of an inertial compensator "defies physics" but at least here I'm trying to make one slightly more reasonable then the ST infini-compensator right http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

And the reason I get mad at you El-Phil is because I don't like being talked down too simply because I'm younger then a lot of you folks, if you are going to say something is "utterly impossible" give me more reasons then just "because physics says so" okay, like WHY physics says so.

I mean to be honest physics is a head-in-vice sort of science because you've got newtonian, relitivistic and some third one I can't remember lol and all of them have different principals and crap so it's hard to keep track of it all right http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

The explanations are never simple, or the details of it aren't, and in general people do tend to go 'Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!' and run off screaming at the concepts. The maths are worse. You can simplify things, but then you risk lose the meaning. "Things should be as simplified as far as possible, but no further." Einstien I believe.

As for the gravity when a ship stops or is at constant speed your crew should be floating around. Now this isn't really very neat, honour guards drifting around the room, coffee drifting towards the screens etc, but it's the way it goes.

Just as a side point, I do remember something about G force tolerance being massively variable. A big naval aviation study ,if I recall, had variance from 2.5 to 7.5 for blackouts in pilots/personnel. Of course you'd hope it was the pilots at 7Gs and the cleaners at 2.5 but still.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Well someday maybe someone will figure out how to create a gravity field so for the sake of keeping things nice in this story I'll just assume that http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I Know not very "scientific" but I don't want to have to deal with the even more complicated and pain in the butt problems that come about when you have rotating sections.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Nothing wrong with a rotating section, except when it stops rotating of course...

Now I remember a name 'Alistar Reynolds.' anyone read any off his stuff? There's a guy who takes things seriously. As in journeys take years/decades as light speed is the limits and people have to wear exo-suits when the ship accelerates at high Gs. Masochisticly hard science really.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Trust me El Phil I've read a few different opinions on the "problems" that come in with rotating sections, which is in part why I asked about that idea here.

I've heard any number of things like friction, amount of power required yadda yadda that people threw at one another as to why or why not rotating sections would work.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Rule number 37: There is no such thing as overkill. There is only "Open Fire" and "Time To Reload".

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Given the choice between floating into scalding hot coffee when the ship stops accelerating or a rotating section I know what I'd choose... Full on artificial gravity. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

If you don't like rotating sections then perhaps consider the rotating ship. An idea I got from a Heinlein book, essentially the enire ship 'rolls' along. No friction or bearings to think about, full gravity for the whole ship (admitedly variable strength, but you can't have everything) it seems clever. I haven't put that much thought into practical issues, but none are jumping up at me right now.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Wouldn't a rotating ship require alot more thrust to accelerate. Manuverability would also be greatly reduced, I believe, as it would be harder to change directions. Another problem turning when spinning is that the thrusters to move you into a turn would be rotating and would create a couple of problems, depending on how much you wanted to explain.

They would need to be pulsed on ond off in a serial order to keep thrust on just one side of the ship.

If you wanted to go farther into it, then that wouldn't work either as each thruster would still fire in an arc, not just at one point. It would be massively unstable.

I can't think of any way to explain around this, and there may be other problems I haven't thought ofas well.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Yeah like firing weapons lol think about it if your ship is rotating a cannon that was locked onto the enemy a second ago won't be after the ship rotates.

Also grav "plating" works for me for now as just looking at an Icaran ship it's clear there's no room for a rotating section in the design (see attached).

As far as constant acceleration goes I agree with you there it would suck to float into something if the ship comes to a sudden stop lol

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

How to solve that? Computer controled constant correction. Modern aircraft (F-22, Eurofighter) are 'dynamically unstable' airframes. You kill the computers and the plane goes out of control. Similar thing with this. Or just pre compensated burns, you allow for the fact the thruster is moving when you calculate the burns. You know all the factors that will affect the stability so it's calcuable, with fast enough computers.

Weapons however are tricky, it would depend on how fast the outer edge of the ship is spinning, which would depend on how much gravity you want in the ship and how big the ship is.

OR the ship rotates round its axis of movement. The main engines are mounted on the 'hub' of the ship as are your forward firing main weapons. Simplifies some of the problems certainly, if not solving all of them.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Yup, computers could do the trick there. And with some sort of Thrust vectoring you could control it's tendancy to pitch throughout each burn. It would still have poor manuverability though.

Nice ship, btw. I guess these problems won't matter for you ship much but they are still fun to discuss. Grav plating sound ok to me, but then I'm ok with just about anything in sci-fi. At least there are not any commonly accepted theories that prohibit it from functioning (well none that I'm aware of anyway).

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

As far as shooting while spinning, I don't knw if this came from a book or video game, but the ships spun to keep gravity but when they went into combat or needed to do some tricky maneuvering, they killed the spin and everyone strapped in or floated.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

That would work as well, the problem would be the inertia. Just because you stopped powering the spin doesn't mean it will suddenly stop, there's no resistance (or practically none) in space so you have to apply power to stop the spin. Not a big problem granted, you got it spinning in the first place after all.

Gravity plating. Wonderfull and how do you propose for this to work? Last I checked you needed mass for gravity.

Lets see how you would get this. OK use Newtonian gravitational theory, its fine for practical stuff involving small fields. And its a hell of alot simpler.

So to get earth strength gravity you need about 6E24 kilograms, or the mass of the earth, at a distance of ~ 6400 km. This isn't really practical to lug around, but your plating is on the floor! Say under a few cm of carpet (or funky futuristic space floorboards) lets say its 1 cm down. So you only need 9E15 kgs of mass to create that much gravity. Tricky. Oh and it's unidirectional so your crew on the deck below are being attracted to the ceiling.

Frankly I can't see how you can ever get that into plating and then directional. But I'd like to hear this theory that would be fine.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

In order for humans not to be disoriented (dizzy) from the rotation, a rotating structure must have a cycle time (complete rotation) at at least one minute. In order to get 1 g of acceleration in a 1 minute rotation time you need: 33 feet per second * 60 seconds = a wheel 1980 feet in circumference. (approximately 650 feet across) Since any 'upper' decks within that radius will have correspondingly less g, they'll have to be 'storage and utility space' and only decks that far out or farther will be regularly inhabited. So you'll need pretty large ships for a 'routine' 1 g environment. I suspect that colonies will eventually be built that have this level of gravity but I doubt that many moving ships will.

The balance factor is another sticky problem but I suppose it's more solveable than the sheer size requirements. In order to rotate effectively the ship/structure will have to be relatively balanced, but of course it will never be perfectly balanced. Various controls can be used, including thrusters and internal movement of material, like stored water or other fluids. Even with computer controlled pumps moving fluids around you can't have a response time or a margin of error that can handle humans running around doing their daily business. Another reason that rotating ships will probably be impractical but colonies will be important enough to deal with the problems. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

I never said I could explain it. Only that "there are not any commonly accepted theories that prohibit it from functioning (well none that I'm aware of anyway)."

Currently, it is generally accepted that gravity is mediated by a particle called a graviton. I admit, there is no solid proof of its existence, but then science has relatively few proofs when compared to theories. If we assume the graviton does exist, then it is not that much of a stretch to think that with 2000 years more science, that someone might figure out how to control it without needing all that mass.

If you have proof that the graviton does not exist, then please share this information with the rest of the scientific community so they can spend their time on other theories.

If you do not believe that science will ever explain anything not already known, or pose new questions never thought of, then you will always nit-pick science fiction, and never gain anything from it.

Just as a note: Newtonian gravity works OK on large scale, but breaks down at smaller scales. It does work for your example, however, because with newtonian gravity that is considered large scale. Small scale is considered less than the width of an atom. But then, I'm just being nit-picky. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

What strikes me most about this thread, with its frequent emphasis on what's "really" possible, is that once you assume "warp" space travel (i.e. as in the SE IV game), 21st Century science goes out the window. Perhaps it would be more productive* to speculate how the "warp" travel already built into the game can explain other game features. Example: For in-system travel, why not replace Newtonian acceleration/deceleration, with its inconvenient mass/energy/velocity/fuel limitations, by a continuous "micro-warp" drive with constant velocity (very convenient) and whatever limitations you like? BTW, this is somewhat similar to the "stutterwarp" in the Traveller role-playing game, which is based on, yes, REAL science, i.e. [begin handwaving] quantum tunneling [end handwaving]. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Or take the "Alderson Drive" in the Niven/Pournelle novel "The Mote in God's Eye". The "warp points" in this fictional universe arise from an as-yet-undiscovered "fifth force". Presumably the discovery of this new force would lead to a whole new branch of physics and many practical applications, but to my knowledge the authors made no use of this technology beyond interstellar travel. If so, then I'd say they missed a good opportunity.

Back to SE IV. You want "shields"? No problem! Apply the same game technology used for interstellar travel to generate a "warp field" around your ship that "warps" incoming matter/energy harmlessly AROUND the vessel! Now for game/story purposes you may want limits on how much "incoming" can be deflected (leaky shields) or you may want "incoming" to "use up" shield/warp energy (consumable shields). Your weapons can be modified shield projectors that create a long thin warp field (as opposed to a short fat shield) along which you can fling projectiles, photons, anti-protons, etc. toward enemy vessels. Since warp fields defy "conventional" physics your "beams" don't scatter and efficiency is so amazingly high that minimal cooling is required. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Just as the first lasers led to multiple practical applications in telecom, weaponry, medicine, computers, chemistry, physics, etc. I would expect a fictional scientific breakthrough to affect many aspects of a scifi story.


*by the phrase "be more productive" I mean "waste time more efficiently" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Well hunpecked the thing is if 'warp points' are just wormholes then your still probably OK in modern science. As long as you dont go FTL locally during your trip through the warp point your OK it's 'just' a distorion in the local spacetime.

Still its a nifty theory.

Are Gravitons really generally accepted? There was me thinking it was just part of the attempt at transfering quantum mechanics to gravity. There are many other quantum theories of gravity that involve no gravitons. I'm not saying they don't exist, similar quantum theories work in many other fields. But existing quantum graviton theorys are nastily convuluted, contrvied and internally inconsistent at the moment. Of course they could straighten out, or the correct theory could be that convoluted.

Still with gravity being mass, momentum and energy, taking Einstein's theory of gravitation as right of course, it doesn't matter what particle does the work, you still need those three to get gravity. Just because you can put a name to something does mean you can create it easier.

Why is this? Gravitons are just messenger particles, they don't create the force they just pass it on. So to create the gravitons you have to create the force, so you have to create that much gravity which is no real net gain. Or that is my understanding anyway.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Energy loss via gravitational waves can be seen in binary pulsars like PSR 1913+16

Gravitons are to gravity waves as Photons are to light waves.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

But exploding people doesn't bother you..?


Sounds to me like a good excuse for fighter combat.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Good point about fighter combat http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif assuming they'd have weapons powerful enough to hurt a capital ship's shields/armor or whatever.

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Hey Starhawk, remember my Deliverance class system defense fighter bases? The ability to launck two hundred, 40kt, corvette cals fighters in one combat turn is definently enough to hurt a capital ship, or two, or three.....

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

LOL yeah those uber fighter stations of yours http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif they'd probobly help destroy a few cappys thats for sure.

I designed a "carrier" flag monitor that can launch 58 75kt fighters at a time, and 5 of them are capable of destroying a Superdreadonught, and oh yeah the flag monitor carries 189 so that's 37.8 SDs dead if I could get all my gunships there unschathed http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

El_Phil writes: "Well hunpecked the thing is if 'warp points' are just wormholes then your still probably OK in modern science."

I lack even a layman's understanding of "wormholes". From the Wikipedia I gather that it's all theory so far and usable wormholes may or may not be possible. In other words it's still sci fi, though with a possible but not solid theoretical basis.

Personally I doubt that wormholes, if they even exist, are usable for FTL travel, for the simple reason that no ET species has to our knowledge taken over the entire universe. Yeah, yeah, we could be alone, we could be in an interstellar "wildlife preserve," etc. But I get the distinct impression that our universe is just not very friendly to many of our cherished sci fi concepts. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Semi-OT: A question on Power Ratios in Sci-fi
 

Or generally speaking the universe is really freaking huge and what are the odds of an interstellar empire just happening to bump into us?

I mean for all we know our universe is a war torn hell hole, or a rather "earthlike" concept of nations empires and yadda yadda that are sometimes at peace and some times at war.

Either way I doubt they'd need to pay much attention to us just yet anyway, now if and when we ever get space ships we may bump into a few of them and either get squashed or just get out there and form our own little nation states.

Yah never know but I also doubt that every species out there except us is unified like we see in Sci-fi either.