How do crystallurgy weapons work? -> component descriptions

[Taera]

I've been thinking a little.
There are different racial technology trees out there, but most of their components and weapons (especially) actually do make sense and its clear how do they work. All but crystallurgy ones.
Okay, so i understand how High Energy Magnifier works. But how do shard cannons skip armor? and crystalline armorworks? Why normal races cant reproduce the Energy Dampener, the Solar Panels or the Energy Transmitting Lense? How does the energy dampener work anyway?

So those are my questions. Someone enlighten me?

[ November 21, 2002, 01:26: Message edited by: Taera ]

[capnq]

how do shard cannons skip armor?

I think the idea is that the shards are so dense and moving so fast that they just punch straight through the armor, leaving too small a hole in the armor to sigificantly reduce its protection against other weapons. The damage to internals could be more due to explosive decompression than anything else.

and crystalline armorworks?

Probably some kind of piezoelectric effect. (There are certain kinds of crystals known to produce electricity while under pressure.)

Why normal races cant reproduce the Energy Dampener, the Solar Panels or the Energy Transmitting Lense?

Some mods make the racial techs researchable at a much higher cost for races without the attribute, but I forget offhand which mods they are.

How does the energy dampener work anyway?

That could just be an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) temporarily knocking out the ship's systems, or it could be something more exotic using some kind of wave interference pattern.

[Kamog]

Thanks, those are interesting explainations. Hmm, come to think of it, I don't understand how half the regular technology works, let alone the special racial technologies!

For example, what is a jacketed photon? Actually, I have no idea how any of the engines work, except for the ion engine! I am also unclear on how some of the weapons work, like the wave motion gun. What exactly is coming out of the gun when it is fired?

[Phoenix-D]

Contra-Terrene Engine: weird word for an antimatter engine. Make a explosion, push hot gases and energy out the rear of the ship. Like a rocket, but with a much bigger boom.

Jacketed-Photon: "harnessed light drive". Hmm. I read this as using photons like the ions in the Ion Engine

Quantum Engine: dunno

Wave-Motion Gun, Incinerator Beam, Ripper Beam: focuses fusion heat at the target. Think heat-ray, only the heat is SUN hot.

Phoenix-D

[Raging Deadstar]

This should turn into a thread where the components are described, it'd make writing fanfiction a lot easier

[spoon]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:

Quantum Engine: dunno

It's just an improbability drive. Watch out for whales.

[Ed Kolis]

Funny, I always thought of the Wave-Motion Gun as some sort of spatial distortion wave... I know it says "fusion beam" but a lot of the other descriptions are messed up - I just figured it had to be SOME kind of wave and a spatial distortion wave seemed appropriate for an uber-weapon...

And wasn't the Ripper Beam a form of combination tractor/repulsor beam in SE2? Sounds more appropriate for the name...

[Taera]

ok. im not any much good in physics but i had a good explanation to how HighEnergy weapons work. So here it comes.

Ripper beam is simple fusion cutter. A heat beam, short ranged too. Think laser.

Incentrator is more concentrated beam. And a lot hotter, too. Think heavy laser.

Wave-Motion gun is something different althogether. In fact it projects an extremly hot fusion beam but not thats the point - it bombards the target with decaying, dissolving particles causing even further damage from reaction caused by these particles multiplied by the extreme heat.
Think particle beam/laser.

How does that sound?

Good idea about writing descriptions for components. Anyone with good questions?

[Kamog]

OK, what's a fusion beam? I know what a fusion reactor is, it generates energy by combining deuterium / tritium atoms into helium, and part of the mass is converted to energy in the process. So does a fusion beam mean that it is a stream of particles that are combining to form heavier elements within the beam itself? That must be difficult to achieve, because it takes enormous pressures to bring the nucleii close enough for the nuclear fusion to occur, and that's not going to happen when the beam is traveling through open space. Maybe a fusion beam is simply a powerful laser that is powered by a nuclear fusion reactor?

So, do ripper beams and incinerator beams consist of a stream of particles, or are they a form of electromagnetic radiation which are waves? I suppose the question of wave vs. particle may be irrelevant because they are the same thing because of duality. Lasers are both waves and particles because photons (and, in fact all particles), are also waves - it just depends on the observation method or experiment that is used to look at it.

[Desdinova]

fusion beams work similiar to fusion reactors. they heat the feul inside a magnetic bottle until it reaches fusion state. then an opening is made in the bottle releasing the energy in a high temperature, high velocity jet (solar flare).

edit. in several of the scifi games i used to play in (traveller, space opera, star frontiers, etc.) it was usually a feul pellet that gets heated by high powered lasers. at lower tech levels they could only heat it till it reached a plasma state (plasma beams) but then at higher levels it could be contained until it reached fusion state.

[ November 22, 2002, 08:04: Message edited by: desdinova ]