Semi-OT: A General Tech Question Thread for me :)

[Slick]

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.

[Starhawk]

Thanks slick so from now on my I-lasers are now officially just extremely powerful AP stream weapons

[douglas]

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.

[Starhawk]

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.

[Baron Munchausen]

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.

[Starhawk]

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.

[douglas]

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.

[Starhawk]

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

[El_Phil]

Whilst there is no "overkill", there is a "waste of munitions"

[Starhawk]

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

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)