Remove ads

Distance Learning for fun and profit...

Reader mode
mp3.1415player said:
Not sure how they'd have actually survived doing this, but we can put it down to plot armor
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The Cold War going into deep freeze.
Both entities realize what escalation would mean, both are sane enough to not want to escalate. Both eventually cool their heads enough that the Eagle and Bear, previously at each others throats, turn their backs on the feud and occupy opposite sides of their previous battlefield. They aren't necessarily allied, but they are reverent and respectful of each others power, ideals and territory for now on.
It's not perfect, sometimes one or both will skirt the edges, but they remember the futility of their feud and deescalate. The feud still exists of course, but it's gone into deep hibernation as they gained a sense of perspective fighting for their lives.
 
Vyrexuviel said:
I think the reason that the torpedoes in ME are so screwy is because they have two different, not quite compatible mission requirements: they're meant to batter down shields of enemy capital ships, and they're also meant to draw enemy fire away from your own ships and towards the decoy torpedoes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is so stupid I don't know how they could have got it past any sort of review board.

You Do Not Put Wildly Different Requirements Into A Single System.

If they wanted a decoy they should build a decoy, something that stays close to the ship and confuses fire control computers into targeting something other than a ship, it would be fine if it is launched from the same tubes as your torpedoes but that is as close to being a torpedo as it should get.

Their torpedoes should be fast, enduring, agile and seeking with as large of a warhead as they can cram into any remaining space once those first four requirements are met. You certainly don't sacrifice speed for any sort of decoy function. If you could exchange the warhead for a decoy system let it be something that draws attention from the CIWS to the decoy and away from the live torps.

In the Honorverse (Honor Harrington) they have dedicated decoys to lure fire away from the main ship and torpedo decoys to draw fire away from the actually dangerous torpedoes and it is done in a way that seems to mesh well with how warfighting could happen in the future. After all the goals of a ship is to survive (not get shot) and kill enemies (deliver enough torpedoes intact through their defences to at least cripple them).
 
E M Berner said:
Snip
You Do Not Put Wildly Different Requirements Into A Single System.
Snip
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Torpedoes (systems) designed by committees and sold as a cost savings to other committees. :D

Real world example in militaries are not only common but we could fill books (and there are books filled) with examples. Civilians also try it all the time. It is from all those examples that we know that, you Should not put wildly different requirements into a single system. I would like to think that they (we) would learn better.

Edit: Funny thing is that sometimes when they just make a good solid system it turns out to be quite versatile.
 
Last edited:
E M Berner said:
You Do Not Put Wildly Different Requirements Into A Single System.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's funny, but with eezo tech and computers this could very easily be a truly multifunction device, as long as they only try to use one function at a time. After all, a self-guided FTL missile needs the same hardware plus explosives as a slow decoy or a messenger bouy. Even better, if they miss or run out of fuel they can be recovered and deactivated by a physical connection before being refuelled and reused. Just have a software update in the tube to say which configuration it needs to use.
 
Last edited:
Darkphoenixlady said:
A self-guided FTL missile
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Lemme stop you there.

From what I heard, up until a terrorist organization among the Turians used an FTL freighter to excise a fairly large chunk of a planetary surface, the idea of using an FTL impactor apparently never even -occured- to the Mass Effect people. Look up the Cerberus News thingie about the Taetrus Blast.

The thing is: eezo is apparently stupid-expensive. And using enough of it to make FTL rockets is ruinously expensive, because you don't get that eezo back. And a missile that -misses- the target is a bad missile and should be publicly humiliated. And that's leaving aside the fact that the Mass Effect universe does not have FTL sensors, so such a missile would have to be a dumbfire rocket launched at ranges short enough to not really need an FTL drive.

The closest that I think the ME universe gets to "FTL sensors" is having a sensor platform already in the target zone, using a comm bouy to relay its scanner results to whoever needs them.
 
You use the eezo in the launchers not the missile/ torpedo. Of course to do this you would have to go back to wet navy tactics of getting broadside on and giving them hell, but then I was always a Honor Harrington fan
 
Vyrexuviel said:
eezo is apparently stupid-expensive
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Not so expensive that they can't put a bit in pretty much every weapon. And it doesn't have to be guided in FTL, just be able to calculate microjumps so that it gets closer to its target before it can launch countermeasures. If it's laser guided this would be trivial, as even ICBM's have been able to calculate burn times for decades. Certainly it would be even easier for something that could automatically navigate through gates to deliver messages.
 
Yeah, "eezo is too expensive to waste on a planet killer" is fundamentally incompatible with "everyone and their dog owns multiple devices containing the stuff" unless for some reason major governments are massively subsidising civilian sales, even out in uncontrolled space somehow.
 
Mr_Rose said:
Yeah, "eezo is too expensive to waste on a planet killer" is fundamentally incompatible with "everyone and their dog owns multiple devices containing the stuff" unless for some reason major governments are massively subsidising civilian sales, even out in uncontrolled space somehow.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
wasn't it because of the rate of diminishing returns? like how eezo for small frigates is cheap compared to the eezo needed for a dreadnought as it becomes EXPONENTIALLY more inefficient the bigger the mass effect you need? so cheap on personal equipment level needing only a tiny bit, but on large scale weapons would need pounds to literal tons?
 
tri2 said:
wasn't it because of the rate of diminishing returns? like how eezo for small frigates is cheap compared to the eezo needed for a dreadnought as it becomes EXPONENTIALLY more inefficient the bigger the mass effect you need? so cheap on personal equipment level needing only a tiny bit, but on large scale weapons would need pounds to literal tons?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If that's the case, clearly they are doing it wrong. Probably something stupid like forgetting the skin effect so the only eezo affected by the charge is the stuff on the outside of the lump. Wouldn't be surprising at all.
 
Besides all that, a superluminal planet killer doesn't have to be big. If you take a relatively cheap frigate class engine and remove all the pointless gubbins like life support and guns, you have something that can go very fast. Aim it at the right geological anomaly and you might actually split the target in two…
 
Mr_Rose said:
Besides all that, a superluminal planet killer doesn't have to be big. If you take a relatively cheap frigate class engine and remove all the pointless gubbins like life support and guns, you have something that can go very fast. Aim it at the right geological anomaly and you might actually split the target in two…
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That's what they did to the freighter they used in the Taetrus Blast Incident. It removed a chunk of the downtown of the city and flattened the rest, but it wasn't a planetkiller, even at FTL, because in order to -reach- FTL speeds, the core has to lower the mass of the ship to less than zero, to make the energy equation balance.

Yeah, if you try to apply real physics to MAJIK SPESS RAWKZ, you're going to get a massive headache.
 
Vyrexuviel said:
That's what they did to the freighter they used in the Taetrus Blast Incident. It removed a chunk of the downtown of the city and flattened the rest, but it wasn't a planetkiller, even at FTL, because in order to -reach- FTL speeds, the core has to lower the mass of the ship to less than zero, to make the energy equation balance.

Yeah, if you try to apply real physics to MAJIK SPESS RAWKZ, you're going to get a massive headache.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I presume that the problem with eezo is that it preserves the total energy in the system. So you can't just switch it off and end up going at a high percentage of c. As such it just trades apparent mass for velocity and vice versa.
 
Darkphoenixlady said:
I presume that the problem with eezo is that it preserves the total energy in the system. So you can't just switch it off and end up going at a high percentage of c. As such it just trades apparent mass for velocity and vice versa.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You'd think that, but nope: that's how ME weapons get so good at punching through armor. By lowering the mass of the round to near-zero, and accelerating it with a traditional magnetic coilgun system, they can get -tremendous- accelerations because of the reduced mass of the round while it's still inside the chamber. Once it exits the muzzle, it reverts to normal mass and keeps the same velocity.

Their -hand weapons- violate the Conservation of Momentum. Their FTL drives -should- be devastating planet killers. and yet, they aren't. Canonically.

Makes your head hurt, doesn't it? >.<
 
Vyrexuviel said:
You'd think that, but nope: that's how ME weapons get so good at punching through armor. By lowering the mass of the round to near-zero, and accelerating it with a traditional magnetic coilgun system, they can get -tremendous- accelerations because of the reduced mass of the round while it's still inside the chamber. Once it exits the muzzle, it reverts to normal mass and keeps the same velocity.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If it conserved energy or momentum, you'd do the opposite: increasing mass inside the barrel. That would allow your gun to apply force to the projectile more effectively (the faster it goes the harder it is to push on it as a rule) and then when it leaves the barrel and drops back to normal mass it also snaps to a much higher speed.
Vyrexuviel said:
Their -hand weapons- violate the Conservation of Momentum. Their FTL drives -should- be devastating planet killers. and yet, they aren't. Canonically.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Crossing the zero-mass boundary has to make a difference. Otherwise, you're concluding that you could go FTL using an Eezo drive, turn off the drive, and keep going FTL as an object notionally subject to normal physical laws. Which laws are going to be unhappy about your kinetic energy being a complex number.
 
EK​ = ½MV2​ so if mass is negative that number also goes negative… which also makes no sense, but in a different way.

Or, what if the Mass Effect explicitly only counters relativistic mass once you go to zero rest mass? Which kinda implies that if you pass the threshold you automatically jump to light speed with an apparent velocity proportional to the current supplied because there's no other way to exist in that state? Unless you've devised some method of containing and directing the field into space time itself (i.e. how relays do it)… but that would also mean that what you'd get out of a relativistic impact would probably mostly be a whole bunch of electricity, in a form more commonly referred to as β-radiation, as the additional relativistic and pseudo negative mass cancelled out and fed back through the eezo. Also, a big pretty blue explosion of Cherenkov radiation on top.
 
Last edited:
Aineko said:
If it conserved energy or momentum, you'd do the opposite: increasing mass inside the barrel. That would allow your gun to apply force to the projectile more effectively (the faster it goes the harder it is to push on it as a rule) and then when it leaves the barrel and drops back to normal mass it also snaps to a much higher speed.

Crossing the zero-mass boundary has to make a difference. Otherwise, you're concluding that you could go FTL using an Eezo drive, turn off the drive, and keep going FTL as an object notionally subject to normal physical laws. Which laws are going to be unhappy about your kinetic energy being a complex number.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As EDI explains in ME3, the Eezo-core generates a "pocket of mass-free space", which protects the Normandy from collisions with micrometoroids or the like. At sub-luminal velocities, however, collisions do occur, and the ship suffers abrasion and damage. She further comments that the ship may require maintenance by the end of the year. (And Shepard responds that, if they survive the Reaper invasion, they'll "totally spring for it". Presumably, this could be one of the things taken care of during the Citadel DLC repairs?)

ME1 codex entries also mention that if the Mass Effect field does fail on a vessel in FTL, it drops to below lightspeed, and the excess energy is released as "lethal Cherenkov radiation". A reason not to have it on your ships, perhaps, but for an FTL torpedo whose field collapses when it hits the enemy ship / kinetic barriers that is surely a feature?
 
Mr_Rose said:
EK​ = ½MV2​ so if mass is negative that number also goes negative… which also makes no sense, but in a different way.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Negative energy measurements don't necessarily fail to make sense, though they're certainly weird for kinetic energy. However, that's the Newtonian formula - good enough for many human purposes but wrong when you're dealing with speeds that are a non-negligible fraction of c and horribly wrong when dealing with speeds that are a large fraction of c.

The relativistic formula also goes negative when given negative values for m. But then, it gets an imaginary part if you plug in superluminal speeds. Of the two, I'd say the second is the more puzzling...
 
Last edited:
It's safe to say the so called physics of Mass Effect make even less sense then the Inertialess drives from Lensman. That one, at least, had and followed consistent rules and had mechanics that at lest sort of made sense in setting.

For those that are unfamiliar, the Inertialess drive suspended momentum and rendered the object it affected effectively massless, making it's instantaneous velocity that where it's thrust was equal to the drag it was experiencing. This meant it's atomic drives (think fusion torches; this is an OLD series) could push a ship in the near vacuum of space to speeds many hundreds of times that of light, with greater speeds in the less dense interstellar and intergalactic regions then within a solar system. It's downsides: momentum was suspended, but conserved and thus needed to be equalized upon arrival, and thrust had to be constant. One of the upsides: no damage from collisions in either direction, with small objects being "nudged" aside as part of the drag the ship experienced and large ones brining the ship to an instant stop. Also, no acceleration is ever felt by the crews...

You know, now that I think of it, such a drive may just be the sort of BS this version of Taylor might just come come up with. Imagine the looks on the faces of the Citadel Races if suddenly the ships of the Migrant Fleet became Immune To Mass Driver Weapons of ALL Sorts...
 
Jacen1 said:
You know, now that I think of it, such a drive may just be the sort of BS this version of Taylor might just come come up with
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Taylor inventing Bergs would be great. Inertialess combat was well thought out in Lensman - mostly about grappling, whether physically or with tractor beams/zones... and a side of sending so much energy so fast and in such a dense beam that it penetrates the target screens and all based on the drag of atoms in space.

Doc Smith also liked his subspace, using it as a gateway to other parts of the Cosmic All... just like Taylor going through subspace to get Tali.
 
I'm kinda hoping that Taylor comes up with a Spindizzy drive. Imagine the looks on the Council's faces when the Quarians show up DRAGGING A PLANET.

(Spindizzy drives were a 19th century idea that misunderstood how angular momentum and magnetism worked. They got exponentially more powerful the larger the ship they were on, making very large ships, such as CONTINENTS more affordable and effective than smaller ones like supertankers.)
 
Mr_Rose said:
EK​ = ½MV2​ so if mass is negative that number also goes negative… which also makes no sense, but in a different way.

Or, what if the Mass Effect explicitly only counters relativistic mass once you go to zero rest mass? Which kinda implies that if you pass the threshold you automatically jump to light speed with an apparent velocity proportional to the current supplied because there's no other way to exist in that state? Unless you've devised some method of containing and directing the field into space time itself (i.e. how relays do it)… but that would also mean that what you'd get out of a relativistic impact would probably mostly be a whole bunch of electricity, in a form more commonly referred to as β-radiation, as the additional relativistic and pseudo negative mass cancelled out and fed back through the eezo. Also, a big pretty blue explosion of Cherenkov radiation on top.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

so KE should be something like

Edit thanks SAL9000
FTFY:
\[ \begin{align} m &= \frac{m_0}{\sqrt{1-\dfrac{v^2}{c^2}}}\\ \text{KE} &= mc^2-m_0c^2\\ \end{align} \]
and m0 is rest mass. when v=c the first term is divided by zero and when v>c you get division by an imaginary number

1/2mv^2 is an approximation derived from a Taylor expansion that holds when v << c
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top