Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution
- Thread starter Hoyr
- Start date
@Yog has already come up with some really cool stuff; what's already there is a great read. Heh, given what's there I'm wondering if it could actually be published when it's done; wouldn't that be something?
On a slightly more acquisitive note, the paper itself should probably be worth a few hundred RP in-game, as one of the most mathematically-intensive omakes ever produced.
I really doubt that the person inside the barrier is being personally affected by the PME field; that sounds really unhealthy, plus it would make their own weapons nearly useless.
Chargone
Invisable operator
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- New Zealand
I'm... not sure what you're saying? Or at least, what you think i was saying (which, admittedly, could have been clearer.)
To stop the bullet, it would make sense if the sensors detecting incoming rounds and the kinnetic barrier system created a source of gravity strong enough and close enough to the round to deflect the round away from the wearer in a sort of slingshot effect. I'm aware this has it's own issues, but it sounds more like something that'd work than "kinetic barriers" creating an actual wall of opposing force... somehow. Not that I'm anything close to an expert on these sorts of things, of course.
I was pretty much agreeing with you that it seems unlikely that a kinetic barrier is just a "solid" PME field that the subject is sitting inside. I mean, first off the blackbody radiation issue @Yog was talking about would do weird things to a person over an extended period of time. On a more immediate level, the PME field would rob the person's own mass effect weapons of speed/momentum.
That's a terrible work ethic!
Look, if the man wants to try to make the bullshit space magic less bullshit, then more power to him. Who knows, it might lead to one of those, "Huh, that's interesting"-s that lead to real scientific advances. See: story behind discovery of penicillin.
In other words, gravity.
Yes, that's one possible avenue of exploration: that a PME field might directly warp spacetime the way objects with mass do.
It's been 16 hours so:
Vote tally:
##### 3.18
[X] Peak Human - 30d10+55 + Overflow 1
[X] CASIE Implant - 70d10+65 + Overflow 2
[X] Frigates - 40d10+40 + Overflow 3
[X] Improved Warhead - 0d10+0 + 150 Bonus RP
[X] Advanced Neural Interface - 0d10+0 + 400 Bonus RP
[X] Advanced ME Theory - 0d10+0 + 400 Bonus RP
[X] Optical Computing 0d10 + Overflow 4
No. of votes: 3
Cassiemouse, meianmaru, Lagrange
[X] Improved Warhead - 0d10+0 + 150 Bonus RP = 100%
[X] Advanced Neural Interface - 0d10+0 + 400 Bonus RP = 100%
[X] Advanced ME Theory - 0d10+0 + 400 Bonus RP = 100%
[X] Peak Human - 30d10+55 + Overflow 1
[X] CASIE Implant - 70d10+65 + Overflow 2
[X] Frigates - 40d10+40 + 50 Bonus RP + Overflow 3
[X] Optical Computing 0d10 + Overflow 4
No. of votes: 3
TheEyes, tyaty1, JhonCollins
[x] Improved Warhead - 0d10+0 + 150 Bonus RP (100%)
[x] Advanced Neural Interface - 0d10+0 + 400 Bonus RP (100%)
[x] Advanced ME Theory - 0d10+0 + 400 Bonus RP (100%)
[x] Peak Human - 30d10+55 (98.08%)
[x] CASIE Implant - 70d10+65 (98.23%)
[x] Frigates - 40d10+40 + Overflow 1 (1.46%) (95% chance of 230)
[x] Optical Computing 0d10 + Overflow 2 (Basically 0%)
No. of votes: 1
AckSed
This is from here to here for reference.
I... don't think so? I mean, I think (not sure, but think) that it'll get compensated overall, over the whole transition.
But I think I finally got it. Cosmic microwave background radiation! Its total power will rise as K, and its total pressure as K*sqrt(K) when obseved inside the field, creating the expelling force! Yes! I think this would work. Now, to run some checks and numbers. Also, upload the calculation code somewhere.
More like political costs, due to the way procurement and R&D now work in the US government (
The classic (and most visually noticeable) of these costs are the space shuttle. The space shuttle was built with those giant thrusters sticking out of the back because one of the design requirements was to be able to go from an equatorial to polar orbit in a single orbit; in other words, it was designed to be able to launch a nuclear missile/bomb at Russia without passing over Russian territory. Now, why you'd be doing this when you already have bombers with nukes on them flying in the air already as part of your decades-long MAD strategy I have no idea, but some Congress-critter wrote that into the spec sheet, so the engineers had to build it. Note that since we got rid of that requirement the new Ares crew capsule being designed for a future Mars mission doesn't look nearly so ridiculous, though these days the stranglehold Congress has on the NASA budget will likely ensure we don't get to Mars in our lifetimes.
Actually as I understand it the situation is now reversed for may things. From what I've read on "why our militaries stuff costs so much now" its the military wanting to many things and congress is starting to get pissed. Take the new super carriers, the navy wants it too have far to many bits bob and new things. It was designed to be ready for upgrading with that electroplate stuff, lasers and all kinds of fancy items, so it needs reactors that provide twice the power it needs at launch. Its also designed as massively multi-role further increasing its cost. If someone in congress was responsible for the militaries choice to build craft in this manner I'd imagined they have been hanged/burnt in effigy on some of the sites I was looking at. The Air Force (apparently) wants to drop the A-10 (one of our best planes in terms of current usefulness and cost) and use the far more expensive F-35 to run the same jobs which its even worse at (or so I read). Congress has been telling the Air Force no. The Navy was supposed to maintain more ships but the navy has been proposing and researching more and more expensive multi-role ships so they can't have as many! Hell the Navy's current hull rating system is about a rank up from what it was or so I read.
Now that could be wrong and their may be people in congress who are responsible, but most of the fingers I've seen are pointed at the elements of the military responsible for development and procurement spending to much on high tech. Though some of the issue can be allocated to the buying practices used, which I'm pretty sure is mostly congresses' fault.
What? Hmm.. looks like a math fail, fixed. Thanks.
Indeed repulsors cost should scale by the square of radius at a minimum. Probably by volume, which is what a arc-reactor does. Thrust is by the square of radius, and power... We'll leave it at square of radius for the moment, so the old calcs can stand. Assuming that the stats for one are .3 production and 50,000 credits for a .1m diameter repulsor that draws 700MW and provides 12,500N of thrust*, estimated based on mach 2 peak performance of four. That would leave a 1m/1,250,000N repulsor at 300 production, 50 million credits and 70GW power. A 10m/125,000,000N repulsor at 300,000 production, 50 billion credits and 7 TW power. Frankly you don't need a freaking 125 MN thruster, much less four. A set of eight one meters (for bidirectional thruster setup) is more then enough for a frigate I'd guess. So 1000GW arc-reactor: 60P/10MC, 8x 1m Repulsors: 2400P/400MC and power draw of 560GW. Total: 2460P and 410MC.
I may want to up rate the power draw to scale by volume. That would mean that a single arc-reactor can power seven repulsors of the same production and credit cost at all levels. Thoughts?
*Technically its ~8,000N for four, but I tend to guesstimate the repulsor at 7.5cm across, not the 10cm of UberJJK and since 10 cm is nice to math with so I up rated and rounded up. This is also 1/2 what UberJJK tends to estimate.
Also on a side note the Tiger should cost at least 30P/5MC probably more. Using the by volume rule it should cost four times as much. Opps
, oh well fixing it would take far to much effort, so I'll ignore it if you guys will.Yes but the end result size is more then a factory could handle, sure you could build the keel plates and crap, but you'd need a specialized factory/site to assemble the damned things. Even a Factory III tops out at around 8m individual objects.
A ship-sized gravity nullifier, like, say, a ship's eezo core?
We'll yeah I'd be ship grade core the problem is that you'd need at least two so you can cycle them just to keep the thing from breaking and maybe more for any industrial processes. Doing it in space is far easier as you only need one core and you may not need to use it until you actually use the ship.
You can forge a lot of the parts elsewhere it'd be far more economical I imagine and you wouldn't have workers/robot in high mass fields (that also are producing a shielding effect), though their welding tools probably can project those.
That is true... Hmm.. I may have to do some math for this after I choose ship numbers.... Specialization/Single product may knock of a quarter from factory build time...
Its worth noting that there are some vague market saturation caps and possible income caps eventually. Civilian arc-reactor demand in the combined citadel market is probably around 5 trillion units ever, though chances are you're not going to sell more then few billion units per quarter to civilian buyers (still a lot!). Not sure on the military or corporate saturation levels would be. The galaxy isn't quite made of money. Maybe ~2.5 quintillion credits all told? Not sure how much of that is bound up locally as opposed to available on the galactic level. It probably won't be a noticeable issue but I do plan to keep an eye on such things
If it were me making the ruling, what I'd be doing is restricting what size of factory can be used to build larger products, and/or how many Factories you can have in a single geographic location, so we can't cheat the build time constraint by laying down 10,000,000 Factory IIIs or 100,000,000 Factory IIs and start building any Dreadnought we want in 2-3 quarters without having to retool. I'd also consider some super-expensive tech options to let us build factories faster, so our endgame can feature us throwing out 10,000 m super-ultra-dreadnoughts against giant Reaper world devastators.
I though that was what I was doing? Most ships are too big for Factor IIIs barring special conditions, so that's what Space factories are for. I may rule that you need at least one shipyard of the right size for each larger ship assembled, though other factories can still help. That would be due to the need for a large enough assembly site. Planetary sites have a three factory limit with space having its own limits. And big factories have to be built in space.
Same rules would apply to other large constructions, though the only ones I can think of that big would be ships and space stations. So I'm using ships as an example as space stations are weird.
Well it does seem that dark energy is a carrier for kinetic energy/momentum, similar to photons. Head sized ball can deliver ~1250 newtons of force on impact in a vacuum and the impact is (sometimes only partially?) transmitted though shields. Of course the force may be transmitted via to some other effect and I don't know how much it'd help. Shield wise that'd mean the PME is sucking up KE/momentum from the incoming projectile.
Can't think of much other than the speed of light limit. But that seems messy. Also recall shields work on planet, not sure how cosmic microwave background radiation and its shifting by the shields would be effected by the atmosphere, but it is something to keep in mind.
Technically speaking it all depends on how they hit. Positron - Electron annihilation is "clean", you get gamma rays and maybe some neutrinos that's it. Anti-Proton - Proton is mess, See protons (and anti-protons) have three parts and quite often only one or sometimes two of the three parts is annihilated. So what you'd get is 1/3-1 protons annihilated and then the system would have to stabilize itself. The Lithium atom may be torn in the process apart, it might not depending on factors. Of course first you'd have to you know hit the lithium nucleus with the anti-hydrogen's anti-proton. Which is rather difficult due to size and spacing and as I believe the lithium's electron shell would repel the anti-proton.
Edit: also thanks to @UberJJK!
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From what my defense contractor friends have been telling me, the difference is that it's the generals playing politics with defense spending now, as opposed to the 70s-80s when it was the politicians. Ever since Reagan got a bug in his hat about that Star Wars laser weapons thing (which was a doomed idea until someone came up with diode-pumped fiber lasers about twenty years later), Congress has just gotten used to throwing money at the defense department and not really paying attention to where it was going, content to know that it was giving the Russians a gigantic ulcer. The military cutbacks in the 90s and early 2000s focused mostly on troop levels, while R&D and weapons development largely continued.
Because of this, siphoning money off of the R&D budget became the thing to do in the military to remain relevant, and so you have a bunch of old guys with stars on their shoulders ordering up silly crap like the F-35. It looks like some in Congress are finally, finally trying to reign them in, but many of these generals have spent their whole careers getting free money thrown at them every time they had a wacky idea, and between that and the fact that there are still a lot of people that think that denying a general anything he wants is tantamount to treason, the next half decade looks to be an interesting one.
Erm, a ship is pretty much going to have to be able to generate PMEs and NMEs simultaneously, otherwise they'll never be able to both maneuver/fire MACs and have kinetic barriers up at the same time, so we already know a ship has more going on than a single monolithic eezo core. Also, putting those cores near actual ground will make grounding them much easier and less dangerous.
To me, it just makes sense to use the core to help build the ship, which would serve the secondary purpose of stress-testing the core so you know it's working reliably before you start working on the rest of the systems. It's not like the eezo itself is going to decay or anything, and frankly if your ship's superstructure is so weak that it can't take a measly 1g, then I doubt it'll do well against ship-based GARDIANS and MACs! I imagine the Alliance in particular likes to do their large ship construction on the ground, where it can be more easily secured from prying alien eyes. They also build on the ground so they can more easily hide the 800m+ nuke guns that they rip out of their illegal dreadnoughts to make them into totally legal and legit fighter-carriers.
All the more reason we need to create/expand into new markets, and possibly set off a couple of economic booms over the next decade. Definitely need to look into making eezo easier to mine/produce.
Hm, okay I guess I was misreading what you had above, when you were talking about 10,000 Factory IIIs and the like. I figured it was something like you buy 10,000 Factory IIIs, then three quarters later you suddenly have a Factory big enough to build a dreadnought, but now that I re-read that section I get that you were talking about a Factory VII just costing exactly as much as 10,000 Factory IIIs, which is fine by me.
Still less than enamored with the idea that large things must be built in space. That sort of thing makes sense in the real world, but millspec eezo and the robust construction necessary to actually fight a fast combat in space both negate a lot of the advantages of construction in space as opposed to groundside. Somewhat ironically, it might be the comparatively smaller civilian freighters and the like that may need to be built off-planet, as such ships would probably not be strong enough to survive being in a gravity well.
And yeah, a large space station is likely to be a Single-product Factory IX or something. You build the Factory, use the Factory to build the station, then dismantle the Factory.
I have resolved the problem. It's quite easy, really, when one thinks about it (for a long time). It goes back to radiation pressure. The object that is shielded emits heat radiation. That energy scales as K when transitioning INTO the shield, where it impacts the projectile with the force that scales as K*sqrt(K), i.e. faster than the projectile's mass. It's quite beautiful, really, and really works.
it does mean, however, that shielding something cold is harder than shielding something hot. Of course at high K you have the heat radiation emitted by the projectile itself (and absorbed the underlying protected object, heating it) factoring it.
Yes, I think I solved this problem. Expect the calculator program (in Delphi) coming in about an hour with some examples for calcs of projectiles facturing in the games. The paper itself is in the process of being written, with all the equations already laid out. You (and others) can check them out.
Yeah that sounds rightish based on what I've read.
From what I got out of the background material a ship has at least 5 separate systems that use ME. Drive core is the large central core that produces the strongest effects its used for moving. The MA cannons use NME, they may be tapping off of the central core or using a set of smaller cores. The shield are actually a bunch of tiny PME emitters each projecting a segment of the shield. The probably each have their own core or have a core shared by sector. Then their is the artificial gravity system, once would assume it uses PME (maybe?). It probably has its own small cores/emitters distributed throughout the ship and maybe connected to the shields. Then there are the inertial dampeners, they are a unknown and one would assume also distributed, might be part of connected to the artificial gravity. There may also be a reactor system, a thruster system and/or an antimatter containment system.
All told there is probably one big drive core and a bunch of little ME generators though out the ship. What I'm saying is that you'd need a ME core set to generate a lot of NME to save the ship from breaking on the ground. One to take over for it when it needs to discharge and one to produce high gee. Now if you schedule things right you should be able to use just two.
Multi-core tech would in theory allow you to use multiple drive cores and synchronize the timing so that you can basically never need to discharge. Or be able to use a bunch of tiny cores collectively so that when each one does discharge it basically does nothing. Which would be my theory on how the reapers do it and why they do the lightning thing.
To me, it just makes sense to use the core to help build the ship, which would serve the secondary purpose of stress-testing the core so you know it's working reliably before you start working on the rest of the systems. It's not like the eezo itself is going to decay or anything, and frankly if your ship's superstructure is so weak that it can't take a measly 1g, then I doubt it'll do well against ship-based GARDIANS and MACs! I imagine the Alliance in particular likes to do their large ship construction on the ground, where it can be more easily secured from prying alien eyes. They also build on the ground so they can more easily hide the 800m+ nuke guns that they rip out of their illegal dreadnoughts to make them into totally legal and legit fighter-carriers.
The core probably could be used to help in some ways, but I imagine it'd be very phased, one would need to only turn it on at selective times or risk, Bad ThingsTM.
As far as I can tell the only reason a ship can't land is the power issue. Which in the face of the FTL stuff is rather silly. I see little reason to forbid ships from landing after they've had good power upgrade though they might have a fairly limited time in atmosphere (and fly like bricks). The only thing I can guess at is that while ME effects mass, weight and thus gravity factors into the power needed to reduce the mass as apparently all you need to land is more eezo/power.
Hey I didn't write the setting! If I did landing ships wouldn't be an issue or at least I would have explained properly why it didn't work. However as it stands being unable to land things bigger then say 200m even on a one gee planet is a core part of how the setting functions.
Complicated... I'd also point out for the construction of building you've just been paying someone else to produce the production points needed and for the raw goods. Errg... more things that are going to get complicated.
Edit: Freaking BBC code \ not / is the escape character!
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Oh man... Well, I made the program to calc kinetic barriers based on my paper's ideas. The paper can be found here, the program here. On the plus side - kinetic barriers work, there is repelling going on with reasonable K mass scaling coefficients (lower than 10^5). On the downside - accelerations on the of magnitude of 10^19 meters/sceond^2. They also cool objects down, but not by much.
So, yeah, kinetic barriers work. What do I have left to address?
So, yeah, kinetic barriers work. What do I have left to address?
- Location
- America
Thermal clips?
What about them? I don't remember mass effect featuring in how they work.
Oh, and I'm not touching cryo armor, for that way lies madness.
- Location
- America
What about tech armor?
'As far as I can tell the only reason a ship can't land is the power issue. Which in the face of the FTL stuff is rather silly. I see little reason to forbid ships from landing after they've had good power upgrade though they might have a fairly limited time in atmosphere (and fly like bricks). The only thing I can guess at is that while ME effects mass, weight and thus gravity factors into the power needed to reduce the mass as apparently all you need to land is more eezo/power.'
It's not just a power issue, it's supposed to be the fact that once your ship reaches a certain size, acceleration isn't stable enough across the entire frame of ship and thus the ship would either twist, bend, warp or snap in half.
If they were willing to build linear accelerators or massive booster rockets that could carry a 1KM dreadnaught into outer space, then they wouldn't have any problems building them on the ground.
Which is why they get freaked out about 2KM long Reapers landing on planets....
Anyhow, considering that the Reapers do seem to use fuelless propulsion while not being stealthy at all, it is likely that they used QVP thrusters to give themselves stable acceleration across their entire bodies...or at least enough for it to work....which would explain Jokers comment about the reaper being able to pull turns that would normally tear a ship in half.
It's not just a power issue, it's supposed to be the fact that once your ship reaches a certain size, acceleration isn't stable enough across the entire frame of ship and thus the ship would either twist, bend, warp or snap in half.
If they were willing to build linear accelerators or massive booster rockets that could carry a 1KM dreadnaught into outer space, then they wouldn't have any problems building them on the ground.
Which is why they get freaked out about 2KM long Reapers landing on planets....
Anyhow, considering that the Reapers do seem to use fuelless propulsion while not being stealthy at all, it is likely that they used QVP thrusters to give themselves stable acceleration across their entire bodies...or at least enough for it to work....which would explain Jokers comment about the reaper being able to pull turns that would normally tear a ship in half.
- Location
- Budapest, Hungary
Kinetic barrier enhanced with flashforged armor pieces.
Ok, so I have TIR to add (not sure how in-depth I'll go with it, really) and to recalc Thermal Annihilator. Probably some other minor things, and, of course, to polish this and to incorporate all the good criticism I was given (mainly be @Hoyr ). But the primary things have been tackled, I feel. Unless I'll remember something else.
That's the thing though the ability to go FTL and the inertial compensators needed should make that trivial. The mass reduction makes the downward force to small to be dangerous. Remember the deformation force is F=ma. Gravitational a is independent of the ships mass so dropping the mass? Reduces the force greatly. Even on the less generous mass reduction estimates it would take a mere 20 evenly distributed thrusters each capable of 675N to keep a 1km dreadnaught in the air and perfectly fine (Eh maybe add one or two more so it doesn't roll). Get it light enough and you can do it with a only a pair of ion thrusters doing <.1N. Those forces and numbers are nothing nothing on the scale of rockets. Which says to me that ships larger than frigates just can't drop their mass enough*.
If you can't do it now all you need to land is just more mass reduction. That's why the material for Sovereign says that landing on a planet implies massive amounts of power and a large eezo core.
*Or the writers fail a science.
If I'm doing this right the effect might not worked scaled up to dreadnaught sized... 4025km/s 20kg shots, barrier what maybe 10m deep? Don't think that can be varied in the program tough. Shot made from... IDK something with really high magnetic permittivity.
Also barriers should stop the projectile not rebound it faster then it was going... you'd have found a better gun if that worked, how does it balance out?
I'd nitpick that 1000m/s is RL gun speed not faster than ever gun speed, but meh its less then an order of magnitude.
Well if you want to really get into a mess there's biotics, but I will in no way blame you if you just want to avoid that. Hmm, artificial gravity and inertial compensators are an option. Mass relays and comm buoys too. Or you could look into the temporal effects that Conrad wrote his thesis on.
On the other hand I'm trying to write a short bit on your in game thesis for Advanced ME Theory... blah...