Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution
- Thread starter Hoyr
- Start date
Van Ropen
Angry, angry about elves.
Eh.
We had a similar existential crisis with the ANI, and handwaved over the worst possibilities because genre, assumed safeties, blah blah blah. Same thing here, though probably even less of a big deal if they aren't actively picking up signals or connecting to outside sources the way an ANI is.
...though that does raise a point about raising things you (or a hypothetical soldier) is using in combat that they could lose access to if they are also using an ANI and come under bullshit cyberattack.
- Location
- United states
You are making the assumption that the Batarians haven't been improving their tech in preparation for the war with the Alliance. Also didn't Hoyd say that the MK II was vastly superior to the MK 1.75B? If so I rather we put at least 500 RP into just the MK II armor so that when the war starts a good portion of the army are equiped with the armor in case the Batarians upped their tech in anticapation of combat against the old MK models, it's not the Cabira is gonna done this turn anyway. Also I meant for the suits to have FTL not fight in space but so that they be used to transport whole squads/Legions without the need for ships drastically reducing the need for ships in troop transport.
I've no doubt they have; I'm just fairly certain that they will fail. Remember that we haven't been resting on our laurels here in terms of ground combat. Our Legionary suits today are vastly superior to the one that Revy used to one-shot a YMIR mech (!!) during the power armor competition. We have better anti-armor missiles, and micro-missiles to counter human wave and hostage-taking tactics; we have better barriers; we have Repulsors for flight; we have IFVs with super-crazy weapons capabilities. Most importantly, we have advanced VI-driven weapons drones that let us force-multiply our troops exponentially.
Remember, all this is being brought to bear against a species who has, given 2,000 years of access to mass effect tech, by 2185 still uses slavery to do most of its grunt work because they can't seem to get their VIs to do the work instead, and can't keep up with canon humanity in terms of tech despite the two millenium head start. No; basically the only way for the Batarians to even try to match us on the ground at this point is to throw themselves into the Leviathan, at which point they basically become Husks (I strongly suspect that the super-soldier that came after PI in that one event was from such a combination). Other than that, the moment we start landing Legionaries and Tigers on the Batarian homeworld our victory is assured; we just need to get to that point.
As I mentioned in a previous post, the Cabira (and thus the Core Cabira techs) need to get done quickly, because I am fairly certain that PI is going to be the main focus of the Skylian Blitz in 2176 and I'd prefer that our headquarters not be nuked from orbit. That basically requires almost exclusive investment in Cabira techs for the immediate future. Compared to that goal, the Mk. II pales in importance. We'll get there, to be sure; just not right now.
That is a terrible idea. Not only do you have the problem that a trip from one planet, through the Relay network, to another planet could potentially take days, but at every point in the process you're exposing the soldiers to ships and weapons on a vastly larger scale than they're equipped to handle. Again, you're turning soldiers into skeet.
- Location
- United states
Aren't we slready planning on working on stealth tech? also wouldn't it be difficult to hit a man sized object moving at high speeds especially with stealth tech in the void of space? Not too mention that not all planets have ships or else the Normandy and Sheperds crew wouldn't have gotten anywhere in any of the games. As for the trip taking several days wouldn't it(and before you say anything remember we can stop aging) be possible to put the armor pilots in a sort of hibernation?
Hmm, less useful than I hoped, at least initially. We'll need micro-QECs and cloud servers for these things to become truly game changing. Still worth the effort. No knowledge downloads? This means no engineering, no science, etc. Shame. Unless this can be handled by implants with databases of relevant info.
What would we need to develop matrix-style skill downloads? I assume some sort of electronic consciousness transfer (sorta like virtual aliens do).
I disagree. First of all, such things already exist in setting (remember that president (or some other high-level official, I forget) who was brain dead and then revived and integrated with a VI?). Secondly, universal translators are already close to that level of intrusion. Third, we have perfect black boxing, which should protect from hacking
And they have a Reaper to plunder for tech. Reaper which might have started to cooperate with said plundering.
Remember, it's magical space slavery which can out-compete other economic models enough for humans (and it seems USA-expy, culturally) to have to adopt it too.
- Location
- United States
So I was just looking at the planning post and was wondering why our research is growing so slowly? do we have a hard limit on the number of labs we can have per planet? and is there a way to remove the reduced efficiency of off planet researchers?
Pretty much. It's a sorta artificial limit so we don't develop into a Culture by the time of Reaper arrival. IC it's justified by how there's only so much Revy to boost research results of all our labs.
Loans are a thing, you know.
And given our current cash inflow and projected cash inflow, borrowing 1-3 trillion is doable as our credit rating is solid, and we make enough profit to repay that loan within a few years, even if every new tech we developed flopped.
I recalled something like them targeting post bronze age civilizations, but I can't source that. They didn't invade the Yahg homeworld immediately, and they were on the verge of making their first starship. Though it may just not have been a priority. However the Vanguard would just trigger the Reaping early, so meh?
Well to open laser maximum combat range occurs at around one light second max, almost definitely less. Purely due to targeting and hit issues.
Okay so making some basic assumptions:
18 GW power at lens laser (about what you can shove into a 100m frigate based on my lazy calculations, I'll probably round to 20GW)
10m Lens (Yeah that's big but I'll fit)
400nm Wavelength (Violet laser)
0.1s pulse duration
Target effect at 18,000 km on graphite carbon, 0.9864 m wide hole 10.6 cm deep (Max depth is 3.2meters at best aspect ratio).
With 100nm wavelength (Ultraviolet subsection C)? Same effect at 72,000 km
With 20nm (Extreme UV)? 300,000km (one light second) 0.722m wide hole, 15.3cm deep.
With miniaturization I'm probably going to let it go up to x10 that power too (Same hole 1.53 meters deep at 300,000km, maximum aspect ratio hole? 6.9 meters deep)
You really don't need gamma ray lasers.
Way to much. I mean if you talking antimatter... >50 petatons TnT?
Sure.
I have tweaked them just a tiny bit so they make a little more sense to me and I can actually run them as a "character". Just FYI.
They're still your salvation though destruction and turn people into techno-cyborg-zombie spaceship museums. They're reasons for doing so are a little different them ME3 portrayed them, quite similar though in fact you may never notice the difference.
It can for the most part plus maybe a helper VI, or you know an extranet connection. Databases + a creative skill (at a penalty but meh) can stand in for a lot.
1) Short version: Revy is really a magic research fairy and only has so much magic research dust to spread around.
2) Yes one lab I-III stack
3) No
- Location
- Leeds
What does that do to research dice. I notice that we've got 4 research heroes, Revy, Conrad, Gaver and Mordin.
You could roll a d100 and just give us that percentile of what the bell diagram looks like.
I tried to suggest this. Its what sparked this massive argument.
Very true. We could build a better tech later, building upon it (ie matrix-style skill downloads that stay with you and don't need a chip. ).
That doesn't say what you think it says. The corporations who re-legalized slavery weren't doing it because the economic model is superior; they did it because they wanted to not have to pay their own workers anything. Even magical space slavery isn't better for the economy; it's just better for a few ultra-rich people who, in the case of Anhur, managed to buy enough of the government to get a law changed. Slavery, like repealing banking regulations, is a great deal for a rich few who want to print money to line their own pockets, but it sucks for the economy as a whole.
What this tells us is that Batarian society as a whole is as incapable of protecting itself from corruption as a tiny planetary government, and worse, that they are still that corrupt, even 2,000 years later, when Anhur fell in a couple of years.
We just did that, and very successfully too. I'm not sure if @Hoyr is going to let us do another one, though; it's very much a potential game-breaker if we can just get 3 trillion credits worth of loan, although I don't think anyone doubts our ability to repay.
Emphasis mine.
The only way you can get a beam spot smaller than the lens size at the source is if you have a converging beam, which means we'll need some sort of material that can create a perfect mirror and instantly adjust itself into a parabolic shape allowing us to dynamically focus the beam at the range we're targeting. Are you telling me that we get free access to such a mirror? Because if so that's awesome, and I withdraw my recommendation for a gamma ray laser.
My original assumption was that you were never going to fall for us making the business end of our laser 10m wide with a converging beam that lets us dynamically focus at any range we want. If we can do that, well, hey, screw gamma rays, let's go for power instead!
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- Location
- United States
So what do the QEC's give us other than info-sec? as far as i know they need to be made in pairs so a drone swarm is a really inefficient use of this technology. if all they give us is info-sec, i think they are a lower on the priority pole than some of the better lasers, shields, and MK2 arc-reactors and suits, and sensors. I would like to develop and put up some orbital laser sats (with the permission of the alliance of course) in order to protect our primary base. Then we can worry about info-sec beyond super-blackboxing.
They give us comms that cannot be tracked.
They give us comms that cannot be hacked.
They give us FTL comms. That means, if we put them on our sensor drones, we get FTL sensors. It's the next best thing to time travel. With GRASER ships and FTL sensors, we can hit a ship and destroy it at the speed of light, from light-minutes away where the target could never have a hope of retaliating.
QECs are pretty much the most awesome tech left on our list, after arc reactors and repulsors. If the Reapers didn't have such a massive headstart in terms of materiel, those three techs alone would mean our victory.
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Also, they give us comms that can't be blocked. Which is also very, very important.
- Location
- United States
I understand that they are awesome in there security potential, i'm just questioning their use in the immediate future assuming an assault (ala the Skyllian Blitz). Do we know how expensive they will be or how large the are? because we will likely need invisible man or maybe even the TIR before the drones become useful/not a bucket of wasted money. It just seems to me that we have some things with a higher priority than the QEC.
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Okay, now that is a reason that i could get behind. The only issue with that is who are we so concerned about communicating with right now? If we are under assault by a force that can get past the planet's defenses, we should be able to get an SOS off to the alliance. also, I remember us being about a day's travel from the nearest relay from earth. that probably a good minimum response time from the alliance fleet, with the actual being a few days. Maybe we should try to get the alliance to put a cruiser or two in system so that we, one of their more important in-house R&D companies, is better protected.
So yea, still don't see the immediate need for the QEC
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- Location
- Leeds
Yes but only between two connections.
I assume Hoyr is going to solve it but it sometimes confuses me that we put QEC in every space ship without saying what its entangled too. Are we also giving away a QEC phone linked to every purchase? Is the Alliance going to need to by some kind of 'mothership'module?
Infosec is rather huge when it comes to repelling invasions. Remember that the first thing that happens in an invasion is that the comm buoys are hacked/destroyed, preventing anyone from making a distress call. Now, granted that the response to such tactics should always be "When the comms go down, send a fleet," but then the red team tactics just evolve to destroying comm buoys in several decoy systems before going after the target.
QECs bypass all of that because, as @Yog said, they cannot be jammed, cannot be blocked, cannot be hacked or spoofed, and are instantaneous. On a strategic level, combined with assault/bombardment-grade shields (which we have, thank God), QECs will easily buy us enough time to wait for the Alliance to send a fleet in response to any major planetary invasion.
Frankly, QECs stop the Skylian Blitz cold. The only real reason we want the Cabira is so that it's Paragon Industries stopping the Blitz, rather than the Alliance.
You put the other side in a military base (or, in ParSec's case, in their HQ). Having all those endpoints interface with each other, with central command, or even with the civilian commnet is relatively trivial.
I'd assume the QEC connections to everywhere work somewhat like the Ansible Network from Orson Scott Card's later Ender Books. A bunch of central hubs because the crucial component is a single particle/small molecule and thus small enough to have multiple connections for each "reader" bit which is what would actually need room
deadcrystal
Slaaneshi Cultist
- Location
- The Warp
We seriously just got an explanation for how it works, it's a highly limited direct neural override. Deciding that we'll somehow make it work an entirely different way is kind of silly, there's no reason to think it could ever do that, it works on totally different principles. You aren't allowed to envisage a particular functionality and decide it'll somehow turn out that reality works that way.
Plus can we please stay away from the tech that would cause total social collapse and destroy humanity completely? Please, thank you? It seriously doesn't take more than a minute to think up ways the technology would ruin everything. Blackboxing doesn't help, it simply isn't relevant, it's all about the effects the application of the technology will actually have.
- Location
- Leeds
As I said,
I was just pointing out how its interesting that no one seems to be speculating the best way to optimise it.