Indeed that was me. Seeing as how Repulsors are much shorter range than lasers will eventually be, I was figuring that they'd take on the role of short-range megadeath that lasers currently occupy.
Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution
- Thread starter Hoyr
- Start date
Chargone
Invisable operator
- Location
- New Zealand
I said their objection is silly, not that repulsors aren't dangerous weapons.
The simple fact is that litterally ANY drive system has the same damn issue (ramming and unguided rockets at the low/crappy end, fusion torch to the face/hull or antimatter bombs at the other) and repulsors are positively Tame compaired to what they're already using in that regard (the specifics of how vary depending on what you're comparing it to), so their objection to us using/selling the drive on that basis is nonsensical. (Though is entirely believable.)
That's fine. I'm talking about cases were they're stacked right next to each other.
Ironically that would be pretty ineffective unless the incoming round was destroyed.
Edit: Completely destroyed or deflected I should say.
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- Location
- United States
yea, that is a lot of force that the projectile would have to be put under. if the repulsor could stop it or deflect it is such a short space (less than 1km?), it would almost definitely destroy the round entirely.
Lithium forever! But, seriously, lithium is a very cool stuff.
If someone can remind me how much that is (a cost of an apartment? Basically, how much does a middle class civilian roughly gets in Alliance in, say, a year), that'd be great. In any case, this is one project we could slowly move towards to. This is also probably something to discuss at the post-scarcity conference.
What if we design it so, in a few generations, it'll develop sapience? Actually, yes, this is an important question. Say, we take dogs and introduce bias selecting for general intelligence (through mucking with how they perceive 'Beauty" and select desired partners). By itself it isn't creating new species or sapient life. But in several generations it would lead to them becoming sapient.
I thought creation of new species was flat-out illegal? Also, not plabets. I wat to create "life" to colonize the very stars themselves.
Ok, sure.
The issue is that power requirements, and eezo amounts needed rise exponentially with the field strength and base mass affected. This makes smaller ships better. Miniaturization is basically the way to go.
Just had a thought about lithium and liquid heatsinks. It seems to me like the canon description of a lithium heatsink would run through liquid lithium very quickly, yet another place where our warships are burning through finite resources. I'm wondering if it would be possible to "recycle" the lithium used in the heatsink. Instead of just being expelled from the ship, the "hot" liquid lithium would get sent through an aerosolizer or nebulizer of sorts before being ejected into vacuum, something that vastly increases the surface area to volume ratio. My thinking is that these droplets would radiate heat far more quickly than just spraying out the liquid, maybe fast enough to allow the "cool" lithium to be reclaimed by the ship to be used again?
All subject to veto by @Hoyr, but: Our security guards are being paid 350,000 per quarter per team of 20. That's 70,000 credits per year in total compensation and, since it's fairly universally true that 1/3rd of total compensation usually goes to non-salary benefits, that translates to roughly 46,666 per year in salary. This is, incidentally, equal to the salary of the highest paid security guards in the USA, leading me to conclude that the credit in our games is roughly at parity with the modern US dollar.
Given that, you can use prices in the US to get a rough idea as to what things should cost in the ME universe:
5-10,000 for a decent used car
15-18,000 for a new compact car
20-25,000 for a new midsize car
65,000 base price for a Tesla Model S (85,000 for a fully-loaded one)
Property prices vary extremely widely based on a number of factors (location, school district, etc), so it's rather hard to give a meaningful price range for them.
We've been lazily assuming that a credit is about the same as a USD or comparable currency (it's the one I know best). So around 50k is the quick lazy estimate.
More detailed thoughts here: How much you have to earn to be considered middle class in every US state
7.4 million is prohibitively expensive for one person, but they'd have room for several. I'll leave the math up to others.
Technically that's not okay, but if it happens by "coincidence" then oh well.
Nope, technically this is for SA law and before contact with the Citadel, but I'm going to assume that it's still okay under Citadel law as I figure that would be called out.
"Creation of designed life is broadly legal (and mainly used for terraforming and medical applications), but sentient creatures are heavily regulated, and creation of sapient life is outlawed by both the Systems Alliance and the Citadel Council."
Don't ask me what wrong with the bioplasm that makes up medi-gel (Yes its alive apprently). For some reason that's against the law. Probably has something to do with the fact its a self-replicating single-celled organism.
Atomic Rockets talks about this, you should go read that. Thing is I assume that what they do it's just that maneuvering looses lithium and ships in combat move a lot. Finding better ways to contain the lithium from getting lost would save money.
Could be kinda sorta possible, maybe. I'll have to think more about it.
Well, as I talked about in my liquid metal idea (by the way, is it something viable for Revy to do in her spare time? It should be a useful additional layer of defence against energy weapons, and a way to tie in heat removal and armor), surface tension should be a relatively good way to keep liquid metals on top of other metals. You just have to ensure wetting, which should be quite doable with super-alloys.
Hmm, thanks.
Hmm, eventually I'd want ships for single persons to be available, but for now that's quite good. We might want to approach quarians, perahps offering them "old ships + some of you working for me + political concessions for new ships" kind of a deal? Basically a way to refit their fleet in exchange for their expertise. Actually, we might want to approach them with the idea of a total rebuild. Right now they are living in the ships frankly not meant for long-term living. They have a lot of experience in being space nomads. Let's take that experience, our technology, existing and planned, and, together with them, design a series of ships that make "space nomad" not a necessity but a choice; enviroments designed to make living in space comfortable, sustainable and expandable.
Heh, might be something to do then. We'll need a fast-breeding species, and to set up boundary conditions pretty well, though.
Hey, doesn't this mean that geth, by design, are not illegal? They aren't AIs, they became so spontaneously, without being created. Probably not. For them to be kinda legal they'd need to be AIs written by VIs written by VIs or something like that.
Thanks for the info.
- Location
- America
Ground Effect Standoff Lightweight Attack Missile (GESLAM) Codename:
Lightweight Missile deployable from mobile launcher or from a static silo.
Uses the ground effect to fly 1 meter above the ground at 325-450 meters per second toward a land target.
Carries a 25kg frag warhead, 25 ton nuclear warhead, or (super?)Pilum.
I'm too lazy to do calculations.
Should work. With repulsors, that means that the missile doesn't suffer from the problem that other atmospheric missiles have, range, so it should be just about able to fly around the world and hit a target. Pretty good ground based defense. You just have a couple dozen silos and you're essentially immune to land attack, well, until you run out of missiles.
I'm going to assume that Legionary suits and/or tigers can survive a 25 ton nuke.
Lightweight Missile deployable from mobile launcher or from a static silo.
Uses the ground effect to fly 1 meter above the ground at 325-450 meters per second toward a land target.
Carries a 25kg frag warhead, 25 ton nuclear warhead, or (super?)Pilum.
I'm too lazy to do calculations.
Should work. With repulsors, that means that the missile doesn't suffer from the problem that other atmospheric missiles have, range, so it should be just about able to fly around the world and hit a target. Pretty good ground based defense. You just have a couple dozen silos and you're essentially immune to land attack, well, until you run out of missiles.
I'm going to assume that Legionary suits and/or tigers can survive a 25 ton nuke.
I think I commented on this before but isn't carbon pretty much superior to lithium in every way for this? It has a higher max temperature where its useful ~3915K, so it radiates more. It's got a higher emissivity than lithium (I think there seem to be few stats for this), thus radiating more heat. It's got a better maximum thermal energy per volume, making it better anti-laser armor. Meaning it can be both armor and heat radiation. It's only weakness is the lack of a good liquid state.
According to the ME3 DLC: Citadel AI wasn't illegal at the time a small number lived on the Citadel a citizens.
I mean holy fuck Bioware way to retcon the entire Quarian thing into utter confusion for some cheap grim dark and drama. The only way I could ever make sense of that was that it was illegal to enslave AI, thus why the Quarians were in trouble, time to cover up. If it was a case of oops we accidentally an AI, well there were other times it happened, possibly deliberately.
Alternatively the Quarians are idiots and tried to destroy the new AI because their idiots and the we had to destroy them because Citadel thing is a cultural cover up based on the Citadel's new anti-AI laws that apparently did not exist at the time.
Or I guess making AI may have been illegal but AI its self wasn't? So, what then? Quarian attempted genocide against a known class of sapients? I mean not only did they make AI, but then they tried to kill beings the Citadel considered people at the time? WTF Quarians.
Seriously the entire change just makes the Quarians seem even stupider. I like Tali, she's cool and can actually think. The Quarian people collectively? Pants on head retarded from canon.
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Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
strange that AI would rather blow themselves up than be discovered by the citadel then.
Here's a statistic that might put it into perspective: the average wage earner in the US will earn $2 million over the course of an entire lifetime.
Yes, the lack of a liquid state would kind of make it hard to make liquid armor like @Yog is suggesting. Although... maybe it would be possible to make the armor itself mobile? For example, redesign the ship to be largely elipsoid in shape, and have counter-rotating "hoops" of solid carbon armor wrapping around the hull, with Yog's liquid armor filling in the "cracks".
I don't think you did, or I might have missed it (sorry about that). The lack of good liquid state is pretty much a clincher, though. The idea is specifically to use liquid metal instead of a solid armor. It provides several benefits, such as adaptability (slowing the flow in hot areas, creating thinker armor there), self-regeneration, delocalization (in which a hit in a single area is responded to by armor from a larger area), vaporization shielding (which is different from sublimation in that the vapor pressure is a smooth function of temperature and, as such, power load) which creates complete protection above a certain power threshold. Carbon doesn't have this.
Lithium also has higher heat capacity, which is important. But I wasn't even talknig about lithium specifically here. What we want, since we have super alloys, is a metal with low melting temperature, high evaporation temperature, high heat capacity, that wets the surface of the underlying armor as best as possible all the while having as high surface tension as possible. The underlying layer should also be designed with the liquid metal in mind, being wetted by it as best as possible from as low temperature as possible, while having the best conductivity but the lowest heat conductivity
Yeah, I know that scene. The administration of the Citadel pretty much panicked, I think. That they weren't put on trial is really bad.
I think it could be interpreted as quarians decided to destroy geth on their own volition, not as a demand from the Citadel. This resulted in civil war (we saw, admittedly very suspect, recordings of quarians protecting geth), which pretty much blew up in their faces. I got a feeling from those pieces of data, that quarians had a pretty damn fanatical / tyrannical government at the time. As it blew up and geth repeatedly protected themselves to the point only less than a percent of quarians survived (because apparently they attacked all the time before that point), CItadel pretty much crapped its pants. Thus, the AI bans.
Basically? I got a feeling it was an attempt to pretty clearly paint quarians as fanatics / very irrational as a race.
Apparently the Geth Rebellion is what caused the Citadel to declare the AI illegal, the edict in question mentioned by the video. 1896 is the year after the Morning War starts. Which is confusing because the Morning War started supposedly because AI was illegal.
There are alternative interpretations of that video, but I have consider them unlikely. It is possible that those AI were visiting from some where or had been in hiding and petitioned the council, but umm... that sounds stupid if the Citadel had anti-AI laws to begin with.
Technically the could be visiting Geth trying to talk to the Citadel... that sounds even stupider on the Citadel's part... yeah can't buy that either.
I just meant it made a better armor-heat radiator in general. Carbon is the best for heat and anti-laser work (barring shenanigans with reflection and refraction). Lithium's benefit is that it can be used as the cooling fluid and as a spray radiator (thus vastly increasing radiating area).
Of course if you want liquid armor for other reasons (localized regeneration for one), then yeah. I don't know, maybe it should be a cheap tech on a research hero? I do think the idea has merit.
Pretty classic case of poor treatment of a minority local population in a time of crisis that the minority is connected to.
It's possible. I just find the swap from Cause of War: Citadel AI Laws to no Quarians were lying (and the Citadel apparently goes along with this) Cause of War: Quarian Fanaticism/Irrationality/Stupidity, jarring and really deserving of more impact then a few seconds of video in a DLC.
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redzonejoe
Vaguely Pastafarian
- Location
- Canada
Is voting still open?
Those long-ass economy votes, and this science-y lithium/carbon discussion is all beyond me. A nice and simple two-part vote? That's something I can do.
[X] More research is required. (100 PointResearch Project: Dream Entertainment Drugs)
[X] Sure, you're proof enough that people can be that good.
Hopefully I'll actually notice the next update when it happens instead of two weeks later.
Those long-ass economy votes, and this science-y lithium/carbon discussion is all beyond me. A nice and simple two-part vote? That's something I can do.
[X] More research is required. (100 PointResearch Project: Dream Entertainment Drugs)
[X] Sure, you're proof enough that people can be that good.
Hopefully I'll actually notice the next update when it happens instead of two weeks later.
- Location
- Lake superior, Minoc
Isn't that the plot of the whole third game?
- Location
- United states
Funny thing is we could avoid that whole mess by just fixing the Quarians immune system.
Personally, I want to make "space nomad" a viable way to live that doesn't leave one with almost no resources, no room to grow, and with no comfort. I want to make it comfortable, easy to expand as population grows and sustainable.
- Location
- The word mines
Soon as you said "space nomads" I thought of the Roamers from Saga of the Seven Suns. TL;DR version: Human Quarians who pride themselves on living free of planets. Thanks to an expert scientist/engineer specialising in extreme environments, they thrive.
- Location
- Lake superior, Minoc
So, SDF style? That really shouldn't be hard at all. Don't even need super Shep tech to do it. Just some good hardware and a asteroid belt.
The Quarians fail at being space elfs kinda hard.. they got the paranoid nutjobs part down well tho. Add that to poor ME writing in general and they never advance past the ships they had hundreds if years ago.
They, and I think Mass Effect in general lacks mobile shipyards or, to be more correct, mobile factories capable of taking an asteroid and turning it into a ship, and capable of building things bigger than themselves. Hyper modularity is the core tech that was missing and, with its introduction I could actually see those kinds of things appearing, possibly even from Quarians.