- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
So when do we see Catowitzky the Elder ending his speeches before the Parliament on the note of "Ceterum censeo Khar'shaninem esse delendam." (Or on "Khar'Shan delenda est.")...alternatively: genocide
Last edited:
Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution
- Thread starter Hoyr
- Start date
We already have something. The Dragon Lady.
We need cruiser tech to really build those.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
What about defense?
In particular, missile defense is one of the primary duties of GARDIAN towers, and one they do very well. We're going to have to come up with a solution to that problem before we can start any major ground operations on older Batarian worlds, since all are sure to have shields and laser towers. I'm not saying that an MBT is the only or even the best solution, but it's the most obvious role for the tech should we develop it.
Still, though, we need to solve the problem of space warfare first. That, to me, means UV lasers and miniaturized energy weapons. Between those, brain shields, and QE comms, we have a lot that needs to be done this quarter: 2,800 RPs worth of immediate priority items, versus ~2,100 non-omake RPs available, many of which are now no longer able to be invested in those priority items thanks to the rule change. Numbers like those are what make me so exasperated with the people whining about the Mark II and earmarking omakes to it, despite the fact that the war is going to be primarily space-based for the next six months at least; it's like people are completely unable to figure out where their own best interests lie, which is just baffling to me.
Combined arms tactics in build up or otherwise cluttered areas, like any other vehicle deployment in such circumstances. Defense in open terrain can depend on dodging and tanking what can't be dodged due to a combination of factors including the fact that man, or even vehicle, portable lasers are not yet a thing outside the Alliance, so full on warships are needed, and if a frigate enters a ground battle you are either fucked or have a pinata.
As for GARDIAN towers, those are not useful or too busy in the general circumstances you'd see Tigers deploy missiles. After all, these won't be 'I need a hole in a building' missiles, Tigers have their gun for that, these are 'what building' missiles, often shot at enemy strongpoints in confined areas where collateral matters, which means the GARDIAN has no angle, or the collateral damage doesn't matter and the GARDIAN system is far more worried about orbital bombardment.
And remember, GARDIAN systems tend to be lasers, which means they are line of sight weapons. If they can see you, you can see them. If neither are an option mass Tigers and keep shooting, you either break the optics, the machinery keeping it operating or topple the tower entirely. Shields are not cheap and shields that can take a sustained bombardment even more so.
- Location
- Budapest, Hungary
Ideally they are on high ground, protected by heavy KB. Also they probably can track more targets , than a RL AEGIS system, and their VI can prioritize targets.
Ideally? Yes.
However, GARDIANs are not cheap and neither are Kinetic Barrier systems. Indeed, a large turret is already 100 million credits to construct and 1.25 million to maintain. In many ways that, to us, is not a lot of money. For one turret. And a standard building shield is 10 million and 125 thousand, respectively.
However, a shield that can take a dedicated land assault costs 10 times as much, and as such it's as expensive as the turret it's meant to protect, and now your budget only covers for half as many turrets, which you still have to station everywhere across your entire interstellar polity and maintain. Certainly, if your economy is strong you can probably do that, but you need that budget for a lot more than just GARDIAN turrets at every colony. And the Hegemony's economy is quite simply unlikely to be that strong and manage to support a military that can strike at the SA.
Does this mean that there won't be GARDIAN turrets that are without actually useful shields? Don't be silly, of course there are, but they will be few and protect key installations and government facilities. Which makes them a pain to deal with for a swift victory, sure, but if you can dictate the enemy's fleet movements this is not a big issue, you can just cut off the supply lines and wait, or take the losses on your chin and simply toss more munitions, vehicles and men at it than it can deal with.
Or you can hack it, or try to anyway, and besides, a GARDIAN is unlikely to be capable to attack ground targets. Flying targets? Sure, but ground targets would be a tremendous hazard in case of an error.
Last edited:
Depends on construction of the turret and software lockouts.
Right, so, I would like to make the case for getting transforming systems, and no I don't intend to make things that transform from jet to mech or things like that. I want to make the case because it makes hyper-modularity even more useful. Consider for a second just what hyper-modularity means to you. Regular modularity is plug and play and easily moddable systems. To an extent we have that today in desktop PCs and various peripherals. You can plug things together and with USB or other ports you don't need any tools, in fact, to install hardware inside of them.
Hyper-modularity to me means infinitely scale-able systems. It means that a 1GW laser is made of all of the same parts as a 100MW laser, just in different amounts and ratios. This has some obvious implications as I'm sure you guys are probably coming to realize. It means you can take apart a 1GW laser and put together a couple of smaller lasers. Now think for just a moment what transformation systems would do for this. It means a "fighter" that used purely repulsors for engines can cannibalize it's propulsion systems to assemble a larger more powerful repulsor cannon while sacrificing mobility. Or it could change it's propulsion profile by changing the vehicle's own profile and pointing more repulsors in another direction. Or a ship with a spinal laser could sacrifice it for much improved GUARDIAN capability, either to take out more massed missiles than it was designed to or to provide more turrets against massed legionaries.
A Legionary outfitted with dual lasers to take out other similarly classed enemies could combine or split it's weapon(s) to fight lesser or greater enemies.
Additionally, it allows for other very interesting things. Things like self assembling ships, just add parts to a "core" and add in what arrangement you want them to be in and it does the rest.
Hyper-modularity to me means infinitely scale-able systems. It means that a 1GW laser is made of all of the same parts as a 100MW laser, just in different amounts and ratios. This has some obvious implications as I'm sure you guys are probably coming to realize. It means you can take apart a 1GW laser and put together a couple of smaller lasers. Now think for just a moment what transformation systems would do for this. It means a "fighter" that used purely repulsors for engines can cannibalize it's propulsion systems to assemble a larger more powerful repulsor cannon while sacrificing mobility. Or it could change it's propulsion profile by changing the vehicle's own profile and pointing more repulsors in another direction. Or a ship with a spinal laser could sacrifice it for much improved GUARDIAN capability, either to take out more massed missiles than it was designed to or to provide more turrets against massed legionaries.
A Legionary outfitted with dual lasers to take out other similarly classed enemies could combine or split it's weapon(s) to fight lesser or greater enemies.
Additionally, it allows for other very interesting things. Things like self assembling ships, just add parts to a "core" and add in what arrangement you want them to be in and it does the rest.
Now, taking directly from IS is somewhat of a bad idea, the core idea of this isn't a bad one. Taking the Legionary, or a followup armor and making it a "core block" of future small scale vehicles isn't a bad idea. It has included all of the control and survival needs for it's wearer. As such, it means that you could make a vehicle specifically to accommodate an armor wearer or wearers while skimping on control computers and life support. Making it basically a "collection" of modules for an armor isn't a terrible idea. Though we would need transformation systems to really make it worthwhile. I'm imagining a few modules that shift around the armor to form up a more immobile "tank" shape or "fighter" shape or a "long range" form and can shift between them as needed.
Never said to take the IS suits themselves, but the idea behind them, as you said, use it to extend what the PI Armor's can already do, just to a even larger extent. More powerful thrusters, vehicle scale Kinetic Barriers and Weapons as basic mods. To extend this modularity add an Electronic Warfare package which removes most extra thrusters and shields and weapons but capable of intercepting and/or jamming enemy comm frequencies. Artillery mods for where a Tiger or future IFV/MBT cannot be deployed easily, etc, etc.
Now, Ibmaian already said this, but they wouldn't at all be useful everywhere, especially inside small facilities or insides ship corridors as these things do bulk up anyone wearing them, but there are situations where they might come in handy, its basically an in between option to a dedicated tank and/or fighter depending on mods installed and extremely heavy infantry (even if our PI armors already make them heavy infantry basically). Even then a frame holding all the mods for the outer layer must be there to make it detachable... maybe make it voice locked with a specific code needing to be spoken to reattach, or a specific code unique to a person's armor, meh, when detached it wouldn't have the main suits computer power so it would be easier to hack, but then you would need a PI armor to use it anyway, might be you'd need a third gen even that has the specific hard points unless going for using the current ones normally meant for other things.
Of course to change mods in between fights or deployments, one would need either a dedicated change out facility or something similar, it's not an anime heavy with rule of cool allowing instant switching of any all carried weapons/available mods here.
The following would be the way it would be more like an IS style suit, just not with the pilots anywhere near the actual fights unless you want a virtual reality version of this which can bring back the instant weapon/mod switching... in this you could also use the exo-frame design with a basic inner atmosphere only package that would allow for arena like fights with mechs controlled remotely by those implants we made, basically link up to one of those mechanized exo-frame's modified to a pilots preference and use them to fight each other while not in danger one self, basically a rich guys way of being able to duel each other without actually getting hurt, or getting of their asses... damn, that might actually be popular...
Maybe I should stop thinking for now, I'm only getting more ideas for this particular niche idea that I threw out to clear my head... Feel free to ignore if unpractical at all, I'm just throwing shit out there...
Edit: it ate my formatting, jeez, edited...
Edit II: Added some things to clarify and added some words and such.
Last edited:
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
Eh, I view it as a balance change. Omakes are bonuses that we shouldn't rely on, and they're incentivized by allowing the writer to choose the reward they want regardless of voter whims. If we can't get everything we originally planned for, c'est la vie.
I don't think Tigers will have a hard time taking out lone GARDIAN towers, but I'm worried about the expense of taking out a veritable fortress guarded by lots of towers with overlapping ranges that can hit ground targets. Pilums are not cheap, and if you have fire thousands just to start penetrating defenses, costs start approaching 100 million, and you're probably already running out of Pilums. That's also excluding Tiger costs themselves, and assuming they're not getting destroyed (by staying out of range of GARDIAN towers).
Eventually, tech advances should give missiles some level of TIR shielding (assuming they can be used in atmosphere) or design missiles that explode into a laser/particle burst at decent range, but the missiles may also be more expensive then.
At some point, it may be more cost effective to use something besides missiles, which is where MBTs with their dedicated MACs or lasers can shine.
Not that I think MBTs should be designed quite yet. Should wait for miniaturized energy weapons tech first at least. Or maybe go ahead and design them, and leverage hyper-modularity to ship advanced laser modules to MBTs once they're available.
Of course, this is all assuming that orbital bombardment can't be used to break through the defenses. Again, not sure if a "Hoth" scenario is possible. Or perhaps the defenses are so strong that the level of orbital bombardment required somehow violates Citadel prohibitions. There might also be special circumstances where orbital bombardment simply isn't available, like if the fleet is otherwise occupied yet still landed invasion forces.
I think you're overestimating what transformation systems tech give you. There's no way hyper-modular system are infinitely scalable even with the most advanced hyper-modularity tech we can get. Some components might be fungible, but others are not, and there will always be limits to that fungibility. You will never be able to take a dreadnought MAC and recombine it into a gigantic batch of rifles.
Unless we somehow find AoBS-style nanotech. (No, Extemis-style nanotech is far from sufficient for this.)
I'm pretty sure the main benefit of transformation systems is on-the-fly reconfiguration, and maybe gattai-ing ships and vehicles together. That is, hyper-modularity can now be leveraged on the battlefield, rather than in factories and shipyards.
You know, the logical conclusion of all this is Eve Online-style ships and vehicles. One man pilot for even gigantic dreadnoughts.
Which brings up another point: the more capabilities provided by such a frame, the more overburdened the user is. I already mentioned before that it's not a great idea to get infantry to pilot fighters. It will be even worse for vehicles that have optimal crew capacities greater than one. It will only work out if you have AIs to help or rely on remote piloting. Robust plug-and-play skills would also help.
Actually, this isn't an IS style suit at all. It's basically remotely piloted drones.
And it's a great idea if PI-developed QECs are cheap enough and can fit in the space vacated by a living body.
can we plz address the issue of the antimatter nuke Revy built in her sleep while waiting for a update?
Say what?
Last edited:
What I would like to see as an option is either a chance to buy ot InGen (from Jurassic park) or a way to make our own version. Also we seem to spend way less time with dad compared to everyone else. So I would like to do somthing with him as a father daughter bonding experience.
- Location
- Budapest, Hungary
It was left in prototype stage, since multi-warhead fusion devices are more cost effective as WMDs.can we plz address the issue of the antimatter nuke Revy built in her sleep while waiting for a update?
Um, I remember @Hoyr talking about this once, and from what I remember a GARDIAN tower can take out even a half dozen Tigers in fairly short order. The key here is twofold:
- Heat dispersal. GARDIAN towers "only" have something like a 50-100MW laser attached to them, compared to the 5GW laser on our Pyndas, but because they are ground-based they can use massive pools of water to dump waste heat into, which means they can basically fire forever, or at least a very long time, without overheating.
- Ground speed limitations. Further, speed in an atmosphere is somewhat limited compared to space, due to atmospheric friction and compression heating. When you're going at any significant fraction of c in an atmosphere, you're basically taking the entire column of air in front of you and trying to fuse all the atoms together at once. This means that getting to the c-fractional speeds seen in space is basically impossible: even if you had the basically infinite engine power required due to how much air needs to be displaced, you'd basically be setting off a continuous fusion nuke in your own face due to atmospheric compression at the front of your ship, and a continuous vacuum bomb in your wake, which is very bad for your own vessel and especially bad for civilian infrastructure on the ground. For the most part, you are instead limited to a few times the speed of sound, which is still damn fast in conventional terms, but for a GARDIAN tower is basically an eternity to laser through anything that comes near them.
@UberJJK do you happen to have that post indexed?
Interestingly, Revy's dad would make an excellent minor hero, or maybe a hero with Revy's "base" RP output with the caveat that he can't benefit from research team help, beyond that of a personalized lab (his garage).
Last edited:
Well yes, taken to that extreme you do run into efficiency problems. But it's something you can do if you built the Dred gun out of rifle scale components. I was talking more along things that take up a similar scale. Ship guns into ship guns, rifles into handguns into assault rifles into SMGs and such.
As for AoBS style nanotech... that isn't exactly out of the question. Though we might want to try for programmable matter instead.
Maybe, maybe not. Depending on how you do it you could very well completely automate a ship with VI, no AI needed. I don't know why, then if you add a human into the equation that suddenly the human has to be taking care of all those annoying minor issues that your full auto ship could take care of on it's own. It's something that tends to annoy me greatly whenever people talk about integrating a human into another platform. No, the human doesn't have to micromanage every single thing about the ship that they are integrated into. Just provide that executive input as the controlling will about what the ship is actually going to do rather than taking care of every little bit of the how. And if they want to go and edit the VI to change some setting or sees how it can provide better efficiency? Well there isn't any reason an over-ridding mind couldn't do so just as effectively as an AI provided they have the knowledge and skill to pull it off.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Deorbit where there are no GARDIAN lasers, fly close to surface to target, minimize time you are getting shot at. The downside is of course that the opposition gets more time to prepare. If you don't manage a stealth insertion.
A single large GARDIAN tower already costs 100 million credits. If you have to expend 100 million credits to break through the defenses but can then smack down a dozen GARDIAN towers for another dozen million each it's cost effective. Besides, at this level of defenses you start looking towards dreadnought level orbital bombardment, and the Citadel is not necessarily opposed to this level of orbital fire support. On garden planets? Yes, then it'd care, but off garden planets you can use whatever you want.
And if you can make it reasonable that however regrettable this level of fire support was in fact needed even if it did considerable damage to the biosphere, well, you might get hit with sanctions, but those sanctions are likely to be 'pay for the repair of the biosphere.' And what do you know, we've got biosphere adjusting technology researched, it'd be fairly easy and cheap for Paragon Industries, and the Alliance as a result.
Or you use Tigers, which are already using MACs and lasers.
Hoth scenario is possible, theoretically. It just requires more money than the entire galaxy's gross economic product for a whole planet, and not by any measure cheap for anything smaller.
EVE ships are actually manned beyond the Capsuleer that is captain. General crew requirements are much lower though.
If your armour can take the ram heating of the air to the point you can turn yourself into a flaming ball of death even a lot of GARDIAN lasers are going to have trouble making a useful impact on your trajectory. A KKV based missile that smacks into a GARDIAN from below the horizon would probably work and kill the GARDIAN through sheer impact.
Last edited:
That distance is still probably somewhere around 22 miles. Even traveling at Mach 10, that's still 2 minutes to target, which means you're flying through a combined 6 gigajoules of laser energy (assuming a 50MW laser), which is enough to completely vaporize 3 metric tons of steel, or simply melt more than twice that much.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
?
36km with 10*330m/s speed results in 36000/3300 ~ 11 seconds.
Huh, wonder where I lost that factor of 10?
In either case, 11 seconds is still more than enough time for a GARDIAN tower to shred multiple Tigers and their armaments, and if the towers have overlapping coverage then it becomes even more difficult to sustain an assault. This, I think, is the clearest use case for an MBT: something with enough heavy armor to make assaulting heavy emplacements like overlapping GARDIAN towers less expensive per assault, without having to resort to politically complicated orbital bombardments or something slow like a mining operation.
Not really. Because quite frankly, anything that could actually be useful as an MBT facing a 50MW laser would require such thick armour that it's basically not really useful, especially since you also need to armour the gun and hope the laser doesn't skewer that as it's an obvious weak point. No, dealing with GARDIAN systems is better done by exploiting the fact that these are big facilities meant to effectively operate over large ranges; their machinery is optimized for small, slow changes of the gun to track targets at large distances and engage them effectively.
Against something like that you bring in something fast that can be shot from widely differing angles so it can't engage all of whatever it needs to engage.