- Tool for "phasing" out of reality to avoid incoming threats.
- A spatial-warping effect that makes projectiles bend around us.
Interesting that Inspiration picked these two out as its other two favorites. More hax than anything on the list other than the time-slow, and they share Skybreaker's "theme" of screwing around with space. The targeting computer is a bit less clear. On the one hand, it's the
simplest and probably one of the lowest-tech items on the list - it's about the only item on the list that we have IRL! - but on the other hand that means it's also the most efficient idea I had and in my opinion the most elegant. It also significantly improves Skybreaker, both in its capabilities and in how
awesome it looks when we're using it.
...Huh. It's the only item on the list that we can build IRL. I wonder if that actually makes it
more interesting? It's so simple, but just a tiny twist and it becomes one of the most effective items on the list.
Okay, let's test this. Method: Present Inspiration with a huge list of different ways to make things fly. Hypothesis: Inspiration will be all over the options that work by messing around with spatial-warping effects or blatantly ignoring various laws of reality, will be
least interested in middling-complexity stuff, things that other Inspired could build, and reasonably interested in but maybe not wildly enthusiastic about solutions that're notably efficient or elegant.
I don't think that I need detailed feedback on every one of these; for example, I'm guessing that most or all of them will be well outside our access to resources. I'm more trying to get a general idea of what Inspiration likes so I can focus on idea it'd prefer.
- Straight antigravity effect, block gravitons or set the curvature of spacetime to "flat" in a radius or something equivalent to those formulations.
- A lump of negative mass paired with a selective gravity amplifier to boost the negative-gravity from the negative mass enough to counteract the gravity of the earth.
- A gravity projector that can be operated for extended periods at an intensity of 1g to counteract gravity in its target area.
- A tool that phases an object out of reality in a way that ignores gravity as well as everything else.
- A mobile pocket dimension with no gravity and a coterminous border with reality.
- A tool that latches on to celestial objects and uses them to haul itself around.
- A tool that twists existing gravitational wells to change which way gravity points.
- A tool that changes masses but not kinetic energy, allowing us to play tricks with inertia to get extreme thrust.
- A big-ass jet engine suitable for mounting on a building.
- A clockwork rotary-airfoil aircraft aka helicopter.
- A clockwork ornithopter.
- A flight-capable roc or dragon or other excessively large mount.
- A hot air balloon. But a really good one, maybe with the capability to eject controlled quantities of lifting plasma as an attack.
- A hot air balloon that keeps itself heated using a giant lens to focus the sun, conveniently also usable as a directed energy weapon, for reconnaissance work, or for astronomy.
- A monolithic vacuum airship built using ultra-high-strength materials.
- A vacuum airship built out of air-repelling force fields.
- A vacuum airship built using super-low-density microscale structures e.g. ultra-large fullerenes or carbon tubes.
- A lighter-than-air airship using light gasses at atmospheric pressure.
- A lighter-than-air airship using aphysical gases with impossibly low densities.
- A lighter-than-air airship that operates by pinching space inside itself to so that it has less volume than it should, lowering the mass inside it without affecting the buoyant force from differential pressure across its height, leading to lift
- An Immovable Object that nails itself to a bit of the fabric of space and refuses to move
- A big-ass jet engine strapped to some wings
- An airship that operates by walking on a parallel dimension's ground that's higher than the ground in our world.
- A glider that gets power by flying a kite in the upper atmosphere to take advantage of high-speed airstreams at higher altitudes.
- Build a rocket and get up into orbit.
- A giant cannon that'll blast us up into space where we can reach orbit with only a small kick.
- A tool that pushes against the earth's magnetic field hard enough that we can use it to climb into the sky.
- A glider that can rapidly fold and unfold its wings so we can get a much larger flyer through one of Skybreaker's portals.
- An aircraft powered by a void portal placed behind vents that channel the incoming air to exert a force on the craft as it's sucked into the portal.
- A persistent pocket dimension, suitable for inhabitation and buildings (workshop, house, etc) and only accessible via Skybreaker portal.
- A tool that can gain traction against open space by exploiting whatever weirdness it is that makes the rims and backsides of Skybreaker's portals invulnerable. Then we climb up into the sky, or make it persistent and build a building on top of it, something like that.
- A trajectory computer that uses Skybreaker portals to fling the user through the air in whatever manner is desired.
(I am the best at brainstorming.)
Given our ability to repeat projects, I think making a point-defense targeting system is probably a good investment. We should be able to adapt it for use on, say, a flying fortress or aircraft. Which is going to be invaluable in not getting shot down.
Yep, these kinds of trackers are core components of quite a few remarkably useful systems.
@Alivaril Just to confirm, you're not closing the vote any time soon are you? Because if you are, I'd like to @everyone to make sure they're aware of Vebyast's new vote and confirm they prefer the old standby vote.
Posting something big enough to trigger the author alert should do the trick, and this post will provide a good candidate. Then
@Alivaril can add a tally to the bottom of that post and point out that there's a new option. If that won't be enough, I'm not sure what
would.
