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Natural Born Soviet Airwoman - Airplanes vs Aliens

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Character Sheet
  • Informational
    • Kilesso Kristina Vsevolodovna
    (Kilesso is her surname, Kristina is her first name, and her friends call her Tina.)
    Pilot for the VVS

    Hard​
    Calm​
    Keen​
    Daring​
    -2​
    0​
    +3​
    +1​
    Institutional Move

    Positive Heroism: Ongoing while a Soviet pilot operates under 3000 meters, they ignore 1 Injury Penalty and up to 2 G-force penalty. This is for the purposes of rolls only.

    Mastery - Slipstream
    - Tables have Turned: In Dogfight! you can use Keen to turn the tables on your attacker, and Daring to go on the offensive. When you Draw a Bead, you can opt to take G-force equal to Speed factor rather than a Hard Move.

    I-16 Type 13


    Modifications
    - Gun Harmonics (and electric firing triggers)
    - Upgrade to x2 Heavy Machine Guns, x2 Machine Guns
     
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  • Informational
    • Admiral Skippy said:
    It does look a lot like that, yeah. That said, the efficiency on our current iteration of electrohydrodynamic thrusters is pretty terrible even if you were in an atmosphere thick enough to pop you like a grape. If it's anything like an IRL version they shouldn't be able to fly on their side, let alone Earth's.

    Being able to make EHD thrusters work at all for propelling aircraft would mean that they're either using some sort of rather exotic materials or technology, or they have the power of both God and Anime on their side.
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    You can improve efficiency quite a bit if you coat the anode in something tiny hairs or spikes of some sort, the smaller the better. Carbon nanotubes are ideal. The electric field is stronger around sharply curved surfaces, so less is needed to ionize the air. That's just one improvement that could make a real difference with technology and materials we understand, but can't yet use cost effectively in that role. With some real engineering effort put into it, this does not strain my suspension of disbelief at all, especially if they've got some fancy high tech power storage or generation technology running these things.
     
    brmj said:
    You can improve efficiency quite a bit if you coat the anode in something tiny hairs or spikes of some sort, the smaller the better. Carbon nanotubes are ideal. The electric field is stronger around sharply curved surfaces, so less is needed to ionize the air. That's just one improvement that could make a real difference with technology and materials we understand, but can't yet use cost effectively in that role. With some real engineering effort put into it, this does not strain my suspension of disbelief at all, especially if they've got some fancy high tech power storage or generation technology running these things.
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    Admiral Skippy said:
    Being able to make EHD thrusters work at all for propelling aircraft would mean that they're either using some sort of rather exotic materials or technology, or they have the power of both God and Anime on their side.
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    I'm going to cut things off a bit and say that the aliens are like... the exact way the alien tech works isn't important to me so much as creating a consistent aesthetic and function as it plugs into the airplane builder.

    So y'all are on the right track identifying the purpose of the ring, but the efficiency of the real-world technology isn't really my concern so much as the consistent principle that it makes thrust like a propeller does is. The Invaders come from an EE Doc Smith universe, and while their planes have to obey the laws of physics to the same loose degree as other Flying Circus planes do, the components making up those planes can be fun black boxes that enable the sort of storytelling I wanna do with them.

    In other words, yes, the aliens do have the power of god and anime on their side. The anime for most Flying Circus is Miyazaki, but here it's more Leiji Matsumoto.
     
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    As I said, going into the specifics of a (currently) fringe propulsion system is kind of overthinking it a bit.

    The aliens use glowy rings because they're aliens, and are basically straight from the front cover of a copy of Popular Mechanics. Their technological paradigm is basically straight up '30-50s pulp. Internet articles about EHD thrusters can be really fascinating, but it's probably not the way to go here.
     
    Obviously the glowy rings generate propulsive power because they have to otherwise the plane doesn't work.

    However, out of idle curiosity, would it be possible for nanotubes to naturally occur under certain geological conditions? It sounds like these things would be much easier to build if you could dig up ultrathin conductors like it's a block of graphite.
     
    FrangibleCover said:
    Obviously the glowy rings generate propulsive power because they have to otherwise the plane doesn't work.

    However, out of idle curiosity, would it be possible for nanotubes to naturally occur under certain geological conditions? It sounds like these things would be much easier to build if you could dig up ultrathin conductors like it's a block of graphite.
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    I gotchu fam! Kaiju hairs!

    Really though, carbon nanotubes can form in natural settings but are wildly inconsistent in dimensions. Perhaps through the looking glass you can find conditions that promote more consistent growth of tubes. Underground settings probably wouldn't be the place though (at least not for carbon nanotubes), since they seem to be more formed from energetic processes that create vaporized carbon. If there was a coal seam that was always on fire or getting zapped by lightning all the time you might find something?
     
    [X] Try to shoot the tailgun before the tailgun shoots you.

    Soooo... this is the only vote. You have twenty minutes to disagree.
     
    [X] Try to shoot the tailgun before the tailgun shoots you.

    Bravely go forth! Nothing can go wrong from putting some lead in there!
     
    [X] Try to shoot the tailgun before the tailgun shoots you.

    Alright, they easy way to interpret this is a Draw a Bead to focus fire on the gunner, then Open Fire, so let's do that!

    A good bit of news is due to a recent change, when you focus fire, you can fire +Calm, so you won't be taking the -2 penalty. Something bad is going to happen to you, though, that's how Draw a Bead works.

    So roll 2d10, or roll 3d10 to hold the trigger down! Roller's choice as usual. Tina sorta tends to just blaze it 420 though.
     
    open_sketchbook said:
    You don't really need system mastery here: just say what you want and it's my job to interpret it in the mechanics.
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    I have the problem of "I don't know how much altitude/airspeed/both we have available to spend before a significant emotional event known as 'hitting the ground' happens". I can't tell how to read the altimeter on the control panel, and airspeed's just as confusing to me.
     
    Ash19256 said:
    I have the problem of "I don't know how much altitude/airspeed/both we have available to spend before a significant emotional event known as 'hitting the ground' happens". I can't tell how to read the altimeter on the control panel, and airspeed's just as confusing to me.
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    On both, the outer ring is the 1s place and the inner ring is the 10s place. The Altitude meter is in increments of 100 meters off the ground, and the air speed meter is in increments of 10 kilometers per hour.
     
    In that case...

    [X] Snap roll and dive away, trading altitude for airspeed to try and slip under the firing arc of the tailgun, then come up at the enemy aircraft from below in a zoom climb, trying to shoot them on the way up.

    Hopefully, we can shoot them badly enough that the tailgun is out of action by the time we go behind them.
     
    Ash19256 said:
    In that case...

    [X] Snap roll and dive away, trading altitude for airspeed to try and slip under the firing arc of the tailgun, then come up at the enemy aircraft from below in a zoom climb, trying to shoot them on the way up.

    Hopefully, we can shoot them badly enough that the tailgun is out of action by the time we go behind them.
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    Vote's over m8.
    Guess I'll get rolling.
    Wish me luck!

    Edit: good shots! I'll not hold the trigger, since I notoriously get jams.
    Plausbius threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: Shoot the gun! Total: 14
    7 7 7 7
     
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    ... Frak it, might as well do a proper roll.

    EDIT: well, it's not jamming any of the guns at least?
    Ash19256 threw 3 10-faced dice. Reason: Gunnery Total: 20
    10 10 2 2 8 8
     
    Please god, tell me that's for something good and not "Alien reinforcement roll" or whatever...
     
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