MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Has an Ion Spinal Mount been written up anywhere? It would be the ultimate weapon for taking over highports.
Ion Spinal Mount
- Thread starter MasterGwydion
- Start date
Arkathan
Emperor Mongoose
That just seems like a war crime waiting to happen.
Take out life support and you have to hope the tens of thousands of people on board have access to some form of auxiliary breathing apparatus. Government cutbacks and megacorporate greed are killers.
Take out the M-0 keeping it aloft, if it is in a stationary orbit, the station will fall at about .9g in what we consider a standard station orbit on Earth. Each shot lets it fall for six minutes, longer for critical hits.
So, a highport that is in a parking orbit over its lowport, at a height of 300 miles, could burn up in one or two combat turns (per the freefall calculator that came up on Google.
Scary.
Take out life support and you have to hope the tens of thousands of people on board have access to some form of auxiliary breathing apparatus. Government cutbacks and megacorporate greed are killers.
Take out the M-0 keeping it aloft, if it is in a stationary orbit, the station will fall at about .9g in what we consider a standard station orbit on Earth. Each shot lets it fall for six minutes, longer for critical hits.
So, a highport that is in a parking orbit over its lowport, at a height of 300 miles, could burn up in one or two combat turns (per the freefall calculator that came up on Google.
Scary.
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
Well technically, if it was in 'orbit', it wouldn't fall at all.
If it was hovering (at less than orbital velocity) over a point on the ground at some altitude lower than geostationary, it would certainly fall - I think it's only about a quarter G at GEO for Earth, but not planning to do the math - but again, that would be okay, since you're already at orbital velocity. If you were hovering at a point beyond GEO, you'd actually go off more or less tangentially, not necessarily an escape velocity path, but I think you'd likely end up in an elliptical orbit with your starting point as the low point.
Chicken and Egg thing: If you were building a station and it wasn't powered yet, you'd probably want the construction zone to be at orbital velocity. But of course it could be 'towed' or moved under it's own power to a lower location later.
Not sure an Ion spinal mount would necessarily only do 'Ion' damage. It's likely like a detuned particle accelerator (since the science behind it is only defined (as far as I know) as 'that thing that stunned the star destroyers at Hoth') and at the scale of a spinal mount, even 'detuned' it is likely to burn through the station.
And to answer the original question, no, I don't think it's been written up anywhere.
If it was hovering (at less than orbital velocity) over a point on the ground at some altitude lower than geostationary, it would certainly fall - I think it's only about a quarter G at GEO for Earth, but not planning to do the math - but again, that would be okay, since you're already at orbital velocity. If you were hovering at a point beyond GEO, you'd actually go off more or less tangentially, not necessarily an escape velocity path, but I think you'd likely end up in an elliptical orbit with your starting point as the low point.
Chicken and Egg thing: If you were building a station and it wasn't powered yet, you'd probably want the construction zone to be at orbital velocity. But of course it could be 'towed' or moved under it's own power to a lower location later.
Not sure an Ion spinal mount would necessarily only do 'Ion' damage. It's likely like a detuned particle accelerator (since the science behind it is only defined (as far as I know) as 'that thing that stunned the star destroyers at Hoth') and at the scale of a spinal mount, even 'detuned' it is likely to burn through the station.
And to answer the original question, no, I don't think it's been written up anywhere.
Arkathan
Emperor Mongoose
That is why I was specific in the parameters of the station. Gravity at the altitude of the ISS is about 0.9 g's, but they are in freefall.
Higher or LaGrange orbits are nothing for M-drive ships/boats, but if they rely on grav-haulers, they'd need something closer.
agentwigggles
Cosmic Mongoose
Not everything scales.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
What weapons don't scale? Knives to swords Klingon Cleave Ships. Laser pointer to laser scalpel to laser pistol to laser rifle to vehicle mounted lasers to firm point lasers to turret lasers, all the way up to spinal mount lasers, yet weirdly, not much in the way of laser bays. The only things that may not scale are things that are not 3D.
Just thinking that anything less than an ion spinal mount would be ineffective against most space stations due to their size and power output. With one, you just keep firing on the station to keep its available power nerfed and then just land your troops with vastly less difficulty, since they can't really shoot back at you as effectively.
I just handwave the whole concept of Ion Weapons. They don't exist, so We just make up that they do "stun damage" to things that use electricity. As long as they work the same way every time, mechanically speaking, I don't really need to know more.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Existing oxygen will slowly be exhausted, so if there are emergency supplies, crew, inhabitants, and transients have time to secure them.
And starports tend to be big.
Traveller rules tend to be all over the place regarding asphyxiation, as I recall.
And starports tend to be big.
Traveller rules tend to be all over the place regarding asphyxiation, as I recall.
agentwigggles
Cosmic Mongoose
Most things dont scale.
Knives have a fix range where they're useful. From about 2 inches to six feet long. Not a lot of vehicles using swords. Or naval vessles using it. Where the rail mounted sword. No, a cow pusher or the kligon ship arent swords. If you're gonna classfy that as any linage of weapon itd be Naval Ram. The gnarly sword based missile, the swords on that thing are fairly short.
Tank armor doesnt scale. We dont put it on humvees and we dont put it on infantry and we dont put it on naval vesssles and we dont put it on aircraft.
Catapults and trebuchet dont scale well either. They have a min. size to be effective, and making them larger, just makes worse weapons.
The lasers you brought up, is the one that requries an amount of nurance.
And guns dont scale infinetely. They can get rather small to a credit card size. Though they dont work too well on spaceships.
And lasers, I would also say dont scale like that but the reason behind that, doesnt quite matter for this conversation. But to suffice it to say, if you just put a car battery on a laser pointer, it would melt. And if you made the electronics inside the laser pointer larger/more robust can gave it a car battery, you'd just have a bigger longer lasting laser pointing. No matter how bbbig you made it, it wouldnt be a weapon. Though it would start to be dangerious. Laser pointer to lasgun, arent that related. I get that seems silly. Its similar to how blue LEDs arent really related to other color LEDs. It needs a wholey different engineering to achieve it.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Seriously? Armor technology scales. Bulletproof vests up to the armor on the sides of Battleships. Quit looking at the micro-everything to invent fake differences. Laser technology scales. Mass Driver technology scales. Meson and particle technology scales. Sensors scale. Electronic Warfare scales. Residential technology scales. Vehicle technology scales. Literally, almost everything scales. Quantum-level. Atomic-level. Molecular-level. Etc. All the way up to Universe-level. Literally, almost everything scales. Hell. Even food scales. See the Guiness Book of World Records.
What do you think an artillery piece is? It is an updated and upscaled catapult.
Go ahead and mansplain it. Lasers go from surgical scale up to Death Star scale. Again, quit inventing fake differences. Power-level is also a way to scale things. A laser scalpel and a laser rifle are two different things, but a laser rifle is still just upscaled laser technology.
Tell that to the dinosaurs. A Mass Driver is a Mass Driver, no matter if it is a nailgun or a thing that throws whole asteroids at other planets.
Designing a BelAZ 75710 is totally different from building an 1896 Thornycroft "steam-powered dust cart". The BelAZ is merely a more advanced, larger version of the Thornycroft. Quit making things more complicated than the need to be.
agentwigggles
Cosmic Mongoose
I am fairly certain they dont use aramid and ceramic strike plate on naval vessles. I am fairly certain that naval vessles dont concern themselves with slashing and stabing restistive scoring. I am also fairly certain a belt armor on a naval vessle doesnt expire.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Again. Micro-differences. You missed the forest by focusing on the tree. The point still holds. Almost everything scales.
Anstett
Emperor Mongoose
I think the difference here is Concepts scale up and down. Technology does not.
With the laser point example. The idea of using a laser pointer as a weapon scales up to a laser pistol but the technology of one is a dead end until you create something new to carry that concept onward.
Switching to non-weapon ideas. Residential technology. The concept of a residence scales. The technology of the various scales is wildly different and unrelated to what came before. There are vast differences in the technology of a traditional mud daub hut to a current 30 story building. Both of which are totally inadequate for an space station.
With the laser point example. The idea of using a laser pointer as a weapon scales up to a laser pistol but the technology of one is a dead end until you create something new to carry that concept onward.
Switching to non-weapon ideas. Residential technology. The concept of a residence scales. The technology of the various scales is wildly different and unrelated to what came before. There are vast differences in the technology of a traditional mud daub hut to a current 30 story building. Both of which are totally inadequate for an space station.
Anstett
Emperor Mongoose
A different point but related. This is part of why Tech Levels work.
Someone being gifted a laser pointer on a TL3 world would understand how it works, might even conceive of building a big one to turn it into a weapon, but would have the intuition gap/technology gap to create a laser pistol until TL8.
The scaling up breaks as part of the technology but not the concept of scaling it up.
Someone being gifted a laser pointer on a TL3 world would understand how it works, might even conceive of building a big one to turn it into a weapon, but would have the intuition gap/technology gap to create a laser pistol until TL8.
The scaling up breaks as part of the technology but not the concept of scaling it up.
Limpin Legin
Emperor Mongoose
Well, now having read the comments on this thread I have began to believe that more things are scalable than I previously realised
Well the concepts scale but the means of implementations differ:
Weapon : put-target-out-of-action-before-target-gets-chance-to-do-same-as-you type of idea
Armour: Provide-a-barrier-so-the-about-concept-has-less-effect
These ideas scale because the words provide categories not implementation details.
Well, the devil is in the detail as to why things don't scale:
A house made from a pack of cards does not scale because there is no cohesion between the individual cards and the wind or the weight of objects would cause the implementation to fail, but the idea of a building made from panels does not fail. So the devil is in the detail.
Software does not scale because it is structurally weak with poorly defined functionality.
Not the same. A bulletproof vest would get soggy and a ship would sink, as water seeped through the material. Similarly, anyone wearing a side of a battleship as armour would not be able to bend over or sit down or climb over obstacles, etc.
A bigger sensor you mean? Not when the centre of a sensor is giving different readings to the perimeter of a sensor. The sensor reading would average out, and provide an inaccurate measurement. Better to have lots of small sensors than one giant sensor.
Nope. Theory of relativity works at universe level and quantum mechanics works at sub-atomic level, yet their explanations contradict each other.
Plus never heard of quantum mechanics working at any level above sub-atomic, would you care to example?
Well, even within 3D, things don't scale because of a number of practicalities: time taken to move weapon into place, ammo reload times become significantly impractical, large projectile doesn't move fast enough to outdo effects of gravity, large weapon is harder to store and becomes an easier locatable target for the enemy to find. Etc. etc.
Ha ha, in Uk, we would call "food scales " kitchen scales, me thinks. But seeing this statement made me think that meals do not scale. You cannot just consume one larger 3D meal as a substitute for lots of smaller 3D meals, because the human or animal stomach cannot store some nutrients and will just excrete wasted nutrients instead of making use of them. Plus also body reaches a limit about how much carbohydrates it can turn into energy. Unprocessed carbohydrates just gets stored on body and makes consumer more and more obese.
So, yes, I'd agree you opened my eyes a little about what is scalable. However I'd also like to counter there are limitations where scale does not compute well, even if we could brainstorm the idea on paper.
(Edit: Thanks @Anstett didn't mean to duplicate some of your ideas.)
Limpin Legin
Emperor Mongoose
Plus psionics is not scalable. Never seen a planet stat block with psionic ability included. Nor a vehicle or spaceship!
Limpin Legin
Emperor Mongoose
Limpin Legin
Emperor Mongoose
Yes, but what good is a sword against an opponent that is also made of metal?
Same good that a human sized sword works against chain mail. Applied force in a concentrated space. It's very effective.. if you can somehow stop the projectiles from taking you out before you get into sword range.
Vehicle scale swords are effectively wrecking balls with a cutting edge. Very effective, just.. usually too niche to be worth the cost.
