Planet Mongoose - Development Diary: Worrying Drones

[MongooseMatt]

Another update on the Vehicle Handbook on Planet Mongoose - a nice little drone you can inflict upon your players in great number!

http://blog.mongoosepublishing.co.uk/?p=827

 

[-Daniel-]

Will there be art to go along with these interesting entries?

 

[MongooseMatt]

Oh yes. A lot of that

 

[-Daniel-]

Oh yes. A lot of that

Great, I find that the artwork often helps me get my own creative mind going. :mrgreen:

 

[phavoc]

I remember somewhere in the old materials that had californium rounds being mentioned, but that the vehicle had to be equipped with nuclear dampers in the magazine because otherwise the rounds would decay before they could be used (depending on the isotope Cf has just seconds to miliseconds of life before it decays).

So my question would be wouldn't the drone also need to have a nuclear damper to store the rounds?

 

[alex_greene]

I remember somewhere in the old materials that had californium rounds being mentioned, but that the vehicle had to be equipped with nuclear dampers in the magazine because otherwise the rounds would decay before they could be used (depending on the isotope Cf has just seconds to miliseconds of life before it decays).

So my question would be wouldn't the drone also need to have a nuclear damper to store the rounds?

Yes, a damper box to hinder the decay of the strong nuclear force, the reverse of the regular nuclear dampers.

I once had a terrorist place a ticking nuke inside a damper box, just to increase its yield a couple of hundred times. His 1kt mini nuke became a 300 megaton strategic device.

 

[MongooseMatt]

So my question would be wouldn't the drone also need to have a nuclear damper to store the rounds?

Not a damper per se, a it only has to focus the effect on a relatively small volume rather than projecting it outwards (did think about using a standard damper, but it just seemed wrong).

 

[alex_greene]

So my question would be wouldn't the drone also need to have a nuclear damper to store the rounds?

Not a damper per se, a it only has to focus the effect on a relatively small volume rather than projecting it outwards (did think about using a standard damper, but it just seemed wrong).

I can never find the actual text. I think it was in the LBB Book 4: Mercenary. If I recall, there was something about the master and slave modules heterodyning to create nodes, where the nuclear force was disrupted, and antinodes where it was somehow reinforced; and damper boxes were containers designed to put the radioactive contents inside an antinode, to keep them metastable. Something like that.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Dampers and Damper Boxes and rules are in CT Striker.

C. Collapsing Rounds: Collapsing rounds are much smaller than standard rounds; this is made possible by using very unstable fissionable materials, such as californium, and by omitting the reliable but bulky detonation system found in standard rounds.
...
Collapsing rounds, because of their short useful half-lives, must be carried in damper boxes; see Book 3.

CT Striker, Book 2, p10-11.

A. Configuration: A damper unit has three components: two separate damper projectors and a fire control system;

CT Striker, Book 2, p11.

 

[Condottiere]

Exactly which pseudo physics law allows that increase in yield?

If it's cost effective, you could load it as a standard missile warhead, which should be interesting when fired into a swarm of fighters.

 

[alex_greene]

Exactly which pseudo physics law allows that increase in yield?

The same pseudo physics law that allows nuclear dampers to work in the first place. Clearly, NDs were reverse engineered from something invented by the Ancients.

 

[phavoc]

So my question would be wouldn't the drone also need to have a nuclear damper to store the rounds?

Not a damper per se, a it only has to focus the effect on a relatively small volume rather than projecting it outwards (did think about using a standard damper, but it just seemed wrong).

Now that someone has dug up the old reference, maybe damper boxes should be added to the Vehicles book as optional equipment?

 

[phavoc]

Exactly which pseudo physics law allows that increase in yield?

The same pseudo physics law that allows nuclear dampers to work in the first place. Clearly, NDs were reverse engineered from something invented by the Ancients.

Hrm... dampers are definitely pseudo-physics. But super-charging a nuclear reaction seems MORE far-fetched than slowing one down. If you could do that with nukes then the yields on larger warheads, especially something as large as a torpedo, would be enormous. Basically a hit would vaporize a dreadnought.

 

[alex_greene]

Basically a hit would vaporize a dreadnought.

Have you seen what happens when you detonate a low to medium explosive in a confined space? The explosive force is multiplied considerably.

Have you ever given a thought that they might actually design Traveller nukes with that in mind? Those warheads might be really small, but pack a huge wallop because they've been kept stored inside damper box fields.

 

[FallingPhoenix]

Have you seen what happens when you detonate a low to medium explosive in a confined space? The explosive force is multiplied considerably.

Have you ever given a thought that they might actually design Traveller nukes with that in mind? Those warheads might be really small, but pack a huge wallop because they've been kept stored inside damper box fields.

Except once you let it out of the confined space, it should be about as effective as normal. The reason it's multiplied in a confined space is because the confined space is containing it. So if you can build your damper box around the target, then you've got something, but a nuke in a damper box would just be as effective as normal once you let it out...

 

[Condottiere]

If you can accelerate the sub atomic processes, that may actually result in a disintegration.

 

[phavoc]

Basically a hit would vaporize a dreadnought.

Have you seen what happens when you detonate a low to medium explosive in a confined space? The explosive force is multiplied considerably.

Have you ever given a thought that they might actually design Traveller nukes with that in mind? Those warheads might be really small, but pack a huge wallop because they've been kept stored inside damper box fields.

Nuclear damper fields don't actually confine anything. They alter the nuclear decay process, which affects the ability of the fissile materials to go critical and detonate. Someone who knows more about physics can probably weigh in on the weak/strong nuclear forces and get more detailed, but at a high level that's what they do.

Detonating something in an enclosed space doesn't add any energy to the explosion, though how the wave force travels can be altered.

 

[alex_greene]

Basically a hit would vaporize a dreadnought.

Have you seen what happens when you detonate a low to medium explosive in a confined space? The explosive force is multiplied considerably.

Have you ever given a thought that they might actually design Traveller nukes with that in mind? Those warheads might be really small, but pack a huge wallop because they've been kept stored inside damper box fields.

Someone who knows more about physics can probably weigh in on the weak/strong nuclear forces and get more detailed, but at a high level that's what they do.

What nuclear dampers do is something that we don't know how to do yet, but that does not mean that we don't know what to do.

But under the effects of a damper node, the decay threshold of a nucleus is somehow drastically reduced for unstable nuclides.

The process is the same as how an electron moves from a higher quantum state to a lower quantum state and ejects a photon (which is how LEDs and lasers work). X-rays are the same dealio, but they're caused by transitions of lower shell electrons where the quantum states are much further apart and the photons emitted are much more powerful - a thousand times more powerful than visible light photons.

So it's like that in a nucleus. When a nucleus decays, it goes from unstable to stable, and it either ejects a gamma photon because a proton or neutron moved to a lower quantum energy shell inside the nucleus, or the nucleus decays from its current form to a less unstable nucleus and ejects a particle - electron or alpha particle - changing the numbers of protons and neutrons in the nucleus and transmuting the atom, and releasing a boatload of energy.

With the nuclear damper node in place over the nuclear material, somehow the strong nuclear force governing the unstable nucleus is weakened. Unstable radionuclides begin shedding a lot less energy and transform almost instantaneously because the gap between the excited, unstable nuclear quantum state and the less excited, more stable lower nuclear quantum state is decreased, speeding up the process of transmutation and reducing the energy of the photons being emitted from gamma rays to X-rays or even harmless visible light.

If it's an antinode, these quantum transactions are still possible, but the threshold is raised. Protons and neutrons are held in excited states, and may require some sort of stimulus to raise their energies to a higher quantum level (having to go from state A to higher state B, and then decay from state B to state C with ejection of a particle or emission of a gamma photon as the nucleus settles into a more relaxed state, for instance). Think of it as having to climb a two-metre guardrail to leap over the five hundred metre cliff on the other side. Now imagine that with the gravity increased by, say, x3. As much effort now needs to be put to climb over the guardrail as one would have to climb up a six metre guardrail - but the fall on the other side releases as much energy as a 1500 metre drop.

BOOM.