Relativistic Weapons
- Thread starter Gentleman John
- Start date
far-trader
Mongoose
rust said:far-trader said:
This view of human nature in the far future is a bit more sceptical than mine, but I do of course agree that it may well be the right view.
Spelling aside (tricky word, skeptical) I think you mean cynical (grabs dictionary to check, English even as a first language is tricky
). And yes I am. But I'm also hopeful we'll outgrow my cynicsm.far-trader said:Spelling aside (tricky word, skeptical) I think you mean cynical (grabs dictionary to check, English even as a first language is tricky
Hey, I did look that up, and my dictionary really spells it "sceptical". :shock:
This must be another one of those nasty British tricks, changing spelling
in mid-stream to confuse those poor foreigners ... :lol:
Otherwise, yes, I fully understand cynicism, as there are excellent reasons
to be cynical. However, in my description of my science fiction setting, my
optimism usually gets the upper hand - although I could never go as far
as considering the Federation of Star Trek as plausible.
far-trader
Mongoose
rust said:
Tricksy Britishessss yes
And I realize now too that your usage was fine, my understanding was slow.
I can be seen as skeptical (hmm, gotta invent a new way to spell that
) in believing we'll shake off our cynical nature.And I'm with you on the UFP as idealized is too much to hope for. If you scratch the veneer of the fancy UFP propaganda you find the same cynical people we have right here in the 21st century as shown more than once in the many shows.
(and on another note... HEY! Who painted strips on my nice clean fur?
Made Banded Mongoose )Wow, Empty Hex Jumps, Jump Torps, and near-c rocks all showing up at the same time here... it's all the classic Traveller flame wars in one place! Who needs any other boards now...
I don't buy the "if it was possible it would have already been done" argument. I guess far-trader missed all those broken planets leftover from the Ancient War? (that said, those need a MUCH bigger explosion than just a big rock hitting them at lightspeed to be turned into an asteroid belt).
And frankly, there's nothing stopping you from doing it in the OTU - it's a consequence of a poorly-thought out technology with unlimited energy that has no practical limitations. Take one planetoid hull, add 6G drives, load it up with fuel for the powerplant to accelerate using reactionless drives for as long as it likes (since plants bizarrely use fuel at a constant rate regardless of how long they're operating for or how hard they're pushed) and you can accelerate up to any speed (limited by relativity, but you can get to a good 0.8c at least before you even need to worry about that). Aim at planet, and blow a big hole in it at the very least.
Someone will have tried it. Someone will have succeeded. Maybe everyone saw the consequences and though "whoa, we're never doing THAT again" (like the way that nobody (so far anyway) has nuked another population centre after WWII). But enemies (internal and external) might be up for it, and it's really easy to do and to set up, and by the time it's detected there'd be no hope of evacuation from the target.
But while there's moral reasons to not do it, there's absolutely no practical reason whatsoever stopping anyone determined enough from dropping a rock at bloody fast speed (at least) onto a planet.
Generally, I think one big problem is that reactionless drives don't use fuel - which is one reason I liked TNE because it dropped them in favour of HEPlaR, which DID use fuel and thus limited what ships could do.
Another problem is that you're moving a few million tons of rock at the very least - which probably doesn't even have the structural integrity to hold itself together under any kind of acceleration (i.e start accelerating most asteroids, and you'll just break them up into the rubble piles that they really are).
I don't buy the "if it was possible it would have already been done" argument. I guess far-trader missed all those broken planets leftover from the Ancient War? (that said, those need a MUCH bigger explosion than just a big rock hitting them at lightspeed to be turned into an asteroid belt)
. And frankly, there's nothing stopping you from doing it in the OTU - it's a consequence of a poorly-thought out technology with unlimited energy that has no practical limitations. Take one planetoid hull, add 6G drives, load it up with fuel for the powerplant to accelerate using reactionless drives for as long as it likes (since plants bizarrely use fuel at a constant rate regardless of how long they're operating for or how hard they're pushed) and you can accelerate up to any speed (limited by relativity, but you can get to a good 0.8c at least before you even need to worry about that). Aim at planet, and blow a big hole in it at the very least.
Someone will have tried it. Someone will have succeeded. Maybe everyone saw the consequences and though "whoa, we're never doing THAT again" (like the way that nobody (so far anyway) has nuked another population centre after WWII). But enemies (internal and external) might be up for it, and it's really easy to do and to set up, and by the time it's detected there'd be no hope of evacuation from the target.
But while there's moral reasons to not do it, there's absolutely no practical reason whatsoever stopping anyone determined enough from dropping a rock at bloody fast speed (at least) onto a planet.
Generally, I think one big problem is that reactionless drives don't use fuel - which is one reason I liked TNE because it dropped them in favour of HEPlaR, which DID use fuel and thus limited what ships could do.
Another problem is that you're moving a few million tons of rock at the very least - which probably doesn't even have the structural integrity to hold itself together under any kind of acceleration (i.e start accelerating most asteroids, and you'll just break them up into the rubble piles that they really are).
EDG said:Wow, Empty Hex Jumps, Jump Torps, and near-c rocks all showing up at the same time here... it's all the classic Traveller flame wars in one place! Who needs any other boards now...
Gee, with trading barbs with Kenji within the week it's just like old times.
Let's see we've had a pirates arguement, This thread is covering the whole near-c rock issue, there has been some heated word of trade and system design. Well all we need to add in is a bit of banter about Aslan in comfortable shoes and we're golden. (Hey did we cover all the bases over at SJGs boards?) Heck we have even had my personel meme, K'kree Bar-b-que.
EDG said:
Yep, that is my opinion too, TNE went a long ways to define a lot of things that were glossed over in earlier editions. I was reading the orbital rules in TNE again this evening, funny if the rules and concepts presented there don't fit better with the chosen ship scale in MGT core rule book. Couple this with a recent bit nostalgic computer game play of Homeworld, I am sorely tempted to write a fusion of FF&S and MGT's ship construction and combat.
EDG said:
That is a point that I believe has never been brought up.
Infojunky said:
Yeah, that's really funny... until the K'Kree come and carpet bomb your cities with nukes from orbit and kill billions in the process, and then send landing parties down to mercilessly kill any survivors until every single last one of your species is dead... just because of what you eat.
I think people ridicule them because they'd be scared out of their minds if they were real
. Well it might be somewhat moot - if you have a 1km rubble pile asteroid that breaks up and the largest chunk is 100m across... that would still do a fair bit of damage.
Gruffty the Hiver
Banded Mongoose
(EDG: we need to bring up cutlasses in space and marines in BD and/or drop troops to complete the set )
)Gruffty the Hiver said:
Ah, these are easy ones. My Marines never use cutlasses, and they always
wear battledress and are armed with pulser (= gauss) rifles.
And what some so-called Marines in some so-called Imperium in some far-
off parallel so-called OTU universe are doing or not doing ... :roll:
rust said:
Actually ISTR that White Dwarf (?) or someone did a crossover adventure based on CoC and Traveller way back ... maybe even in the 3LBB days (which it would have to have been for WD to have been involved, if they were
)After all, you can't deny ... the Stars are right in Traveller.
I can see what we've missed with the Cthulhutech guys having jumped ship ... the next big thing 8) ...
Cthulhutech Traveller
ALL the Stars are right!
:mrgreen: :shock: 8) :mrgreen:
Phil
EDG said:Well, the Ancients did screw a lot of them up...
And Grandfather is obviously a Servitor of Cthulhu! :twisted:
Which makes the Droyne a servitor race ... and explains why they are so stand-offish and what they are hiding ... all those aweful SAN blasting rituals! :shock:
And those Hivers ... servitors of Shub-Niggurath ... all those limbs, y'see ... not to mention their foul reproductive excesses :shock:
And, of course, Hastur (God of Interstellar Space) is the real why Empty Hex Jumps are impossible ... he devours most anyone stupid enough to try them :shock:
Phil
Vile
Banded Mongoose
Are you thinking of The Last Log: A Call of Cthulhu Scenario set on a Distant Planet Far in the Future by Jon Sutherland, SDteve Williams and Tim Hall in White Dwarf #56? That was actually a straight CoC adventure, although it was nicely isllustrated with photos of a beautiful diorama featuring those gorgeous "Imperial Marines" miniatures by Grenadier Models (reviewed in the same issue) and a brace of Space:1999 "Eagle Transporter" models.aspqrz said:Actually ISTR that White Dwarf (?) or someone did a crossover adventure based on CoC and Traveller way back ... maybe even in the 3LBB days (which it would have to have been for WD to have been involved, if they were
If you're looking to marry Cthulhu and Traveller, you could do better than Cthulhutech - just check out Cthulhu Rising for inspiration.
