Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: MonkeyHead on February 20, 2016, 11:50:06 am

As for your oxygen burner idea... it is not really feasible. However, let us play around with atmospheres a little. Let us consider an alien race that breathes a methane oxygen (or other oixidizing) atmosphere. A canister of pressurised oxygen methane and an igniter of some form would really ruin their day, replacing all theat lovley breathable air with CO₂, H₂O and fire. Kind of like a reverse napalm fuelled by their atmosphere, maybe?

The weapon would work just as well there with oxygen as it would here with methane. (assuming that the moles of O2 and the moles of CH4 are equal)

Yeah, I appear to have simply reinvented the fire bomb. *shrug*

Standing exposed on a plinth overlooking enemy territory. I rain short range fully automatic fire down on two approaching enemy who stop and swim for cover. One pops out from cover firing inkzooka rounds at me, with the second offering covering fire from a heavy weapon. I swim away and leap from the platform to a walkway beneath to avoid the incoming fire. As I land, an airstrike incoming warning lets me know I am in real trouble. I spray ink up a nearby wall, swim up it, and balance on the narrow wall top to avoid the ink strike. Heavy fire from my 2 engaged enemies is flying all around me when a third enemy (probably the one who called in the airstrike) joins in the firing at me from behind cover further along the walkway. I leap down to the walkway again to hide behind a small box, laying ink while in mid air with the intent of swimming back a long way along the walkway back to better cover. Upon landing my own inkzooka fully charges. This instantly changes the balance of power and as such changes my plans. I turn to face my pursuers and whip out the inkzooka, then fire off two rounds in quick succession - both are direct hits splatting the 2 enemies pursuing me from the plinth as they leap down to the walkway. The third rather sensibly stays in cover, probably out of ink. His weapon will out range mine if I choose to trade fire, but if I get in close while he is out of ink he is a dead squid. I swim up to and on top of the box he is hiding behind, jump and turn a quick 180, landing neatly behind him. A short burst of ink from my Aerospray later and he too is splatted. About 15 seconds of instinctive and reactionary combat, and I am left with 3 dead enemies and a whole load of unprotected turf to claim. This secures the win for my team, as there is not long left on the match clock.

I think the problem with a rail shotgun is that on a railgun you want a single projectile to be shot from the rails (not sure how you could fire multiple projectiles with just the single gun) so you would need a projectile that would stay as one when fired but upon leaving the barrel it would split into multiple (flechetes, rods, cubes, spheres, what have you). Though my knowledge on this is very limited and I don't know what I'm talking about so what I'm trying to say is I don't know and don't believe me XD

Easy. Discarding sabot flechette rounds. Basically what used to be called canister shot back in the day. Oh, this has already been covered...

As for your oxygen burner idea... it is not really feasible. However, let us play around with atmospheres a little. Let us consider an alien race that breathes a methane (or other hydrocarbon/volatile) atmosphere. A canister of pressurised oxygen and an igniter of some form would really ruin their day, replacing all theat lovley breathable air with CO₂, H₂O and fire. Kind of like a reverse napalm fuelled by their atmosphere, maybe?

My point about the iron sphere may have been a bit glib - sorry. That said, the whole Whale not being a fish thing is kind of a big deal with regards to people who claim the bible is perfect in nature. Notice, not that Whales should be identified as mammals (for the reasons you outline), but that it is not a fish. Subtle but important difference. Why the mis-categorisation occurred is fairly irrelevant compared to the fact that calling it a fish is wrong. The same as calling grasshoppers 4-legged, or labelling bats as birds. They are claims made by a book that are wrong, and torpedo any claims of divine perfection. They are creatures that are lumped in with others that they should not be, and such a thing would not occur in a work of divine provenance.

... and determining if an iron sphere is solid or hollow is also trivial without knocking on it, especially if it is in motion or interacting in some way with other objects in some way.

Whales being a mammal and incorrectly identified in the bible IS damning to its claims of divine provenance (even via inspiration) and of being a "perfect work".

You could also argue that the last "old" war would have been the Crimean War (only a few years earlier than the US civil war...), which featured many of the aspects that one would associate with the earlier formation dominated warfare meshed with the technological innovations you describe. The tools existed, but nobody seemed to know how to use them.

... are you defining free will as a function of the difficulty of realistically simulating reality enough to determine future states, and that free will emerges as an illusion due to insufficient computing power or too "rough" a mathematical model of reality? Interesting.

Pee Tee Eff