May 9, 2024: The May '24 Report is up.
News: April 23, 2024: Dwarf Fortress 50.13 has been released.
News: February 4, 2021: Dwarf Fortress Talk #28 has been posted.
News: November 21, 2018: A new Threetoe story has been posted.
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just useFTFYIRCTHE FRIKKING FORUM guys, no need for any mics or even sound
so simple, so efficent, so easy
@GWG: They may be from soft sci-fi univereses, but the mode of operation is still valid (As it is a real mode for laser operation.). I just used that as the example as that's how such a laser would look like in operation.It would have helped if you hadn't cited such sources, though...and maybe cited some more real-life thing?
As for the electric train thing, those don't requires the sheer amount of power the weapons would need to operate. So now there's the issue.We can't generate and transmit the sheer amount of power anyways. The concept is there, it just needs some improvements...as does everything we're talking about in this discussion when compared to modern technology.
A large blast would have a VERY small duration, if one at all.If d=0, e=0. Simple as that.
As for the fighters, only a few have to be built with the life support systems, the rest you can fill out with the drone's equipment and such.What drone equipment is going to be anywhere near the size and signature of active life-support stuff?
Fighters would be harder to detect at a larger range,Stealth and space are two concepts that normal physics will not let coexist.
and (Assuming the fighters are powered via reactor) very capable of dodging.Oh, really? Maybe at absurdly extreme distances, or against absurdly slow projectiles, but otherwise their window between detecting a projectile and being able to move out of the way is very slow--I believe one of the previously-linked pages had a figure of a quarter-second at a range of 20,000 km?
On the flip side though, they'd need to get close to do any appreciable amount of damage so they do need it.Indeed. And the enemy will have better range than them.
@Lenglon: A pulsed op beam is NOT continuous. It does all it's damage all at once, not over time. It only needs to hit the target initially like a ballistic weapon would, and it's done it's job. And if doing it in two pulses causes heat issues, imagine how a continuous wave of it would produce heat on that frequency.Again, the duration can not equal zero. It's impossible. And that's what Lenglon is saying.
@GWGOh. Well, um, what about autonomous drones? And where is the line between "drone AI" and "pilot"?
In this case, I'm arguing whether or not having organic components physically present is helpful. Back when the argument started, someone defined a fighter as having a pilot physically present, whereas a drone is remotely controlled. So I just went with it.
As far as the Avatar, I don't mean dump Miyamoto into space as he is. That would be idiotic. I mean, design an avatar with a different body- one tailored for space, with rockets or whatever you use for propulsion.I know. However, I'm not sure how well synthflesh would work with rockets, and very sure that delta-v limits would once again rear their ugly heads.
At the moment, I have two ideas:
1. A nuclear explosive thingy small enough to be used as a bullet or other such projectile (likely a larger-caliber one), for when normal explosive rounds just aren't enough.
2. Synthflesh/Normalflesh hybrids. I have some ideas, but first I need to make sure this is possible and sane.
-snip-Enter Ms. Simus's VR Session
"Miss Simus, do we have a budget or something like that? Do we have restrictions on what we can make it be?"
Pistol. 3d6 damage, +5 bonus to attack rolls. You get another +10 because Will. :vWill shoots the left cell in the nucleus.
I would really like you to stop undermining my involvment in the plot to justify why you think it was bad.Well, first off, there was no indication that Kyle's arguments convinced the angels of anything, but fine. That means that there was nothing we could do for the first half of the plot--which was where everything that matters for after the plot happened--and only one player had any effect on the plot after that. Given that there are more than 2-3 players, this ain't much better.
Sometimes, there are events that a group of PCs simply can not change. Rather than making the player to complain about it with the GM until it all gets retconned, it should motivate the characters to make sure that won't happen next time through ingame meansThat doesn't make it anything like acceptable GMing, or anything like fun, or even fair.
ACTUALLY, it was said by Rag, over Skype, that it was completely possible to win that fight. If people focused on Dumah, you know, the one charging the giant laser, then it would be completely possible. She has low DEX, so it can't quite dodge as good as most. We would of hit it much more than the one with 50 DEX. Plus, Dumah only had like 400 HP as opposed to say, over 1000 HP on Seles/Asariel's part.How would we have known any of this useful information? And, um, people WERE focusing on Dumah when she was charging the laser, it's just that Asariel made almost all of the big ones fail and we barely had any time to deal 400 points of damage. Oh, and we would have also been able to focus on Dumah had rag not decided "This is a magical bad thing so it's a curse, duh" without consulting ANYONE, hence allowing everything to be negated for that one vital turn. Including the powerful effectively one-shot gauntlet Cyrielle had made and the attack Marie had been charging all combat.
To be fair it sounds like you have Skype but choose not to use it. Come on guys, you just need a mic, its not that hard.I don't even have Skype, and if I did I wouldn't have the time to chat with random Internet people about a game in hopes that I'll get the critical information that no one bothers to post about in-thread.
I wonder if ICARUS will figure out how to make a toy Meme won't want to hide from...No.
ICARUS begins dissecting a half-burned couch for massiveness, two torn apart furcoats for fluffyness and the stuffing of a matress to make a teddy bear to Memes specifications. It looks even more freakish than before, as it's almost 2 meters tall, incredibly bulky and is covered in the stitched-together fur of many dozen rabbits.Will does not want to know where ICARUS got the rabbit fur.
"Aesthetics are at the bottom of the priority bracket, function, durability and cost-efficency dominate. The unit Meme is irrational. Perhaps PTSD?""Let's try this."
"Do you mean to say the toy induces fear?"Will facepalms.
ICARUS eyes glow red, then she blasts the abomiteddy with her particle cannon, leaving only dust, before her eyes turn purple again.
"Fear is a class-7 threat. Threat has been eliminated. Unit Meme, you are save now."
...That's a little silly.There's something called design complexity. Not to mention that the enemy only has to hit the rails and the system is useless. Railway-based weapons are just not efficient at all, regardless if the rail is on a ship, or terrestrial.What about some sort of magnetic treads? Point defense tanks!
@GWG I was talking about the turrets >.>I know. I was applying the exact same argument to the fighters.
@Paris: You're looking at something that's many more times expensive than a standard, fixed mount turret. While it could be somewhat effective, depending on what weapons it as, you are still looking at a very large investment per tank.Not as much as a whole fighter.
PD weapons exist in any case, be it against missiles or asteroids. Take that as fact.Possible, yes. Effective, efficient, worth making? You haven't shown that.
This means that missiles both exist, and are used on the field.
This means there are tactics developed to counteract the enemy point defense.
This means fighters are possible during the same phase of engagement where missiles are possible.
Weapons precise enough to destroy fighters can destroy or damage these weapons with ease, as they are attached to much slower-moving capital ships.Whereas fighters are going to have severe trouble dodging any kind of weapon unless they're at extreme distances, so they're also going to be easy to hit.
The opening phase of the fight therefore becomes an exchange of salvoes that targets the individual weapons of the enemy - it's the best way to render the enemy helpless. This is especially true if ships are valuable enough to refrain from destroying them with abandon.Wouldn't your logic make the ship with more PD weapons and PDstroyers the one with the advantage?
Single large weapons become weakpoints. They become secondary weapons meant to be used when it's necessary to destroy the enemy, after its precise defensive weaponry is removed.Assuming, of course, that the exposed part of the weapon is A. easy to damage and B. important to the function of the weapon.
Multiple mobile weapons with enough range and precision to inflict damage on sensitive parts of the enemy become favorable.Wait, how did "mobile" become an advantage? You kinda slipped that in there without explaining it. And why do I suspect you're going to immediately jump from "mobile" to "not on the ship" without explaining that, either?
Attack drones start being employed as secondary precision weapons platforms.Called it.
They are used at large ranges to avoid incoming enemy fire where regular weapon turrets are incapable of this,Why? Again, the turrets can be made mobile if it's that much of an issue, and the ability to dodge in space is pretty much nil except against kinetic weapons at low speeds or extreme ranges.
Attack drones use starts to expand when both sides use drones. As they are mobile weapons, the engagement ranges close to eliminate the possibility of dodging due to laser lag.You mean it was possible to dodge before? Referring to those fighters, there.
Eventually fights progress into mixed drone/ship combat with ships and drones both exchanging fire at long and medium ranges.Unless, of course, you have accurate, long-range lasers that can heavily damage ships before they get in fighter/etc range. Or you could always shoot down the drones as they get closer.
Unless drones possess individual intelligence on par with human, effective countermeasures are being employed to fool the opposing sides' drone AI.Which are most eaisly and cheaply remedied with a patch, not--
Human presence is required on the field to control and direct drones in situations where light lag would prove disastrous.--that.
Squadrons of mixed piloted and drone fighters are adopted as standard, all designed to appear identical on sensors, to provide in-situ control of AI drones.Which requires wasting space in the drones so they have fake life support and whatnot.
That's about as far as I can hypothesize it.Mind starting over?
Now, what if it was a capship weapon that took out the rails (As a side effect of hitting the main hull itself.)So anti-capital weaons are suddenly not worthless?
As for the design, the ship would be easier, as the rail weapons also need their power supply taken into account, and a destroyed reactor on the hull could have pretty catastrophic effects so that's not exactly a suitable option. Batteries would have limited charge, and ammo being loaded into the turret would be far more difficult if it is mobile.We already have rails that give power to what's on them. They're called electric trains, I've ridden on them. They have functional electric lights and everything.
quick reminder: heat weapons (lasers) need to stay on their target over time to work. additionally at long range in space you have light-speed sensor limits. small targets can move perpendicular to the line of fire and the lasers, even with instant reactions, won't stay on them.If you're not constantly spending delta-v to change your course (a tactic so fraught with issues I won't go into it unless asked), you're going to be moving in a straight line. PRetty easy to track your movements then.
there is no true 'instant weapon', and accuracy limits still apply.Moreso to the little weapons than the big ones, since the big ones will have access to better...well, everything that can be made better, really.
additionally, a ship intent on close-quarters combat can build up momentum from outside effective range, and their limiting factor is mostly how fast they can slow down.And their delta-v.
oh, and not everything has to be turreted. you can hull-mount fighter/drone weapons without issue, and they only need small sideways movement options, they can mostly go forwards/backwards and rotate.Your point?
regarding rails, continuious damage heat weapons (lasers) can draw large circles or grid patterns without precise aiming, and rails, by their nature, can't be armored. you can confine / limit railed turrets to a single area at much longer ranges than you can pick individual turrets/targets off.Unless the ship moves relative to where the lasers are being aimed. Why is that possible for the fighters but not the capital ships?
That depends on the laser. If it's pulsed operation, it wouldn't need to stay on target since it delivers all it's energy in one, large blast. Sorta like the sectopod main cannon or a lasgun.Both of which are from pretty soft sci-fi (XCOM and 40k)...
A pulsed laser only hits once. it doesn't fire a continuous beam at the target.So?
even that large blast has a duration. if it only hits for part of the time it is fireing, be it pulsed or not, it will only do a fraction of its normal damage.
So, skipping over the argument of whether a small attack craft is even feasible, what does a fighter have over a drone? As Lenglon said, life support is minor- brains can be supported by a torso, with room left over (robobodies have accurate anatomy as far as muscles, and there's some decent musculature in a torso).Um, a drone piloted by a brain instead of a computer is still a drone for all intents and purposes.
However, there are ways to make space wizards more effective. For a moment, recall Miyamoto fighting the sods with meat shields. IIRC, he made a massive heatblade which bisected the building he was in and continued on into the upper atmosphere. That would be very effective against a spaceship. Miyamoto could do that, because he was in an avatar of war. Isn't an Avatar about the same size as a large fighter? You could make a Avatar that is entirely space based, give the user a universal manip, coat it in as much stealth stuff as possible, and voila! You have a hard to detect fighter craft that can chop capital ships in half. And it's more durable than a equivalent fighter made of metal. It's probably really expensive though.And Avatars are not, by default, equipped for any kind of zero-g acceleration. Imagine an overshot on a manipulator roll just to get moving...
also, if you keep insisting that Will is useless and want to keep him useless, stop complaining that he had no chance to change anythingHe's not useless, it's just that combat isn't what he's good at. And I'm not complaining that Will had no chance to change anything--I'm complaining that everyone had no chance to change anything, no matter how hard they tried.
Wait, so the plot ended while I was asleep? What the fuck happened, also does Bethany gets points?Shys'm Caes surrendered right after Arya's house was destroyed, Yuri (and Selina and Kyle) testified to the angels about the lack of overgod qualities in Yuri's mother because they were too blind to know and too stupid to check (and Shys'm didn't tell them), points to everyone who "participated" in the plot.
"...It fweakyish..." Meme is trembling as she is also kinda afraid of robots!Will comforts Meme.
There's something called design complexity.How are rails more complex than a whole fighter?
Not to mention that the enemy only has to hit the rails and the system is useless."Not to mention that the enemy only has to hit the fighter and the ship is useless."
Railway-based weapons are just not efficient at all, regardless if the rail is on a ship, or terrestrial.More efficient than space fighters. And really, the rails are only an auxiliary thing. "It's there if we need it, but we really won't."
Yeah, no.Oh, and your claims that Will is more useful in a fight than Neferis? Amusing. After all, Neferis is super-strong, and Will's only skill lets him guess at all the BS abilities the angels had to screw us with.Neferis has absolutely no Dexterity though and has trouble hitting anything that could move. Really, what we hould do is make a harness for Will, so that he can ride on Neferis's back and direct her attacks with his powers.
...
No?
