Well of Souls Forums

I think it comes down to sci-fi reality over "reality". In space whoever has the longer weapons range wins, so the Loroi should absolutely devastate the Umiak. But then that would make for a pretty boring war. "Yeah, we pretty much own them thoroughly, but they keep building new ships for us to shoo...

The values are kind of odd though. The Umiak have no real turrets, so they most likely fight jousting style, as we've seen in the last few panels. It makes sense to have massive armor if you fight like that. But then why wouldn't the Loroi also beef up their armor, or concentrate it on the front of ...

Looks like tempo is as surprised as me, such large warship of doom is coming their way, guess the loroi losing their Far-seeing abilities and those the tt supers coming aren't a coincidence. It appears that the Umaik are starting offensive operations now that the Loroi have lost a key advantage. Ac...

As Ktrain suggested, we could be a good staging area and it's better if we were able to rebuild and supply the Loroi from what we have here than having them bring all of the supplies they need all the way with them. Yes, but that doesn't mean we'll get competitive engine or weapon technology. I do ...

dfacto, that is unrealistic. If the Loroi want us to help them, some tech assistance will have to be offered. Right now, humanity has little to offer aside from bodies and an undamaged and unexploited tech base that can be expanded upon. With billions of people on our worlds, we have the advantage ...

The cyclotron largely lets you achieve a given particle energy in a shorter weapon. I don't think it's notably more efficient. Something similar might be used to separate and inject particles into the linac...and as for continuous fire, I don't think they're any better suited than linacs. I assumed...

Ok, I concede that particle cannons would make good weapons, and probably be much more efficient than a railgun in space. I don't envision any cyclotron, just a straight linear accelerator...more straightforward to scale up in beam intensity, and it's what existing particle beam milling machines use...

Had some ideas for how Terran Ship design would evolve, so I thought I'd share a quick outline. 0-5 years post contact: Terrans realize they're completely outclassed and can't catch up. Loroi mistrust Humans and don't see any reason to give them technical support when they have no industry to make u...

I haven't suggested anything remotely like firing solitary high-energy particles, I was in fact very specifically describing the very opposite...low particle energies compared to research/medical accelerators, and very high beam currents. Just so I'm sure I understand you here: low energy, lots of ...

Of course it still requires large amounts of power, you're just not going to deposit a large amount of energy into your target without putting that energy in somewhere. Railgun, linear synchronous motor, particle beam, laser, kinetic missile, the same goes for all of them. Not sure where you're goi...

Ablation is only an issue for deployment as a working weapon, not for achieving a high projectile energy for such a single shot test, and I don't know what "alignment" issue you're talking about... Current problems with the rail itself are ablation and the rail buckling after each shot, requiring r...

Their current record is 33 MJ, apparently with a 10.4 kg 2.5 km/s shot. Which is why I doubt the best we can do in another 150 years is 3 GJ, 200kg and 6 km/s Traditional artillery went from barely being able to dent a stone wall to blasting through a foot of hardened steel in a matter of 700 years...

Yes, but on the other hand you have a lighter round with less inertia, which means it needs less energy to accelerate it compared to the larger round. I'm thinking the situation isn't as bad as you make it out to be. Probably doable, just no benefit to it.

Since you haven't been very clear so far so I'll ask for clarification, are you talking about an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT mass driver? If not then my and Mjolnir's posts still stand. If yes then you still run into the issues with actually building such a weapon since it's power usage will be significantl...

1) the Loroi timeline is not in wartime and is largely due to their cultural traditions, not their actual capacity. So just using simple math isn't really going to give you a reasonable approximation. Much like the 1/2+7 rule for creepiness while dating. Perhaps humans just maintain a higher non-wa...

I have to agree, 200 Kg for a railgun round seems ludicrously large. There's going to be a problem with storing rounds that large in a ship. That's a lot of extra weight if you assume they have more than ten shots. Then again this isn't real life, so you can wave off weight for artistic license. Aft...

Trantor wrote:

Tash wrote:Maybe mankind's contribution is being very good at bluffing?

Now i got it: Pesticides! We have pesticides! Yay, win!

We've got this:



Quake in fear, Umiak scum.

Eh, all this tech talk is pointless anyways. Most likely the Loroi will outsource their shoe manufacturing to us or something. We'll get paid next to nothing to make space Nikes.

You say that like its a bad thing, and what about it being a webcomic? That has nothing to do with my counter. Any fiction can take anything as far as it wants, or be as close to reality if it desires, and mix it however they please. Yes, any fiction can do whatever it wants, but only good fiction ...

Come on man, seriously. The works of fiction that assume a certain development at a specific date, does not change realistic human development pace. Your example, isn't an example at all to argue your case. Realistic is realistic. A webcomic story is a webcomic story. The two are only related if the...