Anti-gravity

[Charlie]

There is no stealth in space. The only thing you can do is not be in the spot they are looking. The field of view gets narrower the farther out you are, but at any combat range, it is still damn wide.

Can we not hide behind a gas giant?
And the very least Lorai would have trouble spotting our ships at first.

[Imbrooge]

Thats because they rely largely on their Farseers for detection, and they were too busy fighting the Umiak at the time to pay attention to anyone coming into the solar system with their non-psychic sensors.

The only thing that could be "hidden" behind is a star, and thats only if their so close inside the solar system that the stars brightness and size causes a large blindspot.

[Voitan]

When it comes to artificial gravity the first thing that comes to mind for me in a military use, is to create a field to bend away enemy fire on your ship, or a torpedo that you don't want to get blown up.

[Charlie]

Thats because they rely on their largely Farseers for detection, and they were too busy fighting the Umiak at the time to pay attention to anyone coming into the solar system with their non-psychic sensors.

This is why I think a first strike with a large asteroid could work, I have no idea as to why wee would want to do it to our best allies though.

However after only one or maybe two impact events a Lorai would undoubtedly know what we are doing as Humans are the only known beings to be stealth to Farseers. How this could work on the bugmen is an unknown. I don`t think it would beyond poorly defended planets which would likely be their slave race`s.

When it comes to artificial gravity the first thing that comes to mind for me in a military use, is to create a field to bend away enemy fire on your ship, or a torpedo that you don't want to get blown up.

Would not having massive gravity in a certain area bend the beam towards the ship? Maybe if we could project the field we could create ultra dense fields of local gravity, miniature black holes to hide behind at a safe distance.

[Absalom]

I have always thought it was more like a field type like in Mass Effect instead of tractor beam technology akin to Star Wars.

If we attach a drive onto a large enough rock of sufficient mass and structural integrity and get the rock moving at the best possible speeds Terran tech can accomplish then before it get near to the planet we crank the gravity drive to maximum settings, we would have a far heaver rock moving at high speeds aimed at an offending colony.

You're thinking of mass manipulation, not gravity manipulation. Gravity manipulation is hopefully accessible via mass manipulation technology, but it isn't the same thing. In the real world we're basically certain that we've found mass's force carrier particle, but we aren't actually certain that gravity should have one.

Mass manipulation could, however, be potentially very useful. If you can selectively increase the mass of a ship's hull then you could potentially greatly increase the armor value of that hull. This, I believe, is at least part of what you need for WH40k's ramming prows.

As for tractor beam/field effects, if you can bend or reflect a field (as you can with photons), then you can manipulate a field into the form of a beam. If you can form a beam with a single-source emitter then you don't need fast switching, if you can't then there's a very real possibility that you'll need fast switching to create a mass driver with gravity technology.

When it comes to artificial gravity the first thing that comes to mind for me in a military use, is to create a field to bend away enemy fire on your ship, or a torpedo that you don't want to get blown up.

Only useful if mounted on drones, usable in a beam/focused form, or usable as actual anti-gravity. However, if used in a different setting than Outsider this could (and even more so if combined with artificial-mass armor on the defended ship(s)) be used to produce a very distinct technological setting.

However after only one or maybe two impact events a Lorai would undoubtedly know what we are doing as Humans are the only known beings to be stealth to Farseers. How this could work on the bugmen is an unknown. I don`t think it would beyond poorly defended planets which would likely be their slave race`s.

It probably couldn't. Unless, of course, you could massively circumvent the front lines, so that you could get around the areas that the Umiak heavily defend. This would probably only work if you could requisition some Farseers, which obviously would require Loroi support.

And all of this, of course, would work better if you were using actual Loroi warships, since they have better capabilities. Humanity could build any theoretical "artificial-mass impactors", but actually using them would likely require Loroi ships to help get them into position.

When it comes to artificial gravity the first thing that comes to mind for me in a military use, is to create a field to bend away enemy fire on your ship, or a torpedo that you don't want to get blown up.

Would not having massive gravity in a certain area bend the beam towards the ship? Maybe if we could project the field we could create ultra dense fields of local gravity, miniature black holes to hide behind at a safe distance.

Unless any theoretical gravitons could move faster than light (or, alternatively, were somehow immune to the acceleration applied by moving space-time), I don't think we'd quite be able to produce a black-hole level effect. Though maybe I'm wrong.

[Charlie]

I have always thought it was more like a field type like in Mass Effect instead of tractor beam technology akin to Star Wars.

If we attach a drive onto a large enough rock of sufficient mass and structural integrity and get the rock moving at the best possible speeds Terran tech can accomplish then before it get near to the planet we crank the gravity drive to maximum settings, we would have a far heaver rock moving at high speeds aimed at an offending colony.

You're thinking of mass manipulation, not gravity manipulation. Gravity manipulation is hopefully accessible via mass manipulation technology, but it isn't the same thing. In the real world we're basically certain that we've found mass's force carrier particle, but we aren't actually certain that gravity should have one.

My apologies, I was told in school that anything with a measurable mass has it`s own gravity well. This is where my confusion comes from. My reasoning was that we make an object heavier and create an extended artificial gravity well.

I have seen videos of grains sugar been shaken together in a bag in micro gravity, to roughly show how stars form. And then planets from the remaining accretion disk.

If a sugar grain weighed three times as much as normal it could attract more sugar to it and increase it`s own gravity well there by attracting more sugar extending the cycle until most of the sugar is a relatively stable clump inside the bag.

Mass manipulation could, however, be potentially very useful. If you can selectively increase the mass of a ship's hull then you could potentially greatly increase the armor value of that hull. This, I believe, is at least part of what you need for WH40k's ramming prows.

This is what I envisioned for my kinetic strike weapons, heaver than normal, powered by star ship engines and aimed at the planets

As for tractor beam/field effects, if you can bend or reflect a field (as you can with photons), then you can manipulate a field into the form of a beam. If you can form a beam with a single-source emitter then you don't need fast switching, if you can't then there's a very real possibility that you'll need fast switching to create a mass driver with gravity technology.

Is this an idea for a gravity powered Coil Gun?

When it comes to artificial gravity the first thing that comes to mind for me in a military use, is to create a field to bend away enemy fire on your ship, or a torpedo that you don't want to get blown up.

Only useful if mounted on drones, usable in a beam/focused form, or usable as actual anti-gravity. However, if used in a different setting than Outsider this could (and even more so if combined with artificial-mass armor on the defended ship(s)) be used to produce a very distinct technological setting.

However after only one or maybe two impact events a Lorai would undoubtedly know what we are doing as Humans are the only known beings to be stealth to Farseers. How this could work on the bugmen is an unknown. I don`t think it would beyond poorly defended planets which would likely be their slave race`s.

It probably couldn't. Unless, of course, you could massively circumvent the front lines, so that you could get around the areas that the Umiak heavily defend. This would probably only work if you could requisition some Farseers, which obviously would require Loroi support.

And all of this, of course, would work better if you were using actual Loroi warships, since they have better capabilities. Humanity could build any theoretical "artificial-mass impactors", but actually using them would likely require Loroi ships to help get them into position.

When it comes to artificial gravity the first thing that comes to mind for me in a military use, is to create a field to bend away enemy fire on your ship, or a torpedo that you don't want to get blown up.

Would not having massive gravity in a certain area bend the beam towards the ship? Maybe if we could project the field we could create ultra dense fields of local gravity, miniature black holes to hide behind at a safe distance.

Unless any theoretical gravitons could move faster than light (or, alternatively, were somehow immune to the acceleration applied by moving space-time), I don't think we'd quite be able to produce a black-hole level effect. Though maybe I'm wrong.

To be honest I have no idea about the real sciences involved, I was educated on an outdated high school physical sciences level, most of what I know comes from reading articles that pique my interest online. You can be sure however I will read up on this as much as I can until my knowledge base is sufficient to renew this conversation, as at the moment it is fairly one sided as you posses more knowledge on the subject.

[Charlie]

In hind sight the black hole shields were explained poorly by me, we only need to make a region in the spacetime depressed enough to catch or change the course of enemy beams or missiles.

[icekatze]

hi hi

Actually, people shrink as much as .75 inches during the course of a single day due to compression by gravity, and expand again during horizontal rest. I think it is very likely that someone who grows up in a low gravity environment would indeed be taller.

In the Star Trek universe, they used mass manipulation for a lot of things. Their incredible delta V budget in sub-light speed was due to reducing the mass of the ship while in motion. Although I think using gravity to stop projectiles would probably run into the problem that a powerful enough gravity field would tear the ship apart at the same time.

(I think the current theory is that gravity propagates at the speed of light. Now I'm not 100% on this, but I seem to recall that it might have had something to do with frame dragging effects.)

[Absalom]

Okay, it's time to give you an introduction to bbcode. This is how a quote begins:
quote="Charlie"

And this is how one ends:
/quote

Add them together, with both inside of their own set of square-brackets, and you get this:

Within certain limits (which vary between different message boards), you can embed quotes within each other:

On the outsider boards, you can only have them three deep, so this is the limit:

Whenever you're trying to reply to part of a message instead of the entire message, you can "cut" it into pieces by inserting a:
/quote
followed by a:
quote=""
where the username of the person that you're responding to is inside of the quotation marks.

You're thinking of mass manipulation, not gravity manipulation. Gravity manipulation is hopefully accessible via mass manipulation technology, but it isn't the same thing. In the real world we're basically certain that we've found mass's force carrier particle, but we aren't actually certain that gravity should have one.

My apologies, I was told in school that anything with a measurable mass has it`s own gravity well. This is where my confusion comes from. My reasoning was that we make an object heavier and create an extended artificial gravity well.

I assume that doing that would work (I don't know, but I assume: just as I assume that gravitons, possibly in multiple varieties, exist), but if you can generate an actual gravitational force instead of having to stop with artificial mass, then you might be able to achieve your goals more efficiently (consider: your method could, for example, require duplicating the mass of an entire planet to generate standard-Earth gravity: without a more efficient method, Humanity couldn't have artificial gravity with any reasonable size of fusion reactor, which would be a deal-breaker for at least Outsider).

As for tractor beam/field effects, if you can bend or reflect a field (as you can with photons), then you can manipulate a field into the form of a beam. If you can form a beam with a single-source emitter then you don't need fast switching, if you can't then there's a very real possibility that you'll need fast switching to create a mass driver with gravity technology.

Is this an idea for a gravity powered Coil Gun?

I assume that it wouldn't be designed as a coil system, but yes, this is an idea for a Mass Driver (which is a generic category which includes both Coil Guns and Rail Guns). It could also be used for e.g. elevators.

Would not having massive gravity in a certain area bend the beam towards the ship? Maybe if we could project the field we could create ultra dense fields of local gravity, miniature black holes to hide behind at a safe distance.

Unless any theoretical gravitons could move faster than light (or, alternatively, were somehow immune to the acceleration applied by moving space-time), I don't think we'd quite be able to produce a black-hole level effect. Though maybe I'm wrong.

To be honest I have no idea about the real sciences involved, I was educated on an outdated high school physical sciences level, most of what I know comes from reading articles that pique my interest online. You can be sure however I will read up on this as much as I can until my knowledge base is sufficient to renew this conversation, as at the moment it is fairly one sided as you posses more knowledge on the subject.

My knowledge of the science involved is limited as well, I just know that some things can be extrapolated by logic alone (other things, of course, require math in order to verify, or even predict). For example, I can know that using just artificial gravity to produce an artificial black hole seems dubious (after all, if the gravitons affect themselves, shouldn't you wind up with insufficient graviton-density at your event horizon?), but without actually doing math (which in this circumstance I don't know how to do), I can't know whether this holds up under theory or not (addendum: I think artificial black holes would be one of those areas where you'd need to go with artificial mass, in the hopes that you could get it to "bind" to the event horizon, thereby perpetuating the effect).

In the Star Trek universe, they used mass manipulation for a lot of things. Their incredible delta V budget in sub-light speed was due to reducing the mass of the ship while in motion.

I'm honestly dubious about the wisdom of actually doing that with anything that you don't consider disposable. I'm not so certain that many things would react well to having their mass reduced.

Although I think using gravity to stop projectiles would probably run into the problem that a powerful enough gravity field would tear the ship apart at the same time.

If you can go with the Newtonian laws for the actual deflections, then I think the main restriction would be the volume of your projector device that actually emitted the counter-gravitons. If the volume was too small for the force exerted then it could be thrown through your ship like a projectile. After that, it all revolves around whether you've got your emitter power levels set correctly for what your ship can handle.

Of course, whether you can produce enough deflection at the emitter power that your ship can deal with is itself yet another question, but one that varies greatly on the basis of your individual situation.

(I think the current theory is that gravity propagates at the speed of light. Now I'm not 100% on this, but I seem to recall that it might have had something to do with frame dragging effects.)

I figure that's probably the speed restriction as well, which leads me down the road of "but does gravity work on it's postulated force carrier?", the answer to which might produce problems for artificial black holes produced via gravity control alone (I think that the result would be rather like your average star: light takes a very long time to escape, but eventually it does, and not through the Hawking effect). In a situation of gravitons + lightspeed-limits on gravitons + mutually-deflecting gravitons, I'm pretty certain that the very existence of the artificial black hole would require it to not have a genuine event-horizon, ergo, not an actual black hole. And if the actual emitter(s) had to be inside, then it would be REALLY easy to destroy: just shoot lasers at it.

[Charlie]

Okay, it's time to give you an introduction to bbcode.

I was a bit rushed when posting, it was quite early in the morning. I will try to make it alot cleaner next time.

I assume that doing that would work (I don't know, but I assume: just as I assume that gravitons, possibly in multiple varieties, exist), but if you can generate an actual gravitational force instead of having to stop with artificial mass, then you might be able to achieve your goals more efficiently (consider: your method could, for example, require duplicating the mass of an entire planet to generate standard-Earth gravity: without a more efficient method, Humanity couldn't have artificial gravity with any reasonable size of fusion reactor, which would be a deal-breaker for at least Outsider).

I was thinking more a mass of a star, not on the ship itself as the tidal stress would likely destroy it but far enough to be safe from the heavy gravity.

My knowledge of the science involved is limited as well, I just know that some things can be extrapolated by logic alone (other things, of course, require math in order to verify, or even predict). For example, I can know that using just artificial gravity to produce an artificial black hole seems dubious (after all, if the gravitons affect themselves, shouldn't you wind up with insufficient graviton-density at your event horizon?), but without actually doing math (which in this circumstance I don't know how to do), I can't know whether this holds up under theory or not (addendum: I think artificial black holes would be one of those areas where you'd need to go with artificial mass, in the hopes that you could get it to "bind" to the event horizon, thereby perpetuating the effect).

I also think that creating a black hole in such a manner would be unlinkley, we just need a heavy enough area of space to affect the projectile`s flight not an actual black hole.

In the Star Trek universe, they used mass manipulation for a lot of things. Their incredible delta V budget in sub-light speed was due to reducing the mass of the ship while in motion.

I'm honestly dubious about the wisdom of actually doing that with anything that you don't consider disposable. I'm not so certain that many things would react well to having their mass reduced.

I would object to weighing say 20 grams. The effect on the body could be undesireable.

[Mr Bojangles]

My knowledge of the science involved is limited as well, I just know that some things can be extrapolated by logic alone (other things, of course, require math in order to verify, or even predict). For example, I can know that using just artificial gravity to produce an artificial black hole seems dubious (after all, if the gravitons affect themselves, shouldn't you wind up with insufficient graviton-density at your event horizon?), but without actually doing math (which in this circumstance I don't know how to do), I can't know whether this holds up under theory or not (addendum: I think artificial black holes would be one of those areas where you'd need to go with artificial mass, in the hopes that you could get it to "bind" to the event horizon, thereby perpetuating the effect).

Not necessarily. Gravitons are the hypothesized force carrier for gravity in quantum field theory, but overall, our understanding of the force is poor compared to the other three fundamental forces. There's nothing that says pure gravitons can't create a black hole, but it's almost a moot point: if there's enough energy in a volume of spacetime, you'll get a black hole. Relativity would talk about the curvature of spacetime (loosely speaking), whereas QFT would quantize the effect, giving gravitons (again, loosely speaking). Whether or not gravitons were self-attracting, having enough in a given volume would likely yield a black hole.

I'm honestly dubious about the wisdom of actually doing that with anything that you don't consider disposable. I'm not so certain that many things would react well to having their mass reduced.

Alistair Reynolds' "Revelation Space" series of books dealt with the effects of "inertial reduction" generators. Basically, to get faster acceleration of ships without having to generate more thrust the more advanced factions would reduce the inertial mass of their ships (and everything in them). This played absolute havoc with the organic crews and ship systems. Why? Because they either evolved or were built in a universe where a certain amount of inertia was expected per unit mass. You can imagine the affects changing that constant had.

I figure that's probably the speed restriction as well, which leads me down the road of "but does gravity work on it's postulated force carrier?", the answer to which might produce problems for artificial black holes produced via gravity control alone (I think that the result would be rather like your average star: light takes a very long time to escape, but eventually it does, and not through the Hawking effect). In a situation of gravitons + lightspeed-limits on gravitons + mutually-deflecting gravitons, I'm pretty certain that the very existence of the artificial black hole would require it to not have a genuine event-horizon, ergo, not an actual black hole. And if the actual emitter(s) had to be inside, then it would be REALLY easy to destroy: just shoot lasers at it.

According to both theories of relativity and QFT, gravity propagates at the speed of light. In relativity, c is the absolute maximum speed for a physical interaction, e.g., the effect of gravity between massive objects. In QFT, gravitons are massless, so by relatively would have to move at c. As for self-interacting gravitons, again we can break down the affects to energy per unit volume, or draw a comparison to photons: they are massless, but are able to interact, i.e., interference. Also, gravitons wouldn't deflect one another; you'd need some sort of anti-graviton to do that.

As an aside, light takes a long time to get from the interior of a star to its exterior due to the absorption and re-emission of photons by the atoms of the star, not self-interaction. It would be interesting to know if gravitons behaved in the same way.

[Yiuel]

As an aside, light takes a long time to get from the interior of a star to its exterior due to the absorption and re-emission of photons by the atoms of the star, not self-interaction. It would be interesting to know if gravitons behaved in the same way.

Considering a graviton would technically be able to get out of a black hole while light itself cannot, I believe we cannot infer how gravitons behave from photon behavior.

[Victor_D]

There is an interesting hypothesis why gravity is such a weak force in our Universe - according to some models, they're 'leaking' into spatial dimensions we don't perceive due to their extremely small size. This 'leakage' weakens the effects of gravity in the normal 3-dimensional space.

(Also, in Outsider and other sci-fi settings, this could be a good way of explaining why objects in hyper-space are still influenced by the mass in real-space. Hyper-space is where the gravitons 'leak into' )

[VictorValor]

If anti-gravity technology is a thing in this setting, does this mean drop pods that didn't turn it's occupants into jelly would be possible in this setting?

[Mr Bojangles]

As an aside, light takes a long time to get from the interior of a star to its exterior due to the absorption and re-emission of photons by the atoms of the star, not self-interaction. It would be interesting to know if gravitons behaved in the same way.

Considering a graviton would technically be able to get out of a black hole while light itself cannot, I believe we cannot infer how gravitons behave from photon behavior.

Well, if we discover a graviton that fits into the existing framework of QFT, an inference might actually be possible.

There is an interesting hypothesis why gravity is such a weak force in our Universe - according to some models, they're 'leaking' into spatial dimensions we don't perceive due to their extremely small size. This 'leakage' weakens the effects of gravity in the normal 3-dimensional space.

(Also, in Outsider and other sci-fi settings, this could be a good way of explaining why objects in hyper-space are still influenced by the mass in real-space. Hyper-space is where the gravitons 'leak into' )

Ah, the Large Extra Dimension theory. It could be used to explain the effect of realspace mass on hyperspace objects...

If anti-gravity technology is a thing in this setting, does this mean drop pods that didn't turn it's occupants into jelly would be possible in this setting?

Maybe not by Humans. Arioch indicated earlier in the thread that, for Humans, gravity control technology is an expensive, energy-intensive process. So, not only would the tech likely be too big to fit into a drop pod, it would also be too pricey to place in such a damaging situation.

[Solemn]

If anti-gravity technology is a thing in this setting, does this mean drop pods that didn't turn it's occupants into jelly would be possible in this setting?

My understanding is that anti-gravity technology in fiction is just another way of accelerating or decelerating objects. By "drop pods" I believe you mean essentially small, engineless craft which deliver a payload to a planet's surface from orbit. I am not sure how anti-gravity would help towards that end; reducing the acceleration due to gravity would prevent any troops inside from dying, but antigravity isn't really necessary for that, as any sufficiently powerful and reliable engine would do.

If you mean that "anti-gravity" would change the inertia of the pod and occupants so they could come to an impact with the surface at normal acceleration without risk of injury, I think you're talking inertia manipulation and inertia reduction or reapplication devices, rather than gravitational control. In most works I encounter, the two are treated as different technological thingamajigs.

I know that inertia manipulators exist in Outsider, which is why even a human ship like the Bellarmine is able to sustain several Gs of acceleration without harming the crew or limiting their mobility, as do gravity generators, but neither are small or low-energy enough for the races of Outsider to fit on anything smaller than an Umiak gunship (presumably due at least in part to power requirements rather than sheer mass), which is why the Umiak don't build anything below the gunship size. Loroi fighters are not inertially dampened, if I recall correctly they use a liquid breathing medium of equal density with the Loroi body to compensate for acceleration on their fighter pilots rather than mounting inertial dampeners on the smallcraft. Throwing a gunship-sized inertially dampened cargo pod full of ground troops at the dirt seems more like a waste of resources that could have gone into a mobile combat craft instead.

If you want to come up with a way to weaponize inertial control devices, there are some pretty impressive things writers have done with them, though I suppose Doc Smith's Supernutcrackers would be completely unfeasible in this comic.

I would assume that the humans of Outsider at least have already thought about weaponizing their inertia manipulation technology, since they employ mass drivers on ships that have inertial manipulation systems. It just seems like a logical step to me, if you can alter the inertia and/or acceleration of the humans aboard a ship so they don't get pasted against the walls surely you'd at least consider using similar technology and principles to alter the inertia of other things you accelerate in other contexts. If they can't do so, I would assume it isn't for lack of trying.

[Absalom]

If anti-gravity technology is a thing in this setting, does this mean drop pods that didn't turn it's occupants into jelly would be possible in this setting?

My understanding is that anti-gravity technology in fiction is just another way of accelerating or decelerating objects. By "drop pods" I believe you mean essentially small, engineless craft which deliver a payload to a planet's surface from orbit. I am not sure how anti-gravity would help towards that end; reducing the acceleration due to gravity would prevent any troops inside from dying, but antigravity isn't really necessary for that, as any sufficiently powerful and reliable engine would do.

If you mean that "anti-gravity" would change the inertia of the pod and occupants so they could come to an impact with the surface at normal acceleration without risk of injury, I think you're talking inertia manipulation and inertia reduction or reapplication devices, rather than gravitational control. In most works I encounter, the two are treated as different technological thingamajigs.

Drop pods are basically an insane form of airdrop. You take a atmospheric re-entry pod, accelerate it at the planet, and somehow slow it down before impact so that:
1) Whatever's inside can be used to do whatever it's supposed to do, and
2) The drop-pod (and it's contents) reach the surface as quickly as they can without violating 1.
It's sort of like a nightmarish parachute insertion, or a space-to-surface Normandy landing. It's also a semi-standard word/phrase in sci-fi, along with "drop ship", which itself implies that you're probably going a little slower than a drop-pod, on account of wanting to actually use the ship again later for something other than an eyesore/lawn ornament/scrap metal. As for "anti-gravity", if it could be used by the drop-pod to produce acceleration/deceleration forces that felt to the occupants as if they were in a free-fall, then it would work as a useful technology for drop-pods. The same thing goes for inertial control if that allows you to "link" the inertial of the contents with that of the drop-pod, allowing any forces experienced by the drop-pod to be transferred directly to the contents as well, preventing meaningful amounts of relative-velocity to build between the drop-pod and it's contents.



Drop pods can be made to work with current technology (substitute parachutes & retro-rockets how whatever high-end drive, and a liquid breathing fluid for the inertial control).

The challenge is for making them useful. In Outsider you basically aren't likely to get the chance unless you're using them to aid commerce raiding, or to attack the planets of weaker races before their stronger allies have time to intervene. Even in Heinlein's Starship Troopers the Mobile Infantry were more of a raiding force than primary combatants. If you dial up the acceleration differences between ships & small craft (such as missiles, fighters, and drop pods) higher than they are in Outsider then they become more practical, but ultimately you need some fairly specific circumstances to make them work.

Specifically, the results that you can reasonably expect need to be sufficient for the forces you should reasonably expect to lose. It needs to be a scenario where you can expect a blitzkrieg followed by an artillery bombardment to wear down the left-overs to produce better results than switching the two around (I gave an example above: you can crush the locals, but in a little while their buddies will show up, so you don't have time to snuff out resistance). Alternatively, it needs to be a situation where anything in orbit is in MORE danger than anything on the surface (maybe a planet with lots of TTK-class or bigger shielded hovering "planetary fortresses" on a vacuum-world, that specialize in keeping anything from landing in the first place?).

Drop pods are a lot easier if you target someone basically undefended, or you have teleporters ala Armor (though in that case you only need drop-pods if your teleporters are range-limited or point-to-point), or you can perform undetectable/unpreventable FTL travel like in some episodes of Babylon 5 so that you can perform the drop from (at least relatively) low-altitude.

[Solemn]

Drop pods are basically an insane form of airdrop.

There are levels and varieties of insanity. From what I remember of Starship Troopers, a certain percentage of the MI are killed by their own equipment every drop. But from what I remember of Star Trek's transporters, death is the least interesting thing that might happen when something goes wrong. You might turn into a child, or get split into the good and evil sides of your personality, or get thrown into another universe altogether, or just... sort of... melt into the next person over. Or face down some sort of telepathic space barracuda. Oh sure they say it's the safest form of travel in the Federation, but that just speaks poorly of the safety standards for their Space Yugos.

Anyways.

Specifically, the results that you can reasonably expect need to be sufficient for the forces you should reasonably expect to lose. It needs to be a scenario where you can expect a blitzkrieg followed by an artillery bombardment to wear down the left-overs to produce better results than switching the two around (I gave an example above: you can crush the locals, but in a little while their buddies will show up, so you don't have time to snuff out resistance). Alternatively, it needs to be a situation where anything in orbit is in MORE danger than anything on the surface (maybe a planet with lots of TTK-class or bigger shielded hovering "planetary fortresses" on a vacuum-world, that specialize in keeping anything from landing in the first place?).

Drop pods are a lot easier if you target someone basically undefended, or you have teleporters ala Armor (though in that case you only need drop-pods if your teleporters are range-limited or point-to-point), or you can perform undetectable/unpreventable FTL travel like in some episodes of Babylon 5 so that you can perform the drop from (at least relatively) low-altitude.

In all of the cases I can imagine, given the limits of Outsider's antigravity/inertial control (you need a gunboat-sized ship, presumably with gunboat-sized power plants, to work effectively at ship acceleration/deceleration levels, much less sudden impact energies, and there's no instantaneous teleportation) it really seems like it would always be more effective to just build a dropship, and then mount guns on the dropship. People are able to mount guns and engines on fighters in this comic but are unable to do so with inertial/gravitational control devices, so the guns and engines seem like they'd be a marginal expense next to the inertial/grav control items and their power plants etc. which you're already installing.

[Absalom]

Drop pods are basically an insane form of airdrop.

There are levels and varieties of insanity. From what I remember of Starship Troopers, a certain percentage of the MI are killed by their own equipment every drop. But from what I remember of Star Trek's transporters, death is the least interesting thing that might happen when something goes wrong. You might turn into a child, or get split into the good and evil sides of your personality, or get thrown into another universe altogether, or just... sort of... melt into the next person over. Or face down some sort of telepathic space barracuda. Oh sure they say it's the safest form of travel in the Federation, but that just speaks poorly of the safety standards for their Space Yugos.

I don't know that it was here, but I once suggested somewhere that warp engines must be really vulnerable to someone else using a related technology to inject resonances into your engines or something. The only things that don't seem to be made of Explodium are the crews and carpets (and the carpets seem to all be made of Staticium).

Specifically, the results that you can reasonably expect need to be sufficient for the forces you should reasonably expect to lose. It needs to be a scenario where you can expect a blitzkrieg followed by an artillery bombardment to wear down the left-overs to produce better results than switching the two around (I gave an example above: you can crush the locals, but in a little while their buddies will show up, so you don't have time to snuff out resistance). Alternatively, it needs to be a situation where anything in orbit is in MORE danger than anything on the surface (maybe a planet with lots of TTK-class or bigger shielded hovering "planetary fortresses" on a vacuum-world, that specialize in keeping anything from landing in the first place?).

Drop pods are a lot easier if you target someone basically undefended, or you have teleporters ala Armor (though in that case you only need drop-pods if your teleporters are range-limited or point-to-point), or you can perform undetectable/unpreventable FTL travel like in some episodes of Babylon 5 so that you can perform the drop from (at least relatively) low-altitude.

In all of the cases I can imagine, given the limits of Outsider's antigravity/inertial control (you need a gunboat-sized ship, presumably with gunboat-sized power plants, to work effectively at ship acceleration/deceleration levels, much less sudden impact energies, and there's no instantaneous teleportation) it really seems like it would always be more effective to just build a dropship, and then mount guns on the dropship. People are able to mount guns and engines on fighters in this comic but are unable to do so with inertial/gravitational control devices, so the guns and engines seem like they'd be a marginal expense next to the inertial/grav control items and their power plants etc. which you're already installing.

I think Arioch said something about it being a miniaturization problem, but yes, I agree. I think that for landing anything smaller than a Continental Siege "Bolo" the size of a capital ship, drop-pods are non-viable for this setting. The closest you'd be likely to see is if some lower-tech civilizations had started raiding each others commerce or something, otherwise I don't know of any way to make "combatant assault pods" useful in Outsider.

[discord]

you are thinking linearly where you should be thinking laterally, we can make drop pods that work just fine right now(given how people get back to earth during the lunar missions it should be a 'duh'), and the orbital bombardment thing is not a before or after it's during, it's called chaff or decoys, retro boost/parachute at lowest possible altitude(probably around 1-2km.) at such low altitude line of sight becomes a problem for the defenders, and reaction time is also low, especially as the defensive weapons are already working overtime trying to minimize damage from the 'chaff'.

basically saturate defenses with cheap kinetic weapons with a similar sensor signature as your drop pods, problem mostly solved.