Well of Souls Forums

TrashMan wrote:The enemy will not even know you fired and won't change course or speed.

Assuming for a moment that they wouldn't know you fired (that's already been covered), they most likely WOULD change course AND acceleration/velocity regularly simply as a matter of policy. Such a change would have minimal cost and can prevent embarrassing (though extremely unlikely) incidents like the one you are proposing. A change of course of .5 degree or a change in acceleration of .1g would be far more than sufficient to end any chance of a super-long range mass driver round impacting.

Mjolnir wrote:
Uh...no. First, they will be visible across the system. Systems are big, but almost all of them are also very empty, extremely cold and quiet. Something with a powerplant capable of running a large, long-range mass driver weapon will be visible. Even if you managed to thoroughly disguise one as a random asteroid or non-military installation, it would become obvious as soon as it fired...it would also be obvious it had just fired a shot, and it's quite plausible that the shot itself will be visible on active or passive sensors, especially since they'll have a decent idea where to look. And your mass driver platforms need sensors too...ones capable of not only detecting the enemy, but of tracking their trajectory with enough accuracy that you can hit them with a ballistic projectile...you want Terran sensors to do this from beyond detection range of Loroi or Umiak sensors?

Ahem..In real life. Yes. But this is sci-fi. Where vessels can sneak up on you (enemy vessles got within 60km of Bellarmine, Loroi couldn' detect Umiak until lafter tehy exited the cloud. And I can guarantee you those superheavies put out a LOT more power than a single mass driver platform)

And no, I don't think ship sensors can detect such small objects. If they did, they'll be beeping constantly, given that there's more than enough of micro-metoeries, dust and garbage in systems..especially popualted ones..

And no, the terran gun platfrom don't need longer-range sensors than loroi. Remeber that part about spy sats linked with the platforms. Basicly forming a information chain that transmitts targeting data to the platform.

Second, it's going to take 13 hours for a Terran mass driver projectile to cross even just the Loroi/Umiak maximum weapon range. An hourly evasive maneuver isn't going to substantially cut into either side's delta-v budgets. Even if their sensors were damaged or impaired by an unusual environment like the proplyd and you had unimpaired sensors and a mass driver with sufficient accuracy in aim and launch velocity, you couldn't hit them.

You sure your numbers are correct? 13 hours for 1 LS? That can't be right.

TrashMan wrote: Ahem..In real life. Yes. But this is sci-fi. Where vessels can sneak up on you (enemy vessles got within 60km of Bellarmine, Loroi couldn' detect Umiak until lafter tehy exited the cloud. And I can guarantee you those superheavies put out a LOT more power than a single mass driver platform)

It's been pretty well established that the Naam system is unusual in the concealment that it offers to starship. And even then. The Bell's encounter came off as more freak chance than anything you could try reliably.

TrashMan wrote: And no, I don't think ship sensors can detect such small objects. If they did, they'll be beeping constantly, given that there's more than enough of micro-metoeries, dust and garbage in systems..especially popualted ones..

I'm talking about the gun batteries in question. All the enemy needs to do is run a thermal scope over one of your mass driver batteries to detect it. Because if it's running it is going to be pumping out detectible heat.

TrashMan wrote: And no, the terran gun platfrom don't need longer-range sensors than loroi. Remeber that part about spy sats linked with the platforms. Basicly forming a information chain that transmitts targeting data to the platform.

The Terran gun platforms are out of the range of being observed by thermal telescopes?

TrashMan wrote: You sure your numbers are correct? 13 hours for 1 LS? That can't be right.

A Terran mass driver round goes 6 km/s. A Loroi/Umiak beam weapon goes 300,000 km/s. Why wouldn't their be a huge disparity in the time it took a mass driver round to a target that a beam weapon could hit almost instantly?

TrashMan wrote:Ahem..In real life. Yes. But this is sci-fi. Where vessels can sneak up on you (enemy vessles got within 60km of Bellarmine, Loroi couldn' detect Umiak until lafter tehy exited the cloud. And I can guarantee you those superheavies put out a LOT more power than a single mass driver platform)

The Naam system is an exception. Humanity can't defend their territory with systems that only work in dense proplyds.

TrashMan wrote:And no, I don't think ship sensors can detect such small objects. If they did, they'll be beeping constantly, given that there's more than enough of micro-metoeries, dust and garbage in systems..especially popualted ones..

Why would anyone design their spacecraft systems to do that? They don't need to "beep constantly" to detect threatening objects on collision course with the ship.

TrashMan wrote:And no, the terran gun platfrom don't need longer-range sensors than loroi. Remeber that part about spy sats linked with the platforms. Basicly forming a information chain that transmitts targeting data to the platform.

So you're also filling space with a massive targeting network. How many trillions of sensor sats will you be using?

Not that this matters, there's plenty of other things that kill the idea.

TrashMan wrote:You sure your numbers are correct? 13 hours for 1 LS? That can't be right.

13 hours, 52 minutes, and 45.41 seconds. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+ ... 2F6+km%2Fs

TrashMan wrote:Ahem..In real life. Yes. But this is sci-fi. Where vessels can sneak up on you (enemy vessles got within 60km of Bellarmine, Loroi couldn' detect Umiak until lafter tehy exited the cloud. And I can guarantee you those superheavies put out a LOT more power than a single mass driver platform)

As has been established repeatedly over MANY threads, no stealth in space unless you've got "terrain" to help you.

And no, I don't think ship sensors can detect such small objects. If they did, they'll be beeping constantly, given that there's more than enough of micro-metoeries, dust and garbage in systems..especially popualted ones..

And if they DIDN'T then it's just a matter of time before a pebble punches a hole through their ship, any successful space-faring race MUST have high-resolution radar or else they will lose MANY ships to random space debris.

You sure your numbers are correct? 13 hours for 1 LS? That can't be right.

Without doing the math myself it's certainly the right ballpark, and that's 13 hours with an enormous firing signature that will draw quite a bit of attention.

Look, we've had this discussion before, multiple times. Mass drivers suck, period. Humans suck, period. MAYBE in a few years that second part won't be true anymore, but the first part will always be true until the application of a significant portion of handwavium takes place.

I think in the first stages humans will rely on drones, smart rocketbombs and dummies.
Billions of them, and trillions of dummies.

This is also a chance, because in the long way it´s smarter than antiquated "warrior-honor".

We just have to make sure they can´t turn our drones and bombs against us.

Trantor wrote:I think in the first stages humans will rely on drones, smart rocketbombs and dummies.
Billions of them, and trillions of dummies.

This is also a chance, because in the long way it´s smarter than antiquated "warrior-honor".

We just have to make sure they can´t turn our drones and bombs against us.

A self-replicating jump/warp probe that sends a constant army at your enemies.

Something like the "wild" drones in Eve Online.

REPLICATORS: This forum needs a like button. Creating a self replicating army might not be capable with the story's given technology (though advanced adaptive AI's could theoretically exist and be used for colonizing/scouting, thereby giving mankind something to tinker with).

The number of drones and automated logistic facilities need would be tremendous in order to capitalize on swarm tactics. A huge and risky investment, but something worthwhile if it could be pulled off.

Self-replicating machines are as uncontrollable as biological weapons. Literally. They are a guarantee of a bad outcome somewhere down the road. Because a self-replicating machine is life in every sense of the term, and we should know by now that life will not be controlled or contained.

Arioch wrote:Self-replicating machines are as uncontrollable as biological weapons. Literally. They are a guarantee of a bad outcome somewhere down the road. Because a self-replicating machine is life in every sense of the term, and we should know by now that life will not be controlled or contained.

That doesn't preclude the use of nanoswarms for fast construction though. Put some on a mass of alloy and you get a ship hull in a few days without any necessary interactions.

dfacto wrote:That doesn't preclude the use of nanoswarms for fast construction though. Put some on a mass of alloy and you get a ship hull in a few days without any necessary interactions.

I think Arioch's overestimating the difficulty of controlling self replicating machines (a bigger problem seems likely to be keeping them replicating when they've exhausted easily-accessible local resources or get confused and clog up their refining machinery with junk rock instead of useful ore) the use of nanoswarms for rapid construction is precluded by an entirely different set of problems...supplying power, supplying nutrients, extracting waste heat and waste materials, etc. Such an approach to assembly of large objects is likely to be quite slow.

Ya, in Star Trek you can poof out a cup of coffee but pooffing out a ship doesn't happen

Ktrain wrote:Ya, in Star Trek you can poof out a cup of coffee but pooffing out a ship doesn't happen

Well the replicator in Star Trek are more related to teleportation than to nanomachine. It kind of a godlike plot object. It reorganise matter (often wasted matter) into a new meal/drink.

I wont try to find a reason (other than because it cooler to see a space shipyard with a lots of SCV roaming around an half build hull) why they just dont "beam" a new ship

One thing that I do find that seems very Star Trek is 3-D printers, which are growing more sophisticated by the day. I forsee a point where a design (mechanical or biological) will be loaded and within minutes a completed "copy" will be produced. Biological applications appear to be most promising at present. Materials engineering will need to come a long way, however, before really useful parts or fully-assembled devices and components can be produced. That said, 200+ years into the future, I expect those breakthroughs to have been made.

Karst45 wrote: I wont try to find a reason (other than because it cooler to see a space shipyard with a lots of SCV roaming around an half build hull) why they just dont "beam" a new ship

or why not "beam" whole crews into existence to man your "beamed" ships
War time losses thats ok i will just beam another fleet into existence and maybe a few ground regiments while i am at it

Karst45 wrote:I wont try to find a reason (other than because it cooler to see a space shipyard with a lots of SCV roaming around an half build hull) why they just dont "beam" a new ship

They do make a plot point a few times of replicated matter being full of 'errors'. It's somewhat possible that at the tolerances and energy scales Star Trek tech works that replicated phaser arrays, shield generators, warp coils, etc., fail in spectacular ways. Having said that, I can't imagine that gross structural features or things that are not prone to explosion (armor plating, the ship's interior furnishings, the windows, as examples) aren't simply not replicated en masse, leaving the ship's construction in space dock to mostly be crews installing components on a mostly replicated frame.

Cdr Straker wrote:One thing that I do find that seems very Star Trek is 3-D printers, which are growing more sophisticated by the day. I forsee a point where a design (mechanical or biological) will be loaded and within minutes a completed "copy" will be produced. Biological applications appear to be most promising at present. Materials engineering will need to come a long way, however, before really useful parts or fully-assembled devices and components can be produced. That said, 200+ years into the future, I expect those breakthroughs to have been made.

3D printers will be very important and are already getting to the point where they can be used for producing working parts rather than prototypes that are mainly good for testing fit (http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/37540), but they'll always be limited in speed for reasons similar the problems I mentioned with nanotech. You have to have time for heat to spread through and be removed from the part, allow for internal strains to relax, etc and the really useful processes require post processing to achieve a full-strength part...metal sintering and impregnation can't be done instantly, forming a robust ceramic from component powders requires time for different substances to diffuse into each other and recrystallize, etc.

That and the simple mechanical issues of laying things down a few microns at a time...you can expect large parts to take a considerable amount of time to complete. 3D printing's flexible and capable of making structures that are otherwise impossible or just impractically difficult to make and of quickly switching to making different parts (or even of making multiple different types of parts at once), so it'll almost certainly play a big role in future aerospace components, but it's not fast.

uthilian wrote:

Karst45 wrote: I wont try to find a reason (other than because it cooler to see a space shipyard with a lots of SCV roaming around an half build hull) why they just dont "beam" a new ship

or why not "beam" whole crews into existence to man your "beamed" ships
War time losses thats ok i will just beam another fleet into existence and maybe a few ground regiments while i am at it

here you enter into the theological chapter of "soul"

But considering that in an episode they beamed someone were at first they tough they failed to, then realize they actually made a copy of him on the destination, cloning in this way would be "simple"

hi hi

There's a few ways that Star Trek tried to limit the damage of transporters, but alas some of the writers apparently didn't get the memo and made some episodes that threw those damage control measures out the window. One of them was the idea that the entire and exact molecular composition of a human was too complex to store digitally, the patterns were stored in a temporary analog buffer. The other was that, at least occasionally, they explained that the molecules that were beamed around were the person's original molecules.

As for self replicating machines. If they are allowed to alter themselves, they'll eventually break away from their original designs enough to cause a problem unless there are long term active controls. If they aren't allowed to alter themselves, you still have to worry about quality control in the very long run.

Self assembly is an interesting concept, especially when you consider that it might be some sort of scaffolding. Also there is the very interesting mixture of microgravity and high vacuum that is space. You may be able to play with process parameters like surface energy etc to make scaffolds more useful.

Also there isn't anything preventing growth stresses from being eliminated in much the same way as sintering (or annealing as the process of removing dislocations / growth stresses is called for bulk metals). While I agree it appears that nanotech processes could be slower, if all you need to actually grow is a little disk the correct diameter every mm (or more often for large % change with length in diameter) AND you get lucky that you can say use surface energies to make it so that said scaffold structure "wicks" a molten liquid that will cool to form your material (obviously better for things like metallic glasses and less good for things like fiber composites). Basically I'm saying a "realistic" process would take into account the limitations inherent to the process and maximize the utility by limiting those problems. If the problem is slow growth, don't grow much material.
Although truthfully given the high levels of complication, it might not be a problem to setup massive one-time-use CVD (and related) deposition chambers in orbit (or largely out of the solar system gravity well) and just grow / deposit the whole ship in one go, especially if lot's of special layers need to be made (such as every 5 microns putting down a layer of graphene or diamond or diamond-like carbon something to help dissipate heat)...

-O