Would it be possible to distort to path of a plasma rifle using an electromagnetic field? If so would it be feasible to create such a device as to be usable by a character?
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Defense against Plasma Weapons
Tue, 2013-02-05 22:41
#1
Erenthia
Defense against Plasma Weapons
Wed, 2013-02-06 04:19
#2
NewtonPulsifer
Yes.
Yes.
The barrel of the plasma rifle can contain the plasma, so if you unrolled a bunch of plasma rifle barrels and wore them you should be able to deflect plasma rifle shots.
It's likely to take 6 rifles to cover a square meter. About 2 square surface meters on an adult - call it 12 plasma rifle barrels.
How much would it cost? Don't know.
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"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto
Wed, 2013-02-06 10:15
#3
Holy
What could be the explanation
What could be the explanation that the plasma is kept in the barrel?
Could it be by magnetic fields? Or rather something else? (Some strange alloy, composite material or watever)
Wed, 2013-02-06 13:18
#4
Erenthia
Well that actually makes
Well that actually makes things easier. I think I'll go with a "Plasma Defense Mesh" that has power cells equivalent in all game mechanics ways to a Plasma Rifle's ammunition. For every shot it defends against it uses up a shot and provides some kind of bonus to fray. Either +30 after being halved or it allows full use of Fray vs plasma weapons as long as it remains powered. I'm leaning towards the former.
I'm thinking of making this the same cost category as a plasma rifle, just higher up in the category.
—
The end really is coming. What comes after that is anyone's guess.
Wed, 2013-02-06 14:14
#5
NewtonPulsifer
Holy wrote:What could be the
Plasma rifles aren't hard sci-fi so its best not to dwell [i]too[/i] hard on the details.
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"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto
Thu, 2013-02-07 07:14
#6
Holy
NewtonPulsifer wrote:Plasma
Good point. :-)
Fri, 2013-02-08 12:10
#7
MattMk1
Possible? Sure, but not IMO a
Possible? Sure, but not IMO a good idea in the kind of hard(ish) sci-fi setting EP tries to be. For several reasons.
1. Using plasma rifle barrels as anti-plasma armor doesn't really make sense - just because something is designed to contain and channel something highly energetic, it doesn't mean it's designed - or able to - prevent direct impact from that same force. A high-powered rifle barrel, unrolled, would not necessarily make for especially good bulletproof vest material.
2. If the plasma beam is contained with EM fields of some kind, keep in mind they probably only need to be generated for a moment, while any protective device would need to be on all the time to be useful. Also, the size of the field would have to be orders of magnitude bigger - in a rifle, it only needs to be the size of the diameter of the barrell, but to deflect a shot aimed at the center of a foot-wide human torso, the field would have to be huge, and I think the inverse square law starts to become a real problem at this point. Bottom line, the power requirements would be enormous.
3. If the barrel is simply lined with some super-special ceramic or whatever, and armor designers aren't a bunch of morons, then you have to assume there's a good reason why powered battlesuits are not made covered in this stuff - too expensive, too brittle, too heavy, all of the above... whatever.
And that's without considering things like designer intent... They could have put armor in the game capable of shrugging off plasma fire or missile hits, but they didn't.
Fri, 2013-02-08 16:06
#8
NewtonPulsifer
MattMk1 wrote:Possible? Sure,
Plasma weapons are not kinetic energy weapons. It's not the same as a rifle bullet.
EDIT: And even so, many 5.56mm barrel blanks are 27mm mm wide. That's over 10mm thick. There is NO WAY a 5.56mm round is getting through 10.5mm of stainless steel.
There is no penalty for having an "always on" magnetic field when you have room temperature superconductors.
Inverse square isn't a big problem. If you can continuously bend something by 1 degree and the effect is far enough out, it will miss you. You don't need to elastically bounce it off of your electrostatic/magnetic field.
Not to be rude to them, but the armor designers [i]are[/i] a bunch of ignoramuses (not morons). Because ultimately they're the game designers.
Plasma rifles aren't even possible - I don't mean this from an engineering point of view, but rather a contemporary physics point of view. So unfortunately trying to have a "hard sci-fi" debate about it is like arguing whether catholic prayers can deflect voodoo curses.
I try not to go there. I mean, you have a Trait like Hyper Linguist for 10 CP that costs 0.25 CP as a personal augmentation. Err....
—
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto
Tue, 2013-02-12 05:01
#9
Arenamontanus
Taking into account that
Taking into account that plasma weapons do not hold up well in the harsh light of really hard sf (the thermal capacity of a plasma isn't that enormous)...
I would argue that strong electromagnetic fields can repel or distrupt plasma, but since it is travelling really fast this is not simple. You need a very strong field to disrupt the plasma field envelope (I envision a plasma bolt as something like a vortex ring with frozen magnetic field lines holding it together) and push the plasma somewhere else. Probably this is on the order of a few Teslas at the very least, and that is why you don't see anti-plasma armor.
Check out the pictures of MRI machine accidents at http://www.simplyphysics.com/flying_objects.html - this is what happens when ferrous materials get within a few meters of a multi-Tesla field. Yes, the plasma might miss you and hit the magnet, but so will plenty of your equipment and surrounding objects. I can imagine something like a disposable super-magnet as a piece of equipment, however. (I am totally going to give that magnet grenade to James Kong, my dreaded Firewall "cleaner" - there are so many other uses for it!)
Incidentally, just because you have a magnetic field it doesn't mean the bolt will be attracted to it. The Lorenz force law means that a charged object will try to move at right angles to the magnetic field. So the plasma bolt might turn and hit something else. Or split into two. Who can tell - plasma behavior is *weird* even in the real world!
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Tue, 2013-02-12 11:49
#10
NewtonPulsifer
Arenamontanus wrote:
But this just piles on the handwaves, right? Plasma vortex rings aren't stable for more than a few microseconds, and further, are repelled by other plasma vortex rings.
So even a plasma sheath will do for defense.
Then there's the fact you can destabilize a plasma with lasers.
I vote that catholic prayers DO indeed block voodoo curses. There is a decent chance the curse will boomerang onto someone nearby, however.
Okay, with that inane comment, I'll bow out of this thread :)
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"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto