Octomorph wrote:

Decivre, I think you're missing your own point from a couple of posts ago. The bulk of this thread has diverged from the original topic - I think most people agree that space combat rules per se aren't critical, but that a better description of the options available for ship design, parameters, etc. would be, if not critical, highly beneficial to the setting material. Eclipse Phase has a lot of appeal to hard sci-fi gamers. Many of them fall into the anal-retentive 'gear-head' camp (heirs of Traveller, Space Master and GURPS) and even if the math doesn't work out, designs need to make logical sense to them (I include myself among their ranks). Yes, we can adapt other systems, but not everyone has access to those (many of which are out of print) and providing a set of resources for a GM to have at hand to answer the inevitable player questions would be a helpful resource (IMHO).

I've already said that construction rules would be an interesting thing to have, as well as info about purchasing ships. In the case of construction, it's a valid idea, but it's possible that the general assumption was to leave ships out of the hands of the players... in which case it may come down the road, but not necessarily (like rules for playing a dragon in Shadowrun). As for ship purchase, those are hardly rules at all... we're just asking for costs.

Octomorph wrote:

Take for example the ship design in part one of scenario in the QSR: the design is laid out as what is a roughly conical or cylindrical shape, with crew accomodations and other spaces forward, a large cargo bay in the aft third or so, and then 'engine space'. The deckplan is divided into a dorsal and ventral view. So we've got a cargo bay that's a single space on the order of 30-100 meters in length down the primary axis of acceleration. Here are the types of questions that came up when I ran my group through the adventure: How would cargo be secured in this space when the ship is under acceleration?

Spoiler: Highlight to view

The deckplan shows various crates scattered around the space, intended as cover for the firefight that ensues, yet once the ship goes under acceleration (almost the only way to deal with the nanoswarm) to get away from the scum barge, what's going to happen to those containers?

Simple magnetic systems or even velcro can be used to brace materials for space travel. Believe it or not, space travel is fairly slow. Let's assume his ship is a long-distance travel ship (which is very likely, since it is a freighter). That means it will likely either have a plasma or fusion rocket engine (if it had HO or MH rockets, it would be short range, which is just plain bad for a freighter; antimatter would make it undockable). In that case, the fastest it could go would be if it accelerated at 0.05 Gs (the max speed of a fusion rocket), which sums to 0.49 m/s[sup]2[/sup]. For frame of reference, that means it goes from 0 to 60 mph in 54½ seconds. Really... think about that.

Octomorph wrote:

What's the method of propulsion? The EP rules define a number of options, but there's no indication of what this vessel uses, which would define things like maximium acceleration, fuel source, fuel storage, etc., all of which would have an impact on design (and potentially play).

Very true, but the general assumption of the adventure is not that the ship will escape. Rather, the trade is going off on the ship, so players are expected to [i]escape the ship[/i] in order to avoid nanoswarm death. The ship's acceleration isn't a factor... the ship's movement is only pivotal in determining if the players successfully isolate the swarm from the scum barge, and is largely irrelevant otherwise.

Octomorph wrote:

Does the ship travel under continual thrust? How much? How does the crew move around the ship under thrust? If there are long periods of travel not under thrust, does the ship get put under spin to provide gravity? If so, is it the whole ship or just certain modules?

Not necessarily. As a mobile city, there is little need for the constant thrust that other ships might generally do. The passengers of the scum barge are in no need to get to the next location, as the ship is self-sustaining and acts as the home for its denizens. Thrust is likely needed to get to a certain pace, then most other resources are saved for inhabitant use. And yes, the central cylinder is rotated to produce 0.4 G for those living within. Just the central cylinder rotates (this is all on page 23).

Octomorph wrote:

What are the provisions for the cargo bay being in vacuum while maintaining pressure in the rest of the ship? What about radiation shielding?

I don't remember at any point any mention of vacuum in the freighter. All I remember is the need to get to an airlock to escape (and the effects of vacuum will be pointless as the players are fleeing the ship).

7thSeaLord wrote:

I am simplifying, but living conditions in the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, most of Western Europe, a lot of the rest of Europe and probably various other countries have far more common points of reference than not. Ditto for Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, certain parts of China, Singapore and possibly Malaysia. There are probably other groupings that one could claim as well. And each of these can look at others and say "They have that, but not this...".

To an extent that is correct. Individual factions likely have a common standard within that faction. Outside of the faction, this isn't as much the case anymore. Transhuman society is a far more ambiguous melting pot than it is in our day, and the law is a bit more difficult to ascertain. There is no system like the FAA which standardizes all communication amongst all flights. There is no standardized universal licensing of pilots, or even potentially communication standards, especially where negative sentiment might be in place (especially when people deal with the Junta).

7thSeaLord wrote:

I strongly disagree. If just to reduce the odds of error and miscommunication (however miniscule you might assert them to be), I think there would be some common standards in place. They might have been around for a long time, but stiil.

The common standard would likely be the mesh protocol, plain and simple. Advanced translation software renders the need for standards rather pointless. If anything, you can consider translation software to be the "common standard".

7thSeaLord wrote:

Because space is an unspeakably dangerous environment with very little room for 'acceptable error' and 'second chances'. We all know Murphy's Law, and there is a long long long list of historical disasters that were worsened because of dependance on one particular thing to keep people safe. Never mind having enough lifeboats for everybody, they will never be needed because the ship itself is so safe. We've already run enough tests with that drug, no need for any more. Personal inserts may be pretty much everywhere and do pretty much everything, but good safety planning considers worst case scenarios. Even if the odds of inserts or the Mesh itself being neutralized or otherwise messed with seem almost non-existent, there would be "just-in-case" protocols. Especially for groups most likely "at risk" (like space crews, security personnel and so forth). Because to do otherwise would be idiotic. ESPECIALLY with the whole Exsurgent thing looming over Transhumanity - which could, given the make-up of certain groups, possibly even cause a swing back to more "manual" systems.

Which simply sums to mean that systems should be redundant, not that they should necessarily resort to primitive means. The primary reason that current military/naval standards still utilize more primitive forms of communication is because more primitive forms of communication remain cheaper to implement. It is easier and cheaper to set up a morse code transmitter than it is to set up a wireless computer system. This isn't the case in Eclipse Phase. Computers have become so standardized, that the majority of the transhuman race has them implanted into their heads. Ectos are often also implanted in various other objects, like clothes, equipment, and even ships. A ship containing a few dozen crew is likely to have a few dozen computers each independently capable of communication[i]at the very least[/i]. The likelihood of all of that failing would render any just-in-case protocol rather moot. In such a scenario your backup systems have likely failed as well. As for the Exsurgent virus, primitive technology would do NOTHING to stave it off. The virus is an intelligent being that can infect biologically and digitally just fine. Even your inanimate transmitter could become a weapon of death by the manipulations of a TITAN nanoswarm, and Exsurgent infection will likely consume your entire crew long before redundant systems will be of worth to you. If the infection is so great that all of the standard systems have failed... you're probably fucked, Murphy's Law preparation or no.

Decivre wrote:

Simple magnetic systems or even velcro can be used to brace materials for space travel. Believe it or not, space travel is fairly slow. Let's assume his ship is a long-distance travel ship (which is very likely, since it is a freighter). That means it will likely either have a plasma or fusion rocket engine (if it had HO or MH rockets, it would be short range, which is just plain bad for a freighter; antimatter would make it undockable). In that case, the fastest it could go would be if it accelerated at 0.05 Gs (the max speed of a fusion rocket), which sums to 0.49 m/s[sup]2[/sup]. For frame of reference, that means it goes from 0 to 60 mph in 54½ seconds. Really... think about that.

Oh, I understand it - it's a primary reason that ego-casting would be a preferred method of travel - but the authors set the adventure on ships in space. Even then, at low acceleration, things still have mass. For example a modern shipping container has a payload capacity of approx. 60000 lbs. At .05 G that is still going to apply a downward force of 3000 pounds. Perhaps a magnetic system would work to hold items against the hull, but not the rest of the bay space.

Decivre wrote:

Very true, but the general assumption of the adventure is not that the ship will escape. Rather, the trade is going off on the ship, so players are expected to [i]escape the ship[/i] in order to avoid nanoswarm death. The ship's acceleration isn't a factor... the ship's movement is only pivotal in determining if the players successfully isolate the swarm from the scum barge, and is largely irrelevant otherwise.

Except that as the game resolved, the ship didn't just drift free of the scum barge, it left under acceleration - which made it entirely relevant to the matter at hand. In addition type of fuel (i.e. reaction mass) makes a difference with regard to ship design.

Decivre wrote:

Not necessarily. As a mobile city, there is little need for the constant thrust that other ships might generally do. The passengers of the scum barge are in no need to get to the next location, as the ship is self-sustaining and acts as the home for its denizens. Thrust is likely needed to get to a certain pace, then most other resources are saved for inhabitant use.

I was referring to the Arabella, not the scum barge. In thinking it through further, I think I can answer my own question here: the description of the bulk carrier in the EP main rules (p. 347) simply says that it is slow and doesn't have rotating habitat pods. That implies that it probably doesn't travel under constant thrust, but a blackmarket arms dealer may well have different requirements than a long-haul ore freighter. Smart materials could be used to alter configuration for periods when under thrust, free-fall or spin (although the descriptions of neither the bulk carrier nor standard transport mention smart matter installation while the GEV, LLOTV and SLOTV explicitly do). As an aside, this raises an issue for me on the Standard Transport, described as 'fast and comfortable travel for passengers and relatively swift transport for small cargoes.' I suppose it depends on your definition of 'fast', but for me, that would imply a constant thrust vehicle, yet if that's the case, why have the rotating passenger pods?

Decivre wrote:

I don't remember at any point any mention of vacuum in the freighter. All I remember is the need to get to an airlock to escape (and the effects of vacuum will be pointless as the players are fleeing the ship).

Well, they're fleeing the ship into space, so vacuum is pretty relevant (discussed in several places in the scenario, including Stress factors for leaping into the void). In addition, my players blew one of the cargo airlocks open (overrode the controls) to suck the nanoswarm into space (fortunately for them, having bought smart vac-suits before boarding the ship). Having done that, it raised the question of what interior compartmentalization there might be - would there be an airlock between the cargo hold and the forward portion?

nick012000 wrote:

Yes, and if you don't have your ship's radio directly connected to its computer, you can't get it infected by an Exsurgent infomorph that's being broadcast by other infected ships. Primitive technologies do have their uses. Also, as for standardization, do remember that the Research Network Associates includes both Hypercorp and Autonomist scientists in its ranks; if there is going to be standardization (and there obviously is, otherwise an Anarchist endo wouldn't be able to talk to a Hypercorp endo), they'd probably be one of the major ones doing it. Odds are that significant portions of the Original Space Colonists were trained in piloting spacecraft; this means that there's a very good chance that intership communication standards survived. The FAA might not exist anymore, but that doesn't mean that the spaceship version of them probably does, and they'll be just as powerful in the Outer System as the Inner. Spacecraft are serious business, and if you get a hundred people killed through incompetence, that's a loss of 7-8 @-Rep each.

Or you can shut off your mesh insert's wireless connection to the ship computers. That would prevent your mesh inserts from getting infected. That said, if your ship was Exsurgent infected, the last thing you'd want to do is set up communications with other ships anyways. You're risking putting others at risk for infections. The best choice is to isolate yourself, prevent all outgoing connections, and quarantine. An exsurgent infomorph, even without a direct connection to the radio system, may find a means to utilize that radio system in order to spread the infection (remember... the virus is VERY smart). I doubt there is any FAA equivalent because the FAA solely exists by merit of the fact that we acknowledge one another's standards. This isn't the case in EP, where autonomists do not necessarily acknowledge hypercorps, hypercorps don't acknowledge scummers, and the Jovians acknowledge no one.

nick012000 wrote:

The RNA is acknowledged by everyone.

RNA is simply a reputation network, not an organization. All reputation networks are recognized to some degree.

It that must not be named wrote:

Inside trespassing vessel: "The junty corvette can't catch up to us as our speed's too high due to diving into jupiter's grav well. They just fired a missile at us. Impact in 16 minutes. We've got a clear lock on it due to it's engines' radiant sig." "Ok, in 15 minutes activate the point defense laser turret and have it pop the missile at 2000 klicks." Onboard the junty corvette: "Missile away, but they're tracing it and have a laser turret that will kill it before it hits, like all the other ones." "Not this time. The missile's engine will flare out at max speed and they won't be able to track it by the engine flare. It's stealth coated to make it harder to tract with active scanners and we'll give it terminal guidance with out own scanners for the final approach." Trespassing vessel: "Oh shit, the junty missile's engine just flared out, and I can't get a solid lock on it doe to a radar absorbant material coating. The junty corvette's pinging us with active scanners, that must be what the missile's homing on." "Start jamming their scanners and putting out max electronic warfare spoofing. Stand by to launch decoys when the missile's range it estimated to be at 2,000km." Corvette: "Sir, the scum is using maximum ECM to foul up our scanners, the missile's guidance head may not be able to get a clear lock." "At 1,000 km activate the missile's activa terminal guidance system and let it home in on it's own." Tresspasser: "The junty missile just went active! Range 1000K, turret tracking it by it's emissions! Firing!" How's it end? Who knows, but it can be more fun than you suggested.

I know how it ends. Missile is hit, detonates, and everything within 4,000 kilometers of the blast is annihilated, including the targeted ship. There is a reason why ships with antimatter engines are restricted from getting within 25,000 kilometers from any given planet, or 10,000 kilometers from a habitat. 2,000 meters is only [sup]1[/sup]/[sub]5[/sub]th that berth. Besides, a turret is likely worthless against antimatter warheads. Antimatter requires a TON of shielding and protection, so the armor on the head of that missile is likely to repel virtually anything. After all, it was designed to safeguard the most destructive material that the human race can produce. Chances are that you'd either need classic sensor countermeasures (a futuristic form of chaff), or need to fight fire with fire... destroying antimatter warheads with (smaller) antimatter warheads. If the latter, then it comes down to two rolls... opposed tests between the missile launcher and the chaff deployer; or opposed tests between both missiles. There's a good reason that romanticized air combat is generally portrayed with World War technology. Modern air and sea warfare are very much fire-and-forget affairs. With a greater advance in technology, this will likely be even moreso the case in the far future.

nick012000 wrote:

HAHAHAHA! No. Do you know how much energy it takes to kill everything in a 4,000 kilometer radius an atmosphere? Roughly 2 [i]teratons[/i] of TNT. That's roughly 93 [i]tonnes[/i] of antimatter. Antimatter's powerful, but when you run the numbers, you'll actually be surprised how much you need for the really huge explosions.

Note what you said: "4,000 kilometer radius [in?] atmosphere". Space combat has no atmosphere, so all things are FAR more devastating. Atmosphere luckily has the added benefit of cushioning an explosion, absorbing the heat and force produced and dispersing it in atmosphere. This doesn't happen in vacuum, and the destructive force of weaponry tends to be far worse. Think of a bullet being fired from a gun in space: that bullet continues to fly near-indefinitely because there is no friction to stop it. In that same vein, the force of the explosion (and all remaining material within) will continue to expand with no real resistance. It will lose a significant amount of force as it distributes evenly in all directions (assuming that this missile does not utilize directional explosion, which is very much a possibility), but will still be very potent for a vast amount of distance... far more so than in atmosphere. Even if it was heavily exaggerated, I doubt that the lethality of such weapons is miniscule enough to make for good cinematic combat. Also, I thought it should be noted that your calculation is too large. You only need half that amount of antimatter, because half of the explosion is induced by normal matter. So about 46 tons of antimatter (with an equal amount of normal matter, much of which could be supplied with a target) would suffice for such a massive atmospheric explosion.

I think I'd like to jump in and make my opinion on this subject clear. It isn't reasonable to expect the core rules to cover every single situation that occurs. Space combat rules would be nice, but primarily the game is about people interacting with each other. A supplement on this area would be nice. It's all very nice to sit around and trade scientific facts insisting that spaceship combat is too lethal to be fun, or that it could still be interesting, but there is an overriding concern that people seem to be missing. Simply put, we don't really know what spaceship combat will be like in a few centuries. Anybody who pretends to absolutely know what it will be like is kidding themselves. Spaceship combat can largely be how we envision it to be, even assuming the presence of antimatter and so on. Our assumptions about physics and antimatter, AS WE KNOW THEM TODAY, are just guidelines for coming up with a good game. If people want to include spaceship combat rules, I don't think there is really a problem with that, and since a lot of stuff happens in space there really should be some sort of rules set to cover everything that happens in the game. Don't forget, it's pretty reasonable in this context that a character might steal someone else's ship, and use it to blow up an enemy target under the rationale that if he gets blown up, he just goes back to his backup and hasn't lost anything in the process. (Just a stolen spaceship.) It's not all that implausible that this could happen. The game is supposed to be fun. Let's stop using our knowledge of modern (that is, science as we understand in this moment) science to beat each other over the head, and just proceed from that idea. I think spaceship combat is likely to be pretty lethal, but that doesn't mean people won't do it. Hell, personal combat is pretty lethal too, and that happens anyway. Why would battle in ships be any different? The one constant throughout history is that people have always found reasons for going to war, even when the odds look awful. People kill each other, it's a constant occurrence today and we don't backup our minds to a computer and jump into a new body at the end. How much more violent could a people be when that final consequence doesn't exist anymore?

nick012000 wrote:

No, not with explosions, it isn't. Explosive weapons are far more dangerous in an atmosphere than outside of it, since the weapon doesn't have any atmosphere to propogate a shockwave through in space.

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilation]Annihilation doesn't simply produce an explosion.[/url] Photons, gamma rays, and a number of other goodies are produced during particle annihilation, and it all decays into new particles. And for the record, gamma rays flow extremely well through vacuum. The biggest weakness that a weapon might see in space is that the impact force reduces dramatically as it expands outward evenly. In atmosphere on a planet, the explosive force is somewhat directed (generally going horizontally outward and upward exclusively) producing more damage in those directions. However, if such force could be directed in space (I don't see why it couldn't be, with antimatter utilized through a funneling magnetic field that basically shapes the force), it has the potential to be significantly more devastating, especially as an antimatter weapon.

nick012000 wrote:

An explosion is a wave. With nothing for the wave to travel through, there is no wave. In space, explosive weapons do damage with the radiation they emit only, and that doesn't do nearly as much damage to space ships as a blast wave would. In short, you're going to need to achieve a direct hit in order to score a kill; proximity kills would probably be limited to a couple hundred meters at most with nuclear weapons.

Annihilation does not produce the simplistic wave of force that dynamite does. It mainly produces matter, light and gamma radiation... all of which travel through space perfectly fine.

nick012000 wrote:

No, you're right in that they make for very compact nuclear-scale weapons. You just aren't going to get up to the sorts of weapon yields universes like Star Wars or Warhammer 40,000 throw around without stupidly huge amounts of the stuff.

Annihilation isn't the same as nuclear technology. They are hugely different fields. It is much akin to the difference between fusion and fission (which admittedly, many people today don't realize that there is a difference, even though the difference is immense).

nick012000 wrote:

Okay, 46 metric tonnes. That's still a stupidly huge amount of antimatter. Odds are that the yearly production of antimatter in the entire solar system is measured in the grams.

Not necessarily. Today, it is measured in grams. We can't know for sure how much we could produce by the time we reach the technological capabilities of Eclipse Phase's transhuman society. For instance, today we can't store much more than a miniscule amount of antimatter, and it all has to be either positively or negatively charged. Who knows how we can store it by then.

nick012000 wrote:

And none of those are likely to damage a ship all that much. You need a blast wave for that, and yes, an antimatter explosion will produce one when the energy released by the blast interacts with the air around the bomb, the same way that nuclear fireballs are produced (and I do mean exactly the same way).

A concentrated gamma ray burst would cook every single person on the ship in a single flash and likely do more damage than most energy weapons to every single object they pass through. Gamma rays travel through a large majority of material, and have a lot of energy potential. Unless you are arguing that ships are immune to energy weapons (especially microwave, which basically utilize blasts at a much lower frequency than gamma rays), we're still talking about a lot of damage.

nick012000 wrote:

If you're spraying antimatter at them, you don't really have an antimatter bomb any more, you've got an antimatter particle beam.

It's not about spraying antimatter, but rather directionalizing the effects of annihilation. It's akin to bunker busters that our military utilizes today.

nick012000 wrote:

None of which are all that good at damaging ships.

Ships are immune to all energy attacks? Since when?

nick012000 wrote:

The energy yields of an antimatter bomb and a "conventional" nuclear bomb are likely to be within a few orders of magnitude, and that's all the matters when you need to determine the raw destructive power of the blast.

No, it isn't. A nuclear explosions effects are dramatically different from dynamite explosion effects, and not just in magnitude. The same is true for antimatter, which does not simply produce heat and force.

nick012000 wrote:

1 gram of antimatter per year is still a billion times more than our current production of antimatter. According to CERN, we need to spend about ten billion times the energy released by antimatter in order to create it. I think you can see the problem here.

The law of conservation of energy states that if we were to make production more efficient, we could theoretically produce antimatter by only spending twice as much energy as is released by it. It all comes down to how much our ability to produce it has improved.

nick012000 wrote:

Inverse square law, dude. Nukes (and any sort of explosive, for that matter) are next to useless in space unless you score a near-direct hit. It doesn't matter how much energy they have; increasing their energy only results in marginal increases in explosive power. And no, the blast from a nuclear weapon works much like that of however many thousands or millions of tons of conventional explosive, save that it also produces ionizing radiation (and EMP, if detonated high enough in the atmosphere). All that matters for that is the amount of energy in the explosion, and the mechanics of such explosions are well-understood. It doesn't matter if it's a nuke, a few kilograms of antimatter, a few million tons of conventional explosive, or a relativistic kinetic kill weapon.

Look, there is a [i]significant[/i] difference between various forms of "explosive" weaponry. Dynamite does not create a similar explosion to a nuke, no matter how much of it you use. It doesn't burn as hot, doesn't produce radiation, and doesn't even come close to having the same chemical reactions. The same is true when comparing annihilation weaponry to nuclear weaponry: nukes don't produce gamma ray bursts, don't produce heavy materials, and don't have anywhere near the same yield or temperature. If you need a comparative, take a weapon from the main book: the microwave agonizer. Microwaves are essentially electromagnetic waves FAR lower on the scale of frequency than gamma waves... but essentially the same thing. Now take the microwave agonizer and convert it into a weapon which shoots in every single direction at once... now we're getting towards what an annihilation [i]might[/i] be like. From there, we increase the frequency of the electromagnetic waves to the gamma level. This not only causes them to be more devastating, it also causes the electromagnetic waves to be able to pass through other materials. Essentially, anything caught within a gamma ray burst is cooked [i]throughout[/i]. Lastly, because it is an ionizing radiation, it can also damage electronics to a significant degree. Moreover, it travels light years without stopping... so I highly doubt that 4000 km is enough to be safe from a high dosage. At best, it would only reduce the damage by a significant degree as the gamma radiation disperses in all directions (which again is only relevant if the blast isn't directed). Unless you are arguing that microwave agonizers are completely worthless in attacking a ship (or anything, for that matter), there is no way that gamma rays are ineffective. Gamma rays are essentially more potent forms of the same exact thing (electromagnetic radiation).

Decivre, just stop arguing. You obviously don't know what you're talking about.

Quote:

Look, there is a significant difference between various forms of "explosive" weaponry. Dynamite does not create a similar explosion to a nuke, no matter how much of it you use. It doesn't burn as hot, doesn't produce radiation, and doesn't even come close to having the same chemical reactions. The same is true when comparing annihilation weaponry to nuclear weaponry: nukes don't produce gamma ray bursts, don't produce heavy materials, and don't have anywhere near the same yield or temperature.

A million tons of TNT will produce a very similar explosion to a megaton nuclear bomb. The exact shape of the blast waveform might vary, but they'll have much the same effect. The fireball would be the same size, the mushroom cloud would be the same size, the blast radius would be the same, et cetera. Once you get to a certain threshold, the blasts are basically identical. The only difference is that conventional explosives will produce much less radiation (next to no ionizing radiation, and much less thermal radiation). Similarly, if you have a microwave gun and a gamma ray gun, and they both are suitably overpowered, they'll cause the same effect on a ship you shoot them at: the material in the path of beam will evaporate explosively. If it's at the same order of magnitude to a nuclear weapon, and you shoot it at a target in an atmosphere, then the blast that results at the target will be basically identical to that of a nuclear bomb. Once you get enough energy involved, it doesn't matter what sort of means you're using to deliver that energy, since the explosions will be basically identical to any other explosion at that same amount of energy. This is well-understood science.

Quote:

If you need a comparative, take a weapon from the main book: the microwave agonizer. Microwaves are essentially electromagnetic waves FAR lower on the scale of frequency than gamma waves... but essentially the same thing. Now take the microwave agonizer and convert it into a weapon which shoots in every single direction at once... now we're getting towards what an annihilation might be like.

No. Making a weapon explode in every direction at once makes it [i]totally ineffective[/i] in space. The Inverse Square Law demands that.

Quote:

From there, we increase the frequency of the electromagnetic waves to the gamma level. This not only causes them to be more devastating, it also causes the electromagnetic waves to be able to pass through other materials. Essentially, anything caught within a gamma ray burst is cooked throughout.

Gamma rays can be stopped with a few meters of water. Guess what a proper warship is going to need lots of for its crews?

Quote:

Lastly, because it is an ionizing radiation, it can also damage electronics to a significant degree. Moreover, it travels light years without stopping... so I highly doubt that 4000 km is enough to be safe from a high dosage. At best, it would only reduce the damage by a significant degree as the gamma radiation disperses in all directions (which again is only relevant if the blast isn't directed).

No. Any spaceship worth its salt will be hardened against electromagnetic effects; a nuclear bomb won't fry its electronics, because if it could, the Sun would already have done so. Additionally, the Inverse Square Law dramatically limits the ranges of any explosive radiation weapon in space; someone lightyears away wouldn't even be able to notice that it went off, because its signal power would have dipped below the ambient noise level. The radio transmissions we give off only make it .3 light-years before they become indistinguishable from the ambient noise.

Quote:

Unless you are arguing that microwave agonizers are completely worthless in attacking a ship (or anything, for that matter), there is no way that gamma rays are ineffective. Gamma rays are essentially more potent forms of the same exact thing (electromagnetic radiation).

Microwave agonisers [i]are[/i] completely worthless in attacking things; they were deliberately designed to only cause pain without inflicting injuries. Gamma rays are rather more dangerous to living things in sufficient doses, but there are various means to minimise their effects. Like a few meters of water, or a few inches of lead.

Quote:

Thermal isolated Objects (of low albedo) that are "gliding" on momentum & "running silent", should be quite hard to detect. I imagine it also hard for a spaceship to detect & avoid a speck of dust (of nasty surprise). As well as Small objects & other Micro threats. Shrapnel, self-replicating robotic systems, mines & "caltrops". Such hazards can be deployed in a active battle, and not just for battle preparation or "passive" defenses.

The enemy can see you deploying them, calculate their trajectories and orbits, and then avoid them.

nick012000 wrote:

Decivre, just stop arguing. You obviously don't know what you're talking about.

I would say the same thing.

nick012000 wrote:

A million tons of TNT will produce a very similar explosion to a megaton nuclear bomb. The exact shape of the blast waveform might vary, but they'll have much the same effect. The fireball would be the same size, the mushroom cloud would be the same size, the blast radius would be the same, et cetera. Once you get to a certain threshold, the blasts are basically identical. The only difference is that conventional explosives will produce much less radiation (next to no ionizing radiation, and much less thermal radiation). Similarly, if you have a microwave gun and a gamma ray gun, and they both are suitably overpowered, they'll cause the same effect on a ship you shoot them at: the material in the path of beam will evaporate explosively. If it's at the same order of magnitude to a nuclear weapon, and you shoot it at a target in an atmosphere, then the blast that results at the target will be basically identical to that of a nuclear bomb. Once you get enough energy involved, it doesn't matter what sort of means you're using to deliver that energy, since the explosions will be basically identical to any other explosion at that same amount of energy. This is well-understood science.

Again, we aren't talking about the explosion, which is only a small portion of what goes on with a weapon of this type. The explosion is a negligible part of an antimatter, or even nuclear device. The radiation is the central reason that an antimatter weapon is lethal, and you yourself said that the "only difference is that conventional explosives will produce much less radiation". Seriously? You can't see the problem with your argument yet? That said, you also have to note that radiation travels well (if not better) in vacuum. Radiation weapons are therefore far more potent. The explosive force may not be, but again that isn't what an antimatter weapon is built for. Complaining that the explosion of an antimatter weapon is weak and therefore useless in space is like saying that a gun is crappy because it comes painted blue.

nick012000 wrote:

No. Making a weapon explode in every direction at once makes it [i]totally ineffective[/i] in space. The Inverse Square Law demands that.

Which would probably be why such a weapon would be directionalized, wouldn't it?

nick012000 wrote:

Gamma rays can be stopped with a few meters of water. Guess what a proper warship is going to need lots of for its crews?

So does air, what's your point? Are you really arguing that a warship is going to cover its entire hull surface with "water armor" a few meters in density? Do you even realize how much of a waste of weight and space that would be for any ship? Water is fully recyclable, so it needs very little for even the most long-distance of trips. The largest majority of all water on ships equipped with full nanofabrication will be in the bodies of the crew, and encasing the reactor. If anything, the crew would rely on its steel hull (which has the same amount of protection of 7¼ inch thick water in a single inch thick piece of steel), or an extra layer of depleted uranium... but again, only so much is economical. Ships in Eclipse Phase are built for travel, and very rarely built for combat. Even combat models will likely have problems when dealing with radiation weaponry, simply because of the scale of destruction they are built for. Offensive technology tends to outpace defensive technology when you deal with high-magnitude weaponry.

nick012000 wrote:

No. Any spaceship worth its salt will be hardened against electromagnetic effects; a nuclear bomb won't fry its electronics, because if it could, the Sun would already have done so. Additionally, the Inverse Square Law dramatically limits the ranges of any explosive radiation weapon in space; someone lightyears away wouldn't even be able to notice that it went off, because its signal power would have dipped below the ambient noise level. The radio transmissions we give off only make it .3 light-years before they become indistinguishable from the ambient noise.

No form of electromagnetic hardening is absolute. In virtually all cases, such hardening is given a specific rating. I have no doubt that most electronics are hardened against all but the most severe electromagnetic effects. Chances are that anything that can affect your electronics will likely do far more damage to you than your motherboard. The Inverse Square law doesn't completely invalidate any threat that radiation has. The inverse square law applies to the radiation of the sun, and yet we can still feel a hefty degree of its potency a full 8 light minutes away. Moreover, the law has less validity when a weapon is directionalized.

nick012000 wrote:

Microwave agonisers [i]are[/i] completely worthless in attacking things; they were deliberately designed to only cause pain without inflicting injuries. Gamma rays are rather more dangerous to living things in sufficient doses, but there are various means to minimise their effects. Like a few meters of water, or a few inches of lead.

You might want to re-read the material. A microwave agonizer is fully capable of killing someone in its lethal setting, essentially acting as a weaponized microwave oven. A gamma ray weapon would be similar, and much more lethal. Of course, what with everyone wearing their several-meters-in-diameter water balloon radiation armor, I suppose all these things are harmless, ne?

King Shere wrote:

Dodging a railgun lanched grain of "dust"? Having enemy avoid areas are one of the purposes of mines & caltrops

Remember the scale that most ships will be fighting on. Chances are that space combat will occur between ships in excess of 5000 kilometers of each other. At such ranges, even a very fast projectile will still have plenty of delay between firing and impact. Let's assume that the fired grain of dust flew at 100 km per second (that's mach 301 at sea level!); it would still take a full 50 seconds to reach its target at a range of 5,000 kilometers. For this reason, railguns serve better as bombardment weapons on stationary targets. But I agree that such a weapon might be useful for forcing a target to evade, if that's your plan.

It that must not be named wrote:

No matter how much TNT you set off it won't produce an EMP or radiation. Likewise TNT won't produce the temperatures nuclear fission does, let alone nuclear fusion.

Exactly, thank you. There is a significant distinction between various forms of energy, and simply comparing all of them as "varying sizes of explosions" is a dishonest way to do so.

UpliftedOctopi wrote:

I may be off on this but it seems like travel times are WAY over estimated. I think this because of Franklin Chang-Diaz's VASIMR which is currently under development or testing or something irl (source:http://www.adastrarocket.com/VASIMR.html). This is looking at Earth to Mars < 3 months (unless I'm mistaken). Again, as it often seems to be, I would like to submit that the true limitation is on shielding tech, making sure debris doesn't wreck your shit mid trip.

It'll depend on the time period when the trip occurs. A trip to Mars from Earth takes far less time if the trip starts at one point during the year than another (if Mars is very close to Earth, it takes less time than if its on the opposite side of the Sun). When they are fairly close, a ship can fly directly from planet to planet. If not, a ship needs to fly into the orbit of the next planet and wait to be intercepted.

The math here is fairly easy to work out. Let's say that we have a 10kg load of antimatter (a yield equal to more than 10,000 years of production at our current rates). I'm going to round off a bit for ease of calculations (i'll round up c to 300,000,000 for instance) The energy released by the antimatter detonation is calculated by: e=MC^2 e = 10kg x (3x10^8 ms^-1 )^2 e = 9.10x 10^17 J 1MT of TNT = 4.184 x 10^15 J 9.10 x 10^17 J/ 4.184 x 10^15 J =217.492 Mt This is the intensity at the point of annihilation. Assuming no absorption or refraction, the energy (actually intensity) at the target ship, assuming the missile detonates/is detonated at 1000Km, can calculated as: I=P/A Where P = Power and A=area Power = 9.10 x 10^17J Area = 4∏r^2 = 4 x 3.14x(1000000)^2 m Area = 1.31 x 10^13 m^2 Power = 9.10 x 10^17J/1.31 x 10^13 Power = 6.95 x 10^4J This is sufficent energy to raise the temprature of a kilogram of water by about 16 degrees. Hardly enough to damage a spaceship uless it was made of very flimsy materials. The nature of the energy is largely immaterial, as it's the intensity of it we are measuring. 70kJ of gamma rays is just as energetic as 70kJ of IR radiation. Of course, that assumes a perfect transfer of energy, and assumes it's all transferred immediately and evenly, which it wouldn't be. However, what we do see is that 10kg of antimatter releases the energy equivalent of over 200MT of TNT. G.

Decivre wrote:

UpliftedOctopi wrote:

I assume these figures are referring to ideal conditions

Ideal conditions don't come around that often. Two orbiting bodies will only line up once every so often, based on the timing of their orbits. Mars and Earth synch up only once every 1½ years or so. Jupiter and Saturn only synch up once every 2 decades or so. I highly doubt that trade ships are willing to wait that long to head onto their next trade route.

Earth and Mars's orbits are in resonance. Every 2 earth orbits is 3 mars orbits. You get a conjunction every 24 months or so. G.

Decivre wrote:

GJD wrote:

Earth and Mars's orbits are in resonance. Every 2 earth orbits is 3 mars orbits. You get a conjunction every 24 months or so. G.

Mars' orbit is actually around 1.8 Earth years per Martian year, not 1.5 (thank you, Wolfram Alpha). Still, 2 years is a very long time to wait between trade ship routes. The larger numbers that were given were likely meant to account for the average distance between planets, rather than the closest possible distance.

Indeed. I said about. I believe the conjunctions occur every 26 months. However, there are a variety of cycler orbits that allow for the trip to be made in as little as 3 months, without expending an thrust en-route. Of course, those cycler orbits are eccentric so both legs won't be the same duration. The trade off for a 3 month trip in or out could be a corresponding return leg as long as 3 years. The idea is to set up a schedule of cyclers that are arriving and departing with regularity. That said, throwing a constant thrust into the equation, or even a decent boost phase, changes all of this. G.

This is all well and good but I have yet to see how eclipse phase addresses shielding the ship from debris. I feel any other discussion is purely speculation (huh weird, speculation in sci fi) until this has been settled. Could also have implications for space combat which, a long time ago, was the topic of this thread.

What is a big deal to me is the lack of shielding. Yes, once you have a working system, it seems a small matter. However, when you have no system specified, concerns are high. Again just my opinion (wonder if devs are listening) but I thought EP was "hard" sci-fi. If this is the case, I feel it important to specify what shielding tech is used. It may be possible that the answer is simply that the hulls are polarized and thus strong enough to resist impacts, but if it is that there is some type of deflector array, or something more advanced, it would seem that it would be important to elucidate this detail. Imagine the implications of a shielding tech "arms race" between open market of autonomous habs and the corps. Each has different tech and that, necessarily, would be an important factor in space combat, even potentially a deciding factor that allows the autonomous masses to overcome the Junta. A whole campaign could and should be grown around emergent shield tech that will be a deciding factor in space combat and whose hands it falls into. I, personally, would have Firewall making it only available internally in order to forward their cause as an early sign of corruption. But, I digress, shield tech (or comparable alternatives) is an important part of a sci-fi setting, as space travel (on the big scale) is not feasible without it.

Odds are that they use [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield]Whipple shields[/url] with self-repair nanites for the small stuff and laser point-defence turrets for the bigger stuff.

UpliftedOctopi wrote:

As speed increases laser turrets won't really be feasible and, to my understanding, neither really are whipple shields. Those would be useful for relatively slow moving objects but to develop a targeting system to identify, target, and shoot debris faster than it goes from max sensor range to impact becomes harder as propulsion gets better. Whipple shields just aren't that strong from their description. I'm looking for the Eclipse Phase solution, not the fluffy sci fi and the NASA solution. I think the self repair nanites are a step in the right direction though. Perhaps used in combination with a heavily modified whipple shield this could be what I'm looking for.

Remember that space travel speeds aren't that significantly quick, even by Eclipse Phase's time. Even in a trip from Uranus to the Sun, the maximum speed that a ship with an antimatter engine will get to is 0.00828c in the 28 days it spends traveling (obviously fastest at the halfway point). That said, I think the best possible solution to the issue might lie in antimatter storage. Currently, doing so requires massive magnetic containers on order of millions of times larger than the antiparticles held. In contrast, Eclipse Phase technology allows for magnetic containment fields that only weigh 10 times the total weight of the antimatter stored. In theory, a field that can be used to contain matter could just as easily be turned outward to repel it.

UpliftedOctopi wrote:

so in layman's terms... kinda... You could create some sort of "repulser" (Dr. Evil quotations gesture) shield using a variant of an antimatter containment field (consistent with the EP tech level)? Would this apply enough force fast enough to repel things sufficiently, or do we not have enough information to say?

It should, considering it can hold a large hunk of antimatter stationary in such a way that it doesn't touch any sides of the container despite any movement. Such a powerful field utilized on small dust fragments in space would be far more potent repelling force.

The "shielding" described in that document is VERY similar to the whipple shield if not "the" whipple shield. Would the use of energy weapons and things such as eelware indicate potential advances in a similar system, seeing as how the shield is said to "shock" the micrometeorites? Also what about an automated repair system, nano-based or otherwise? Having/playing an r2d2 type synth might be fun.