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Old 05-03-2013, 10:19 AM   #17
ammulder
 
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Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Philadelphia Area
Default Re: "100 Years Ago Today" - Car Wars News

The thing with drones is that all the stuff is already in the rules -- it's just the 1980 version. There's infrared, radar, radar detectors, radar jammers, radar-guided weapons, the bollix, and so on. You can create a helicopter (or off-road buggy) with a vehicular camera and a remote-control guidance system, it's just atrociously big and expensive. As far as miniaturization goes, I'm fine if 6e doesn't include nanotechnology, but you can't walk through a shopping mall in 2013 without getting buzzed by a remote-control helicopter on display. And as I said, cameras are already tiny and battery tech will supposedly be much more advanced. Denying that drones would exist in such a world is sort of like saying the world has forgotten how to make cell phones. (OK, maybe the satellites were all trashed so you don't get signal outside the city, but still... are kids going to be too mature to be texting and shooting photos to their friends in 100 years?)

Now I'm fine if Chassis & Crossbow drones are as in the present rules -- perhaps the finer details of manufacturing have been lost. But I don't think that's what the main edition of the rules will be targeting.

I guess the question is where to draw the line so that Car Wars doesn't become cyberpunk. So I'm OK if the decision is made to eliminate some things. But it would be pretty disconcerting if the 1980 version is included while other tech advances 100 years. I would be totally OK if there was an "electronics" type expansion and all the camera/radar/infrared/jamming/drones/etc. was deferred to that -- certainly it would be an easy way to prevent any of it from showing up in the arena ("everything in this book is restricted from arena usage").

Anyway, two more links:

Tiny robot flies like a fly:
http://www.nature.com/news/tiny-robo...-a-fly-1.12926
A proposed drone-detection system (article mentions others):
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/...ection-system/
An photo overview of military ground drones:
http://news.cnet.com/2300-11386_3-10017023.html

Last edited by ammulder; 06-01-2013 at 05:07 AM. Reason: New link
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