Potential Pitfalls for a Superscience Technology

[Varyon]

So, I've been working on a possible Space Opera-ish setting to make use of GURPS Spaceships. There are two major superscience technologies - a system that accesses subspace to make a force screen, and one that accesses hyperspace to dump velocity (theoretically allowing a vessel to expend all its delta-V during travel, then "brake" at the end of the journey, rather than having to save half of it to decelerate near the end). We'll refer to these technologies as the Shield and the K-Sink, respectively. One of the big issues with these is that they don't cost any energy to maintain - the Shield relies on its link to subspace, the K-Sink on the very energy it's dumping into hyperspace.
EDIT: I should note here the purpose of this thread - tear my superscience devices apart! Tell me everything that's wrong with them, what sorts of unexpected uses they may be employable for, and so forth. This should allow me to modify them later to function in a way that doesn't destroy the setting.

One of the limiters on the Shield is that it generates an excessive amount of waste heat. So much so that, in a spaceship, it actually requires a full system (meaning it takes up 2 systems total) for heat circulation and venting. This actually only allows the Shield to be active for about 15 minutes before its safeties kick in and shut it down (overriding the safeties risks serious damage to the Shield starting at 16 minutes). Fuel Tanks full of coolant extend this by 15 minutes per tank. Disabling/destroying the circulation/venting system (which includes the main radiators) drops this to 3 minutes (and only 1.5/tank). This is all in the vacuum of space, of course - in an atmosphere it would be able to dump heat more quickly. I'm assuming being in a Standard atmosphere would be about equivalent to having an additional full tank of coolant (the Shield actually blocks some of the heat energy from escaping, which is one of the reasons it overheats so quickly).
The problem here is that the Shield is generating an excessive amount of waste heat... with no energy input (well, technically the energy comes from subspace...). This could be used as a way to generate "free" energy. I think I'm actually OK with this - the way the shield works you'd have to work in atmosphere, and you'd probably end up turning it on, waiting until it reaches its maximum safe temperature, turning it off, then running the coolant through some sort of heat engine to cool it down and generating some electricity in the process. The Shield itself is rather unkind to matter (think the DR Device from Ender's Game, but slower and without as much propagation), meaning you'd need to move it around from time to time as it reduces the ground it sits on to a fine powder. I think this would end up generating energy at a rate that isn't too far off from a solar panel array of comparable mass on a clear day - although the Shield would be able to generate this energy in any weather.
Am I missing any serious issues here? The setting tends to be rather environmentally friendly (so no fission energy or the like), so one problem I see from this potentially green energy source is an excessive amount of heat pollution.

The other issue is with the K-Sink. The K-Sink functions first by establishing a "K-Tether" to nearby objects. After this point, the pilot of the K-Sink-equipped ship can accelerate (at 100G for a full-sized system) without expending delta-V, but only in a direction that will make the ship's velocity relative to a K-Tethered object closer to 0. For most objects, the K-Tethered object gets an equal-and-opposite change to momentum (so if an SM+5 ship has tethered an SM+7 ship and is decelerating at 100G, the SM+7 ship, which is 100x as massive, would decelerate relative to the smaller ship at 1G). Neither ship "feels" any acceleration (just like with a pseudo-velocity drive, except this is causing a real change). A ship must be relatively close to an object to K-Tether it (it's a function of mass-based SM - that SM+5 ship can K-Tether Earth's sun at around 1 AU, can K-Tether Earth at 1.2 million miles, or could K-Tether that SM+7 ship at around 700 yards), and K-Tethering larger objects is much easier than smaller objects (I haven't completely decided on the numbers, but Sun/Earth would be an automatic success, an object 2 SM larger would require a roll against 12, an object 2 SM smaller would require a roll against 8). I'm considering having certain objects (planets, stars, maybe some moons) qualify as "celestial bodies" and be immune to the mutual-acceleration clause, but those objects are probably so much larger than any ship that it probably doesn't matter.
The above is all fine and well, but it introduces an odd possibility - K-Sinks are effectively contragravity devices! This would allow zero-cost (aside from maintenance) geosynchronous orbits at any height, provided it's within K-Tether range. What sort of effect would this have on a society, and on its industry? Additionally, this introduces the possibility of yet more "free" energy - activate the K-Sink, move the K-Sink up (easy with no gravity), then deactivate the K-Sink. Gravity will try to pull the object back down, and you can turn this energy into electricity with a simple turbine system. This is going to be much more efficient than the Shield-based generator... is there any good way to tweak things so something like this won't work? I was thinking maybe having the K-Sink's temperature drop as it gets further away from the K-Tethered object (turning heat energy into potential energy), but that would be hard to implement. Perhaps I should make K-Sinks all-or-nothing? That is, either they are decelerating at their full rate (again, 100G for a full system), or they aren't working at all. I think this would work - it's just as difficult to get something to a given height, but then you can turn on the K-Sink and it'll stay there (you'll need acceleration in excess of the K-Sink's to make it move). Of course, one use I wanted for the K-Sink was to make it easier for ships to Rendezvous with each other, and with all-or-nothing K-Sinks this might not be as feasible...

[Nereidalbel]

All that thermal energy from the Shield could be used to produce molten salt, which can then be used to boil water and drive turbines. Since molten salt can safely reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, you can dump a lot of heat energy into it, and thus, boil a lot of water.

The K-Sink could be resolved by requiring some minimum acceleration for the tether to remain stable.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

All that thermal energy from the Shield could be used to produce molten salt, which can then be used to boil water and drive turbines. Since molten salt can safely reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, you can dump a lot of heat energy into it, and thus, boil a lot of water.

I haven't bothered to define the temperature at which the Shield will shut down, but, yes, I imagine using it to boil water and drive turbines would be one potential heat engine one could use to generate electricity.
I suppose we could set the shut-down temperature for the Shield by determining the rate of electricity generation by a given weight of TL10 solar panels in full sunlight, set this as the rate at which the same mass of Shield generator+coolant can generate electricity, then back-calculate using Carnot's theorem (while TL10 heat engines probably aren't at maximum efficiency, I'd imagine they're close enough to get a ballpark temperature).

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

The K-Sink could be resolved by requiring some minimum acceleration for the tether to remain stable.

I think I jumped the gun a bit with the K-Sink problem. See, I was assuming it would just negate gravity, then you'd be able to move it without a problem. Instead, it constantly accelerates (at whatever rate the pilot sets, up to its maximum) in a direction that will set relative velocity to 0. This will mean that when it's "negating" Earth gravity, it's actually accelerating at 1G (or more, if the pilot so desires), so it would be just as hard to move (up or down) as it normally would be to move up. So, no free energy from the K-Sink.

...

I think my initial post failed to convey the purpose of this thread - I want to know what sorts of problems (like the infinite-energy K-Sink system I proposed earlier) exists with the technologies as I've presented them, so that I can adjust the way they work properly (or perhaps find a new use for them).

[Walrus]

For Shield.

What's the size of Shield-producing device? Do they vary? Can it be arranged easily depending on needs? How does heat yield depend on the size of device?

What's the particular effect of Shielding? Is it some sort of "Force Field", "Utter Dome" or what?

For K-Sink.
What about accelerating towards far planets (or sun) and then back towards closer planets, effectively going back and forth and generating that free energy and moving just from the surface? How fast can be that switching arranged?

What about using it as tunneling device (or potential bomb) when you accelerate toward the object on the opposite site of a planet (which may be again giant planet which just happened to be there)?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Walrus

For Shield.

What's the size of Shield-producing device? Do they vary? Can it be arranged easily depending on needs? How does heat yield depend on the size of device?

What's the particular effect of Shielding? Is it some sort of "Force Field", "Utter Dome" or what?

The generator weighs 1/20th (1 system) of the vessel, and must be in the dead center. It creates a shapeable field just above the vessel's surface. Interestingly, this effect seems more mass-based than volume-based.

Its effect is multilayered. First, it breaks molecular bonds (or, rather, makes it such that molecular bonds don't exist at the Shield surface). This effect is transmitted through matter a short distance (the more dense the matter, the further it transmits) but is not self-sustaining.
Secondly, it actively blocks energy and particles from crossing the barrier. Rather large particles (that is, objects) can force their way through, but will find their outer layers stripped off in most cases. Game mechanically, the shield makes a roll against 17 to block any incoming object/attack. If the object's SM is equal to the vessel's SM -4, this is instead a roll against 16. If the object is -3, the roll is against 15, and so on - meaning you're at 12 to block something of equal SM, and get no roll (skill 2) if it is 10 SM's larger. There will also be an effect of speed (higher speed means higher probability of intercept), although I haven't worked that out yet.
Shields are two-way, but are unstable and constantly "flickering." 1 minute after activation, your ship's computers have successfully analyzed the flicker (it follows a unique pattern each time the Shield is activated) and thus only allows your weapons to fire during a flicker. It's possible to analyze an enemy ship's pattern to be able to fire when it flickers (imposing a skill penalty on the intercept roll), but you cannot capitalize on this when your own shield is active.
In general, you can't manage larger (they'd overheat immediately, regardless of amount of coolant) or smaller (the shield would destroy your vessel) shield generators. The only exception are Blades - a monoplanar Shield using a special generator, Blades can cut through other Shields but don't project very far.

Originally Posted by Walrus

For K-Sink.
What about accelerating towards far planets (or sun) and then back towards closer planets, effectively going back and forth and generating that free energy and moving just from the surface? How fast can be that switching arranged?

I think I see what you're getting at, maybe. Something like setting your velocity relative to the Sun to 0 so you're moving fast (about 18.5 mps) relative to the Earth, then dumping your velocity by setting Earth as your tether. Seems difficult to exploit, really.

Originally Posted by Walrus

What about using it as tunneling device (or potential bomb) when you accelerate toward the object on the opposite site of a planet (which may be again giant planet which just happened to be there)?

You can only tether to something that is within a range set by 3+(Vessel SM)+(Target SM). For an SM+5 vessel, this is +54 (1.2 million miles) for Earth, +65 (1 AU) for the Sun. This could allow you to slam into earth at a rate of 18.5 mps using the Sun as your reference. You'll cause some damage, but probably not a lot unless you're massive. For massive vessels that could cause significant damage at such a speed, it would probably be illegal to get within close enough range to be able to do this without being intercepted.

[Walrus]

You use a lot of narrow game mechanics (particulary Spaceships) in explanations but thread seems to discuss more in-world effects of such technology.

So, again about Shield. How little can it be? How fast it can be switched on and off? What is it's effect against visible light and pure energy weapons (lasers)? What about sound waves?

And that effect of breaking molecular bonds. Do you mean intermolecular forces (so, forces bonds molecules which effectively turns molecular solids and liquids into very fine powders/sprays) or chemical bonds? The latter will cause decomposed atoms to react quickly after leaving zone of effect generating a lot of heat as well on the border of shield. The former doesn't determine what it does to atomic or mettalic lattice. And even without that it would generate heat as well, though not so much.


And one solution to shields. We can assume that shield technology generator requires actually low temperatures (maybe it requires superconductors or something like that) and a lot of low-temperature coolant, so practical usage of that excessive heat is impossible.

it would probably be illegal to get within close enough range to be able to do this without being intercepted

I mean actual weapons, something like kinetic orbital weapon with good positioning and nearly instant acceleration. They don't need permission or whatever.

And about that non-inertial acceleration. What is the size of that non-inertial zone? What if we can shoot out weight on a cord just before tehthering so that it leaves the zone of lack of inertia. We can see interesting effects then.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Walrus

I mean actual weapons, something like kinetic orbital weapon with good positioning and nearly instant acceleration. They don't need permission or whatever.

seconded. you don't even need to put the thing into orbit. You can accelerate from a standing start. Space is nice though, because it lets you build up speed.

Also, what is an 'object' for our purposes? does it need to be able to move around? can you select part of an object? would a tectonic plate be considered an object? what about someones foot? or a cluster of asteroids? a patch of ocean?

How long does it take to establish a lock? this has interesting implications for those wishing to capture another. A hover car passing over a crowd can establish a lock on a victim, then "slow down", yanking the poor passerby out of the crowd and into his abductor's vehicle.

Can a lock be established if something else is in the way? as in, can I lock onto the sun when the earth is in the way. Or China's tectonic plate? (PS, that one should probably be technically impossible, one way or the other, or you get super acceleration vehicles that zip across the planet (or bulldozers that can dump tons of energy into their push .... knocking over buildings with ease.

[Varyon]

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I think I'm getting some better ideas on how to tweak these technologies (much of what I list in this post are changes/clarifications based on your comments). Let's see if I can address everything...

Shield

The Shield is based on (i.e. ruthlessly stolen from) the Molecular Detachment Device from Ender's Game, which produces a field within which "electrons can't be shared," causing matter to fall apart. For the MD field, each time it interacts with matter it gets stronger and extends further, meaning one hit will utterly destroy a ship (and send out a field that can hit adjacent ships, potentially wiping out an entire fleet in one well-placed shot). The Shield is the same effect, but doesn't propagate as effectively - you'd probably require something like neutronium to get the supercritical reaction you see from the MD Device (although neutronium, with its lack of electrons, would be unaffected).
So, it prevents chemical bonds from working (effectively breaking them and thus releasing heat energy, which is part of why the Shield heats up so quickly).

At the moment, the smallest possible shield generator I would allow would be something around a 3-lb sphere with a 2.5-inch radius. This would produce a Shield sufficient to protect a 70-lb (SM-1) vessel. While a Shield that would work for a human does exist, the setting's cybernetics aren't advanced enough to replace a human's core with the 10-lb generator (and part of the torso with the other 10 lbs of cooling/venting hardware) necessary - and even if there were, either human body temperature would shut the shield down to rapidly or the generator would probably end up cooking the human.

The Shield takes about 10 seconds to come online after it's been activated, but drops as soon as it's turned off. It blocks light of all wavelengths, although that flicker effect means some will get through. To the human eye, while protected by a Shield everything outside looks darker and you'll pick up some occasional flickering. When looking at something protected by a Shield, the object itself is darker and occasionally flickers darker/brighter. Most vessels are designed such that their screens only display while the field is flickered off, giving lower FPS but preventing the darkness effect. I haven't considered the effects on sound waves, as I originally considered the Shield to be a vacuum-only technology (once I opted to use it to justify mecha, however, having it function in atmosphere became necessary). The field partially blocks small molecules and the like (you'll typically need an internal air supply while the Shield is active), so I'd imagine it would block sound propagation as well - meaning while within a Shield you can't hear as well either. While this could theoretically allow someone to use the technology for stealth, the Shield is easily detectable by most sensors, and living things can feel one nearby from a tingling on the skin. In GURPS terms, once a Shield is online it grants a +12 to detect/locate whatever it's protecting (characters unfamiliar with the technology won't realize what they've detected, but they'll know "something" is "over that way").

As for the heating/cooling problem, I had considered making it so the generator shuts down at a relatively-low temperature, but I think this would require a decent amount of energy to keep it cool enough to function in atmosphere. And, unless we make it require an extremely low temperature (which would cause serious issues), it would still be possible to use it to generate energy during winter or at a planet's poles. I think I want to stick with it actually getting hot (although not ridiculously so, possibly a bit hotter than boiling water).


K-Sink

I actually hadn't really considered what constituted an "object" for purposes of a K-Sink. I've already decided that everything with mass has a "shadow" in hyperspace, and as the K-Sink is linked to hyperspace, it makes sense that it would operate based on these shadows. An object would therefore be anything with a distinct shadow, so multiple continuous objects (like that line-and-weight attached to the vessel suggested by Walrus) would count as a single object. In fact, any atmosphere denser than trace would count as continuous, so Earth, its atmosphere, and everything on Earth and in its atmosphere would count as a single object. This means K-Sinks wouldn't work at all on a planet (so much for my floating cities), as you'd have to instead tether to something else, and the K-Sink would give absolutely pitiful acceleration (the K-Sink of an SM+15 vessel would give said vessel 100G acceleration, but if the vessel were in Earth's atmosphere it would be accelerating the entire Earth with the same force... which really isn't going to do much).

As for establishing tethers, this is automatically done (it's a "natural" phenomenon) as soon as something comes within range, but often fails for objects that aren't much larger than the vessel itself. No time is necessary. Currently I have it set that you can opt to accelerate based on anything you have a tether to, but I'm considering only allowing the "strongest" tether to be available. This would be the object you are proportionally closest to. That is, consider an SM+10 vessel, which would tether to our sun at around 6 AU (SM+70) and Earth at around 0.1 AU (SM+59). If it's 0.1 AU from Earth, it's 1 AU (5/6 closer than the outer limit) from the Sun but at the very outer limit from Earth, meaning it would tether to the Sun. Once it gets 1/60 AU (around 2 million miles) from Earth, it will be proportionally the same distance from each, allowing it to use either - any closer and it can only tether to Earth.
In actual play, there's no need to roll to establish a tether until you try to actually make use of it.

As for "captures," this was actually why I decided to make it hard to tether smaller vessels - otherwise a ship can stop incoming missiles or mechas (which need to get really really close to use their blades to open up the ship) or escaping small vessels simply by tethering them and "accelerating," holding the incoming/outgoing object perfectly in place.

Finally, the lack of inertia applies to anything that accelerates due to the K-Sink, but only applies to K-Sink-based acceleration. So, with the bulldozer example (assuming a bulldozer hovering above a planetoid that lacks atmosphere), it could get some velocity to punch into the dirt out of the K-Sink, but once it's impacted it won't be able to accelerate toward the planetoid any further, as they are now one continuous object. If on the other hand we had a vessel trying to escape another one that has it tethered, the crew would feel the full acceleration of the ship's drives (example: if a vessel is being "held" by a vessel 1000x as massive and tries to somehow boost away at 3000G, both vessels would actually accelerate at a little less than 3G; the holding vessel would feel no acceleration from this, but the tethered one would feel the full 3000G).

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Varyon

As for "captures," this was actually why I decided to make it hard to tether smaller vessels - otherwise a ship can stop incoming missiles or mechas (which need to get really really close to use their blades to open up the ship) or escaping small vessels simply by tethering them and "accelerating," holding the incoming/outgoing object perfectly in place.

So, how expensive would it be to outfit missiles with K-Sinks, effectively making them 100% accurate? They should have a rather nice bonus for SM difference, after all.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

So, how expensive would it be to outfit missiles with K-Sinks, effectively making them 100% accurate? They should have a rather nice bonus for SM difference, after all.

K-Sinks are probably going to be fairly cheap, although I haven't determined how much they cost yet. I still need to decide if I want K-Sinks to allow you to choose a direction of acceleration (what I'm leaning toward currently), or if they automatically make a beeline toward 0 velocity in all directions. The former would make a missile (or bullet, for that matter) extremely accurate, getting a bonus to hit of up to SM+3 (they need to "hit" a target that's really just the range at which they can tether the real target; this will be SM+3 if nothing else is in tethering range, less if there's something closer). The latter would be useless in a missile.

This is a really good idea, and is making me want to go with the former option even more. Missiles and guided bullets typically aren't used in the setting, but this could easily be incorporated into otherwise-unguided bullets* (which are used). The EM pulse of electromagnetic guns might be a bit too much for the K-Sink and guidance circuitry, forcing a reliance on conventional and ETC rounds.


*The hand-wave for missiles/guided bullets (the SS default) not being used is that they are too vulnerable to point defense (shoot them once with a low-power beam, they are no longer guided and thus will almost always miss). Unguided bullets are all armor and just need to not be vaporized to damage the target. Adding in a small K-Sink and some basic guidance would still require heavy damage to stop one (you'd need to punch through to the Core and destroy that), would give it a nice Acc boost, and even if you do manage to destroy the K-Sink it's still functioning off of base Acc.

EDIT: After doing some math (a 10 cm round - typical for a mecha carbine - made of solid steel would be around SM-1 by mass, SM -5 to target), the effect probably isn't as good as I had hoped. That 10 cm round would enjoy at +2 (essentially getting EM sAcc), but would suffer range penalties. An unguided round from an Acc 9 (11 with the bonus) weapon really isn't going to do much at space ranges.