12-09-2018, 09:43 PM | #311 | ||
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: The plutonium rich regions of Washington State
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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For practical considerations, visible and infrared laser scattering will be linear. For near ultra-violet, you start to get significant two-photon absorption at high intensities. This means that as a laser nears its focal point, the proportion of energy scattered from the beam goes up. This benefits the planet-based people. They can build a near-UV laser cannon that does not suffer two-photon absorption as the beam is going away, because it is still quite wide at that point. The orbital forces, who need their beams to be focused to a tight spot when they arrive at the planet, are in a different pickle. Their beams will be intense enough at that point to suffer significant extra absorption, which will greatly degrade their performance. Since ultraviolet can hold a tight focus at greater distances than visible or infrared wavelengths, the planetary defenders can shoot farther than the orbital attackers. Of course, all this is based on real physics, not GURPS game stats. I know some people don't like to get reality messing up their game, so if not you can just ignore all this (but then, you're not allowed to try to justify differences in propagation based on path direction using physics either). For those who are interested, I did make an attempt to get as-realistic-as-possible laser weapons for GURPS here: http://panoptesv.com/RPGs/Equipment/...asers.php?HR=0 However, since it is not compatible with Ultra-Tech, it is a bit off-topic for this discussion. Luke |
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12-09-2018, 10:01 PM | #312 | |
Join Date: Mar 2014
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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Last edited by Andreas; 12-09-2018 at 10:08 PM. |
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12-09-2018, 10:34 PM | #313 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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Assuming total range is substantially greater than the depth of the atmosphere, and a beam that is focused to a point, the beam will be much wider (during its atmospheric passage) for the ground attacker than for the space attacker. This will result in far more heating of the beam path for the space attacker, increasing distortion and possibly resulting in plasma formation that will turn the atmosphere opaque to the beam. On the other hand, the effect of atmospheric distortion on final spot size will depend on how far the beam goes after the distortion occurs. |
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12-10-2018, 06:59 AM | #314 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
What about using a lower intensity secondary laser to create a vacuum channel through the atmosphere a millisecond before the higher intensity primary laser activates? While it would not work for a weak laser, a 100 GJ laser could easily have a 100 MJ secondary laser create a vacuum channel, meaning that the effective atmospheric pressure that the 100 GJ laser would experience would be trace (for the millisecond that the vacuum channel lasts). It would not be feasible for a space attack on the ground though, as even the smallest difference in position at origin would cause the vacuum channel to be in the wrong place when the beams got to the atmosphere (for example, a divergence of position of a million to one would result in the primary beam being 10 m from where it should be at a distance of 10,000 km).
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12-10-2018, 09:58 AM | #315 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
You can argue for giving all the AI gunners skill-18 but it's not what GURPS tends to assume. At TL10 AIs tend to end up with middling skill levels.
Last edited by Michael Thayne; 12-10-2018 at 11:28 AM. |
12-10-2018, 10:46 AM | #316 | |
Join Date: Mar 2014
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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GURPS tends to assume? Is that for Transhuman space? Either way, gunnery programs should at the very least be as good as what could be developed with our current technology in order to be plausible. |
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12-10-2018, 11:28 AM | #317 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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If you want to make a case for realism, you can argue that the targeting systems in Spaceships already assume a great deal of computer assistance (explicitly +9 for targeting with active sensors). But the other side of this is that while realistically, AI capabilities are likely to be highly uneven, superhuman in some areas but very limited in others, spelling out how that works in detail is a major world-building challenge and most sci-fi settings either make AIs comparable to humans for most tasks, maybe slightly worse, unless the AI is a unique specimen like Star Trek's Data. |
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12-10-2018, 12:03 PM | #318 | |
Join Date: Mar 2014
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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+9 isn't enough (and it should probably allow you to fire at a certain level of skill rather than give a bonus like that). It is very common for AIs in fiction to be very good at some of the tasks that computers are known to excel at. This is of course as you noted, a major world-building challenge, and misstakes are made, but it is possible to do reasonably well if you at least check that your future technology isn't worse than what could be developed today. |
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12-10-2018, 01:38 PM | #319 | ||
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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12-10-2018, 01:43 PM | #320 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
One other thing I'd add: a lot of the programs that aren't explicitly mentioned in GURPS are either going to be in the category of "basic software to use a skill at all" or something that gives a +1 or +2 bonus to the skill. When a program replaces a PC skill entirely that's a big deal and there are plenty of examples of this being made quite explicit in the rules (robofacs and automeds, for example).
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