[Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like

[Ulzgoroth]

Addendum: that's disregarding that per Spaceships a robofac requires you input components running to 40% of the list price of the product - for most projects that's not going to be refinery bar stock! So when your dyson swarm invasion fleet is working from outer-system rocks you need more factory to feed your factory, driving that reproduction rate down a bit further.

I think the robots-building-robots-forever bit is again getting rather afield of the intended subject...

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Addendum: that's disregarding that per Spaceships a robofac requires you input components running to 40% of the list price of the product - for most projects that's not going to be refinery bar stock! So when your dyson swarm invasion fleet is working from outer-system rocks you need more factory to feed your factory, driving that reproduction rate down a bit further.

I think the robots-building-robots-forever bit is again getting rather afield of the intended subject...

Don't build robofacs.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

Don't build robofacs.

...So when you said "expand", what did you mean?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

An Overlord Assault Carrier has a robofac that can make 30M per hour. What do you really need biological people for on it? Crew? You have AIs.

And once again people are totally sidelined leaving no game to play.

[AlexanderHowl]

Other than to be the valiant planetary defenders opposing the monstrous robotic alien invasion. Using their genetically and biologically augmented intelligence, will the humans (with an average IQ 14) be able to counter the robotic hordes?

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

What makes it valuable? Labor?

No. Because of The Zeroth Law.

Well, sort of. Basically "because people."

I've heard this whole argument many times about how we won't even need planets, and who wants to mess with a gravity well when you can just build space stations. And as always, it rings hollow to me. The people who spout such nonsense tend to be space zealots who clearly don't understand normal people. At all.

I have lived in the equivalent of a freight yard (Bagram Air Base) and I don't want to do it again. Likewise, I would not want to live in a space station, which is essentially one large conglomeration of industrial infrastructure.

People will still want to live on planets, in atmospheres. If nothing else, an immense shirtsleeves environment that doesn't need continuous heroic maintenance will be attractive to many. And they still benefit from all those lauded space resources because dropping it down to them is still cheap.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Would you care to tender an example that actually matches your principle? Or for that matter some argument to support it?

Such examples are never perfect- don't be a pedant. Would you care to cite a single example of a modern fortress that triumphed against a mobile opponent in a nontrivial way? I can't think of one. Every one that I think of ends up like Eben Emael or Sevastopol.

[AlexanderHowl]

Habitable planets are also biological reservoirs that allow spacefaring societies to renew the genetic information required for artificial environments. In addition, they are emergency 'lifeboats' for spacefaring species for when their civilizations collapse. While every artificial habitat will eventually go dark and countless trillions will die, the billions that live on habitable planets may survive.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

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).

There are many tasks represented by skill in GURPS for which programs can already outperform humans, so I think one could find plenty of examples of it not being explicitly mentioned.

Originally Posted by acrosome

That being said, "take over the world" is probably too broad for such a bot (i.e. an NAI). That might not go well.

Sure, that would generally be too broad for humans as well and the -2 Hidebound penalty almost certainly applies! However, Slave Mentality wouldn't have much direct effect on it.

Originally Posted by Rupert

If this offends your sensibilities, by all means simply assign effective skill levels to automatic weapon aiming systems, or just state that they never miss. I hope you want a game where the PCs are high level decision-makers in combat, because that what this will get you. It's also, in my pessimistic opinion, not terribly realistic even in open space, for things to never miss.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Oh sure. There is absolutely no reason for people to engage in violence whatsoever in any role other than supervisor or victim. Just let the mindless machines do all of it.

Except that sucks as an opportunity for gaming.

It depends on if you want a game which presents a plausible future scenario. If you want something like Star Wars, then sure, go ahead and make human aiming skill relevant for laser weapons in space.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

or operating in a self-replicating-industry post-scarcity basis at which point it's very unclear what your war is about since you could frankly just replace the planet.

Having picked up a hundred dollar bill from the ground doesn't mean that it is no longer worth your time to pick up a one dollar bill. For the same reasons it can make perfect sense to attack the planet for its resources.

The resources in the rest of the star system might be far greater than those in the planet, but they are still finite and the cost of that " time-on-target kinetic barrage" is most likely smaller than what you could eventually extract from that planet.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by acrosome

People will still want to live on planets, in atmospheres. If nothing else, an immense shirtsleeves environment that doesn't need continuous heroic maintenance will be attractive to many. And they still benefit from all those lauded space resources because dropping it down to them is still cheap.

Dropping stuff down to a planet still costs delta-V, and the deeper the gravity well the more delta-V it costs. You can play with aerobraking and such to make it a bit cheaper than lifting the same amount of stuff from the surface up into space, but the costs will always be within an order of magnitude of each other.

Of course, if your setting has delta-V in general being cheap, then what you say is true. That's a perfectly valid tech assumption at TL10. The universe becomes a much flatter and closer place. (Of course, it also makes it easier to build gigantic, expansive, open-air space habitats.)

Luke

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

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?

This is pointless for visible or near-visible lasers. Air is transparent to these colors, and they can use adaptive optics to correct for turbulence. For ground installations where the beam will be wide when going through the air, this is already a solved problem. For space bombardment of the surface with lasers, there is a question of thermal blooming (the laser heating the air, so that it is less dense at the center, making a diverging lens which interferes with focusing). But your solution only magnifies this problem, making a channel of diffuse plasma (it will never be a good vacuum) that will absorb and spread the beam.

There's also the issue of the energy involved. Since I need to run off to work now, I don't have time to calculate this number at the moment. Later, perhaps.

Luke