Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 08-07-2018, 04:16 PM   #441
(E)
 
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post
If you can get stolen shuttles in space, you can station real interceptors there, too.

Anything that fast will set off all sorts of klaxons, and somebody will send a fast-mover to make a kinetic inquiry.
Would it be unfeasible to attempt to track every one of the drives in existence?
I wonder what the feasible amount of interceptors is? Dumb projectiles could get knocked off course fairly "simply" with numerous techniques if detected early enough.
__________________
Waiting for inspiration to strike......
And spending too much time thinking about farming for RPGs
Contributor to Citadel at Nordvörn
(E) is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2018, 04:38 PM   #442
tanksoldier
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post
If you can get stolen shuttles in space, you can station real interceptors there, too.

Anything that fast will set off all sorts of klaxons, and somebody will send a fast-mover to make a kinetic inquiry.
...just like in the real 9/11. How did that work out?

ETA: ... and don't forget, in the real 9/11 an aircraft shot down crashes into the ground.

A spacecraft hit by a missile, or laser or rubber-band gun becomes a debris field with the same general mass and velocity the original ship had.

Last edited by tanksoldier; 08-07-2018 at 04:44 PM.
tanksoldier is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2018, 04:44 PM   #443
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Fairly well for what they were trying to do, which was get the US involved in endless wars in the Middle East. Anyway, how are you going to stop 500,000 ball bearings from hitting?

Last edited by AlexanderHowl; 08-07-2018 at 04:47 PM.
AlexanderHowl is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2018, 06:08 PM   #444
(E)
 
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Ok, my thinking to stop something like the ball bearing attack they get detected fairly early on, if a terrorist group can achieve the accuracy required to hit a planet at a a range of 90 billion kilometers then sensors would be fairly good.
Then you need to nudge each BB a very small amount to make it miss. ("Simple" not easy) If the intercept was early enough then the BBs would be in a very small area (relatively)

Area of effect weapons maybe
If every BB can be detected then an interceptor could impact an edge BB and the energy released may serve to nudge the rest.
Continuous beams (we need an enormous solar power laser for "Defense")
Adjust the earth's orbit a little if the drives are powerful enough.
Sand casters at even higher velocity.

Greatly increased military budgets required anyway.
Civil rights, bah, just have a profile for everyone and track them all.

Big assumption about detection, but on the other hand the accuracy required is staggering.
__________________
Waiting for inspiration to strike......
And spending too much time thinking about farming for RPGs
Contributor to Citadel at Nordvörn
(E) is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2018, 06:13 PM   #445
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by tanksoldier View Post
...just like in the real 9/11. How did that work out?

ETA: ... and don't forget, in the real 9/11 an aircraft shot down crashes into the ground.

A spacecraft hit by a missile, or laser or rubber-band gun becomes a debris field with the same general mass and velocity the original ship had.
Which actually isn't a problem as long as the fragments aren't durable enough to survive re-entry at that speed. As for 9/11 that only worked because the attack was coming form inside the defense perimeter.
David Johnston2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2018, 06:22 PM   #446
tanksoldier
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
Which actually isn't a problem as long as the fragments aren't durable enough to survive re-entry at that speed.
...unless you’re living in an orbital habitat. With those technologies many people are.

...and they wouldn’t hijack the shuttle full of scrap headed for recycling or anything.

...and with reactionless drives nobody is going to fly out to an asteroid and alter it’s orbit.

...and there will be methods developed to prevent this sort of thing, and methods developed to circumvent them.

It -will- happen eventually.

Quote:
As for 9/11 that only worked because the attack was coming form inside the defense perimeter.
True. We all know that can never happen again.

No one will ever circumvent security. There will never be a disgruntled employee.

Ever.

Last edited by tanksoldier; 08-07-2018 at 06:30 PM.
tanksoldier is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2018, 06:39 PM   #447
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[QUOTE=tanksoldier;2200524]
Quote:
...unless you’re living in an orbital habitat. With those technologies many people are.

...and they wouldn’t hijack the shuttle full of scrap headed for recycling or anything.
Sure they would. Then they'd get blown up.

Quote:
...and with reactionless drives nobody is going to fly out to an asteroid and alter it’s orbit.
They can try. Of course the problem with that idea is that there is no stealth in space. So what they're doing will be perfectly obvious.


Quote:
No one will ever circumvent security. There will never be a disgruntled employee.
Missing the point. Any such operation in space will be outside the perimeter.
David Johnston2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2018, 07:23 PM   #448
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Hitting a continent from 600 AU away with a ballistic attack is not difficult, we are capable of that level of accuracy right now. It is not like anyone can move the planet enough in six weeks to matter, so it is just a basic physics problem. And it is not like anyone will detect the ball bearings, they are not emitting any energy, they are 3 cm across, and, at 0.1c, they are moving too fast for anyone to intercept (you might be able to position an asteroid in the way of a few thousand, but you are going to be spending a lot of effort to stop an attack that took relatively little effort).

Even if you could detect them, at 300 AU, the spread is going to be 500 km in radius. While you can try to use FTL to put something in the way, the average separation is 1.4 km between each ball bearing. How many SM+16 ships do you have that are FTL capable? How many of them are you willing to lose to defend eastern North America?

This is generally why reactionless drives need a hard maximum velocity. In my settings, it is usually 100 mps times the square root of the number of reactionless drives (meaning that mosr shuttles can only reach 200 mps). While a shuttle can still be dangerous, it is possible for beam weapons to hit multiple times before it can do any damage.
AlexanderHowl is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2018, 07:50 PM   #449
(E)
 
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

My thinking was the accuracy is going to be limited by the challenges of calculating the exact position of the launching ship relative to the earth. At 1 G this might involve a round trip with 2-3 months of acceleration. Then precise timing (which is possible) but any minuscule errors in thrust measurement etc would add up. Then the BBs have to be released perfectly.

It might be obvious that a ship heads out from the solar system then turns around. Possibly enough of a warning flag to sent another ship to investigate.
It would certainly be a lot more possible at TL9
Currently we know saturns position within a couple of miles of precision using some quite large radio telescopes.
__________________
Waiting for inspiration to strike......
And spending too much time thinking about farming for RPGs
Contributor to Citadel at Nordvörn

Last edited by (E); 08-07-2018 at 07:58 PM.
(E) is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2018, 08:20 PM   #450
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by (E) View Post
Would it be unfeasible to attempt to track every one of the drives in existence?
See this is the fundamental problem of space drives in an RPG. *Any* decent space drive is a weapon of mass destruction. It doesn't need to be reactionless, a space drive that can hit 100 km/s - a number that still will require *weeks* to travel between planets, i.e. slow by the standards of most SF settings - provides enough energy to allow your naked body to hit with the energy of a kiloton nuke.

Any realistic setting will necessarily treat good space drives the same way they do nuclear weapons. And given that the setting hasn't burned down yet, it must succeed most of the time. The problem with that is even those few governments that might consider allowing private individuals or companies access to a nuke wouldn't allow a typical bunch of PCs to. Which makes it next to impossible to use a spaceship in an adventure - because there are reliable mechanisms in place *specifically* to keep them away from the sort of people who would have adventures.
__________________
--
MA Lloyd
malloyd is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 02:50 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.