08-07-2018, 04:16 PM | #441 | |
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
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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.
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Waiting for inspiration to strike...... And spending too much time thinking about farming for RPGs Contributor to Citadel at Nordvörn |
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08-07-2018, 04:38 PM | #442 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
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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. |
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08-07-2018, 04:44 PM | #443 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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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. |
08-07-2018, 06:08 PM | #444 |
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
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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.
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Waiting for inspiration to strike...... And spending too much time thinking about farming for RPGs Contributor to Citadel at Nordvörn |
08-07-2018, 06:13 PM | #445 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
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08-07-2018, 06:22 PM | #446 | ||
Join Date: Feb 2005
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
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...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:
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. |
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08-07-2018, 06:39 PM | #447 | |||
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
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08-07-2018, 07:23 PM | #448 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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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. |
08-07-2018, 07:50 PM | #449 |
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
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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.
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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. |
08-07-2018, 08:20 PM | #450 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
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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.
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