03-30-2013, 10:48 AM | #61 |
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: The Fine Line Between Black and White
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
In my high tech operatic games I use a reflexive velocity hard-light shield which is easily accessible and perfectly legal to everyone except convicted felons. While they're legal, committing a crime while in possession of one acts as a penalty enhancement. (What is considered 'low velocity' I've yet to expand upon beyond hand-waving.) A micro-computer detects incoming objects of a particular mass traveling over a particular velocity deemed to be harmful. If it was set to 0 mass/velocity, the shield would push pots and pans (even those currently in use), notebooks, papers, pencils, clothes, and even furniture around. Basically anything that wasn't nailed down or composed mostly of fire. Factory models cannot be set this low. Extremely low-mass low velocity units can keep dust, bugs an other irritants out, these are the size of keychains. Come to think of it, there's probably a whole community dedicated to experimenting with the mass/velocity profile on these devices to achieve specific results.
The setting has this technology in its very early stages to prevent silly but entirely plausible things like 'everyone now has telekinesis' since it doesn't yet possess a tractor beam quality to manipulate objects but late enough that you could use a velocity shield to protect you from a long fall. In settings that have tractor beams, I make them entirely different technologies. In game, the RVHL *Rival* Shield detects any damage over '5' outside of a 2 yard radius and activates a field of 10 to 25 DR (for a military model) for a couple of milliseconds, double that if set to be directional (commonly forward). They are however expensive and superfluous. Only police, swat, military, criminal underground, and civilians operating in high places have a need of use for them, and I'd imagine the current non-practical parkour scene in my setting would frown upon their use unless you were just starting out. Even then body armor is still popular and a rifle round will still go through a civilian's projected energy field. The military also has access to Pulse, AP Pulse and APEX Pulse rounds that cap an energy folding device on the front of the round. The Rival Shield cannot generally stop liquids, heat or light. Rival Shields draw the same social penalty that you get for walking into a tavern or bar in peace time with armor or a combat vest on, so they're commonly hooked on a carry belt under a vest or jacket or disguised as a wearable computer. --- On the larger field, EMP, ECM, scramblers and miniaturized point defense are used. In space-combat, you want to move in fairly close and fire a barrage which will occupy most of the systems.
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. ( )( ) -This is The Overlord Bunny o(O.o)o -Master of Bunnies O('')('') -And Destroyer of the Hasenpfeffer "This is the sort of relatively small error that destroys planetary probes." ~Bruno Last edited by Blood Legend; 03-30-2013 at 11:12 AM. |
03-30-2013, 02:30 PM | #62 | |
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: The plutonium rich regions of Washington State
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
Quote:
Mini-nukes are a bit more problematic in this regard. Even if they are antimatter-initiated microfusion (one of the more plausible scenarios), presumably they are not armed until fired so even an accident that exposes the antimatter only makes a small boom and not a big boom. Still, a boom of few kg TNT equivalent is Not Nice when you are carrying it. Luke |
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03-30-2013, 04:29 PM | #63 |
Join Date: Apr 2006
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
If it's space opera, throw nukes and weaponized antimatter on the same genre-inappropriate trash heap the ultratech targeting aids and postmodern computing are already sitting in.
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03-30-2013, 04:31 PM | #64 | |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
Quote:
They just are not opeating on an infranty level. The Skylark and Lensman series for example.
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My GURPS publications GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits; GURPS Template Toolkit 4: Spirits; Pyramid articles. Buying them lets us know you want more! My GURPS fan contribution and blog: REFPLace GURPS Landing Page My List of GURPS You Tube videos (plus a few other useful items) My GURPS Wiki entries |
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03-30-2013, 04:55 PM | #65 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
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03-30-2013, 05:00 PM | #66 | |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
Quote:
More a deterrent to it.
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My GURPS publications GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits; GURPS Template Toolkit 4: Spirits; Pyramid articles. Buying them lets us know you want more! My GURPS fan contribution and blog: REFPLace GURPS Landing Page My List of GURPS You Tube videos (plus a few other useful items) My GURPS Wiki entries |
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03-31-2013, 11:42 PM | #67 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
Quote:
(This could be realistic, too, for both mini-nukes and antimatter. Plus, antimatter is inherently dangerous in a terrene environment, it defaults to disaster with pretty much anything going wrong with the technology. I could readily imagine that most people, bad guys included, would be reluctant to be close to it. Kind of like carrying bottles of sulfuric acid as weapons, it might work but is it worth the risk? Social pressure can cover a range of things, too. If it's just social disapproval, the bad guys might not care. If using the forbidden weapon means that everybody feels free to shoot at you for it, or even that your former friends and allies won't trade with you, take your money, or the like, that's something else. In the real world, there are some actions that will make even hardened criminals violently hate you. In a future world, using mininukes or other forbidden weapons might fall into that category. Still, there's no getting around some of the problem, the regular 'in your face' battles of pop sci-fi just don't make realistic sense. You can fix some of it with various solutions, but there's no plausible way to make it really realistic on all fronts. It's not hard to come up with specific situations where an in-your-face battle happens, but I've never seen a plausible situation where it happens as a routine thing with the SFnal technologies. |
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Tags |
space opera, ultra tech, ultra-tech |
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