space based avatars
A big capital ship made of synthflesh...
*shivers* With the innate protection of such a mass of synthflesh, combined with the increased intelligence and self-awareness and overall power, one could have a
very dangerous weapon indeed.
@Radio: Maybe, but by that point you may as well get the fighter since costs for all that would be pretty high there. Theoretically though, small fighter craft would be useful because of the energy shielding on most ships, yet most of them seem to lack something against ballistic weapons. Mount a cannon or two on a fighter, have them make short runs on the ships.
You sure the cost (and increased size of ship) for pilot's cockpit, life support and such would be less than decent communication equipment? Sounds iffy.
Also, are we still talking ER-related, or general real-life viability? Cause if latter:
http://futurewarstories.blogspot.be/2012/05/fws-topics-hard-science-space-fighters.htmlAnd one thing I just thought up that should be said about the boarding: Do expect the UWM ships not only to have a self-destruct protocol, but expect them to use it as well.
Indeed, but we have Steve for helping to prevent that. He could probably hack a ship very fast (considering he probably helped design it, and so might have left a backdoor for him to use).
RC that setting idea is awesome. Do make.
thanks, but most probably not. It'll probably be like my ideas for running an RTD: nice concepts, but lack of time and energy prevent me from really getting into it.
Is this "gravity field":
A. something sensors can detect?
B. the only way things in phasespace or whatever interact with the world?
C. actually a gravitational field?
And for that matter, can the gravity fields of two phasing ships interact?
A. It is an inherent property of every object that has any mass. So yes, but only for big objects (like in real life, basically, you can deduce the presence of a massive object by the effect of it's gravity). You could calculate the distance they are likely to leave their jump given mass of two objects though.
B. Haven't worked out all the details, but probably yes.
C. any object just has gravity like it normally does. It's just that, the more mass something has, the greater this 'gravity field' is in temrs of forcing ships out of their jump. You know the usual analogy for gravity, the one with the ball on a big elastic sheet? Well, like that: the more mass, the bigger the distortion in spacetime, so the sooner it disrupt the jumping process.
@ Tiruin: space fighters=/=planet-bound fighters. Just like space warfare=/=naval warfare. Read the link above and the pages you find linked there.
Smaller craft ARE more manoeuvrable in space actually, since it would take less energy to shift their mass and velocity into a different direction.
But they need a lot of fuel to stay useful for any extended period of time (unless you have an energy storage source with ridiculous energy density). Maybe (
maybe) if you can ambush ships at close range (due to fixed FTL jump points, par example) they could work (and actually be efficient at their job, instead of being an excuse to have jock fighter pilot character that get all the girls).