Your gunship sounds acceptable too. Though, it may have limited use depending on the situation. But still, sounds acceptable. You might want to add on a box of tungsten rods for carpet bombing.
Yeah, it'd be very limited in the amount of actual missions it can be used on, but would offer cheap and indirect firepower in return (Heabi mission would've been good :v ). Also, you sure about the rods? My idea was to use the missiles and arm them with nukes (using Simus' 'clean nuke' if needed) because I thought that'd be more cost-effective and less bulky (and a couple megaton nukes can bomb a pretty big carpet). I mean, one'd need to accelerate the rods to immense speeds to use them for carpet bombing, no? Needing enormous accelerators and/or spess mahics? Or am I missing something here?
EDIT:
I mean, one'd need to accelerate the rods to immense speeds to use them for carpet bombing, no? Needing enormous accelerators and/or spess mahics? Or am I missing something here?
I think the idea with tungsten rods is that you release them from orbit and gravity accelerates them to a high speed. Due to their high mass and speed they don't need any explosives either. Though, the planet would have to have sufficient gravity, so it might not work on asteroids unless the ship is already moving itself. At least, this is how they claim that they would work on Earth.
I dunno if they'd be worth it when used like that. I mean, it's a High-altitude gunship, not an orbital warship, and normally would still operate inside the atmosphere. Longer range is possible, but then you loose accuracy, and the main use for this is precise artillery support, not indiscriminate bombardment, though when that is needed I think a complement of nukes should do the trick very well in a pinch. But if the main goal is glassing a site, then an orbital warship using a big rail/coilgun seems better.
From this video: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/reel-physics/7296-GI-Joe-Retaliation-Tungsten-Rod-Drop
A tungsten rod of 8500 kg going 8700 m/s from an altitude of 800 km gives 32800 mJ, or 78 ton (0.78 kiloton) TNT equivalent.
If we assume a gunship is flying at, say, 100 km (a Lockheed AC-130 gunship has a service ceiling of about 9 km, by the way, and 100 km is the Kármán line on earth, aka upper limit of the atmosphere), and that it wouldn't be using rods of 8.5 ton a piece (that lockheed gunship only weighs about 55 ton itself), these rods would have substantially less energy. I could do a quick calculation, but you get the idea.
In the armory you can buy a 1 kiltoton nuke for just 7 tokens. The bomb on Hiroshima was 12-15 kilotons. So really, when not using very big coilguns to actually accelerate your ammo to high speeds (which would cost a lot and probably be big and heavy, an issue for ships in atmosphere), just using nukes is much more efficient (a nuke is a lot of power in a relatively small package).
Should we precisely define what amount of vouchers gets you what, or would you prefer to keep it more vague?
new idea: electronade
This is basically a non-'refillable' electricity grenade. Take the tesla arc electricity-throwing mechanism. Make it shorter and less focused so it throws electricity all around it, in an area of a few meters or so. Make it have a blueshard battery. Bigger than a regular nade, more like a grapefruit I think (Though i don't know for sure). Components are cheap and burn out through usage, should last about as long as the battery. Give it three round dials: one for % power used, one for time delay and one for how long it works. Has small battery life indicator.
different intensities:
0,5%: taser power, stuns unarmored people but doesn’t kill or harm them
2% kills unarmored people
5% kills lightly-to-medium armored people
10% full power, kills anything not very well insulated against electricity
Time dial indicates how long it works before shutting off. So at 0,5% power for ten seconds will make it work at stun intensity for 10 seconds and uses up 5% of the batteries' power. After that, it can be reused (until the battery dies out). Time delay says how long it waits to start working to prevent people zapping themselves (standard is 3 sec). Does this thing make sense? How many could we get for a token? Is 2 for a token reasonable?
I thought the ship was low orbit, never mind.
Eh...yeah, we should. But lets do that as soon as someone actually shows interest in using it. Till then...lazy.
Electronade sounds fine, but I think we might need to up the % costs. Probably double them. 1,4,10, 20%. Even like that it's a 5 time use grenade at full power or a basically infinite use tossable taser.
Some questions about the limits of the black halo. No need to answer all of the below if you don't have time.
1. How much can it change your appearance? Can it make you look like an alien that has eight legs?
2. Can it change your appearance to someone whose existence you know, but whose exact appearance you don't know? For example, can you think "make me look like those trooper's commanding officer" even though you've never seen said commanding officer?
3. Does it also affect other senses? Would it, for example, affect how your voice sounds or how you smell or how your clothes feel?
4. How much does it confuse senses? If I disguise myself into someone that has only one arm and someone tries to touch my arm stump, will they think they are touching my arm stump or will the illusion break?
5. Can you give me a rough estimate of the distance it can affect other people's minds? Will it affect a security guard watching a video feed of me while he's standing behind the armoured door I'm trying to get him to open, for example? How about a sod trying to snipe me?
6. Can it only affect people viewing me in real-time or can I affect a recording of me wearing the halo if I'm nearby?
7. Can I project different illusions to different people?
8. Can it make you look like an inanimate object? Like a water cooler?
9. How large or small can it make you look like? Rough estimate, no need for exact numbers.
10. Can it alter how you perceive yourself or at least let you know what others are seeing?
11. Can it be used to alter what equipment others think you have, so that you can use it to make someone think you're holding a valid ID or a police badge?
Asking to see if it's worth giving my Exo backup character some charisma. Such thoughts always come to mind when Flint lands in the next deathtrap.
1. You can alter your appearance to be basically anything, though the farther you get from human, and the more detailed you are, the more difficult it is.
2. Ah, interesting question. No. It effects the target's perception, but it doesn't rely on their comprehension. In other words, you don't present their mind with some sort of incomprehensible image which they then unconsciously fill in as what you want them to. You have to mentally create the image, and they see it.
3.If you extend it to those senses, then yes. But that takes extra effort.
4. They'll see you point a stump at them and then feel something touch them. The illusion never breaks, so to speak, they'll keep seeing you as that as long as you keep the illusion going, but they'd probably wonder whats going on.
5. Anyone who can see you could theoretically be effected. But that example of yours wouldn't work because, like I said, it doesn't work on cameras. Someone watching you through a camera would just see you.
6. See previous.
7.Yes, but that will be harder.
8. Yes.
9. Well, as small as you want basically, and theoretically as large as you want, but the larger you get, the more area you need to image in detail, so the larger you get the harder it is to do.
10. Well, you'd know how you look because you'd be the one creating the image.
11. Yes.
here is my new plan, it is for a rifle that melts down any ferrous metal and then shoots it at variable ranges. Call up the schematic for a Gauss rifle. Remove any loading mechanism and repair any hole once this is done. Add a small dial on the side that controls the strength of the magnets in the barrel, and a switch that flips the polarity. Separate the stock of the rifle form the body and add a solid block of metal the width and height width of the body of the gun where you separated the stock form the gun. the block is about 5 inches long. Weld any attachment points need to attach the stock to the end of the new block of metal.
Carve a hopper with a hatch on top, that is not quite as deep as the barrel and is slightly smaller then the mold below into the block of metal between the stock and the main body of the gun.
Carve out a space behind the hopper on the same level for a laser. Bore a hole between the hopper and the laser head so that the laser can melt the metal inside the hopper.
under neath the hopper there is a mold for a standard gauss rifle round. the mold is connected to the hopper by a small tunnel with a valve that when turned on allows molten metal to flow from the hopper into the mold. the mold is on the same level as the barrel carve out the metal separating the barrel and the front of the mold and replace it with a door that moves up and down. At the back of the mold there is a piston that push the round out of the mold and into the barrel.
Here is the order of the mechanical actions that happen. The hatch on top of the hopper opened. Scrap metal is loaded into the hopper. when the hatch is closed the valve separating the hopper from the mold is turned off. And the laser heats the metal until it is molten. The valve then turns to the on position dumping the molten metal into the mold. The valve is turned to the off position. The round in the mold is allowed to cool. Once the round is cool if there is no round in the barrel the door in front of the mold opens and the piston at the back of the mold pushes the round. If there is a round in the barrel the hatch on top of the hopper gets locked so that you can not put any more metal in.
When you pull the trigger it fires the round. And if there is a cooled round in the mold. It will open the door between the mold and the barrel, and then the piston at the back of the mold pushes the round into the barrel and unlocks the hatch on top of the hopper.
Fill the hopper with ferrous scrap metal, wait for it to make the round and then test fire the weapon at 100 percent power.
Then try to front load the gun using a premade Gauss rifle slug. by switching the polarity of the coils. placing the slug at the front of the barrel and firing the weapon at 2 percent power. Then put the polarity back to normal and fire the weapon at 100 percent power.
EDIT: oops I missed the clause for pulling the trigger.
EDIT 2: I forgot to say to fire the weapon.
EDIT 3: clarified, and added the ability to front load the gun
I tired to be as specific as I could be and make it very clear how everything works. Did I make any glaring errors that would prevent this from working? Does any one have a suggestion for how to improve it?
A big wall of text as your first post in tinker?
You'll fit in here just fine. For the future, you don't have to go super in depth if you don't want to. See the post from radiocontrolled up on top of this one? See How he describes the Electronade? Thats fine too.
Now then...Well first, I'd say you should look into induction heating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iBztmCuwgkYou can melt magnetic metals using nothing but copper coils and electricity. Which is probably gonna be a lot safer and easier then using a laser.
The issues I can see coming from this are as follows:
1. Getting the shell to take on a perfect, uniform shape will probably be difficult. This will mean that these rounds will probably be less accurate. Not to mention you might get non-magnetic metals mixed in as alloys which would also cause uneven magnetic effects on the bullet.
2. If you use multiple kinds of metals to make the bullet then you can get lots of problems. The mixing of the metals might not be perfect so you could get unevenly weighted shots, which wouldn't fly straight, or you might have the coils work unevenly on the shot as it accelerates down the barrel. Which could also cause problems.
3. There's gonna be a limit on the size of the pieces of things you can stick into the hopper, which is gonna limit the amount of material you can melt, which will limit the speed of production of shells.