If we established a presence on those four worlds, it wouldn't prevent sneak attacks. But it would prevent them from easily establishing a foot hold near a jump point from which to attack us. They could still just bring a fleet through to fight, they just wouldn't have any back up or place to retreat to.
However, couldn't we just place a bunch of nukes and lasers at their jump points, preventing them from getting into those systems in the first place (or at least not without paying the cost of whatever we can destroy before the defenses are kaput themselves)? That'd seem like a relatively cheap way of hindering them and buying us time.
It works not dissimilarity to digestion. Sharkmist is a living thing, remember; weird as hell but living. In general, you need something that has carbon and you need source of energy. Sugars work well. Fats too. Adenosine triphosphate, Anything with molecules it can break down to release energy. It works sort of like mesk. As per turning it off...as long as it doesn't get the stuff it needs it won't do it, and it will never grow beyond the original state, but you can't really flip a switch and shut it down.
Could it use an external power source to help speed up the process/make it more efficient? And am I correct that the sharkmist expels waste materials during conversion (eg CO2 gas)? Could it extract CO2 from the air to use as a building block given an external power source? Finally, out of, oh I'm just saying something, a well fed 80kg grown human male, how much sharkmist material could be converted, using no external power?
It's possible...but the regeneration process will be more complex and require more materials.
Out of the following parts a robot might need to operate, which ones could sharkmist (even if heavily altered, or supported by another kind of nanomachines, maybe even the living sand) absolutely not perform, and which ones could it do but not very good:
- general body
- moving parts (aka motors of some kind, could also be for example something to make wheels turn)
- energy source (could be anything, even solar panels of some sort)
- sensors of different kinds
- some way to control it, a brain or computer or something, both in terms of hard- and software needed
- communications (mostly radio signal)
((Zombie robot apocalypse? Zombie robot apocalypse.))
1. That would certainly work on at least slowing them.
2. Well, I don't know if we could just feed electricity into them or something, but a big gallon jug of sugars would work. It expels some gas and solid matter, but it is pretty minimal. Not in the form it currently has; it eats solid matter and can't process gas into carbon for itself. They probably designed it like that so it could be used on worlds without atmospheres. Pretty good amount. I'm not sure how much carbon you got in an 80Kg man once you strip away all that hydrogen and oxygen. I'd also assume the sharkmist might not digest different things with the same efficiency. But it would be pretty efficient. I just lack the numbers to say how efficient.
3. General body it could do just fine.
Moving parts too.
Energy source it couldn't.
Sensors it...could but probably not well
Could do control system and communications.
So it would need some sort of powersource not made of sharkmist, but it could run with the rest.
Armor questions:
1.Okay, so I just got an idea. Would you be averse to an actual armor system, even if it's only a system for testing that doesn't need to be closely followed in missions and such? See 2&3 for details.
2.The idea is this: we assign 'durability' and 'resistance' numbers to armors, classified by 'kinetic' 'energy' 'laser' etc. We also give matching numbers to our various guns. So, a civic defender's longcoat might give 2 kinetic durability, and 0 kinetic resistance. A gauss rifle would have 2 kinetic damage, and 0 AP ability. This would mean a CDL would prevent most of the damage from a gauss round, but be destroyed in the process (which is exactly what you've said happens).
3.The reasoning behind this suggestion is just to streamline the process of weapons/armor design. Instead of designing a gun, giving vauge made-up numbers like 'velocity' or relative strength compared to other things, and then testing it's performance, we can just say "I want to use a gauss round strong enough to do 3 kinetic and 1 AP." and automatically know how effective it is. It would also make everything WAY easier to balance, because instead of remembering twenty different specific tests, we can directly compare stats between things.
4.Failing that, can I just have the name of the strongest 'light armor' that the UWM uses, as a benchmark for weapons design?
5.Same for a medium armor, meaning the heaviest mostly human-sized armor. Not a battlesuit. Protectorate suit?
Actual tinker questions (Because I can't work with weapons nor exoskeleton stuff :p):
6.You know how Radio had his legs chopped off when he got an Avatar? The Doctor said his nerves were needed? I'd like to use my Hephaestus admin priviliges to reasearch what Avatar pilot's nerves are used for.
7.During the defense of Hephaestus space battle, one of the warship's automanips was damaged, and it overloaded. I believe Steve said the overloads get larger on a exponential scale. Does this apply in reverse, I.E. does a tiny manip have a far smaller overload relative to what you'd expect it to have?
8.What is the minimum size we can make an automanip?
9.Pretty sure I know the answer, but asking just to make sure: Our suits, robobodies, and all our other computerized equipment are all shielded from EMPs, right?
Adverse? No. Would it be followed? Probably not. I mean, we got all those range modifiers on weapons that I pay basically zero heed to. And I feel like a system that exists here and then behaves completely differently in the rest of the game because of my blundering is a poor idea.
Light armor for standard infantry or just in general? Because there are some really good light armors, but they're gonna be really expensive so you'll rarely encounter them.
Same problem there. You want the standard or the exception?
6. Better connection to the Avatar mostly. We could have just stuck his brain in a jar, but Avatars work better if the pilot is more human then not.
7. Yes, but there's a minimum size.
8. Depends on what you want it to do. Theoretically we could make them exceedingly tiny. Maybe a gram or two each. But they'd be uselessly weak and limited.
9.To a degree.
Anton Chernozorov
So... am I right in assuming that further research is unlikely to result in significant improvement? Without some kind of automanipulator to keep the assembly cold, there probably isn't anything else the science team can do.
Assuming that, let's start on hypothetical weapons.
First. Self-sufficient battlesuit weapon - this is with integrated cooling system, and regular charge system. Usable as anything from a regular HEP up through quad-compressed shots, with no ammo involved. Being a HEP in principle, the maximum fire rate is still once a minute. Correct?
Second. Heavy infantry weapon - with exchangeable coldplates. Some silly high number as a strength requirement, basically requires a full-power exoskeleton to wield. Still same slow fire rate, plus limited amount of compressed shots available. Regular HEP-like shots can still be fired without using coldplates. Correct?
Third. Semi-ammo-based battlesuit weapon. Basically same as the above, but a more integrated unit without a backpack attachment, that coldplates can be loaded into like regular clips. Does that work? How expensive would a coldplate be?
Fourth. Hypothetical. How large a Bluerad cell would be needed to power a HEP shot? Would a cell like that fit on the rim of a coldplate, so that the cell and the plate can be "reloaded" as one unit? If that is possible, would that allow the weapon to fire anytime it is loaded, i.e. once every two turns (fire-reload-fire-reload)?
How much cheaper can the resulting weapon be made? How much lighter? Removing the regular HEP power supply, removing the adjustable mechanism (fixing it at "3/4 compression"), basically making it a weapon that can only fire the quad-compressed HEP beam, once per reload. Would it result in a weapon that can be in any reasonable way wielded by an un-augmented Sod?
And finally, Anton is unlikely to go for it, but for purely academical purposes - there is an automanip that can maintain a given area at a constant temperature. Would using it effectively remove the overheating problem for the weapon, or would it cause interference? How large would such an automanip be, and how difficult to power?
With the materials we have, probably not.
Yes. Though "No ammo" is a bit of a misnomer for depending on the cooling system. That thank of cold stuff has to be switched out eventually.
Yes, the plates only come into use for compression.
Semi-auto would be limited by the firing time of the HEP more then the plates.
Powering a hep isn't possible, but producing hep like effects? Not sure.
I'm not sure...not sure what it would do when you force the plates from heating up. Might reflect super well and not overheat. Might cause them to lose reflectivity and kill the machine. Don't know.
Author
Topic: Hephaestus No Longer Exists: Crater thread. (Read 191782 times)