I shall propose some designs for next turn.
First being a kind of drive.
Bootstrap driveTraditionally, the concept of "bootstrapping" refers to the impossible act of lifting oneself off the ground by pulling on one's bootstraps.
Our concerned physicists have been in a state of despair since we decided that it is not impossible at all.
The concept is simple: a mechanical arm with a telescopic shaft and a retractile grabber with a powerful electric motor on each end. The arm starts attached on a rail, then a small borehole opens, with the genesis in front of the arm and the terminus a very short distance to the side, facing the very same rail. At this point the shaft extends such that the grabber can hold on the rail and then the electrical engines on both sides engage pulling the ship. While normally there would be a reaction ensuring no momentum change for the ship as a whole, but in this case the arm is fixed to the bore, which acts as an anchor in spacetime itself against which we push ( the universe may or may not accelerate in the opposite direction, but who cares?). After the bore gets too close to the wall, the arm retracts entirely to the terminus side and the bore is collapsed. Then the cycle begin again.
Now, one arm surely wouldn't be enough. For a startship, what you see is a room full of fast moving pistons and blinking boreholes, a complex and ever rearranging mechanical device as you might see in retro-technological novels. And yet this apparatus that some say resembles ancient mechanical computers, thanks to clever application of borehole technology it can produce significant thrust for spaceships with great efficiency and without any interaction with the exterior of the ship.
Attached below is a scheme of the mechanism.
It has been noted by GM as being simpler than the borefabric, requires less energy (small short boreholes cost very little) and is more bulky. It may have other limitations (probably depending on die), but not requiring interactions with outside is probably safer from external interference.
BoregunBoreholes are, as we know, dangerous. While they work their edges are the sharpest thing that could exist, and when they collapse even the aperture cuts you in half.
Therefore, we must make it a weapon.
Unlike projectiles however, propelling boreholes is not trivial, as they are created fixed to the frame of the drive and we don't want to ram the enemy with our ship.
Enter the Fast accelerating repeating borehole sled, or Boregun for short. It consists of a small borehole drive mounted on an electromagnetic sled. At the end of the sled there is a borehole leading back to the beginning. The borehole drive is accelerated by the electromagnetic sled loop until it reaches a suitable large speed, then it starts creating smaller boreholes a few decimeters above itself, just enough to avoid collision with the sled borehole.
Those boreholes , being in the frame of the very fast sled, are shot out of the ship just like a bullet would. Genesis and terminus are very close to reduce energy expenditure (although this can be adjusted, trading rate of fire for range and penetration) and misaligned in orientation, in order to scramble whatever they pass through.
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Topic: The Gaian Regime Empire Thread | Terrans | GalactiRace (Read 46466 times)