Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

Didn't Germany's missiles get hacked at one point?

Germany has missiles?

edited 1st Apr '17 1:53:59 PM by DeMarquis

A German deployed Patriot Missile Battery in Turkey. However the details of the report reveal that it never actually happened and the supposed avenues of attack are not practical methods for carrying out such an attack. One of them involves a secure data link between system and missile which unless a missile is being prepped to be fired is not exactly in operation. The second would require directly compromised hardware which is even more unlikely.

Of the two only the first one has any real chance of having happened but is every unlikely. You would have to ask Sis Taira for the details on the likelihood of that happening. I strongly suspect it is highly unlikely without a potential enemy force being inside light mortar range of the battery in the first place with LOS to it on top of it and some suspiciously classified information on that particular battery.

To top it off there are almost zero reliable sources backing up the story.

edited 1st Apr '17 2:18:54 PM by TuefelHundenIV

This is as believable as the DDG Donald Cook being completely jammed by Russian jets and having several crew members resigning because of it.

And then there was that navy dedtroyer that turned invisible.

I'll just say this: I've never seen an invisible Navy destroyer.

It's working!

Food for thought, how would you let your hypothetical Super Soldiers retire, if the option was open?

Or would you basically mandate you serve the state until death?

Given the nature of the cybernetic enhancements used and how they provide biological immortality in an empire already struggling with population control, the super soldiers (really just generic soldiers) in my setting sign on for life.

But given the status increase that comes with serving in the military, combined with the previous fact, AND the fact that war isn't exactly constant, its not like that is too bad of an option given they have to work less and live longer then the average citizen as a trade off.

Jasaiga:

There are a few books that address this or something similar in one degree or another.

In COBRA by Timothy Zhan they send the COBRA cyber soldiers to colonize hostile worlds. The decision turns out to be a good one as the COBRA are well adapted to the highly dangerous environments. This decision was reached after an incident with a first generation COBRA killing some civvies who may or may not have been trying to run him down after being assholes.

In fact the used for colonization in general, frontier space as in frontier guards, special service member only colonies, and even deep space explorers have all shown up in sci-fi a few times.

Other options are deliberate downgrades for as safe as it is to do so. Part of the COBRA dilemma is that they cannot safely downgrade them all the way as some of their weapons and cybernetics are integrated deeply with their organic components.

Here's another question. What methods do you use to handwave Artificial Gravity? Visible generators? Emitters? Special plating?

All grav-gens of mine use electricity, Gravitic plating especially, which is more like a battery that stores electricity to power said gravity. It's based off of similar EM theories that allow for flying cars.

Plating powered by a central generator.

Its mostly used during transit though, and during actual combat is mostly used to dampen high g maneuvers so that all available power can be shunted to weapons and sensors.

Every bit of the hull and flooring, has bits and pieces of a special Handwavium, which the central power plant produces a field, causing artificial gravity across the entire ship.

In my stories/setting one of the things I use (besides artificial gravity plating) is literal anti-gravity plating that's also part of the users' FTL drive technology on spacecraft.

Essentially the 'roof' of each deck is lined with plating that generates (or at least simulates) negative mass/gravity, which results in objects and people being 'pushed' against the 'floor' in the same way that gravity plating would 'pull'. With the added benefits that any physical projectile shot at the craft has to pass through several meters of anti-gravity as well (which most projectiles still have the energy to overcome, but it still increase the deflective potential of the hull armouring) and that this makes the total mass of the craft functionally negative, allowing for FTL travel.

Decks, on any craft that has them, in my setting tend to alternate orientation (one deck's up is the next deck's down), sharing a floor with the deck 'below' them and a 'roof' with the deck above. Going between decks that share a floor is achieved by the simple expedient of a door-sized hole in the floor at the end of every corridor, which is traversed by simply letting oneself fall forward with one foot positioned to step onto the deck 'below'. ('Big stepping')

Regarding supersoldier retirement, the Old Man's War series allows various retirement options for those rare soldiers that manage to put in a full 10 years of service and come out the other side still breathing. For the Ghost Brigades, there's a colony specifically set aside for them to retire on away from the rest of humanity, which works well enough as most baseline humans and supersoldiers are rather uncomfortable with them, and the Ghost Brigade soldiers never get the opportunity to fully integrate with human society before starting their careers anyways.

The one example we actually get to see in the series has a baseline supersoldier and his Ghost Brigade girlfriend sent to a very backwater colony with some sinecure jobs as a fairly pragmatic way of making sure they (specifically the girlfriend) don't spill the beans on some very sensitive state secrets they came across in the performance of their duties. The setting is ruthless enough that they might have considered just killing them, but neither has a reputation for being a troublemaker by intent (John is kind of a Weirdness Magnet, but that comes with being the main character of a book anyways).

edited 3rd Apr '17 9:52:42 PM by AFP

WRT artificial gravity I generally go about it by building my ships like skyscrapers, so that under thrust at least a ship doesn't need specific artificial gravity (or not as much), because the thrust itself is doing the job. Does rather screw up the navigational speech though, since the 'zero point' for lateral rotation is arbitrary (but then it is for Earth too).

edited 4th Apr '17 1:01:52 AM by MattII

A question of my own: compared to body armor, what would a faction gain and lose by favoring ballistic shields ^note reasonably light and effective shields against high-caliber rounds, shrapnel, and (usually) non-direct hits from rockets alongside more or less modern weaponry?

If you are talking about the hand held shields you lose mobility and in general the ability to freely wield weapons requiring two hands from a larger variety of positions. Ballistic shields also tend to be heavy and unwieldy with the variety rated at least at Level IV being painfully heavy. There is a reason they are seriously looking at UGV's to haul them around instead.

edited 4th Apr '17 1:15:18 PM by TuefelHundenIV

The one use for ballistic shields I've found is with explosive reactive plates. Primarily, it allows the arm to absorb the recoil rather than the torso but you can also drop the shield entirely when the explosive tiles run out or detonate them manually in close combat.

Might also make a good breaching charge too.

Well in a more sci-fi take on the concept from one of my universes, one force within the Trans-Galactic Federation military known as the Centurions relies on such ideas for their Phalanx corps. Working in tandem with shieldless but still well-armored Hoplites, the Centurions employ heavy shock tactics and "leap frog" defenses where shielded Phalanxes go in first or set up a line and absorb enemy fire as best they can and provide some limited fire themselves while Hoplites take position behind or move on the flanks after contact has been made and provide heavy continuous weapons fire to batter down and suppress enemies in a tide of troops, beams, plasma and bullets. In defensive actions, Phalanxes may set up several lines of shield walls that Hoplites may move or fight behind. In addition any retreating Phalanxes may fall back to these deeper lines and either reinforce it, or form a new wall behind the one they just fell behind. (Leap frog defensive lines, a form of defense in depth.)

And given what both Hoplites and Phalanxes are within the Centurion ranks, your job as Player Character is either burn through a lot of ammo ^note At least double what it would take to take down an equivalent enemy with Deflector Shields, and they're resistant/immune to headshots owing to heavily armored helmets to boot. or keep some anti-vehicle weapons just in case. Be prepared for one hell of a fight if you have to engage more than a few Centurions of either type.

edited 4th Apr '17 3:04:31 PM by MajorTom

In the real world the hand held ballistic shields are used in conjunction with armor but the user is usually limited to various lighter or compact weapons typically hand guns. That and shields provide limited directional coverage and weapons like air bursting explosives or any sort of flanking fragmentation would render the shield largely useless.

Police make the best use of the shield or people who can guarantee their flanks and/or tops are covered by some means. Like say someone fighting down a narrow corridor.

You need something fancier than ballistic shields to really make it worth it. Like the covenants shield mooks.

ARCA Space Corporation has proposed a single stage Earth to orbit rocket. The rocket is aimed at the small/micro satellite market. The rocket would be using a different type of engine called a linear aerospike engine. Another neat rocket concept.

edited 4th Apr '17 9:54:36 PM by TuefelHundenIV

^ Well in my case, the ballistic shield isn't a lightweight piece of kit worn by police type units but rather it's more a slab of armor plate connected to Powered Armor.

And you're right about one way to defeat Centurions particularly Phalanxes. Explosives are very effective at rendering their shield cover less than useful.

Tom: Power armor certainly helps. Otherwise you wind up needing said slab with wheels. Seriously 60-90lbs depending on the model.

Damn I knew I was missing part of that last post.

Behold the Sea Dragon A massive heavy lift rocket whose design was to lift 450 tons and was designed to launch from the ocean surface. They did several smaller scale tests of the water launch which worked out pretty well. The project was never pursued to its logical end due to funding cuts to the program it was a part of.

Wiki article on it.

Encyclopedia Astronautica article on it.

The damn thing was huge at about 175m tall for the proposed design.

Let's talk about sci-fi shields. The inestimable Dr. Michio Kaku has a few ideas regarding this subject.

Shield technology, as they're depicted in most sci-fi, kind of irritates me. The way they work tends to lack nuance in my opinion, with it being simply assumed that whatever method they use would be equally useful against all threats, regardless of their nature. Makes me shake my head when I see people go about rating the defensive value of shields in biggatons.

In my 'verse, there exist a number of defensive technologies you can put on a starship, each one effective against a specific kind of attack and possessing it's own advantages/disadvantages. These can range from typical ballistic point-defense systems (anti-missile/fighter, generate little heat, can be used in CQB, limited by ammo) to laser PDS (unlimited ammo and 100% accurate within effective range but generate a lot of heat) to magnetic shields (only effective against charged particle beams, useless for anything else) to smart-flak systems (think a gun that shoots kirklin mines, shreds kinetic shots with their own velocity)- the list goes on.

The closest single technology I have to classic sci-fi shields in my setting are what I call "plasma screens". The vessel has nodes on it's exterior that emit a plasma that is bent into a protective bubble by a magnetic field. When the defense system's radar detects an incoming projectile, it activates the appropriate node, then another node shoots a laser into that plasma near the impact point of the projectile, exciting it and raising it's temperature to the point of disintegrating the projectile in impact. As you could imagine, this is an incredibly technically sophisticated and expensive system that is rarely in use, but especially valuable because it can protect the user against basically anything- kinetic, missile, laser or particle beam. It still can't react to a laser however, it needs to be on first to absorb any laser that's fired at you.

How do you handle shields in your 'verses? Do you prefer the classic sci-fi method, or do you too go with something different?

Classic Sci-fi for only my softest setting.

EM Shielding for my Space'verse. The Shield uses EM fields and specialized emitters to bend the bubble around the ship and disperse attacks, kinetics do less damage and beam weapons are dispersed by the changing feels.