A Little Help With Writing a Minovsky?

Thanks. And yeah, I tried to give it longer than ten days, but then I saw... I think it was a policy on "Don't bump once it gets to page 2" so...

Anyway, were it not for my Complexity Addiction, I would've just made most of it handwavium, but you really got me interested in the possibilities.

The substance is mainly controlled by a subset of a superpowered UN, and some sovereign governments on the Security Council. And because there's an alien threat everyone is united against, it's unlikely that it will end up on two sides of a conflict any time soon.

edited 29th Apr '15 8:31:57 PM by Essex

All right, let me make a response to your earlier post.

First, I'd like to note that I feel that I'm straying somewhat out of my areas of confidence, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt, and I stand to be corrected.

That said:

One minor point that comes to mind is that it might be worth having your ramjet release a small amount of the collected air around the ship so that there isn't a significant low pressure everywhere other than behind the exhaust vents. (Again, a one-way shield would presumably result in the air within being "left behind" as soon as the ship started moving, and no air being allowed in to replace it.)

Regarding your mesh, let me first note that it would, if I'm not much mistaken, be called upon to handle windspeeds higher—perhaps much higher—than the effective windspeed that the ship would experience simply by virtue of flying—after all, the ramjet concentrates airflow, producing a much higher velocity in the air being collected.

That aside, there may still be vulnerabilities in the mesh:
First (and which you do somewhat mention in your post, I believe), if the mesh is fairly open, then chunks of solid matter—shrapnel from explosions, pieces of bird, stones, etc.—might enter the intake and potentially do damage. On the other hand, if the mesh is fairly tight then there's the potential for objects to become caught against it and choke your ramjet.

Second, as long as air is admitted, there's likely the possibility of high-temperature gas (as from an explosion) being admitted, which again might damage the engine. (I'm not sure of whether shockwaves would propagate well past a tightly-woven mesh, offhand.)

You might be able to reduce the impact of turning on and off the shields by pulling the shields as close to the hull as possible. Hopefully at the point of form fitting.

But as I understand it, a major purpose of the shielding system is to give an aerodynamic form to a ship that's rather unaerodynamic; if the shields fit the form of the ship, then this advantage is presumably largely lost.

Which is why you ditch the shields and solely use disposable armor units to give the dropship an aerodynamic (at hypersonic speeds) form. An atmospheric wave rider of sorts, in the Zeta Gundam sense, with liquid boosters instead of finicky ramjets.

The dropship itself can provide its own thrust, but can't go particularly fast due to its shape; the plungecraft is capable of speed and vacuum operation, but it's too specialized to do much else and is jettisoned as soon as is convenient. (My personal preference would be for a pulsejet rather than a ramjet configuration on the dropship itself, as ramjets don't work at a dead stop and would themselves operate more effectively with the force fields than a fictional material.)

So you're suggesting using the fields solely for shielding purposes, while the hypersonics can be handled by a disposable aerodynamic shell/casing. Assuming a high mission frequency, say up to 30 or more a day, is that economically viable? A Masquerade is still in place, so it's not like Pacific Rim where everybody publicly throws money at the program.

Is there a way to make it economically viable? Maybe rendering the casing reusable somehow...? Another consideration I have is how the dropship has to get back to its carrier/base in short order after completing the mission, to repair/refit/re...whatever in order to be ready for the next op.

Also what's a pulse jet? I've vaguely heard that the XCOM Interceptor uses something called a pulse detonation engine, but I don't know if those two are related.

edited 2nd May '15 4:45:52 AM by Essex

A pulsejet is indeed related to a pulse detonation engine, but is simpler and is currently in limited use. (The trick to getting around the max number of pulses per second is to link up a bunch of them and fire them in succession. I remember seeing a five-tube configuration, once.)

That many missions in a day (which isn't "high frequency" so much as "logistical nightmare"), under secrecy... probably shouldn't involve breaking the speed of sound in the first place. Sonic booms, yeah?

I figured that the idea was to eliminate hostiles before they could properly react without causing too much collateral damage - otherwise you'd just launch hypersonic missiles (or inter-continental ballistic missiles) rather than send in doodz with gunnz - in which case there wouldn't be much need for a hypersonic extraction. Either the mission succeeds and they can return at a comparatively leisurely speed, or it fails and... they don't need to.

Assume a hypersonic disposable carrier armor unit travels to a destination in X seconds. Now assume Y seconds is the time necessary to actually complete the mission, from infiltration to extraction. X + Y is how much time a second Extraction HyDCAU ("hide-cow")has to get to the mission site, assuming things go well enough, and I suspect it doesn't need to be hypersonic so much as stealthy.

Oh, I see. So basically, it's something where we have actual test experience.

Now that you mention it, that does sound kinda counter-productive to a masquerade. It's just the issue I have is the enemy mainly gets numbers via a supernatural virus. If it happens in an urban area, it'll go from individual outbreak to Zombie Apocalypse if not dealt with in short order. But yes, it's a matter of eliminating the hostiles fast, while minimizing collateral.

I guess you're right that extraction doesn't need to be fast so much as stealthy, especially if the dropship fleet is big enough to tackle all missions simultaneously. Which I guess is another economic concern.

I mean sure... they also have a platoon of (probably hypersonic) Magical Girl Warriors at their disposal, but I don't want my muggles to look useless.

Perhaps in that case, though, rather than having a central base to station the dropship fleet, it would probably be better to have bases scattered across the globe, with an allotment of ships. I do picture their headquarters to be based on a carrier fleet to minimize contamination risk.

Oh, okay. That setup reminds me of Ultraman Nexus (which is basically "what if the response team was military instead of civilian?"), where they used cloaked response aircraft and, uh, basically ignored what would happen upon breaking the sound barrier.

Here, do you know what Antipodes are? For functional purposes, the most you should ever need to fly anywhere is about 12,000 miles or 19,500 km or so - rounded off. The latest Boeing 747s can fly this distance (assuming it doesn't run out of fuel at 2/3 of the way as it would in real life) in 21 hours at its cruising speed of 570 mph (mach 0.855), or in 19.5 hours at its top speed of 614 mph (mach 0.92).

But of course, this is if there's only one base of operations. With two antipodal bases, 12,000 miles apart, they only need to travel 6,000 miles at most. (Which is about the distance from San Diego to Buenos Aires, Argentina.) This is a cruising flight time of 10.5 hours.

With six bases (one on each XYZ pole)... my math-fu starts getting sucky, but I think you'd be looking at a distance of 3000 miles - Los Angeles to Boston, and a 5.2 hour flight. This is on a commercial flight, but one that gets right-of-way. Add to that a half-hour to unload and prepare once on the ground, and you can say that your Muggles can be responding anywhere in the world in about 6 hours or so.

My suggestion would be to lengthen the time it takes for the virus to spread (perhaps it's airborne, but dies within seconds outside of a host?) and have them monitor communications for mentions of symptoms that might lead to an outbreak to shorten response time.

30 sorties a day makes it sound like the Masquerade wouldn't last long, though, in a social media-connected world.

Actually (if my math is correct, I literally just learned the bases of spherical trigonometry on Wikipedia) your 6 polar bases will be at most at 3900 km on any point on Earth.

Yes, you just nerd-sniped me.

Having only seen Tiga and Dyna, I didn't even realize that most Ultraman support teams were civilian in nature, haha. But a quick brows of their wiki shows that the group in Nexus is pretty well covered, complete with cleaners and MIB.

This idea looks pretty nifty as far as base placement goes. I was thinking something more traditional, like the system in old school XCOM, but this looks pretty sweet, and very much appeals to my melancholic side. Now I just have to find enough antipodes to cut down travel distance further.

But you're right that with 30 sorties a day (admittedly an Ass Pull figure) in a social media world, a masquerade wouldn't last long. Facebook was already big in '07, and even if I handwave that it wasn't that widespread yet due to AU-ness, My Space would be there. Would be pointless to use handwavium to get rid of the big FB. The masquerade needs more thought...

The virus is spread by physical contact and has several weeks of incubation time, and most newborns only have an instinct to kill rather than infect. So it's relatively manageable, and it's the survivors of an attack that have to be monitored. Symptoms include a progressive psychological deterioration into paranoia, jerkassness, etc. because the virus feeds on negativity. If caught in the early stages, Mundane Solutions like psychotherapy, counseling, etc should be enough to kill it. More details in this long note:^note I guess I should go into some optional detail on it. I'm taking a page out of Gate Keepers, in which the incubation period is a weeks-long downward spiral into negativism, resulting in extreme jerkass/paranoid tendencies as a major symptom. The virus (perhaps by this point The Corruption is more appropriate?) feeds on negative emotions, and provokes negativity in the host over time. Like a little voice, if Bob catches Alice doing something that looks bad, it prods Bob to interpret the situation in the worst possible light, even after hearing Alice's explanation.

The kicker here is that the hosts don't turn into the Monster of the Week, so much as reusable Mook Makers that birth heartless over several cycles until the host breaks down into catatonia from the incessant barrage of negative enforcement. And since the mind is broken, no longer able to emote, the host outlives their usefulness and probably dies in some corner somewhere from exposure.

The resulting offspring carries the virus and spreads it by physical contact. Although at this stage, instinct just has it go around killing people. It's the survivors, who get away with a scratch, who take the next stage of infection.

Depending on the environment, it either evolves along a tree of increasingly animalistic brutal forms prioritizing mass destruction, or intelligent cunning forms that will actively infect and abduct people to raise an army under its command.

Notably, the host has to be reinfected by the offspring in order to continue the cycle. Getting them proper medical attention ASAP after giving birth gives them a good shot at surviving. The bigger problem is dealing with the ensuing trauma. Some handy form of Laser-Guided Amnesia (via Magical Girl) is probably best for this, if traditional methods aren't enough, in order to help reintegrate the former host into society.

Additionally, Mundane Solutions like psychotherapy, antidepressants, and other things used to combat mental problems, can be used effectively on hosts in the early stage of infection with good results.

@Aeotl: Is 3900km manageable given the nature of the virus/heartless I noted here?

I'm thinking cooperation with local authorities with implanted agents could also serve as a good buffer.

edited 4th May '15 4:29:15 PM by Essex

3900 km is not much more than what Deus Denuo said, so it's mostly the same conclusion. Count several hours, but less than a day, for an intervention. Even if the bases are not at the exact right geographic points (this is unlikely), it's still the same.

If you have more bases, probably more concentrated in more populated areas (e.g. 3 bases for the US or Europe only, but only one for Siberia — or none at all, the region is covered by bases in adjacent countries) you can have a faster reaction time in most cases. Emphasis on most.

Aetol, are you sure that's not 3900 miles instead of km? (That would make it 2423 miles, less than my guess, but still a flight from NYC to LA.)

Also, how did I decide that LA-Boston was 3000 miles...?

@Aeotl - That does make sense, now that you mention it. Sparsely populated areas like Siberia don't need as much attention, while more populated places like the US and Europe require more. Something like...

North America - 4 Bases Europe - 4 Bases South/East Asia - 4 Bases South America - 3 Bases Africa - 3 Bases Australia - 2 Bases North/Central/Steppe Asia - 1 Base Pacific - 1 Fleet Atlantic -1 Fleet

Though that arrangement might sort of throw the whole antipodal thing out the window, unless say, the major bases are antipodal, with the others counting as satellite facilities.

@Deus: According to Google, the Boston~LA is 2611 miles/4202 km.

So I did mess up my math (the stupid stuff — confusing sqrt(2) with sqrt(2)/2...). And I didn't even notice you were talking in miles and not km.

The actual distance is about 6100 km, or 3800 mi. That the wrong distance in km is close to the actual distance in mi. is purely coincidental.

Would it be selfish if I asked us to go with kms? I can sorta better picture those...

About 9817 Km and 6115.5 Km Respectively

Right, thanks. So, six major antipodal bases (6115.5 Km), with a few satellite bases each in more heavily populated continents, should be enough to get a strike team anywhere in 5.2 hours (or less?), and, combined with coordination with local authorities, who should be able to stall for long enough, or at the very least, evacuate as many civilians as possible, while waiting for the pros to arrive.

Yes, I'm making a general statement and this probably won't always be the case. But, generally speaking, does that sound about right?

edited 6th May '15 2:04:00 PM by Essex