Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

Maybe aliens just like the taste. Unless their central nervous system is identical to ours caffeine might just not do anything. Or it could be lethally toxic, or a hallucinogen. Who knows.

Caffeine producing the same effects it does in humans is highly unlikely, to say the least. It works on us by blocking certain receptors in the nervous system, so they’d have to have the exact same receptors doing the exact same things for it to work.

That's more or less what I was going for, it'd have different effects, hell absolutely no effect on the mechanical lifeforms but they like the taste.

Hm. Then I really need to go get a liquor export license...

What would be the signs/evidence that a planet or moon that seems to be "natural" at first glance/discovery but was in-fact artificially geo-engineered by a Precursor Race?

Potentially none, depending on the construction method.

Which of course lead to one of my favorite lines in the Expanse.

"What is that?"
"One of the moons."
"What's it doing?"
"Melting."

Jas: Mutineers Moon does that. The Moon is coating a moon-sized spaceship. Basically, it was turned into a hollowed out sphere to camouflage a massive and highly advanced warship with its own AI.

You can determine more or less the exact mass of an object by observing its orbit. Compare to volume to find out how hollow it is.

I wonder...what about using this for the moons in the Solar System?

Like say you wanted to say Titan or Europa are artificial...would the evidence we have now be so overwhelming you might as well skip that particular plot point?

Again that's a thing in the Expanse. Phoebe is actually a alien probe.

What if the way they formed planets was just using gravity manipulation technology to run the planetary formation process? There wouldn’t be any way to tell in that case.

If you’re talking like artificial planet made out of metal, that’s a different story.

Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 3rd 2018 at 12:40:26 PM

Now I kind of want to write a sci-fi story where one of the alien races is wired such that caffeine is a trippy narcotic and so they're always trying to get their hands on black market Folgers.

Naturally, this means that humans operating in that part of space have the hardest damn time getting any caffeine at all because it's considered a controlled substance.

One of the sci-fi series I was going through one of the species found generic soap to be a delicacy and it became a major import item.

I wonder if it would be feasible to have a substance controlled by race in a multi-species government.

"Caffine is okay for humans to own, but not okay for the Turax"

Also in a different course of questioning, would battleships remain viable for longer in the wet navy of a species that evolved on a ring-world? Without the horizon, the advantage of an aircraft drops off rather rapidly, and considering due to existing tech they managed to skip gunpowder straight to magnets... I am wondering what the point of bothering with putting flying things on a ship would be.

The advantage of an aircraft isn't the limitation of the horizon line. Carriers supplanted battleships because they could project firepower a lot further and lot more effectively. Guns will still have their limited range, they can't see for infinite distances and aircraft could still reach out and strike them down.

Even when your having to deal with rail-guns while bi-planes are still attempting to get airborne? Would the schism between the two deter further advancement of the later?

A lot of there tech is reverse engineered "precursor" tech, the problem being there weren't exactly functional airplanes left to figure out, so I don't know how "having access to tech, but not fully understanding aerodynamics" would hold planes back either.

Seriously, Bi-planes vs future tech? Even modern Bi-planes do very poorly against modern ADA or air to air.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Aug 3rd 2018 at 7:30:13 AM

Well not bi-planes per say, like I said the problem is this species evolved on a broken down ring world... they have access to lots of advanced tech, but not the concepts behind how it works.

They can imitate things like a rail-gun since it is easy to figure out "Put metal item here, and it shoots" "To make it we just hook metal bars to this thing"

But for things like an airplane, the lack of functional examples I do not know how that would impact the jump-started development.. They might be able to imitate a jet engine (though rockets and pulse-jets would be more likely due to simplicity), but would that really do you any good if you dont know how to properly design its lifting surfaces?

Thats a legit question, not a hypothetical to clarify, I am trying to figure out the correct way the tech path would diverge in this case, where you have ready access to "Monkey See, Monkey Do" but not to the underlying principles.

Edited by Imca on Aug 3rd 2018 at 5:37:45 AM

I don't think they could ever get a craft to fly and be useful without a way to actively control it. Take a look back at the Wright brothers. Their first craft were unpowered gliders. While they became famous for their powered flight they should be as famous for figuring out a way to steer the craft. Before airplanes could be used as tools of war they had to develop a method to control and steer the planes. A Wright Brothers 1908 variant plane was billed as an observation aircraft by the US Signal Corps and part of that was the ability to control and steer the craft with a two-man crew. Though that isn't quite far enough. You're looking at somewhere in WWI style aircraft for the first realized military combat craft. The control systems on the planes were relatively simple compared to their future WWII counterparts but you still needed some training and knowledge to fly them. You wan things like the interrupter mechanism, the improved flight controls, and slowly increasing altitude limits.

The first practical bombers are what signaled the earliest indication that aircraft could possibly devastate naval forces.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Aug 3rd 2018 at 8:37:20 AM

So your saying the control systems would be the stumbling block, more then figuring out areodynamics?

If you can't control it how on earth would you even begin to understand flight? If all you can do is go with the launch and pray method you're just letting the environment shove you around.

"So your saying the control systems would be the stumbling block, more then figuring out areodynamics?"

The Wright brothers invented both: they worked out the basic principles of aerodynamics for the very first time by observing birds and gliders. They used that knowledge to design the first control surfaces (warpable wings). So the two went together. If your broken down ring world has birds, they could still get there, in theory.

And the main advantage of an airplane would still exist. A shell fired from a railgun cant report back what it discovered about the enemy's formation.

Edited by DeMarquis on Aug 3rd 2018 at 11:56:53 AM

And anyways the visible horizon wasn't even a limit for battleships, which could handily fire on targets that far away with a little bit of assistance from someone spotting shots for them.

The biggest advantage that bombers had over warships in WWII was their mobility. Even the Swordfish biplane was leaps and bounds ahead of any surface craft in terms of speed and maneuverability, meaning that there was pretty much no way for a warship to effectively outmaneuver them in combat. Even if you knew they were coming, and thanks to the development of radar, the sailors often knew they were, there is only so much a WWII era warship could do other than wait for the wolfpack to run them down and hope they could splash them before one of them hit something important.

This is why, even with the highly capable Anti-Air defenses that warships would develop as the war continued, that it was generally considered that the most effective means of defense against air attack was friendly aircraft that could intercept the bombers at a safe distance.

Edited by AFP on Aug 4th 2018 at 2:09:25 AM

Folgers? Come on man!

Well obviously the really bougie aliens will try to get some of those nicer blends, but the man on the street is gonna get whatever he can afford. Supply and demand.