The Practicality of various futuristic weapons.

unsunghero10 · Post by **unsunghero10** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 4:02 am

Looks really expensive, but it takes the soldier out of the picture.
And why make it a bomb? It could just run over and shoot the enemy, then run back to a pick up. Save a whole lot of electro-muscle and keep valuable intel.

Wicky_42 · Post by **Wicky_42** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 4:42 am

Going back to the nano-mines, I think Noctis was over-complicating matters. They wouldn't need thrusters, just a small receiver to accept 'disarm' and 'activate' commands and the ability to disassemble spaceship hull at the molecular level.

They don't need to move cos they are mines - you just spam them through the area of space you want to deny and wait for something to try and fly through.

Of course, the problem with nano-tech is that the individual parts aren't exactly armoured or anything - they would have to be hardened to survive even background space radiation, and I don't know how they would fare in the face of laser spam. You would also have to get quite a few onto a ship's hull in order to get an appreciative effect. Easily much cheaper than a full-blown robot though.

I wonder whether they could be an effective long-ranged missile defence - slowly eating the missile's structure away until its own manoeuvring pulls the missile apart (though if infected debris hit your own ships you'd better hope the kill command worked...).

unsunghero10 · Post by **unsunghero10** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 5:52 am

Given enough time, a handful would be enough to take down a capitol ship. >:]

And shielding, put them in cup sized proximity triggered lead containers. I don't believe a few seconds of being exposed would disable them all.

Wicky_42 · Post by **Wicky_42** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 6:49 am

TBH, I don't know enough about nano machines as to be able to say how much radiation they could withstand. I've noticed in sci-fi UV light seems to be commonly used against nanos... well, that was X-Files, so it's not exactly scientific, but there's still food for thought there.

pick yer poison · Post by **pick yer poison** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:15 am

What if you launched them inside an enemy ship? You carve out a hole with an implement of your choice, then shoot a tube full of nanobots into the enemy ship. Once they're inside, you activate them and they start destroying everything, since most ships don't have reinforced armor plating on the inside. It would take epic level targetting systems, though, and probably isn't nearly as efficient as I think it is.

Droid · Post by **Droid** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:18 am

If you can shoot a tube of nanobots inside an enemy ship, why not just shoot a bomb?

Noctis · Post by **Noctis** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:22 am

Droid wrote:If you can shoot a tube of nanobots inside an enemy ship, why not just shoot a bomb?

Thats not nearly as fun.

unsunghero10 · Post by **unsunghero10** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:56 am

Plus, you could program them to destroy only certain alloys, like ones in the lining of fusion plants or communication arrays.

Wicky_42 · Post by **Wicky_42** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 8:12 am

Of course, if you manage to breach their hull within a cloud of nanobots then the destruction could be accelerated - have missiles/shells that could drop nanobot clouds in ships' paths - think flack, only more persistent. And potentially lethal. A healthy mix of mechanical and organic deconstructors and you've got a nice fun terror weapon on you hands - imagine an invisible cloud of lingering death seeping through micro-fractures in bulkheads and environmental suits. You might win the battle, but days later the crew are still dying from nano-plague, each cough scattering a few bots into the air, each one set to tirelessly rip your cells apart one by one...

Then you make it self-replicating.

And self-evolving - 'to better adapt to the enemy's defences in the field.'

Then you kiss your ass good-bye ^_^

unsunghero10 · Post by **unsunghero10** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 8:32 am

Geneva would have a field day with this and combat VI 'efficiency'.

"VI, a 'virtual intelligence' as opposed so SI 'synthetic' and AI 'artificial'"

ChaosTheory · Post by **ChaosTheory** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 9:45 am

The idea of using nanobots for attack/drilling/bombing/infection is silly. Technological requirements notwithstanding, how it it easier to cover your enemy in nanobots than hit them with a nuke?

Glossing over that point momentarily, then. All you really need is a thin coat of nanobots, goo, or pretty much anything that can emit as much radiation as possible on as many wavelengths as possible - background radiation to overwhelm the passive sensors. It doesn't have to be very much, even, just enough to prevent the ship from effectively targeting you or your incoming missiles. Bam, PD problems solved. Heck, all you have to do is dump some of your weapon or reactor coolant onto the enemy to overwhelm most of the IR-gamma range.

It probably won't do much for actually damaging the sensors, since they'll be rad-hardened/shielded against stray exhaust, but it will seriously impair their ability to track incoming missiles at long ranges.

Post by **Anna** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 9:49 am

unsunghero10 wrote:Deconstructive/mining nano-clouds, in place of mines.

Just putting that out there.

1) Mines don't work in space. Space is way too big to place minefields effectively. Like, it's really big. I mean, it works in sci-fi, because in sci-fi people conveniently forget about things like the fact that space is fucking infinite and goes out in three dimensions.

2) Nanobots are so small they would likely get fried by cosmic radiation.

3) Nanobots are tiny. Really tiny. If you had a million tons of nanobots, each as small as a hydrogen atom, and spread them out over a cubic light second, there'd only be one nanobot per centimeter. And that might sound like fairly good coverage, except a single nanobot couldn't do much of anything. Not even a few hundred. You'd need millions and millions for them to have much of any effect on a ships hull. Otherwise they'd be little more than ineffective bacteria.

And that's not even covering other details like "would those nanobots survive colliding with a very large object moving at several kilometers per second". When the answer is almost certainly no.

Frankly, nanobots are a retarded idea that get used way too much in sci-fi, and while they might have some realistic uses, this isn't one of them. This is a fundamentally stupid idea. Almost as stupid as the guy on another forum proposing nets made out of thermite to be used against ships in space.

A really, really dumb idea.

EDIT: I checked the math, and it's a little more than 1 nanobot per cubic centimeter. It's a little closer to 1000 nanobots per cubic centimeter, which is still horrible coverage. If each is the density of a hydrogen molecule, then you have roughly the density of interplanetary space, as in flare season interplanetary space is x00 particles per cm^3. Meaning, still largely a vacuum.

And if we really want to get into how nanobots are a retarded idea, how about the fact that if nanobots were weaponised then they could easily be rendered useless by things like radiation emitters to fry their electronics and, oh, I don't know, a nanobot immune system in ships.

Frankly, the idea's just dumb. I feel the need to restate that.

unsunghero10 · Post by **unsunghero10** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 10:09 am

"As small as hydrogen atoms" ???
Your joking, right? Please tell me you're joking.
Also, it's not a stupid idea when retreating. Drop a cloud behind you* with fighters in pursuit, and they wouldn't bother you much longer.
*(which would go a little bit slower than your own ship)
And I never said mines did work in space. They might work to blockade an enemy planet, but not anywhere else.

At ChaosTheory, killing the enemy and vaporizing his ship isn't always the objective. Say, you want to study an aggressive alien species' tech intact.

Post by **Anna** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 10:16 am

unsunghero10 wrote:"As small as hydrogen atoms" ???
Your joking, right? Please tell me you're joking.

I was giving you an ADVANTAGE. If they're as small and as dense as a hydrogen atom then they offer far more coverage. Idiot.

Also, it's not a stupid idea when retreating. Drop a cloud behind you* with fighters in pursuit, and they wouldn't bother you much longer.

Yes, it still is a stupid idea, because the tiny little mechanics would fucking disintegrate when the fighters slammed right through them (ignoring the fact that fighters in space are also highly unrealistic), assuming they survived exposure to cosmic radiation, not to mention your ship's FUCKING THRUSTERS.

And I never said mines did work in space. They might work to blockade an enemy planet, but not anywhere else.

And even then they'd be fairly easy to dispose of.

thanto_ · Post by **thanto_** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 10:27 am

Honestly, I don't see how thermal-based DEWs could really work. I mean, we have Thermal Protection Systems now that could easily handle ridiculous amounts of heat. See the TPS on the space shuttle for example: "HRSI tiles (black in color) provide protection against temperatures up to 1260 °C. ... The HRSI tile is basically a composite of high purity (99.8 %) silica fibers (10 %) and empty space (90 %) that exhibits ceramic bonding. The high percentage of voids is the reason for the low density (144 kg/m³, 9 lb/ft³)"

It's lighter than styrofoam. If all weapons used are just DEW, then a ship could easily be covered in that material without adding much weight.

So, sure, you could easily drill through steel with a laser, but I'd think that in a universe where DEWs are the one weapon, then this kind of material would be the most common armor component.