Thinking about the QEP
kingkuma
cancels Work: distracted by Dwarf Fortress Join Date: 2015-09-25 Member: 208137Members
cancels Work: distracted by Dwarf Fortress Join Date: 2015-09-25 Member: 208137Members
So I was thinking about the QEP, and how it is able to "bend" the laser beam around the planet. Then it hit me: It's not a laser. it's just plasmized air. If you get a strong enough current running through air, it will create plasma and glow. (This is basically like lightning.) How do they control it? Simple. You can use magnets or electrical fields to "bend" plasma. So that would work out if the precursors are using the PLANET'S MAGNETIC FIELD to bend the beam, and computers would defenitly be able to calculate the trajectory to a near 100% accuracy? How accurate? Well, the aurora probably took multiple hits, so where would you hit to take out a starship of its size? Simple. The thrusters, so it can't escape, and the power. We can see the thrusters getting hit in the intro screen, and there used to be a hole in the side of the ship that led directly into the reactor core. (It's gone because they re - arranged the ship) So the QEP took at least two shots, one hitting the thrusters, and one hitting the power. That was enough to cause the aroura to lose orbit and crash in range of the warpers, which would then take out any survivors. Pretty genius, when you think of it.
Comments
https://www.nap.edu/read/10993/chapter/6
Don't forget, that the gun holds the energy equivalent to a mid - sized nuke, as I remember. Enough to shoot down even larger ships. The beam could last a while longer, crippling the whole side of the ship. Secondary explosions didn't help as well.
About bending beams, the gravity/magnetic field of earth-like planet is far too little. You would need one of the super-dense objects, like neutron star or a black hole. I would rather add an information on more AA platforms on the planet.
https://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/153861/sg1-one-ion-cannon-isnt-enough-for-plane-wide-coverage#latest
Don't make him waste time on such things. He needs to finish writing a new piece of Downward Spiral.
I remember he stood for particle beams, and conjectured on the possible beams which would produce damage akin to the one Aurora suffered. My main issue with it is regarding the beam velocity, to effectively use gravity assisted maneuvers it has to be quite "slow" and an aware ship might employ evasive maneuvers.
Not saying that's what the Aurora would do, but the QEP was designed for whatever craft approached the planet.
After a few beers contemplation it hit me. A beam of nanobots.
Imagine so many nanobots packed together, streaming like a beam, shot by a very high tech rail gun. The beam looks green because the nanobots are so. They have minute ion cubes for power. It could ride the planet gravity to engage its target and have some neat additional capabilities, such as limited tracking, accelerating, navigating inside target ship to reach vital sections before finally exploding in unison.
That also explains why the QEP beam hits the Sunbeam and there's a 2-3 sec gap before anything goes boom!
Yeah, but that works best with hitscan mechanics, which does not appear to be the case for the QEP. Maybe if the precursors new about that they would have equipped the QEP with an AWP.
Found it.
https://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/2372162#Comment_2372162
All the same, by adjusting beam velocity, gravity can be used to greater or lesser effect. Higher beam velocity, lower gravitational influence - and vice versa. But given the realities of physics as we currently understand them, it's highly unlikely to be gravity alone.
@Maalteromm is absolutely right: the QEP can't be a hitscan-type weapon.
Quick and dirty: It's the same basic mechanic at work when a car airbag saves your life. Contrary to popular belief, when an un-airbagged driver bashes his dome into the steering wheel, it's not the steering wheel per se that's doing the skull-breaking. It's acceleration. (Kind of like the old joke that it's not the fall that kills you but the sudden stop at the end - it's true.) When your head hits a steering wheel during a crash, it's decelerating to the tune of about 60-100G instantly. (At 35 MPH, it'll be about 60G; at 70 MPH it'll be more to 100.) Your skull can't handle that kind of acceleration, so it cracks, splinters, and does all manner of gruesome things. The airbag, however, imparts acceleration over time. So instead of 100G in a millisecond, it's 100G over the span of several milliseconds. Remember that acceleration is cumulative, so as long as you get to a total of 100G before your head clonks car, you're good. By providing that slow, several-millisecond deceleration, the effective acceleration drops to a survivable (if uncomfortable) 40-50G.
Insofar as our QEP vs. Aurora situation, by using a beam that has a more airbag-like slow acceleration, it means the odds are better that we'll apply acceleration to the ship and change its trajectory rather than just tearing its butt off.
But, all that said, the gun definitely has an aimbot, and a good one at that. Of course, we have the exact same technology today, so it's not all that impressive.
For everybody who just went "we do?!":
The net takeaway is that our weapons - like the QEP - aren't hitscan weapons, but do have one wicked aimbot.
It's coming.
That's an interesting hypothesis, and one I quite like. And were it not for one detail, I'd back it as an alternative.
Besides, Coolness Level 10 aside...do we really need to go to that kind of trouble? To make a weapon like that work, you'd need a molecular factory (like a Universal Constructor) to churn out nanobots for the gun, some way to keep them in storage but not running down their power supplies, some way to accelerate them without breaking them or frying their logic systems, and finally, they'd need time to do their work. The whole nanobots-ate-my-neighbors thing that the (horrible) Day the Earth Stood Still remake ran was visually impressive but totally impractical. More steps means more chances for things to go wrong. Since the Precursors built their QEP with the idea that it could stand guard over 4546B indefinitely without maintenance and without fail, logic strongly points to as simple a system as possible that can still accomplish the goal.
Still...I really like it.
In that sense the "computer game" aimbot becomes unmissable.
Our real world aimbot is indeed very good, however it's nowhere infallible. That's why such systems fire a barrage of bullets. Also, there are other systems concurrently being developed to deal with the same threat of incoming missiles. Each appear to excel in different situations.
Now, following the great explanation on physical hitscan weapons, I got lost on how it is know that the Aurora was in fact pushed to a new trajectory?
I always imagined that it was the lack of propulsion, which did not allow it to maneuver properly when approaching the planet for the slingshot.
I also have considerations against particle beams.
First and foremost, PB are mostly ineffective in the presence of atmosphere. Second, if it was a PB, the Sunbeam should've suffered its effects as soon as it was hit, no after a visually mensurable delay of a few seconds.
Third would be regarding the other beam traits: "slow" velocity and the time window for the target to react, susceptibility to magnetic shields (which deep space crafts should employ to protect against cosmic rays) and such.
Now, regarding the Bots hypothesis, whom don't even need to be nano. They might range from small particles to bullet sized. They don't need to be frail, as it could comprise of a solid state crystal computer. The precursors clearly held a lot of tech regarding crystals and computing. And warping. Flying bots that can warp to bypass defenses.
The Precursors manufacturing processes seem to work fine regarding Ion Cubes. The Self-Warping Quarantine Enforcer Units, aka Warpers, doesn't seem to suffer with power outages either. And accelerating the bots without braking can be done in a rail gun, similarly to how we accelerate a maglev train.
The more I look at it, the more it feels like tiny bots are the way to go.
Truth is, something feels off with the QEP. Maybe we shouldn't try to explain it realistically (even in a sci-fi setting).