anyone else glad to see a sci-fi universe with main weapons being kinetic?

[amddude]

Fuck those narns

 

[Locut0s]

Mass Drivers are the best weapon around.

Everyone knows this.

Ahh B5, memories!

 

[frostedflakes]

ME guns use this magical stuff called element zero; you run a bit of electricity through it and it changes the mass of everything inside a given area. Their guns use that effect to lighten their bullets before firing them down railguns, which allows them to reach much higher speeds than they normally could, or just reach the same speed with a fraction of the recoil.

But the guns are easily the weakest link in their chain of plausible tech. Think about it, from their description I should be able to lighten a magnet in a dynamo, spin it up with a flick, and generate enough power off of that to do it again twenty times. Their guns flat-out break physics.

Yeah I was going to say, I wouldn't really consider the guns in ME to be realistic. Energy weapons are more believable to me.

Still fun games, though. If you really wanted to, you could pick almost any sci-fi game or movie apart.

 

[dighn]

Kinetic Weaponry is Sci Fi is nothing new. All the laser stuff came pre 90's. Modern sci fi has lots of kinetic weaponry. ME did nothing new.

Ditto. Try reading some sci-fi novels. They tend to have far more plausible visions of technology.

oh and Mass Effect is *not* good sci-fi. That element zero completely throws out physics.

 

[lord_emperor]

Battlestar Galactica (reimagined) has done this best so far, loads of guns and nuclear missiles, clearly chemically propelled since they can be seen traveling.

It did however seem odd that the Galactica did not have any high-calibre guns, it seems extremely inefficient to wear down a Basestar's entire fighter compliment just to get some missiles through and finish the job when a few big guns can end things immediately.

 

[Fritzo]

Battlestar Galactica (reimagined) has done this best so far, loads of guns and nuclear missiles, clearly chemically propelled since they can be seen traveling.

It did however seem odd that the Galactica did not have any high-calibre guns, it seems extremely inefficient to wear down a Basestar's entire fighter compliment just to get some missiles through and finish the job when a few big guns can end things immediately.

It had big canons in the nose.

 

[aigomorla]

Mass Drivers are the best weapon around.

Everyone knows this.

agree'd there is nothing more badass then a big rail gun.

However if u guys ask me... this ship had the biggest cannon

They called it a reflux cannon.

 

[lord_emperor]

It had big canons in the nose.

Only the Pegasus actually. And fixed-angle weapons seem widely impractical on a battleship.

Still baffles me why they sacrificed the newer, better battlestar though.

 

[Nik]

GL tracking movement on something hundreds to thousands of miles away... in space.

Actually, we track movement 13 billion light years outside of our galaxy.

Today. We do that.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Only the Pegasus actually. And fixed-angle weapons seem widely impractical on a battleship.

Still baffles me why they sacrificed the newer, better battlestar though.

He wasn't supposed to. He defied orders and saved Galactica. Also, Galactica probably worked better for morale.

 

[ichy]

Battlestar Galactica (reimagined) has done this best so far, loads of guns and nuclear missiles, clearly chemically propelled since they can be seen traveling.

It did however seem odd that the Galactica did not have any high-calibre guns, it seems extremely inefficient to wear down a Basestar's entire fighter compliment just to get some missiles through and finish the job when a few big guns can end things immediately.

One thing I never got about BSG is why they had so few nukes. Seems like you could've ended any battle in a few seconds by just volleying hundreds of nuclear-tipped missiles at your opponent. Why bother with guns at all?

 

[ichy]

Still baffles me why they sacrificed the newer, better battlestar though.

Pegasus was lost in the original BSG, they were probably trying to maintain a certain connection to that show.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

One thing I never got about BSG is why they had so few nukes. Seems like you could've ended any battle in a few seconds by just volleying hundreds of nuclear-tipped missiles at your opponent. Why bother with guns at all?

Mass missiles was the cylons primary weapon, including nukes. Most are shot down by flak fire and other countermeasures.

The galactica was a decommissioned ship that used to have no armament until they raided a abandoned military warehouse. I think they had a half dozen nukes or so total.

 

[ichy]

Mass missiles was the cylons primary weapon, including nukes. Most are shot down by flak fire and other countermeasures.

Yeah but most of their missiles didn't carry nuclear warheads which made no sense. A single Raider could carry multiple nuclear weapons, seems like the easiest thing do do would be to load up every Raider with nukes, swarm the target, blow it to bits.

 

[dighn]

One thing I never got about BSG is why they had so few nukes. Seems like you could've ended any battle in a few seconds by just volleying hundreds of nuclear-tipped missiles at your opponent. Why bother with guns at all?

The show is a drama set in space. Logic, technicality and realism take a back seat. The entire ship look ridiculous archaic for their level of civilization. Yes I know it's supposedly a decomissioned ship, but when you have a battle capable spacecraft, there is a minimal tech level far beyond our own. Heck they have artificial gravity, FTL, but use some old ass weighing scale that nobody today even uses.

 

[mfenn]

Check out the Lost Fleet series for a decent treatment of how space combat in a world with real physics would work. (Ignore the crappy romance subplot.)

 

[ichy]

The show is a drama set in space. Logic, technicality and realism take a back seat. The entire ship look ridiculous archaic for their level of civilization. Yes I know it's supposedly a decomissioned ship, but when you have a battle capable spacecraft, there is a minimal tech level far beyond our own. Heck they have artificial gravity, FTL, but use some old ass weighing scale that nobody today even uses.

I know I know, willing suspension of disbelief and all that. A "realistic" space battle probably would be no fun at all to watch. Still, I couldn't help but wonder why there were so few nukes.

 

[dighn]

I know I know, willing suspension of disbelief and all that. A "realistic" space battle probably would be no fun at all to watch. Still, I couldn't help but wonder why there were so few nukes.

You answered your own question. There's no reason why that's the case except for plot convenience. I'm sure the cylons would have the resources to stockpile massive number of nukes and ensure BSG's destruction. However doing so would mean no BSG = no show, or having to raise BSG's tech level to something the writers don't want.

 

[Fox5]

Sensors only tracking only heat is lol.... Oh yeah and a relativistic projectile would probably be really hot, since even a negligible friction from firing is still a ton of energy lost.

The mass effect in the title of the game refers to their ability to alter the mass of an object. Objects are reduced to near 0 mass (by modifying the higgs field) and then accelerated to near the speed of light. It's how they achieve faster than light travel too.

Mass Drivers are the best weapon around.

Great in master of orion, send a fleet around with planet messing weapons and hit all the undefended planets. You don't have to conquer, just follow a scorched earth policy.

 

[Lonyo]

Railguns mofo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJGQ_df5a34

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

They use lasers because kinetic weapons are slow and inaccurate, oh yeah and can be seen.

Actually, from what I gather from my Stage 1 Physics course, you can only see lasers in the atmosphere because the light gets scattered by the atmosphere. So in space, unless you get 'hit' directly with a laser, you'll have no idea it's there.

The only use for kinetic weapons would be relativistic ones, but those would require a ton of energy, and take up a lot of space.

But when they hit, they also release a lot of energy. Since they are travelling at a significant portion of c, they don't need to be very big. And since they're going so fast, once they're 'seen' then there may not necessarily be enough time to move out of the way.

ME guns use this magical stuff called element zero; you run a bit of electricity through it and it changes the mass of everything inside a given area. Their guns use that effect to lighten their bullets before firing them down railguns, which allows them to reach much higher speeds than they normally could, or just reach the same speed with a fraction of the recoil.

But the guns are easily the weakest link in their chain of plausible tech. Think about it, from their description I should be able to lighten a magnet in a dynamo, spin it up with a flick, and generate enough power off of that to do it again twenty times. Their guns flat-out break physics.

Not necessarily. It may just require heaps and heaps of power. But the main advantage of doing that is that the energy you require can be spread throughout the whole of the object the gun is attached to, not just through the gun. Which makes it less likely that the railguns need to be realigned because of heat warp every time they're fired.

 

[SunSamurai]

Heh I was about to come in here and say "actually Mass Effect did it a couple of years ago." But I see this thread is about Mass Effect. So I'll just sit in the corner and nod agreeably.








*nod*

This just reminds me of the rage of ME2 and clips.




Fuck clips.

 

[marvdmartian]

the latest version of BSG had them firing nukes at each other......and I'm pretty sure those count as a non-photonic weapon.

 

[Matthiasa]

The mass effect in the title of the game refers to their ability to alter the mass of an object. Objects are reduced to near 0 mass (by modifying the higgs field) and then accelerated to near the speed of light. It's how they achieve faster than light travel too.

Um mass doesn't matter for it heating up... volume and density of atoms however would. So did it also effect volumes?
/never played the game.

 

[Fayd]

Actually, we track movement 13 billion light years outside of our galaxy.

Today. We do that.

of something the size of a soda can. yes.