1189 replies to this topic

[Polymorphyne]

Ummm.... the above post is in code.....
edit: except I got ninja'd.

Anyways, this is me leaving the thread- It really has been beaten to death, and its getting a bit boring. Time for me to move on to more interesting and fresh discussions.

Edited by Longsword, 10 March 2012 - 07:38 AM.

[Strum Wealh]

Catamount, on 10 March 2012 - 07:36 AM, said:

@Strum Wealh

Having a bit of trouble getting the forums to format your post?

Yeah...

'Tis all fixed now!

[Zakatak]

I believe the original power requirements for the Alcubierre Drive was 10^42, which is impossible. That would require turning the entire mass of Jupiter and all of its moons into pure energy. There is also the problem of particles getting sucked into the bubble and compressing with neutron star densities, eventually exploding the moment stop warping spacetime. Although these statistics are subject to change, however. Some new theories are coming in.

I "plugged" my sci-fi just out of boredom and for comparison purposes (to some of the less techy sci-fi's). It was my understanding it took 6MW and superconducting magnets to simulate 1g for mammals of similar biology to us. But something tells me I'm wrong now...

Edited by Zakatak, 10 March 2012 - 08:24 AM.

[Stripes]

Well - my deep dislike for StarWars-style HyperSpace comes from many sci-fi writers who just to lazy to actually get at least somewhat logical way of FTL

And idea of getten some G from supermagnets is wrong on so many levels, even only from health point of view... In my opinion, It is much easier to go without artificial gravity alltogether and just outfit crew with artificial bodys Ghost in the Shell style.

And by the way, i belive, Alcubierre Drive has roots in very old idea of bypassing speed of light by crating gravi-bubble around ship. Ship moves with sublight speed, but entaire system can, with our current physics know-how, achive FTL.

Edited by Stripes, 10 March 2012 - 08:42 AM.

[Zakatak]

How is Hyperspace "illogical"? Hyperspace is entering another dimension in which Eh) the laws of physics are different or Bee) the universe is composed of more than 3 spatial dimensions. I approve, since the existence of alternate realities and dimensions has already been proven, and because Warp Drives are soooooooo slow in comparison (and require ridiculous power). Stargate still has the coolest jump to FTL, IMHO.

The problem with artificial gravity is... srsly? How the hell do you "make" gravity? Has there been ANY theories on how?

Edited by Zakatak, 10 March 2012 - 09:17 AM.

[guardiandashi]

Zakatak, on 10 March 2012 - 09:03 AM, said:

How is Hyperspace "illogical"? Hyperspace is entering another dimension in which A) the laws of physics are different or the universe is composed of more than 3 spatial dimensions. I approve, since the existence of alternate realities and dimensions has already been proven, and because Warp Drives are soooooooo slow in comparison (and require ridiculous power). Stargate still has the coolest jump to FTL, IMHO.

The problem with artificial gravity is... srsly? How the hell do you "make" gravity? Has there been ANY theories on how?

nitpick most hyperspace drives seem to be about "jumping" into an alternate dimension where things work a little different than our universe.
in most hyperspace theories they use either an alternate dimension or a series of alternate dimensions where spacial distances are compressed compared to the "regular" dimension or where the constant C (speed of light is different)

lets use the compressed dimensions model first
in the "normal universe the distance between point A (start) and point B (destination ) is 100 light years, if you cannot move faster than light speed (or a significant fraction there of) it would take you a minimum of 100 years to get there

if on the other hand you can transition to dimension A1 where the distance is only 50 ly then it would take say 50-60 years
if dimension a2 has the distance as 25 ly then it would take 25-30 years
if dimension a3 has the distance as 12.5 ly then it would take 12.5-15 years
etc

the honorverse works this out fairly well as it is their method of travel and their ships are limited to ~70-80% of the speed of light as that is where the ambient radiation starts overloading the ships protective systems, some of the alternate dimensions they use may have additional ambient radiation that effectively limits them to a safe velocity of say 0.5 c instaid but due to the heavy spacial compression they can still reach an effective speed of say 800c, 1600c 5000c or whatever

[Charles Martel]

I'd say Macross is not the best at all things, but it has the most well rounded units.

Firepower-wise, I'd accept that SDF-1 = Death Star....... so what does that make a New Macross class battle section? Take things to the level of Frontier..... and all opponents are borked. The MDE munitions simply transition anything in their blast radius out of existence, shielding or no. And the newer super-scale New Macross class battle sections like Frontier and Galaxy..... yeah something's gonna die.

The VFs are pretty much uberLAMs. The primary weapon hasn't changed much, pretty much the equivalent of a rotary AC5 except for the Galaxy built VF-27 which has a gunpod sized macross cannon. And their missiles make BT missiles look primitive. And the VFs are the laeast of your worries, many colony fleets have one or more squadrons of Quedluun Rau zentradi power armors. The VFs use "energy conversion armor" so they don't sacrifice armor protection for low weight.

Edited by Charles Martel, 11 March 2012 - 04:05 AM.

[VegetaL]

Well i just read this whole thread, and let me say wow some of u are just behind saving when it comes to nerdyness... but i love it, I have and all ways be a fan of all space battles from all the diff universes we are discussing.. It still comes down to size and that is what matters, so ima give it 2 40k....

[Zakatak]

Is this basically what the Romulans do for power? Put mini-BH's inside their ships, or is it called "quantum singularity" NOT due to the rule of cool? I assume they would need more then 1, to match up with the Feds.

http://nextbigfuture...-starships.html

Anyway, 160 Petawatts over the course of 20 days is 275 Zettajoules. Extremely, extremely impressive for an actual theory that doesn't involve mining 4-dimensional crystals or putting tons of highly lethal antimatter inside a ship (not saying this isn't lethal... just less). Of course, building a 7x7km solar panel with a thousand gamma-ray lasers firing into 1 spot is... problematic. 50 trillion $ at the least. But once you have the machine, you can make hundreds. Could it power a warpdrive? We would only be so lucky.

Edited by Zakatak, 11 March 2012 - 08:31 AM.

[Ilithi Dragon]

VegetaL, on 11 March 2012 - 04:44 AM, said:

Well i just read this whole thread, and let me say wow some of u are just behind saving when it comes to nerdyness... but i love it, I have and all ways be a fan of all space battles from all the diff universes we are discussing.. It still comes down to size and that is what matters, so ima give it 2 40k....

You, sir, have just earned an Internet if you have read the entire thread. Damn.

Your conclusion, however, is based on a false premise: Size is just one of many factors that must be considered, and while it is an important factor, it is still only one of many important factors to consider.

Zakatak, on 11 March 2012 - 08:30 AM, said:

Is this basically what the Romulans do for power? Put mini-BH's inside their ships, or is it called "quantum singularity" NOT due to the rule of cool? I assume they would need more then 1, to match up with the Feds.

http://nextbigfuture...-starships.html

Anyway, 160 Petawatts over the course of 20 days is 275 Zettajoules. Extremely, extremely impressive for an actual theory that doesn't involve mining 4-dimensional crystals or putting tons of highly lethal antimatter inside a ship (not saying this isn't lethal... just less). Of course, building a 7x7km solar panel with a thousand gamma-ray lasers firing into 1 spot is... problematic. 50 trillion $ at the least. But once you have the machine, you can make hundreds. Could it power a warpdrive? We would only be so lucky.

More or less, yes, Romulan D'Deridex class ships are powered by small, artificial black holes. How they are created is not mentioned, but it is known that D'Deridexi are each equipped with only one artificial singularity, and that it is able to provide comparable power generation capabilities to Federation M/AM tech, though it is not without its own serious drawbacks. Given the known lore, it is likely that the D'Deridex is the Romulans' only production starship that uses artificial singularities, since in the 2260s they were still using fusion reactors and had to trade cloaking technology to the Klingons to get M/AM technology, and based on what we know of the Battle of Narendra III, where a single, 20-year-old Federation capital ship engaged 4 Romulan capital ships, and was able to out-maneuver them AND out-tank them (the E-C took over two hundred hits to its hull - I've counted them), it's likely that the Romulans were still playing catch-up in the 2340s, and so employed an artificial singularity power generator in the new generation of warship, the D'Deridex, launched in the late 2340s or early 2350s, so that they could field a ship that could compete with or out-strip anything the Federation could produce at the time (though it was quickly matched by the Galaxy and Nebula classes launched in the early 2360s).

Later Romulan ship designs, like the Valdore class, built after the Dominion War and all the tech exchange (and tech peaking) that would have come from their allilance with the Federation and Klingons, likely use M/AM reactors instead of singularities.

[Catamount]

I tend to agree with Ilithi's impression that the artificial singularity was, most than anything else, a dangerous experiment to try to quickly close a tech gap with the Federation (and Klingons?).

The Enterprise C must have just been frightening to them. This ship could outgun and outmaneuver them, so much, that they engaged the ship four on one and the damn thing wouldn't die.


But consider how much crazier than that it must have looked. After engaging and slamming the Enterprise with over two hundred hull hits, from their point of view, a spacial disturbance appears, and it blinks for a moment, and then suddenly she's all repaired and at full capacity, ready to take another pounding (obviously the Romulans didn't know about it going into the future and having time to repair, so it must have just looked like an insta-restore on the ship), and this wasn't some brand new capital ship, it was the capital ship the Federation was just preparing to replace! (with the Niagara class). The Romulan admiralty must have soiled themselves after reading the reports from that battle

Edited by Catamount, 11 March 2012 - 11:00 AM.

[Ilithi Dragon]

Well, I wouldn't call it a dangerous experiment - they did use it in their mass-produced capital ship, after all. I would call it more a powerful energy source that would otherwise be impractical or have too many disadvantages to be worthwhile if not for the Romulans' lagging M/AM power tech.

[guardiandashi]

ilithi dragon, on 11 March 2012 - 04:40 PM, said:

Well, I wouldn't call it a dangerous experiment - they did use it in their mass-produced capital ship, after all. I would call it more a powerful energy source that would otherwise be impractical or have too many disadvantages to be worthwhile if not for the Romulans' lagging M/AM power tech.

as I remember my lore it wasn't so much that the romulans M/AM tech itself was lagging it was that they had serious shortages of high grade dylithium which was one of the keystones of federation tech.

the romulans effectively would have needed tons of high grade dylithium to build and maintain the fleet they wanted, and yet they were only able to come up with (for the sake of arguement) kilos.

the klingons were in part getting around it by using larger quantities of lower grade dylithium, and cutting safety margins in ways that the federation would not accept.

the federation both had access to better dylithilum and developed methods to turn lower grade dylithium into high grade that the other factions lacked (and if you read some of the novel -/ extended canon resources) developed methods of creating materials that do not normally exist

the romulans were partially handicapped by available resources, and by having issues developing the tech to overcome the resource issues

[Ilithi Dragon]

And that makes perfect sense in a lot of ways - not just tech disadvantages, but limitations of supply - to get the power generation capabilities to compete with the Federation and Klingons, the Romulans needed more dilithium, and probably anti-matter, than they had the technology and infrastructure base to provide. Using artificial singularities gave them the power generation capabilities they desired, and their need for that level of power generation was large enough to out-weigh the drawbacks vs M/AM tech.

One HUGE draw-back is that if a ship with an artificial singularity is destroyed, and the engineering section is damaged enough that the containment systems shut down, the artificial black hole will destabilize and 'evaporate' at an exponentially accelerating rate, basically creating a prolonged explosion far larger than a warp core breach. Not to mention the space-time distortion problems.

Edited by ilithi dragon, 11 March 2012 - 05:21 PM.

[Jack Gammel]

ilithi dragon, on 11 March 2012 - 05:19 PM, said:

One HUGE draw-back is that if a ship with an artificial singularity is destroyed, and the engineering section is damaged enough that the containment systems shut down, the artificial black hole will destabilize and 'evaporate' at an exponentially accelerating rate, basically creating a prolonged explosion far larger than a warp core breach. Not to mention the space-time distortion problems.

And that doesn't even take into account alien lifeforms which might try to procreate inside your ship's core...

Seriously though, it seems like the Federation ought to have a manual when it comes to time-shifts/space-time distortions and alternate dimensions. They certainly deal with it enough. O'Brian is experiencing time-shifts? No problem, we've seen this before. Just turn to page 34 subsection b...

[Ilithi Dragon]

You know, there's a couple episodes of DS9, particularly "Trials and Tribble-ations", that actually imply just that, what with the temporal security guys and all.

[Jack Gammel]

ilithi dragon, on 11 March 2012 - 07:53 PM, said:

You know, there's a couple episodes of DS9, particularly "Trials and Tribble-ations", that actually imply just that, what with the temporal security guys and all.

Yup, those were good episodes. I especially enjoyed how pissed off they got when they found out Kirk was involved. But I was specifically talking about some kind of field manual, not just a department that cleans up afterwards.

[guardiandashi]

shrug read the novel imzadi its all about a temporal change because somthing happens to deanna Troy and the end of it is that the security/monitoring/research team that is stationed at the guardian of forever added a new question they ask it every day... "is all as it should be?"

why? because some temporal agent assassinated troy which had major repercussions to the timeline.

on the note of temporal and spacial abnormalities there was something I read some time back that indicated that any ship in the federation named enterprise had something like a 400% (or more) higher chance of running into those abnormalities and a 200% plus greater chance of successfully dealing with the issue.

[Catamount]

Well temporal problems are like any problem situations vary, and there's no one-size fits all solution. It's like asking for a general defeat the Romulans rulebook (okay, okay, admittedly all you have to do is play to their seething arrogance... bad example )

However, the problem is eventually addressed by the Temporal Accords, once time travel gets to be more common (before which only a general non-interference directive seems to apply).

Edited by Catamount, 12 March 2012 - 07:20 AM.

[Jack Gammel]

And you could probably defeat the Cardassians by sending their government the gift of an empty box that you tell them they should never open.

The Klingons...well...I always figured that they would eventually take care of themselves.