Back from the drawing board (a HUD on the windscreen of my car as I commute)
As I see it, playing with the consequences of the tech:
If we use a grav plate/skimmer tech that has a local inverse square law, the power requirement for hovering at 4 metres would be 64 times greater than that required at 0.5 metres. This would be a formidable ground effect, making high flying almost impossible. It would incorporate a power/altitude system as Ishmael suggested, though a bit more severe than his, I think. (Do not, under any circumstances, walk underneath one of these things - the tidal force would suck you up and spread you like jam on the vehicle's belly! - yet another weapon in the grav tank's armoury - the Hoover effect.
)
Used as grav plates, the local inverse square acting at a distance of only 3 metres would have some very uncomfortable effects for ship occupants, unless plates are located only on the belly of a ship. In this case, higher decks might be comfortable, but you would have some dangerously high-G regions 'below decks'. The only use for these areas would be fuel tanks and this would lead to some radical re-design of ships.
Maybe skimmer/plate tech doesn't use inverse square, but in that case, maybe it isn't gravitational. If it's a new pseudo grav force, then it is truly handwave magic rather than 'a deeper understanding/manipulation of gravity'.
It looks like grav plate/skimmer tech MUST be different from grav vehicle tech; one creating a local force to attract/repel local matter (maybe with a local inverse square law) and the other providing some form of shield against the influence of naturally gravitating bodies, using the inverse square on a planetary scale.
Repulsors/Tractors fall uncomfortably between the two, with a range of many thousands of metres but affecting bodies with virtually no intrinsic gravity.
Unless anyone can see another viable option - I can't see how they can all be one force, yet work in different ways at different scales. (If Robject is involved with T5, maybe he can inform these queries - or vice versa. It would be nice to have a logically consistent, if unexplained, anti grav technology. I'm happy to have the contents of the black box generator under wraps, as long as the effects it produces conform to the laws of physics and are mutually compatible in all manifestations.
At present, we seem to be stuck with at least three different types of grav-tech, none of which are compatible in their effects with the others, and use of high-G thrusters at deep space ranges would make the system even worse. :sad:
Can someone tell me how you get a sad icon in the text these days?
