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Meson comms

M

maitrejeanth

SOC-9
One of the PCs in my "Agidda" naval active service campaign chose "Side lobes in meson communicators : opportunities or liabilities ?" as his final naval academy engineering thesis. The gist of it is : can side lobes in friendly naval comms be minimized, so as to prevent eavesdropping by hostile forces ? Conversely, can these lobes in ennemy comms be listened to?
Sounds like a neat subject, of course, but is believable ?
Do meson communicators have any sidelobes at all ? Can meson comms be intercepted in any way ?

How would they work, actually ? Do meson comms have any scientific basis, or is it just another case of the "let's choose the first serious sounding name we will come across", like the infamous Tachyon communicators in ICE's Rolemaster ?
 
They work the same way as meson guns - short-lived subatomic particles accelerated to relativistic velocities and timed to decay inside the target. Some will decay sooner, and some later (the size of the spread will depend on things like relative speeds, TL, user error, etc), so yes, in theory they can be intercepted, but only if you're right on top of the target.
 
They work the same way as meson guns - short-lived subatomic particles accelerated to relativistic velocities and timed to decay inside the target. Some will decay sooner, and some later (the size of the spread will depend on things like relative speeds, TL, user error, etc), so yes, in theory they can be intercepted, but only if you're right on top of the target.
 
Hehe hehe I just had a sneaky idea... what if your comms officer rolls a critical failure at "open communications" task. Could the recipients comms console suffer a micro explosion
 
Yeah, I don't like the whole Meson weapon/comms theory idea much myself and can live quite happily without it imtu.

Imagine the little user caution warning sticker on the side of your handheld meson comm...

"Prolonged usage may result in stray meson decay damage to objects close to the antenna element. Users are advised to always wear the appropriate meson screen helmet*.

*Helmet not included but available for purchase seperately.
Click to expand...
Or so I always imagine. I mean the size of the antenna element in a handheld meson comm is tiny. And you're trusting someone with a high power meson transmitter to hit that little element (and not your brain a few cm away), from orbit, through the planet, get real :rolleyes:

I have a so much better time accepting every other handwave of improbable tech, I'm really not sure why I such a hangup on the whole Meson thing :confused:

And then there's the issue of using Meson comms while you have your Meson screen up to block incoming Meson weapons fire. Do they use different "frequencies" or something? But then that leaves exploitable holes in your screens.

Rather than the model (unless I've misunderstood it all these years) of point decay I could probably accept a broadcast version. I'm sure I've posited parts of this here (or elsewhere) before.

It would work something like a directional radio transmission. Weapons would be effective against ships due to interacting with some standard ship element, maybe the jump grid (which has the benefit of making fighters viable even, or especially, against high tech ships). Meson weapons fire would therefore be much like all other beam weapons fire in difficulty and fashion.

Communications would be similar with the antenna element being a small jump grid, which needn't be actually useful in a jump sense, its just there to interact with the "mesons".

Anyway that's part of it. I haven't spent a lot* of time working it all out since I'm not using it as it is and since I'm not missing it I don't feel much impetus to work all the kinks out and introduce it. Besides it would be just a mtu idea as it goes against too much canon to be acceptable by the community I expect.

* Define a "lot"
I have spent some time pondering it and trying to make it work, probably far too much in fact
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Meson communicators are very low power, so you're fairly safe using them. OTOH, you don't want to get in the way of a lasercomm...
 
I don't think that meson comms would have "side lobes" of mesons, but perhaps it's possible that the particle accelerator that forms the meson comm beam might produce some EM side effects that might be detectable if an enemy was close enough.
 
Meson comms, as I understand them, use a small screen to crash decay the mesons for mximum signal gain.

They use a very tightly focussed, Extremely Low Power meson beam, usually focussed just past the reciever, so that only at the screen do they decay on target. So low power a beam that it would be incapable of doing significant harm to a human in a single exposure.

So, yes, they can be intercepted, if you can weed out all the other EM noise, and you can see the "post-target decay zone".

Now, in very hostile situations, youo'll focus within the hull. Yes, you can see a meson decay in a dark room... but it's a red glow when it's a comm meson. A combat meson beam will generate a bright flash.
 
Ooh I feel a warm glow inside me. Wait, it's just the new comms officer sending me down the latest tactical evaluation from orbit. Ah better than a bowl of porridge in the morning.
 
Ooh I feel a warm glow inside me. Wait, it's just the new comms officer sending me down the latest tactical evaluation from orbit. Ah better than a bowl of porridge in the morning.
 
Border: I've had players send morse with meson guns (note guns, not comms), Set it for VERY low meson generation, and hit the room they're in... it was a bit of an emergency...
 
Brilliant!!

I tried to keep my players as far away from the big toys as possible knowing their attraction to mayhem. Though there was this one time on Efate when they did some experimenting with nuclear damper fields just to see what would happen....
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Thanks for the replies. Still one major problem with meson comms : targetting. Laser comms are relatively easy to use : just point the beam in the requested direction and send the data packets. You only need to know your "target's" bearing to communicate with it.
Meson comms use the low energy released during the decay process to transmit data packets. Trouble is, the meson packets "materialize" at an exact location. They don't just travel towards their target in a straight line like the photons in a laser beam do. You need to know bearing and range to target to talk to it. So, what's the point of sending mesons to ao target if you've already had to send some kind of other energy toward it to locate it ?
Now, meson comms are great between fixed locations or locations with predictable movement patterns, like orbital installations. In that case, the meson comm's ability to ignore any barriers would be very useful.
 
As I remember reading, a meson comm uses a small meson screen to force the incoming meson comm beam to decay so it can be decoded. Thus you don't need to know the exact range as you do with a meson weapon, just the bearing.

However, this would indicate that if the receipient ship has an anti-meson gun meson screen up at the same time as the meson comm beam arrives, the meson comm beam will prematurely decay outside the meson comm receiver and so the signal will be lost. That's how I read it, anyway.
 
Perhaps a full scale meson screen can function as a meson comm receiver as well as a defence against meson guns.
If a meson gun strike arrives at the same time as a meson comm message you may have problems though ;)
 
As I understand, meson beam decays when hitting a meson screen. Does the screen generator somehow react to the hit? If yes, no problem. Use a small meson shield as target for the beam, just as explained by Oz. That way, no need to know the range: you just point your comm on the target and "fire" it at maximum range. It will decay sooner if it meets the meson screen. What if your meson screen (the big one, the one for meson guns) is up? Just use it as "target". Your comm beam will "knock" on the screen and the generator will react. Read those reaction, decypher them and you've got your message. You'll just have to avoid recieving meson communications and meson gun shots at the same time.
 
As I understand, meson beam decays when hitting a meson screen. Does the screen generator somehow react to the hit? If yes, no problem. Use a small meson shield as target for the beam, just as explained by Oz. That way, no need to know the range: you just point your comm on the target and "fire" it at maximum range. It will decay sooner if it meets the meson screen. What if your meson screen (the big one, the one for meson guns) is up? Just use it as "target". Your comm beam will "knock" on the screen and the generator will react. Read those reaction, decypher them and you've got your message. You'll just have to avoid recieving meson communications and meson gun shots at the same time.
 
I've never seen anything to say if a meson screen generator has any kind of reaction (drawing extra power, etc) from stopping an incoming meson beam. You could do it either way if you want to.

The problem I see with using your main meson screen as the "decoder" screen for incoming meson comm messages is that the meson comm beams are said to be very low power, and you might miss seeing the signal if it was decoded by your main meson screen. That's what Sigg is talking about.

If the meson screen generator does have some measureable reaction to stopping a meson beam, then that could be used to "read" the signal. Again, having someone else shooting you with a full-sized meson beam at the same time could cause problems in reading the signal.
 
My undersanding of meson screens is that they cause premature decay at or near the shield boundary. How? No clue, but they do. And so the decay energy occurs on the edge of the shield field rather than inside the target.
 
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