mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I don't understand your point here.
Imperium and Dark Nebula are historical settings for the OTU. GT:ISW had to take them as canon.
The ultimate weapon
- Thread starter Carlobrand
- Start date
Imperium and Dark Nebula are historical settings for the OTU. GT:ISW had to take them as canon.
I think he means a different type of ship would be used.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Nope, the rules of Imperium and Dark Nebula make it explicit they it is the standard warships that do so, the ones that are equipped with manoeuvre drives and jump drives standard to Traveller.
Wasn't the Tenguska event theorized by some whacked out psychiatrist to be a black hole boring through the Earth, or some high velocity object doing the same?
Sadly yes and it's caused substantial problems.
Imperium, and it's "game engine" used by Dark Nebula, actually predate Traveller. The color text in the first edition baldly states that the Imperium consists of 70 stars centered on Capella and the designer notes in the same state that the jump lines on the map are similar to the Alderson drive tram lines of Mote in God's Eye. Later editions of Imperium were somewhat rewritten in order to kitbash the games into canon, but the fit has never been a good one.
Like jump torpedoes in A:4 Leviathan or the early Library Data entry which state that Capital controls the only crossing in the Rift for thousands on parsecs, certain parts of Imperium and Dark Nebula are best taken either with a dTon of salt or completely ignored.
Then you probably wouldn't, I can't put years of engineering in a single post.
I heard it was:
The explosion is believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometres (3–6 mi) above the Earth's surface. Different studies have yielded varying estimates of the object's size, with general agreement that it was a few tens of metres across.[4] It is the largest impact event in recorded history.[5]
from the tunguska event wiki.
So it would be nowhere near c.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Try explaining it in very simple words that even I may understand then...
Actually, he wasn't implausibly wrong. Just wrong.
It's possible that a high-sub-C micro-singularity could evaporate in-air with a whopping big concussion; it should have put out huge amounts of hawking radiation in the process. The problem is that any such micro-singularity would have either evaporated long since if generated elsewhere, or implies some method of relatively local generation, both of which are incompatible with known data.
Plus, the nature of the evaporation should have been much slower, and/or broken the trees TOWARDS it, then tossed them back in the fusion flash.
See, it could work, if it's just big enough to pull in enough atmosphere to fuse locally, generating a fusion bomb - a micronova - but in so doing, the traces should have been much different. Also, the question of how long such a micro-singularity can sustain itself, and how much damage it should have done...
The current theory is basically "A comet turned into a steam explosion resulting in a big boom, and doing so at several hundred meters altitude."
MT "Interstellar" range PEMS has a nominal range of two parsecs.
However, when you get into actual game mechanics, where you have to perform tasks to locate something with your sensors, "interstellar" range sensors are barely adequate for detection within the outer solar system
Which puts you back to ten minutes warning before you get smacked....
Maybe installing sensors at the outer reaches of the system and the jump limit?
O
Omnivore
Guest
We got into that over on the Satellite Sensor thread. Summary, you *can* cover an entire system from star to Oort in the ecliptic plane with sensors having sufficient sensitivity out to 1 light week, it is expensive though - 10BCr is a good starting point, not counting reaction forces.
However... that's covering the ecliptic plane as in 2D. To also cover the 3D spherical volume out around Kuiper belt distance that you'd need to spend roughly 10x that amount. I picked Kuiper belt distance because a 'realistic' RKV, using Traveller fusion drives (from FF&S for example) would require a three to six month run up starting out past the Kuiper belt distance.
If you can pick them up there, while they are still below a significant fraction of light speed, you might could intercept via micro-jump. The catch is the time delays involved. The RKV will be at, lets say, 1 light week from the sensor satellite when first spotted. Now you have to contact an interceptor, that could take another couple light weeks. Then add in the interceptor's micro-jump time of 1 week. So you're trying to predict where it will be in a month, hopefully while it is still going slow enough for the interceptor to make an attack run.
I'd put the total cost of an effective defense system at about the 1 trillion credit mark. One benefit of looking at it this way, it soaks up all those excess Imperial Navy budget credits and explains why the navy isn't 10x its current size.
The above is a rough analysis based on half-remembered numbers, a more detailed analysis would probably take into account such things as the advisability of intercept at the thruster plate viability distance and work out deployment numbers and sensor locations/densities accordingly. Although I have a nagging suspicion that trying to intercept at the thruster plate viability distance may be too late.
PS: Remember, it's not just about detection, it's about the time lag and response time lag.
Brian
Last edited:
It would make a good amber zone of a defeated world launching a STL planet killer vengeance weapon knowing it would take years for it to hit. The adventurers could uncover the plot and have to try to jump into empty space to stop it and all the original designers were either executed or are in a gulag somewhere...save the planet, literally.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Now that is an excellent idea for a scenario or two - consider it borrowed 
DangerousThing
SOC-13
_Iron Sunrise_, by Charles Stross. An excellent book.
One system nova'ed the other's sun. The dead system had a deadman defense. STL missiles that used most of their acceleration on their startup run. However, they had a really good AI which would aim them properly towards the end. The startup acceleration was done light-years from the target system.
The entire plot involved getting the shutoff codes from the dead systems' leaders (most of whom were dead).
This is part of a series that I don't think he's ended yet. Though he had time to write a 7-part novel about interdimensional coke-smugglers. Gack.
Twisting it even further, the student and professor are natives of the world which launched the planet-killer.
The weapon was launched by a government faction when defeat in an interstellar war seemed certain. That defeat and the subsequent reconstruction weren't the "end of times" many on the planet thought they would be, in some ways life on the planet is better, and now, one or two generations later, the planet is due for independence or autonomy.
However if the planet-killer reaches it target, a nearby system used as a staging area for the final invasion, independence is dead. A vicious crackdown by the victorious polity is certain because the leaders of the defeated world, unaware of the faction's launch, had sworn no such weapons had been built.
The student, the professor, and the adventurers will have to hide their mission from both governments.
That former regime military officer would dynamite in the hands of a good GM. Is he really going to help them? Will he try to sabotage the mission? Either at the start or at the very end? Is he working for the launching planet's current government? Will he sell the whole story to the victorious government in return for a new face and fat pension far, far away? When will he make up his mind about what he's going to do?
Or is he just some red herring that will keep the players from suspecting the real turncoat?
Or is he hiding something else? Something far worse?
There's a character in Piper's Junkyard Planet who immediately comes to mind when mulling over your proposed former military officer. The plot of the book involves people on the planet Poictesme searching for a mythical supercomputer left behind by demobilized forces. The Federation had allegedly used to computer to win a war against a breakaway alliance. Once the war was won, interstellar transport costs meant the Federation would only ship it's soldiers and their personal gear home. Everything else, from bases to factories to shipyards and all their associated equipment is mothballed and left behind. With the wartime boom over, the economy of Poictesme grows to depend on "prospecting" through all the stuff left behind. The book's protagonist, Conn Maxwell, mentions his father "prospects" for plutonium by disassembling nuclear warheads.
Anyway, a group finally saves enough to send Conn to Earth for school. The young man is also tasked with finding out as much about the mythical supercomputer as possible. He manages to interview the old commander of the huge force which was based on Poictesme and...
Anyway, there are a great many ways a canny GM could spin the character of the former military officer....
Or is he just some red herring that will keep the players from suspecting the real turncoat?
Or is he hiding something else? Something far worse?
There's a character in Piper's Junkyard Planet who immediately comes to mind when mulling over your proposed former military officer. The plot of the book involves people on the planet Poictesme searching for a mythical supercomputer left behind by demobilized forces. The Federation had allegedly used to computer to win a war against a breakaway alliance. Once the war was won, interstellar transport costs meant the Federation would only ship it's soldiers and their personal gear home. Everything else, from bases to factories to shipyards and all their associated equipment is mothballed and left behind. With the wartime boom over, the economy of Poictesme grows to depend on "prospecting" through all the stuff left behind. The book's protagonist, Conn Maxwell, mentions his father "prospects" for plutonium by disassembling nuclear warheads.
Anyway, a group finally saves enough to send Conn to Earth for school. The young man is also tasked with finding out as much about the mythical supercomputer as possible. He manages to interview the old commander of the huge force which was based on Poictesme and...
Spoiler:
Anyway, there are a great many ways a canny GM could spin the character of the former military officer....
Similar threads
