NationStates Jolt Archive

The Steel Plague project.

Today though the cooperation of the Dontgonearthere govornment and GLACORP military labs we have reached a new age in military technology.

The Steel Plague, also known as RNCS (Replicating Nanite Combat System) is a nanite based, self-replicating, machine of destruction. The Plauge is capable of breaking metal down and using it to add to itself, becoming larger and stronger with each additional 'meal'.

Nanites are microscopic robots, only a little larger than your average molocule. Steel Plague contains an number of differnt nanites with differnt specialties.

The project was originaly concieved as an infantry support unit, but later it was deemed that the Plague would be more effective on its own, teamed with other Plague units. The Plague robots now have little friend-or-foe recognition, this was scrapped in favor of more tactics, repair-bots and effeciency.
Once dropped Steel Plauge will consume all resources and terminate all life signs within a certain set area, regardless of political affiliation. Once this is completed the 'bots will set up a perimeter around the area to prevent entrance by any. The DGNT Hive computer will shut them down and put them back into their dormant state once the team of technicians trained to handle the bots arrives.

To begin with, Steel Plague is a ball resembling Mercury, the metal not the planet, about six inches across. it is stored in a 'sensor blind' box to prevent it from killing the crew of its vessel and eating the transport.
Once set the box will either be broken by a fall, or opened via time-release, whereupon the Plauge will roll out, and begin consuming materials. Of course it DOES have to start fairly small, the begining number of nanites is only suffecient to take apart hand-held objects, though it may eventually move on to larger things, such as tanks.
The Plauge may also form a number of weapons, though limitations in the technology prevent moving parts, some very effective melee weapons are avalible and the Plauge also has been 'taught' how to operate chemical-based projectile weapons.

So far no way of effectivly 'killing' the Plague has been found, it can 'eat' bullets and anti-tank rounds, blowing it up only makes more, and energy weapons dont destroy the nanites fast enough to be effective.

Steel Plague is DGNTs ultimate detterent weapon, we feel that any who attack will be severly discouraged by the threat of having their army turned into ours.

Steel Plague is the future of war, your armies will come apart to be reborn as ours, your tanks will melt and from the piles of detritus long abandoned in the junkyards destroying golems will tear your cities into pieces. If you resist, you will be destroyed. If you dont, well...its pretty much the same.

RNCS is currently undergoing combat trials in the Dehydrated Ocean, no further details are avalible.

The RNCS system is not currently for sale. We are not stupid.

May your future be both peaceful and profitable.

-GLACORP sales representative.

OOC:
Ok, before you jump down my throat, half of that is propeganda. The RNCS has a few solid parts that are fairly easy to destroy. Its central computer is what holds the nanites together, its about the size of a laptop and moves about in the torso. If its damaged the nanites CAN repair it, but only if nothing vital was hit. If it IS damaged beyond repair then the nanites lose cohesion and the system falls apart.
Its fairly vulnerable to an EMP blast, nanites are hard to shield, but they are pretty good at channeling energy, so the inner nanites and computer MIGHT take the hit. If not, see above.
As noted, it cannot make moving parts, it moves around using nanites similar to human muscular cells, with arms that interlink with the other nantites, these expand and contract to lift and lowerthe units legs, arms and other appengages. It does however have the capability to pick up weapons and use them.
Bullets and other solid rounds are almost totaly innefective unless they hit the computer, the kinetic energy is absorbed by the 'battery bots', and the metal is converted into more nanites. Explosives are pretty good at slowing them down, since they will have to reform whatever was blown up, but again, unless they hit the computer it wont affect them much.
Energy weapons, unless you fry the entire thing, are not at all effective. A laser will destroy what it hits, and nothing more.
The computer is linked to The Hive, DGNTs central Hivemind, a sort of state-within a state, and takes some orders from it, but its mostly independant.


SECRET IC.
OOC: You dont 'know' about this part unless I specificaly give you permission to. ICly, of course.
Mostly, its just for refrence.

Back to secret IC:

GLACORP Secret Projects File
Project #27,651 (Phase 1)
RNCS:
Regenerating Nanite Combat System
Project: 'Steel Plague'

Project Summary:
Due to increasing tensions with the international community, the rise in warfare and agression, as well as a need for something to do, GLACORP scientists have issued this proposal:
Steel Plague's goal is to create a soldier using cooperative nanobots to simulate a combat machine. The cheif advantage over traditional combat units is its ability to regenerate by 'eating' metallic objects, such as bullets, weapons, buildings, and the like.

Deployment:
The system can be dropped by a bomb case, or released from a backpack, cage or box, something.
In its beggining form Steel Plague is a sphere, about six inches across, which is solid. Once released Steel Plague will proceede to the closest (non-friendly, the details later in the AI section) source of metal and begin adding to its structure.

AI:
The nanobots themselves will act in unison as a sort of giant 'brain', communicating with each other via electrical surges in much the same way as a human body. This does bring up a central sticking point though, while the nanobots themselves are somewhat intelligent they require a central computer to act as a 'master', and without it they will break down into their standard units of a single nanobot. Each RNCS must have a computer to direct and make sense of the orders, and this presents a vulnerability.
The computer itself may be quite small, possibly laptop sized, but if the system is struck by an explosive round, or a chance bullet and the computer is damaged beyond immidiate repair the bot will break down. Once the computer is repaired any nanobots within a short range will reform back to the starting form of a sphere and begin searching for 'food'.

All Steel Plague robots will be at least semi-sentient, with descision making capcity, the possiblity of 'sergeant' bots that are fully sentient and capable of issuing commands to other RNCS' is under investiagtion. Being semi-sentient they will all be informed as to the differnce between enemies and friends, who to kill/abosb and who not to kill/absorb.
Another possiblity is linking the bots to The Hive, DGNTs resident hive-mind robot colony.

Systems:
Another minor point, nanobots will not be able to form sophisticated weapon systems such as firearms, lasers or anything with more than a few moving parts. The reason is that each part must be programmed into each robot, this would take forever even by the standards of the Hive.
So, all RNCS bots will need to be armed in standard fashion, or they can form their own melee weapons. Throwing weapons would be possible, but inadvisble since hurling bits of your arm at your enemy is generaly not a good idea.

Energy Source:
DGNT nanobots are all equipped with solar power generators, and backup batteries for night-fighting. The batteries last about five hours and robots are capable of sharing. Obviously the system will be less effective at night, since new robots will be entirly dependant on existing bots for energy.
Ways of solving this problem are under investigation.

Progress notes:
-AI currently unstable, this will be solved.
-Energy source unreliable, inclusion of Universal Energy Pack with computer?
-Weapons training?
-Throwing devices and 'Call back' radio to retrieve them
-Transport? Plauge mortars? Missiles? Bombs? Will shock damage them? Must test.
-Resistance to radiation? Chemical weapons?
-Solve explosion problem.
-G'oaway City Grocery
+Milk
+Eggs
+Bread
+Avacados
+Orange soda
+Popcorn
+Pizza
+Hydrogen Laser Array
+MK III Proton Disrupter
+NCB suit
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
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ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY

GLACORP Secret Projects File
Project #27,651(Phase 2)
RNCS:
Regenerating Nanite Combat System
Project: 'Steel Plauge'

Progress Report:
-AI stabilized
+Set to respond to The Hives orders, plus semi-independant intelligent processor
+No longer crashes when more than one object must be absorbed at once
+No longer attempts to create more than two weapons

-Movement problems solved
+New nanite, #N62, developed to act as muscular tissue while retaining normal mobility.
-Bots maximum speed in humanoid form increased to 20mph, sphereoid max at 32mph.

-New nanites developed to aide certain procedures.
New nanites will be constructed when material is absorbed, nanite proportions will remain the same.
+Above mentioned #N62
+#N65, modified construction nanite to break down materials quicker (Accounts for about 1/10 of the bots structure)
+#N66, 'battery' nanites, absorb energy sent through other bots, solar or otherwise.

-Problems with RNCS system maintaing stability, some RNCS break down shortly after they assume humanoid form. Others cannot leave sphere form. Problem being worked on.

Phase Three:
All major issues resolved, still have minor problems.
SP robots exhibit a %6 failure rate, resulting in inability to leave sphere form, AI breakdown, and inability to maintain a coherent shape.
These are currently being adressed

OOC:
Questions? Comments? I tried to put some weaknessess in, such as the computer and the solar power source, but is it still too godmoddish?

OOC=Kinda godmodish, but are you modern or space tech?
Cause modern, then I suppose if AMF can have his Sentinels, you can have your RNCS.

OOC:
Futuretech, I was reading my early posts and came across AMFs Sentinel topic...suddenly I though:
"Hey, I want something like that' :)

ooc: you'd need to give it some independant problem solving routines because there is no way you could enter in the entire assimalition proccess for every alloy.

As for the many parts delema that could be solved by creating 'memory bugs' who's sole purpose is to relay arrangement patterns to other nano machines. This would mean that you'd have several million one shot nano bots but that's in itself a small price.

You might want to create some form of anti shock system. With a circuit this complex and minute you could rub your foot on the ground and destroy it via static shock.

The problem with 'sergeant bots' is that you'd have to give them fuzzy logic in an extreme to cope with the ever changing enviroment they faced. You'd also have to give them the directive of reproducing. If reproducing was the primary command and they passed along knowledge accumulated you'd eventual have them stop passing along friend/foe recognition because it is detrimental to their reproduction. If you put the friend/doe recognition as a primary command your now requiring a minute CPU that can do three tasks at one as aposed to the standard 01010101010101010 etc. (that's not worded right but you get the gist)

I like the idea but have you thought of none milatary aplications? construction, medicine, procceing power etc.

OOC:
-The bots can move objects inside the structure and have the others which arent currently doing much break it down and build more bots of the the resulting material, obviosuly larger objects will require more bots, but they will have more surface area so the proccess should take about the same amount of time if there is enough in the way of nanobots.

-Well, Ill stick with issueing them guns. They could of course, make their own bullets, but I figure insta-guns for all my men would get ignored :)

-The bots act as their own anti-shock system, they absort electricty fairly well and excess can be distributed across the entire system with fairly minimal effects.

-The sergeant bots bit was just for flavor, I plan on giving them a link with The Hive which pretty much solves the problem, I might end up with some sort of 'transmitter' bot to relay orders, or something similar.

-Nanobots are already used in most of those roles in DGNT, I've had a nanovirus for some time now, I use construction in almost everything, and I basicaly have the ultimate vaccine to everything in the form of robot white blood cells :)

These things would likely be highly vulnerable to EMP. Really, afterall how much can you shield something like a nanobot? They'd be great against most armies though. :p

Well, the would be fairly cheap, and all you would really need to do is run a magnet over the battlefield to retrieve 'em :lol:

Plague

I have a possible solution for your power situation.

You can transfer power from an energy source by using microwaves. I have a functional power system set up using this principal, which was researched by NASA in the 70's and I read somewhere they are planning on using it for one of the missions.

This makes it viable in a modern nation or higher provided they put time and funding into research.

I hope this helps.


I would be interested in helping your research if it is possible. Contact me if you think I can be of assistance.

(I hope this doesn't double post. Server is acting up again)

Thanks for your offer Balrogga, it will be taken into consideration.

And...what exactly do you mean, Erinin?

Bump.
And this is SECRET. Nobody outside GLACORP and the DGNT govornments highest offices knows about this, and nobody will until I release it.
Im thinking a week or so, then Ill announce it in its final 'beta' stages.

If you have the technology, you should make the master computer a nanobot, so all you would have to do is program it. It would also help with the creation of commanderbots.

-=DELETED FOR REASON OF MEKANTAN BITCH SLAPPING=-

Canan, nanobots dont have enough power by themselves to do much, a group can work, but they are a good deal less effecient than your averge CPU since a 'thought' has to pass through all the nanobots and they all have to make a descision on it.

Fera, SECRET IC. Your communications overlord has not heard about this.

In my opinion neither this or AMF's sentinels are modern tech and I would seriously consider IGNORing any attack made using either. Just my opinion though.

Exactly, this is futuretech, they have no place in my modern division.

:arrow:

-OOC-

*bitchslaps his puppet*

Heh. I'll edit that when I get on Fera next time. ^_^"

OOC:
Good. :)

SECRET IC:

GLACORP Secret Projects File
Project #27,651
RNCS:
Regenerating Nanite Combat System
Project: 'Steel Plauge'

Progress Report:
-AI stabilized
+Set to respond to The Hives orders, plus semi-independant intelligent processor
+No longer crashes when more than one object must be absorbed at once
+No longer attempts to create more than two weapons

-Movement problems solved
+New nanite, #N62, developed to act as muscular tissue while retaining normal mobility.
-Bots maximum speed in humanoid form increased to 20mph, sphereoid max at 32mph.

-New nanites developed to aide certain procedures.
New nanites will be constructed when material is absorbed, nanite proportions will remain the same.
+Above mentioned #N62
+#N65, modified construction nanite to break down materials quicker (Accounts for about 1/10 of the bots structure)
+#N66, 'battery' nanites, absorb energy sent through other bots, solar or otherwise.

-Problems with RNCS system maintaing stability, some RNCS break down shortly after they assume humanoid form. Others cannot leave sphere form. Problem being worked on.

:arrow:

Bumpity for update.
Hi all.

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