NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: Secret as per usual operating procedure. Got the idea for this weapon from a GURPS book I'd read a few months ago...

"Your move, Corbox," Cassius declared as he clunked a white pawn with his rook. "I have to admit, you're getting better at this a lot faster than I expected."

"I've been playing with General Lear on her off days."

"Is that what the children call it now?"

"What? Hey! I'm married! Happily I might add!"

"And with seven kids. I know the drill. Lighten up, Corbox, I've said that enough that you should know when I'm pulling your leg."

A small alarm beeped happily at Cassius' side, and he toggled it by instinct more than anything. "What's up?" He asked, seemingly to no one in particular.

A small voice piped in from what appeared to be the left joint of his jaw in response. "General Lear to see you, sir. She says its urgent."

"Urgent you say? Why is she still out there?"

The door to the massive suite opened with a resounding thud, and General Lear strode into the chamber, accompanied by a pair of Adjutant Generals.

"She isn't, sir," Cassius' secretary replied, then clicked off the connection.

"Archon Longarm! And Archon Corbox, too, a pleasant surprise. I tried to contact you earlier, but your secretary said you'd been fishing."

"Yep. Caught me a few big-mouth bass, then decided I'd pay Cassius a visit."

General Lear took one look at the chessboard. "Cassius has checkmate in seven, Corbox in nine. If you'll excuse me..." She swept the chess pieces out of the way, causing the holographic game to terminate, and flopped a somewhat thick file upon the table.

"I'm surprised your people at the university hadn't found this, Archon Longarm. This was brought to our attention by what appeared to be a co-op program with the Amazon Industrial Institute and the Antarctica Citadel."

Cassius and Corbox both began poking through the hefty file on the table between them. Corbox spotted the paydirt first. "What the hell is THIS?"

"The Citadel and the Amazon Institute were conducting research into high pressure and otherwise hostile mining environment technologies, in this case looking into the properties of Coherent Tachyon beams. It was not known what benefit the Tachyons would create, as they seem mostly to be used in generating gravity wells and other forms of FTL inhibition."

"Is this a before and after comparison?" Corbox asked, indicating the pair of pictures he had firmly in his hands. "This second one is just a crater!"

"It is a before and after, sir. That crater is not really all that large when you consider the dimensions. Only about as powerful as a single Flux Cannon shot.

"You see, sirs, that typical tachyons are very weak-interacting. Even less interactive than neutrinos and even gravitons. However, when these researchers tested it on an energy shield... well, that's the result you see."

"It turned into a plasma bolt?"

"A disintegrator beam, actually. It seems that when a Coherent beam of Tachyons interacts with any form of shielding, the beam siphons power from those shields and shifts into a highly volatile disintegration beam. Nowhere near as powerful as our PA Disintegators, much less the vaunted PPD cannons, but I am certain you can see the potential applications."

"It goes straight through shields..." Corbox said, then gave Cassius a mischievous grin.

"Sounds more like the Shields are what makes it deadly," Cassius replied. "It would otherwise go straight through a human, machine, or anything else for that matter, but when it strikes a shield its true power comes into play."

"Exactly... on both counts actually, the beam would be useless if shielding stopped it cold, but Tachyons are weak enough that shields only have just enough of an effect to make them deadly."

"Holy hell..."

"We all know how the Klington battle turned out, because our Bridge-sniping attempts were held back by those annoyingly powerful shielding systems the imperials had," General Lear continued, "But now... we have the perfect weapon to turn their own defenses against them. Counter their counter, as it were.

"We have already begun initial second-stage development, working the kinks out and such, and should have a full scale conversion for the Godulan Star Navy and Home Guard within the next few months. The first thing we realized was that we would have to use the Tachyon cannons in Torpedo form, as we would need to shut down our own shields for the weapon to work if we were to fire it directly. Torpedo form allows the weapon to travel out of the shielding and detonate in such a manner that the beam gets one shot at maximum firepower at whatever it was targeting."

"Good good good... I suppose you were just coming to us for final approval?" Cassius asked, raising an eyebrow. "It does, after all, seem as though you and your two cohorts are just itching to get everything fully started."

"Its a very good weapon, sir."

"I know that, you know that, Corbox here knew it before I did. Your defense budget is the size it is for a reason, Lear. Get it done."

"Yes sir!" Lear stated, half squealing with glee. "That information is your copy, by the way. Feel free to go over it further at your leisure." She spun on her heel and double-timed it out of the giant suite.

Cassius turned back to their disrupted game of Chess. "Ha ha, I won."

(OOC:Nice. So, umm, how are the Tachyons meant to disintergrate?)

The Shields interact with the Tachyons just enough to energize them to a surprising level. It basically turns the Tachyon beam into a plasma bolt. Impacting on solid material while in that state basically causes an explosion akin to a flux cannon blast as the Tachyons disrupt whatever matter they are incident upon. I.E. Boom.

Bump for views/questions/comments/etc

[Errm...I'm with Kyanges on this one. Aren't, if I recall correctly, tachyons merely theoretical particles capable of traveling faster than the speed of light? Hell, don't they tend to work on entirely the opposite process as normal particles; that is, the more energy one applies to them, the more they slow down? I'm just not entirely sure how it succeeds in being a weapon is all.]

Actually, that kinda works, if ya think about it.

By entering the shield, it doesn't stop the Tachyons, it makes them more powerful, slowing them down to normal-ish speeds. So it really WOULD make it seem like the Tachyons had turned into a plasma burst after passing through the shield... nothing special, just enough to do a typical amount of damage.

Bump again

Bumpification. Any more comments 'n such? Or did I explain it too well with the lead-in?

Actually, that kinda works, if ya think about it.

By entering the shield, it doesn't stop the Tachyons, it makes them more powerful, slowing them down to normal-ish speeds. So it really WOULD make it seem like the Tachyons had turned into a plasma burst after passing through the shield... nothing special, just enough to do a typical amount of damage.

are tachyons plasma based if they slow down?

Well, analogous to a plasma burst, if nothing else. I'm just going with the statement that it hits pretty much as powerful as a medium turbolaser shot, for simplicity's sake.

Well, analogous to a plasma burst, if nothing else. I'm just going with the statement that it hits pretty much as powerful as a medium turbolaser shot, for simplicity's sake.

that goes through shields, assuming they have shields... but otherwise does nothing... I can live with that...

Well, it doesn't go through shields per se.

The shields are what makes it effective. Its the interaction with the shield that turns it deadly. Its actually utterly useless to unshielded targets.

Warm summer breezes and such. But yeah, that's pretty much it... and perfect for Godulan uses...

Furtherbump

(OOC: Shields are what make is effective, that much I've gotten. You'll use these in torpedo form so you don't have to lower your shields as well, I got that too. And, in the end, it's not much more effective than a regular energy shot thing when it hits matter. But what I'm not too clear on this. If shields make it effective, that means that one will have to lower their shields, or risk making the very shot they're trying to defend against, deadly.

But as you stated above, it doesn't really go through shields. So if shields are what makes this effective, but it won't go through shields (Thereby giving me no reason to lower them anyway) , why go through all the trouble of this, instead of just shooting something more simple, and much easier? Like say, a laser bolt or something?

Cool factor maybe? Because if that's why, well, then I'm fine with that. It does sound pretty creative. Would make space RPs more interesting for sure.

I'm not sure if I explained my self too clearly, but I hope you see what I mean. That fact that shields make it deadly, but it doesn't go through shields, makes it seem like there's no point to how shields make it deadly in the first place. Why would I have to lower them, if keeping them up does nothing to me what so ever. (Other than make this thing deadly, but as stated above, it's not much more powerful than a regular weapon, once again making it seem pointless to lower shields.)

If it's not meant to make someone lower their shields, then you can simply disreguard all of the above. Does it's power increase acording to how many tachyons are released or how high powered the enemy shields are, both? Or does it just jump up in deadliness the same amount reguardless?)

That confused the hell outta me.

I'm basically saying that it doesn't just "Go Through" shields, which to me would imply that the beam essentially ignores the shields entirely. This is likely what causes most of the confusion for the others. The shielding does affect it, it just doesn't stop it, instead shifting it into something... greater.

Its not meant to make someone lower their shields. If they did that, they would fall victim to the much more powerful conventional weapons we employ.

Its a precision weapon. Striking at vulnerable spots such as heavy weapons turrets, even destroying Superlaser focusing apparatus. For ships with Outboard bridges, which seem so ridiculously prominent in this day and age, these weapons could wipe out a ship's entire command crew in a single shot.

And think of what this thing could do in the event that a Godulan fleet is laying siege to an enemy planet. They bring the planetary shield up, and we can shoot straight through. Granted of course not with nearly the amount of firepower as we would like, but we would still be doing damage.

As for your last question, the beam's power is dependent on how much energy is put into the cannon shot. The Medium Turbolaser fudge factor is basically the strength of the blast from a torpedo tipped with the cannon, but the beams can be much more powerful if fired from dedicated craft. The strength of the shielding that the beam passes through does not affect the power of the beam's second form.

(OOC: So, in the end, it's still a weapon that can go through shields? (In the way that you mean.))

Pretty much.

Bumpies... any more comments from FT nations 'n such?

Gonna put in a second IC post tomorrow.

Several weeks had passed since the initial discovery of the Tachyon weapon, and second-stage testing had reached completion well ahead of schedule. Further refinement of the Torpedo cannon process improved the power-transfer efficiency as the torpedo itself detonated, improving the strength of the beam to only slightly less powerful than a Heavy Turbolaser burst after comparative analysis.

Furthermore, because of its application as a Torpedo, refitting the Godulan StarNavy was made much more simple as all that was required was a simple ammunition switch.

Several munitions plants had received instructions and materials to refit for Tachyon Torpedo production, and full scale manufacture of the new weapons were fully underway.

Soon, everything would have a complement of the torpedoes, from Corvettes and Defensive Drones all the way up to the Archonal Command ship...

Bump for views/comments/so on so forth

Bumptasmagorical

OOC:
Four things:
1) You do know that some folks will have sheilds which are defined such that they won't create this effect, correct?

I don't think it'll work against my Barrier Feilds, for example, but I'll have to look up their description and consider the matter befor passing judgment. And the Inversion Feild would just bounce them like everything else.

2) Is the beam itself FTL? I can think of a few ways to make it lighhtspeed or sublight, but if it's FTL it will likly create issues with FTLi, and I don't think folks like FTL weapons in general.

3) How would this weapon interact with multilayered sheilding?

4) What is the bomb-pumped tachyon beam cannon's range, in torpedo form?




Otherwise, looks good; a moderatly powerful 'standard' scale weapon with, which effectivly bypasses certain defences and is employed in a specalty role.

Just don't over use it(ie spamming an enemy with 'em), or make it too powerful - atleast as a matter of course; the ability to shoot through sheilds is a powerful thing, and if not employed conservitivly it can easily become a godmod.

1) You do know that some folks will have sheilds which are defined such that they won't create this effect, correct?

My shields themselves do not generate this effect, but I'm basically fudge-factoring and saying it pretty much does that with all shields in general. For simplicity's sake more than anything.

Besides, your ships have so much armor it really wouldn't make a difference now would it? Using the Prospector vessel as an example, anyway.

2) Is the beam itself FTL? I can think of a few ways to make it lighhtspeed or sublight, but if it's FTL it will likly create issues with FTLi, and I don't think folks like FTL weapons in general.

I didn't actually make that assertion. Somebody else mentioned that and I basically said 'well, it would still work, really.'

3) How would this weapon interact with multilayered sheilding?

It would only stop at the first solid surface it came into contact with (I.E. Armor and such). Once again for simplicity's sake. This isn't a one shot kill weapon, so the world won't end if you take a shot or two in the face.

4) What is the bomb-pumped tachyon beam cannon's range, in torpedo form?

A few hundred kilometers or so. Enough to commence orbital bombardments from beyond the Planetary Shield range at least. I suppose you could say its pretty much the same range as a typical turbolaser.

Beyond this though, another reason that I stuck with the Torpedo application is that it means I only have limited ammunition. So I have to make each shot count. Less so for the big ships, of course, but the consideration is still there.

1) You do know that some folks will have sheilds which are defined such that they won't create this effect, correct?

My shields themselves do not generate this effect, but I'm basically fudge-factoring and saying it pretty much does that with all shields in general. For simplicity's sake more than anything.

Besides, your ships have so much armor it really wouldn't make a difference now would it? Using the Prospector vessel as an example, anyway.



Well, I was just using myself as an example. Thought, admittedly, I do tend to slap alot of armour onto anything expecting to see combat.

But so long as you realise that there are exceptions(to almost everything), tis all good.





2) Is the beam itself FTL? I can think of a few ways to make it lighhtspeed or sublight, but if it's FTL it will likly create issues with FTLi, and I don't think folks like FTL weapons in general.

I didn't actually make that assertion. Somebody else mentioned that and I basically said 'well, it would still work, really.'


Well, if it's FTL, you have to factor in the FTLi that some folks use, and it's important in determining plausible acuracy-at-range, as well as plausible reations.



4) What is the bomb-pumped tachyon beam cannon's range, in torpedo form?

A few hundred kilometers or so. Enough to commence orbital bombardments from beyond the Planetary Shield range at least. I suppose you could say its pretty much the same range as a typical turbolaser.

Beyond this though, another reason that I stuck with the Torpedo application is that it means I only have limited ammunition. So I have to make each shot count. Less so for the big ships, of course, but the consideration is still there.


Pretty reasonible, then; my bomb-pumped lasers have a range of 50'000 km(although when I started using them it was a small fraction of that).

Pray tell, you able to provide a few examples of these more exotic shields? Wanna know if the shields themselves are reasonable or not.

As for the FTL part, I'm given to understand that the Tachyons are FTL by nature, and affected by different things differently, so for all we know, the tachyons would just as easily completely ignore the FTLinhibitors as go up in an awe-inspiring explosion.

I'd prefer the former, personally.

How about gravity shields. Or minture black holes, such as the dovin basals in Star Wars. How would it be effected by them?