Re: Star Trek Weapon

DracSpy@aol.com wrote:
> How would you represent the weapon TR-1(or what ever it was, from
ST:DS9) in
> DS2/SG2, it has a very long range, does not need a LOS to the target,
you can
> put the bulled into the targets most vital spot, auto kill? auto hit?
all
> board? very dangerus.  Think about it in space battles, point and
click and
> the fleet commander is dead.	What do you think?

	Well, my two cents is that it sounds jazzy, but it makes for
	a boring game. Both sides take turns announcing which enemy
	unit they automatically kill til they run out of units.

	Star Trek is famous for not examining the consequences of
	the powerful gadgets they introduce.

	In Larry Niven's "The Theory and Practice of Teleportation"
	he points out that a transporter teleportation device
	which does not need a transmitter/receptor pair
	will destroy the civilizations that make them.

	If you create a teleporter that does not need a receptor,
	then you immediately start teleporting nuclear weapons
	over the vital areas of any enemy nations.
	Until the enemy develops or swipes the secret from the
	first nation.
	Then they proceed to bomb each other until they
	are reduced to a technology level insufficent to
	keep the teleporters (or their civilization) working.

	If the enemy takes too long to develop/swipe teleportation
	technology, they'll become sufficiently frightened to 
	push their big red button and trigger mutual nuclear
	armageddon.

	Shield that prevent enemy teleporting will just ensure that
	anything not covered is targeted. Since you cannot shield
	everything, the slide into barbarism is merely slowed down a
bit.

	If you create a teleporter that does not need a transmitter,
	you can steal anything you want from the enemy. And soon
	he will push his big red button.

	So when designing a background for an SF story (or game),
	adding teleportation without transmitter/receptors 
	creates a planet reduced to Road Warrior technology
	or reduced to a glassy ball that glows blue in the dark.