Re: New guy (Inertialess)

Michael Llaneza wrote:

> At 4:30 PM -0800 11/4/99, Jeff Miller wrote:
> >"Bell, Brian K" wrote:
> >
> >
> >Actually, I was thinking more about Lensmen.
> >
> >  >
> >
> >Weapons fire gets tricky since beams don't work at FTL speeds (if you
try, the
> >ghost of Einsein shows up and smashes your ship with a big club).  So
you have
> >to rely on inertialess missiles.  These travel until they are in
contact with
> >the enemy and then explode.	If used while not inertialess, the
missiles would
> >act as p-torps.
>
> Mmmmmmmm..... problem with that is that the ship bounces away from
> the shockwave.

I wasn't relying on the shockwave but the heat.  Maybe just fly over a
mini fission
reactor and pull the rods.  Just China Syndrome the ship....

The hardest thing for me was figuring out a way to damage someone while
going
faster than light using what we know about physics.

Maybe a tachyon beam?  You could probably only produce one while going
faster than
light and it would not effect anyone going slower than light. 
Unfortuantly, within
the ship, relative to the ship, everything is going at speeds that are
relatively
slower than light.

> The closest to a missile used in Lensman is a big
> honking shell that travels down a force field tunnel to impact a
> tractored ship. For beams, I think the ghost of Einstein blinks if
> your relative velocity to your target is < c.

Yeah, but how often is *that* going to happen.	Unless you are referring
to the
inertail velocity.  But thinking about how you can fire a beam while
going FTL
gives me a headache.  <grin>

>
> >Nope, the fun thing about inertialess is that except in an
> >*absolute* vacuum (in
> >which case the ship would go an infinite speed), inertialess ships
> >stop when the
> >stop thrusting.
> >
> >I suppose that it would be possible to eventually design a ship with
> >fine enough
> >control over thrust that it could use inertialess while at sub-light
speeds.
>
> or fine enough control over its drag. Varialble geometry spacecraft
> anyone ? FTL Solar sailers perhaps ?
>

That could do it too.

I had been thinking about shape.  I figured that Partially Airodynamic
would give
the ship a +1 on their movement multiplier.  Fully Airodynamic would
operate like
partial, the extra airodynamics would be offset by the drag of teh
lifting
surfaces.  Alternatively, I would propose another shape Needle Shaped. 
It would
give a +2 on the movement modifier but would function in an atmosphere,
it acts as
Partially Airodynamic.

>
> >The major restriction that I'm puting on them is that without
super-science,
> >they can't see much except big things that don't move and things that
have an
> >active inertialess system.  They *are* traveling faster than light
> >and the view
> >out the ports is changing far faster than most computers could
> >handle.  It also
> >keeps them from totally dominating other ships.
>
> Like stutterwarp, only worse.
>

Yep.

I want to come up with a functional, not uber movement system.

--

Jeff Miller
Program Director/Webmaster for Agamemcon IV

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