AI War Beta 5.090 "Fish Or Cut Bait" Released!

[keith.lamothe]

A waffle at relativistic speeds would still be considered a fairly effective weapon, methinks.

An atmosphere would be an effective defense, I think.  Though it may result instead in a fairly large area being bombarded with high-velocity superheated waffle-plasma.

[Mánagarmr]

An atmosphere would be an effective defense, I think.  Though it may result instead in a fairly large area being bombarded with high-velocity superheated waffle-plasma.

Well, I was mostly thinking ship to ship. For bombarding planets...hmm...I don't know? Coconuts?

[Draco18s]

A waffle at relativistic speeds would still be considered a fairly effective weapon, methinks.

Paint chips at orbital speeds are fairly effective at ruining real-world space equipment.  Fortunately rare, but it has happened:

In June 1983, the windscreen of the shuttle Challenger had to be replaced after it was chipped by a paint fleck just 0.01 inch (0.3 mm) across that hit at 2.4 miles (4 km) per second.

http://earthsky.org/space/space-debris-a-growing-problem

As for bombarding planets: tungsten rebar.  If I recall correctly, a hunk of tungsten about 4 inches in diameter and four feet long would impact the surface with the equivalent of a small nuke.

[KDR_11k]

Probably applies to waffles and pancakes too.

[keith.lamothe]

Probably applies to waffles and pancakes too.

It's a bit different when the relativistic-velocity-projectile encounters the atmosphere coming in from the outside (much lower pressure zone), as opposed to suddenly popping up from within a surface-level pressure zone.

It'd probably still walk the batter, though.

[Aklyon]

A waffle at relativistic speeds would still be considered a fairly effective weapon, methinks.

How does it compare to the Relativistic Pancake?

[Draco18s]

A waffle at relativistic speeds would still be considered a fairly effective weapon, methinks.

How does it compare to the Relativistic Pancake?

Relatively similar.

[Mermel]

While everyone is speculating about "realistic" space games and weapon mechanics, I really just think about steampunk all the time
It's pretty much that, projecting current technology unchanged into the future. A bit like the 60 year old thought, that computers would soon be twice as fast and only four times as big, making it feasable to have one or two per nation for whatever....

Whomever is actually interested in some real world "magitech", should look for Warp drive theory after Alcubierre and Van den Broeck (You might have heard of it, the thing that fries everything in front of it with a giant radiation wave when slowing down ).
It was just recategorized from unrealistic to theoretically possible in the last symposium of the 100 year starship initiative. Happened last month.
It's a NASA/DARPA funded Project, so no need to worry about the credibility of the whole thing.

Whomever is interested in that project, here's a link
http://100yss.org/

(Disclaimer: The Drive is a theoretical possibility, the 100yss a partly governmental funded project with no guarantee to bring you to vega in your lifetime )

[Draco18s]

This drive?
Yeah, comes with some nasty side effects.

[Faulty Logic]

But even with stl empire establishment, ftl information transmission would be huge.
FTL. Faster Than Light. This is truly astounding. The implications are numerous and fundamental, but mostly awesome. This is the biggest "welcome to the sci-fi future" since the internet. Yes, I am gushing. FTL.

Not in my lifetime? Depends how fast (indefinitely) life-prolonging medical discoveries progress.  And whether planetwide scientific setbacks (eg nuclear war) occur.

[Mermel]

Yepp, but it's pretty fresh and the math is advancing rapidly around that.
And I positively know that the creation of negative energy densities was already done, so that part is also practical possible, though by now not on any relevant scale. That one is called the Casimir Effect. Don't know if there are other ways of producing that by now, but as practical applications besides a theoretical warp drive are not thought of right now, not so much research is put into that area. It's pretty exotic to begin with anyway.

edit: yes, fundamental implications... would make some pretty neat reusable weapons by the way. Want to fry a planet? Short Warp jump directly to it... so much for the need of orbital bombardment or weaponry altogether on your ship. Who needs that when your drive can handle it already? XD

And for the medical advances... don't know where you are living, but we got some pretty neat particle accelerators for cutting within a body without opening it. Makes tumors that are conventionally inoperable a cakewalk. Too bad those behemoths are so damn expensive to operate, the companies and government are fighting about one and a half year now on how to actually use these effectively. Three build... one at work... sometimes :/

P.S.: I never saw a thread derail that hard and still keep going

[Aklyon]

There are far harder derailed threads, Mermel. One on bay12 once got thrown from spambot to forum game, and then when that thread was deleted it was pulled back together sans-spam because people hadn't been bored of it yet.

[Cinth]

7/7 take all challenge... well you be the judge.

[Faulty Logic]

Apparently you missed the "we lost the war" and "don't let the AI fear you" memos.

[keith.lamothe]

Apparently you missed the "we lost the war" and "don't let the AI fear you" memos.

Yea, I think the AI just filed a "Human Player Did Not Get Memo" bug report.