Good post; I had never read that. Where's that "universe document", btw? I'd like to read the whole thing.
Deus wrote:1) Get rid of electrogravitics. It's bullshit, fake science. We don't need that kind of magic outside of FTL. Using EM to defend against particle weapons is fine of course though.
100% agreed; but let's elaborate for the benefit of less science-aware readers:
JackS originally described "shields" as being some kind of "space-time deformations", more effective against kinetic weapons, in fact, that against beams. I took him to task about explaining these deformations. I was not aware of this document, and it seems now obvious that he did think about it a bit and changed the working description. In this document he speaks of "electro-gravitic shear forces". That doesn't satisfy me in the least. The term "forces" is used here in its most un-scientific, star-trekkish manner, like the infamous, offensive term "force field". Force is what results from the interaction between a field and an object, such as a magnetic field and a magnetic material. It doesn't make sense to speak of "forces" as if they were floating vectors without an object to apply to. Describing shields as "shear forces" of any nature is absurd. Perhaps describing shields as "fields that cause shear forces on matter moving through them" would be more acceptable. But even doing so would not suffice:
The problem is that deflecting a kinetic object implies accelerating it away from its trajectory, so that by the time it would be reaching its target it would have moved far enough off its intended trajectory as to miss. But if we consider this "miss distance" and apply
and
such that
we see that not only f needs to increase linearly with m to achieve a given deflection distance s, but it also needs to increase with the square of the inverse of the time the projectile spends interacting with the shield; such that deflecting a fast, kinetic projectile, either the shield should be kilometers in radius to increase that t, or involve ridiculously strong forces.
Now, suppose we
could produce ridiculously strong forces... What would they rest against? Something needs to act as an anchor point for a force, and if this were some kind of electromagnet, for instance, it means the reaction force would act upon the coil, which would be anchored on a core; and the question begs itself: would these be made of stronger materials than the projectiles being deflected?
Furthermore, the ridiculousness of the forces involved is such that both: the kinetic projectile AND the coils, cores, or whatever provides the anchor for the produced deflecting force, would at least be liquified, if not vaporized.
In other words, speaking of any kind of "field" that deflects kinetic munitions boils down to assuming that forces as strong as those involved at the instant when a depleted uranium shell strikes a tank's armor could somehow be purposely produced at a distance off the armor, without reactive force consequences, AND originating somehow from a uniformly distributed "field" that surrounds the whole ship, as opposed to a concentrated, directed field.
It boggles the mind that something so absurd would be seriously contemplated by anybody; --least of all someone educated like JackS.
I think what this belies is an inverted priority paradigm: The *what* comes before the *how*, generally. It seems to me that JackS simply considered shields to be a necessity, like FTL, and then groped hopelessly for ways to explain them.
The same is evident when he tackles weapon systems other than kinetic: a "Particle and plasma weapons are a given; let's try and explain them now: ..." -kind of paradigm.
To his credit, though, he explored some of the absurd assumptions, such as being able to accelerate neutrons, or keeping plasma together as "bolts" possessing their own confinement fields such as would be needed to avoid their natural tendency to quick dispersal as they travel towards their target.
EDIT:
The "ball lightning" idea is interesting. (Current theory in ball lightning is that it's a soliton wave. Look up "soliton" in wikipedia.) But we must still question the usefulness of throwing balls of plasma, in the first place.
((Not to mention the question of what would make being hit by a bolt of plasma feel like more than an open-hand slap; --perhaps a "hair raising experience".))
As to the why this has been his modus operandi, I don't know; but I suspect it's either a reluctance to change UTCS game data already produced based on fantasy terms; or a perceived need to have these specific types offensive and defensive systems in order for a space game to exist or be playable and fun; or both.
But you can't explain fantasy using science: Fantasy is basically undefeatable. People who know neither the meaning of "force" nor of "field" decide to put the two words together into "force field", and that's completely meaningless. Science condemns such horrors; it does NOT explain them. The same goes for people who have no idea what a neutron is, and a fraction of an idea what a gun is, and come up with "neutron gun". Science doesn't *want* to explain a neutron gun; it wants to laugh at it. Suppose instead of trying to accelerate neutrons we'd set up a proton accelerator and then cause them to emit a positron and turn into neutrons while in flight, somehow. What would a stream of neutrons achieve, anyways? Make parts of the target radioactive? Kill the pilot slowly, over years afterwards, from exposure?
I question the need to support, abide by, and represent such fantasy terms. I question the assumption that absurdities are necessary, in general. Some absurdities, such as FTL, such as being able to fully radiate excess heat, etceteras, may be hard to live without; but I see no need for shields, no need for "electrogravitics", no need for plasma weapons or neutron guns or tractor/repulsor beams or "inertial compensators".
So, I think we need to use an ax first, to tackle the bulk of all this huge amount of crap; --and a scalpel maybe much later.
R.E. fantasy ~?~ playability/fun: Donno where the idea comes from. I doubt a technology allowing you to fly over obstacles would make car racing games more fun; but someone could argue that being unable to avoid an imminent crash would be "not fun". Such was the typical mental process in Hellcat's head at all times... As I said to him once in chat, paraphrasing myself: "Once we *really* conquer space, as in mining asteroids, and we have millions of people livig in hundreds of space stations around the solar system, we WILL have pirates; we WILL have national and corporate space-born militaries and paramilitaries, etceteras. And it WILL be "fun", --or make for fun reading at least. And yet, there will be no inertial compensators or tractor beams or neutron guns or goblydook shields involved. So, all we have to figure out is how, in realistic terms, things will play out." I.O.W., we don't need to assume that the future reality will be boring, and that only fantasy can be fun. I think we humans are bound by nature to make our lives fun, one way or the other. Of course, we did bore ourselves to death more and more since the 1960's, but the ongoing economic collapse is probably a natural adjustment, among other things: Enough of the recent trend towards safety and comfort and attendant loss of liberty; now we'll value liberty more than comfort, as shown in Thailand, Greece, Kyrgistan, etceteras; --I think that's a prelude to what's to come around the world.
But I'm getting side-tracked. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that instead of implicitly assuming that reality will be boring in the future, therefore fantasy technologies are necessary, therefore we should have them first, then figure how they work; we could more simply and profitably assume that reality will be fun in the future, and try to figure out how it will play out. ((And stop being copy-cats... Just because most space fantasies have "shields" doesn't mean that they are mandatory.))