Here's the first instance of the usage of the infamous Wave Motion Gun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BhvLvQ08RM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BhvLvQ08RM
The Grand-daddy of spinal guns.
- Thread starter Blue Ghost
- Start date
Easterner9504
SOC-13
Hard Oints
Must be tough having all weapons forward or dorsal leaving ventral pretty much undefended.
Must be tough having all weapons forward or dorsal leaving ventral pretty much undefended.
At least they had a reason for it.
Not a good reason admittedly. But still a reason.
Ignoring the reason, having a WWII superbattleship as a space vessel is also kind of cool.
AT,
True, that.
What really galled me back when Starblazers first broadcast was the fact that IJN Yamato suffered a main magazine detonation as she capsized and sank. No one needed to dive on the wreck to know that fact either, pictures taken from the circling US plane and escorting Japanese ships make it as plain as the freakin' huge mushroom cloud that resulted.
The wreck is in two widely separated chunks and nearly a third of the ship is actually missing, literally blown to miscellaneous scrap when the 18.1 inch magazine went off.
And yet in Starblazers, the wreck is repaired, refitted, and launched into space.
Sheesh...
Regards,
Bill
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
Hey, its Anime!!
You were expecting something written for people above 10 years old? Never happen.
You were expecting something written for people above 10 years old? Never happen.
BB242,
Written for 10-year-olds and obsessed over by alleged adults the world over.
Regards,
Bill
Lycanorukke
SOC-13
Would it class as a spinal mount though?
From what I vaguely remember (well it was 25+ years ago) the magical 'wave motion gun' was the 'wave motion engine' blasting its exhaust forward instead of out the back after they overcharged the engines. I wouldn't call the laser driven photon drive from the Kzinti lesson a 'spinal mount' but it made just as big a mess when the Kzinti ship got hosed with the 'tail flame'.
A trav fusion drive could have the same effect if the range wasn't so short compared to trav ranged weapons.
From what I vaguely remember (well it was 25+ years ago) the magical 'wave motion gun' was the 'wave motion engine' blasting its exhaust forward instead of out the back after they overcharged the engines. I wouldn't call the laser driven photon drive from the Kzinti lesson a 'spinal mount' but it made just as big a mess when the Kzinti ship got hosed with the 'tail flame'.
A trav fusion drive could have the same effect if the range wasn't so short compared to trav ranged weapons.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Yeah, that's what I had it pegged as too. The old HG1 fusion torch maneuver drive was usable as a weapon... if I recall correctly it had a USP = G (kind of low imo, not really "spinal" threat level) with a range of short (in HG that's decent) but you only got one shot since it automatically put you at long range. Something like that. But seeing this again for the first time in ages got me thinking I'd like to see it in Traveller 
I'd say yes.
1. The big gun is used to solve ALL problems. Enemy ships ("Fire the wave motion gun!"). Enemy planets ("Fire the wave motion gun!"). Lost ships cat ("Fire the wave motion gun!").
2. It is really big, and almost stupid amounts of space are taken up by it on board.
3. It can be used to destroy nearly anything.
4. Based on "supertech" of one kind or another. Fires faster then light handwavium particles[1] similar to both PA and Meson spinals.
[1] Which can be seen slowly propogating. It's a freakin tachyon laser - that you can see move.
Wow!
Nice stuff, thanks!
Nice stuff, thanks!
Im sitting in the breakroom of my new job, surrounded by female Hispanic employees, and doing my best not to break out in laughter as I read this post on my phone
The Excalibur's Vorlon - based main gun from Crusade was the same kind of thing: a ruddy great ubergun that they fired at the end of the show to destroy whatever alien freakishness they were facing off against that week.
It had a big Achilles' heel, namely the ship was paralysed for one minute after firing (which begs the side question of why they never thought of installing a bank of backup chemical batteries good to keeping the ship mobile for that one minute main systems were otherwise out) but basically, when the big gun fired, the problem was always solved.
Beats me why they didn't ever just fire off the gun at the start of the show and get it over with, most times.
beowulf2044
SOC-12
Same reason they always waited to the last minute to asselble into Voltron, or Titan Maximum, or whatever the heck that Multi-Vehicle-into-One-Big-A-Anthropomorphic-Thingy was.
Lycanorukke
SOC-13
Beats me why they didn't ever just fire off the gun at the start of the show and get it over with, most times.
They do it on any show with a 'BFG'.
Crewman: "Enemy is right in front of us! Fifty quadrillion ships of the Zog empire. Flying in the 'sitting duck' formation"
Captain: "Hmm, are they doing anything?"
Crewman: ""Yes, they are saying they'll blow us up, that your mother wears combat boots, and that they are not scared of us due to their new aluminium-foil ship hull technology."
Captain: "Okay, fire peashooters! Warning shot only"
Crewman: ""Um, why not fire the BFG?"
Captain: "Cause we have to fill 45 minutes of emo-angst, faux sexual tension, boring character stories, advertising and technobabble. And at the end of being bored out of their skull with that crap, the audience wants to see someone die, and we can't afford the CGI for two space battles".
Crewman: ""Oh okay. *cough* Peashooters sir? It will take 5 minutes to chew the spitballs and I have a dead mother! Waaah"
Captain: "Dont over do it...pace yourself...we still have 40mins to go"
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Madarin Dude
SOC-13
I guess there is someone else who is not a big fan of Anime'. I have a love hate relationship with it I like stylized toons but a whole genre comping the same style is different thing again.
Lycanorukke
SOC-13
No, but I remember the singing which could generously be described as "A bag of cats being fed through a woodchipper".
o:Thinking on other 'Big space guns' from various media though, since a spinal mount is 'a gun with a ship built around it' what would the reverse be known as? Ie: Ships with a gun built around it? Things like the Behemoth from Wing Commander 3, where the 'ship' is basically a gun with an engine and cockpit strapped on the back?
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