Doing away with Meson Guns

[atpollard]

Personal Meson Guns

I think Traveller combat really needs a personal meson weapon.

... Bad guy in combat armor takes a hostage to use as a shield. That's no problem for our Police sniper, he just uses his TL 16 prototype Meson LAG to shoot through the hostage, through the armor and deliveres 10D6 points of damage directly INSIDE the bad guy. :toast: The bad guy is stopped. The hostage is safe. Justice is served. Peace is restored. mega:

 

[aramis]

I'm sorry if I was a bit elliptical, but I really can't see the point you're making here. My point is simply that both the meson gun and the MRL are going to require someone to communicate with them to call in fire beyond LOS. Its a wash. Whats good for the goose must be good for the gander. Either the commo can be traced, in which case the Meson Gun is just as vulnerable as the MRL (and more vulnerable than a remote MRL), or the commo can't be traced in which case we don't have an issue in either circumstance. In which case we are back to the cost effectiveness argument. Given all other things being equal, is a battlefield meson accelerator better value for money than the alternatives, if so, why? (note I'm not talking about starship combat and never was).

Meson comm can only be chaffed with meson screens.

Laser, tight-beam radio, and maser comms can all be chaffed with simple materials, and the FDC then found. Laser is the easiest to chaff; aerosols. Just watch for the particles experienceing energy dump and you can back-line on the data sender. Maser is the same, but different aerosols. Radio's a bit harder to chaff, but less focussed and easier to DF upon.

Meson weapons need FDC as well, but if you've meson weapons, odds are you've meson comms...and that LOS can be underground, thus preventing screen blocking/chaffing.

 

[Icosahedron]

I think Traveller combat really needs a personal meson weapon.

I had a character use one once.

Confronted with the heavily armoured bad guys, he takes out a pocket laser and fires it.

Bad guys guffaw as the damage from the device is absolutely zip and my character runs away.

They don't even bother to give chase, they just draw and ready their personal cannons.

What they don't realise is that the pocket laser is a designator for a Battlefield Meson Gun mounted on a remotely piloted grav sled way above the cloud base. Moments later, as I continue to hot foot it away from ground zero, the Meson Gun processes its target acquisition and the bad guys are :toast:

The GM took it off me though.

 

[The Thing]

They already are using mesons for this. Look here:

http://www.triumf.ca/welcome/pion_trtmt.html

to see for yourself.

Ahh, but do their meson beams explode at a certain distance from the emitters?:rofl:

No, seriously thanks for the link, it makes my little theory more plausible.

 

[The Thing]

I think Traveller combat really needs a personal meson weapon.

... Bad guy in combat armor takes a hostage to use as a shield. That's no problem for our Police sniper, he just uses his TL 16 prototype Meson LAG to shoot through the hostage, through the armor and deliveres 10D6 points of damage directly INSIDE the bad guy. :toast: The bad guy is stopped. The hostage is safe. Justice is served. Peace is restored. mega:

OK, now all we need is a way to reach grandfather and convince him to buuild us a few...:rofl:

 

[jec10]

Meson comm can only be chaffed with meson screens.

Laser, tight-beam radio, and maser comms can all be chaffed with simple materials, and the FDC then found. Laser is the easiest to chaff; aerosols. Just watch for the particles experienceing energy dump and you can back-line on the data sender. Maser is the same, but different aerosols. Radio's a bit harder to chaff, but less focussed and easier to DF upon.

Meson weapons need FDC as well, but if you've meson weapons, odds are you've meson comms...and that LOS can be underground, thus preventing screen blocking/chaffing.

What rule says that only forward observers for meson weapons get to use the TL15 comms technology? Equally, remember that in CT/Striker the smallest meson communicator weighs half a ton. It will have to be on a vehicle. Not hell of a stealthy for the poor forward observer using it regardless of whether he is calling in fire from a meson weapon or conventional artillery.

As said, the comms detection issue is a red herring, because each weapon system can use the same comms back to the FDC. It makes absolutely no difference to a comparison between one highly expensive and power hungry battlefield meson accelerator and dozens of cheap and nasty disposable MRLs at TL15.

 

[pendragonman]

What rule says that only forward observers for meson weapons get to use the TL15 comms technology? Equally, remember that in CT/Striker the smallest meson communicator weighs half a ton. It will have to be on a vehicle. Not hell of a stealthy for the poor forward observer using it regardless of whether he is calling in fire from a meson weapon or conventional artillery.

In my real-life experience with FOs, they don't get very far from their vehicle anyway. Stealth isn't a real issue, unless the FO is with straight leg infantry, which normally calls in their own fire support. Even an M557 or M113 can carry a half-ton com gadget, especially if it gives more secure comms to the FDC. And, tracking the comms back to the FDC requires the ability to detect meson comms, no easy trick.

 

[Scott Martin]

They already are using mesons for this. Look here:

http://www.triumf.ca/welcome/pion_trtmt.html

to see for yourself.

the down side to this, of course is that if you want to stop the meson beam, just put something dense in front of it (like say, a sheet of steel)

That pesky real world getting in the way of traveller handwavium. The real issue with Meson accellerators as weapons (and why I don't use them IMTU) is that anything that strongly interacts with matter (which by definition you need to be able to do to be usable as a weapon) will interact with armour *first*, so at the very least you have a complicated interaction between decay time *and* materials interaction. I would expect collapsed matter (SD anyone?) to make this even more of a penetration problem.

As handwavium I suppose you could "calibrate" your meson gun to the armour on the target, but this would be an issue if the armour was more or less armoured than expected (and Q-ships would be a real PITA to a meson armed corsair...)

Scott Martin

 

[whartung]

The Handwavium-238 that's in the Meson Gun lets you pin the emergence of the Mesons inside the armor, that's the magic of it. You beam the bomb in to the ship ala Star Trek, almost. The plan is that Mesons themselves are itty bitty things that don't interact with matter, but when they decay, they turn in to other particles/energy that DOES interact with matter. Then you speed them up to relativistic velocities to delay the decay of the particles until they've reached some point in 3-D space. If that point is inside of a ship, it bypasses the armor.

I think the way TNE handles them is pretty good. Basically you get a free pass through the armor and hit inside the ship, but it's delivered as damage value just like anything else (say, a Particle Accelerator). The difference being that it doesn't have to penetrate armor FIRST before it goes off. But I think it's fair that once it DOES penetrate and go off (i.e. it becomes a damage value), then it's normal damage working its way through the ship. So, if you have armor INSIDE the ship (say around the PPlant), the damage from the Meson hit would then have to penetrate THAT armor, since at this point it's simply a normal, everyday explosion vs enriched Handwavium.

The funny thing, tho, is taken to the extreme, you'd end up with ships with little armor (I mean, why bother, it doesn't DO anything any more) and big Meson Guns and Meson Screens. But if they ever engaged some low tech PA and Nuke wielding barbarians, their ships wouldn't hold up as well.

CT/Striker I think treated Meson damage differently.

 

[aramis]

Handled differently, but used the same handwave.

Real mesons DO interact other than in decay, or so we've been told.

The Meson used in the Meson Gun doesn't interact, but does decay to ones that do; it's not a real-world known meson yet. But it is the handwave in 6 editions...

And armor defends against more than weapons... most radiations are altered by thick armors, and many stopped. (a few become MORE dangerous with thin armors...)

 

[The Thing]

Neutrinos can penetrate several light years worth of solid lead. Fact, not SF.

So maybe they've got a meson that acts like a neutrino in some ways.

 

[Scott Martin]

Yup neutrinos can penetrate anything, because they don't interact with it. Feel free to zap me with whatever size neutrino cannon you want, since it won't *do* anything to me.

Traveller's meson guns try to both interact and not interact with matter, and that's really a no-go from my point of view. Schrodingers particle perhaps?

Scott Martin

 

[aramis]

Hardly, Scott. Just unstable neutrinos.

And the australian article points out that the mesons they use (pi mesons, as does traveller) interact weakly UNTIL THEY DECAY, where they do interact strongly.

Neutrinos, BTW, DO interact with matter. Just at ridiculously low rates. (Sci Am, Discover, Science, and other credible outlets have all had articles on measurement of neutrinos and how they do interact, and how propylene glycol is one the substances they react with more than others....)

 

[Anthony]

Hardly, Scott. Just unstable neutrinos.

And the australian article points out that the mesons they use (pi mesons, as does traveller) interact weakly UNTIL THEY DECAY, where they do interact strongly.

As pi mesons are mesons, they interact through the strong force, which means pi0 mesons have roughly the same penetration as neutrons, and pi+/pi- have roughly the same penetration as protons.

 

[Antony]

A very interesting discussion. Using FF&S1 I designed a meson artillery sled at TL11. It does not do a huge amount of damage but is does have a 3,000km short range. How would that stack up against the MRLs? What would be vulnerable would be the FOs. At the TLs I normally use IMTU they would probably use Maser comms via relays and cheap disposable satellites.

What I really like about my Meson Gun Sled is its ability to give a shock to anything in orbit. See it at
http://www.skaran.net/banners/equipment/vehicles/alston/thunder.html