Explain Sandcasters to me?

[Condottiere]

1. Play chicken.

2. However, I kinda suspect that the pirates are going to use skiffs.

3. As regards sand casting, density of crystals per cubic metre probably is the essential measurement as to protection, or damage against personnel.

 

[Rigel Stardin]

Yeah, but think about all those kinetic energy strikes hitting their armor of those pesky salesmen space walking across to your ship and you 'clear the deck' with your trusty blunderbust. Watch as they dance as they are swept clear of your hull. Those few that managed to lock on with their magnetic boots, now have broke ankles to think about. Listen to the curses and screams over the coms, oh that music to my ears as I chamber the anti-armor round. Boy are they going to love this...

 

[Spinward Flow]

those pesky salesmen space walking across to your ship and you 'clear the deck' with your trusty blunderbust. Watch as they dance as they are swept clear of your hull. Those few that managed to lock on with their magnetic boots, now have broke ankles to think about. Listen to the curses and screams over the coms, oh that music to my ears as I chamber the anti-armor round. Boy are they going to love this...

Scrape 'em off, Jim!

 

[kilemall]

But it's not going to hit anything of interest because the ranges are so big.

At best, an incoming missile may hit the cloud on its way in, then you start having all sorts of interesting potential kinetic energy collision issues. But I have a low opinion of "impact" missiles in space combat anyway.

It would be a curious analysis of how dense a cloud (of anything) would have to be to be at all effective at draining energy from an incoming laser barrage.

Why not just blast out droplets of LH, for example?

One of the issues is the lasers can come in different bands of EM wavelength, so a sand canister built for visual lasers won’t be effective for UV lasers.

Same thing for reflec itself, I just figure it is a heat suit.

 

[Condottiere]

Aerosols, in space; which sorta implies gas substituted for crystals.

In any case, it appears that ecks rayed laser variants have disappeared in the current edition.

 

[mike wightman]

Sandcasters are TL7, they are improved at TL8 and then again at TL10.

They fire a cloud of crystals (and we know that that cloud is dense enough close to the ship to be the equivalent of a VRF gauss gun and that it spreads out as a cone).

FF&S adds the details that EM fields may be used to keep the cloud from dispersing too much (TL8 improvement perhaps)and at higher TLs a gravitic field is used (TL10 for this would tie in with HG).

 

[Condottiere]

Which instrument is projecting that electro magnetic field?

Actually, if such a field exists, using them as buckshot would probably ensure they stay together, rather than disperse.

 

[aramis]

Which instrument is projecting that electro magnetic field?

Actually, if such a field exists, using them as buckshot would probably ensure they stay together, rather than disperse.

Were it not for the expense and TL, one could posit a combined repulsor and tractor beam... (TL13 required, and those are in bays only...)

 

[Condottiere]

Like Magneto, if it remains cohesive and intact, you could have it moving about.

Which sort of begs the question of whether you could have a long term force field/shield consisting of magnetized particles.

 

[Ezra]

I've always felt sandcasters were Traveller's attempt to speculate a hard-science fiction iteration of the ubiquitous "shields" that always exist in fantastic sci-fi (i.e., Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.).

 

[Grav_Moped]

I've always felt sandcasters were Traveller's attempt to speculate a hard-science fiction iteration of the ubiquitous "shields" that always exist in fantastic sci-fi (i.e., Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.).

And extrapolated from screening smoke, countermeasures chaff and flare, and naval chaff dispensers.

 

[kilemall]

Like Magneto, if it remains cohesive and intact, you could have it moving about.

Which sort of begs the question of whether you could have a long term force field/shield consisting of magnetized particles.

2300 did.

 

[Rigel Stardin]

So did Robotech.

 

[Condottiere]

Was that what the Bridge Bunnies were waving about?

 

[Rigel Stardin]

If, I remember correctly (Way early in the series) they used trackball mouses to move the point defense barriers around?