mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Ships will need big radiators to deal with the waste heat from lasers and PA weapons.
Hard Space Redux
- Thread starter Golan2072
- Start date
Eh maybe they can use what little they've gleaned from the Antediluvian tech to send the waste heat somewhere into another dimension?
At least if you want a possible reason for why we don't see radistors?
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Which might be an issue as I'll explain. (Note to the Usual Suspects; I wrote might be an issue.)
On one hand, they would be cool and would definitely signal that the setting "Is not your father's OTU..."
On the other hand, comm lag will be an issue. It's already an issue now. Generally speaking about current drone use, "combat" drones are controlled "in theatre" while "recon" drones are controlled from as far away as CONUS due to the reaction times "combat" drones require. Of course, the comm lag issue is moot if the drone is partially or fully autonomous.
Suspicions that semi/fully autonomous combat drones have already seen use have led to calls for international treaties banning or limiting their use. Even if such treaties come into being, they won't be an issue for your setting.
What will be an issue in you setting is the previous use of drones in WW3.
You've mentioned several times that WW3 has left a number of "cultural hangovers" among the people of the setting. If WW3 featured the heavy use of "autonomous kill vehicles" operating on the ground, in the air, on the sea, and under the sea the people of the setting might squeamish about using them post-war. Sensor drones would be one thing, armed drones would be something else.
I can always add radiators to the new ship designs. I recall, for example, Zozer's Orbital 2100 having them for nuclear thermal rockets (NTRs).
Potentially, the compromise here would to use sensor and decoy drones as one of the ship's weapon systems.
I do see the point about fearing fully autonomous attack bots...
Autonomous kill vehicles or AKVs are a "plot point" of sorts in GURPS Transhuman Space. All the major powers have them in their "inventory', mostly as space craft but some are configured for use on Earth or other "environments". Nobody, even the powers who have them, trust them too much if at all. That's due in part because an unknown number of "orphaned" AKVs to the defeated bloc called the "Transpacific Socialist Alliance" still are skulking around making occasional attacks long after the end of the war which that bloc lost.
Whether those AKVs were forgotten during the TSP's collapse or deliberately allowed to slip their leash as a bit of revenge isn't known.
You could easily spin similar ideas especially considering your setting's various "secret/forbidden research" angles. While AKVs or even semi-AKVs wouldn't be on store shelves waiting for the PCs to buy, they could be in the dark between stars waiting for the PCs themselves!
This also risks the SKYNET scenario. Since general AIs are unstable as of yet, their response to situations would be unknown, or at least uncertain. This makes military AIs risky.
Of course, there are security bots and even warbots, but typically with limited autonomy. A fully sentient warbot is a major risk.
That's the idea. It's risky, so risky that the military of "mainstream" groups will never even consider developing it let alone deploying it.
Fringe groups won't have the same concerns.
A nasty surprise in some remote or forgotten lab tucked away in some backwater system, wouldn't you think? Sometimes, they may not have been built by man...
BRJN
SOC-12
This Chamax Plague is made of metal...
Yes, TSAO has similar technology called "SI", or "simulated intelligence". Not self-aware but can cheat the Turing test in certain fields. SI II/Advanced SI can cheat the Turing test in a wide array of areas, but again - not self-aware.
What term might Hard Space have for such technology you think?
This is starting to sound like the Remnant from Mass Effect: Andromeda - alien robots left to perform unfathomable tasks after their masters have disappeared.This Chamax Plague is made of metal...
There are several problems with fighters, whether manned or drone: I'm not sure a nuclear lightbulb can compete with a target equipped with a torch drive, and torch drives are too large for small craft... So, at most, the "drones" used in Hard Space would be smart missiles with limited (chemical) fuel but great acceleration.
Why not have ships launch some sort of autonomous missile bus (armed with some sort of non-missile weapon for additional PD) that can send out smart missiles?
In addition, the smaller size and lighter weight of such drones should allow for them to have higher accelerations, but shorter fuel time, than the torchships they're being fired against?
I mean they don't have squishy human pilots, life support, etc to worry about so they can be flung out electromagnetically from a ship, and have much higher accelerations, than normal ships, or so I imagine?
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Epicenter raised an interesting question - is WWIII necessary for Hard Space? I am still undecided on this. Will climate instability, pollution, and government insolvency achieve the three goals I've outlined above?
While a world war is not necessary because the Four Horsemen will produce goals you want, one of those Horsemen is War.
If by "World War 3" you mean a war featuring all the major powers more or less divvied up into two opposing blocs fighting each other in a war at the same time, you don't need a WW3.
If by a "World War 3" you mean all or most of the major powers divvied up into several blocs or acting alone while fighting several wars around the same time, you can have a WW3.
Look at the Seven Years' War for example. It's arguably the first world war in that some of the European powers fought each other in theaters across the globe. It's also not a world war in our 21st Century perception because it was not a a two-sided or binary war. All the European powers didn't divide into two opposing blocs which then (almost) stayed together (almost) up until the point where one bloc was beaten. Instead the various powers joined, participated, and then left the general war as it suited them. A few powers also engaged in peripheral wars which were only linked to the general war because the other power involved happened to be fighting in the general war at the same time.
Instead of a world war, you could have a world at war. That is several regional wars occurring around the same time which are only linked in hindsight because one or more of the participants had been fighting, were fighting, or would be fighting somewhere else in another war around the same time.
Borrowing an overused geopolitical term, your setting's WW3 could be a multipolar war instead of a binary war.
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Daidoji Dave
SOC-12
Golan, I'm curious - are you planning on using only the book careers for character creation, or are you planning on coming up with some of your own?
