Mesons and the ground combat picture

[epicenter00]

how big is a deep meson site? no idea. but lets just say it's nice and big, 100,000 D-tons, with all the support facilities, defensive meson screens, emergency power generation, ect. I did the maths, once, to work out how big 100,000 Dtons is, and the answer is actually about the size of the old Worlds Trade Centre towers.

This is just a theory of mine, but I'd say that a meson screen probably would leave a pretty tell-tale signature, allowing targets to pinpoint the meson gun quickly. It seems more likely that they don't have screens and use the difficulty of detection as their primary defense.

If you're using the not-so-effective canon meson screens, your deep site meson gun can't really "dodge" incoming fire anyway, so those screens would be pretty questionable. More likely is that meson guns probably are in a 'complex' with gun sites separated by many kilometers (drilling tunnels is likely to be vastly faster, cheaper, and safer than today with fusion and anti-grav so cheap and accessible); the trick would simply be to operate the guns from a remote location. A single "gun crew" could operate multiple guns this way from a low signature site. Even if your enemies locate and destroy one gun, there's a few more where that came from.

 

[jec10]

I'm not convinced by triangulation, at least for the meson weapons as described in the GDW OTU. I'm sure there was a rule somewhere that said to only take sensor hits on the HG damage table when fighting an action against deep site mesons. Unfortunately I can't find it!

But the canon seems clear that you're really going after sensors and powerplants in order to take out a deep site meson.

I think I'm right in saying it is only in MT that the DGP lads dreamed up densitometers that could locate something as small as a meson gun 1km down. In TNE that was dialled right back and they became survey instruments again like in the original DGP Grand Survey for CT. The whole neutrino sensor thing was another DGP creation that lasted until an actual nuclear physicist on the old TML pointed out the realities of how large a sensor you'd need to get anything like the specificity the MT neutrino sensor achieved. Again, they became system survey instruments only.

 

[mike wightman]

There is a new explanation for "meson guns" made possible by T5.

T5 has grav array personal/vehicle weapons.

What if the term meson gun was a smokescreen for the production of a grav based ship to ship weapons. All that fluff about mesons and relativity is just disinformation.

The meson gun spinal is really a gravity wave spinal, designed to "pluck" the space-time at the target location and cause the production of the secondary effects we are used to.

 

[epicenter00]

What if the term meson gun was a smokescreen for the production of a grav based ship to ship weapons. All that fluff about mesons and relativity is just disinformation.

That makes a lot more sense. IMTU I used a similar explanation - during the Interstellar Wars, Terrans took a page from the WW2 British and bandying about carrots to improve night vision as a smokescreen to hide the existence of RADAR. The Terrans told their own troops that their new weapon was based on "breakthroughs" involving the Meson particle. They were aware that the Vilani were culturally predisposed to not developing new technology but were not idiots; if Terran prisoners or something let slip about the true workings of the "meson" gun, the Vilani had vast resources to throw at developing their own or developing an effective counter as they knew where to look for an answer. So the Terrans cooked up a semi-plausible explanation - breakthroughs involving the Pi Neutral Meson which sounds just plausible enough to have fooled the Vilani into spending trillions of credits in trying to replicate the Terran "results."

Does T5 declare if Meson gun fire trackable or not because if it using gravity, I'd think it'd be fairly easily trackable as the large number of gravity-based devices in the Traveller universe suggest the science of gravity is pretty far advanced.

 

[rancke]

What if the term meson gun was a smokescreen for the production of a grav based ship to ship weapons. All that fluff about mesons and relativity is just disinformation.

The meson gun spinal is really a gravity wave spinal, designed to "pluck" the space-time at the target location and cause the production of the secondary effects we are used to.

That's a brilliant explanation, as long as you don't propound that the disinformation campaign is still going on in the Classic Era. It would be called a meson gun for historical reasons, but how it worked would be public knowledge.


Hans

 

[Ulsyus]

This is just a theory of mine, but I'd say that a meson screen probably would leave a pretty tell-tale signature, allowing targets to pinpoint the meson gun quickly. It seems more likely that they don't have screens and use the difficulty of detection as their primary defense.

Possibly, but given that the B³ p357 describes how meson screens affect all meson activity within them and inhibit communicators and meson guns, they could be installed and just flicker off for the duration of a shot at their target picked up by remote sensors. The ships above know where the deep batteries are, but can't get to them and couldn't keep up a rate of fore that'd damage them when they turn off their screen.

There is a new explanation for "meson guns" made possible by T5....

Nice idea, but does that mean that meson screens are really gravity screens as well? Nice explanation though, a good YTU twist.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

just acquired the MgT Sector fleet book, which happens to mention this exact idea. "Meson" guns don't shoot mesons, it was a deliberate misnaming by the terran confed to confuse the vlani, like "tank" was, or the radar based proximity fuse entering service under the as the "variable timing" fuse. the cover name stuck as it was more memorable than the actual working methods name was.

if I understand mongooses canon policy right, the sector fleet book and the fluff within are supposed to be OTU-canon, so this is apparently the new official answer on the subject.

 

[Ulsyus]

just acquired the MgT Sector fleet book, which happens to mention this exact idea. "Meson" guns don't shoot mesons...
if I understand mongooses canon policy right, the sector fleet book and the fluff within are supposed to be OTU-canon, so this is apparently the new official answer on the subject.

For those of us who don't have that book, what does it say meson guns actually fire?

As for the canonicity (?!?) of it, T5 was still published post-MgT, so the references I mentioned above still probably stand ahead of what MgT has written at least as far as the OTU goes. Can we get some guidance from a cowled figure sitting atop a pillar?

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

its copyright 2010, so it is older than the T5 stuff, and if that says something different, then its been superseded.

the meson guns are said to fire "relativistic particles" without further explanation beyond that these are nor actually mesons, but some other particle (or mix of particles).

 

[Carlobrand]

its copyright 2010, so it is older than the T5 stuff, and if that says something different, then its been superseded.

the meson guns are said to fire "relativistic particles" without further explanation beyond that these are nor actually mesons, but some other particle (or mix of particles).

"Relativistic" could still be a problem, and we're still faced with the additional problem of finding a particle or mix of particles that behaves as described.

 

[rancke]

"Relativistic" could still be a problem, and we're still faced with the additional problem of finding a particle or mix of particles that behaves as described.

How can we? The technology to detect them has still not been invented.

Seriously, the behavior of meson guns is singular enough that it's presumably not possible to find a Real Universe particle or mix of particles that fits. I don't think there's any choice but to postulate some non-existent la-la-land particle. Nor do I feel any strong need not to do just that. And Ebenezar Hasdrubal Meson, the inventor of the meson gun, will surely agree with me.


Hans

 

[whulorigan]

For those of us who don't have that book, what does it say meson guns actually fire?

As for the canonicity (?!?) of it, T5 was still published post-MgT, so the references I mentioned above still probably stand ahead of what MgT has written at least as far as the OTU goes. Can we get some guidance from a cowled figure sitting atop a pillar?

its copyright 2010, so it is older than the T5 stuff, and if that says something different, then its been superseded.

the meson guns are said to fire "relativistic particles" without further explanation beyond that these are nor actually mesons, but some other particle (or mix of particles).

T5 says the particles are Muons and charged Pions (pi-mesons).

 

[rancke]

T5 says the particles are Muons and charged Pions (pi-mesons).

And when some some physicist comes along and says "that's not how muons and pions work", are they going to change it to yet another Real Life particle that doesn't work like that either?

I just don't get the point of using real particles for unreal physics.


Hans

 

[Ulsyus]

the meson guns are said to fire "relativistic particles" without further explanation beyond that these are nor actually mesons, but some other particle (or mix of particles).

This is a sensible way to go with any sci fi game.

And when some some physicist comes along and says "that's not how muons and pions work", are they going to change it to yet another Real Life particle that doesn't work like that either?

I just don't get the point of using real particles for unreal physics.

Hans

Exactly. Avoid the Star Trek/Honorverse syndrome if at all possible.

 

[Carlobrand]

Okay, let's look at this pragmatically. We have a weapon that fires relativistic particles, or at least as close as we can get in a practical weapon: the particle beam. Speeds are governed by how much mass we want to shoot and what it does when it gets to the target. We can hypothetically boost one atom/whatever to hella speed, but at the end it goes all the way through the target, leaving a nice but narrow line of emitted radiation and whatnot from impacts along the way but taking most of its energy with it as it exits the other side. We conclude that the existing PB weapons are the designers' best compromise between power consumption, size of weapon, and results at the end, something that fires just enough particles at just the right speed to ensure that the target takes the bulk of the energy, without needing such a huge machine or so much power as to become impractical for a ship.

Now we want something different. Presumably we want something that ghosts through armor and then does something destructive once it's past the armor. Mesons will do that nicely, though there's some question as to whether the damage portrayed is actually what would happen. Problem is, they're quite incredibly short-lived, and extending their lives through relativity gives us something that looks vaguely like a gamma laser that appears out of nowhere. Neat weapon, worth exploring, but not what we were aiming for.

So, we either drop the meson and replace it with some other particle - maybe an as-yet-undiscovered cousin of the meson - or drop the "relativistic" bit, or drop both and go in a new direction.

I have a problem with "relativistic": no matter what you do, at the end of it you have something moving directionally and very fast. Explode something, and you have an explosion with a near-C vector. So, I vote we kill the "relativistic", unless we want something that starts inside the ship and then exits it in tiny fractions of a second, which to me says most of the energy goes into space.

If we want something that behaves like a radiating explosion or a region of sudden death at the target point, maybe - instead of firing some magic bullet from a mystery gun - we need to play with nuclear damper technology and come up with some variant field that causes mesons to be emitted, or gamma to be emitted or ordinary particles to suddenly become highly unstable, within the defined region created at the end. A precursor to the disintegrator, perhaps.

 

[HG_B]

In my game I ditched Meson weapons altogether. Leaving Particle Accelerators. Gives the game a different feel at the strategic level as one is left with nukes and PA spinal mounts for heavy ship/world combat. The only screens are Nuc Dampers which only work against nuke weapons. Ya have to use armor against the PA's.

 

[Carlobrand]

In my game I ditched Meson weapons altogether. Leaving Particle Accelerators. Gives the game a different feel at the strategic level as one is left with nukes and PA spinal mounts for heavy ship/world combat. The only screens are Nuc Dampers which only work against nuke weapons. Ya have to use armor against the PA's.

It's my favorite solution too, though you need to tweak the particle beam rules or you end up with a line dominated by invulnerable planetoids that can just sit in orbit dropping nukes on the world below. It's useful to tweak the nuke missile rules as well - those things are pretty emasculated as currently written. There's enough power there to leave a 2.8-meter radius patch as liquid slag with a vaporized crater in the middle in bonded superdense, which is to say quite enough to penetrate even a TL15 planetoid hull. One can either give the missile a spinal-mount level punch on those rare occasions when it hits - which is both ample reason to use them and defend against them - or radically ramp down their power and cost by calling them 0.001 micronukes, or permit the player (and write rules for) a range of options from the 0.001 kt micro to the 0.1kt heavy-hitter.

An intermediary option is to rule that meson weapons exist but are so large and power-hungry as to be practical only in planetary installations. That at least keeps the uber-armored planetoids at bay, though it does still leave one with the problem of explaining how they work.

To do that, and for those who want a meson or a meson-like effect for their ship to fire, it's easier to induce it at the target point by manipulating physical laws at that point than to create some scenario where you're spitting mesons or any other exotic particle out of a gun at relativistic speeds.

 

[HG_B]

It's my favorite solution too, though you need to tweak the particle beam rules or you end up with a line dominated by invulnerable planetoids that can just sit in orbit dropping nukes on the world below.

Yes, weakening them would be crucial. Reducing max armor on them and leaving the beneficial cost factor is one option I'll look at.

It's useful to tweak the nuke missile rules as well - those things are pretty emasculated as currently written. There's enough power there to leave a 2.8-meter radius patch as liquid slag with a vaporized crater in the middle in bonded superdense, which is to say quite enough to penetrate even a TL15 planetoid hull. One can either give the missile a spinal-mount level punch on those rare occasions when it hits

I ditched missiles (those little turret fired things) and replaced with large torps with 10X payload. Easy targets but a close miss can be nasty (for nukes). Best use is in close defense (planetary) where time to acquire for point defense is limited.

 

[Ulsyus]

I ditched missiles (those little turret fired things) and replaced with large torps with 10X payload. Easy targets but a close miss can be nasty (for nukes). Best use is in close defense (planetary) where time to acquire for point defense is limited.

What's a close miss for a nuke in vacuum?

 

[HG_B]

What's a close miss for a nuke in vacuum?

For the size nuc I'm sticking in a drone, within 500 meters.