I thought of this inadvertantly while discussing something else.
T.A.Gs
Mounted on larger Craft, T.A.Gs (The Accelerator Guns) are aimed at other objects, mainly smaller fighter craft not built to withstand near luminous or faster then luminous speeds. The accelerated particles fire out of the gun, slamming into the other ships at incredible speeds. Upon hitting the craft (thanks to no inertia in space) the shower of particles sends the target craft at incredible speeds often causing great if not complete damage to a ship. When aimed at larger craft, craft made to withstand the great preasures of faster then luminous speeds. the ships are repulsed away from the ship, causing minor damage. If T.A.G. beams are focused enough, much like a laser, only part of the ship (the part shot by T.A.Gs) will withstand the blast, sending the section into space, leaving the critically damaged ship behind. since some inertia would be caused, the ship would be thrown a distance (caused by the small resistance offered on the part of the hull and other matter on the ship).
Well, I'm just thinking stuff up. for fun. I know its not scientifically accurate, but whoopdee do
Only after 14 hours of work, will you realize you can do it in 2.
Extremepumpkin wrote:Upon hitting the craft (thanks to no inertia in space) the shower of particles sends the target craft at incredible speeds often causing great if not complete damage to a ship.
Maybe a weapon with that type of mechanics could make it in. It's certainly creative. I think we could try a bit harder on the explanation though. Gameplay trumping realism doesn't mean we should starting putting in things like apple pie cannons.
Where did you hear that there's no inertia in space?
Their most definatly IS Inertia in space, Inertia is the fundamental defining property of matter itself. Ofcorse Inertial Dampeners and Nulifiers alow us to break the rules so perhaps thats what your geting at.
In any case this is just like the Repulsor Beam weapon of Moo1 (which could be very anoying if you didn't have long range weapons) and in any case its not realy an apropriate BrainStorming topic as its a very specific weapon and we are ages away from that. Bring it up again when we talk about weapons which I belive comes in V 0.4
There is inertia is space. He was confusing intertia with friction, which is very low to non-existence in space. Inertia is not a fundamental property of matter.
@ pumpkin
Before we figure out weapons, we need the game mechanics and parameter first. Otherwise, either your idea will never materialize or risk being insignificant.
skdiw wrote:Inertia is not a fundamental property of matter.
Do we know of any form of matter that lacks inertia? Do we know of anything that has inertia, other than mass?
If we can't answer yes to either of these questions, I don't see how we can say with any confidence that inertia is not a fundamental property of matter. It certainly looks that way.
Copied from text, "There are four different properties of matter. They are weight, volume, mass, and density. The most important one is mass. Mass is the amount of matter in an object and it never changes unless matter is taken out of the object. Mass also has a direct relationship with inertia." Just because mass has a direct relationship with inertia from Newton's Law, physicists don't consider inertia an inherent property. Don't blame me, it's not me who define it like that; I never said I think either.
There are four different properties of matter. They are weight, volume, mass, and density.
What text are you quoting? Seriously, it's pretty misleading. Weight really only has meaning near the surface of a massive body. Perhaps they mean gravitational mass? Density is just a function of volume and mass. Even volume is pretty shaky if you start looking at things from a quantum point of view.
Just because mass has a direct relationship with inertia doesn't make inertia an inherent property.
Show me an instance of matter without inertia, then I'll agree that it's not a fundamental property. Until then, inertia is a lot more fundamental than volumne, density or weight.
I am with Entropy on this, Skiw the text your quoting sounds like a low end Junior High school Physics book, they typicaly gloss over things like Inertia and Quantum mechanics and give a perspective on Physics roughly on par with the findings of Galelo/Newton.
Like I said Inertia is the fundemental defining property of Matter. Without Inertia it would be imposible to determine the mass of an object or any of the other properties like density. Now the thing that realy Bakes the Noddle of all the Physicists is the question "Why dose Inertia exist?" You see when it comes right down too it we dont realy know what Inertia realy is. Just as Newton realy had no idea WHY object were atracted to each other he never found out WHY they obey the laws of Inertia. All of our knowlage is "sufrace" knowlage, just as I am able to play a computer game without knowing C++ we are able to send space ships to the moon without knowing what Inertia is.
Anyway, the point is we don't want the tech tree to be just a sequence of progressively stronger beam weapons. I think we are going to want some really exotic types, so the more creativity the better. Once we decide on the game effect of the weapon, the technobabble can be refined later. Perhaps the weapon you describe could be a cousin of teleportation tech, only a nasty, offensive version
Neat weapons will be cool, but programming it is another matter. I am all for unique weapons, but those ideas are no good if they never appear in the game.
@EA
Like I said, I didn't define properties of matter nor inertia, don't blame me. We are using old archaic methods, technology, thinking all the time for variety of reasons. For instance, we found of that speed of light is not a constant long ago, rather it is the inverse square root of two other constants. Maybe in another decade or so, we may discover other more fundamental constants. In the interim, we still treat c like a fundamental constant. Just because you can't find an example where some mass don't have inertia doesn't there never will be. Plus from philosophical point of view, it doesn't even matter. An answer of yes or no to your question has nothing to do with intrinsic properties as scientist define it. You can define it any way you want. I for one think the second law for thermodynamic is bogus, but nobody cares and it will still remain a law and treated as such by rest of the world. Even my physics professor saw merit in my arguements, but that doesn't mean jack. Also, quantum mechanic and classical don't mix. I doubt you know anything about either of the two more than concepts and some equations. A lot more brilliant ppl are trying to bridge than you. I never say 'I' on a topic that I don't have a lot of confidence on.
You know I have also had Problems with the Second Law of ThermoDynamics and the whole consept of Entropy. A ways back I did some research and Think I have figured it out. Here let me start at the begining and see if my problem was the same of similar to yours.
Everyone is told that the amount of Entropy in the Universe is always incressing and can never decresse. Thus logicaly the total Entropy of the universe was lowest at the Big Bang (not nessarily Zero but lower then it ever was subsiquently) and it will incresse forevor afterwards.
We are also given examples of small scale entropy, for example 2 containers of Pure gass are alowed to mix. The resulting mixture is said to be more Chatic and disorganized then the pure gasses and thus Entropy has incressed. Likewise senarios that organized physical matter inevitably release heat that more then compensates for the incressed order. The Earth as a whole is full of organized matter and would at first seem to be breaking the rules, the Sun comes to the resque here as it supplies the energy that organizes the Earth, inside the Sun Hydrogen is being converted to Helium which aparently holds more entropy and thus more then compensates for the Earth.
Even from my earliest introduction to Entropy I had a bad feeling about it, something wasn't right (kinda like how Neo feels about the Matrix). I realized many of these examples are inconsistant. The Gass mixture experiment implies that a uniform Homogenius state of matter has more entropy then complex differentiated matter. Yet if we look at the evolution of the Universe from the Big Bang we see that the universe has gone from a higly homoginous and uniform state to one that is full of bumbs and gaps and complex arangments (Galaxies basicaly). This would seem to indicate that Bumpy highly diferentiated matter is higher in Entropy. It seems to be that Entropy is always being defined as what it needs to be to keep the always incressing point true.
By consulting my Comunity College Physics teacher and then doing a bit of reserach I belive I have found it. The problem is in how Entropy is emplained, the classic definition of Entropy as "the amount of Disorder in a system" is just pure Hogwash, it must be something that braindead middle-school teachers came up with to explain Entropy which has unfortunatly been picked up by most educated Physists as the way to tell laymen about Entropy. The Second Law of Thermodynamics ACTUALY states that "the amount of energy avalible in a system to do work is always decressing". This is a radicaly different law. For one thing it no longer contains to offensive word "disorder" which always to me implied a human observer desided what was disorganized and what was not. It also avoids the puzzlement over the uniformity of matter. The true second law of thermodynamics speaks only of Energy and in all of the classic examples the high entropy state is indeed less able to do work. The mixed gasses can no longer push or turn a fan, the matter in the Universe in colapsing to form galaxies is at that much lower of a gravitational potential and the Sun as it turns to Helium is that much less able to shine on the Earth.
When the Big Bang Occured all the potential work that the Universe would ever do was ahead of it, thus the universes potential is at a maximum and its Entropy at a minimum. As the universe ages and dose work its Entropy incresses. The classic "Heat Death of the Universe" would be a point of maximum Entropy and zero energy avalible for work, unfortunatly this would require that the whole universe recolapse into a "Big Crunch" so that gravitational potential energy became zero, any none colapsed universe would by nessesity still contain energy avalible for work (perhaps a vanishingly small amount). Because resent findings seem to sugjest the universe will expand forevor this means that their will be no heat death or point of Maximum Entropy, much like an Asyintopic line the universe will be forevor aproatching but never reaching total Entropy.
