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[META] Perceived Setting Assumption Contradiction
Why you don't need explicit waved weapons
#12
While it may not be possible to make weapons directly with wavetech, it's dirt simple to use what we've already got to make far superior arms.
A few choice elements out of a fic I'll be posting 'any day now':
'Fire and Forget' - You take a waved engine (the kind that will get an SUV up to .1c). You cover it in iron plates and wave them. You give it a few really small and simple radar antennas. You attach the steering mechanism and the antennas to a cheap computer processor (an old pentium system or one of those free-after-rebate 'net boxes, whatever). You program it go straight at whatever it's been fired at - forever. You give it a reasonable turning radius. It probably goes .11c or so. Now you've got a half-ton waved-steel bullet that will eventually hit whatever you shoot it at with a relative velocity of AT LEAST 1% of C. The only Wavium involved is in the hull and the engine - both of which have been shown can be mass-produced with minimal to no quirks. All you need is someone good enough to program the unwaved computer it runs on - any CS grad student could probably do this.
'Slow down so we can catch you' - Similar setup, but you don't need nearly as much armor on the engine. What it does have is a claw attachment that will sink into just about any waved hull you can name. It's programmed to hit the target (not too fast), sink its claws in, and then use its engine in the exact opposite vector of however the ship its attached to is moving. Once you've mastered the programming for 'fire and forget', this is a somewhat more advanced model. The engine will likely burn out after a few minutes - but your ship is dead in the water for that few minutes, with reavers coming in at an appreciable fraction of C. This really only works on cars and similar small vehicles, although a horde of these could be used against the larger ships.
'Wave your .44 and use HV bullets' - There are much better explosives than gunpowder. The kind that could much larger bullets much faster. We don't generally put these materials in bullets because they would cause the guns to blow up. But 'waved materials are much stronger than their natural counterparts. So you drop your grandfather's elephant gun into a bucket of handwavium. You either pull out an oddly shaped paperweight (the 'wavium decided to change the shape/function of the device), or a rifle that fires half-pound buckshot and will never break - no matter what kind propellent you put in the cartridges. And without air resistance, a half pound of waved steel travelling at Mach 5 stays at Mach 5 until it hits something. (This, by the way, is probably more efficient, easier to set up, and cheaper than railguns, which is why I mention it here in their place)
'Platemail seems to be popular this season' - The biggest reason why platemail is a poor choice for armor these days is because A)it's heavy and B)it won't stop bullets. You take corrugated cardboard, press it into the appropriate shapes, (possibly cover it with tin foil) wave it, and suddenly you've got a four pound suit of wearable ship-hull plating. Guaranteed to stop anything short of that Mach-5 bullet. For the joints, use waved chainmail. Suddenly, medieval armor is back in style. And if you think those Storm-trooper warsies haven't waved their costumes yet (making them better armor than anything the current day military has access to), you're crazy. Arm a few goons with this kind of armor and a metal pipe and you've got an army that can take down just about any modern military ground force that isn't using tanks.
It's not pretty, and it's not meant to be. If you're in it for the proffit out there, you're not trying to be stylish. And whoever is leading the reavers knows this.
You'll note that the only two properties I've used thus far are 'wavium can make something really tough' and 'wavium can make engines do .1c when attached to something the size of a car', and modern (10 year old or older, really) hardtech. The reavers HAVE weapons. They ARE dangerous. They CAN catch you. And they don't need black holes, laser pistols, or anything even remotely sci-fi to do it.
"Not this again!" Minerva said. "Albus, it was You-Know-Who, not you, who marked Harry as his equal. There is no possible way that the prophecy could be talking about you!" - Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality, Chapter 84
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Messages In This Thread
Re: [META] Perceived Setting Assumption Contradiction - by The Hunterminator - 01-17-2007, 06:35 PM
Re: [META] Perceived Setting Assumption Contradiction - by Sirrocco - 01-18-2007, 04:03 AM
Re: [META] Perceived Setting Assumption Contradiction - by Kokuten - 01-18-2007, 04:36 AM
Re: [META] Perceived Setting Assumption Contradiction - by Sirrocco - 01-18-2007, 07:48 AM
Why you don't need explicit waved weapons - by kestrel404 - 01-18-2007, 07:23 PM
Re: Why you don't need explicit waved weapons - by KJ - 01-19-2007, 03:55 AM

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