Japan, Canada and Australia get many Mobile Suits (RAR!)

[avatarxprime]

Would this scenario work better if it was switched from UC to AD and have it be that a bunch of GN-Xs show up? GN particles decay faster than Minovsky particles so they don't need to be handwaved away, 00 Gundam already has the technology to make every suit have a biometric lock to set each suit to a specific individual (no keys needed), and GN Tau drives don't need anything exotic for their mass production or fueling. I'd say there should be no true GN drives though, that might be a bit too much power, although instructions for their construction could be given.

[Darksider]

How exactly do the GN drives work anyways? I know they aren't fusion reactors like the ones in the UC suits.

[Stark]

They're perpetual motion machines. They output GN particles at a steady rate, which are gathered in condensers for use later. The particles themselves are used for propulsion, formed into shields or swords, shot out of guns, impregnated in armour for defense, etc. If they were 'true' GN drives, they would literally produce energy forever.

And man its a bit strange to say Tau drives don't require 'anything exotic' when all we know is that they're LESS exotic than 'MUST BE MADE ON JUPITER'. :V

EDIT - if you meant 'where does the energy come from', who knows. The description of their operation in my Exia manual is pretty fruity. Lets just say there are flywheels involved. :V

[Darksider]

EDIT - if you meant 'where does the energy come from', who knows. The description of their operation in my Exia manual is pretty fruity. Lets just say there are flywheels involved. :V

This is what I meant. As far as I can remember, there's literally no mention of any kind of fuel source for the GN drives, and they just run on Magic or something.

I kind of remember someone speculating that they were drawing energy remotely from those giant solar-elevators, but that wasn't mentioned in the show.

[Connor MacLeod]

the flywheels are driven by interdimensional fans pushed by the etheric winds, which are connected directly to the flywheel which is then tapped to provide unlimited power.

And I can't decide whether I'm being serious or facetious with it, which is probably a sign of incipent madness.

[Stark]

They draw energy somehow from 'topological defects'. Drives with compatible 'defects' can be used in the twin drive system, which uses some kind of resonance to increase the output of the drives involved (by three times, lol). They dont need fuel or the solar power system, but I dunno what maintenance they need or wha kind of wizardry is required to store GN particles or transmit them.

edit - what Connor said. :v

[Connor MacLeod]

Dammit you're not helping me decide whether the theory is legitimate or joke... *brain snaps and gibbering commences*


It still makes more sense than some of the power sources I've had to deal with in 40K. Fusion powered boilers for the win (And I wish I was kidding..)

[gigabytelord]

Dammit you're not helping me decide whether the theory is legitimate or joke... *brain snaps and gibbering commences*


It still makes more sense than some of the power sources I've had to deal with in 40K. Fusion powered boilers for the win (And I wish I was kidding..)

Well to be absolutely technical, the first fusion reactors we're most likely to use (if ever) will probably be used to boil water, which will produce steam, to generate electricity with.
This is how nuclear reactors currently work right? Yeah the mechanical systems used are highly advanced, but it's still just a really advance boiler after it's all said and done.
Maybe one day we'll be able to skip the boiler and figure out a way to pull the energy directly from the reactor, but I don't see this happen on a large scale anytime soon.

EDIT: I haven't read the book you got that from so there could be something particularly stupid in there that I don't know about.

[Connor MacLeod]

I meant that the plasma reactors on starships in the novel 'Know No Fear' feature shirtless humans shovelling solid promethium ore (or pellets or whatever) into open furnaces.

About the only way it could be worse would be to have a bunch of cogs and gears and pistons positioned around the place for no apparent purpose. Sometimes I think the difference between Ork and Human technology is mainly the Ork's lack of preconception.

[gigabytelord]

I meant that the plasma reactors on starships in the novel 'Know No Fear' feature shirtless humans shovelling solid promethium ore (or pellets or whatever) into open furnaces.

About the only way it could be worse would be to have a bunch of cogs and gears and pistons positioned around the place for no apparent purpose. Sometimes I think the difference between Ork and Human technology is mainly the Ork's lack of preconception.

Oh dear that is bad...

[Connor MacLeod]

Well bad is relative. I suppose you could make it work somehow, but the thing I dislike about it is how it feeds certain preconceptions about 40K, in the sense thats how EVERYTHING is supposed to work and it 'can't' be 40K if it isn't dirty, primtiive, and unsophsticated. I've known some people complain that starships having autoloaders is 'thematically inappropriate' to 40K simply because it wasn't a bunch of guys hauling on chains, as if 40K has some sort of paradigm that MUST BE ADHERED to in order to avoid 'ruining' it.

Its kinda like the idea that you NEED canon to have a good franchise or universe, some don't realize that imposing restrictions or arbitrary limits on a work just because of the risk of SOMETHING DIFFERENT is what can actually end up ruining the work, because you stifle any potential at growth or change of the setting.

I've had a lot of cases where something I didn't like colored my preconceptions of the setting and attempted to dictate to the setting just because I didn't like it, but when I had gotten past my hangups on preconception and actually just watched it, I enjoyed it far more. For example, I watched a bit of Gundam (War in the Pocket) on Adult Swim long ago, and I didn't care for it too much because it didn't have enough explosions and bangs and it had giant robots and I disliked the way the ending was handled. But I watched it again a few months back, and I liked it a whole lot better. My perceptions had changed (or broadened), many of my preconceptions about what was 'good' had changed, and so I was able to develop a wider appreciation of what I was seeing. Even more, there are things about the ending I still dislike (mainly becuase of how sad and horrible it is) but at the same time I can appreciate why it did and appreciate the impact it has on me. Simply not liking something does not mean it is inherently bad

[gigabytelord]

Well bad is relative. I suppose you could make it work somehow, but the thing I dislike about it is how it feeds certain preconceptions about 40K, in the sense thats how EVERYTHING is supposed to work and it 'can't' be 40K if it isn't dirty, primtiive, and unsophsticated. I've known some people complain that starships having autoloaders is 'thematically inappropriate' to 40K simply because it wasn't a bunch of guys hauling on chains, as if 40K has some sort of paradigm that MUST BE ADHERED to in order to avoid 'ruining' it.

Its kinda like the idea that you NEED canon to have a good franchise or universe, some don't realize that imposing restrictions or arbitrary limits on a work just because of the risk of SOMETHING DIFFERENT is what can actually end up ruining the work, because you stifle any potential at growth or change of the setting.

I've had a lot of cases where something I didn't like colored my preconceptions of the setting and attempted to dictate to the setting just because I didn't like it, but when I had gotten past my hangups on preconception and actually just watched it, I enjoyed it far more. For example, I watched a bit of Gundam (War in the Pocket) on Adult Swim long ago, and I didn't care for it too much because it didn't have enough explosions and bangs and it had giant robots and I disliked the way the ending was handled. But I watched it again a few months back, and I liked it a whole lot better. My perceptions had changed (or broadened), many of my preconceptions about what was 'good' had changed, and so I was able to develop a wider appreciation of what I was seeing. Even more, there are things about the ending I still dislike (mainly becuase of how sad and horrible it is) but at the same time I can appreciate why it did and appreciate the impact it has on me. Simply not liking something does not mean it is inherently bad

I agree but, and to go even further, if the setting, themes, and events are combined to create a rich enthralling atmosphere that is capable of maintaining your suspension of disbelief even if some of the plot points are clear off the deep end in regards to, science, religion, philosophy, what have you, then I say good damn job to the writer.

That being said I haven't read the book that started this conversion so I can't rightly say if any of those elements are present in it. I only have what I've heard, er... read, but the description you've given doesn't paint a good picture, and shovels? Ore? Boilers? No, just no, I'd have to read the book first before I could establish a worthy opinion.
Then again my opinions on a lot of things have changed since I started visiting this site several years ago, so it wouldn't be the first time.

[Stark]

It's probably better to ask what such an image would say (about people, about the society, the value of the individual, etc) than simply look at it from the perspective of 'scientific plausibility'. Once you've got hive fleets and bondage elves, super space coal is not much of a stretch. Fiction doesn't have to be a simulation.

That said, too silly for Connor = p silly. but we ARE about perpetual motion machines that use special blankets to be infinite, so we're clearly adults prepared to acce

[gigabytelord]

It's probably better to ask what such an image would say (about people, about the society, the value of the individual, etc) than simply look at it from the perspective of 'scientific plausibility'. Once you've got hive fleets and bondage elves, super space coal is not much of a stretch. Fiction doesn't have to be a simulation.

That said, too silly for Connor = p silly. but we ARE about perpetual motion machines that use special blankets to be infinite, so we're clearly adults prepared to acce

Accept?... Don't leave the sentence hanging! Finish or you'll drive me insane try to figure out what you were going to say!

[Stark]

Sorry. Accept dramatic conceits and the 'language' or signs of a work without rejecting everything that isn't 'unrealistic'.

[gigabytelord]

It's probably better to ask what such an image would say (about people, about the society, the value of the individual, etc) than simply look at it from the perspective of 'scientific plausibility'. Once you've got hive fleets and bondage elves, super space coal is not much of a stretch. Fiction doesn't have to be a simulation.

That said, too silly for Connor = p silly. but we ARE about perpetual motion machines that use special blankets to be infinite, so we're clearly adults prepared to accept dramatic conceits and the 'language' or signs of a work without rejecting everything that isn't 'unrealistic'.

I understand where you're coming from, and agree for the most part, however I have to admit that sometimes no matter how hard I consciously try to maintain my own suspension of disbelief with a particular story and simply try to accept it for what it is, sometimes I simply can not.

For instance my room mate was watching an animated movie about pirates in space, seems simple enough right? And normally it would be except the pirates in question were literally sailing through space, as in they were sailing on wooden ships of sail through space.

And because of that I simply couldn't pay attention, it had decent voice acting and the scripting was ok, but I simply couldn't be bothered to ever watch it again. It also didn't help that the script was almost a scene for scene copy of Titan AE, right down to the OMG the captain is bad then turns good at the last second twist.

[Stark]

I think everyone's like that. Especially around here people can learn how to fixate on 'sciency' stuff or whatever and some flavours of dramatic conceits become roadblocks. So long as we can be conscious about it, I don't think its really a problem. I bet cops/doctors/wealthy parents of attractive teenagers have the same issue but with different things. :V

I mean serious I've thrown more books out the window for 'stupid shit' than most people have even read... but that isn't necessarily because the work is actually stupid or bad or wrong or whatever; it just contains shit that I can't look past. I've been trying to make this more conscious in the last few years, and I've been able to revisit (and enjoy) a lot of stuff I'd dismissed as 'so unrealistic lolz' in the past.

And man I could totally dig sweaty men doing manual labour in space. :V

[Connor MacLeod]

That being said I haven't read the book that started this conversion so I can't rightly say if any of those elements are present in it. I only have what I've heard, er... read, but the description you've given doesn't paint a good picture, and shovels? Ore? Boilers? No, just no, I'd have to read the book first before I could establish a worthy opinion.
Then again my opinions on a lot of things have changed since I started visiting this site several years ago, so it wouldn't be the first time.

It's not so much a problem really, its kinda quirky and retro, sorta like shit you get in Lensman, so I don't really mind it. What bugs me more is the way it will invariably play on people's preconceptions about how 40K 'ought' to be. I've really grown to loathe some of the gross simplications made (EG SPACE FEUDALISM is supposed to accurately sum up the totality of Imperial politics. Or the whole 'autoloader' thing.

Oh and it absolutely drives me batty when someone tries to use RULE OF COOL to justify stuff in 40K. Especially when the stuff they're trying to justify isn't cool but downright silly. In the end it all just comes down to how we look at things, and how we can see them diffrently, and whether we're comfortable with accepting viewpoints different from our own.

For instance my room mate was watching an animated movie about pirates in space, seems simple enough right? And normally it would be except the pirates in question were literally sailing through space, as in they were sailing on wooden ships of sail through space.

And because of that I simply couldn't pay attention, it had decent voice acting and the scripting was ok, but I simply couldn't be bothered to ever watch it again. It also didn't help that the script was almost a scene for scene copy of Titan AE, right down to the OMG the captain is bad then turns good at the last second twist.

Well thats okay, but again it really depends on how you look at it. What you describe is not really any worse than saying 'magic material' that was metal or ceramic or whatever. Beyond a certain point (or yields, or whatever) it all becomes magic, and its just the degree of magic you're willing to accept that matters. I mean its no less silly than Eldar or Imperial ship design just because one uses wood and another uses metal.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh and it absolutely drives me batty when someone tries to use RULE OF COOL to justify stuff in 40K. Especially when the stuff they're trying to justify isn't cool but downright silly. In the end it all just comes down to how we look at things, and how we can see them diffrently, and whether we're comfortable with accepting viewpoints different from our own.

"Rule of cool" should never be used in so many words, especially not in the context of 40k.

What you can say about 40k is that it's a setting with a sort of gloomy glamour, the terrible, incredible scale of the forces threatening the galaxy, the determination of humans not to go gentle into that good night, and the slowly collapsing social order around them, which they constantly struggle to defend.

That is not "cool." But it creates a certain interesting symbolism to having capital starship guns loaded by huge gangs of slaves. The physical contribution of these humans to the defense of the species is very direct, even if it's conscripted, oppressive, and totally painful.

[Connor MacLeod]

Rule of cool is just invoked the same way 'common sense' can be, or any other sort of 'vague and meaningless' terminlogy, like trope. Basically its an attempt to reduce somethign complex to simple terms, because peopel can't be bothered to do the work to back shit up. Its pretty hilarious when you get 'rule of cool' to justify absurd yields, accelerations or whatever. Its like because its 'magical' you can pretty much justify anything (which is how alot of people think when it comes to gods, magic, or other fantasy shit, even though that's pretty damn silly.)

Ultimately its just another way of injecting preconeptions into things they have no business injecting them into.

[Stark]

I don't even think its that; its an inherently anti-intellectual attitude that depreciates any attempt to actually engage with and understand what's happening. That huge AA effort to destroy millions of projectiles falling from orbit I showed you is pretty 'cool', but if you say 'it happened because rule of cool' you are saying nothing can be learned from it because the creators just said OMG SO WICKED and thoughtlessly added it. The continent of Africa is obscured by vaporised debris... but who cares, its just 'rule of cool' and thus means nothing.

[avatarxprime]

EDIT - if you meant 'where does the energy come from', who knows. The description of their operation in my Exia manual is pretty fruity. Lets just say there are flywheels involved. :V

This is what I meant. As far as I can remember, there's literally no mention of any kind of fuel source for the GN drives, and they just run on Magic or something.

I kind of remember someone speculating that they were drawing energy remotely from those giant solar-elevators, but that wasn't mentioned in the show.

The show and more so the side materials get into the development and functioning of GN drives. As I understand it*, GN and Tau drives are nearly identical, except that the Tau drive needs to be "refueled" from time to time while a true GN drive can indeed run forver. As to how they run forever, they are stated as generating power through a catalyzed proton decay reaction (hence why they can "run forever," so long as they have matter to break down they will have a source of power), with the catalyst being magnetic monopoles (hence the need for Jupiter) that are stored in the TD Blanket that surrounds the GN drive. This reaction provides sufficient power to run the MS and also run the reaction to produce GN particles. In a Tau drive it lacks the TD blanket and as such cannot just produce power whenever it likes, which is why Tau drives have a limited operation time as they do not produce sufficient power to run the MS and produce GN particles for more than a few days. There's a bunch of other things about the drives that I can infodump if someone really wants to know, but basically have the technology helps make space travel far easier and gives us the potential to produce true GN drives (for the purposes of this scenario I'm assuming monopoles are real and Jupiter would have them).

And man its a bit strange to say Tau drives don't require 'anything exotic' when all we know is that they're LESS exotic than 'MUST BE MADE ON JUPITER'. :V

By "less exotic" I simply mean "can be made on Earth in mass quantities with resources from Earth." Considering that in 2 years (season 2 to the Movie time jump) the people who actually know what they are doing with GN tech could only produce 2 new True GN drives, while in the 4 year gap between season 1 and season 2 of the show the ESF produced at least hundreds of Tau drives, I'd say its safe to call it that Tau drives can be produced with materials solely available on Earth, making it definitely less exotic than needing Jupiter.

*The rest of my response is based on my understanding of the material, which is in turn dependent on the translations of the original materials (it's all in Japanese) and how much of that I have been able to get my hands on, so don't take it all as 100% accurate.

[Stark]

That sort of explains why I didn't get how Tau drives were used late in S2; I'm not sure the show ever made clear that they had lower endurance. How much sense does things like the gun that drains a drive in one shot make, then, since the drive produces energy at a steady rate? Can you spin up a Tau drive to burn itself out in an instant?

[avatarxprime]

Yeah, Trans-Am. That's why you don't Trans-Am a Tau drive, it destroys the thing. True GN drives simply go into recharge mode, a Tau drive is rendered so much slag. Also, the most advanced Tau drives at the time in S1 (the Thrones' drives) could only run at max power for 3 days before needing to return to their mothership for recharging.

[Stark]

Ha. I didn't realise the CB gun used them in trans-am. I probably just wasn't paying attention. :V