Antigravity nation vs teleportation nation (RAR)

[Irbis]

Teleporting something in space may be tricky, because of relative velocity between teleporter on ground and teleporter in orbit although that may be solved by putting teleporter in geosync orbit so it stays at rest relative to ground.

I thought about this, but geosync orbits have 'slight' problem of needing speeds in excess of 3 km/s to stay in one place, which might or might not play havoc on teleported object.

I hate to break it to some people, but jets can make it to 72k feet. Sure, you need to wear a space suit, but you can lob missiles at the flying battleship all-day. Eventually the flying battleship runs out. The attacking fighters never will.

Slap a dozen Phalanx CIWS on floating battleship. These have trivially easy task now, because you're not on the water, you're 22 km above land where every speck of dust is captured on radars and shot as hostile. Now, who will run out first, nation A of extremely expensive missiles that can make to 22 km and penetrate battleship armour, or nation B of simple bullets you can load by millions? Now, slap on few RAM-like defensive medium range systems and S-400 like long range systems, too, both of which have huge advantage of being launched from 22 km, giving them massive speed bonus, and I guarantee nation A will quickly run out of missiles and jets trying to shot one down.

For those postulating limpet grav mines: it's unlikely that the structure of a warship will be strong enough to be lifted such as you postulate. More likely is the grav mine just ripping it's way through the ship until it hits 22km. You're better off with a standard mine, which aren't very effective in the open ocean anyway.

You don't need to lift it. All you need is to make bottom of ship weight less, at which point laws of physics will turn your expensive carrier bottoms-up, wrecking all machinery aboard and possibly sinking it. All on one cheap, homing torpedo mine, which can then detach and grab another hull.

Also, sure, antigravity can get you into thin air, but it doesn't help you at all with propulsion. You'd need to have fleets of tankers to supply your airships with fuel.

We solved this over a century ago, with Zeppelins. Except, these 'Zeppelins' are armoured and can take ten thousand tons of fuel aboard, like real battleships, making fuel stores on Zeppelin blush (and real Zeppelins could circumnavigate the globe).

Really, the space based aspects of this win it for the Teleport guys. Rods from god are exceedingly cheap ways of taking down your airbattleships, that you can't effectively counter, because you're fuel limited in your ability to get to orbit, and the teleport guys aren't. They have infinite dV to spend to avoid your ASAT missiles. And can boost enough armor up (even if they are small slabs to begin with) you can't match them.

All of which takes time and doesn't work once anti-grav guys locate your space base with first teleporter and shot it down with wast fleet of ASAT missiles launched from 22 km faster than teleport crew can blink, much less beam enough of the defensive materials onboard. Oh, and a horde of ASATs launched from 22 km is trivially cheap compared to even smallest space station capable of sustaining teleporter, power source, and a crew of assembling workers. Teleporters only win in both of your examples if we ignore how vastly cheaper the countermeasure is for antigrav nation, or if anti-grav is stupid and lets teleporters build wast military infrastructure unchecked for years (in place where it can't be hidden, no less).

Also note, alot of the weight shouldn't actually be an issue, since the aircraft doesn't need to carry much fuel, and so you can shrink the fuel tanks (and therefore fuel tank weight) down to nearly nothing.

And RTG unit you need to power teleporter indefinitely weights nothing? If you missed that bit, 5 ton teleporters are stationary and require a lot of energy. Bomber big enough so you can assemble, arm and refuel fighters inside is just huge, immobile target for cheap long range AA antigrav guys throw at it. Also, you know how long refuelling and rearming your empty fighter takes? Bomber that can launch one fighter every 2-6 hours isn't scary/defensible in the slightest.

You might even be able to manage something with performance similar to a JAS-39.

While anti-grav fighter carries armour twice as thick as M-1 Abrams and is armed with oversized hypersonic missiles with parameters out of 22 century? AMRAAM weights 152 kg? Fine, weight doesn't matter to us, with 1520 kg budget we'll slap enough fuel to give our missile twice the range, five times the speed, cheap, big radar that doesn't rely on expensive miniaturized parts but is still better than any radar teleporter guys can fit into missile, etc, etc.

Good luck fighting it with JAS-39, launched every other hour or not.

Oh, and anti-gravs can make their airships/fighters perfect stealth shapes, negating any missiles but optical teleporters can use. Who cares about such shape wrecking stability or imperfect aerodynamics, with fighter weighting ~zero even worst turbojet engine will give it equal or better speed.

Teleporter nation will dig 100m under ground and build giant underground complexes. You drop bombs and make holes. They dig deeper.

Which would require so absurd amount of resources anti-gravs could move their entire civilization into floating castles as building cruise ship is much cheaper than digging its volume out of the ground in solid rock. Sure, teleports might make removing waste easier... But underground cities have one serious weakness: earthquakes. Build 400 meter long 'dropship' with your anti-grav technology, say, block of lead in steel casing, drop from 22 kilometers, end result: rocks fall, everybody dies.

Yes, teleporters give you unparalleled logistical supremacy, but it doesn't matter if every fight is HMS Victory against USS Iowa, Mark I tank vs Abrams, or SPAD vs Su-27. You'll be bleeded out of war materiel as enemy effortlessly mounts enough armour and weapons to kill you without any chance of retaliation, even if his weapon platforms are more expensive. Hell, you can't even resort to asymmetric warfare, flying tanks laugh at IEDs and mines, flying bases laugh at infiltrators and mortar attacks, flying soldiers can go over your defensive positions and attack rear of your army.

[Terralthra]

Flying tanks and battleships, powered by...what, exactly? Zeppelins like the USS Shenendoah were powered by multiple 300hp engines, and could barely make 70mph. It weighed 77,500 lbs, or just a bit under 40 tons. An armored battleship like the USS Wisconsin (the last battleship commissioned in the USN) weighed 45,000 tons with, 58,000 tons with a full load of people and arms.

A battleship weighs literally over a thousand times more than a zeppelin. In water, it could move at about 30 mph, but water is better suited to propulsion than air, by far. So, with the same engines, it would be able to move at about .07 mph. Add more engines, you say? But then you add more weight! And more fuel consumption, which means even more weight! Bigger engines to compensate for the extra weight, means even more fuel consumption and even more weight! You don't dig your way out of that pit.

Not to mention, air currents would play hell with your battleships' ability to hold a course. A ship in water is kept on course by the keel in the much denser water; an airship (like a zeppelin before it) is much more at the mercy of the winds.

And keep in mind, these battleships were built in the 1930s and early 1940s, before it became clear that propellor-driven aircraft with WWII-era bombs made the entire idea of large visual-range warships obsolete. Yes, they're heavily armored, but they have to have less armor in spots for radio antennae, gun ports, windows, and the like, and the relative expenditure of building and operating them is much much higher than the aircraft necessary to down one.

This is ignoring that a battleship in water that gets hulled or has an engine failure is at least still afloat by design. Damage the antigrav engines and your air battleship is suddenly a very expensive meteorite.

[madd0ct0r]

Floating tanks and battleships, powered by...what, exactly? ...

A battleship weighs literally over a thousand times more than a zeppelin. In water, it could move at about 30 mph, but water is better suited to propulsion than air, by far.. .
Not to mention, air currents...

And keep in mind, these battleships were built in the 1930s and early 1940s, before it became clear that propellor-driven aircraft with WWII-era bombs made the entire idea of large visual-range warships obsolete...
This is ignoring that a battleship in water that gets hulled or has an engine failure is at least still afloat by design. Damage the antigrav engines and your air battleship is suddenly a very expensive meteorite...

Terralthra - you can't complain a Skylord is too heavy to accelerate easily AND complain it'll be blown about by the wind easily. (especially since the latter is far more true of ocean currents with warships. A skylord can just move up or down into a different airstream, so a better analogy might be a submarine. They do suffer from currents, but that dosen't seem to put anyone off using them )

now, as for engines.
lets look at modern turbofans, shall we?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_Alliance_GP7000 : output of 340kN per engine.

Assuming a 50 METRIC tonnes Skylord, 8 engines will accelerate you at: 0.0544m/s/s
Which means you'll be faster then the warship's 30mph after 4.1minutes of acceleration.

Fuel efficiency is really hard to calculate for a hypothetical weightless, 50ktonne mass Skylord of unknown aerodynamic effeciency at an unknown speed and altitude.
The A380 uses 4 of these engines to travel 15,400 km at Mach 0.89 (altitude approx 40,000ft or 12.2km). This needs a 320,000L fuel tank (including reserves, which i think a Skylord should probably have too) - want to see that range on a map?
try here: http://www.airbus.com/aircraftfamilies/ ... rformance/

Now, let's see if we can filter the energy used to keep the plane up off (since the skylord won't need it)
to travel that distance at that speed (neglecting time accelerating) takes 50848 seconds.
to produce an upthrust = g for 50848secs.
accelerating at 9.81m/s for 50848secs gives you a theoretical speed of 498827m/s
Assuming a constant weight of 386,000 kg for the Airbus (horrific simplification, but it's the max landing weight. So the first part of the trip will be heavier and the last part lighter then this. It's a ball park figure)
Therefore Theoretical KE of Airbus = a lot, 48024005329840000joules

Keroene energy values seem to vary, I've picked a middle of the road estimate from here: http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/EvelynGofman.shtml

35MJ/l which gives: 1,372,114,437 Liters of Kerosene - or four times the fuel capacity. bugger. anyone want to check my figures?

[ryacko]

I thought about this, but geosync orbits have 'slight' problem of needing speeds in excess of 3 km/s to stay in one place, which might or might not play havoc on teleported object.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit
Teleport to a far out orbit.

Then again, if the teleporter is orbiting, wouldn't the teleported object be teleported with the same relative momentum?
Otherwise teleported objects would be smashed by the rotation of the planet.

[Sky Captain]

Airships were slow because they also were very fragile, sticking a powerful engine on it to make it go fast would probably cause structural damage from too much wind pressure. AN 225 weighs 600 tons at MTOW and goes 800 km/h without any antigravity. With anti gravity taking care of the weight engines would only need to provide forward movement. Actualy if your flying battleship were similar size and shape to a zeppelin it could reach the same speed with the same engines, only acceleration would be slower due to large mass. Speed limiting factor would be aerodynamic drag not weight.

Largest zeppelin Hindenburg was 245 m long and 41 m diameter and it cruised at 135 km/h with only four 890 kW engines. Similary sized real battleship had ~150 MW engines and it went ~60 km/h max. If anything flying anti gravity battleships would be far more fuel efficient and could cruise at few hundred km/h using only fraction of the power a real battleship needs especially in the higher atmosphere where air drag is less of an issue. With multiple jet engines 100 MW each there is no reason why they couldn't go supersonic and use high speed as defensive measure.

fighter-bombers against real battleships were highly effective because they operate in different environment and are very fast compared to their target. That advantage goes out of the window if their target also can fly at similar speed and even pull of maneuvers that airplane limited by aerodynamics can't.

[Feil]

Both states have easy access to civilization-destroying weaponry, even without the traditional WMD trinity. All you have to do to get a lot of destructive energy is put a heavy thing high up and drop it, and both of them have that capacity in spades. MAD, marginally favoring Teleportia, because their murder machines can be put higher than those of Antigravistan, and hence have undeniable second-strike capability, whereas Antigravistan must rely on simply having too many or too well-defended murder machines for Teleportia to defeat before Antigravistan can retaliate.

[Beowulf]

I don't think teleported objects won't gain the velocity of the destination teleporter. There's alot of problems otherwise. Like teleporting to the other side of the planet will net you smashing into the wall at 800 m/s. Yeah. Bad news. So lets assume that teleporting to orbit will work, k?

I think assuming that your Skylords will be able to gas the South more efficiently than the South can strike back at the North is flawed. I mean, once we get to that point, we can assume the South will build an absurd number of very small drones, essentially just an engine and two teleporters, and a cheap guidance system. One teleporter fuels it. The other teleporter lets it spray Chemical agent of your choice. Herbicide to kill crops, non persistant nerve agent to kill people and animals. Next year, the North is starving, because the teleporter nation killed everything that's not fish.

Incidentally, correct method to determine fuel consumption of the lifting devices would be to determine drag from lift, then multiply by distance. However, that's... tricky. Airbus isn't going to give you that number. Neither is Boeing. But I'm sure you can find something to give you that value. It's complicated by the fact that lift induced drag varies with speed (as does form drag from just going at a given speed).

You're probably best off trying to estimate a decent zero-lift drag coefficient, and using that, along with the frontal area, and an estimated thrust specific fuel consumption.

Now the bad news: no wings, no aerodynamic lift from wings. You're like: why is that a bad thing? Lift is also what allows you to manuever. So you can change your velocity vector at most 0.0544m/s^2 for your 50 MT Skylord. What's worse, you'll have problems with your intakes if they're not reasonably close to facing into the airstream. So it's at most that, assuming you're going forward, and possibly considerably less (I'd estimate near 0 for any reasonably high speed and right angles to motion). And incidentally, that's for sea level. Most engines perform considerably worse at altitude. You get a bit of a boost from the ram air effect, but that's an effect that increases with speed. And with more speed comes less manueverability, if you don't have wings, because you can change your angle to the airstream even less.

Incidentally, at 22km up, you've got a pressure of 40mb, and a density of about 5% of sea level.

Now, as for actually killing a Skylord: Russians determined that a 1000kg anti-ship warhead can give a crater about 12m deep, and 5m wide. And this wouldn't be a warhead optimized for penetrating armor. After all, no one builds ships with serious armor anymore. A AIM-54 has a 15in diameter. A well optimized HEAT warhead can penetrate at least 10 times it's diameter. So that's 150 inches of penetration of steel. This, on a missile that masses 500kg. And note, materials such as concrete are more easily penetrated (though, probably cheaper and lighter. Armor plate does weight around 40 lbs / sq ft / in. And the attacker can keep tossing them at the Skylord, every 5 seconds. Also, decoy missiles, and missiles in closely spaced barrages. Eventually the Skylord runs out of missiles to defend itself, and can't hit enough with CIWS at one time to prevent it from getting hit. And then it turns into a meteor.

As for shooting stuff down from orbit, from 22km up: assuming you instantaneously gave your projectile a necessary 2.75km/s necessary to get up to ISS heights, you're still looking at well over 2 minutes just to get to altitude. Now, you might want a higher initial velocity, so you're not just barely squeaking up to altitude... Doesn't change the fact that you actually have quite a bit of time to teleport more defensive munitions up. And if you try for orbital ASAT, rather than suborbital, the teleporter's station can change plane and altitude with infinitely more ease than you'll have in trying to stick an interceptor in the correct orbit.

As for power in orbit: AIP diesel. What, you think I actually need to use a RTG? (not that I could, no fissiles!). I can just teleport up enough fuel and LOX to keep it running. Could use kerosene, and therefore use the same fuel as for the rocket engine. Exhaust just gets dumped overboard.

Denial of orbital space only becomes sensible if you ignore how vastly easier it is for the teleporter nation can make orbit. It costs the anti-grav nation on the order of $10000/lb to orbit. It costs, as an estimate based off the fact that a 1kg teleporter runs off wall power, about 91 cents to loft 5000 more kg to orbit. I can loft a solid, 5000kg block of foam, for less than it costs you to drive to work. Cheaply scattering micro meteorites won't work. You'll need an active interceptor. Which can itself be intercepted.

As for large teleporters being stationary, I'm pretty sure that's mostly Zor lacking imagination. I mean, yeah, for normal transport, it'd be stationary, but we're talking military operations.

Really, this setup is like a Tico vs an Iowa. Yeah, sure, if you can manage to get your Iowa close enough, it'll win. Realistically, Tico wins everytime it's not in knife fighting range.

[madd0ct0r]

where did you get the anti-grav to orbit cost figure from?

I'll keep looking at the Skylord fuel effeciency puzzle - Sky Captain's probably right by using zepplins as examples and scaling the engines up.
I chose 8 Airbus engines purely on a whim. Engine numbers can be increased once fuel effciency is known. As a rough guide, the aribus's fuel tank weighs 25tonnes, and we're talking about a 50,000 tonne skylord. We can probably afford a larger fuel tank and more engines then just 8.

I'd also note you could easily have retractable control surfaces, sort of stubby wings for easy maneuverability at speed. Couple this with sensibly putting the engines (jets, turbofans, contra-rotating propellors or whatever) on nice big rotating mounts and you'll certainly have something as maneuverable as an attack helicopter (ie, much more nimble then an airbus)

Denial of orbital space is the only sensible approach for the anti-gravvers. They don't need it, and the teleporters only enjoy cheap lifting AFTER they've got the first teleporter up there. why would the anti-gravvers allow that? It's not like a satelite launch is espcially stealthy.

qudos on the chem drones idea though - that could get really nasty.

[khursed]

The whole debate is ludicrous as long as we do not know the actual numbers, and until we solve a few problems, such as the actual possibilities and limits of both technologies.

If the teleporter can send stuff in geostationary orbit, and do it for a fraction of the cost it is to do it the other way, then I see that being a huge advantage. I don't think it's necessarily the end of the world, however it depends on many factors.

My main one at the moment, is the actual cost of those things, because then it's simple magic, and we simply consider which is better then the other, not based on science, but on their magic strength.

For example, if we are allowed to assume a "flight ship" of 400m in diameter, with a thickness of 80 meters, in a cylinder format, with absolutely no weight restriction. Imagine that ship with 6 meter thick composite armor, 5 meter of high strength steel, interleaved with ceramic, kevlar coating, ablative surface, and other goodies. That would be a hell of a floating platform to destroy. We're talking 600mm of the best possible armor. the armor alone would weight over 12 million tons, but who cares? Try and shot that down with missiles. Install 50 CIWS with multiple missile batteries and try and take it down with your infinite fuel jets.

If we assume we can make a cube battleship 400m by 400m by 400m, we're talking a mind boggling 17 millions tons of armors, however with a seven fold increase in the volume of the vessel. So how much ammunition and fuel can you carry within a 61 million cubic meter flying ship?

The main problems a battleship faced, was the fact that it could only have so much armor, unless it wanted to sacrifice speed, not to mention being able to stay afloat.

I mean, it's the same problem with tanks, you either have to sacrifice mobility for protection, and range.

So those anti-grav thing could really change the whole game. Then again, if the teleporter can simply send access space, for free, it might scrap some of your advantage.

I still go back to the same question, what are their limitations? More importantly, what are their specs?

Without further info, i feel it's a useless debate.

[vengence]

a few Ideas, first instead of the whole armored battleship, smaller supersonic planes operating at higher altitudes more efficiently world work quite well too, also mobile airbases would be another good idea. Fuel would be a concern,altitudes higher than 15km have insufficient air, they then would likely have to bring their own O2 on the craft as well as conventional engine systems don't work at those altitudes, but that then brings the question, does the planet have similar air densities as earth? It should be noted that very few conventional aircraft can operate above roughly 15 km, due to lack of air at such altitudes, also are the skylords pressurized or does the crew wear suits?

A crazy idea: if Agrav is cost effective could you like hyper accelerate an agrav generator and slingshot payloads into space?

also for the infinite fuel idea, the nature of the teleporter likely means that you would have to keep the fuel in containers, plus the wight ratios mean that to bring in larger weapons on an aircraft are out of the question, your likely going to get infinite bullets but not missiles, and while you likely could supplement fuel it is likely that the aircraft are largely going to have to rely on on board fuel supplies. Also the constant change in mass on the plane would likely be a concern(this is more an engineering concern not a feasibility concern).

the rods from gods is a good idea but you would then see a large space race, getting to that point, and that advantage is lessened if the Agraves can slingshot into space.

[Zor]

As for large teleporters being stationary, I'm pretty sure that's mostly Zor lacking imagination. I mean, yeah, for normal transport, it'd be stationary, but we're talking military operations.

Correct.

Zor

[khursed]

The rods from god, made of tungsten, use roughly 15-20 tons of tungsten per rod, costing approximately 400k each, before any work is done on them.

That said, tungsten is also a pretty rare metal, with production level around 60-70,000 tons a year. That doesn't mention the fact that China alone produces over 80% of the worlds tungsten. So, in this scenario, if the anti-grav were to also control the majority of the tungsten deposit, you'll have to find alternative for your rods from gods.

Could a viable economy really ration all it's tungsten to make rods from god? To be fair, lets assume that each side has half of the world's reserve, and each get their 30-35,000 tons a year, that means that the teleporter can at best build 1750 rods a year. Would that be enough to raze a country?

There is also the question of whats the maximum size and weight you can teleport? I mean, it wouldn't it be pretty difficult to build those rods in orbit?

[vengence]

The OP states the max weight is 5,000 kg for teleportation

[Terralthra]

The main problems a battleship faced, was the fact that it could only have so much armor, unless it wanted to sacrifice speed, not to mention being able to stay afloat.

I mean, it's the same problem with tanks, you either have to sacrifice mobility for protection, and range.

Sky Battleships will suffer from the same problem. The OP specifically states that the antigravity only moves the item in question up or down, it does not assist in any other direction of travel. A sky battleship that weighs over 12 million tons...that's 10.8 * 10^9 kg. Assuming 100% efficiency (ha!), and no air resistance (ha!) that means it will take just over 300 L of gasoline (energy density 35MJ/L) to get your sky battleship moving at 1 m/s. Getting it to be as fast as a naval battleship (30 mph, 13 m/sec) will take approximately 4000 L of gasoline, again, assuming perfect mechanical efficiency in burning the gasoline and no air resistance at all.

Even the most energy-efficient jet engines have an overall efficiency well below 40%, so in practice, you should at the very least double that fuel load, and probably more. Jet engines' overall efficiency is the product of their thermal efficiency (how efficiently they extract the energy of the fuel) and their propulsive efficiency (how much thermal energy is converted to kinetic energy of the aircraft).

Thermal efficiency is, at best, around 45-50%, and propulsive efficiency is optimal when the exhaust jet's velocity matches the aircraft's velocity. As previously covered, this behemoth is going to be fucking slow, making propulsive efficiency also terrible. Velocity/exhaust velocity = 0.5 results in ~60% propulsive efficiency. Exhaust velocity of the most efficient jet engine manufactured (Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593) = 29,553 m/sec.

Your sky battleship moving at 30 mph = 13 m/sec. 13/29,553 = 0.0004, for an estimated propulsive efficiency of fuckall - probably in the hundredths of a percent, if that high. Let's call it .01% to be charitable. 45% thermal efficiency * 0.01% propulsive efficiency = overall efficiency 0.0045%. So, ignoring air resistance (I have no idea how you're going to make this sky battleship aerodynamic, so I can't calculate that), to get your sky battleship moving at 30 mph is going to cost you 8.6 * 10^7 L of gasoline or so. The largest supertanker currently operating carries 50*10^7 L of oil. So, for an entire supertanker's worth of oil, you can maybe get your sky battleship moving at 30 mph and keep it there for a couple minutes. Maybe.

[Rossum]

I'm mildly curious about how this anti-gravity technology would work at lifting water or altering air pressure. I mean, it obviously has some kind of control over what materials it makes weightless like levitating the armor on their ship but not making the crew float around while they are inside (unless it does that and nobody mentioned it before).

So if Anti-Grav Nation could use this to alter the relative weight of fluids and gasses then they could do some pretty weird stuff like create tornadoes by making a huge cylinder of air weightless and having the surrounding air rush in to replace it and thus create a wind funnel to make hurricanes and things.

Or place an anti-gravity field on a beach causing the ocean water to become momentarily lighter than air and lift a huge mass of it up and pump it all into a Teleporter Nation city creating floods.


Now that I think about it... I think the Anti-Gravity Nation would win this war (but not due to the above hurricane and flood machines). I seriously doubt that adding a bunch of armor to their ships is going to help them so much as say adding long-range cannons and just bombarding their enemies from miles away. Plus, having some back-up engines and anti-gravity generators on hand would help.

I mean, shooting an airship isn't like shooting an oceanic vessel because on the latter, its breaching the hull to let the water in that kills it. Shooting an anti-gravity ship would cause damage but unless it takes out the engines and anti-gravity generator then the thing will keep in the sky and bombard its enemy. All the Ant-Grav Nation guys have to do is get a fleet of modestly armored ships with long-range cannons on them and some backup systems to ensure they don't drop out of the sky on the first hit and they can bombard their enemy from miles away with next to no chance of retaliation. With point-defense systems and the constant high ground they can keep themselves protected and if they do get hit its just a matter of turning around and getting their airship fixed up before returning to battle.

Plus, assuming both nations have roughly the same tech-level otherwise then any missiles the teleporter nation can make to attack the airships with the anti-grav nation can make as well. Sure, they might not have unlimited fuel but if teleporter nation feels like installing teleporters in their missiles then anti-grav can do the same... resulting in missiles that only use a fraction of the fuel (first because they are launched from higher up and thus don't use up fuel beating gravity, and second because anti-gravity could render them weightless for prolonged flight). So their missiles would by default get huge boosts to their range. Heck, they could even have floating missiles who get launched in the air, turn on their anti-gravity to coast along slowly, and then turn on their engine to attack days or weeks after they were launched.

Combine that with stealth technology and Anti-Gravity Nation can have their missiles, bombers, and drones flying all over Teleporter Nation spreading payloads of explosives, chemicals, or what have you. All without necessarily getting their own ships within range of Teleporter Nations own weapons.

Rods from God might well be within Teleporter Nations grasp but getting it set up would be expensive and for every satellite they set up Anti-Gravity Nation could be mass producing their own missiles and loading them onto high flying airships. For every one shot the Teleporters get with their superweapon the Anti-Gravity guys can have hundreds.

Plus, assuming this isn't a singleminded war of extermination, both sides would have to field an army into the others territory to properly capture their cities and then establish order. If Teleporter Nation establishes a foothold in a city then in addition to mundane means, their teleporters would be there but only bringing in soldiers one at a time and nothing more. Anti-Gravity Nation could have huge troop transports coming in bringing men, but also giving more air support and a display of their dominance over the area.

If Teleporter Nation takes a city, you get a few teleporters placed in a bunker somewhere where a stream of soldiers come out. If Anti-Grav Nation takes a city they see a constant patrol of ships in the sky and troop transports bringing in fresh soldiers... plus snipers with flight backpacks or flying police cars or whatever. The citizens of a captured Anti-Gravity city would just see a rise in the number of soldiers there while citizens of a Teleporter city would see their skyline get changed and a whole new world gets shown to them.

Plus, I think the Anti-Gravity guys would have an easier time airdropping relief supplies to people hurt by the war so long as nothing goes wrong (though Teleporter soldiers might have an easier time getting the supplies sent out to begin with). Flying cars and trucks would let them ignore any deficiency in the roadways of occupied cities and areas.

Of course, there is the problem of having teleporters in occupied cities... since having even one teleporter active could give the rest of Teleporter Nation a chance to sneak in operatives or nerve gas or whatever. I get the feeling that alot of what happens once any one side gets a foothold in the other would rely on diplomacy and writing out rules of combat. If Anti-Grav Nation captures a Teleporter city then the teleporter network would be a huge liability to them if they want to keep the city infrastructure intact. So, they either shut down the network somehow, establish rules with the Teleporter guys on how they are to be used, or they just adopt a scorched earth policy and trash the whole city to avoid the problem ("Let our enemies teleport into the rubble if they want to!").


One that happens... eh, I'm saying Anti-Grav wins in the end but it becomes a question of if the Teleporters are fanatical enough to keep fighting after cities are taken and who's willing and capable of creating a Hiroshima-level weapon first to give the other side a good reason to surrender. Anti-Grav Nation has the means to make those chemical bombardment ships that were mentioned earlier... just cover whole cities in deadly toxins that makes teleporting into them a bad idea. Then bomb the infrastructure to the stone age (not necessarily in that order).

Teleporter Nation has the potential to turn a campaign into a constant gorilla war with freedom fighters (or insurgents or terrorists or take your pick) who could teleport through the network from all over. Depending on how fanatical the population is to keeping the Anti-Grav Nation out then this could become a real problem. Of course, if the Anti-Grav guys can reliably wipe out whole cities then it should be enough to force a treaty.

So yeah, Anti-Gravity wins because they have a better chance to wipe out whole cities quickly and thus (hopefully) force a surrender. Kind of like with the US and Japan in World War 2. Sadly, I can imagine things getting really bad due to Anti-Grav wanting to intimidate their enemy into a surrender and basically saying "We can exterminate your entire nation if we want to, surrender now." while the Teleporters either feel that the Anti-Gravs will wipe them out anyway and surrender isn't an option or they just try to deny the damage since alot of their network is set up where they don't see where things go or come from. Having food teleported in instantly from special restaurants creates the subconscious illusion that they can make food appear from nothing (and get surprised when that stops working when the city that makes that stuff gets leveled) or since they either are at home or are teleported to work with not "commute" to their job then alot of people simply wouldn't see the carnage and destruction of war like they would if they had to drive around.


Actually seems interesting from a sociological perspective. Anti-Grav Nation has people who might get on flying busses to commute to work and thus see their city from the air alot while Teleporter Nation has people and objects getting zapped back and forth across the whole nation in an eyeblink due to a huge network of teleporters (probably maintained by a few companies). People from Anti-Grav nation would probably have a much better appreciation for the laws of physics than Teleporters.

Plus, considering all the sorts of industrial accidents that can result from normal non-airborne devices and structures the Anti-Grav guys probably have a list of disasters caused from levitating giant armored cubes and then suddenly having some device in the anti-gravity generator fail and drop from the sky. When something fails in a teleporter you get one chunk of something that doensn't make it through (either due to it just not teleporting or it gets ruined... depending on how these teleporters work) whereas an anti-gravity machine can ruin a whole lot of peoples days if it fails and people don't take proper precautions.

[Beowulf]

There's apparently two conceptions on how the anti-gravity works. One, it provides a field that acts against gravity, such that objects in the field experience reduced acceleration from gravity, to a limit of actually accelerating in opposition to gravity.

The other, and the one I favor, you have a generator, that essentially provides bouyancy. You need to bolt the rest of your airship to the generator, and strongly enough that the generator doesn't rip through the mounting. Bigger generators provide more bouyancy, thus giving greater force in the vertical axis, allowing faster climbs, or more weight being carried.

As for my prior costing of anti-grav to orbit: It's the approximate current cost of getting to orbit in real life. Anti-gravity raising your launch platform reduces the cost slightly for the rocket, but there's so much more to the cost of launching a rocket than fuel that a slightly smaller rocket doesn't help things much.

With respect to going total war and the two sides starting to gas each other, teleport nation wins. They can spam a very large number of drone aircraft, that can spray chemical agents. Their range is only limited to how long until the engine fails. And the anti-grav nation needs to destroy every aircraft, as any of them can continue the chemical attack. This is in contrast to a Skylord spreading gas, as each Skylord has a limited endurance, and can only carry so much chemical weaponry. Every Skylord you take down directly impacts how much chemical can get spread. Every drone you take down only makes the rest of them take longer to complete the attack.

[Sky Captain]

Sky Battleships will suffer from the same problem. The OP specifically states that the antigravity only moves the item in question up or down, it does not assist in any other direction of travel. A sky battleship that weighs over 12 million tons

I'm not sure making air battleships that big would be optimal since each unit would be very expensive take lot of time to build and they would be few in numbers. You would probably want something that is smaller, but still highly survivable and very fast, maybe naval destroyer sized. Since anti grav takes care of the weight their shapes could be optimized for high supersonic speed or stealth. They could carrly regular turbofan engines for slow fuel efficient cruising and ram or scram jets for extreme speed something that conventional aircraft can't because it would add too much weight.
Air drag depends on the size and shape of the object not mass. A 50 ton zeppelin would have the same drag as 10000 ton anti grav bomber that has similar size and shape. While a bomber would be slow to accelerate it could do acceleration phase over friendly territory and reach enemy already at Mach 5 or more making it very hard to intercept.

With respect to going total war and the two sides starting to gas each other, teleport nation wins. They can spam a very large number of drone aircraft, that can spray chemical agents. Their range is only limited to how long until the engine fails. And the anti-grav nation needs to destroy every aircraft, as any of them can continue the chemical attack. This is in contrast to a Skylord spreading gas, as each Skylord has a limited endurance, and can only carry so much chemical weaponry. Every Skylord you take down directly impacts how much chemical can get spread. Every drone you take down only makes the rest of them take longer to complete the attack.

It works both ways since there is no reason why anti grav nation couldn't make huge number of chemical spraying stealth drones. Sure they won't have infinite fuel and chem supply, however they would be able to carry more since weight is not a big issue and because of stealth they would be very hard to find and be able to return to base and rearm. Or anti grav guys could drop chem bombs from high altitude hypersonic bombers. Both sides are capable of massive chem attacks if they go to total war of extermination.

[Terralthra]

Sky Battleships will suffer from the same problem. The OP specifically states that the antigravity only moves the item in question up or down, it does not assist in any other direction of travel. A sky battleship that weighs over 12 million tons

I'm not sure making air battleships that big would be optimal since each unit would be very expensive take lot of time to build and they would be few in numbers. You would probably want something that is smaller, but still highly survivable and very fast, maybe naval destroyer sized. Since anti grav takes care of the weight their shapes could be optimized for high supersonic speed or stealth. They could carrly regular turbofan engines for slow fuel efficient cruising and ram or scram jets for extreme speed something that conventional aircraft can't because it would add too much weight.
Air drag depends on the size and shape of the object not mass. A 50 ton zeppelin would have the same drag as 10000 ton anti grav bomber that has similar size and shape. While a bomber would be slow to accelerate it could do acceleration phase over friendly territory and reach enemy already at Mach 5 or more making it very hard to intercept.

Mass isn't the determiner for air drag, but it certainly affects the inertia, and even weightless objects still have mass. F = ma.

[madd0ct0r]

Stealth has it's limits, especially if you're flying low to dump chemicals. Wasn't chem warfare banned in the OP anyway?

[khursed]

Well, the teleporter nation, seems to bypass the huge cost associated with putting things in orbit, and can do it at will, I'd surmise the anti-grav then have basically weightless 400m whatever they want, that thus requires a lot less energy to move aorund.

You don't need to make anything completely weightless, the second you reach density lower then the air around you, it will rise on it's own, probably justifying a maximum of 22km of altitude.

So, we now work on the assumption, that we are dealing with lighter then air vehicule, and make our calculation accordingly.

I was thinking about it, if we load them with CWIS and other anti-aircraft weapons, then we don't really need to have that much armor. Although it would be nice to have some. At 22km not many weapon can reach you, and those that can will either be missile from the ground, or air launched missile.

If we just work on the basis of the aircraft carrier, having one that is at 22km high, definitely has it's advantages.

It's definitely going to cost a fortune to make those ships, just as it will cost a fortune for the teleporter to build space stations.

So once again, I'm guessing it's the nation with the best ressources and industrial base that will win.

I'm thinking 10,000 tons tank floating 3-4 meter off the ground would be a bitch to deal with. You could make a lot of those, and make it really hard for the ennemy to deal with them.

I would think mobility would win the war above everything else, and in that regard alone, the anti-grav do have the advantage. Because it's all nice and dandy to have teleporters, but if anything, we now know that the most efficient army, is the one who can move the best.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Wasn't chem warfare banned in the OP anyway?

Chemical warfare wasn't ruled out, but biological stuff was, and the planet has no accessible fissiles for nuclear/radiological stuff.

[madd0ct0r]

So once again, I'm guessing it's the nation with the best ressources and industrial base that will win.

Perhaps we should turn our attention to industrial base uses of the technologies?

I must admit, I think the teleporters might have an edge here.

[khursed]

So once again, I'm guessing it's the nation with the best ressources and industrial base that will win.

Perhaps we should turn our attention to industrial base uses of the technologies?

I must admit, I think the teleporters might have an edge here.

It does open up a lot of possibilities for sure.

I mean, if it is widespread, you just saved god knows how much on public transportation. Every city could afford to have those instead of subways. You can also save tons of ressources by using that instead of trucks to get goods around.

So like I said, if the energy requirement is such, that you save over using other means, then you will definitely profit a lot more then anti-grav.

Just look at our society, most of our energy is spent on transporation and travel. Who needs expensive airplanes? Not the teleporter nation, who needs trains? Boats? Trucks? Not those peoples. You'd still need a minimum for city, and local delivery, however, with the right network of teleporters, they would be golden.

The thing is, though, if they come to rely on it to such a degree, then they do become dangerously dependant on it, so a concerted attack on say the power plants that power them would probably cripple them.

I'm still thinking the whole thing is impossible to answer at the moment simply because we lack too many details.

[khursed]

On the anti-grav side, a locomotive could probably move a hundred to a thousand time it's normal load, once helped by anti-grav engines.

It wouldn't be as useful for pure industrial application as the teleporter, however, I can imagine a lot of stuff where it would be amazing, such as building very high buildings, moving huge amount of materials, and mass transportation.

As with anything, with a little imagination I am sure people would come up with very clever ways of using it.

But like I also said, if the energy requirements cheat the laws of thermodynamics, then you can simply create perpetual motion machine, such as a huge bucket attached with an anti-grav engine, that fills a water reservoir, and you get more electricity then the engine consumes. Or you could simply build a gigantic wheel, and have two anti-grav engine lift counter weights and creature power that way.

[vengence]

I don't think that teleporters would get rid of mass transportation, especially in large cities where things like subways are being used. from suburbs to cities it would likely work, as well as between mining sites and factories, or oil fields to refineries and such as that.

The rods from gods only work if they get and maintain space superiority, which would likely be fought conventionally without much help from the techs. Although the a-grav society could use the a-gravs to accelerate payloads drastically reducing fuel costs. plus at 22km that puts vessels at higher altitudes than most traditional fighters can fly, plus those that can fly at those altitudes are required to maintain very high speeds to maintain that altitudes which severely reduce a fighters ability to perform in combat. This then limits assaults on bases that high with pretty much missiles.