Supersonic Swords and Gun-Kata

krakonfour · Post by **krakonfour** » 2013-11-20 06:57am

Hi!
This is the new scenario I want to discuss!

So..
Imagine a future world where Europe and the Americas suffer the same decline that the former USSR did. The major players are now the Middle East and Asia. In 100 years, the geopolitical landscape has changed a lot.

It is well known that these regions are brimming with hostility to their neighbors. Pour in cash and natural resource scarcity, and we have an arms race dotted with skirmishes and covert raids.

This setting has two new technologies.
The first is the momentum field, and the second is the electropolymer.

The momentum field is where it's at, and it is mostly a plot device to allow charging at the enemy with a sword a viable tactic. It is an eggshell of zero thickness that stops anything coming at it. The momentum of the incoming objects (bullets, shrapnel, gas) is transferred to the field's generator instead. Anything within the field is unaffected.

The practical effect is that a bullet strikes the field and stops dead in its tracks, unharmed. The person wearing the generator is knocked back a bit.

The shield's properties can be tuned in shape and malleability (see below). Two shields in the vicinity of each other extend and merge. This means that three generators can enclose one larger volume instead of three separate ones. A low malleability 'hard shield' will be perfectly spherical and will transmit the full force of the striking object in an instant, greatly stressing the generator's bracing. A high malleability 'soft shield' will bend more easily against incoming forces. It will, for example, deform when facing a strong wind and dent upon impact. An object extending out of the field will drag the field with it, creating a bump or a protrusion and shrinks the entire field to compensate (volume is constant). If the object extends too much outside, the end of the protrusion opens up, creating a gap in the field. The distance outside the field before this happens depends on the softness of the field.
A balance has to be struck between maintaining the shape (hardness) and dampening shocks (softness).

Fields cannot be formed one inside of the other.

The generators require a large amount of energy to create the field to the required volume. Very little energy is required to maintain it. A large amount of energy is required to expand it, and that energy can be recuperated by shrinking the field. The field 'dies out' by shrinking into nothingness.

The practical consequence is that you cannot mount field generators onto bullets, nor can you create enormous shields to cover whole buildings.

Because of these properties, the shield has applications in the military, but also in energy storage and propulsion (jet engines won't need compressors if the air molecules can be halted in their tracks).

krakonfour · Post by **krakonfour** » 2013-11-20 07:07am

Next off: Battlesuits.

How do you defeat a soldier with such a field generator strapped onto his back?
You can try to over come the field through conventional means. A hail of bullets will do practically nothing to a well-mounted generator. An explosion at short range however will force enough momentum into the generator's bracings that they crack and fly off. A tank gun will have a similar effect, with the additional bonus of deforming a soft field to the point of creating an internal protrusion with an opening at the end, allowing full penetration of the field. A final option is to create a missile with a field generator as a warhead. It activates during the flight, preventing it from being shot down. Then, it merges with the target's field and goes through.

Of course, all of these are expensive heavy weaponry you wouldn't want to use up to defeat a single soldier.
One option is to create another soldier, give him his own shield, and make him walk up to the enemy. There, the fields will merge, and he can bash the opponent with a handheld weapon.

And this is the core of the setting, the objective if you may.
Two opponents, wearing suits of armor, powered by electropolymer muscles, dueling within an enclosed space.

krakonfour · Post by **krakonfour** » 2013-11-20 07:24am

Now on to the questions:

The elctropolymer muscles are pretty powerful. I see them becoming as strong as hydraulic actuators today, but with increased flexibility and resistance to damage.
How then to defeat an opponent wearing a full suit of armor at close range?

My initial idea was to use close combat weaponry suited for defeating armor, such as swords and hammers.
Then I did a few calculations.
If the muscles used to carry hundreds of kilos of weight are used to swing a sword, the tip may very well reach supersonic speeds. In fact, striking speeds upwards of 300m/s are required if the opponent is wearing armor plating anywhere near the ceramic composites used in tank armor today.

A plain steel sword just won't cut it (pardon the pun).

So... how do we design a sword to go through composite ceramic plating? Which materials, or combination of materials, can withstand the forces of being struck at supersonic speeds repeatedly?

How would the swordplay look like? If we take the current soldier/computer interfaces to their logical extremes, and matched them with electrically-activated muscles, we would have reflexes and movements incomparable to anything today. Stuff you'd see in manga, really.

Another question arose:
A hammer, or something resembling a piledriver, would be more suited than a sword for bashing through armor. Nowhere have I found information as to how a hammer-wielding hero would go about fighting against a person wielding a sword. In fact, nothing about hammer tactics....

Finally, an idea rose: You have two merged fields and some space in front of you.... get a gun in there!
Of course, the opponent is a steps away, and can easily dodge your gunfire. He might have a gun of his own.

What do you call close-quarters combat between gun-wielders at blinding speed? See thread title.

MrDakka · Post by **MrDakka** » 2013-11-20 08:01am

Several questions:

1)Does this momentum field also stop light as well? Light after all has momentum.
2)Does the field stop momentum both directions(from inside and outside)?
2)What happens when a "soft" field merges with a "hard" field? Is the resultant field "hardness" between these two?
3)What's the range of a personal field generator? 10ft diameter?
4)What's the shape of the field?
5)Can/(how do) you walk/run/crawl/climb/jump with the field on?
6)How bulky/expensive is this field generator? You mention that its impractical to incorporate it into bullets, but what about bigger bullets, shotgun shells, grenades?
7)How much armor is on these battlesuits? Enough to defeat most modern small arms fire?

For melee weapons, I'd imagine small HEAT/HESH warheads at the end of a stick being more useful than hammers/swords at punching through an inch or so of RHAe and one shotting the poor fool inside.

Darth Tanner · Post by **Darth Tanner** » 2013-11-20 08:14am

Why can the elctropolymer muscles simply not allow infantry to carry much heavier weapons capable of defeating the fields. Explosive ammunition should suffice to overload them?

Otherwise laser weapons!

MrDakka · Post by **MrDakka** » 2013-11-20 08:23am

Darth Tanner wrote:Why can the elctropolymer muscles simply not allow infantry to carry much heavier weapons capable of defeating the fields.

Firing autocannons from the hip and sniping with tank cannons like a boss.

Zwinmar · Post by **Zwinmar** » 2013-11-20 08:30am

You have to define the low threshold for the shield to stop a round. 500fps, 800 fps, 1200 fps? How does this compare with the swinging tip of a hammer/sword? Conceivably you could get the head of a handheld weapon going that fast especially with your muscle enhancers there.

Darth Tanner · Post by **Darth Tanner** » 2013-11-20 08:58am

Another thought is although you say shields can not protect buildings is this still the case if masive amounts of energy is applied? Could you for instance have a mobile nuclear reactor that powers a huge area shield that can either be used for strategic defence or as a zap to knock a large area of the enemies shields offline?

Also just going back to your setting, even though the USSR fell apart Russia has remained a strong military force in the world, have the EU/USA done the same?

Purple · Post by **Purple** » 2013-11-20 09:05am

Speaking of mobile nuclear reactors I would like to point out that these do exist. The smallest one I know off was actually mounted on a series of trucks and could move relatively easily. http://z4.invisionfree.com/NSDraftroom/ ... topic=9092

madd0ct0r · Post by **madd0ct0r** » 2013-11-20 10:57am

how do you defeat an army of such soldiers? minefields

krakonfour · Post by **krakonfour** » 2013-11-20 11:37am

MrDakka wrote:Several questions:

1)Does this momentum field also stop light as well? Light after all has momentum.
2)Does the field stop momentum both directions(from inside and outside)?
2)What happens when a "soft" field merges with a "hard" field? Is the resultant field "hardness" between these two?
3)What's the range of a personal field generator? 10ft diameter?
4)What's the shape of the field?
5)Can/(how do) you walk/run/crawl/climb/jump with the field on?
6)How bulky/expensive is this field generator? You mention that its impractical to incorporate it into bullets, but what about bigger bullets, shotgun shells, grenades?
7)How much armor is on these battlesuits? Enough to defeat most modern small arms fire?

For melee weapons, I'd imagine small HEAT/HESH warheads at the end of a stick being more useful than hammers/swords at punching through an inch or so of RHAe and one shotting the poor fool inside.

Good questions and ideas:
1) The same method used to allow air through the field (imagine the air freezing to absolute zero on the surface of the field). Object with too light of a mass won't be affected.
2)The field stops motion from both sides normally, but there's a different reaction from pushing something through it slowly and trying to shoot through it. A slow penetration will pull the field along with it until it opens up. A quick object will hit the field and stop.*
2)There'd be a gradient from the hard extremity to the soft extremity. In practice though, all shield have the same 'optimal' setting that is adjusted to counter specific threats. A field a tad too hard will have holes in it from the slightest protrusion, and might allow the smallest bullet to crack the generator. A field that is too soft won't allow holes for the feet and will bend out of the way of an incoming object. For the actual merging mechanism, imagine two bubble merging.
3) It's variable, but ranges of 3-5m are common for personal generators. Larger fields provide a bigger 'buffer zone' for the field to cave into on a soft setting, but uses up more energy to generate and maintain, shortening how long you can use it before you have to go back to base to swap out the batteries.
4) It's a bubble that is trying to adapt to legs and feet sticking out. Umm... a very fat starfish?
5) The field is usually maintained so that legs stick out enough to create holes for the feet. Climbing is hard though, since the field presses against solid matter for zero resistance. You'd have to shorten the field enough for your hands to stick out.
6) I'm thinking in the 60kg range for the generator (a modern soldier's backpack) plus 40kg for the batteries. The density is about 500kg/m3 for the generator, and 1000kg/m3 for the lithium-ion based batteries. Most designs have the field generated at the campsite, with the onboard batteries doing nothing except maintaining it and driving the muscles.
7) I'm going into the optimistic end for electro-active polymer technologies, so battlesuits weighing 400-500kg shouldn't be impossible. You'd have enough for 20mm ceramic plating at the thickest. They'd be impervious to most current grenades and low-end RPGs. With the shield on top standing up to tank guns, you're going to revolutionize modern warfare.

Why? Because a guy with a knife can kill a machine that can defeat a tank.

And yes, they have cool designs like this one-Spoiler

As for the actual weapons being used, I did say that plain steel won't be enough. A single HEAT warhead designed to one-shot-kill the opponent would also be too unwieldy to put on the target in close combat. Maybe we'd have something like a HEAT-round-in-a-hammer with a magazine fed mechanism or the fan favorite, machine-gun-sword that'll fend off the opponent's weapon then shoot. Spoiler

2*: One technique would be to use a shooting stick. Put a gun on the end of a stick, and push it out of the field until you have a barrel sized hole. You can now shoot out of the field, with very little to shoot back at.

Darth Tanner wrote:Why can the electropolymer muscles simply not allow infantry to carry much heavier weapons capable of defeating the fields. Explosive ammunition should suffice to overload them?

Otherwise laser weapons!

The field is supposed to be a battlefield revolution that does away with long-range weaponry. I'm sure a strong enough blast will defeat the shield, but the momentum of the gas is not very much compared to the target, and at worst it'll break the generator's bracings and fly off without injury to the user.

A viable refit of modern weapons would be to use full solid shot, designed to put a lot of steel on target.... or maybe a bunker-buster type weapon that would screech to a halt against the field, then explode at point blank.

Laser weapons! Yes! Utterly defeats fields of all sizes. That is, if you can deal with its drawbacks... and bribed enough US or European officially to allow the strictly controlled piece of 'technological superiority' into the hands of 'axis of evil' Middle Eastern and Far East Asian countries.
In this setting, their most prominent use is shooting down field-generating cruise missiles aimed at western forces.

MrDakka wrote:Firing autocannons from the hip and sniping with tank cannons like a boss.

I think MrDakka perfectly understood the final aim of this setting.

Zwinmar wrote:You have to define the low threshold for the shield to stop a round. 500fps, 800 fps, 1200 fps? How does this compare with the swinging tip of a hammer/sword? Conceivably you could get the head of a handheld weapon going that fast especially with your muscle enhancers there.

Stops everything, no threshold except for objects of tiny mass (molecules, photons).
The swinging top of a hammer isn't supposed to strike the shield, but be used inside of it, against the opponent's armor. While they might not go cleanly through like a chemically accelerated slug might, they will certainly crush it with repeated impacts. Heck, they don't even have to go through it. A sword tip can find and push through elbow joints or neck guards, or simply swipe off the vision aids. A hammer can bash the opponent through the armor or knock the joints out of place.

Darth Tanner wrote:Another thought is although you say shields can not protect buildings is this still the case if masive amounts of energy is applied? Could you for instance have a mobile nuclear reactor that powers a huge area shield that can either be used for strategic defence or as a zap to knock a large area of the enemies shields offline?

Also just going back to your setting, even though the USSR fell apart Russia has remained a strong military force in the world, have the EU/USA done the same?

Massive amount of energy CAN be applied to protect a whole building. It's just unfeasible to put everything under shields, you know?
A super huge field powered by a mobile nuclear reactor is a possibility, but it would have to touch the opposing fields to merge with them. Since we're going with roughly spherical fields, the amount of energy you'd need to catch everyone in the vicinity becomes exponentially huge.

And yes, your assumption about the EU/US is correct. They maintained they military forces, and their technological edge (see lasers above). They do not have the economic superiority however to go on the offensive, and they've become importers reliant on Middle East/Far East production. Kinda like the UK doesn't want to go war with the European Union today, because then it'd have nothing to eat.

Zwinmar · Post by **Zwinmar** » 2013-11-20 01:05pm

from reading this it seems mines are going to be a very big thing because the way the shield operates actually makes the more effective. Namely that the shield itself cause a rebound effect for the explosive wave amplifying it.

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2013-11-20 01:17pm

krakonfour wrote:Hi!
This is the new scenario I want to discuss!

So..
Imagine a future world where Europe and the Americas suffer the same decline that the former USSR did. The major players are now the Middle East and Asia. In 100 years, the geopolitical landscape has changed a lot.

What sort of "major players" are we talking about? Do they have the strongest economies? The best technology? What do you expect "declined Europe/America" to look like?

The momentum field is where it's at, and it is mostly a plot device to allow charging at the enemy with a sword a viable tactic. It is an eggshell of zero thickness that stops anything coming at it. The momentum of the incoming objects (bullets, shrapnel, gas) is transferred to the field's generator instead. Anything within the field is unaffected.

What about the ground? If I switch on my ellipsoidal bubble shield, does it extend under the ground? If so, then to move I have to introduce new matter (the ground in front of me) inside the shield, while moving other matter outside the shield. Does this have an energy cost?

If the shield does not extend under the ground, then do I have to roll myself around like a hamster in a hamster ball to use this thing? If not, why not?

The generators require a large amount of energy to create the field to the required volume. Very little energy is required to maintain it. A large amount of energy is required to expand it, and that energy can be recuperated by shrinking the field. The field 'dies out' by shrinking into nothingness.

The practical consequence is that you cannot mount field generators onto bullets, nor can you create enormous shields to cover whole buildings.

Why can't you shield a building? They require "enormous energy," not power, so you can trickle-charge, right?

krakonfour wrote:Next off: Battlesuits.

How do you defeat a soldier with such a field generator strapped onto his back?

One option is to create another soldier, give him his own shield, and make him walk up to the enemy. There, the fields will merge, and he can bash the opponent with a handheld weapon.

...Alternatively, you could walk up to the enemy and shoot him in the face after your fields merge.

krakonfour wrote:Massive amount of energy CAN be applied to protect a whole building. It's just unfeasible to put everything under shields, you know?
A super huge field powered by a mobile nuclear reactor is a possibility, but it would have to touch the opposing fields to merge with them. Since we're going with roughly spherical fields, the amount of energy you'd need to catch everyone in the vicinity becomes exponentially huge.

What is the energy required to shield one cubic meter of space? I need an estimate.

And yes, your assumption about the EU/US is correct. They maintained they military forces, and their technological edge (see lasers above). They do not have the economic superiority however to go on the offensive, and they've become importers reliant on Middle East/Far East production. Kinda like the UK doesn't want to go war with the European Union today, because then it'd have nothing to eat.

This would not stop the UK from going to war against, say, Poland with the backing of Italy under the right circumstances. Please remember that "the Middle East" is not a country; you can have allies and enemies in different parts of the region, and import goods from one set while warring on the other set.

krakonfour · Post by **krakonfour** » 2013-11-20 02:37pm

Simon_Jester wrote:What sort of "major players" are we talking about? Do they have the strongest economies? The best technology? What do you expect "declined Europe/America" to look like?

The decline of the West followed that of fossil fuels.

Major players, Middle East: Qatar, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Egypt.
Iran and Iraq are at a sort of cold-war state, trying to gain influence in countries such as Lebanon, Syria and the Saudia Arabie (lost most of its oil revenue). Israel doesn't like the frequent wars happening around its borders, and feels backed against the wall without US support. Turkey didn't follow the Middle Eastern rise in power because it got crippled along with the rest of the EU countries. Qatar is the richest of the lot, and practically owns Oman and Yemen. The UAE is officially best-friends-that-will-backstab-you with the Qatar. Egypt is a pretty neutral party, happy to be the new African capital after South Africa.

Far East: China, India, Korea (unified), Indonesia, Thailand
China is the largest superpower by far, but has started its own decline. A three year war with India was fought into a stalemate a decade ago, sharply dividing Pro-Indian and Pro-Chinese countries. Indonesia is Pro-Indian. Thailand is Pro-Chinese. Korea was unified peacefully a few years before the war, and remained neutral. Unlike Egypt however, it is a powerhouse that threatens both Indian and Chinese hegemony. The tensions between the three have spilled onto the sub-Chinese region.

There are relationships between the two regions. Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Egypt form a 'muslim bloc' based mainly on trade and cultural relations, with the implicit pact that if Pakistan gets attacked by India, or Indonesia by China, they will receive help. China and Qatar have relations simply because they are the richest of each region, but they are the type to believe that they are secretly better than the other party.

Europe. Not EU, because that broke up following the economic collapse of Germany and France over energy costs and the generalized economic degradation carried over from the US. They got on the wrong side of China during its expansion phase, and thus locked themselves out of the geopolitical turnover of the century. The African countries relying on their imports went down with them (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia ect.), and this what gave the opportunity for Egypt to take top spot. Their current situation is comparable to... humm, Ukraine? Poverty, corruption, useless industries but generally not too bad.

The USA got hit hard by its own problems. Tried standing up to China in a panic attack following the latter's OPEP-crisis like pricing of rare earth metals with the help of other producers, couldn't follow up with the military power and found itself unable to pay its debt. Since China had invested its yuans by selling to Qatar and Korea during its build, and even more to Iran and Iraq during their arms race, it could afford to dump its dollar reserve on the market and destroy american value. Economist's nightmare, essentially. Market flooded with dollars, and extreme pricing of essential minerals you have to pay in... dollars. Other countries stuck to the dollar and lost, or paid in their own currency (or had no need for such stuff) and filled in the void the US had left.
Currently, the situation in america is comparable to Mexico or Brazil: hotspots of former glory, with the rest a barren wasteland of poverty.

And that's your future history!

]What about the ground? If I switch on my ellipsoidal bubble shield, does it extend under the ground? If so, then to move I have to introduce new matter (the ground in front of me) inside the shield, while moving other matter outside the shield. Does this have an energy cost?

Quite a bit of your questions were answered above.
The feet extend out of the field, so there is a hole where it touches the ground.
For anything else interacting with the field, it either stops completely or the field opens up to it, trying to follow the contours while maintaining an equal volume. The energy cost is zero, as long as the volume enclosed does not change.

If the shield does not extend under the ground, then do I have to roll myself around like a hamster in a hamster ball to use this thing? If not, why not?

Pick up your feet, bring your arms close and the field will close up into a sphere. With the correct malleability settings, it'll stay closed and slide across the ground with zero resistance.
The problem is, the field does not transmit your weight to the ground or surrounding air, so you will fall through until you touch the bottom of the field and open it up again.

Sidetracking: You could use a jetpack within the field. The air blown out will go through the field and hit the ground. If you try and use a liquid-based thruster for no particular reason, the density of the fluid will trigger the field into halting the flow. The momentum of the flow is transmitted back to the generator, so you will not go anywhere.
The water WILL seep in or out of the field. The molecules are halted on the surface, but start moving again once they are past the zero-thickness barrier. This is because zero thickness... well, the field is thinner than an atom. Kinetic energy does not dissapear, intramolecular vibration is maintained and it'll diffuse past the field.

Why can't you shield a building? They require "enormous energy," not power, so you can trickle-charge, right?

Energy, as in all the energy has to released at once. The requirement for ridiculously huge capacitors with explosion-levels of energy is not practical.

...Alternatively, you could walk up to the enemy and shoot him in the face after your fields merge.

Refer to second half of thread title.

What is the energy required to shield one cubic meter of space? I need an estimate.

Since this is magitech, I still have to play with the numbers to find something neither ridiculous nor mundanely easy to do.
For example, let's use the 3-5m diameter sphere assumption of above.
3m is roughly 14.3m3, 5m is roughly 65m3. I want the field to operate 5 hours in the 3m mode, and an hour in the 5m mode. I said before that the soldier will carry a 40kg lithium ion battery with optimistic energy density. That's 40MJ of energy.
Let's say energy of formation is tied to volume, and the power to maintain it is tied to surface area.
The 3m bubble is formed at the base, before the mission, and all the soldier has to do is maintain it, so energy consumption is about 2.2kW in total, or 77W/m2.
The 5m bubble can only be maintained for an hour despite requiring only 6.1kW. Working out gives me 2.8MJ/m3 of area enclosed by the field.

By these figures, a 'huge field' covering a 20x10x10 building requires 36.2GJ to create and 154kW to maintain.

This would not stop the UK from going to war against, say, Poland with the backing of Italy under the right circumstances. Please remember that "the Middle East" is not a country; you can have allies and enemies in different parts of the region, and import goods from one set while warring on the other set.

See above.

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2013-11-20 03:04pm

Oh, another question. Given that this absorbs ALL momentum from an object... well. Two problems.

One is that it will tend to experience very asymmetric air pressures (i.e. a personal shield experiencing an elephant's worth of force driving it down into the ground, from the 14 psi pressure on the top surface)

The other is that if this thing won't stop individual molecules, how does it react to a stream of liquid? How does it distinguish between individual incoming molecules and solid objects?

krakonfour wrote:The decline of the West followed that of fossil fuels.

Major players, Middle East: Qatar, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Egypt.
Iran and Iraq are at a sort of cold-war state, trying to gain influence in countries such as Lebanon, Syria and the Saudia Arabie (lost most of its oil revenue). Israel doesn't like the frequent wars happening around its borders, and feels backed against the wall without US support. Turkey didn't follow the Middle Eastern rise in power because it got crippled along with the rest of the EU countries.

By what? And for that matter, where is economic wealth coming from for all these Middle Eastern states, if not from oil?

Far East: China, India, Korea (unified), Indonesia, Thailand
China is the largest superpower by far, but has started its own decline. A three year war with India was fought into a stalemate a decade ago, sharply dividing Pro-Indian and Pro-Chinese countries.

How did this not go nuclear?

Indonesia is Pro-Indian. Thailand is Pro-Chinese.

What's in it for them? Thailand is a hell of a lot closer to India than to China strategically; all they get out of such an arrangement is getting to be ground zero for a major war.

Unlike Egypt however, it is a powerhouse that threatens both Indian and Chinese hegemony.

How does it have the population base to do that?

Europe. Not EU, because that broke up following the economic collapse of Germany and France over energy costs and the generalized economic degradation carried over from the US. They got on the wrong side of China during its expansion phase, and thus locked themselves out of the geopolitical turnover of the century.

France has a major nuclear industry and Germany is actively pursuing renewables in the present day. Your real problem is that energy is expensive, and that should affect everyone in the world, not just the developed countries who were at the top in the 20th century.

The African countries relying on their imports went down with them (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia ect.), and this what gave the opportunity for Egypt to take top spot. Their current situation is comparable to... humm, Ukraine? Poverty, corruption, useless industries but generally not too bad.

In that case they are in no shape to be developing novel or advanced weaponry. High science and technological development requires a functional society backing it.

The USA got hit hard by its own problems. Tried standing up to China in a panic attack following the latter's OPEP-crisis like pricing of rare earth metals with the help of other producers, couldn't follow up with the military power and found itself unable to pay its debt.

Since China had invested its yuans by selling to Qatar and Korea during its build, and even more to Iran and Iraq during their arms race, it could afford to dump its dollar reserve on the market and destroy american value. Economist's nightmare, essentially.

And that's your future history!

This sounds... pretty sketchy the way you've described it.

What about the ground? If I switch on my ellipsoidal bubble shield, does it extend under the ground? If so, then to move I have to introduce new matter (the ground in front of me) inside the shield, while moving other matter outside the shield. Does this have an energy cost?
Quite a bit of your questions were answered above.
The feet extend out of the field, so there is a hole where it touches the ground.

In that case, yes, minefields are a huge threat, as is just plain sinking into bad ground. And let me get this straight- there are holes in the shield bubble for your feet? I thought this thing had to form an uninterrupted ellipsoidal surface?

Is that not true? I mean... you can poke holes in this by means other than catastrophic damage. Can the shield "pop" when punctured by a physical object?

The water WILL seep in or out of the field. The molecules are halted on the surface, but start moving again once they are past the zero-thickness barrier. This is because zero thickness... well, the field is thinner than an atom. Kinetic energy does not dissapear, intramolecular vibration is maintained and it'll diffuse past the field.

Pretty fast, yes- by the way, do you actually KNOW how fast water and air molecules move at room temperature due to random thermal vibrations?

Why can't you shield a building? They require "enormous energy," not power, so you can trickle-charge, right?
Energy, as in all the energy has to released at once. The requirement for ridiculously huge capacitors with explosion-levels of energy is not practical.

So you can't create a shield bubble and progressively expand it over time? You didn't say that clearly before.

...Alternatively, you could walk up to the enemy and shoot him in the face after your fields merge.
Refer to second half of thread title.

True- but this is also probably a lot more effective than fighting with swords, and will tend to supplant it.

Also, what happens if someone chucks a hand grenade at the surface of the shield?

What is the energy required to shield one cubic meter of space? I need an estimate.

By these figures, a 'huge field' covering a 20x10x10 building requires 36.2GJ to create and 154kW to maintain.

Previously you did not make clear that you can't make a shield bubble larger by charging it up over time.

Korto · Post by **Korto** » 2013-11-21 05:58am

For anyone thinking of using tank cannons like a handgun, I'll remind you that the strength to lift it is only half the equation. You also need the mass and/or the bracing, or you wont be swinging it, it will be swinging you. Let alone what'll happen when you fire it. Big guns like that would be unwieldy and slow, and the bulk of extra ammunition is another thing that strength can't help you with.
While I of course have a vested interest, I think people are being unnecessarily down on melee weapons here. Point blank range takes out the biggest advantage of a gun: being able to shoot them before they get near you. I wouldn't mind hearing Kamikaze Sith's, or someone else's opinion, who may have real-world experience.

I suspect that extra strength wouldn't increase the sword tip speed that much, because surely there's a maximum speed your arm can biologically go, meaning you'd have to make the sword impractically long. Personally, I would be looking at weapons such as pollaxes, but with a much heavier head. You don't have to penetrate the uber-armour then, the concussion alone will injure and kill, despite any practical amount of padding. The pollaxe can be fast, maneuverable, and deadly.
Would the weapon be able to reach though the shield bubble, to strike at things unprotected by shields themselves? (Such as, I don't know, gun barrels.)

As a final reassuring word, if in the end you can't iron out all the bugs to every nit-picker's satisfaction, but you still like your scenario, then screw 'em. It's fiction, it doesn't have to make perfect real-world sense. The story's what's important.

krakonfour · Post by **krakonfour** » 2013-11-21 06:08am

Simon_Jester wrote:Oh, another question. Given that this absorbs ALL momentum from an object... well. Two problems.

One is that it will tend to experience very asymmetric air pressures (i.e. a personal shield experiencing an elephant's worth of force driving it down into the ground, from the 14 psi pressure on the top surface)

The other is that if this thing won't stop individual molecules, how does it react to a stream of liquid? How does it distinguish between individual incoming molecules and solid objects?

I was thinking mostly in terms of how much momentum the field deals with every second, with a sort of lower threshold it doesn't react to. Gas molecules are sparse, and despite travelling at 500m/s, the zero-thickness shell should be touching about 2.7*10^17 particles at any given time, or 0.0142 micrograms with a momentum of 7.13 ug.m/S
A liquid multiplies that number of contacts a thousand fold, and a solid object like a bullet increases the number of contacts by 3.9*10^15 in an instant, and as it tries to go through the field, the number increases very quickly.
Touching is 107ug.m/S momentum. 1mm penetration is 1.45g.m/s Full penetration of the 9mm bullet is 2.85kg.m/s of momentum

I would think the field would be set to ignore the microgram values.

By what? And for that matter, where is economic wealth coming from for all these Middle Eastern states, if not from oil?

What I meant was that sometime in the next century, the oil and coal spike happen, pass, and the West doesn't come out on top after it.
Europe is crippled by three things in my story- the first is 'rising powers' actually achieving their cultural and social revolution, with a profound impact on the level of education of the masses of young employable people. At the same time, Europe's population has been declining, the aged category is crippling the social services sector, and education hasn't progressed by that much. The practical effect is that the qualified services sector moves out of Europe and into these countries.

Phone call centers moved out of the UK and into India when they could scrounge up several english speakers. The same phenomenon happened in France. If I call my internet service provider, a Tunisian will answer the phone. I'm imagining the same happening in other sectors, such as finance and research. The second is the energy sector. Europe has to reconvert its industry and transportation from fossil fuels to fully electric. The new ME and FE have to build everything from scratch, Europe has to destroy most of what it has and build on what is left. However, Europe has lost all of its capital linked to american assets, has an unsolvable currency following the Chinese crisis and goshdarn nobody wants to invest in a declining country, they're moving with the upstarts. Call it ,arket folly or whatever, but money flows elsewhere. The third is the breakup of the Euro zone, followed by the EU itself. How can Germany and France pander other countries' deficits if they are the hardest hit?

I also mentioned that the states that relied the most on oil were the hardest hit in the Middle East. Today already, the ME states are investing oil money into something that will survive the oil scarcity. Currently, they're dumping it into building and tourism. Who says they aren't going to wise up and invest in research and education in the future? Once the oil crises comes, they'd be in a better off position than countries like Algeria (95% oil revenue).

How did this not go nuclear?

Because they had no intent of actually invading one another? There is no chance in hell that India believes that it can defeat and occupy China, and the latter, for all its resources and millions-strong army, won't be able to stay in India. So, they fight for the sake of showing off their might to the world, and to allow India to send a message: "You can manipulate market prices all you want; but if you stop selling the stuff I need at reasonable prices to me, then I won't hesitate to shoot you... and look, the US ain't intervening in this corner of the world no more" in a more effective way than diplomatic talks.

Plus, Pakistan is in the game too. It has no money for the post oil-crisis reconstruction, and its on un-nuke-friendly terms with India, so it sucks up to China. It allows troops to go over its lands into India, India drives them back, and the war is fought over its land. Pakistan becomes a battlefield, and India and China would have no hesitation to continue the war for three years when its Pakistani who are dying and not their own citizens.

What's in it for them? Thailand is a hell of a lot closer to India than to China strategically; all they get out of such an arrangement is getting to be ground zero for a major war.

Pakistan is the ground zero, and Thailand/Indonesian alignement happened after the war. It's the same way Cuba was a USSR alley in the US's neighbourhood, and Japan a US ally right next to Russia.

How does it have the population base to do that?

It has money, it is competing to implant its industries in the sub-chinese zone, and it has nukes from the North Korean dissolution.

France has a major nuclear industry and Germany is actively pursuing renewables in the present day. Your real problem is that energy is expensive, and that should affect everyone in the world, not just the developed countries who were at the top in the 20th century.

The world's biggest producer of uranium is Kazahistan, which is right next to... yeah. Number 2 is Canada, and its going to keep selling to the US when shit hits the fan. So when you've got 57% (including US, China and India) of the world's uranium production locked away, relying on uranium import doesn't sound so nice.
Germany and countries which converted to renewable energy sources would survive the energy crisis, yes, but the problem is that a)German's income is automobile and high technology b)renewable energy sources are needy of metals the Chinese consortium has an iron grip on. Its not unlikely that Germany would survive the oil crisis, only to find China and co. unwilling to sell the minerals it needs to rebuilt its transportation network and energy distribution facilities. China produces two thirds of the world's silicon, top producer of Cadmium and Gallium...

In that case they are in no shape to be developing novel or advanced weaponry. High science and technological development requires a functional society backing it.

My mistake. It is Europe who has slumbered into decadence, in a situation similar to the Ukraine today.

This sounds... pretty sketchy the way you've described it.

Not my forte

In that case, yes, minefields are a huge threat, as is just plain sinking into bad ground. And let me get this straight- there are holes in the shield bubble for your feet? I thought this thing had to form an uninterrupted ellipsoidal surface?

Is that not true? I mean... you can poke holes in this by means other than catastrophic damage. Can the shield "pop" when punctured by a physical object?

Yup, and yup.
Minefields are a huge threat, and the explosion will be contained and amplified within the field. Nothing's invulnerable... I think militaries would put a lot of effort into both finding and defusing mines, and as much into turning their own untraceable. Something like this would take top priority.

As I described in another post, the field is spherical on its own. It does try to follow the contours of something pressing against it, creating bulges inwards or outwards. If you push too much outside of its perimeter, it'll follow the object with a protrusion until the tip opens up into a hole.
An extreme case would be putting a 1m shield inside a car. The solid matter in the way would push it outside until it is a cylinder going around the car's body.

The field never pops. It's not 'filled' with anything. It's just a shell of magical stuff that is repulsed by the generator into shape, but it accomodates contours and allows holes.

Pretty fast, yes- by the way, do you actually KNOW how fast water and air molecules move at room temperature due to random thermal vibrations?

640m/s (25C water) and 518m/s (0C air)

So you can't create a shield bubble and progressively expand it over time? You didn't say that clearly before.

Hadn't thought of it.
Let's try a quick calculation: What if I had a fixed power supply, and wanted to expand/maintain the field at the same time?
Let's try a 3 to 5m field within one hour. It's going to be quadtratic, since the power required to maintain the new field increases as you go along...
Maintaining: Power= Area*Watts per m2
Time to expand: Time= ((Volume2-Volume1)*Energy per m3)/Power
You'd need a power supply of roughly 39914kW to trickle-charge the field's expansion within an hour.

This led to an interesting scenario. What if you tried to trickle-charge a tiny field? The field would have a volume much too small to cover the object you want to protect, or the generator itself for example. It would have to expand outwards until it doesn't touch solid matter. The result would be an extremely thin ring just on the surface of the object, that would gradually widen before travelling up and down the person and closing up.

True- but this is also probably a lot more effective than fighting with swords, and will tend to supplant it.

Rule of cool- You have an opponent at arm's distance away from you. Do you
a)use a light gun to quickly aim and shoot... ricoheting off the armor
b)use a big gun, spray and pray at 1m distance
c)take your knife and stab the motherfucker in the neck

Also, what happens if someone chucks a hand grenade at the surface of the shield?

Best case scenario: the grenade was thrown hard, halts in front of the shield and explodes. Generator recieves full force of explosion minus whatever the field absorbed by bending. If it bends too much (soft setting) then the soldier would become partially exposed and recieve a lot of shrapnel. If its a bomb we're talking about. The generator flies away, taking the field with it. Worst case scanario is gently pushing the grenade through the field. The soldier better use his robotic arms, multitude of sensors and augmented reflexes to push it back out or jump far enough for the grenade to be outside of the field when it explodes.

Previously you did not make clear that you can't make a shield bubble larger by charging it up over time.

[/quote][/quote]

Hadn't thought of doing so. Even if I allowed it, it would be of the 'Impractical but Cool' variety. Can you reliably maintain a 496kW+ power supply in a battlefield (trying to cover the building from field size zero within 24 hours)?

krakonfour · Post by **krakonfour** » 2013-11-21 06:38am

Thanks for dropping in, Korto.

Korto wrote:For anyone thinking of using tank cannons like a handgun, I'll remind you that the strength to lift it is only half the equation. You also need the mass and/or the bracing, or you wont be swinging it, it will be swinging you. Let alone what'll happen when you fire it. Big guns like that would be unwieldy and slow, and the bulk of extra ammunition is another thing that strength can't help you with.

Well, the handheld, close range sort would probably need a much shorter barrel and much less aiming assists; but it'd still need a sort of tripod or trolley to be used.

The best weapon, in my opinion, for this sort of close range combat is a sort of revolver shotgun with an underslung sticky grenade. The shotgun is easy to point and hit with, and the whole thing can bat away an enemy's weapon in a sort of gun-kata move. The user can then smash the tip of the barrel against a weakspot, leaving behind the grande to explode on the surface.

While I of course have a vested interest, I think people are being unnecessarily down on melee weapons here. Point blank range takes out the biggest advantage of a gun: being able to shoot them before they get near you. I wouldn't mind hearing Kamikaze Sith's, or someone else's opinion, who may have real-world experience.

I think the closest real world experience we can refer to is room-clearing operations by SWAT commandos. Closed space, gunfire and very little distance between opponents. AFAIK, they still employ knives.

I suspect that extra strength wouldn't increase the sword tip speed that much, because surely there's a maximum speed your arm can biologically go, meaning you'd have to make the sword impractically long.

That actually depends on how the suit is built, ya know. We could have actual 'suits', where the artifical muscles over lap the real ones, or we could have stuff like these: Spoiler

Personally, I would be looking at weapons such as pollaxes, but with a much heavier head. You don't have to penetrate the uber-armour then, the concussion alone will injure and kill, despite any practical amount of padding. The pollaxe can be fast, maneuverable, and deadly.
Would the weapon be able to reach though the shield bubble, to strike at things unprotected by shields themselves? (Such as, I don't know, gun barrels.)

I spoke of that effect when mentioning hammers. I just realized that poleaxes have another advantage: if they are long enough, you can fight from outside the oppenent's field. Push the pole through, and swing about.
Another idea I had was to design mechanically-enhanced bladed weapons. We all know the sword. It's metal on a stick; totally inert. How about replacing the armor piercing estoc-sword with something that uses a piston-pushed metal penetrator? Or heck, explosion-pumped reusable metal spike? On the non-explosive end of the spectrum, we have hammers with hinged handles to multiply the swing speed.

And you know, swords with a stick used to push other guns out of the way might just be called gunswords.

As a final reassuring word, if in the end you can't iron out all the bugs to every nit-picker's satisfaction, but you still like your scenario, then screw 'em. It's fiction, it doesn't have to make perfect real-world sense. The story's what's important.

YOU UNDERSTAND ME. Spoiler

madd0ct0r · Post by **madd0ct0r** » 2013-11-21 06:57am

mortars would be fun too.

Set them on a decceleration 1 second fuse. If they hit the ground, they pause and explode 1 second later = craters that hamper movement, knocking people in bubbles over ect. If you happen to land directly on someone, the field stops it, and the mortar then slowly moves though shield under gravity. After 1 second, bang.

Planes remain effective. Artillery remains effective.

Molotovs, smoke bombs, incendiary flares, minefields all remain effective. The infantry warrior would be obsolete, with large static defenses and shielded armored vehicles seeking to punch through in speartip attacks.

Jub · Post by **Jub** » 2013-11-21 07:22am

I see flamethrowers ruling the day if high energy diffuse gases can get past the shield. If they can't get through the shields you can sweep the flames low and cook a person from the feet up using the shield and the leg holes to funnel heat and toxic gases up to the enemy soldier. Either way the soldier is in a bad spot as the soft points in his super armor, audio pickups and optics would be fried leaving him blind and toxic gases and heat would mean he can't take his helmet off. If gets even worse if the soldier isn't carrying his own air supply.

Beyond that a microwave gun would be nifty, you already have people carrying hefty power sources, magnetrons are easy to mass produce, and microwaves are easy to channel. Suddenly you're cooking the guy and frying his electronics with a rather light weight weapon that's drawing from resources you're already carrying. It has the bonus effect of making the enemies expensive shields worthless while being easy enough to make.

If that isn't practical for some reason you can always just fire explosive shells under the shield. As mentioned the shield will amplify the blast wave and send shock waves up the legs of the poor bastard you just hit. The greatest bit is these enhanced muscles will let you fire some rounds that pack a lot of punch so even if you land a bit short the blast will still possibly knock a guy over. If you aim long and/or high you've just knocked the guy backwards and bought time for a followup shot; think two to the shield one to the feet.

If explosives aren't working try using a big blunderbuss that fires a lot of mass at as much velocity as your soldiers can reasonable handle. The enhanced muscles and possibility of using a recoiless round mean you don't fall over and he does.

Either way, swords aren't the answer to your question.

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2013-11-21 11:25am

krakonfour wrote:I was thinking mostly in terms of how much momentum the field deals with every second, with a sort of lower threshold it doesn't react to. Gas molecules are sparse, and despite travelling at 500m/s, the zero-thickness shell should be touching about 2.7*10^17 particles at any given time, or 0.0142 micrograms with a momentum of 7.13 ug.m/S
A liquid multiplies that number of contacts a thousand fold, and a solid object like a bullet increases the number of contacts by 3.9*10^15 in an instant, and as it tries to go through the field, the number increases very quickly.
Touching is 107ug.m/S momentum. 1mm penetration is 1.45g.m/s Full penetration of the 9mm bullet is 2.85kg.m/s of momentum

I would think the field would be set to ignore the microgram values.

Interesting- so the field's reaction to impacts is a function of the total integrated momentum transfer all over its surface. That may present some exploits, but resolves the fundamental problem I discussed.

I also mentioned that the states that relied the most on oil were the hardest hit in the Middle East. Today already, the ME states are investing oil money into something that will survive the oil scarcity. Currently, they're dumping it into building and tourism. Who says they aren't going to wise up and invest in research and education in the future? Once the oil crises comes, they'd be in a better off position than countries like Algeria (95% oil revenue).

The main catch is that these countries have huge demographic bombs and (in most cases) relatively feckless governments- so it is far from a given that they will manage the transition responsibly. It would be interesting to include in your 'rising regions' a few blatant failures that had the chance to manage the transition, but didn't do it properly, and are now pretty much the table stakes for the real players in the region's political game.

Because they had no intent of actually invading one another? There is no chance in hell that India believes that it can defeat and occupy China, and the latter, for all its resources and millions-strong army, won't be able to stay in India. So, they fight for the sake of showing off their might to the world...

Do you have any idea how expensive a modern war fought on industrial scale would be? Prestige just plain isn't enough to justify it.

and to allow India to send a message: "You can manipulate market prices all you want; but if you stop selling the stuff I need at reasonable prices to me, then I won't hesitate to shoot you... and look, the US ain't intervening in this corner of the world no more" in a more effective way than diplomatic talks.

I'm not sure that can actually work. For one, it gives China every incentive to adopt policies that screw India even if that indirectly harms China- nothing creates bad blood like killing millions of a rival's soldiers. For another, the economic cost of the war is likely to far exceed any gain to be had by "forcing" China to respect India's muscles at the economic bargaining table.

Plus, Pakistan is in the game too. It has no money for the post oil-crisis reconstruction, and its on un-nuke-friendly terms with India, so it sucks up to China. It allows troops to go over its lands into India, India drives them back, and the war is fought over its land. Pakistan becomes a battlefield, and India and China would have no hesitation to continue the war for three years when its Pakistani who are dying and not their own citizens.

Yes- but either side would have strong incentives to use tactical nuclear weapons to avoid a major battlefield defeat. That's something I think you're missing- in a shooting war between nuclear powers it is very hard to imagine that.

You're proposing a pretty static battlefront- more like World War One than World War Two. Even so, it would be very hard to resist the temptation to either blast through enemy lines with nuclear attacks, or to halt an enemy breakthrough by nuking their rear area. Especially since the flash and radiation from a nuclear weapon would go right through one of these force-screens of yours like it wasn't there, and the blast would probably wrench a screen generator off its mountings from momentum transfer.

Pakistan is the ground zero, and Thailand/Indonesian alignement happened after the war. It's the same way Cuba was a USSR alley in the US's neighbourhood, and Japan a US ally right next to Russia.

Are you aware of the logistical difficulties of transporting supplies through Central Asia into Pakistan? At the moment there is about one direct route across the border and the country is very rugged- that highway snakes through mountains and along cliff faces. Cutting it would be trivially simply for a modern military, and it would be an especially tempting target for even ONE nuclear weapon.

It would take an enormous investment in infrastructure to make it possible for China to support anywhere near as many men in Pakistan as the Indians could, and that infrastructure would be highly fragile and exposed to Indian attacks by aircraft, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and even artillery.

France has a major nuclear industry and Germany is actively pursuing renewables in the present day. Your real problem is that energy is expensive, and that should affect everyone in the world, not just the developed countries who were at the top in the 20th century.
The world's biggest producer of uranium is Kazahistan, which is right next to... yeah. Number 2 is Canada, and its going to keep selling to the US when shit hits the fan. So when you've got 57% (including US, China and India) of the world's uranium production locked away, relying on uranium import doesn't sound so nice.

You are aware that under any vaguely normal conditions, one country does not export ALL its product to one other country? World exports are fungible; even if Kazakhstan did export all its uranium to China, this would simply mean China's demand is sated and the rest of world production is free to go elsewhere.

My mistake. It is Europe who has slumbered into decadence, in a situation similar to the Ukraine today.

The Ukraine suffers today because of corrupt government, not because of "slumber into decadence." Talk to Stas Bush- PM him if you want information; he's our resident expert on the REAL causes of the decline of the former Soviet states since 1990. Although to be fair, he is in fact a communist, so bear that in mind.

In that case, yes, minefields are a huge threat, as is just plain sinking into bad ground. And let me get this straight- there are holes in the shield bubble for your feet? I thought this thing had to form an uninterrupted ellipsoidal surface?

Is that not true? I mean... you can poke holes in this by means other than catastrophic damage. Can the shield "pop" when punctured by a physical object?
Yup, and yup.

Does it compromise the force-screen's structural integrity to have holes in it?

As I described in another post, the field is spherical on its own.

Not ellipsoidal? Can you set it to be ellipsoidal?

The field never pops. It's not 'filled' with anything. It's just a shell of magical stuff that is repulsed by the generator into shape, but it accomodates contours and allows holes.

A soap bubble isn't "filled" with anything different from its outside- but it can still pop when someone punches a hole in it or tries to curve it too sharply. These are reasonable questions, in my opinion.

So you can't create a shield bubble and progressively expand it over time? You didn't say that clearly before.
Hadn't thought of it.
Let's try a quick calculation: What if I had a fixed power supply, and wanted to expand/maintain the field at the same time?
Let's try a 3 to 5m field within one hour. It's going to be quadtratic, since the power required to maintain the new field increases as you go along...
Maintaining: Power= Area*Watts per m2
Time to expand: Time= ((Volume2-Volume1)*Energy per m3)/Power
You'd need a power supply of roughly 39914kW to trickle-charge the field's expansion within an hour.

So, if you have a forty megawatt power plant, you can set up shielding for a fair sized building within one hour. If you have a day, you can do it on something like 1.5 to two megawatts, which is actually quite achievable for a reasonable-sized generator. Building a force-screen to protect entire urban areas would be prohibitively difficult, but it should be very much possible to construct artillery-proof shielded strongpoints given a few days' advanced notice.

This led to an interesting scenario. What if you tried to trickle-charge a tiny field? The field would have a volume much too small to cover the object you want to protect, or the generator itself for example. It would have to expand outwards until it doesn't touch solid matter. The result would be an extremely thin ring just on the surface of the object, that would gradually widen before travelling up and down the person and closing up.

There are no consequences to having the field inside your body? I could see that being a problem if it interrupts a hollow space inside your body, or blocks blood vessels.

Rule of cool- You have an opponent at arm's distance away from you. Do you
a)use a light gun to quickly aim and shoot... ricoheting off the armor
b)use a big gun, spray and pray at 1m distance
c)take your knife and stab the motherfucker in the neck

d) Walk calmly up to them until the fields merge, fire a slug or two from a bayonet-tipped shotgun, then close with the bayonet.

Also, what happens if someone chucks a hand grenade at the surface of the shield?
Best case scenario: the grenade was thrown hard, halts in front of the shield and explodes. Generator recieves full force of explosion minus whatever the field absorbed by bending. If it bends too much (soft setting) then the soldier would become partially exposed and recieve a lot of shrapnel. If its a bomb we're talking about. The generator flies away, taking the field with it. Worst case scanario is gently pushing the grenade through the field. The soldier better use his robotic arms, multitude of sensors and augmented reflexes to push it back out or jump far enough for the grenade to be outside of the field when it explodes.

I foresee a lot of people playing "catch" with hand grenades. Note that this will probably be how any "OMG SUPER BADASS" hand to hand combatants die- someone gets tired of them killing their buddies in sword fights and just starts standing back and pitching grenades to them.

It's ignominious, but then so was the fate of the Stamford Bridge Viking.

Hadn't thought of doing so. Even if I allowed it, it would be of the 'Impractical but Cool' variety. Can you reliably maintain a 496kW+ power supply in a battlefield (trying to cover the building from field size zero within 24 hours)?

Yes, especially if it is protected by the shield itself. Or rather, you can't do so in an actual war zone, but can certainly do so to protect the general's command post.

Look up industrial generators in the 100 kW to megawatt power class. It's doable.

madd0ct0r · Post by **madd0ct0r** » 2013-11-21 11:39am

i missed that discussion on grenades.

So we're back to push of pike, with the pikes being tipped with explosive?

Purple · Post by **Purple** » 2013-11-21 12:06pm

Random question. If I stick a pipe through the shield so that I am outside and the other end is inside. Can I roll a ball down it? This seems like the ideal alternative to a pike right now.

krakonfour · Post by **krakonfour** » 2013-11-21 05:37pm

madd0ct0r wrote:mortars would be fun too.

Set them on a decceleration 1 second fuse. If they hit the ground, they pause and explode 1 second later = craters that hamper movement, knocking people in bubbles over ect. If you happen to land directly on someone, the field stops it, and the mortar then slowly moves though shield under gravity. After 1 second, bang.

Mortars... humm, interesting but cost prohibitive. They're not terribly effective if you need a direct or very close hit to take out an opponent, especially when you try non-line of sight firing options.
I think a direct fire grenade is more effective. While it might not pack as much explosives as a mortar would, it allows a hit or miss situation with a hit being a certain K.O.

The again... considering the amount of armor they can carry, a hit might not be certain death.
I was visualizing a bit earlier the electronic aids the soldiers might use, and one of them I came up with was a millimeter radar used to continuously track any object within the field. It would provide millisecond reaction times against grenades and such penetrating the field, and would greatly aid during hand-to-hand combat when you can see even the back of the enemy. Heck, the detection system can be linked up to the robotic arms so that they automatically smack away incoming objects before the user even notices.

Planes remain effective. Artillery remains effective.

I'll get to planes and transport in general in a bit. The short version is that planes become much more arcade-y, with extreme lift and weird-ass hollow tube ramjets and weirder-assed triple-staged pursuit missiles designed to catch the enemy's field and explode inside of it.
Artillery is only effective on a direct hit (full momentum transfer) or very near hit (maximal blast wave/field intersection). Shelling the area and relying on shrapnel won't cut it anymore.

Two things I'd like to point out:
A shockwave of hot air DOES trigger the field, so direct explosive concussion won't occur. The field-powered ramjets work on the principle that enough air moving against the field will get halted.
The holes for the feet depend on the hardness of the field. A very hard field will get the edges just millimeters away from the shoe soles. A very soft field would spread out against the ground, like a skirt, and stay very close to the ground, so unless something is exploding from directly under the hole, it is unlikely that it'll bypass the shield.

Molotovs, smoke bombs, incendiary flares, minefields all remain effective. The infantry warrior would be obsolete, with large static defenses and shielded armored vehicles seeking to punch through in speartip attacks.

Very true. My objective though is to make the mobile infantry supreme, not vehicular warfare.
Imagine jeep-riding mini-mecha with combat shotguns, grenades and pikes riding into combat instead.

Jub wrote:I see flamethrowers ruling the day if high energy diffuse gases can get past the shield. If they can't get through the shields you can sweep the flames low and cook a person from the feet up using the shield and the leg holes to funnel heat and toxic gases up to the enemy soldier. Either way the soldier is in a bad spot as the soft points in his super armor, audio pickups and optics would be fried leaving him blind and toxic gases and heat would mean he can't take his helmet off. If gets even worse if the soldier isn't carrying his own air supply.

Very interesting tactic. Heck, the flamethrower user can even fire at the opponent indirectly and use rooms and other enclosed spaces to his advantage. He could even use napalm. Project the liquid onto the field, then burn it when it falls through.
When the fields are merged, it's another game entirely though. His own flames would backfire.

Beyond that a microwave gun would be nifty, you already have people carrying hefty power sources, magnetrons are easy to mass produce, and microwaves are easy to channel. Suddenly you're cooking the guy and frying his electronics with a rather light weight weapon that's drawing from resources you're already carrying. It has the bonus effect of making the enemies expensive shields worthless while being easy enough to make.

I'm trying to stay away from direct energy weapons, but a maser (microwave laser) would be possible... sadly, it is easy countered by a metal mesh worm over the ceramic plating.

I'm seeing a trend here. Low-tech fighters with fields would utter fail against unconventional weaponry such as flamethrowers and masers. High-tech soldiers would have fully-enclosed suits with remote robotic arms and full monitering of the surroundings, and would be impervious to such attacks.

If that isn't practical for some reason you can always just fire explosive shells under the shield. As mentioned the shield will amplify the blast wave and send shock waves up the legs of the poor bastard you just hit. The greatest bit is these enhanced muscles will let you fire some rounds that pack a lot of punch so even if you land a bit short the blast will still possibly knock a guy over. If you aim long and/or high you've just knocked the guy backwards and bought time for a followup shot; think two to the shield one to the feet.

As I've said before, it is unlikely that you'll be able to get an explosive shell, or much of the explosive shockwave, under the shield from the side. Blasting the opponent to knock him over is a great, basics-101-how-to-fight-with-a-field combat tactic.
You could blast the opponent, knock him over, then merge the fields and shoot the guy before he can dodge in his unbalanced state.

Or...
design possibility: The generator could be placed as low as possible, on a swinging mount. It would look like the hornet-tails of the mecha in Ghost in the Shell. Spoiler

If explosives aren't working try using a big blunderbuss that fires a lot of mass at as much velocity as your soldiers can reasonable handle. The enhanced muscles and possibility of using a recoiless round mean you don't fall over and he does.

Not going to work. Whatever recoil you can handle, the opponent can stand up to it better.
One note on the physics: Momentum is transferred back to the generator. What happens to the direction of the force? Well, the new vector is drawn from the point of impact to the center of the field. This means a hit to the top of the shield will push the user down, while a hit to the bottom, at whatever angle, will lift him up.

Either way, swords aren't the answer to your question.

I'm pretty sure by now that they can't be used to break armor. They would make for a great secondary weapon though, especially shorter swords, because they can bat away the enemy's weapon, cut off vital components and be jammed into weakspots much easier than a gun can be accurately fired into. A glorified combat knife/dagger, if you may, and the pommel can be used as an improvised hammer to smash against the opponent to disorient him. A barrel and firing mechanism can't be submitted to the same abuse.

madd0ct0r wrote:i missed that discussion on grenades.

So we're back to push of pike, with the pikes being tipped with explosive?

That's a very interesting idea, and would very certainly work in certain conditions. I also see situations where remaining split up and partaking in duels against individual opponents is more beneficial. Situations such as incoming artillery fire would make increasing the target area prohibitive, and an incoming grenade is much harder to dodge when you've got 10-15 guys inside the same massive shield.

Purple wrote:Random question. If I stick a pipe through the shield so that I am outside and the other end is inside. Can I roll a ball down it? This seems like the ideal alternative to a pike right now.

Yes, you can. The shield extends down the length of the tube's sides, then opens up at the extremity. Everything inside is unaffected.
You could say the field hates 'going through' stuff.

Jester's post coming right up.

krakonfour · Post by **krakonfour** » 2013-11-21 06:43pm

Simon_Jester wrote:Interesting- so the field's reaction to impacts is a function of the total integrated momentum transfer all over its surface. That may present some exploits, but resolves the fundamental problem I discussed.

Okay.
One of the 'exploits' I was thinking of is ramjets. Air, once at a high enough speed, would not have negligible momentum values, and when facing an especially hard field (does not bend at all), will likely be stopped. The following wave of air slams into this immobile air, and hits the field again, with even higher momentum. This process is repeated until we have -back-travelling shockwaves continuously pulsing immobile air through the field. This air, at near-zero speed, can be fed into a carburetor with minimal additional features. Hey presto, we have a pulse-ramjet that has zero moving parts and begins operation at low speed, regardless of the tube's dimensions.

Airplanes would love this engine.

The main catch is that these countries have huge demographic bombs and (in most cases) relatively feckless governments- so it is far from a given that they will manage the transition responsibly. It would be interesting to include in your 'rising regions' a few blatant failures that had the chance to manage the transition, but didn't do it properly, and are now pretty much the table stakes for the real players in the region's political game.

I did away with the 'main catch' through the magic of future history: What if these countries got functioning governments just when they needed them? As for the neighbours that did not succeed, I thought I mentioned the North African countries (for sticking with Europe) and Saudia Arabie from not reconverting away from oil. For the actual failures (did not do things well), I think countries in the Sub-saharan region, South America and the current promising Asian Tigers minus South Korea. Hong Kong would probably fall victim to Chinese pressure, as would Taiwan and Singapore. Other countries I can think of are Russia (not reliant on american currency, has huge mineral reserves to fall back on and the economy is not tied to Europe and yet its not a major power) and Australia. The latter had all to gain from the Chinese crisis. For the developing countries that didn't develop, we can cite Syria (playtoy for the Iraq/Iran regional powers conflict, especially since we hear today that Iran and the current Syrian government are best buddies) and Jordan to the north Middle East, and Yemen, Bahrain and Kuwait to the south Middle East, under Qatari practical ownership.

Off to the Far East, we have Vietnam, Myanmar and Malaysia. Poor things. Most of the fighting and skirmishes in this setting happen in their jungles, with Chinese, Indian, Indonesian forces fighting over future control of their resources.

In term of story setting, we have desert/city combat in the Middle east and jungle combat in the Far east.

Do you have any idea how expensive a modern war fought on industrial scale would be? Prestige just plain isn't enough to justify it.

Oh ho ho ho its unlikely that the cost of future wars in the setting will skyrocket. You ARE doing away after all with the tanks, APCs, gun helicopters and bombers.
Even so, you are right about the cost of a large scale attack. While there might not be any need for several expensive vehicles and ammunition, the sheer scale of men, equipement and supply train to provide is non-negligible.

I'll either think up of a good reason or handwave the question away with dick waggling contest mounting Indo-Chinese tensions.

I'm not sure that can actually work. For one, it gives China every incentive to adopt policies that screw India even if that indirectly harms China- nothing creates bad blood like killing millions of a rival's soldiers. For another, the economic cost of the war is likely to far exceed any gain to be had by "forcing" China to respect India's muscles at the economic bargaining table.

I'll try and work this one out.

You also have to consider the extreme demand for India's growing high tech industry and the consumer base rapidly changing from third-world farmers into middle class people with Ipods and a degree, and future supply of minerals for decades to come is at stake.

Yes- but either side would have strong incentives to use tactical nuclear weapons to avoid a major battlefield defeat. That's something I think you're missing- in a shooting war between nuclear powers it is very hard to imagine that.

Would they use nukes if the battle simply 'pewters out' once both parties agree on the trade conditions they are trying to impose on one another. I can imagine India holding China hostage with the war:
-Keep fighting and its going to cost you more than me
-Definitively close negotiations and I'll escalate to nukes
-Accept the conditions and we won't have to fight anymore

You're proposing a pretty static battlefront- more like World War One than World War Two. Even so, it would be very hard to resist the temptation to either blast through enemy lines with nuclear attacks, or to halt an enemy breakthrough by nuking their rear area. Especially since the flash and radiation from a nuclear weapon would go right through one of these force-screens of yours like it wasn't there, and the blast would probably wrench a screen generator off its mountings from momentum transfer.

Very true.
It's also a war of attrition between Indian men vs Chinese equipment, since the latter have the technological advantage and prefer sending robots down the long supply chain than soldiers.
Plus, Chinese look bad when they use shielded drones to take down living soldiers.

Are you aware of the logistical difficulties of transporting supplies through Central Asia into Pakistan? At the moment there is about one direct route across the border and the country is very rugged- that highway snakes through mountains and along cliff faces. Cutting it would be trivially simply for a modern military, and it would be an especially tempting target for even ONE nuclear weapon.

There's also the possibility of massive airlift operations, or the more likely one of Chinese forces already in position and at the Indian border before the war starts. The Indians drive them back over Pakistani land until they are pushed back against the mountains.
And in any case, it makes for an interesting war. Chinese technological superiority clashing against the forces of nature, trying to replace the expensive battlefield drones, while Indians heroically sacrifice their lives against the cold machines of the enemy...

You are aware that under any vaguely normal conditions, one country does not export ALL its product to one other country? World exports are fungible; even if Kazakhstan did export all its uranium to China, this would simply mean China's demand is sated and the rest of world production is free to go elsewhere.

My idea was that China would threaten uranium suppliers with war or trade restrictions (like a meaner USA today) unless they followed its price-spike plan and refused to sell to the West unless they met exorbitant demands, first of which would be zero military presence in the vicinity, and second, total access to internal markets or something.

'Free to go elsewhere' means market pricing, and when China can stockpile rare resources easily (40 ton annual gallium production worldwide? Buy all the shit), the remaining suppliers outside of its control have a stronger incentive to follow economic pressure (increase the price by OVER 9000) than political pressure (stay on good terms with the US).

The Ukraine suffers today because of corrupt government, not because of "slumber into decadence." Talk to Stas Bush- PM him if you want information; he's our resident expert on the REAL causes of the decline of the former Soviet states since 1990. Although to be fair, he is in fact a communist, so bear that in mind.

I'd love to hear his word on the matter.

Not ellipsoidal? Can you set it to be ellipsoidal?

Nope. The field is pushed out by the generator equally in all directions, so its equilibrium state is a sphere. However, a stick long enough inside the sphere will give it a lemon-like shape, depending on the malleability (elongated shape, bulges on the ends).

A soap bubble isn't "filled" with anything different from its outside- but it can still pop when someone punches a hole in it or tries to curve it too sharply. These are reasonable questions, in my opinion.

Yeah, bubble analogy was bad. A bubble has a film of liquid held together by surface tension and internal/external pressure interactions. The field is just a zero-width break in a reality.

So, if you have a forty megawatt power plant, you can set up shielding for a fair sized building within one hour. If you have a day, you can do it on something like 1.5 to two megawatts, which is actually quite achievable for a reasonable-sized generator. Building a force-screen to protect entire urban areas would be prohibitively difficult, but it should be very much possible to construct artillery-proof shielded strongpoints given a few days' advanced notice.

So now we can build up fortifications and set up camp using fields.
It would be funny to watch an artillery-shielded building completely intact, but the generator driven through the ground by the impacts.

There are no consequences to having the field inside your body? I could see that being a problem if it interrupts a hollow space inside your body, or blocks blood vessels.

It is extremely unlikely for the field to get stuck inside the body. It has a natural preference to form a thin open ring outside of the dense liquids and solids, but even if it did form inside a liquid, it would have to be very finely tuned to halt the relatively slow blood flow.
And even if it did, the flow would just trickle past the field and continue on its merry way.

I foresee a lot of people playing "catch" with hand grenades. Note that this will probably be how any "OMG SUPER BADASS" hand to hand combatants die- someone gets tired of them killing their buddies in sword fights and just starts standing back and pitching grenades to them.

Unless it is a very light grenade, it will be stopped if you throw it against the field. The user has a few milliseconds to seconds to step away from the falling grenade, which would then explode and transmit momentum to the target. If it's a light soldier, you're in luck. If he's a heavy soldier with generator bracing meant to stand up to tank guns, then the explosion won't do much. Heck, if he can carry hundreds of kilos with artificial muscles, armoring to stand up to grenades doesn't seem impossible.

But that's all specifics. Grenade spam might be very effective in some cases, and completely useless against others. It's one tactic amongst many and I haven't tweaked the setting enough to favor one method over the other.

Yes, especially if it is protected by the shield itself. Or rather, you can't do so in an actual war zone, but can certainly do so to protect the general's command post.
Look up industrial generators in the 100 kW to megawatt power class. It's doable.

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Very interesting. This stuff is great.

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