B5 planetkillers

[Crossover_Maniac]

According to the Planet Killer article in the Essay section, a Vorlon Planet Killer can only sterilize a planet, but not destroy one. However, in the episode "The Summoning", a planet was actually destroyed:

Delenn: What is it?

Ivanova: When Marcus and I were out looking for the first ones, we came across an Vorlon fleet hiding in hyperspace.

Marcus: Not dozens, not hundreds, but thousands of ships.

[Lorien leans forward, taking an interest]

A couple of them were three to four miles across. We tried to track them but we lost them somewhere around Sector 70.

Delenn: There's a Shadow base not far from there.

Ivanova: Exactly, so as soon as we got back I had C&C monitor that area for any transmissions, anything unusual. The Shadow base was located on a planet called Arcada Seven. It's not there any more.

Lennier: The base?

Lyta: No, the planet.

[Lorien leans forward even more, a look of worry crosses his face]

They destroyed,… they destroyed and entire planet.

Franklin: Lyta, there are over four million people on Arcada Seven,… you can't be serious.

So, the Vorlon ships are true planet-destroying weapons.

Also, the essay made reference to the Shadow Planet Killer stating that:

The Shadow planet-killer is a giant spaceborn MLRS (multiple-launch rocket system) concealed within an energy-draining cloud. Some Babylon 5 fans claim that this cloud is composed of nano-bots, but that seems absurd. Nano-scale constructs (either mechanical or biological) have an extremely low "thermal capacitance", which is an engineering short-hand way of saying that their ratio of mass to surface area is extremely low, so they heat up very quickly in the presence of radiation (yes, size matters). In other words, thermal radiation which would be harmless to a conventional vehicle or even human skin would rapidly heat nanobots to the point of destruction (this is why microbial life forms must encase themselves in spores or they won't even survive sunlight). The radiative output of a single megaton-class nuclear weapon would destroy all of the nanobots in a volume of space encompassing at least many tens of thousands of cubic kilometres. Only a lunatic or a fool would build a superweapon out of a cloud of nanobots.

Yet, how would this cloud be controlled if it wasn't made of nano-bots? It has to be composed of diffused particles, a gas would spread out until it was equalized with ambient air pressure, which would be 1E-8 Pascals in LEO over a planet like Earth and several orders of magnitude lower in interplanetary space. The particles move along with the main node and can change shape. There must be some mechanism to control these diffuse particles.

Also,

The intelligence of the Shadows is questionable for other reasons as well; for example, they have been aware of a telepath vulnerability in their basic warship design for more than a thousand years (telepaths can jam their warships, thus stopping them cold), yet they have done nothing whatsoever to remedy this crippling design defect.

The questioning of Shadow tech because of its vulerability to telepaths is as errorous as saying that the US military 'have been aware of a computer virus vulnerability in their basic computer system design for over thirty years (computer viruses can destroy programs, thus stopping computers cold) yet they have done nothing whatsoever to remedy this crippling design defect." The fact is, Shadow warships use telepaths to operate their ships much like we use computers today. The vulnerability is based on a need for telepaths like we are vulnerable to certain computer programs because we need computer programs for running the computers that controls our commerce, transportation, military, etc (hence, the fear of the end of civilization due to the Y2K computer glitch). Also, warfare is a constant cat-and-mouse game of measures, countermeasures, and measures to counter the countermeasures and so forth. Example is air combat in WWII. In order to stop bombing raids, the Germans set up anti-aircraft guns around their bases. Allies bombers would fly either at night or through cloud cover to avoid being seen. In turn, the Germans built radar stations to track Allied bombers. The Allies then used strips of aluminum foil cutted to one-quarter of the wavelength of German radar called chaff as a sort of smokescreen to confuse German radar. The Germans then started experimenting with radar signals at higher frequencies, only to have the Allies use chaffs cut at various sizes for different frequencies. Remember, all of the telepaths in each race were created by the Vorlons. I can only image the Shadows set up countermeasures to only allow their telepaths to control their ships only to have the Vorlons find a way around it. Military technology is in a constant state of flux not unlike a game of chest. It would foolish to assume the Shadows didn't try to make countermeasures to keep telepaths from disrupting a ship designed to be operated by a telepath.

[Howedar]

According to the Planet Killer article in the Essay section, a Vorlon Planet Killer can only sterilize a planet, but not destroy one. However, in the episode "The Summoning", a planet was actually destroyed:
<SNIP>
So, the Vorlon ships are true planet-destroying weapons.

Yet they leave survivors. "Destroying" a planet can be interpreted a number of ways, but leaving survivors cannot.

Also, the essay made reference to the Shadow Planet Killer stating that:
<SNIP>
Yet, how would this cloud be controlled if it wasn't made of nano-bots? It has to be composed of diffused particles, a gas would spread out until it was equalized with ambient air pressure, which would be 1E-8 Pascals in LEO over a planet like Earth and several orders of magnitude lower in interplanetary space. The particles move along with the main node and can change shape. There must be some mechanism to control these diffuse particles.

There are these cool things, they're called radio waves. Sometimes, if you're real smart, you can use them to control things from a distance, without even touching them! Pretty incredible, eh?

The questioning of Shadow tech because of its vulerability to telepaths is as errorous as saying that the US military 'have been aware of a computer virus vulnerability in their basic computer system design for over thirty years (computer viruses can destroy programs, thus stopping computers cold) yet they have done nothing whatsoever to remedy this crippling design defect." <SNIP>

Last time I checked, computer viruses didn't affect computers on a line-of-sight basis. They actually had to access the computer system itself, which madated either accepting and loading a transmission, or loading off of a disk-like apparatus. Telepaths, however, seem to be rather less limited.

[Crossover_Maniac]

Also, the essay made reference to the Shadow Planet Killer stating that:
<SNIP>
Yet, how would this cloud be controlled if it wasn't made of nano-bots? It has to be composed of diffused particles, a gas would spread out until it was equalized with ambient air pressure, which would be 1E-8 Pascals in LEO over a planet like Earth and several orders of magnitude lower in interplanetary space. The particles move along with the main node and can change shape. There must be some mechanism to control these diffuse particles.

There are these cool things, they're called radio waves. Sometimes, if you're real smart, you can use them to control things from a distance, without even touching them! Pretty incredible, eh?

Did you actually read the post? I was saying that the Shadow Planet Killer had to be composed of nano-bots in order to for the cloud to move with the control nodes. Radio waves can not be used to provide motion. If you actually read the post, you would have figured that out.

[Crossover_Maniac]

According to the Planet Killer article in the Essay section, a Vorlon Planet Killer can only sterilize a planet, but not destroy one. However, in the episode "The Summoning", a planet was actually destroyed:
<SNIP>
So, the Vorlon ships are true planet-destroying weapons.

Yet they leave survivors. "Destroying" a planet can be interpreted a number of ways, but leaving survivors cannot.

I actually discussed with some B5 fans who actually watched the show at the B5 Tech Board and Comic Book Rumble Message Board. Here what one of them said:

For one, we have the scene where the VPK is powering up her main gun, the energy gathering between the forward tendrils. The scene changes at that moment. However when it comes back to the VPK, she's flying through a Asteroid field that wasnt there initially...

This implies the planet was destroyed as Lyta stated. The survivors could have left evacated the worlds the Shadows were on and taken refuge on worlds not touched by the Shadows in the same system.

[Rob Wilson]

Yet, how would this cloud be controlled if it wasn't made of nano-bots? It has to be composed of diffused particles, a gas would spread out until it was equalized with ambient air pressure, which would be 1E-8 Pascals in LEO over a planet like Earth and several orders of magnitude lower in interplanetary space. The particles move along with the main node and can change shape. There must be some mechanism to control these diffuse particles.

Exactly what would be the point of having a obscuring screen that's composed of nano-bots? All you need to do is have a constantly dicharging obscurant device. It would keep pumping out the Smokescreen (which could be composed of anything, hell get something like Toner from a Laser printer and pump it out in space and you'll get a nice cover from veiw, add some chaff and now no one can see you properly. And get this, as the cloud is getting dispersed into the area around the PK it would create swirls and so on, just like what's seen on the TV. No need for Nano-bots, no need for over complicated scenario's, just a practical solution to the problem.

[Crossover_Maniac]

Yet, how would this cloud be controlled if it wasn't made of nano-bots? It has to be composed of diffused particles, a gas would spread out until it was equalized with ambient air pressure, which would be 1E-8 Pascals in LEO over a planet like Earth and several orders of magnitude lower in interplanetary space. The particles move along with the main node and can change shape. There must be some mechanism to control these diffuse particles.

Exactly what would be the point of having a obscuring screen that's composed of nano-bots? All you need to do is have a constantly dicharging obscurant device. It would keep pumping out the Smokescreen (which could be composed of anything, hell get something like Toner from a Laser printer and pump it out in space and you'll get a nice cover from veiw, add some chaff and now no one can see you properly. And get this, as the cloud is getting dispersed into the area around the PK it would create swirls and so on, just like what's seen on the TV. No need for Nano-bots, no need for over complicated scenario's, just a practical solution to the problem.

The cloud is more than a smokescreen. In addition to each particle being self-propelled, the particles also cause ships from the younger races to lose power (energy drain) and equipment to fail as well as obscure sensors (in "A Call to Arms", the Crusader's sensors could barely function inside the cloud, and the ship was based on Minbari and Vorlon technology. Anyother non-First One ship wouldn't be able to see inside the cloud.

[Enlightenment]

So, the Vorlon ships are true planet-destroying weapons.

In this particular case. Subsequent evidence points in the other direction.

Trying to nail down any hard and fast figures on how things work in B5 is very much like trying to nail down a lump of jello. B5 was almost entirely plot driven (this is an insult BTW) and as such something that worked one way one episode wouldn't work the same way in another simply because the Divine Hand decided to undermine the viewers' expectations.

Yet, how would this cloud be controlled if it wasn't made of nano-bots?

How could a human its limbs if its nerves wern't made of elephants?

Hint: the conculsion does not follow from the premise.


Why assume the SPK is anything physical? The behavior of the SPK is so far into the realm of the unphysical that it would make a lot more sense for it to be yet another bit of half-baked B5 metaphysics, along the lines of the Technomages' spell of destruction or some other kind of thought-made-real mumbo jumbo.

It has to be composed of diffused particles, a gas would spread out until it was equalized with ambient air pressure,

A gas is a collection of diffused particles--particles in this case being molecules.

The vulnerability is based on a need for telepaths

<cough>Think for a moment about who (or more to the point what) the crewed the primordial battlecrabs. Also consider how much AI development the Shadows would have been able to pull off during the time they had been around. Neither the PBC pilots nor AIs would be vulnerable to telepathic attack. Using telepath-vulnerable pilots in the SBCs would be about as rational as running a tank with WindowsME.

The SBC telepath vulnerability is only present as the plot required the SBCs to have an exploitable vulnerability. No sane engineer/commander would accept such a vulnerability in the real world as it just makes no sense.

Deal with it.

[Enlightenment]

In addition to each particle being self-propelled, the particles also cause ships from the younger races to lose power (energy drain) and equipment to fail as well as obscure sensors (in "A Call to Arms", the Crusader's sensors could barely function inside the cloud,.

Not even a cloud of nanobots could 'drain power' from a ship. That takes technobabble or metaphysics. Read the nanotech brainbugs page .

And as for obscuring sensors, this is generally what one would expect an inert obscurant, like chaff or smoke, to do...

[Dead on Arrival]

Yet they leave survivors. "Destroying" a planet can be interpreted a number of ways, but leaving survivors cannot.

Howedar, they stated the planet was gone, how can you justify that to mean anything but the physical mass of the planet has been removed from its current place of orbit? Note that there were no survivors from this world...

B5Wars is still canon, and I found my Coming of the Shadows rulebook. It states, "Any ship, moon, planet, or other object in one of these hexes is destroyed. No damage needs to be rolled - destruction is automatic. The beam is capable of cracking planets as large as Jupiter, though it will have no appreciable effect on stellar bodies (even brown dwarfs or black holes, which are too massive to be broken apart by the weapon."

If the Vorlon Planet Killer does not perform a full planetary disruption, its existence is meaningless. A fleet of thousands of Vorlon starships would kill off all life on a planet in minutes, so playing escort for a weapon that takes an exceedingly long time to recharge (1000 turns going by B5Wars) for a resulting effect the fleet can duplicate in significantly less time is pointless.

B5Wars is vague when it comes to exact values for turns or hexes, but I seem to recall 1 minute being thrown around on their forums. That would give a recharge time for the VPK of ~16.67 hours, so it is possible that the Vorlons were hitting worlds faster than the VPK could recharge. This would explain why some worlds were left 'intact', while others appear to have been completely destroyed.

[Crossover_Maniac]

In addition to each particle being self-propelled, the particles also cause ships from the younger races to lose power (energy drain) and equipment to fail as well as obscure sensors (in "A Call to Arms", the Crusader's sensors could barely function inside the cloud,.

Not even a cloud of nanobots could 'drain power' from a ship. That takes technobabble or metaphysics. Read the nanotech brainbugs page .

Since you want to get technical:

Power usage: According to the Star Wars Technical Manual, a star destroyer uses more energy in a single hyperspace jump than a civilized world uses in several thousands years. According to the calculations of Mike Wong, that amounts to 1E25 watts of power. In order to generate that amount with deuterium/helium-3 fusion, you would have to fuse 26 metric tons of fusion fuel or 11,000 tons of matter and antimatter per second. Even using the weapons on the star destroyers would be a drain. The light turbolasers generate 7 megatons of energy per shot (3.15E16 joules), fires every two seconds, and there are 120 of them on the ship. This amounts to a power use of 1.89E18 watts (4.9 tons of deuterium and helium-3 fused or 21 kg of matter and antimatter annihilated per second). And that's only the light weaponry. The big guns generate 22 gigatons per shot and there are 12 of those per star destroy. Of course, I think the weapon yields are are overestimated, but even so, the ship shouldn't survive the power even if it was only fraction of that amount. Never mind the amount of power used, think of the material science necessary to make such a thing. The amount of excess heat should vaporize the entire ship. The energy to vaporize the star destroyer if it was made of iron is estimated at 5.38E17 joules of energy assuming a mass of 69 million metric tons. The ship should subliminate within minutes of turning on its reactor. The Death Star is another matter. According to Mike Wong, the Death Star superlaser generates 1E38 joules per shot. In order to generate that with just fusion would take 2.63E20 metric tons of deuterium and helium-3. For comparisons in mass, the Earth's mass is 5.96E21 metric tons. That's 4.4% of the Earth's mass in fusion fuel used for one shot of a weapon. Even using antimatter, the numbers aren't that good considering the size of the first one is only 160 kilometers and the second one 900 kilometers. The numbers are 1.1E18 metric tons of matter and antimatter annihilating each other to generate that amount of energy. Unless we discover how get energy from a vacuum (zero-point energy) or discover how to make wormholes and place them inside a star or a quasar, we'll never get that amount of power and Star Wars will stay a fantasy.

Now, I don't selectively suspend my disbelief like some Warsies do. Star Wars break just as many laws of physics as B5 and ST does (actually, B5 was realistic enough to have ships that had to rotate to produce artifical gravity and starfigters pilots that had to deal with G-forces like pilots in the real world, at least until the later episodes). It's very hypocritical of you to demand B5 and ST to abide by real world physics but not SW.

[DodoBrd16]

Yet most of those who did were not actually on the ship when it sank.....they were rowing(sp) away in small little life boats because they were able to get off before the thing went down. They were considered survivors

When a ship the size of a VPK jumps into normal space in an inhabited system, it would tend to open a few eyes. Or the intense jamming the Vorlons were doing would give away their presence....so some people could get to ships and leave the planet... And just as how those people who escaped from the Titanic on little life boats were considered survivors, those who escaped before the planet was wacked would be as well.

I would like to make a comment on the technobable thing, Now I dont know where it was said(( by people who work on the show)) that the death cloud uses nanobots for its shroud, but I do know this, the Shadows are BILLIONS of years old...this means that they most likely have learned a few things that we have not.(( probably more like a hell of alot of things))
So, if the cloud does utilize nano technology for its shroud, I wouldnt hold it above the Shadows....

And this is a cool board....like the look.

[Crossover_Maniac]

So, the Vorlon ships are true planet-destroying weapons.

The vulnerability is based on a need for telepaths

<cough>Think for a moment about who (or more to the point what) the crewed the primordial battlecrabs. Also consider how much AI development the Shadows would have been able to pull off during the time they had been around. Neither the PBC pilots nor AIs would be vulnerable to telepathic attack. Using telepath-vulnerable pilots in the SBCs would be about as rational as running a tank with WindowsME.

The SBC telepath vulnerability is only present as the plot required the SBCs to have an exploitable vulnerability. No sane engineer/commander would accept such a vulnerability in the real world as it just makes no sense.

Deal with it.

All of the First Ones technology is organic based. IOW: the ships are living beings. The nanobots may be biological by nature. Because, they are living being, they can be affected by telepaths. Also, a lot of talk about AI is just hype, much like organic technology. There is also a physical limit to how compact you can make integrated circuits before it starts feeling quantum effects putting a limit on your computer's capabilities. And can AI do more than just go after it's pre-programmed targets? Can it adapt to changing situations (which is a must for battlefields) as Mike Wong said himself about the clone soliders

The Kaminoans say that the clones' genetic structure has been manipulated to be "more docile" and "less independent than the original host." This is rather interesting; it is assumed that reduced independence will make the clones ideal soldiers, but officers, NCOs, and even individual troopers (who can be differentiated by their colour-coding) need a certain amount of independent thinking capability in order to function effectively. It is conceivable that at the trooper and NCO level, this can be compensated for with sheer training (their entire lives are spent in military training, after all), but as one climbs the rank structure, a reduced capacity for independent thinking would become counterproductive.

[Dead on Arrival]

No official/canon source I have ever found has stated the Death Cloud to be formed of nano-machines, that is speculation. Along with that, the DC is not capable of performing the maneuver known as 'half-phasing' and there is no evidence to support a claim that the super-structure observed in 'ACtA" is normally phased into Hyperspace. That is also speculation, but there is nothing stopping the Death Cloud from completely phasing in and out of Hyperspace after firing off a volley of missiles.

[Shadow WarChief]

I would just like to point out that the shadows were taking steps to eliminate the design oversight they had in their ships. In "ship of tears", we found out that the shadows were starting to use telepaths to crew their ships, to quote delenn:

"Use one telepath to stop another"

While they could not up and re-design their entire fleet in the middle of a war, they could revise the current versions slightly, and that's what they did, making a Battle Crab mk II so to speak....

[Darth Wong]

(Just checking in on my board)

Interesting ... everyone, crowd around and examine "Crossover Maniac's debating tactics:

Not even a cloud of nanobots could 'drain power' from a ship. That takes technobabble or metaphysics. Read the nanotech brainbugs page

Since you want to get technical
...
According to Mike Wong, the Death Star superlaser generates 1E38 joules per shot. In order to generate that with just fusion would take 2.63E20 metric tons of deuterium and helium-3. For comparisons in mass, the Earth's mass is 5.96E21 metric tons. That's 4.4% of the Earth's mass in fusion fuel used for one shot of a weapon. Even using antimatter, the numbers aren't that good considering the size of the first one is only 160 kilometers and the second one 900 kilometers. The numbers are 1.1E18 metric tons of matter and antimatter annihilating each other to generate that amount of energy. Unless we discover how get energy from a vacuum (zero-point energy) or discover how to make wormholes and place them inside a star or a quasar, we'll never get that amount of power and Star Wars will stay a fantasy.

Now, I don't selectively suspend my disbelief like some Warsies do. Star Wars break just as many laws of physics as B5 and ST does (actually, B5 was realistic enough to have ships that had to rotate to produce artifical gravity and starfigters pilots that had to deal with G-forces like pilots in the real world, at least until the later episodes). It's very hypocritical of you to demand B5 and ST to abide by real world physics but not SW.

Debating observations: notice the clever use of the subject change. Someone points out that there is no connecting logic between "energy draining" and "nanobots" (which is obvious; do small devices have an intrinsic ability to drain energy at a distance due to their size?), so rather than admit defeat, he simply pulls out this completely unrelated rant about high SW weapon and power generation figures (ignoring the fact that Alderaan is an observation rather than a theory). Then he tries to attack my personal credibility with some old Trekkie fanboy-type arguments, which leads up to his triumphant claim that "Warsies" in general are unfair to fans of B5 (and this relates to the point about a cloud not necessarily being composed of nanobots ... how?).

Notice how he has reacted to a point he can't deal with: segue into an attack on me and all "Warsies", in a trollish attempt to incite a defensive reaction and hijack the thread. This guy must have learned to debate at spacebattles.com ...

[Dead on Arrival]

The Drakh share a telepathic hive mind, and they are loyal minions of the Shadows. Any 'weakness' the SVs have could have been fixed by using a willing Drakh or other servitor race as a core. They bartered away some of there technology to the Earth Alliance/Psi-Corp in exchange for rogue Teeps to implant, but not because they needed to but because it furthered there goals of causing conflict among the Younger Races. Shadowtech is designed to integrate with other technology, to assimilate it if you will, and a ship built using it can be controlled by the Shadows or there minions. By giving it out to a select few, they create groups they can control and or manipulate...as was initially done with the Techo-Mages.

Another thing to point out, the Shadows seem to be stuck in the mindset of using starships controlled by a singular core unit. We know that ships can be built that don't utilize this principle, such as the Shadow-enhanced Omega class Destroyers which utilized a layer of Shadow armor, molecular slicers, and energy diffusors with no weakness to telepaths. Imagine if you will, a fully Shadow-built starship about the mass/size of an Omega that does not use a core but instead uses what passes for hundred, thousands, or even millions of years of computer evolution (quantum/hyperspacial-state or something even more exotic).

My point, the Shadows could...given a kick in the pants to unstagnate them...design ships much superior to the designs used against the Younger Races that have no weakness to Telepaths.

[Enlightenment]

It's very hypocritical of you to demand B5 and ST to abide by real world physics but not SW.

Please tell me where, prior to this post, I've even mentioned Wars, let alone excused its tech problems.

And how exactly is this relevant to my statement that nanobots can't 'drain power' from starships?

There is also a physical limit to how compact you can make integrated circuits before it starts feeling quantum effects putting a limit on your computer's capabilities.

Parallelism.

And can AI do more than just go after it's pre-programmed targets? Can it adapt to changing situations

There is no known reason that a neural network containing a comparable number of nodes to the neural network which comprises the human brain would have--given enough training--capabilities equal to those of a human. Assuming Moore's Law holds up for long enough we'll have the computational ability to implement this kind of AI within a few decades. 18 months after this happens, the processing power will be available to make an AI with twice the intellectual capabilities of any human.

Given that the Shadows had billions of years to develop and develop technology, it boggles the mind to think that they couldn't design and train multibillion node AI neural networks not only able to handle complex orders like 'anihilate the Narn' (leaving all target selection and tactics to the AI) but able abstract ideological directives (i.e. 'create chaos') into specific policies and strategic plans.

Note again that AIs aren't vulnerable to telepaths. The fact that the Shadows must reasonably have had the option to use AI pilots but didn't use them boils down to dramatic requirements imposed by JMS' vision rather than a rational policy decision.

[Dead on Arrival]

This guy must have learned to debate at spacebattles.com ...

/Homer mode

"You sir have insulted my honor!"

/slaps Mike with glove...

"I challenge you to a duel!"

PS: No need to rag on Spacebattles man, most people are already bad debators before they find us...

[Enlightenment]

(Just checking in on my board)
This guy must have learned to debate at spacebattles.com ...

I'm 'from' Spacebattles; the debating dolt, however, is not a poster I recognize.


Incidentally, spacebattles.com doesn't resolve at the moment. We're more usefully known as the http://kier.3dfrontier.com/forums people these days.



Nice site BTW.

[Sam]

I do seem to recall there being mention of some sort of anti-telepath weapon possessed by the Shadows. Apparently not much use in space combat, but if they want a world stripped clean of telepaths, they apparently can.

G'Kar mentions, at one point, that one of the signs of the Shadows coming to Narn a thousand years ago is that all of their "mindwalkers" felt a great psychic scream and fell dead. That's why the Narns no longer have telepaths -- anybody who carried any of the genes was struck dead before the Shadows made their base there.

[Dead on Arrival]

I do seem to recall there being mention of some sort of anti-telepath weapon possessed by the Shadows. Apparently not much use in space combat, but if they want a world stripped clean of telepaths, they apparently can.

Yes they do. It was about the size of a mouse, and was equipped with a telepathic lure. A P5 that accidentally triggered it destroyed the reinforced testing chamber and most of the room it was in, as well as mind-fragged all P5 and lower telepaths within several miles of ground zero. There is also what happened to Talia Winters when she accidentally picked up the Shadows escorting Mr. Morden, an effect like falling into a void was how she described it I think.

[Rob Wilson]

Exactly what would be the point of having a obscuring screen that's composed of nano-bots? All you need to do is have a constantly dicharging obscurant device. It would keep pumping out the Smokescreen (which could be composed of anything, hell get something like Toner from a Laser printer and pump it out in space and you'll get a nice cover from veiw, add some chaff and now no one can see you properly. And get this, as the cloud is getting dispersed into the area around the PK it would create swirls and so on, just like what's seen on the TV. No need for Nano-bots, no need for over complicated scenario's, just a practical solution to the problem.

The cloud is more than a smokescreen. In addition to each particle being self-propelled, the particles also cause ships from the younger races to lose power (energy drain) and equipment to fail as well as obscure sensors (in "A Call to Arms", the Crusader's sensors could barely function inside the cloud, and the ship was based on Minbari and Vorlon technology. Anyother non-First One ship wouldn't be able to see inside the cloud.

Each particle is self-propelled? Where does that come from? How can you tell it's self-propelled rather than a particle moving in a weak magnetic field or gravity well?

I know it's been said before, but how does its draining energy inastantly make it made of nano-bots? Just how would these nano-bots make the ship lose power?

It obscures sensors... that's a precursor to it being nano-bots? Oookaay, how about the fact that Chaff also obsures sensors, does that make chaff nano-bots?

So far the only thing that makes them nano-bots is your say so, hardly canon is it?

[Darth Wong]

I'm 'from' Spacebattles; the debating dolt, however, is not a poster I recognize.

Sorry about that; it must have been a reflex reaction

Incidentally, spacebattles.com doesn't resolve at the moment. We're more usefully known as the http://kier.3dfrontier.com/forums people these days.

They shut down?

Nice site BTW.

Thanks!

[Pablo Sanchez]

They shut down?

If I remember correctly:
Johan Alm got sick of paying money to let people rant and rave about every topic under the sun, when the boards were originally intended to be a supplement to his 3d Art page. Kier set up the SB forums up at his own address, so they continue to live. For better or for worse...

If I'm wrong about anything, the SB people here can tell me how very stupid I am.

[SirNitram]

Now hang a bloody minute.

Where's this 'Energy Drain' coming from? All the dialogue I recall is that extreme cold inside the cloud was causing jump drives to be inoperable. If I'm wrong in this particular, please show me a quote.

As for the inevitable 'It can't be extremely cold in space! It's space!' rant, I'm going to give everyone a brief(Brief brief) lesson in thermodynamics. In hard vacuum, the temperature is, indeed, as low as it gets. However, a starship will rapidly get quite, quite hot, because there's so few ways to radiate heat out in a vacuum. However, if the Shadow Death Cloud is maintained at a low temperature, and wraps around the YR ships, the YR ships will radiate heat into the cloud. Sort of like a warm foot on a cold, cold metal floor.