Non-standard weaponry/tactics in SF

[Typhonis 1]

From the Colonial Marines tech manual...The orbital minefield. Basically a gigantic net of metal that is held taut by small rocket motors. its small enough for radar to overlook yet hitting it at orbital velocities......

[Uraniun235]

When the Arcadia goes to make a ramming attack on an enemy ship, a really big blade unfolds from the bow for extra ''

From the Colonial Marines tech manual...The orbital minefield. Basically a gigantic net of metal that is held taut by small rocket motors. its small enough for radar to overlook yet hitting it at orbital velocities......

Wouldn't those motors light up real bright on an infrared camera? Maybe ion engines would work better...? (I don't know, maybe ion engines would show up some other way)

[Lord of the Abyss]

The Countermeasure from A Fire Upon The Deep. Used to stop the Blight, a computer/mind assimilation plague of vastly superhuman intellect, it rendered both FTL travel and more-than-human intelligence impossible in the regions of the Galaxy the Blight had taken over ( which were most of those where FTL and human+ intelligence were possible to begin with ).

[Deathstalker]

The Daedelus maneovuer from Robotech/Macross. Drive the sheilded bow of a ship into another, open the door and loose a missle swarm. Easily the largest right cross in history.

[VF5SS]

That's DAEDALUS ATTACK! and don't you dare mention the R word. >:3

[kinnison]

This is not from a published work, but a bunch of SF RPG players (Traveller 2300, as it happens) came up with this one.

Scenario; a survey expedition finds an intelligent alien race living on an Earthlike world. The problem is that their intelligence stems from a nanotech or high biotech organism that is highly infectious, adaptable and lethal to any organism already intelligent; also, the intelligence gain is enough to severely disrupt the predator/prey balance, thus wrecking any ecosystem that it comes in contact with.

The solution to the problem was hideous. Grey goo with a decomposition temperature of about 250 deg C and a metabolic byproduct, that byproduct being CFCs. As you may know CFCs are extremely efficient greenhouse gases and are also very good at destroying ozone.

So what did we do? Simply drop a couple of dozen packs of this stuff into their atmosphere and wait.

Not surprisingly perhaps, the campaign stopped about then. After all, the group was collectively guilty of ecocide - and still had the formula.

A nasty lesson. This was an RPG group, for God's sake, and came up with a plan that, given the tech background, could destroy all life on an inhabited world.

People are pretty nasty.

[The Yosemite Bear]

man kzin wars

a vessel with an active ion fusion drive system is a weapon

[Lord of the Abyss]

This is from some old 50's/60's short story, and I don't recall the title or author. It involved a race that was far more advanced than humans, yet incapable of violence, so they feared we'd destroy them. So on various planets they dropped machines called Oracles; AIs beyond our power to easily destroy, and willing and able to answer any question save the location or appearance to the creators. And they gave good advice, on everything from technology to how to run a planet -so good that worlds with Oracles who listened did better than those that didn't. So, the humans in a position to endanger them became more and more dependent and unambitious and unaggressive - which was the point. The machines even said it was, but the temptation and benefits were too great to stop relying on them.

From The War Against the Chtorr series by David Gerrold, an alien and more advanced ecology invades Earth, slowly overcoming or assimilating our native life; 'xenoforming' our planet. No technology or sentient alien enemies have even been seen yet.

[darthbob88]

man kzin wars

a vessel with an active ion fusion drive system is a weapon

Not to mention the energy in a communication laser. The Kzinti Lesson, I think is the term; ion/fusion drives are streams of high-energy particles, as are communication lasers, and may be used for destructive purposes.

Another one from the Man-Kzin Wars is the attack on Wunderland; humans launched multiple RKVs against the Kzinti-occupied planet, some of which carried humans in stasis fields. The humans survived the impact thanks to the stasis fields and went to assassinate the general planning an attack on Earth.

[Setesh]

I can't remember the title right now, but there is a book where a bunch of religious nutbar aliens designed a ship that exploded a fission nuke inside the ship to produce X-ray lasers out of the blast. They lost about 5 ships a battle to containment failure.

Schlock Mercenary had a uniquely possible weapon from the lawyer drones. They targeted Tagon's Dragon-class ship while it was docked at a space station, and while traveling at .6c release a bunch of kinetic rounds out the cargo bay door. Even half ton projectiles moving at .6c will deliver multi-megatons of damage.

I also remember a cgi battle involving dart shaped FTL ships that accelerated through their opponents.

[Lord of the Abyss]

I can't remember the title right now, but there is a book where a bunch of religious nutbar aliens designed a ship that exploded a fission nuke inside the ship to produce X-ray lasers out of the blast. They lost about 5 ships a battle to containment failure.

The Thebans in Crusade by Weber & White; one of the Starfire series. They also had electromagnetic rams on some of their ships, modification of their drive field. Also, missle sized troop shuttles called "samurai sleds" designed to punch into an enemy's hull and let boarding parties aboard the ship, assuming they survived.

Aliens in Fredrick Holye's In Deepest Space had an interesting method of attacking our type of planets, tied in with Hoyle's dedication to the Continous Creation theory. They caused the spontaneous creation of hydrogen in the atmosphere of planets with oxygen atmospheres, until a global firestorm would ignite killing pretty much everything.

[Feil]

Winning Colors by Elizabeth Moon made mention of a captain who set her ship to play musical sounds for the various weapons firing, so that everyone on the ship could always know what was being discharged.

One must not forget the inimitable Grot Bomb, nor the Somebody Else's Problem Field.

[Lord of the Abyss]

In The Vor Game, the villainess had Miles Vorkosigan tossed to her enemies ( and his former/future subordinates ) the Dendarii Mercenaries in a life pod, the idea being to instigate an internal conflict between Mile's loyalists and those of the new/old ( Miles stole them from him originally ) commander, Oser.