Connor MacLeod wrote:He's listed as "creative consultant" and apparently RHW wanted him as science advisor, at least according to
here
Yeah, but that doesn't mean he wrote the missile stuff.
The only non-writer member I remember from the BBS was Christopher, who was some sort of writer and a very tech-savvy guy.
Christopher = Christopher L. Bennett, Star Trek book author (among other things).
You mean the way we never see the near-c velocities and light minute ranges and tens of kilogee accelerations?
Besides, we technically WOULDN'T see it even if the visuals were accurate, since gravity is invisble, and the entire thing would happen far faster than we could perceive. I don't exactly see a contradiction here or what you are expecting to see.
No, I mean why are AP guns never used in the series? The weapons are almost always missiles. They might have been using them in ADDB, but that is about it.
Q1: Uh, the velocity of AP guns is low? How do you figure? I'd call 99% of c quite a high figure. And the mass seems reasonable too, given the effective mass reduction and acceleration
Yeah, brainfart. I meant mass.
Q2: A few grams of AP is going to have a potential energy of ~22 kt/gram at 100% efficiency, and that isn't including the matter interaction. We dont know the efficiencies, but the fact that the particle beam is likely highly penetrative (IRL the only way to stop a particle beam aside from EM fields is to throw lots of mass in front of it) means that that energy will all be released inside the hull, which is likely to enhance the effects. It may even simulate a nuclear explosion.
AP guns are likely also to bypass alot of the defneses that would stop a KK missile (you can't intercept it, the battle blades and GFG probably won't deflect it.
Yeah, looking over it they might have a role like that. Still, ~22 kt/gram....still leaves a bit to be desired given the range of missiles and firepower.
Anyway, how do you figure the beam will end up inside the hull? Won't the antimatter immediately interact when it hits the hull?
I don't recall the quote being limited to just fighters. It wasn't specific as to what kinds of ships.
No, I mean the PDLs are point defence weapons. Where do you get that they are anti-starship weapons as well?
I've posted the quotes before actually
here
Tyr: "Some sort of continuous beam plasma cannon?
Dylan: And powerful, at least a few dozen gigawatts.
RAther surprised me this has come up before and we've discussed andromeda before actually.
I think the main power there is from the continous beam weapon. The power itself (1 GJ per second) is not really that impressive related to missile yield, but if it is continuous, then it ramps up easily. So it is probably the fact that it is a beam weapon and continuous that is the danger of it.
Even more the actual full quote:
Harper {picking up a thick piece of metal}: And this is three-inch thick (thorine?)
composite plating. Or at least it was.
<He easily breaks the debris in half, then breaks off a smaller chunk and crumbles it in
his hand.>
Harper: Now, let's run down the list of people we know who have weapons that could do
this sort of thing. Nobody, that's who! That pretty much covers it. That's my list.
Tyr: Some sort of continuous beam plasma cannon?
Dylan: And powerful. At least a few dozen gigawatts. But not much of a range. They
would've had to cripple the target ships first.
and the grav pockets used to slow them down seems to indicate they need to close the range and then keep the target in sight.
See, I'm not sure that's adequate rationale. What makes RHW the final authority on what is or isn't "canon" in Andromeda, or why does his presence or absence affect canonicity in any matter? The fact that Andromeda may or may not be as consistent in latter seasons than it is in earlier is irrelevant - all sci fi has to deal with that fact, and you need a better justification than "some other guy wrote it." That's far too arbitrary unless that too is part of canon policy. It would be like saying "Gene Roddenberry made Star Trek so he's final authority regardless of what Paramount or others say." Are we going to only go with TOS and part of TNG as "canon?"
I think the situation in Trek is different. There you have at least shows that do not change the central theme of the show. It is always the Federation and its ideals, without the central characters changing every week. The very fact that the creator refused to do any more changes and was fired due to that speaks volumes. I've also seen quotes from Zack Stentz and Ashley Edward Miller that they considered the episodes they wrote as being pretty much separate from Engel's Andromeda. Even more considering that the writer's bible apparently left with RHW.
So yeah, if there is a contradiction of capabilities to Season 1 and 2.5 I am going to toss it out. Unless you would like to explain where the power to beam a freezing blast through straight rock suddenly came from?
Well I was mainly pointing out that the "less than a kilogram" bit preceded the quote from Seamus. It was part of that site for a long while. But it can actually be argued to be relevant in terms of recoil - fire the AP cannons in one directon they're going to push the shp the other way without the engines to counter it, so there is a correlation (This is actually potentially more of a problem than the "few grams of AP" is in that regard.) Applies with weapon impacts too.
The idea would also work well with the "anti gravity mass packets" idea
Sorry, but I am not getting your idea here. If I understand you correctly you say that part of the AP threat is that they might push ships out of the way (and without the engines to compensate might do the same to the ship firing). How is that a threat to a ship if combat takes place over such distances?
Also, since weapon impacts from missiles do not throw the Andromeda around like a paper doll, I think it would be best to assume that the AI counters such shocks and impacts, either by manipulating the AG field or by compensating with engines.
Yeah, but you get a visual right before they hit on the tac display, which shows around that number of missiles.
And the visual tells us.. what exactly? How fast are the missiles travelling when they hit? what angles do they hit at How long have they been accelerating and over what distance? There's TONS of variables I can think of that can influence the destructive effects, and the visuals aren't going to tell us alot since they won't accurately portray most of it.
The angles are shown in the visuals as you see the missiles heading for the Andromeda. We also have a minimum flight time when the missiles are being fired (which we do see) and when they hit. We can extrapolate from that as to the velocity when they hit, since we know the maximum acceleration of missiles. Granted, it is not perfect, but it is something tangible at least.
That sounds dangerously arbitrary. Is it supported by any official statements to that effect? I was under the impression all visuals were fairly unreliable.
No, they are not unreliable per se. They are unreliable with regards to standard stuff like ships being close to each other despite them being lightseconds away according to the plot etc, but I never saw them get the number of ships that did not mesh with the dialogue.
I can ask Robert Hewitt Wolfe myself, if you want to. Though I do not want to bother him at the moment, he apparently is quite busy with his new series.
I sure as heck am not going to claim that because it is inconsistent with what the episode (1x22) shows. After one PSP hit, Andromeda is clearly out of combat and had the hit happened at the reactor or something, that would have been it for the crew.
I would have said "PSps are technobabble and do not literally have the mass and momentum of a planet moving at .5c. That would be to inconsistent with alot of other stuff. Basically they "eat" any matter in the path (a more technobabbly damage mechanism, since its unliekly that they're real singularities or black holes in any event.)
Yeah, PSPs are technobabble. My guess is that they cause more damage the larger the mass of the target is, which would be consistent why shots destroy both a sensor drone and a planet.
However, there is the problem that dialogue does say they have the mass of a planet, see the episode "All Too Human" for that. It was written by the same guys who wrote allsystems, btw.
Trance: Wow, that's weird. The Basilisk looks like it just turned into a planet. Uh…my mistake, it didn't just turn into a planet, it just fired one. Make that two.
Note that the PSPs themselves stop existing after hitting a target. So yeah, technobabble weapon, but a very powerful one (Though not exactly suited for ship to ship combat due to its slow speed and that missiles can intercept them).
Not really.
The bit I quoted above is more of a technical description, whereas the "emptying tubes 1 through 200" sounds more like a "said in the heat of battle/off hand" kind of comment" - asituation where your'e too busy to focus wholly on what you are saying (and the actual words probably matter less than the sentiment.)
That never happened before - the impreciseness - and in any case, I find it hard to believe a trained soldier will suddenly make that mistake.
Mass lightening, as a concept (at least in Andromeda, but in most sci fi) is an incredibly difficult technology to make work right, and reconcile ("free momentum and energy!") no matter how you slice it. Nevermind predicting and explaining the implications for the purposes of analysis. It would have been just as "magical" but probably more headache inducing to just say "well they have magical ion drives/launcher capabilities that can fling things out at a significant fraction of c") since that's basically what they're aiming for.
I have never heard of the concept of mass lightening before. What exactly does it mean? If it simply means "oh, yay, free energy", I'd simply say that it really does not matter where it gets the energy from, no more than we can explain SW reactors. Unless the power levels fluctuate wildly (like after RHW left), there is no problem per se.
