Nerin scoots away from the blobs. "I /Highly/ recommend you get tested Dr. Chance. If you have nothing to hide then why are you resistant to it? We are dealing with a class three biomatrix outbreak. If this were a KX9 controlled station, you'd be disabled by a security grid by this point while a test is taken. Any suspicion is enough to warrant testing. As has been shown, the biomatrix can selectively assimilate. There's no reason not to test and every reason to do so. Being defensive only makes you more suspicious."
"Fine, I'll head to another ER. I am staying out of that party, though.""Don't attempt to attack Nerin again Chance. None of the guards nearby are equipped with the firepower required to disable Combatform for more then half a minute. Suspicion is the proper way to go with this. If you have nothing to hide, then why refuse to get tested?"
"You can take a charged particle beam to the face? Cool story."Dr. Chance walks into one of the secondary ERs and calls a worker to take a blood sample. A quick insert into the analysis equipment on the wall and she comes out clean of biomatrix, although Nerin spots some curious structures in a microscope view on one of the device's screens. Small, starburst-like objects moving about, entering and exiting blood cells at will. The blood cells aren't noticeably affected by the passage, but Nerin only sees a couple seconds of video before the screen shuts off and Dr. Chance emerges. One of the techs leaves the room with her holding a bundle of papers the equipment just printed out.
"Dr. Chance is clear."
"See? I'd be pretty clear if I was infected considering you've been scanning the whole time."((Note, in terms of positioning, the Scanner is currently located at the security checkpoint to the clinic, just in front of it so that it's looking out into the store. You are currently inside the clinic. The labs are just ahead past another checkpoint.))
Valrak then addresses the person talking about drones.
"I don't mean drones, although they would be used for deleting whatever biomatrix was infesting the ship. No reason to risk organics. C&C ships have a number of visual ways for transmitting data to crew. The walls, floors, and ceilings can phase between color on demand, they're just a bunch of computer monitors technically, and the majority of KX9 have perfect color differentiation, so biomatrixes could be highlighted in whatever color needed. Camouflage wouldn't work since it can just shift faster then the matrix could produce pigment. The monitors are rather useful for other stuff as well. Gaming, tactical displays, ship map can be called up on demand, easy access to written files. And so on."
"Speaking of computers. The blobs are going into the computers in the lab. What do?"
"Huh? The computers? It can't subvert electronics, thankfully. It didn't develop in that sort of environment. Although a few of our own have suggested drafting a version that can interface with circuits, that's a long way off. We don't understand it well enough.""Get one of the lab guards and shoot the computer with a plasma gun. That should do the trick. As for those in the bag, uh... someone stick a box over it and put something heavy on top of it."A lab guard with a large weapon marches out and approaches the desktop computer section. Customers and staff alike back away from what is effectively a soldier entering their midst.
((Swarms are good in some situations but not all. You want larger ships for counter capitals, sheer firepower, logistics to slave the drones to, and a number of other things Larger non C&C ships are run by KX9 bred AI or volunteer HPU (HPU are Human Processing Units, and yes, the KX9 breed their AI rather then program them. Results in more diversity in the minds. Programmed AI have been deemed inferior to AI that make new AI with one another by the KX9.) so they can operate as task forces away from C&C or in the event of a disabled C&C. Small drones tend to not have a long battery life if they're firing weapons repeatedly. Even if they're solar powered or using future!powersources. Not to mention they can't carry large weapons. The larger droneships are both weapons platforms to counter similarly sized ships and motherships, where hundreds, or in rare cases thousands of smaller drones can latch on and recharge midcombat, or ride in or on during travel. They can function as a layer of reactive armor as well for the larger ships on top of that. Specifically armor that shoots back and gives chase if you try running after you realize the hull isn't just oddly shaped and is in fact several hundred drones now flying at you.))
((As for the decentralization ftl comms issue, the KX9 issuing commands are usually synced by a 63 if there are multiple logiforms. Commands sent are the result of multiple minds pondering on the best choice.))
((So she slapped Nerin's closed hazmat suit faceplate? That's gotta hurt her hand if it exerted enough force to knock him over.))
((Nah, it's more like Nerin walked backward to get away from her and tripped. He wasn't physically knocked back. Also dice mechanics. You rolled a 1.
))
((As for the decentralization ftl comms issue, the KX9 issuing commands are usually synced by a 63 if there are multiple logiforms. Commands sent are the result of multiple minds pondering on the best choice.))
((Syncing commands is a good way to get around the interference problems. There's other ways to solve it like timing your signals and rotating your transmission privileges so that no two vessels are authorized to send a command at the same time. It's just an issue that requires a lot of organization to solve, and creates problems when two navies both use tachyon-based communications, so it's hard to rely on it during actual combat.
Basically, Tachyon comms are
really easy to jam. So no navy relies too heavily on it. Just transmit gibberish with a big enough transmitter and nobody can receive messages without a huge antenna to gather a large sample with for noise-filtering algorithms. Of course, that's if you know the enemy fleet's location. But if you're in combat you can know who to beam and render a ship unable to receive commands. That would basically make a remote drone without a backup option useless, but obviously the drones would have a backup option. It would hinder their ability to organize attacks across the systems though.))
((Swarms are good in some situations but not all. You want larger ships for counter capitals, sheer firepower, logistics to slave the drones to, and a number of other things Larger non C&C ships are run by KX9 bred AI or volunteer HPU (HPU are Human Processing Units, and yes, the KX9 breed their AI rather then program them. Results in more diversity in the minds. Programmed AI have been deemed inferior to AI that make new AI with one another by the KX9.) so they can operate as task forces away from C&C or in the event of a disabled C&C. Small drones tend to not have a long battery life if they're firing weapons repeatedly. Even if they're solar powered or using future!powersources. Not to mention they can't carry large weapons. The larger droneships are both weapons platforms to counter similarly sized ships and motherships, where hundreds, or in rare cases thousands of smaller drones can latch on and recharge midcombat, or ride in or on during travel. They can function as a layer of reactive armor as well for the larger ships on top of that. Specifically armor that shoots back and gives chase if you try running after you realize the hull isn't just oddly shaped and is in fact several hundred drones now flying at you.))
((Larger ships would be more well-suited to a production roll or a tanker role. Something that stores fuel, materials, and spare parts in a sense. Basically a moving station. What you don't want is throwing your vital ships into the battle without armoring them, and an armored ship needs a tanker to supply it or it won't have much travel range.
Solar power doesn't generate much energy over short periods of time. It could power a turret that stores power over years and burns it over hours, but for a drone that sees constant battle
Antimatter would work for stuff like pumping lasers or catalyzing fission, but actually generating usable electricity from antimatter is a significant engineering hurdle since most of its energy is in the form of gamma rays, charged pions, neutrinos, muons, etc. Containing the reaction is also tricky what with non-interacting particles that don't decay into energetic products until they travel several kilometers.
Not to mention antimatter is only an energy storage method, and a really poor one at that. Unless you find a naturally occurring source of course, which I'm open to in this setting.
Most of your energy will probably be nuclear, either fission or fusion. Antimatter could catalyze both, although I think fission would be ideal for drones due to the ease of containing a non-critical mass of fission fuel. Fusion would require sophisticated refrigeration and storage systems for the helium and deuterium, while uranium pellets smaller than a critical mass are basically harmless.
Of course, it could be some exotic power source altogether. As long as it's not ridiculously good I'll probably allow it.
The point of the fluff about FTL comms is to provide a limiting strategic factor. You will always need some kind of organization, and if it's decentralized, it has to be completely idiot-proof. You can't depend on a system that anyone with a transmitter can jam from light-hours away. Then again, an omnidirectional jammer would be pretty inefficient. And using tachyons as a radar doesn't work since they pass through matter. So that complicates things.))
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Topic: 3008 AD: The Guild Chronicles Mission Thread - GAME OVER! See first post. (Read 49757 times)