38 réponses à ce sujet

[JonathonPR]

A warhead would only need the fissionable matter in a cylinder if it were launched from a mass drive at high speed. The impact would set off the reaction. A deadlier weapon would be an antimatter particle beam. shields reduce damage by reducing effective mass. the antimatter would still be just as powerful after passing through the field. the problem is if you use it in atmosphere there are many more particles between you and your target. the best long range weapon would be a meson gun. weakly interaction short half life highly energetic particles fired at relativistic velocities. the speed is important so the particles make it to the target location before decaying. they bypass shields and armor.

[ThePwener]

Great idea, let's take the Fallout games, and turn all planets in the ME galaxy into Fallout Earth. Hardly a worthy victory if you ask me. ME3's secret is Dark Energy, you'll see.

[Katamariguy]

ExtremeOne wrote...

Neofelis Nebulosa wrote...

skiaDUDE wrote...

So i was sitting in my high school physics class talking about explosive power, and of course nuclear weapons were brought up.  Most people know the basics, split the atom, release tons of energy, yadda yadda.  Now playing Mass Effect 2 the same day, i walked past the guy at the entrance to the Citadel yelling about sir Isaac Newton "the deadliest sonofa**** in space".

He said that it could produce a 120 kiloton blast every 10 seconds (or something like that).  This is relatively small considering we have now weapons capable of delivering 100 MEGAtons of TNT equivelent. That is 830 times the explosive force, around 150 years in the past.  Now this just isnt about "BIOWARE U SCREWED UP", I had an intriguing idea.

SInce the explosive power is dependant on the mass converted into energy (please forgive my scientific ignorance lol), theoretically, the more mass you convert the bigger the kaboom

But in the Mass Effect universe, they would be able to use element zero to greatly increase the mass of the explosion and hence create a super-nuke.  

Just a thought i had, it would be cool to see some super nuke take out a reaper in ME3

Actually it was 38Kiloton every five seconds for an Everest class Systems Alliance Dreadnaught's Maingun.

And the primary destructive forces for fission- or fusionbombs are heat and the resulting concussion force, with x-ray radiation as secondary damage yielding instance.
The open space is no good heat transistor and concussion waves as present in atmosphere won't nearly be as powerful  in space where there is little mass to compress and accelerate in the first place. Space is already radiated so the radiation is of no concern. The only real usage it might have would be an EMP blast, but we don't know about any countermeasures others may have developed.

The manipulation of mass would as far as I know not increase the yield of heat based destructive force and such warheads would be too large to be accelerated via kinetic accelerators, thus leaving them for missile-style weaponry, which can be intercepted.

edit://
@ExtremeOne:
It is clearly stated that the M-920 is NOT a nuclear weapon.

     



Then why does it create a mushroom cloud after it explodes . 

Any sufficiently large explosion can make a mushroom cloud. See the destruction of the Yamato; Russian FOAB, etc.

[rekn2]

to the op, bioware didnt screw up, the man was talking about a rifle. i would say safely firing that much power is a big scientific feet

[General User]

Nuclear weapons, especially Casaba-Howitzer type directed energy weapons, are an ideal means of killing Reapers. The main forms of energy a nuke puts out (X-rays and heat), are two forms of energy against which kinetic barriers (the Reapers only real defense) are completely useless.  The Reapers point defenses are a concern, but as has been demonstrated in game, one that has already been surmounted.

Also concerns about expense are largely groundless. It is established in Mass Effect that moderate range, faster-than-light spacecraft can be produced for 3,000,000 credits each, and nukes are mass producible using a technology that is some 240 years old at the time of Mass Effect.  They could be produced and deployed in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. But in a larger sense, costs are also not a concern because, no matter what they are, the cost of losing to the Reapers is greater. So the only real sense in which costs or expenses are a concern is the degree to which those factors affect the ability of a particular weapon to be deployed. In other words, the effectiveness of the weapon is far and away, by orders of magnitude, the most important concern, not expense.

Concerns about the environmental effects of nuclear weapons are also largely without merit because environmental concerns, for obvious reasons, only come into play when nukes are used on garden worlds. Being a bit more callous (or practical, if you prefer) one could even say that environmental concerns only have any merit at all on populated garden worlds. Not that using nuclear weapons is necessarily a death sentence for the planet they are used on in the first place. There have been more than 500 above ground nuclear detonations on Earth since 1945, with no lasting global environmental effects whatsoever. The only two populated cities to ever be nuked, while utterly devastated by the event at the time, recovered to their pre-bombing population levels within about ten years. In Mass Effect we have two examples of entire planets that have been utterly devastated by WMDs: Tuchanka (which still supports a population in the billions), and Rannoch (which never got as bad as Tuchanka and has largely been rehabilitated).

Modifié par General User, 24 juin 2011 - 01:56 .

[General User]

So if nukes are so great, how come they fell out of use by the time of Mass Effect? The true answer is simple: that’s how the writers want it. 

But if looking for an “in-game” rational I can only guess and say that there’s a particular kind of idiocy that human beings (and apparently other races) are prone to where they believe that “old ideas must be bad ideas, because if they were any good we’d still be using them.”  Nuclear weapons are an “old idea.”  

Modifié par General User, 24 juin 2011 - 02:56 .

[skiaDUDE]

Whoa interesting to see this necro'd

[Black Raptor]

Nuclear weapons are classed under Tier 3 weapons in the Citadel Conventions. They are prohibited from use on Garden worlds although most races maintain a stockpile.

So, regarding OPs query; nukes do exist in ME, just that it's a lot easier and less messy in a space battle just to fling some iron bars into it. Nuclear bombs are harder to make and maintain than iron bars.

And just to clear up a few points. An EMP from a nuke occurs because of the interaction with the magnetic field of Earth. Using a Nuke in deep space or on a planet with no such field would not cause an EMP.

And yes, op, you are right when you say element zero could be used to create superweapons. Control over gravity would allow us to decide the fate of the entire universe. It wouldn't just be used to make animating ship battles and onboard life easier.

[Skirata129]

ExtremeOne wrote...


Then why does it create a mushroom cloud after it explodes . 

mushroom clouds are just caused by something igniting at a fast enough rate. the faster it ignites, the bigger the explosion. the combined force of the HE and velocity of the Cain's projectile make the mushroom cloud.

[Yakko77]

It's my understanding that the dreadnaughts don't actually launch nukes, it's just the sheer kinetic energy of the projectiles they shoot are the equivalent of a nuclear blast in the 30kt range.

[sartt]

skiaDUDE wrote...

So i was sitting in my high school physics class talking about explosive power, and of course nuclear weapons were brought up.  Most people know the basics, split the atom, release tons of energy, yadda yadda.  Now playing Mass Effect 2 the same day, i walked past the guy at the entrance to the Citadel yelling about sir Isaac Newton "the deadliest sonofa**** in space".

He said that it could produce a 120 kiloton blast every 10 seconds (or something like that).  This is relatively small considering we have now weapons capable of delivering 100 MEGAtons of TNT equivelent. That is 830 times the explosive force, around 150 years in the past.  Now this just isnt about "BIOWARE U SCREWED UP", I had an intriguing idea.

SInce the explosive power is dependant on the mass converted into energy (please forgive my scientific ignorance lol), theoretically, the more mass you convert the bigger the kaboom

But in the Mass Effect universe, they would be able to use element zero to greatly increase the mass of the explosion and hence create a super-nuke.  

Just a thought i had, it would be cool to see some super nuke take out a reaper in ME3

As i quote a certain Drunk Russian fighting of Zombies in Call of Duty... " Big Explosion Big succes! ":devil:

[Black Raptor]

Yakko77 wrote...

It's my understanding that the dreadnaughts don't actually launch nukes, it's just the sheer kinetic energy of the projectiles they shoot are the equivalent of a nuclear blast in the 30kt range.

That's true. It would also be your understanding, had you actually read the topic, that it isn't what we're talking about.

[Yakko77]

Black Raptor wrote...

Yakko77 wrote...

It's my understanding that the dreadnaughts don't actually launch nukes, it's just the sheer kinetic energy of the projectiles they shoot are the equivalent of a nuclear blast in the 30kt range.

That's true. It would also be your understanding, had you actually read the topic, that it isn't what we're talking about.