106 réponses à ce sujet

[ZipZap2000]

There's no way Americans will vote for him in the general election. He's massively unpopular outside of his rabid bigot base.

That's a pretty big base these days. Especially in the US.

[Filament]

That's a pretty big base these days. Especially in the US.

Stop it, let me have this one wistful dream.

[ZipZap2000]

Stop it, let me have this one wistful dream.

This gif is so racist.

[Filament]

True, I am actually voting for Trump too...

Also true in other ways if you watch Hunter x Hunter, which you should.

The question "why not nuke them?" also comes up there.

[JonathonPR]

Better than a nuke is weaponized mass effect projectile. Make a small single use drive, strap it to a large projectile with a thruster, and accelerate to near the speed of light. projectile hits with force of several megatons at least. Worried about shields? pack some antimatter, fusion mass, or degenerate matter( what neutron stars are made of). The sudden inertial shift from the shield causes an energetic reaction. Mass effect shields do not react with lasers. If it is in the game it is Bioware ignoring their own canon or not knowing science.

[capn233]

Incorrect. When the Reapers attempted to invade Illium, according to Mass Effect lore the Asari used nukes against the Reapers and forced them to withdraw. They still produce a ton of heat and radiation. 

 

The destructive power of a nuclear weapon on earth is largely due to the blast and shock waves, neither of which occur in vacuum.  In space they are pure radiation devices, which is why they need to be delivered much closer to the target compared to in an atmosphere.

 

Halo has space-magic (explicitly handwaved "vacuum-enhanced") nuclear weapons though.

 

They acquired a large defense fleet and a high number of fission weapons, and in the brief space battle, used them on the Reaper fleet's troop transports rather than their near-impervious capital ships.

 

This states nothing about how they were targeted and delivered, nor what sort of defenses the transports possess.  It doesn't really rewrite the physics of nuclear weapons in space.  Just seems to indicate that their transports aren't particularly durable or well protected relative to a normal reaper.

 

Missiles or torpedoes in ME are slow relative to projectiles from mass accelerators, which is why they must be swarmed against targets with GARDIAN or whatever space-CIWS.  We don't know how many fission devices they needed to defeat a single transport.  Illium might have been the only place rich enough to pull this off.

 

The XRay laser idea above is not bad (one of the proposals for SDI).  Guess it depends on quality of reaper armor.

 

And while on the subject, another question is whether or not in ME universe they could build a pure fusion weapon, with either laser or mass accelerator (ie not fission) triggers.  Laser tech isn't exactly described in detail, although it is good enough to be used for CIWS.  Maybe there are some things even mass effect fields can't do, or at least some things they can't do economically.

[ZipZap2000]

True, I am actually voting for Trump too...

Also true in other ways if you watch Hunter x Hunter, which you should.

The question "why not nuke them?" also comes up there.

So far as nukes go.

I think its well within our nature to try. We're driven by curiosity and the spirit of self destruction.

I once watched a classmate stick scissors up his nose and close them. Another kid put his finger in the pencil sharpener.

To quote Jennifer Hale.

"We have to try. For our insatiable curiosity and our fear of what might happen if we do not."

Hard to tell if electing Trump is as bad sticking scissors up your own nose yet but its definitely in the same zone.

[I Am Robot]

In today's market, a 20 kilo iron slug will cost you $80 dollars.  A nuclear warhead will cost you $2,000,000.  The iron slug, traveling at 1.3% of light speed will deliver the same yield at a 10 kiloton warhead.  *WITHOUT* radioactive fallout.

 

Antimatter, as a weapon, straight up sucks.  The vast majority of the energy releases is releases as hard gamma radiation, which is easy to shield again.  Also, Antimatter is insanely hard to make, and more dangerous to you than the enemy.

 

Mass Accelerator weapons, even assuming you coat the slug so it can shrug off the heat of re-entry, will cost you at most $200 a shot.

 

Why not nukes?  Because they're too freaking expensive.

 

To accelarate that slug to 1.3% of the speed of light you would need 1.521*10^14 J of energy. This number is greater than the total energy output of the US in 2012 by a factor of 10. Is it possible? Yes. Would it be more expensive than the nuke? Yes. Of course it would be cheaper in the world of ME given the advance of tech, but so would the materials for the nuke.

 

Also, gamma rays are by far the most difficult type of radiation to shield against. Although they're usually not as harmful as alpha or beta radiation, a sizeable matter-antimatter collision would generate enough to instantly annihilate anyone in a very large vicinity, regardless of any amound of shielding that could reasonably be expected.

[capn233]

Space magic likely reduces the energy requirement.  Which is why mass accelerators are practical in ME.

[I Am Robot]

Space magic likely reduces the energy requirement.  Which is why mass accelerators are practical in ME.

 

You mean like mix that slug up with some eezo, watch the mass go down and then accelerate it? Maybe, but then again eezo and the technology required to utilize aren't cheap either. Also if the mass goes down you'd need to increase the speed by a factor of sqrt(2) to get the same impact. Is that how mass accelerators in ME work BTW?

[Master Warder Z_]

Reminds me of the old SNES classic "Assault Suits Valken/Cybernator", where i would sometimes deliberately fail to prevent the orbiting asteroid base from crashing into the earth, so i could see it crash into the background in the following mission and cause a giant explosion. Granted, this would ultimately lead to the bad ending, but since the bad ending's theme was so badass, it wasn't much of a negative consequence.

https://www.youtube....h?v=9AxzkRmrU_o

Between the game having actual gameplay related C&C like that(unlike ME), the music and destroying the European Union(the antagonist faction) in a SNES game, ASV/Cyberator is pretty damn win.

Maybe it took some inspiration from Operation British from the original MSG then.

[Helios969]

In today's market, a 20 kilo iron slug will cost you $80 dollars.  A nuclear warhead will cost you $2,000,000.  The iron slug, traveling at 1.3% of light speed will deliver the same yield at a 10 kiloton warhead.  *WITHOUT* radioactive fallout.

 

Antimatter, as a weapon, straight up sucks.  The vast majority of the energy releases is releases as hard gamma radiation, which is easy to shield again.  Also, Antimatter is insanely hard to make, and more dangerous to you than the enemy.

 

Mass Accelerator weapons, even assuming you coat the slug so it can shrug off the heat of re-entry, will cost you at most $200 a shot.

 

Why not nukes?  Because they're too freaking expensive.

I can agree with most of that though it's not really that easy to shield against gamma unless your talking about burrowing deep underground.  Antimatter is even more expensive to produce than nukes unless there's something in ME lore that states there are remaining pockets of it lying around the MW (sucks to be the first person to have discovered that!)

[Helios969]

To accelarate that slug to 1.3% of the speed of light you would need 1.521*10^14 J of energy. This number is greater than the total energy output of the US in 2012 by a factor of 10. Is it possible? Yes. Would it be more expensive than the nuke? Yes. Of course it would be cheaper in the world of ME given the advance of tech, but so would the materials for the nuke.

 

Also, gamma rays are by far the most difficult type of radiation to shield against. Although they're usually not as harmful as alpha or beta radiation, a sizeable matter-antimatter collision would generate enough to instantly annihilate anyone in a very large vicinity, regardless of any amound of shielding that could reasonably be expected.

 Is that number really valid given the mass reducing properties of eezo?   (Besides shouldn't it actually be infinite energy according to Einstein?)  Either way I think you have to concede that such weapons in the ME universe are shown as commonplace.

[Catastrophy]

The destructive power of a nuclear weapon on earth is largely due to the blast and shock waves, neither of which occur in vacuum.  In space they are pure radiation devices, which is why they need to be delivered much closer to the target compared to in an atmosphere.

 

Yea, but nuclear pulse propulsion was considered not long ago. Don't ask how it works in space but it seems to be somehow feasible.

[Helios969]

Yea, but nuclear pulse propulsion was considered not long ago. Don't ask how it works in space but it seems to be somehow feasible.

It works by dropping a nuke out the back and detonating in close enough proximity that the shockwave propels you forward.  Do enough times and you can achieve impressive velocities...by today's standards.

[caradoc2000]

You've got the wrong franchise, methinks. Fallout is that way...

[Catastrophy]

It works by dropping a nuke out the back and detonating in close enough proximity that the shockwave propels you forward.  Do enough times and you can achieve impressive velocities...by today's standards.

I don't know how shockwaves are possible in space, but maybe it's a shockwave of light and charged particles?

[Helios969]

You've got the wrong franchise, methinks. Fallout is that way...

And let's hope it stays over there.

[Helios969]

I don't know how shockwaves are possible in space, but maybe it's a shockwave of light and charged particles?

The same way a supernova results in a massive explosion and moves through space.  If that happened in near proximity to Earth we'd be screwed.  These are not soundwaves requiring an atmosphere to propagate through.  You're creating an explosion of matter with energy associated with it.

[I Am Robot]

 To answer @Helios969, no, any speed below c can be reached by any massive object given a finite amount of energy. 

The conversation seems to be twisting in on itself as people are discussing nuclear explosions and matter-antimatter at the same time. In space, a nuclear explosion would simply give off a massive pulse of EM radiation, but that can be just as lethal as the shockwave that would be created on earth. Additionally, I think the OP's question of why not just nuke these other guys assumes that 'these other' civilization do in fact reside for the most part on planets and that those planets will have atmospheres. 

 

It's also probably not a good idea to compare a supernova to a nuclear explosion. A supernova is caused by the core of a star collapsing in on itself, so the matter that the star was holding is then spread through space. With a fusion bomb, the hydrogen inside undergoes fusion, but there's not a substantial amount of matter to then create a 'shockwave'. You might get some serious shrapnel though. 

 

In matter-antimatter collision, both reactants are completely destroyed, so absolutely no shockwave in the absence of an atmosphere. 

[I Am Robot]

Yea, but nuclear pulse propulsion was considered not long ago. Don't ask how it works in space but it seems to be somehow feasible.

 

Nuclear pulse propulsion? Could you link an article? 

[Catastrophy]

Nuclear pulse propulsion? Could you link an article? 

Wikipedia has some basic info on it.

[Novak]

You mean like mix that slug up with some eezo, watch the mass go down and then accelerate it? Maybe, but then again eezo and the technology required to utilize aren't cheap either. Also if the mass goes down you'd need to increase the speed by a factor of sqrt(2) to get the same impact. Is that how mass accelerators in ME work BTW?

 

According to the codex if you put a negative charge on e-zero then you lose mass, and if the charge is big enough it's almost nothing. I would assume that as soon as the slug exits the ship the effects of e-zero wear off so you're back to normal mass. 

In the real world this isn't possible of course, that would be cheating because there is a certain amount of energy you need to accelerate matter and that would just throw off the formula. But that's just space magic and that has an impenetrable plot shield.

[Neon Rising Winter]

You're off on an expedition to a strange new galaxy. It will be trivially easy for advanced technological societies already established there to nuke you off the face of the galaxy, but somewhat trickier for you to do likewise to them. The strategy will therefore likely be to pretend the whole concept doesn't exist lest you give anyone bright ideas.

[Helios969]

According to the codex if you put a negative charge on e-zero then you lose mass, and if the charge is big enough it's almost nothing. I would assume that as soon as the slug exits the ship the effects of e-zero wear off so you're back to normal mass. 

In the real world this isn't possible of course, that would be cheating because there is a certain amount of energy you need to accelerate matter and that would just throw off the formula. But that's just space magic and that has an impenetrable plot shield.

And probably explode then and there.  Of course it's all BS.  For the slug to work the way it's discussed it would need to have it's own mass effect drive to maintain the mass at zero.  It's all just fantasy at the end of the day.