With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

[Chojin Patriarch]

Thank you, corrected.

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...and can't fight things its of own displacement.

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Almost there...

 

[Mr Zoat]

Almost there...

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This time for sure.

 

[Citizen]

So how much decision-making power do Honor Guard lanterns like Guy have?

 

[Gantradies]

Stalin comes close and Hitler has the excuse of being a Drug addict that shot up with Amphetamines as well as other things everyday.



Agreed, especially the later ones who were looking for cities of gold in North America.

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You aren't kidding- by the end he was taking so many different drugs his veins turned brown- alledgedly it started making a crunching noise whenever he took another shot >.<

 

[Cuchulin]

You aren't kidding- by the end he was taking so many different drugs his veins turned brown- alledgedly it started making a crunching noise whenever he took another shot >.<

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It's part of why he killed him self, his "doctor" could no longer find enough of the stuff he was giving him anywhere in Berlin having already raided every place he could to scrounge up stuff to pump into Der Fuhrer. In fact some claim that the fact that the Nazi's used more and stronger Amphetamines (Meth) than the allies (or at least the USA) was part of why they lost as well as why they were such monsters.

 

[Buggy123]

No, they take place at all sorts of ranges.

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Are you deviating from canon here? Because I'd call any and every space ship battle I've seen in DC (and any battle that I'd think they're likely to print) "knife-fight" range.


If you want to dodge something, and your opponent has good aim, you have to be able to move quickly enough to get out of the way before it hits you. Specifically, you have to move your body out of the way in the time between when you first see the attack coming, and when it's going to hit. If someone is trying to punch you, or throw something at you, this is doable. But things such as bullets so fast that it's impossible for a human to move their body even a short distance.

If you can't see a attack coming, then you can just dodge randomly; if you can consistently move your body fast enough, then a opponent would need sheer luck to hit you because all of your body will always be in a different spot by the time the bullet or w/e arrives. This is only really practical when dealing with snipers or such.


The same concept applies to spaceships; if you want your opponent's lasers to miss, then you need to move the entire ship out of the way before they hit you. And you can't really see lasers coming, so you just keep dodging randomly ('drunkwalking') to reduce the chances of any hits.

Here's the problem though; light is fast. Really dang fast. Way faster than you would expect. So are most other weapons you'd want to use in space, even if they aren't quite as fast as light.

If two ships are so close that someone on one of the ships can look out a window and see the other ship with a ordinary eyeball, chances are that that ship is within a 'light-milisecond' or two, a.k.a. 300 kilometers. So to dodge a laser, the entire ship has to move out of the way in about a milisecond, or drunkwalk so quickly that they can't predict where you'll be in two* miliseconds. So, for a 100-meter ship, that's about uhhh... 10,000 g of acceleration. Constantly. For the whole fight. Better hope the inertial dampeners are good.

*Light has to go both ways, after all, unless you have good FTL sensors.

Lets increase the distance to 1 light second, or 300,000 kilometers. Way, way outside the MK I Eyeball range, here. On a piece of paper, this fight looks like either a blank starfield, or one ship shooting into the void. A.K.A. too boring to print, so DC has never done it. At this range, you only need to be unpredictable within a timespan of two seconds or so, so merely 10g of acceleration for the whole fight. This is relatively high as far as practical engines go, but not unachievable. Gonna be real costly if you have a limited fuel supply, though.



So, a lot of people look at this, and the limiting nature of fuel in starships, and conclude that star ship fights probably take place at distances of a few light seconds to multiple light minutes. Aim isn't a problem at all; we could probably find, track, and aim at targets in that environment with our current tech, and we can't even build starships yet. Telescopes have much better eyesight than the eyeball.

But fights like this look really boring, so no one wants to print it or put it on television. So generally writers just go with defense instead of dodging; deflector shields, armor, etc, which can tank shots easily. Fights become a short range game of maneuvering for tactical advantage. Flashy, entertaining maneuvering.

And that's all fine and dandy, but if you have that it starts to make less sense to invest in a inefficient, bulky FTL weapon if you're specifically fighting at knife fight ranges where you won't miss with all but the slowest weapons. Unless it has some special defense-penetrating properties, or it's used as a sniping weapon at ranges where they wouldn't bother turning the shields on yet, I don't see the point.

 

[Mr Zoat]

It seems to me that the faster you ordnance is the further away you'd want to fight.

 

[Mastigos2]

The Lost Fleet book series does some interesting things with ships run by human guided computer control engaging in maneuver warfare. They don't have FTL sensors but can slave fire control to computers as they charge past eachother at fractions of C, though higher fractions mean less accuracy. Thus everything becomes maneuver warfare as they approach eachother with light delays in the information they can see about what their opponent did.

Of course things like that can go right out the window if in addition to FTL weapons, you have FTL sensors

 

[Buggy123]

It seems to me that the faster you ordnance is the further away you'd want to fight,

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Absolutely, but dodge warfare is boring because you get lasers pretty much right off the bat, and lasers mandate "Ship? You mean that tiny spec that only shows up on the thermal cams?" ranges. Which is visually uninteresting, so DC (and everyone else) built their setting to do not that.

So while I'd definitely say you have the right to change that (I certainly wouldn't object to space combat making more sense), I think you'd have to change a lot of canon for FTL weapons to start being practical on the basis of FTL-ness alone, because in DC canon ships demonstrably don't fight at those ranges.

 

[Jirachi]

Honestly, I wouldn't be suprised if that is just Superhero bias, since it's fairly clear that space capable heroes tend to have powers that work best at the knife fight ranges that you are talking about. And we don't really see in detail many non-powered space fights in contexts where they can actually set up dodge warfare (e.g. Dramatic escapes, ambushes, are likely shorter ranged).

 

[Coda]

Unless it has some particular range or defense penetration advantage, a FTL weapon

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FTL weapons DO have exactly those two advantages.

There's little point in making a beam weapon FTL. Beam weapons deal all of their damage by direct application of energy. Going faster than the energy they're made of wouldn't improve their effectiveness.

KKVs like railguns don't technically have a range limitation thanks to the conservation of momentum, but the bigger the projectile, the harder it is to get going at combat-worthy speeds.

Missiles don't have the tradeoff that KKVs have. They can store more damaging energy than just the momentum you can impart to them before firing them. However, missiles don't work at space combat ranges -- due to having a finite fuel supply, missiles DO have limited range before they stop being able to track targets, so from far enough away you can dodge them. Active defenses are also a problem; a missile would normally get intercepted by point defense weapons.

But you can't use a point defense weapon against something you can't aim at. That's where FTL weaponry comes in. We're talking about terapedoes here: you can deliver an armor-shattering blast at the kind of ranges that would otherwise be limited to lasers and railguns.

 

[Buggy123]

FTL weapons DO have exactly those two advantages.

There's little point in making a beam weapon FTL. Beam weapons deal all of their damage by direct application of energy. Going faster than the energy they're made of wouldn't improve their effectiveness.

KKVs like railguns don't technically have a range limitation thanks to the conservation of momentum, but the bigger the projectile, the harder it is to get going at combat-worthy speeds.

Missiles don't have the tradeoff that KKVs have. They can store more damaging energy than just the momentum you can impart to them before firing them. However, missiles don't work at space combat ranges -- due to having a finite fuel supply, missiles DO have limited range before they stop being able to track targets, so from far enough away you can dodge them. Active defenses are also a problem; a missile would normally get intercepted by point defense weapons.

But you can't use a point defense weapon against something you can't aim at. That's where FTL weaponry comes in. We're talking about terapedoes here: you can deliver an armor-shattering blast at the kind of ranges that would otherwise be limited to lasers and railguns.

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Hmm, fair point; combat might be a sort of mix between long range and short range, with heavier weapons limited to shorter range. But that would also be kind of strange; if long-range lasers and railguns are so ineffectual across that entire distance that both sides can close to the point where extremely short range, see-the-whites-of-their-eyes weapons are useful... why carry the railguns and lasers?

Of course, the solution could just be "they don't", and so the FTL weapon is basically a artillery gun capable of picking off targets beyond any other effectual weapon range. And that's sorta how its described, I suppose.

But even then, don't you kinda have the opposite problem? Do you know what a military force without artillery facing down a force with artillery is called? 'Holes'. If we're going by Schlock, the Long Gun just about changed the game as much as the teraport.

 

[Someguy Somewhere]

Much like cinematic time being very different from real time, fictional depictions of space warfare can have cinematic distance between targets that wouldn't much reflect the reality of the work in question, simply because 'distant speck of light' isn't really that compelling from a visual standpoint.

Star Wars is a setting I know and love dearly, but as many have stated, blaster and turbolaser fire is painfully slow, even compared to ballistic weapons, with the lore also showing that, aside from orbital bombardment, the ranges are also piss poor, and require engaging at visual ranges.

I've thought about that for a long while, and I've figured that there is a reason for it that would make sense. Using kinetic weapons in star wars would be a serious navigational hazard for a very long time after a battle, for whole solar systems. Having random anti ship cannon shells, or fragments of such, whipping through near planetary space for years after a battle would require every ship coming and going to be shielded and armoured to military grades just to come and go. Such a thing could starve a world like Coruscant, or other heavly populated worlds that require food and water imports from elsewhere in the galaxy. It may constitute a warcrime or environmental hazard that simply isn't worth the risk for the militaries of the galaxy. (In EU lore the Mando's have used conventional nuclear warhead bombardment, and even that was considered a crime due to fallout, something that proton torpedo's and other weapons lack)

Proton Torpedoes and Concussion missiles likely have a self destruct upon missing a target or reaching the end of it's fuel reserves, to partially eliminate spent ordinance as a risk factor.

With blasters that have the energy dissipate into vapour after a klick or 2, the only thing you've really done is increase background temperature in interstellar medium slightly. Much safer for everyone involved, not to mention using energy weapons vastly simplifies logistics for space navy forces.


PS: Going to just leave this here for those arguing the tactical and mechanical aspects of space warfare.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunintro.php

 

[Coda]

But even then, don't you kinda have the opposite problem? Do you know what a military force without artillery facing down a force with artillery is called? 'Holes'. If we're going by Schlock, the Long Gun just about changed the game as much as the teraport.

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Which is exactly why the Alignment are researching it.

 

[Buggy123]

Which is exactly why the Alignment are researching it.

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I'd almost wager that it's worthwhile as a weapon's platform in it's own right, you just need to field more than one at once for taking on heavier ships.

But yeah, the devil is in the details. Might not be really practical just yet.

 

[Prince Charon]

Much like cinematic time being very different from real time, fictional depictions of space warfare can have cinematic distance between targets that wouldn't much reflect the reality of the work in question, simply because 'distant speck of light' isn't really that compelling from a visual standpoint.

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Classic Star Trek managed to have exciting space battles where the opposing ships were often not on screen at the same time, or the enemy only appeared on the bridge viewscreen (though the remastered version may have changed this). Not every battle, of course, but enough of them to matter.

 

[rkyeun]

I've always felt like lasers would be one of the attacks that don't work in space.
"Captain, the hostile is firing a... laser at us?"
"Huh, maybe they're not actually hostile. Deploy distributor lens and solar panels. Signal thanks for the energy transfer."

 

[Prince Charon]

I've always felt like lasers would be one of the attacks that don't work in space.
"Captain, the hostile is firing a... laser at us?"
"Huh, maybe they're not actually hostile. Deploy distributor lens and solar panels. Signal thanks for the energy transfer."

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Depends on the range, intensity, and tightness of focus. Could also be a method of communication.

 

[Maxx Crowley]

I've always felt like lasers would be one of the attacks that don't work in space.

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But are they ever JUST lasers though?

Seems like they are always at least called something different. Phasers, Hyper-beam, Xeon cannon...ect ect.

 

[Buggy123]

I've always felt like lasers would be one of the attacks that don't work in space.
"Captain, the hostile is firing a... laser at us?"
"Huh, maybe they're not actually hostile. Deploy distributor lens and solar panels. Signal thanks for the energy transfer."

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By my understanding, lenses, mirrors, etc, all stop working at sufficiently high light density. If your opponent's laser is focused enough to do significant damage when it hits you, you probably can't use lenses, mirrored armor, etc.

Granted, focusing lasers is actually a lot more complicated than it seems, so its perfectly possible that the laser will just diverge into harmlessness before it reaches you. I'm not entirely sure what the practical/theoretical limitations are.

 

[Queshire]

I've seen it go both ways in sci fi. Not sure about comics in particular though.

 

[Mr Zoat]

7th February
05:24 GMT

I look back 'up' towards the Alignment's Reserve Defence Fleet, intended to rapidly respond to external attacks in what their strategic planners hope would be overwhelming force. Eight battleships designed with a focus on FTL speed, sublight speed and agility. An unusual design; most fleets which rely on dodging and carefully picking their fights don't build ships in their weight class, or else use them very differently. The Thanagarian fleets are far more typical in that regard: short-range attack craft flying from a brick of a Command Carrier capital ship.

As I understand Alignment doctrine, they aim to operate at medium range in order to get the maximum advantage from their all-lightspeed gunnery. Precisely coordinated fire from multiple ships striking vulnerable locations on their target without disrupting their own ability to dodge the enemy's slower than light return fire. Though I don't think it was deliberate, that weapon focus makes them reasonable counters to Lanterns.

Lanterns they can see, anyway.

There are six of the capital ship sized sniper vessels, though that's about all that their navy has of them while the eight true battleships only represent a quarter of the total number their navy possesses. Thirty cruisers of a variety of configurations. None of them are attack craft carriers, because there's not much point when you're using lightspeed weapons; everything you've got can target them efficiently outside of their preferred engagement range.

Add to that the heavy shields, armour and weapon arrays of the stations and the interdiction field generators strewn throughout the system, and… Yeah, this is a pretty good setup. But it's not a schizo tech setup. Everything here fits technological paradigms which are replicated all across this galaxy.

Except the-

Two cruisers flash into being near to my emergence point. Well, I was momentarily detectable. But they don't have anything that can detect me now, so other than giving me an idea what their response times are it doesn't really achieve anything.

-super strong infantry.

The thing about this galaxy is that species with ludicrous abilities are uncommon rather than nonexistent. As such, the fact that Xor had super strength didn't seem all that odd to me. Even the fact that his augmentations were artificial… Well, plenty of people on Earth could say the same thing about theirs.

But that's rather the point. Earth is unusual. Humans get all sorts of weird abilities. Other species don't, as a rule. Other species have to work things out the slow, scientific, step by step way. On the surface it looks like Alignment biotechnology should be extremely advanced. War Hound bodies can't run purely on chemical energy, and making bodies run on more exotic things is hard. And that knowledge wouldn't just be used on War Hounds. There should be organic power generators, organic starships… Organic everything really because otherwise they would have made the War Hounds cyborgs so as to have them synergise with their other technology.

But those things don't exist. There are a few possible explanations for that. The most obvious is that it's something they've gotten from somewhere else. A Qwardian Weaponer might have designed the bodies for them, except that they've been using them for longer than Varnathon has been in power. Which means that there would have been a political motive for the sale, and the Weaponers wouldn't have intentionally given them something they could reverse engineer or alter. But the Weaponers are hardly the only people selling sophisticated weapons.

They might have found something more advanced than they could make themselves, and only worked out how to use it and not how it works. Archeotech, that bane of anti-anachronistic historians everywhere. If it's a single piece controlled by the navy then there might not have been any spin-off benefits… Maybe. But a body biologically compatible with a brain from another species is a pretty unusual thing to build and then leave lying around.

Or maybe they have got good enough data control to develop a line of novel biotechnology and keep it… No, someone would have picked up on it, surely? Regional rivals, other parts of the government… A singular genius could develop the technology, but they'd need resources and.. they'd be monitored. It might take an outstanding mind to create those war bodies but it would only take a good one to reverse engineer it when they can see how it's being done.

So it's a puzzler.

I turn back around as I drop through the atmosphere and head towards the facility. At this distance I can easily pick out the individual bundles of desire that mark out the locations of the crew. The already trained War Hounds stand out, with their simple and strong desire sets clearly distinct from the confused messes of the yet-to-be-processed unowned orphans or the complex structures of the soldiers and civilian workers. Xor gave me a description of the interior, but he hadn't been back since his first year of service and he wasn't allowed to wander far. Risk a scan or plug myself into the facility's internals once I get inside?

I think I'd rather know in advance if they can detect ring activity, actually.

Ring, scan that facility and get me a map.

Compliance.

Data received and phase just in case…

Huh. The processing centre is well armoured, guarded and has an independent force field system, but there's nothing… Exotic happening there. No weird Bleed effects preparing to boot me out of the universe, no arbitrarily powerful magics… Sure, a lot of brainwashed people with plasma weapons and super strength, but those are comparatively simple to bypass.

And… It doesn't look like anyone detected that.

Huh.

Alright, I'm not going to complain. The facility's primary force field is not up by default, so… I can.. just fly through the walls?

I mean, okay, but…

I suppose that not everyone has a chunk of the Anti-Monitor's armour stuffed away in their secret research centre.

The exterior is thick enough to take a few seconds of orbital pounding before the shields go up, but I phase through it without resistance. On the other side is… Part of the force field emitter array. Nothing… Exceptional-looking about it. Solid construction, a few redundancies for when the strain starts to overload parts but not enough to be wasteful. That sort of overload is generally the result of holding off a sustained assault below its theoretical maximum failure threshold for a extended period of time. Generally, an attacker will give up or blast through before that really becomes a concern, but some planetside facilities are built this way.

No pressing need to do anything to it. It's possible to build remote construct bombs but I haven't really practised the technique and they're not any better than their more conventional counterparts. I could build a stealth explosive, but… It increases the risk of me being detected and… In the event that I did have to fight my way out it wouldn't save me much time. Best just leave it.

Bypassing the door and any sensors that are built into it I phase through the wall. A wide corridor, with a weakly armoured exterior-facing wall and a heavily armoured interior-facing one so that in the event the shield generator explodes the blast is channelled away from the armoured exterior without penetrating the facility. A short distance away I see a work crew doing something to the lighting system while an armed patrol is patrolling without any obvious haste. Regular soldiers, not War Hounds. Aside from the paint scheme they're equipped exactly as the police are.

Okay, I want to go down and inward. The primary computer core is my first stop, then the independent core used by the mental programming system. Those are near the bottom of the facility. Next are the living quarters, on the grounds that they're low-security and it doesn't matter all that much if they're overrun by attackers or destroyed by incoming fire. And-.

I stop halfway out of the wall as I see a child of perhaps… Five? Sitting motionless on a futon in the corner of a bare room. Her head is tilted slightly towards the floor and she's… Just… Staring blankly.

…

There aren't any female War Hounds. Since their artificial bodies are designed purely for combat there wouldn't be much point in including a womb or mammaries. But they'll take whatever brains they can get.

She's just going to sit there until… They decide that it's time to scoop out her brain. I suspect that her original body will then be destroyed as medical waste. Either that, or cut up for transplant parts. And yes, she won't be using them any more and she won't be dead…

But as unpleasant as that is, there's a reason why I'm here and Guy isn't.

I fly past her and drop through the floor.

 

[thebishop8]

Either than or cut up for transplant parts.

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Than should be that.

 

[FreeGod]

Nice to see that power rings are still the most powerful tool in the universe.

 

[Buggy123]

7th February
05:24 GMT

I look back 'up' towards the Alignment's Reserve Defence Fleet, intended to rapidly respond to external attacks in what their strategic planners hope would be overwhelming force. Eight battleships designed with a focus on FTL speed, sublight speed and agility. An unusual design: most fleets which rely on dodging and carefully picking their fights don't build ships in their weight class, or else use them very differently. The Thanagarian fleets are far more typical in that regard; short-range attack craft flying from a brick of a Command Carrier capital ship.

As I understand Alignment doctrine, they aim to operate at medium range in order to get the maximum advantage from their all-lightspeed gunnery. Precisely coordinated fire from multiple ships striking vulnerable locations on their target without disrupting their own ability to dodge the enemy's slower than light return fire. Though I don't think it was deliberate, that weapon focus makes them reasonable counters to Lanterns.

Lanterns they can see, anyway.

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Hah, it's always a little funny when something gets discussed at-length between chapters, and then there's inexplicably a paragraph or two discussing it in the next chapter. Crazy coincidence, innit?

That aside, that's a interesting point about War Hound biotech. It is a bit out of left field compared to everything else. Ought to be interesting to see when OL gets to the room where the magic happens (and his stealth is immediately compromised by something no one expected).

 

[Sockmonkey]

Generally, an attacker will give up or blast through before that really becomes a concern, but some planetside facilities are build this way.

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Typo: should say "built".

 

[Handlewithcare]

I love these long examinations of issues and scenes of thinking-things-through

And yeah, in the DC universe shizo tech and bizarre and arbitrary limitations of tech are so common that no one there would question Warhounds much.

It's just another one of those things, you know?

 

[Yog]

Nice to see that power rings are still the most powerful tool in the universe.

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I'd argue that mother/father boxes 16 are, on average, more useful to an average user than a power ring, especially a green power ring. Sure, in principle, a power ring can provide more utility to a top level user who has perfect understanding on the emotional spectrum - I am fairly sure that, at this point, Paul could probably do Grayven's divine awakening with only a power ring and his own soul sight / understanding of orange light / his own soul structures. But to a rookie, or even just average mortal user, mother / father box is probably more useful than a power ring.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Than should be that.

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Typo: should say "built".

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Thank you, corrected.

 

[Chojin Patriarch]

As I understand Alignment doctrine, they aim to operate at medium range in order to get the maximum advantage from their all-lightspeed gunnery. Precisely coordinated fire from multiple ships striking vulnerable locations on their target without disrupting their own ability to dodge the enemy's slower than light return fire. Though I don't think it was deliberate, that weapon focus makes them reasonable counters to Lanterns.

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Heh, nice tactics, though not perfect.

Spoiler: Commentary spoilered for length

Two cruisers flash into being near to my emergence point. Well, I was momentarily detectable. But they don't have anything that can detect me now, so other than giving me an idea what their response times are it doesn't really achieve anything.

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Still worrying.

But that's rather the point. Earth is unusual. Humans get all sorts of weird abilities. Other species don't, as a rule. Other species have to work things out the slow, scientific, step by step way. On the surface it looks like Alignment biotechnology should be extremely advanced. War Hound bodies can't run purely on chemical energy, and making bodies run on more exotic things is hard. And that knowledge wouldn't just be used on War Hounds. There should be organic power generators, organic starships… Organic everything really because otherwise they would have made the War Hounds cyborgs so as to have them synergise with their other technology.

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Very suspicious, yes.

I think I'd rather know in advance if they can detect ring activity, actually.

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This isn't Earth, what makes you think they could block it?

Huh. The processing centre is well armoured, guarded and has an independent force field system, but there's nothing… Exotic happening there. No weird Bleed effects preparing to boot me out of the universe, no arbitrarily powerful magics… Sure, a lot of brainwashed people with plasma weapons and super strength, but those are comparatively simple to bypass.

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Deceptively so. The hard part is not overthinking it.

I mean, okay, but…

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It feels anti-climactic, doesn't it? It's like running a level 1 mission at level 80.

I suppose that not everyone has a chunk of the Anti-Monitor's armour stuffed away in their secret research centre.

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I would be worried if they did.

Bypassing the door and any sensors that are built into it I phase through the wall. A wide corridor, with a weakly armoured exterior-facing wall and a heavily armoured interior-facing one so that in the event the shield generator explodes the blast is channelled away from the armoured exterior without penetrating the facility.

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Very pragmatic.

Next is living quarters, on the grounds...

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Next are living quarters, on the grounds...
(plural mismatch)

I stop halfway out of the wall as I see a child of perhaps… Five? Sitting motionless on a futon in the corner of a bare room. Her head is tilted slightly towards the floor and she's… Just… Staring blankly.

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Medicated, autistic or just emotionally broken, I wonder?

There aren't any female War Hounds. Since their artificial bodies are designed purely for combat there wouldn't be much point in including a womb or mammaries. But they'll take whatever brains they can get.

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Outside of a few instincts and hormones, I bet their biology doesn't care anyway...

But as unpleasant as that is, there's a reason why I'm here and Guy isn't.

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He would probably already have started breaking stuff.

Concerning. I wonder if that condition is normal for their subjects...