The Defenders OOC

A railgun would likely not be obsolete nor uncommon by the year 2154, especially since they pack so much power, and they do not generate the same amounts of heat as a laser does, so they don't have the cooling needs.
For an idea, the YAL-1 aircraft has a COIL laser in the megawatt range that is supposed to shoot down tactical ballistic missiles, and it fills up most of a Boeing 747. Most of the damage it does is from damaging the skin of the missile, making it more vulnerable to in flight stresses, NOT from melting the missile or burning through it.
A modern railgun built by DARPA has a muzzle energy of 9 megajouls of energy, which is 9 times the energy of a 2.2 ton truck going at 72 miles per hour, which is more than enough energy to heavily damage if not crumple a tank. It is also smaller than the above COIL laser.

So... *cough* when's the next post for the defenders?

Yup, railguns are freakin' cool.

I asked him that yesterday and he said he was in the middle of writing the part of the Ceres group, so I assume, since it was the last listed, that he's mostly done.

oh- okay ^w^ thanks

canis_dirus wrote:

A railgun would likely not be obsolete nor uncommon by the year 2154, especially since they pack so much power, and they do not generate the same amounts of heat as a laser does, so they don't have the cooling needs.
For an idea, the YAL-1 aircraft has a COIL laser in the megawatt range that is supposed to shoot down tactical ballistic missiles, and it fills up most of a Boeing 747. Most of the damage it does is from damaging the skin of the missile, making it more vulnerable to in flight stresses, NOT from melting the missile or burning through it.
A modern railgun built by DARPA has a muzzle energy of 9 megajouls of energy, which is 9 times the energy of a 2.2 ton truck going at 72 miles per hour, which is more than enough  energy to heavily damage if not crumple a tank. It is also smaller than the above COIL laser.

One of the issues over the use of railguns in the far future, is if we were to implement weaponry on spacecrafts. There's no gravity in space, and the projectile will probably be able to maintain its momentum (and will even be able to be fired as it operates with magnets as opposed to traditional cannons). It's hard to calculate how much damage a railgun will be able to do in space, taking into consideration there's no gravity, the possible hardness and density of opposing vessel hull; I'd first have to see a video or example of a projectile fired at high velocity in a zero gravity environment at a somewhat dense object (to gauge results). Matter of being, I don't know. Perhaps advancements will take place so that projectile weaponry in space would be more efficient. Launching explosive shells out of a railgun sounds fun, but it would be much less destructive whilst in space due to the lack of oxygen needed for proper combustion. This all leads me to believe that if a railgun is to be used on a vessel in space, it'd probably be best to use EMP-styled bombs as projectiles and use the railgun only to snipe enemy vessels from afar.

As home defense turrets defending a city or fort or base on a planet, they wouldn't be used (against aircraft anyway, and large land units [tanks] likely wouldn't be used [inefficiency]). They're too slow and attacking aircraft are meant to be swift and maneuverable. They tend to behave in two ways: "drop the bomb and get the hell out", or "shoot while flying circles around them".

Weapons are fun.

I would think that if they used rail guns in space they would be more like a large manuverable space shuttle so you can acclerate your projectiles to an extremely fast speed, probably as fast as their mass would allow.

I would think the projectiles themselves, if they were like a bomb, would be made of an extremely hard metallic material that is interlaced with something to the affect of carbyne, which is in itself rather explosive as well as the strongest known material to date. It explodes it breaks, basically. So coat the outside of your bomb with that, shoot it as fast as the objects mass will allow at an enemy ship, I'm pretty sure its going to pierce the ships hull. And in the process that would cause the carbyne to combust, which could be used to trigger an explosive which was until that point protected within the missile. The explosive could even be a gamma burst or any kind of photon suspended in a cold solution containing ions of praseodymium. No oxygen needed.

"...carbyne is of special interest, chemists find, because it is stronger, and stiffer than anything that they have seen before." [1] By definition, strong and stiff would be difficult to break. If you smash a five pound piece of granite rock against a five pound piece of sandstone, the sandstone will break and the granite will be fine. Why is that? Because granite is stronger and its stiffer and all around more solid than the sandstone. This can be said for a chunk of carbyne piercing the hull of a vessel. Early crafts are likely to make use of steel or steel reinforced with some other element (likely a titanium alloy) because it is: a, cheaper to use, b, easy to make, c, plentiful. That being said, it's also flexible, but definitely not the strongest element. Carbyne can easily stand steel, and for all we know, it could remain intact upon penetration. Or it could be obliterated upon impact due to velocity and momentum. We really don't know, it's still a fairly new element that we haven't invested a whole chunk of our time into researching (it didn't even make the headlines). Dozens of tests still need to be performed. On top of that, the site I sourced above states that it can be found in shock-compressed graphite, interstellar dust, and meteorites. It's been a little hard to come by as of yet, and to gather more, the closest and most plentiful source of meteorites is the asteroid belt and Saturn's ring. Harvesting either of these would be hazardous and for all we know, carbyne could occupy only a twentieth of these rings. Or a tenth. We don't know.

Sure, we could always try, but to gather enough of these resources to be used for nothing more than ammunition would be a waste. "It is hard to replicate in a lab and the longest chain created is a little more than 40 atoms long." [2] Also states untested, therefore volatile. We'll have to wait and see before we make any plans with carbyne.

There's not much information on the combustibility of carbyne either, so I wouldn't get too excited.

All you would need is a projectile designed to flatten somewhat on impact, so that it creates a larger hole in the spacecraft. This would be damage enough since the spacecraft would start venting atmosphere.

A railgun could be mounted on a tank or an aircraft. The only limiting factors would be size and weight really. The main gun on the Abrams M1A2 has a muzzle energy of 12.1 megajoules, and as I said above, modern railguns have rounds with energies of 9 megajoules. A railgun would be a good idea on a tank because the gun could be kept the same size while increasing muzzle velocity and therefor impact energy. The projectile could also be made to flatten somewhat like a hollowpoint bullet, causing more damage upon impact.

And I'm not sure if I read your post incorrectly Lieo, but yes tanks would be used in the future for ground superiority.

And, once more, I am SO freaking confused. There are times when you people make me feel like a total idiot lol.

I'm working on the next act's intro, but it's going slow and now school is slowing me down. I'll try to have it finished by wednesday. Terribly sorry for the wait. I'm not blowing the rp off (again).

Railguns wouldn't work on aircraft unless you were designing a massive Avengers airship. Assuming the technology is as advanced as I think it it, you could probably shoot it out of the sky, fly over it and land a bomb, et cetera. The only reasonable place to put the railgun, in that case, is on the ship's belly. Unfortunately, that would keep it from efficiently landing. You might be able to place it on the aft or tail side of the ship, but you would then need to balance out the weight with something it. And then there's the concern for fuel to keep that thing up in the sky. Nuclear might do it, but a bomb would destroy it and everything (and everyone) on it. It won't work for single, one-manned aircrafts either due to being too heavy. The only exception is if you were to use miniaturized railguns, but that would be inefficient beecaauuusee: they are too slow. Planes move fast. We want them to move fast and to be maneuverable. A miniaturized railgun also wouldn't have the kind of power a real railgun has, or cause the same amount of damage in a minute as two trusty automatic guns do. Hell we could use a computerized system to modify the bullets so they vibrate as they're shot, that'd cause a lil' more extra damage. We can even use incendiary bullets as regular, common ammunition (like lasers, except glowing hot chunks of metal). CENSORED exploding bullets, even.

So we can use a slower aircraft that can shoot a baby railgun every fifteen seconds or so, or use a fast and maneuverable aircraft that can shoot twenty bullets a second with whatever modification you want.

Anyways, for canis_dirus, tanks are slow, fits just a couple people, and fire off mortars. Later? Maybe a nice mounted railgun. But in a world where technology includes space vessels and advanced air crafts (even drones man, we're starting to make robots do the dirty work), we're utterly capable of blowing up tanks with ease. Now a moving fortress reinforced with several inches of some of our strongest resources that can hold a small army, that maybe has a couple of air defense turrets on top (and some other defense procedures)? CENSORED awesome, we don't even have to rely on a slow moving cannon, we can safely send our guys right in.

Umm, Lieo, there is a 32 MJ railgun that was recently given to the navy.

The mobile fortress is a good idea for when sh*t gets really serious (like it will on Ceres) but on Mars and Europa we're trying to keep things under the radar, so I don't think a giant flying fortress would work.

Of course, I really have no idea what any of you are talking about, but Lieo mentioned an Avengers-style fortress.

I never said put one on a fighter, more a larger aircraft. An avengers aircraft...well lets just say that they way they did it, the thing would never have gotten off the ground. The A-10 has a very very large Gatling gun on it used for anti-tank warfare, so why not a railgun.

As for a tank, in the future they might be automated like a drone, but they would most likely still be around, because while a drone can fly over a battlefield and wreak havoc, they don't have much armor and can't carry as big of guns. They also are not very good in cities due to obstructions. The enemy can just hunker down to avoid an airstrike anyway. A tank however packs powerful armor around as well as heavy firepower. They are not as sluggish as you think (42 mph) either.
A large mobile fortress would not be as mobile and would present a large target. While it could carry troops, there are armored infantry carriers that do the same thing with greater speed and maneuverability.

In my personal opinion, if you want an impenetrable fortress they you need to put it in a place that no one will ever find it. Thus, no one will ever penetrate it.

And that could be accomplished by having your fortress be just slightly faster through time than the rest of the universe so its effectively offset and it, being in the future can see ahead of time what any attackers are going to do and prevent it by sending objects traveling at the same speed as the rest of the universe towards a spot where the future observers know the people in the past won't look/be able to defend.

So, that 'meteor' that fell from the sky and completely by chance smashed your tank, was probably aimed at you before you even arrived.

Just my 2 cents. If anyone wants the whole 'make objects time travel' explanation that spans several paragraphs I'll be happy to provide it upon request.

Also, on the subject of rail guns, what if you were to use something like this http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/most-magnetic-material-ever-created-iron-and-nitrogen-might-overturn-laws-physics allowing your weapons to be lighter as less materiel would be required for them to function.

I do know that these materials are hard to create, but we are talking about the future, and advancements in laboratory based production would also have made things like this more possible.

Okay if the one who created the rp is lost, it's not good. (and Ive been lost for a while and just feel stupid as I'm sure others do, too) so here what I say: this seems more like a debate thread than it does a thread relating to an rp. I've been losing intrest in the rp because of that and have been seriously thinking about already quitting the rp because I'm afraid of getting something scientifically wrong in the OOC and ICwhenever I post.

So hopefully this will help settle a lot: the rp is based in the future, where people know more about technology and alien life forms are around that have even more techology knowledge and scientific advancement. Basically, based on the plot and settings in the rp, everyone's weapons would realistically fit in.

Consultant Timelord wrote:

In my personal opinion, if you want an impenetrable fortress they you need to put it in a place that no one will ever find it. Thus, no one will ever penetrate it.

And that could be accomplished by having your fortress be just slightly faster through time than the rest of the universe so its effectively offset and it, being in the future can see ahead of time what any attackers are going to do and prevent it by sending objects traveling at the same speed as the rest of the universe towards a spot where the future observers know the people in the past won't look/be able to defend.

So, that 'meteor' that fell from the sky and completely by chance smashed your tank, was probably aimed at you before you even arrived.

Just my 2 cents. If anyone wants the whole 'make objects time travel' explanation that spans several paragraphs I'll be happy to provide it upon request.

Nothing is impenetrable, but an enormous armed vehicle with an extremely thick metal carapace and an energy shield that absorbs lasers would be an asset to the team. I'm thinking a vehicle similar to the Mammoth from Halo 4, but with a lot better armor.

@Maxx: Okay then, you could combine the 'seeing into the future' thing with that as well, if that wouldn't end up being OP.

@Everyone else: Okay, because several other users have stated that this is a problem for them, I think what we should do to accommodate both the people who do not enjoy scientific debate and those that do, is to ether create a separate debate thread or have a request system so that only if you ask for the content of your posts to be up for debate, will anyone be allowed to debate or nit pick it.

Which system, if any, we use is up to Maxx though.

Regardless, I first posted because I was initially interested but got sucked into the whole debate. I forgot what my idea was in the first place. Oops.

Well it might also help to either start the second act or move on since every one is done you know before it dies because if that happens then there wont be a need for a tank thingy or a separate debate thread

Emma says the next act comes out tomorrow.

Yes. I will attempt to have it done by then. I can't work much on it tonight as my English teacher assigned me 30 pages of history on the freaking Anglo-Saxons on the first day of school.

Ahh, history class... breaking hearts and burning dreams since 600 BC.