UFO Fanfiction Discussion

[Zager]

Sounds good to me.

[Snikers]

One more post huh? What would you be looking for?

[Bomb Bloke]

Oh, anything. Character development, research stuff, plot stuff, generic highjinks... I just don't want every second post to be mine.

[Snikers]

There. Ghost's fantastic character personality: Madcap.

[FullAuto]

A small addition could be a reconfiguring of the medical bay? It would be biased towards invasive trauma treatment (bullets) but most of the wounds we'll be (and have) taken have been burns. I know burns figure on military medical training, but there not high up. The treatment of burns (from the plasma) could become more important, perhaps?

[Snikers]

I really can't see how a laser could blow chunks out of a target dummy, unless it actually caused enough heat on the target to expand extremely dramatically. Lasers have no mass, after all.

[Zager]

I really can't see how a laser could blow chunks out of a target dummy, unless it actually caused enough heat on the target to expand extremely dramatically. Lasers have no mass, after all

 

Because it isn't a laser. A real laser would have no practical close combat applications. I'm just calling it a laser because the game calls it a laser. I prefer to think of it as a small quantity of anti-particles being fired at the target.

[Snikers]

Okay...I'm no scientist, you realize, so you're going to have to explain it to me. How do you keep these antimatter particles from going off as soon as they hit air?

[Alitorious]

You can't. That's why you can see the 'laser' in the first place. It's just that air is a lot less dense than sectoids.

[Zager]

Okay...I'm no scientist, you realize, so you're going to have to explain it to me. How do you keep these antimatter particles from going off as soon as they hit air?

 

Ah, so you've seen the videos of the testing of the mark three, have you?

 

You can't. That's why you can see the 'laser' in the first place. It's just that air is a lot less dense than sectoids.

 

Sounds good to me.

[Snikers]

One - Just how big are these particles, how dense is the shot, and is that actually physically feasible?

 

Two - That sounds like a great way to blind/burn/radiation-poison your soldiers.

[Zager]

One - Just how big are these particles,

 

Beats me.

 

how dense is the shot,

 

Darned if I know.

 

and is that actually physically feasible?

 

As opposed to what? This is X-COM we're talking about, not hard sci-fi.

[Bomb Bloke]

We can't get the stats exact. We'll be in trouble when we get to elerium driven space drives if we tried that.

 

FullAuto! Long time no see!

 

Ok, my last post was dragging on a bit, so the council of funding nations meeting will be written another day.

[JellyfishGreen]

I really can't see how a laser could blow chunks out of a target dummy, unless it actually caused enough heat on the target to expand extremely dramatically. Lasers have no mass, after all

 

Because it isn't a laser. A real laser would have no practical close combat applications. I'm just calling it a laser because the game calls it a laser. I prefer to think of it as a small quantity of anti-particles being fired at the target.

Anyone wnat to treat these lasers as an ionizing beam guiding a discharge of electricity, doing damage similar to a lightning strike except following the beam precisely?

 

No?

 

Antiparticles it is, then. (Used in low density mode, it could be a paint stripper.)

 

What do we get with Plasma then? Hot heavy antiparticles?

[Snikers]

Anyone wnat to treat these lasers as an ionizing beam guiding a discharge of electricity, doing damage similar to a lightning strike except following the beam precisely?

PLEASE. I'm sorry, but I just can't stand to see another misuse of antimatter in a sci-fi setting. We're X-COM fans after all, we're supposed to be intellectuals.

[Bomb Bloke]

Probably a bit late to turn the lasers into lightning guns, methinks.

 

What I was thinking with Plasma was, elerium pellets ignited when fired. The idea is, they burn hot enough for the surface to be plasma, but long enough that they'll still be going a second or two after they leave the barrel (enough for tactical use).

[Snikers]

Just, no antimatter, please. Firing naked antimatter particles strains my suspension of belief far beyond its limit.

 

Your average 20 megaton nuke is the equivalent of a few grams of antimatter, I've heard. Enough antimatter to be fired "nearly continuously for several days" is going to be more than a few grams, I don't care how thin the particle spray is.

 

Firing the gun in a combat setting is going to give the user an extremely heavy dose of radiation. Don't be suprised if our agents begin weeping pus from heavily burned arms and develop super-tumours before they died in a week from radiation poisoning. While X-COM as a rule is a profession where you don't want to be buying any green bananas, so to speak, I can't see any soldiers volunteering to use this weapon.

 

That's not even taking into account the fact that combat is dangerous and weapons tend to be damaged. Suddenly those X grams of ammunition are exposed to air all at once. Yes, it will kill the aliens in the combat zone, there is that; it will also take out the soldier with the damaged gun, the soldier's buddies, the civilians, the Skyranger, the UFO, buildings, trees, helpful snakes, and anything else within some huge number of kilometres.

 

And while we're on the subject of damage, what about back at the base? Building up enough ammunition to furnish an army is going to require several tons of antimatter. And antimatter is going to need a lot of care to keep stable, technology which would be advanced and probably delicate. All you'd need to do is drop one crate and that antimatter is going to go off - and don't forget, the blast from that one crate is going to take out whatever is keeping antimatter from blowing (magnetic fields, dilithium crystals - whatever) in other boxes, so basically all the antimatter in the base is going to go off. With e=mc^2, your standard couple of tons of antimatter is going to annhialate the base, irradiate Australia, and blow a fine hole in the earth's crust.

[Zager]

That's not even taking into account the fact that combat is dangerous and weapons tend to be damaged. Suddenly those X grams of ammunition are exposed to air all at once. Yes, it will kill the aliens in the combat zone, there is that; it will also take out the soldier with the damaged gun, the soldier's buddies, the civilians, the Skyranger, the UFO, buildings, trees, helpful snakes, and anything else within some huge number of kilometres.

 

You're forgetting that we're containing it in a Y bond stream aligned at 58.5634 degrees, which results in complete disassociation via Quantum theta theory involving hypercubed particles. Is it clear now?

[JellyfishGreen]

You're forgetting that we're containing it in a Y bond stream aligned at 58.5634 degrees, which results in complete disassociation via Quantum theta theory involving hypercubed particles. Is it clear now?

Sure, that might be fine for Eleurium-115, which produces antilepton plasma with a -1.6eV charge through simple neutron reflection, but we're talking about frikkin' laser beams! Throw me a bone here people! If it used antimatter we'd call it an antimatter gun, not a laser gun!

 

The electrons do have the benefit of making a visible beam like in science fiction, unlike high-energy (x-ray) lasers.

 

of interest: research into free-electron laser weapons (superconducting coils)

https://www.afa.org/magazine/dec2001/1201laser.asp

 

related, but heavy on the science: the DC (direct-current) gun

https://www.mdatechnology.net/techsearch.asp?articleid=610

 

Edit: Just finished catching up on the fanfic (again). You guys ROCK!

 

I noted two things though. In Brute & Fitz's fistfight, there's a line where Brute swings a fist but Brute ducks it. And in the last post where they're talking about alien weapons, if they haven't managed to fire them, would "early tests" be better replaced by "field reports", ie damage witnessed by soldiers who encountered their power, and/or the investigators who swarmed the battlefield after the mop-up?

[Zager]

The electrons do have the benefit of making a visible beam like in science fiction, unlike high-energy (x-ray) lasers

 

Okay, that works too.

[Snikers]

You're forgetting that we're containing it in a Y bond stream aligned at 58.5634 degrees, which results in complete disassociation via Quantum theta theory involving hypercubed particles. Is it clear now?

Is that gibberish or actual science? Please have mercy on my tiny brain.

 

 

In related news, as amusing as it was to think of Brute dodging himself, my post is fixed.

[Bomb Bloke]

*tweaks his own post*

[Zager]

Is that gibberish or actual science? Please have mercy on my tiny brain.

 

Giberish.

 

And what the hell did we just do? Am I reading things wrong, or did X-COM command just order an airstrike on a Chinese city? Isn't our job to protect civlians, not slaughter them? There goes the UN funding and international support, at the very least.

 

It'll certainly change the budget meeting. Instead of opening with something like 'A review of the activities of X-COM', it'll probably open like this 'The international war crimes tribunal has levied charges against X-COM command on...'

[Bomb Bloke]

Well, that's ONE way to divert attention away from the aliens.

 

Ok, so I presume it was the terror site that got hit, as opposed to a second area.

 

While X-Com's job is to mess with the aliens, I highley doubt this tactic can be used all the time...

[The Veteran]

Yup, it's a bit heavy handed but the target was actually another populated Chinese settlement... Don't getme wrong it was small and as empty as possible but as far as the conscious world is aware the events of the last two days were now nothing more than an unprovoked terrorist attack. And let's be fair, terrorist attacks don't happen any other way...

 

I suggest it would be a good idea to have a few characters know this as possible. Trigger just had to bomb the Chinese and is no doubt going to be a gibbering wreck for a not short period of time now... Gia now knows what's just happened and so has lost faith in X-Command and doesn't know what to think about Trigger. Genega is sufering a guilt trip that's not going to go away anytime soon and the Chinese government is almost certainly going to cease funding I would imagine...

 

Someone will need to deal with that as the top end of the government knows that the first attack was the aliens and not terrorists. Therefore they probably realise what's just happened. It's a bit of a coincidence from their point of view... The real government however, those who have no idea about X-Com or the aliens think both attacks were terrorists, however they have no idea they're shelling out on anti-alien military funding anyway...

 

It gets complicated doesn't it?!