Argument Thread OOC Future Tech Only

[Huerdae]

This makes me want to capture a ship and feed your people to it, Derscon. You realize this, yes?

[Techno-Soviet]

Meat is usually vat-grown tissue cultures. A little more advanced than what I saw described earlier, these muscle tissues are cultured in a way that provides them "natural" nutrient intake, and simulated exercise. As such, the flavor and texture of the meat can be tailored, and often comes as close to the real thing as possible.

It's not proper vat-grown meat unless it's a bland, pale colour, spongy, sorta melts in your mouth and gives the impression of eating packing peanuts or styrofoam when it comes to taste value. Otherwise, you might start to like it and once that happens things start to go downhill very quickly.. D:<

[OMGeverynameistaken]

Meat is usually vat-grown tissue cultures. A little more advanced than what I saw described earlier, these muscle tissues are cultured in a way that provides them "natural" nutrient intake, and simulated exercise. As such, the flavor and texture of the meat can be tailored, and often comes as close to the real thing as possible.

It's not proper vat-grown meat unless it's a bland, pale colour, spongy, sorta melts in your mouth and gives the impression of eating packing peanuts or styrofoam when it comes to taste value. Otherwise, you might start to like it and once that happens things start to go downhill very quickly.. D:<

The Imperial Russian Army and Navy borrowed the British method of boiling everything for weeks at a time to achieve this. Although, rather than melting in your mouth, it tends to give people's jaws whiplash when their teeth bounce off of it.

[North Mack]

Fleet ships usually stock as much fresh food and meat as possible. Most times they can make port and resupply before stocks run low, but in a pinch there are reserve rations that can be distributed. Sailors generally aren't happy when that happens though...

[OMGeverynameistaken]

Surely low morale among the sailors can be resolved by increased beatings? A good beating ALWAYS improves morale.

[North Mack]

But there are so many enlisted sailors compared to officers... so many... they'd overrun the officers. Like zerglings.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

That's why you have the NCO's do the beating. Even if you have to resort to using corporals, it still works.

Hey, in emergencies, sometimes you can even have the privates beat themselves. That can get messy, though.

[North Mack]

That's why you have the NCO's do the beating. Even if you have to resort to using corporals, it still works.

Hey, in emergencies, sometimes you can even have the privates beat themselves. That can get messy, though.

"Private! Hit yourself in the face 50 times!"

"Sir, Yes Sir!" *thwack* "One" *thwack* "Twoo..." *thwack* "Fruh..."

[OMGeverynameistaken]

That's why you have the NCO's do the beating. Even if you have to resort to using corporals, it still works.

Hey, in emergencies, sometimes you can even have the privates beat themselves. That can get messy, though.

"Private! Hit yourself in the face 50 times!"

"Sir, Yes Sir!" *thwack* "One" *thwack* "Twoo..." *thwack* "Fruh..."

Pah! Weak! Russian soldiers are expected to hit themselves in the face thirty times daily in basic training. Sixty on Mondays.

[North Mack]

That's why you have the NCO's do the beating. Even if you have to resort to using corporals, it still works.

Hey, in emergencies, sometimes you can even have the privates beat themselves. That can get messy, though.

"Private! Hit yourself in the face 50 times!"

"Sir, Yes Sir!" *thwack* "One" *thwack* "Twoo..." *thwack* "Fruh..."

Pah! Weak! Russian soldiers are expected to hit themselves in the face thirty times daily in basic training. Sixty on Mondays.

Alas, my fleet sailors are much softer then their Marine counterparts. A shame, really, but they vastly outnumber forces on the ground, so we can't dedicate as much time training them to be the incarnations of death as we can training them on what buttons they should avoid pushing if they don't want to vent the reactor mass into the corridor they're standing in.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

We, of course, design our ships with the expectation that only officers and NCO's are sentient beings capable of any rational thought.

Sadly, it usually doesn't work out well.

[North Mack]

Those enlisted men have a way of getting into EVERYTHING, don't they.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

Actually, I was talking about the officers.
www.instantrimshot.com

[North Mack]

*promptly clicks the button several hundred times*

hehehehe. Er... *ahem* Mm. I see what you're saying. Yes...

[Solar Communes]

Our vessels are commandeered by the glorious Hivemind.

[North Mack]

Our vessels are commandeered by the glorious Hivemind.

So... all your ships do nothing but barrel rolls? sweet!

[Derscon]

This makes me want to capture a ship and feed your people to it, Derscon. You realize this, yes?

I'd lol.

[Khandosia]

The question is not what, but why?

-snip-

I think its funny to note that my ships, even the smallest, can go for at least eight months to a year without resupply of consumables, mostly for the fact that the food comes in "ration bar" form that is nutritional but probably the least appetizing thing in the universe. So...my military men and women keep themselves fed, basically, on nutri-grain bars, but without the tasty grain part.

[Balrogga]

When I have meatbags aboard, I let them use the replicator to make their meals.

I don't have meatbags over for dinner very often so all I need is raw energy or matter to feed my Kythons.

[Sertian]

Meat is usually vat-grown tissue cultures. A little more advanced than what I saw described earlier, these muscle tissues are cultured in a way that provides them "natural" nutrient intake, and simulated exercise. As such, the flavor and texture of the meat can be tailored, and often comes as close to the real thing as possible.

It's not proper vat-grown meat unless it's a bland, pale colour, spongy, sorta melts in your mouth and gives the impression of eating packing peanuts or styrofoam when it comes to taste value. Otherwise, you might start to like it and once that happens things start to go downhill very quickly.. D:<

Hey, at least he didn't tell you that the most popular meat grown in the vats was long pork. >:D

On my own personal note, food on sertian ships (both civilian and military) is remarkably similar to what they eat on planets. Algae grown meat substitutes have advanced to the point that they can provide the same nutritional requirements as meat and can be genetically engineered to taste better than the meat they actually replaced. The algae colonies have even been engineered to diverse/specialize themselves to mimic the type of textures and consistency of regular meat, as well as to allow nutrients and energy from the outer edge of the colony to reach the denser 'meat cells' of the inner colony (many believe that these cultivated algae cells are more akin to a complex protista life form than an algae, but the term algae sticks). This, combined with the more efficient growing of algae-meat over live stock (allowing growers to make more food per zerat spent on cultivating it) as well as less space required per kilogram of usable meat, drove 'farms' out of business centuries ago on Sertian worlds. A similar situation occurred with hydroponics and farming.

However, the food on planet is usually better. The same type of algae is used, but the ones grown on planet tend to be 'healthier' due to better growing facilities and more nutrients supplied to the algae than what is collected, and its also usually fresher. Typically ships are equipped with a stack of rations (either baseline as in emergency ships, or very compact nutritional rations in the type used for emergency rations on military ships - these taste like, well, like if you grew algae and slammed enough nutrients and vitamins in it to sustain a person for a day). Military and cruise/luxury/private ships tend to have a stock of better algae types and plants so that cooks can prepare better meals to improve crew moral and because civilians want their meat not to taste like algae with a great deal of vitamins mixed in. Larger ships, typically any military ship ranked as a cruiser and up, and large luxury liners, have the vats to grow their own food. On a military ship this is tied in to the waste recycling systems after its been purified (any harmful bacteria or toxic chemicals removed) rather than just venting the material into space.

[Solar Communes]

Solarians have a large stockpile of drinks in their spacecrafts, but sometimes the container is not so willing to let the drink inside him go. Of course, they are reminded of how the victims of their fascist oppression weren't willing to be oppressed either, before they are drank to the last drop.

Well, and they can tap electricity too, but it is not as interesting.

[Cyber Utopia]

My good friend Stella gave me a bizarre idea the other day, but I thought I'd wait until the effects of her visit were over before posting it here to see what the plausibility of it is. Right, here it is.

I'm aware that because of a lack of friction in space, an object launched from a moving vessel will continue to travel until it hits something. However, to slow it down, would it be plausible for that something (missile, small spacecraft) to launch a magnet in front of it, and then activate an onboard magnet in the oppisite polarity in order to repel the something enough to reduce it's speed?

Wow. I just realised the extent of how strange that idea is. Stella made it sound so reasonable... o.o

[Morningstar Coalition]

It's not proper vat-grown meat unless it's a bland, pale colour, spongy, sorta melts in your mouth and gives the impression of eating packing peanuts or styrofoam when it comes to taste value. Otherwise, you might start to like it and once that happens things start to go downhill very quickly.. D:<

Hey, at least he didn't tell you that the most popular meat grown in the vats was long pork. >:D

No, that would be Bavin Burgers.

---

My good friend Stella gave me a bizarre idea the other day, but I thought I'd wait until the effects of her visit were over before posting it here to see what the plausibility of it is. Right, here it is.

I'm aware that because of a lack of friction in space, an object launched from a moving vessel will continue to travel until it hits something. However, to slow it down, would it be plausible for that something (missile, small spacecraft) to launch a magnet in front of it, and then activate an onboard magnet in the oppisite polarity in order to repel the something enough to reduce it's speed?

Wow. I just realised the extent of how strange that idea is. Stella made it sound so reasonable... o.o

Ahhhh, boot-strap propulsion.
Sounds simple and reasonable when you think about it, but if you actually look at the physics, it doesn't really work. Yes, if you toss a magnet out in front of you and try to "bounce" off that magnetic field, you'll impart force onto your ship and change your velocity. However, you'll also change the velocity of the magnet, both when you throw it out in front (Since it will just keep on merrily coasting ahead of you at the same distance unless your ship accelerates to catch up to it) as well as when you bump into the magnetic field.
The problem is mainly one of mass. If the magnet you threw out is many times smaller than your ship, then all that will happen is that the rebound well end up firing that small magnet off like a bullet.
In order for the magnet to actually absorb the momentum from your ship (and thus slow you down), either the magnet has to be at least the same mass as your ship (or larger), or else it needs to be anchored to something that is.

Anything else?

[Cyber Utopia]

Ahhhh, boot-strap propulsion.
Sounds simple and reasonable when you think about it, but if you actually look at the physics, it doesn't really work. Yes, if you toss a magnet out in front of you and try to "bounce" off that magnetic field, you'll impart force onto your ship and change your velocity. However, you'll also change the velocity of the magnet, both when you throw it out in front (Since it will just keep on merrily coasting ahead of you at the same distance unless your ship accelerates to catch up to it) as well as when you bump into the magnetic field.
The problem is mainly one of mass. If the magnet you threw out is many times smaller than your ship, then all that will happen is that the rebound well end up firing that small magnet off like a bullet.
In order for the magnet to actually absorb the momentum from your ship (and thus slow you down), either the magnet has to be at least the same mass as your ship (or larger), or else it needs to be anchored to something that is.

Anything else?

Cheers for clearing that up. I had a feeling that physics was going to spoil it all for me.

I do have another question actually. I see most people have some sort of signature weapon, so I thought I'd come up with one. I was thinking of having small ships/big robots that fly towards an enemy vessel en masse and clamp themselves to it in blind spots, before making holes and allowing the vacuum of space to suck everything out.

It sounds plausible enough to me, but then again so did using magnets as brakes.

Now, there's a lot of different armour types out there and a lot of are damn thick, so I was wondering what would be the best method of making the hole? Big drill or laser? Or something else I may not have considered?

[Feazanthia]

You have to ask yourself - what advantage do they have over missiles or kinetic weapons of similar mass and cost?

What is to prevent your robots from being gutted by PD weapons before they get within a thousand kilometers of the target vessel, turning your expensive hardware into low velocity, really expensive kinetic dust?

What about shields?

They'd need sufficient velocity to avoid PD fire, but how do they slow down without being mostly propellant tanks, and how do they do it without being taken out by the PD fire they want to avoid in the first place?

In short - could it be done technically? Sure, probably. What you need to ask yourself is whether it's feasible. And to do that you need to analyze lethality divided by cost, and lethality divided by tonnage, and compare those to more mundane systems.


Edit: And don't forget that any starship worth its weight in gold-pressed latinum is going to have means to deal with both boarders and hull breaches. To even get to vulnerable crew sections and vent them, your robots are going to have to dig a lot. They'll need to dig even deeper to get at the real important hardware and personnel (he who puts his bridge outside the primary hull is doomed to get A-wings flown into it), all the while having to fend off armed naval personnel and any anti-boarding countermeasures the target may have installed, and that's after penetrating anywhere from several to several dozen layers of armor and hull.