TheFake

War of Magics

She hefted the sword and it lengthened into a long javelin. After a pause to gauge the distance she threw it and the projectile streaked off towards the target with a tail of fire. She had another fistful of fire ready a moment later. From each handful flames began to creep along her arms, solidifying into a second skin. Red veins glowed as she began to run, picking up speed. The flames continued to flow across her body, covering her in thick armour. As her face was covered in a fierce, beaked helmet, she smiled.

After War, Before Peace (Military, Alternate History/Post-war RP)

Kyle had just finished breaking camp as the sound reached him. He dropped to a crouch and raised the RPK-74 to his shoulder, a thirty round magazine already loaded. after a second he decided that it was far enough away for him to be safe for the moment but close enough for whatever it was to pose an eventual threat. He slid one arm out of his packs straps, ready to drop it at a moments notice. Taking a few seconds to get a more exact direction, he set off down the mountain slope, avoiding where he'd gone previously to take care not to create enough of a disturbance to leave a trail.

Getting closer to the road, he dropped to his stomach, nearly invisible in the undergrowth. he crept forward carefully until he had eyes on the vehicle. He shrugged off his bag and moved it slowly behind a tree. Still being careful not to disturb anything, he inched himself in the other direction until he was mostly hidden behind a tree trunk. His search and rescue training made him naturally suited to finding things in the forest and equally adept at not being found. He'd had little chance to apply it to his time in the cities of Europe but he was now in his element.

He held his fire for the time being, peering over the sights at the soldiers almost three hundred meters distant. He was content to watch for the moment, it was safer to hold his fire when he was outnumbered like this. they seemed content to stay near the truck for now. He'd have to fire if they expanded their perimeter towards his position. He could have made his way around the truck but he stayed where he was. The patrol seemed unusually disciplined and he wondered at the way one of the officers stood near the cargo area of the vehicle.

War of Magics

Sword in hand, Kyla followed along, having caught up to a dozen paces behind Suki.

☄For Divine Entertainment☄

Pleased with his information gathering, Grimm headed back towards the inn where he had his room. He lifted his gear down from the rafters and laid it our on the bed. The cannon, lance and shield took up the entire surface. His bag containing the shells sat on the floor. Pulling a bandoleer from his bag, he began to fill it with shells for the cannon before hanging it diagonally across his chest. The cannon went on a sling over his shoulder with the lance vertically on his back, the tip at his head height and the butt almost touching the ground. The shield went onto his back, covering the lance. He picked up the bag with one hand and left the room.

After paying for the partial day he heading back to Rhys's Arch Workshop, having a few more questions for the boy regarding the mission.

After War, Before Peace (Military, Alternate History/Post-war RP)

Kyles camp was deep in the jungle, as far away as he could get from any groups of NWA. He'd been on the Island ever since the NWA had shot down the transport he'd been on, the lone survivor. The first missile hit had been bad enough, knocking out an engine and tearing a hole in the wing. Just before making what Kyle had thought at the time was a pretty damn good crash landing on the beach a second missile finished what the first had started and tore the wing off. The pilots died when the aircraft slammed into the ground and the rest of the passengers were killed when a pallet full of aid supplies broke loose and smashed through the seating section. Kyle escaped with his gear minutes before the NWA soldiers showed up to scavenge from the wreckage. He'd returned days later. Thankfully the bodies had been taken away. Taking some food that had been missed and whatever else he could scavenge, Kyle escaped into the jungle.

His camp was little more than a tarp spread across a deep gulley and covered with brush, invisible from the outiside. He'd made a hammock to keep himself dry and off the ground. He had little doubt that they knew that he was on the island, the disappearances of more than one patrol over the last year had seen to that although he suspected that he wasn't the only thing that the patrols had to watch out for. He swatted away an insect and get out of the hammock when he couldn't get comfortable again. He picked up his RPK and began to get ready to break camp. It was well past time he should look again for a way off the island.

Hard Sci Fi combat within our solar system

Tearstone said Light takes time to travel. The distance from the earth to the moon is roughly a second, but from the sun to the earth takes a little over 8 minutes.. and from earth to mars takes about 40 minutes.

That's right, so in a long range battle the best knowledge of an enemy position would be where they were a handful of seconds ago and laser weapons would need to have that taken into account.

Tearstone said LASER - light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation - Is essentially a columnated spatially and temporally coherent beam of EM radiation, usually in the infrared or ultraviolet range. Of course there are radio wave variations and the like. Granted there's little to disrupt the beam, but the lag time for the beam to travel would make super-long range shooting a virtual impossibility, say something more than 600,000 kilometers for anything smaller than a long range (intra-system ship, say designed to fly to pluto and back), unless flying a stable course in a straight line at a specific rate of travel.

Pretty much although a laser would reach a target at the same time as the target would see it firing. Random manouvring would be the best way to dodge lasers so it would really be down to luck. THe maximum range of a laser would be about 1 light second or 300 000km because no matter how focused a laser is, it will still diffuse enough to be ineffective after enough distance. This range still has a full second of time lag.

Tearstone said Another thought is, there was recently a laser system designed that creates a laser that has the same output as the sun for a brief moment with an interesting form of optical condensing and compression. Would something not be similarly possible with military grade lasers of the day? All that much energy packed into a single shot would be nasty.

That laser is located at the National Ignition Facility which is being used in nuclear fusion experiments and is roughly the size of a warehouse. It's also only about 50% efficient if converting energy into a laser beam, meaning 50% of the energy put into the laser is lost to heat and other reasons. It can only really be fired once a day because of the heat buildup. Lasers in that power range are used in this universe to actually launch spacecraft from the surface but would be much too large to fit to a spacecraft. Weaponized lasers would perhaps be in the 75% efficiency range and output of about 100MW.

Tearstone said Also, what about microwave lasers?

They'd work, but the best type of laser to use to damage a target would be UV light.

Tearstone said Also, are you taking in communications and sensor lag, as well as power degradation over distance?

Using directional transmitters, liekly lasers, degradation likely wouldn't be too much of an issue though time lag would still be present.

Tearstone said What kind of accelleration do missiles have available. 20g's? 50 g's? 100 g's? While it might take a laser a second or two to reach lunar distances, a missile pulling 100+ g's of acceleration could reach that distance almost as quickly, and outfitted with a nuke, or even one that splits into multiple warheads could be nasty.

Even pulling 100Gs a missile would still take over 10 minutes to travel a single light second. Missiles are useful because they can track a target and time lag doesn't really have an effect on their accuracy. 20Gs might be better. Raching a target at a lower speed makes it easier to adjust its course. I figure that they'd fire their engines once to get up to speed and then only as needed to make course adjustments.

Nuclear explosions in space aren't really that effective. Without atmosphere there's no blast wave and no heat. The only effect would be through radiation which spacecraft spacecraft would be shielded against anyway. A nuke would have to be quite close to have a major effect other than disrupting communications.

Multiple missiles would be quite effective although there would be ample time to shoot them all down so more is better.

Tearstone said Also, what about particle accelerators, or particle beams. A muon beam might be more effective against a target than a laser, and most particle beams cause a catastrophic failure of most materials they hit, while (as far as I know) inflicting little heat inclination.

Particle accelerators suffer the same problems as lasers.

Tearstone said Random Question - Have you ever read First Flight or the Sundowner Trilogy by Chris Claremont? (awesome series, some of this I'm actually taking notes from since it's a fairly hard sci-fi setting and similar to this setting.)

No. This is actually mostly inspired by the story O Homeworld My Heart written by Angry scotsman 1989 on the alternatehistory.com forums.

Machines(Mechs, Mecha, and Powered Armor Oh My!)

While the battery was charged, Ian walked to the kitchen, returning a moment later with a glass of water and a sandwich balanced on a plate, the crust of the latter cut off. He sat on the edge of the open cockpit, enjoying his lunch and making plans for his next job. Guard work paid well enough but ultimately it was boring as hell for a mediocre payout. Taking out a few hits might be a decent way to score some fast cash. He finished his sandwich on this thought and placed the dishes in the sink. Returning to his aircraft to find the batteries ready for another flight, he climbed into the cockpit and was soon making a landing in Haven.

Ian hopped out of his cockpit and headed for a nearby pub that he frequented. He sat down with a beer at a table near the bar, sipping it slowly.

Vivi-Dream

Atropos returned a while later, waking in the pitch black room as Katarina slept. By touch and memory she made her way back to Remniche through the passages, slowly regaining her awareness before reaching the town again. Finding a bench to sit on, she sat down to simply enjoy things. Idly she wondered if she were spending too much time in the dream. Every time it got more difficult to make herself wake up. It was like losing her sight again, every time, and being plunged back into a world of perfect darkness. She hated it but it was the real her. She was Katarina, not Atropos.

She sighed in anger at herself and stood up to leave, deciding to either go find another Oneiros or find somewhere to explore.

Machines(Mechs, Mecha, and Powered Armor Oh My!)

leaning towards the upper image with Swag Stag.

Machines(Mechs, Mecha, and Powered Armor Oh My!)

The throbbing sound of the rotor blades beating against the air echoed out across the heat of the junkyard. The pilot deftly guided himself into a valley, caressing it's curves as he flew down its length. With a hard pull on the stick and some rudder, he stopped and turned to face the way he had come. Soon enough his pursuer came around the corner and barrelling towards him. Sliding sideways to avoid a long line of tracers, he answered in kind with a burst of cannon fire from his twin 23 millimetre guns that gun diagonally across the tripod style mech, destroying a leg and damaging its weapons systems. He strafed to the side and raked it with more cannon fire until it exploded with a flash.

"Guard Seven to Sheep, Wolf is down. Resuming orbit."

Inserting his aircraft back into the valley, he returned to his patrol area, defending an ongoing salvage operation from opportunistic raiders that cared little about what they attacked. The down wash dislodged debris from the mounts of trash, triggering avalanches of junk as he passed. Pulling back on the stick again, he rose above a mound of trash, rising thermals buffeting him for the few seconds he was above the peaks as he looked for the telltale dust clouds of moving mechs. Not seeing anything, he dropped back below the level of the ridges and checked his charge level.

"Guard Seven, my shift is done. Say hi to Logan for me when he gets here."

Dipping the nose, he made one more pass low over the salvage team, taking a slightly circuitous route back to his home base, carefully manoeuvring into the mouth of the cave and through the open steel doors of the ancient bunker. The doors slammed behind him as the aircraft touched down and the rotors slowed to a stop.