tribulation (spoilers) chapter 3

[Hearly]

I think the people who are arguing against the bps system don't understand what it can be used for vs what it can't be used for.

Can't be used for flying spaceships, too much range issue.

It can be used for Nanites (sp) and such because having to have it's own internal power makes it too large, Imagine what it would be like to have your armor have a broadcast ability and have your body injected with nanites that would help any type of wound, or how about having nanites in your ships armor, if there would be a breach it could fix it quickly, etc...

I think the reason Jason is pushing the BPS system, is because he sees the possibility of miniaturizing almost anything that requires power, that doesn't need to Move too far from a source..

[ANTIcarrot]

Oh dear! Critical research failure! Smurfs are only 6 inches tall, not 12! Sorry Fel, you'll just have to rewrite the whole thing...

Reguarding BPS and the military, I can see missiles and drone weapons platforms being given power transcievers, especially if they weighed less than an equivolent PPG or fusion pack. Low weight = better performance and that sort of thing. Fighters and mechs might also be given a 'trickle charge' system stops them eating into on board fuel supplies, or as an emergancy 'get home' system. Finally, if you can broascast anything, you can send information. And while the consortoium *might* be smart enough to pick up on that kind of thing, no one else in the galaxy could. So secret squirrel stuff as well.

The Parri thing though... Jason disapoints me. As an engineer, I thought he would be smarter than that. IIRC, there is still no scientific theory behind telepathy on any level. As a generation he has a slightly larger 'bandwidth capacity' than most telepathic species. And then he seems to pick up a strange transmission. Well gosh darn it! That must be magic - because there's nothing else it could obviously be! For a profession built upon philosophical materialism, that is at best, a nasty case of cognative dissonence.

PS: Anyone else have the notion that what Jason picked up was not so much a protective barrier, but some kind of telepathic high, that simply makes people feel better? Might explain the Parri attitude to their trees...

[DigitalMaestro]

Well now, someone's a skeptic! hahaha, I must admit that I found the whole explanation of why it was a new phenomenon rather lacking, but hey, it's Fel's world and he's yet to lead us astray.

-DigitalMaestro

[miraborn]

I think the people who are arguing against the bps system don't understand what it can be used for vs what it can't be used for.

Can't be used for flying spaceships, too much range issue.

It can be used for Nanites (sp) and such because having to have it's own internal power makes it too large, Imagine what it would be like to have your armor have a broadcast ability and have your body injected with nanites that would help any type of wound, or how about having nanites in your ships armor, if there would be a breach it could fix it quickly, etc...

I think the reason Jason is pushing the BPS system, is because he sees the possibility of miniaturizing almost anything that requires power, that doesn't need to Move too far from a source..

However, Jason specifically mentioned that production of new gestalts and interfaces has been put on hold until the BPS is operational, to free up space in the units for additional processing and memory. This begs the question: "What will a Generation do if they get too far from a power station?" This possibility doesn't seem too far-fetched, either, given the range of something like a half million miles for a BPS generator. You wouldn't even be able to go to a different planet or asteroid in the Karis system without bringing a generator with you, which seems to be a bit of a liability.

[Fel]

I think the people who are arguing against the bps system don't understand what it can be used for vs what it can't be used for.

Can't be used for flying spaceships, too much range issue.

It can be used for Nanites (sp) and such because having to have it's own internal power makes it too large, Imagine what it would be like to have your armor have a broadcast ability and have your body injected with nanites that would help any type of wound, or how about having nanites in your ships armor, if there would be a breach it could fix it quickly, etc...

I think the reason Jason is pushing the BPS system, is because he sees the possibility of miniaturizing almost anything that requires power, that doesn't need to Move too far from a source..

However, Jason specifically mentioned that production of new gestalts and interfaces has been put on hold until the BPS is operational, to free up space in the units for additional processing and memory. This begs the question: "What will a Generation do if they get too far from a power station?" This possibility doesn't seem too far-fetched, either, given the range of something like a half million miles for a BPS generator. You wouldn't even be able to go to a different planet or asteroid in the Karis system without bringing a generator with you, which seems to be a bit of a liability.

Well, that's why you either bring a powered gestalt with you, or you design your gestalt so its PPG can be easily exchanged.

[IdiotPaste]

What if each ship could broadcast it's own power? Each ship system (weapons, engines, life support, etc.) would receive it's power via BPS. And if one ship does lose power it can receive it from others in the fleet. That would make it pretty hard for any Karinne ships to be knocked out of a fight.

[kd7mvs]

Military hardware should have its own power supply if possible, that way losing the BPS doesn't knock everything out, including the tools needed to repair the BPS; actually, that argues for certain items at all locations still having PPGs, you need functioning tools to work on malfunctioning BPS units. For military interfaces to have the same functionality as BPS powered interfaces would require slightly bulkier interfaces, presuming the BPS receiver is less bulky than the PPG; broadcast power would only be implemented if it was more compact than non-broadcast, and they're talking about being able to power nanotech using BPS, so it is more compact. So civilian versions of various tools will be more compact as they run off of BPS, and mission critical versions will remain PPG powered, so that they can function in a non-BPS environment.

Size of BPS generation facilities would need to be looked into, but since the Consortium is using BPS for their ships its at least compact enough for ships; whether its compact enough for fighters to mount BPS generators is another matter. And the whole question of just how efficient the BPS is in regard to power generation, how much wastage is there, where's the trade-off point between using PPGs vs BPS?

[SYED]

what happens if tech designed for one type of plasma broadcast, recieves a different one. Eventually the karinnes will be able to broadcast all versions of their plasma, but would that be a way to damage the tech.

when the fleet comes for the damaged ships and destroy the wreaks, they have the choice, take it all to a singular location, easily secured and fewer ships needed for transport. But slow in rerpair, If they want the ships quickly repaired, divide them amongst the stations, more ships need for towing, forces divide. Will the operation be done in stages or simultaneous ly, all ships at once. all the ships needed to move the fleet, means while they are occupied, their defense strength will be llow. they know jason needs to destroy the ships, so longer they are defenseless, the greater opportunity, so should be done as quick as possible. Thats over 10000 ships to be moved by a 3000 fleet, so assets will be less defended. Could set up indicted and gated system positions.

how are ships towed, can it be messed with. blow another indictor to cripple new fleet engines. if they know flight plan, they could trap fleet for months, start it as fleet comes, moving away, ship traped when range rapidlly increases. set it so when they attack, the ship that respond fall to amush.

[NSC]

Is this Broadcast Power System based on what Nikola Tesla was proposing?

[kd7mvs]

Is this Broadcast Power System based on what Nikola Tesla was proposing?

While Fel may have come up with the idea based on familiarity with Tesla, the Consortium hasn't a clue who Tesla was, and has been using broadcast power far longer than that.

edit: Ooo, look! My hundredth post!

[hoppy]

I think the use of BPS in the consortium military has more to do with the nature of the war in their own galaxy, and their paranoia (if the smaller fighters have no other power it's harder for dissidents to steal them, there is no need for them in independent roles, and the insectoids instincts may have some influence.

[Wolfee]

Personally I don't see why Jason in such a all fired hurry to switch to BPS... Yes conventional power supplies require power to be delievered by power lines or whatever the Karinne equivilant is. Less I read the chapter too fast I don't see any mention that it is un-jamable. Less Fel is setting the Karinnes up for a beating they will have to recover from.

On the other hand has phase shifting been discussed as a way to attack the new Consortium base? Seems to me this would have been something the Karinnes would have researched. Hyper to the Consortium base, phase shift your attack fleet fly into attack possition, shift phase back to our own, wip out your super-sized can of Raid and BIFF!! BAM!! POW!!

As always look'n forward to the next chapter!

[Fel]

Personally I don't see why Jason in such a all fired hurry to switch to BPS... Yes conventional power supplies require power to be delievered by power lines or whatever the Karinne equivilant is. Less I read the chapter too fast I don't see any mention that it is un-jamable. Less Fel is setting the Karinnes up for a beating they will have to recover from.

On the other hand has phase shifting been discussed as a way to attack the new Consortium base? Seems to me this would have been something the Karinnes would have researched. Hyper to the Consortium base, phase shift your attack fleet fly into attack possition, shift phase back to our own, wip out your super-sized can of Raid and BIFF!! BAM!! POW!!

As always look'n forward to the next chapter!

The broadcast power system has a few major advantages, the primary one being that it allows equipment to be built without needing PPGs. PPGs, like any power system, are always the chokepoint, the one thing you absolutely have to have. Now, they can pull the PPGs out of the civilian, non-critical equipment and stockpile them for military use.

PPGs aren't expensive to make, but they can't be mass produced thousands of units at a time. Since they're literally an enclosed spatial bubble holding a hot fusion reaction, you have to be a TAD careful when you build them and then start them up the first time, and the bigger they are, the more careful you have to be...or you get another Chesapeake. PPG production becomes the baseline of anything else you're building that uses them. The broadcast power will allow them to build low-priority equipment, plug in a cheap and easy to produce receiver unit, and you're good to go.

Another advantage is that it puts a major control on your technology. Nobody's gonna steal a Karinne Stick designed only for local use, because its power is gonna zonk out on you once you get outside of the broadcast range.

And the biggest advantage will be allowing the Karinnes to start developing nano-technology, since they can nano-ize a receiver where they can't do the same to a PPG or a battery. You have NO IDEA how useful nanites can be.

As I mentioned before, broadcast power will primarily be for civilian use. Military devices can't rely on a system like that because a military unit must be self-sufficient and have durable redundancy, though they CAN be equipped with a receiver as an emergency backup in case their primary plants fail, giving a powerless ship at least a chance to get back to its carrying ship if its singularity plant goes offline. Anything military will still run on its own power except for those things that can't use internal power, like nanites.

[nicolai]

I was going back and re-reading Subjugation, and ran across this little bit:

“There’s an idea,” Tim chuckled. “MPACs are plasma inside a magnetic envelope to keep it from blowing up til it hits something, right? Just reverse the polarity of the matrix so it repels the magnetic envelope, which would make the plasma go with it. MPAC fire would just bounce off.”
“You couldn’t do that—holy shit,” Jason said, his eyes brightening. “We couldn’t do that with this, but that’s a hell of an idea, Tim! I think I could make something that could do that!”
“I think I could too,” Steve said with a laugh. “You couldn’t use an MPAC around it, but we could definitely build something that would bounce the magnetic envelope of an MPAC round.”
“I’m writing that one down,” Jason said quickly, typing furiously on his panel’s holographic keyboard. “That’s definitely our next project.”

I wonder if Jason and crew ever did anything with this. Or maybe he could re-discover that note and hand it over to 3D to work on. It just might have other possibilities in the war. I'm sure Dahnai will want to strangle him when she finds out about it.

[expedient]

I wonder if Jason and crew ever did anything with this. Or maybe he could re-discover that note and hand it over to 3D to work on. It just might have other possibilities in the war. I'm sure Dahnai will want to strangle him when she finds out about it.

My guess is, if it works, they'll have some kind of extendable shield on the arms of their armour and mechs. If say the Karinnes have to raid a mercenary hideout or another House then maybe we might see a few surprised faces when their MPAC round bounce right back at them.