np NP: Monday, May 9, 2016

[hkmaly 490]

8 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

Good point. Thinking about it. The Uryuom military might have weaponized versions of the CMD. Would be incredibly deadly when lethality is needed, though potentially have non-lethal settings if only pacification is needed.

I don't think the stuff Uryuom military uses is called Cosmetic Morph Devices, despite having similar technology.

But yes, I think they will have something like that. Without safeties, you can probably use it effectively even against Uryuom who normally can transform back ...

[InfiniteRemnant 141]

51 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

1 hour ago, Drasvin said:

Good point. Thinking about it. The Uryuom military might have weaponized versions of the CMD. Would be incredibly deadly when lethality is needed, though potentially have non-lethal settings if only pacification is needed.

I don't think the stuff Uryuom military uses is called Cosmetic Morph Devices, despite having similar technology.

But yes, I think they will have something like that. Without safeties, you can probably use it effectively even against Uryuom who normally can transform back ...

more likely they would just design a weapon that's universally effective rather than one that has varying degrees of effectiveness based on shape shifting ability.

it may have use as a medical implement though? a variant designed to temporarily seal off wounds so a patient can be transferred to a proper care facility?

[hkmaly 490]

19 hours ago, InfiniteRemnant said:

more likely they would just design a weapon that's universally effective rather than one that has varying degrees of effectiveness based on shape shifting ability.

Making universally effective NON-LETHAL weapon is VERY HARD. And even for lethal weapons, there IS big advantage in weapon which kills people but DOESN'T damage structures - and, again, this is not so easy. Of course, for general "kill everything don't care about property damage" purpose, explosives are simpler.

[Vorlonagent 442]

What could one do with a TF Cannon or a TF Nuke?

TF-Cannon: Think of a TF Gun as an artillery piece with a burst radius on impact of, say, 10 meters.

TF-Nuke: Scale the cannon to a burst radius of 10 kilometers.

Turn anything within the impact zone into...say a mollusk.  Anything with no hands or feet.  For the next 30 days.  Uryouom troops could call down fire on their own positions and simply morph back.  Harsher TFG effects would be saved for facing another shapeshifting race.

EGS Earth should be very happy that Uryuoms are social critters, and not much for empire building.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

11 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

Turn anything within the impact zone into...say a mollusk.

Gives a whole new meaning to "Clam Up!"

[hkmaly 490]

21 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

EGS Earth should be very happy that Uryuoms are social critters, and not much for empire building.

Weeeell, Uryuoms should be very happy Earth Immortals have rules. And even in limits of empower and guide, how long do you think Uryuom would last if they attacked Earth and say Pandora decided she doesn't want them in same universe as Adrian?

Could give a whole new meaning to the term "guided missile".

[Drasvin 123]

16 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Weeeell, Uryuoms should be very happy Earth Immortals have rules. And even in limits of empower and guide, how long do you think Uryuom would last if they attacked Earth and say Pandora decided she doesn't want them in same universe as Adrian?

Could give a whole new meaning to the term "guided missile".

If the Uryuoms declared full-scale war on Earth, I imagine it would depend on two factors.

One) How quickly can the Uryuoms bring their military down on Earth societies.

Two) How quickly the Immortals that care enough to intervene can kit humans out with magical powers and direct them how to use them.

I don't know how divergent Ellen's SL reality was from the main-line EGS, but the uryuoms had the technology to visit Earth and join in combat as far back as the American Revolution in that would, and them deciding to join in is implied as the major point of divergence. So uryuoms are going to have a supreme technological advantage against humans in the hypothetical war. One area humans might have an advantage against alien invasion is magical abilities. Uryuom magic appears to be limited to their transformation abilities and such, while Earth magic runs a very wide gamut, especially with spells like Elliot's Cheerleadra form and Nanase's Guardian Form.

[hkmaly 490]

3 hours ago, Drasvin said:

Two) How quickly the Immortals that care enough to intervene can kit humans out with magical powers and direct them how to use them.

Dex said Saturday, he was already attacking on Tuesday. I suspect it can be done even faster. What, you expected Pandora would play it fair?

Also, war has PLENTY of drama. Angst-induced awakenings would be common.

3 hours ago, Drasvin said:

while Earth magic runs a very wide gamut, especially with spells like Elliot's Cheerleadra form and Nanase's Guardian Form

I'm not sure if those are the most dangerous spells ... summoning might be worse, as shown by Dex. Also consider the psychological effect of monster you fire several rockets into and it just shrugs it off.

The most important part, however, is that Uryuom have NO WAY to prevent humans to use magic unless they KILL them all. No matter the technological advantage, Uryuom can be disarmed and it's weapon stolen and used against them. You can't disarm magic user.

(Which brings me to the motivation Uryuom would have to conquer Earth. It can't be resources - there are plenty of resources on uninhabited planets. It's either ego - proving superiority and such - or slaves. By eradicating humans you reach neither.)

[InfiniteRemnant 141]

11 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

(Which brings me to the motivation Uryuom would have to conquer Earth. It can't be resources - there are plenty of resources on uninhabited planets. It's either ego - proving superiority and such - or slaves. By eradicating humans you reach neither.)

you forgot one: Fear.

[hkmaly 490]

1 minute ago, InfiniteRemnant said:

13 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

(Which brings me to the motivation Uryuom would have to conquer Earth. It can't be resources - there are plenty of resources on uninhabited planets. It's either ego - proving superiority and such - or slaves. By eradicating humans you reach neither.)

you forgot one: Fear.

Ok. You don't get rid of fear either. Immortals can totally keep scaring Uryuom forever, even if without humans they wouldn't have anyone to empower and guide.

Also, maybe if all immortals agree, the rules can be changed.

[Ser Pentrose 14]

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Ok. You don't get rid of fear either. Immortals can totally keep scaring Uryuom forever, even if without humans they wouldn't have anyone to empower and guide.

Also, maybe if all immortals agree, the rules can be changed.

In this comic http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2174 it's mentioned that ancients/immortals have different agreements on each side of the world. Agreements can be changed, and in that situation I think it likely that it would be.

[hkmaly 490]

11 minutes ago, Ser Pentrose said:

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Also, maybe if all immortals agree, the rules can be changed.

In this comic http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2174 it's mentioned that ancients/immortals have different agreements on each side of the world. Agreements can be changed, and in that situation I think it likely that it would be.

It's concluded then: Uryuoms should be very happy they didn't tried the war option.

[ijuin 572]

If the Uryuoms wanted to eradicate humanity and don't care about the collateral damage, then they can simply drop nukes and small asteroids onto Earth and make it completely uninhabitable. If they want Earth for themselves, then they would want to be less destructive of the ecology. If they want humanity to be subordinate to them, then they will also avoid depopulating us too much.

[hkmaly 490]

7 hours ago, ijuin said:

If the Uryuoms wanted to eradicate humanity and don't care about the collateral damage, then they can simply drop nukes and small asteroids onto Earth and make it completely uninhabitable.

Nukes are usually not worth it. Biggest nuclear bomb has around 100 megaton TNT. Antimatter have 43 megaton per kilogram. Asteroid at 50% of speed of light have 3 megaton per kilogram, 90% of speed of light have 28 megaton per kilogram, at 95% it's 47 megaton per kilogram, at 99% it's 132 megaton per kilogram and not even antimatter is worth to be added to it. So, it obviously depends on what engines you have, but usually, engines capable of interstellar travel makes nukes impractical.

And, yes: orbital bombardment with asteroids of relativistic speed is likely only reasonable course of action if you fear what Earth Immortals can do to you. In the "We gave it our best" sense, because we are still not sure if it will be enough.

[InfiniteRemnant 141]

at which point we move on to plan D: trigger unstable cascade reaction in local star and watch the whole system go splat.

[ijuin 572]

Nukes may have a lot less blast damage than large relativistic kinetic impactors, but they have the advantage of poisoning whatever happens to survive the blasts, and the poison can linger for centuries. Impactors sufficiently massive that absolutely nothing survives anywhere (not even in mile-underground bunkers) may be too heavy to bother with, since by that point we are talking about enough energy to melt the top mile of the Earth's crust planetwide.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

6 hours ago, ijuin said:

Nukes may have a lot less blast damage than large relativistic kinetic impactors, but they have the advantage of poisoning whatever happens to survive the blasts, and the poison can linger for centuries. Impactors sufficiently massive that absolutely nothing survives anywhere (not even in mile-underground bunkers) may be too heavy to bother with, since by that point we are talking about enough energy to melt the top mile of the Earth's crust planetwide.

Pfffft. Sissies. In Doc Smith's Lensman series, when they really wanted someone dead, they hit them with planetary masses of antimatter moving at seventeen times the speed of light. 

[Drasvin 123]

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

8 hours ago, ijuin said:

Nukes may have a lot less blast damage than large relativistic kinetic impactors, but they have the advantage of poisoning whatever happens to survive the blasts, and the poison can linger for centuries. Impactors sufficiently massive that absolutely nothing survives anywhere (not even in mile-underground bunkers) may be too heavy to bother with, since by that point we are talking about enough energy to melt the top mile of the Earth's crust planetwide.

Pfffft. Sissies. In Doc Smith's Lensman series, when they really wanted someone dead, they hit them with planetary masses of antimatter moving at seventeen times the speed of light. 

Hmm. That seems a tad excessive. Then again, There's no kill like overkill.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

1 hour ago, Drasvin said:

Hmm. That seems a tad excessive. Then again, There's no kill like overkill.

To be fair to the Lensmen, they were caught at the tail end of an escalating war of superweapons that had been going on for the entire book series. And every time someone had come up with a superweapon, someone else came up with a defence or counter for it. Just two books earlier the superweapon state of the art had been using two ordinary planets with opposed intrinsic velocities as a nutcracker against a planetary fortress. That stopped being effective when someone else discovered a way to use the entire energy output of a sun as a concentrated beam weapon. Since no-one managed to find a way to move suns around before the end of the series, this placed the advantage firmly at the defence for quite a while.

[Vorlonagent 442]

15 hours ago, InfiniteRemnant said:

at which point we move on to plan D: trigger unstable cascade reaction in local star and watch the whole system go splat.

That's so un-Uryouom.

Transform the entire star into a mutant goat that eats the planet...

[hkmaly 490]

17 hours ago, ijuin said:

Nukes may have a lot less blast damage than large relativistic kinetic impactors, but they have the advantage of poisoning whatever happens to survive the blasts, and the poison can linger for centuries. Impactors sufficiently massive that absolutely nothing survives anywhere (not even in mile-underground bunkers) may be too heavy to bother with, since by that point we are talking about enough energy to melt the top mile of the Earth's crust planetwide.

The "poison" may kill humans pretty well, but many forms of life will survive (famously cockroaches). There are live trees around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant already. On the other hand, it will render the planet unusable for conquering.

20 hours ago, InfiniteRemnant said:

at which point we move on to plan D: trigger unstable cascade reaction in local star and watch the whole system go splat.

I guess just before plan E: turn the star into supernova, which would be before F: turn it into black hole, followed by G:, run a cosmic string through the plane of the elliptic.

[InfiniteRemnant 141]

actually, it's after plan o: but before plan ):<

[hkmaly 490]

1 hour ago, InfiniteRemnant said:

actually, it's after plan o: but before plan ):<

... buuuut cosmic string ... ?

( ... supposed to be in that not-far-from crying voice of child who was told there is not enough time and they need to leave the amusement park ...)

[The Old Hack 2,448]

21 hours ago, hkmaly said:

 followed by G:, run a cosmic string through the plane of the elliptic.

A cosmic G-string? 

[InfiniteRemnant 141]

maly, you can have your strings back when you clean your room, and no stuffing everything into a black hole under your bed this time!