Utility mount idea: smoke
- Thread starter Conch
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How would smoke counter lasers?
I don't think smoke screens would work like that, especially in a vacuum. Any gasses or particles ejected would instantly be dispersed in the vastness of local space.
You could use a containment field but then why not just use that field to block beams.
It's a game so, meh....
You could use a containment field but then why not just use that field to block beams.
It's a game so, meh....
You could conceivably have something that would release a smallish dust cloud. It would obviously still disperse eventually, but I can think of a few ways an engineer could get it to hang around for a relevant amount of time. Would do a decent job of interfering with lasers that pass though it, causing them to bloom to some degree and lose potency. Deployable temporary "soft" cover.
Several things, smoke works in the atmosphere because the pressure of the atmosphere stops it immediately dispersing, it's generally used to shield slow moving or stationary target from attack, a particular area of landscape from view or to mark a target. releasing smoke into space will cause it to immediately disperse, yes we could surround it with a field as already suggested, or enclose it in a plastic film of some sort, however to be used in combat it would need to be moving with the ship and many hundreds of meters per second through straight runs and turns, it would be rendered almost immediately useless, better to for something that actually works, like extra chaff than fit smoke canisters. In fact if you left a trail of smoke I can only see it as making you an easier target. There are some things that simply don't work because space!
You could use dust, instead of smoke. Have a little device that stays in space (almost like a mine) that sprays out dust at a low velocity. It would of course disperse, but for the duration of it being sprayed out it could form a reasonably dense field around the "mine".
Alternatively, you could have the mine fire out a cluster of canisters around it, that in turn fire dust out behind them at roughly the same velocity they're moving. The velocities would roughly cancel for the dust, leaving it close to motionless. You'd need to spray the dust out in more of a cone than a straight trail (to get better dispersion) so the velocity wouldn't be completely canceled, but again, it could provide a reasonably dense temporary cloud to hide behind. Hell, make that dust out of metal and heat it up, and you could conceivably hide inside / behind it to mask your heat signature.
Oh I've lost track of him, where could he be? Oh wait, lets look behind this red hot glowing cloud of metal fragments that every single person in the system can see.
It just seems to me that trying to create a complicated system that mimics the effect of a smoke canister while in a vacuum is rather silly, maybe I could squirt some oil like stuff out of the back of my ship as well so that anyone following me will lose control and sort of skid all over the place. Trying to import things that work on earth because of the environment and equipment we use and trying to jigger them up to work in space? Well it's space, lets use weapons designed for space. You want a way to dissipate a laser attack? Use mirror armour.
Oh just one more point, the only real difference between dust and smoke is the size of the particles, on earth smoke floats in a cloud because it is held up by atmospheric effects and dust is heavier and drops to the ground quicker, it's really not that different, the difference in names is more because of the behaviour not the consituents.
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That's a point. Smoke isn't really a gas- it's just a bunch of suspended particles. With that in mind, a smoke screen would probably work reasonably well if deployed as I described. And yes, if you were hiding behind / inside the smoke screen it would be obvious where you were, but that's always the case with smoke screens; the helpful part is that the enemy doesn't know SPECIFICALLY where you are, so hitting you is impractical.
This is right. In vacuum every smoke particle will travel on a ballistic trajectory; it won't hang around as in air. (Another example: a sackful of feathers and a sackful of lead pellets released at the same time will all travel the same straight path, at the release speed).
Releasing a gas containing the smoke particles will be even worse. The gas will expand rapidly into the vacuum, taking all the smoke away with it.
Come to think of it, these considerations apply to chaff too. Chaff is only useful in atmosphere because of the way it hangs around and falls slowly. In vacuum, dumping a load of chaff will leave it travelling alongside your ship and draw attention rather than diverting attention away from you.
I've read a bunch of sci-fi. HARD sci-fi, that muses about how things would work. Like how to defeat a laser, you either wear a mirror, or wear clothing the same color as the laser. Which could counter the laser, or give you more time to act before the laser burns through.
And it's already ingame, mostly: http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Mirrored_Surface_Composite
It makes somewhat sense, though. If you dump a lot of particles, they could very well scatter laser beams. Before they boil away into gas, anyway.
But it's not really practical. Even if you did eject tons and tons of mirrored chaff in every direction, it would probably get REALLY annoying to try and see through.
And it's already ingame, mostly: http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Mirrored_Surface_Composite
It makes somewhat sense, though. If you dump a lot of particles, they could very well scatter laser beams. Before they boil away into gas, anyway.
But it's not really practical. Even if you did eject tons and tons of mirrored chaff in every direction, it would probably get REALLY annoying to try and see through.
That's sort of the idea.
Honestly, something like this could be an Experimental effect for Chaff modding. Instead of disrupting weapon tracking, it trails a thick, expanding cloud of fine metallic dust particles, disrupting sensors, causing visual obscurity, and reducing the efficacy of lasers passing through it. The cloud/trail would disperse enough to see through and acquire sensor locks after 15ish seconds, and dissipate enough that lasers would no longer be affected after 30 seconds. The downside of such a system would be that, unless the pilot doubled back and circled through the cloud, it'd be pretty easy to see where they went from anywhere but directly behind. However, it'd also be a neat tactical element to deploy as a screen in front of allies in order for them to evade fire for a short time.
Practically, though, it could tank frame rates. That much transparency and volumetric stuff going on? And having to test and affect every single laser shot passing through a shifting section of 3d space. That and the annoyance factor of the effects.
Better yet, just have a limpet unfold a big thin mirror and fly at the enemy, holding the shiny side towards them? That's just collision detection with multiple hitboxes, and we already do that. Big Mylar sheet.
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It does. What is it hanging around in? :-(
The first part actually is more sensible than the smoke screen idea. The second part, you're describing what chaff is at it's basic form. And releasing thousands of tiny floating mirrors could direct the beams in any and all directions, including at your and allies ships as well.
Try firing a laser at a disco ball and see what I'm talking about but imagine those (thousands of) mirrors fragments spinning all around your ships.
One hell of a light show though. DISCO FEVER!!!
I'm not going to call this out, as I'm honestly not sure how vacuum influences dispersion of particles. But if the concept wouldn't work, how do nebular form/remain?
I would have thought the gas would disperse with whatever inertia it was ejected with, atmosphere or not. No?
Nebulae consist of one molecule every few cubic kilometres. Because the molecules hardly ever collide there's almost no pressure to cause expansion. This means it's not really meaningful to call them "gas".
Old, old, old idea. The Traveller RPG had them in starships, but they were Sandcasters where the "sand" was a particulate with prismatic qualities to break up the effectiveness of lasers.
The difference, though, is that Traveller used hex paper and a caster produced a cloud the size of a small town. Elite's game play would quickly out distance or maneuver away from that sort of thing, making it of questionable use except for an escape mechanism.
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