Thinking about the QEP

kingkuma

So I was thinking about the QEP, and how it is able to "bend" the laser beam around the planet. Then it hit me: It's not a laser. it's just plasmized air. If you get a strong enough current running through air, it will create plasma and glow. (This is basically like lightning.) How do they control it? Simple. You can use magnets or electrical fields to "bend" plasma. So that would work out if the precursors are using the PLANET'S MAGNETIC FIELD to bend the beam, and computers would defenitly be able to calculate the trajectory to a near 100% accuracy? How accurate? Well, the aurora probably took multiple hits, so where would you hit to take out a starship of its size? Simple. The thrusters, so it can't escape, and the power. We can see the thrusters getting hit in the intro screen, and there used to be a hole in the side of the ship that led directly into the reactor core. (It's gone because they re - arranged the ship) So the QEP took at least two shots, one hitting the thrusters, and one hitting the power. That was enough to cause the aroura to lose orbit and crash in range of the warpers, which would then take out any survivors. Pretty genius, when you think of it.

SnailsAttack

Magnetic fields don't really work that way, but sure. Also i think the QEP only took one shot and some stuff onboard exploded shortly afterwards as a result.

kingkuma

SnailsAttack wrote: »

Magnetic fields don't really work that way, but sure. Also i think the QEP only took one shot and some stuff onboard exploded shortly afterwards as a result.

https://www.nap.edu/read/10993/chapter/6

xm234

kingkuma wrote: »

So I was thinking about the QEP, and how it is able to "bend" the laser beam around the planet. Then it hit me: It's not a laser. it's just plasmized air. If you get a strong enough current running through air, it will create plasma and glow. (This is basically like lightning.) How do they control it? Simple. You can use magnets or electrical fields to "bend" plasma. So that would work out if the precursors are using the PLANET'S MAGNETIC FIELD to bend the beam, and computers would defenitly be able to calculate the trajectory to a near 100% accuracy? How accurate? Well, the aurora probably took multiple hits, so where would you hit to take out a starship of its size? Simple. The thrusters, so it can't escape, and the power. We can see the thrusters getting hit in the intro screen, and there used to be a hole in the side of the ship that led directly into the reactor core. (It's gone because they re - arranged the ship) So the QEP took at least two shots, one hitting the thrusters, and one hitting the power. That was enough to cause the aroura to lose orbit and crash in range of the warpers, which would then take out any survivors. Pretty genius, when you think of it.

Don't forget, that the gun holds the energy equivalent to a mid - sized nuke, as I remember. Enough to shoot down even larger ships. The beam could last a while longer, crippling the whole side of the ship. Secondary explosions didn't help as well.
About bending beams, the gravity/magnetic field of earth-like planet is far too little. You would need one of the super-dense objects, like neutron star or a black hole. I would rather add an information on more AA platforms on the planet.

Fathom

We know the Precursors function in more dimensions than three and I simply assume the QEP does so, too, using gravity more as a guidance than a force for bending the beam, like rolling a ball in a bowl. Only the bowl is a planet and the ball a beam.

hunnersaginger

Always assumed the QEP was one of many.

0x6A7232

@scifiwriterguy You wouldn't happen to be able to find that excellent write-up you did on the QEP, would you? The one where you explored about three different types of beams the QEP could be and settle on the one that was most likely? I can't seem to put together a good enough search term to get the forums search to cough up the result I want.

0x6A7232

Also there's a discussion going on here, if you didn't catch it already:

https://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/153861/sg1-one-ion-cannon-isnt-enough-for-plane-wide-coverage#latest

Maalteromm

0x6A7232 wrote: »

@scifiwriterguy You wouldn't happen to be able to find that excellent write-up you did on the QEP, would you? The one where you explored about three different types of beams the QEP could be and settle on the one that was most likely? I can't seem to put together a good enough search term to get the forums search to cough up the result I want.

Don't make him waste time on such things. He needs to finish writing a new piece of Downward Spiral.

I remember he stood for particle beams, and conjectured on the possible beams which would produce damage akin to the one Aurora suffered. My main issue with it is regarding the beam velocity, to effectively use gravity assisted maneuvers it has to be quite "slow" and an aware ship might employ evasive maneuvers.
Not saying that's what the Aurora would do, but the QEP was designed for whatever craft approached the planet.

After a few beers contemplation it hit me. A beam of nanobots.
Imagine so many nanobots packed together, streaming like a beam, shot by a very high tech rail gun. The beam looks green because the nanobots are so. They have minute ion cubes for power. It could ride the planet gravity to engage its target and have some neat additional capabilities, such as limited tracking, accelerating, navigating inside target ship to reach vital sections before finally exploding in unison.

That also explains why the QEP beam hits the Sunbeam and there's a 2-3 sec gap before anything goes boom!

jamintheinfinite_1

It's simple

the gun has aimbot

Maalteromm

jamintheinfinite_1 wrote: »

the gun has aimbot [/spoiler]

Yeah, but that works best with hitscan mechanics, which does not appear to be the case for the QEP. Maybe if the precursors new about that they would have equipped the QEP with an AWP.

scifiwriterguy

0x6A7232 wrote: »

@scifiwriterguy You wouldn't happen to be able to find that excellent write-up you did on the QEP, would you? The one where you explored about three different types of beams the QEP could be and settle on the one that was most likely? I can't seem to put together a good enough search term to get the forums search to cough up the result I want.

Found it.
https://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/2372162#Comment_2372162

I would amend the post, however, in a couple minor ways. The most significant would be that the beam-bending principle I mentioned would likely be aided by using atmospheric and magnetospheric reflection. Much in the same way we can "bounce" radio and radar waves (essentially the same thing) off the ionosphere for over-the-horizon applications, a charged-particle beam could be similarly curved by making use of atmospheric refraction and the field lines of 4546B's magnetosphere. In such a model, the heavy lifting of bending the beam would be largely accomplished using passive atmospheric and magnetic effects, with the dint of gravity the planet(oid) has offering a bit of a boost. (Of course, we can also assume that the Precursors had a pretty good handle on advanced physics, so we can't entirely rule out gravity manipulation, either. But if they were imparting enough gravitational attraction to twist a particle beam like a Twizzler, then we should be seeing other effects. Flying islands, for example.)

All the same, by adjusting beam velocity, gravity can be used to greater or lesser effect. Higher beam velocity, lower gravitational influence - and vice versa. But given the realities of physics as we currently understand them, it's highly unlikely to be gravity alone.

Maalteromm wrote: »

jamintheinfinite_1 wrote: »

the gun has aimbot [/spoiler]

Yeah, but that works best with hitscan mechanics, which does not appear to be the case for the QEP. Maybe if the precursors new about that they would have equipped the QEP with an AWP.

@Maalteromm is absolutely right: the QEP can't be a hitscan-type weapon.

Imparting force can happen in two ways: quickly and slowly. Now, these are relative terms - by "slow" we don't mean "over a couple hours; rather, a slow impart of force takes a number of milliseconds to a number of seconds. This doesn't seem like much, but it's everything compared to instantaneous force. The reason we can safely rule out a hitscan QEP is the fact that the Aurora isn't missing its entire back end. When a lot of force is imparted in an instantaneous or near-instantaneous fashion, damage is inevitable and extreme. As a general rule, the higher the differences in inertia and acceleration, the greater the chances that the object being forced will structurally fail rather than be moved. Bring those differences more in line, however, and deflecting the object becomes reasonable.

Quick and dirty: It's the same basic mechanic at work when a car airbag saves your life. Contrary to popular belief, when an un-airbagged driver bashes his dome into the steering wheel, it's not the steering wheel per se that's doing the skull-breaking. It's acceleration. (Kind of like the old joke that it's not the fall that kills you but the sudden stop at the end - it's true.) When your head hits a steering wheel during a crash, it's decelerating to the tune of about 60-100G instantly. (At 35 MPH, it'll be about 60G; at 70 MPH it'll be more to 100.) Your skull can't handle that kind of acceleration, so it cracks, splinters, and does all manner of gruesome things. The airbag, however, imparts acceleration over time. So instead of 100G in a millisecond, it's 100G over the span of several milliseconds. Remember that acceleration is cumulative, so as long as you get to a total of 100G before your head clonks car, you're good. By providing that slow, several-millisecond deceleration, the effective acceleration drops to a survivable (if uncomfortable) 40-50G.

Insofar as our QEP vs. Aurora situation, by using a beam that has a more airbag-like slow acceleration, it means the odds are better that we'll apply acceleration to the ship and change its trajectory rather than just tearing its butt off.

But, all that said, the gun definitely has an aimbot, and a good one at that. Of course, we have the exact same technology today, so it's not all that impressive.

For everybody who just went "we do?!":

We do. The most successful version to date is the Phalanx CIWS. You've seen them in action in Under Siege and The Sum of All Fears. The Phalanx is a six-ton piece of robotic "go to hell" that runs on full automatic. Its job is to sweep missiles out of the air to protect Navy ships. A trailer-mounted version (yes, it's real) does the same thing to artillery shells. In simple terms, the Phalanx acquires a target with its own radar along with sensor data from its host ship. Some quick calculations later, it knows where the projectile is along with its range and speed, meaning it also knows where the projectile is going to be over the next several seconds. It's a matter of basic geometry to place a line of bullets to intersect the line of the projectile and knock it out of the sky. Since the gun fires about 50 rounds per second, that's a lot of "begone, pesky missile" put right on target. Net result? No more missile.

The net takeaway is that our weapons - like the QEP - aren't hitscan weapons, but do have one wicked aimbot.

Maalteromm wrote: »

0x6A7232 wrote: »

@scifiwriterguy You wouldn't happen to be able to find that excellent write-up you did on the QEP, would you? The one where you explored about three different types of beams the QEP could be and settle on the one that was most likely? I can't seem to put together a good enough search term to get the forums search to cough up the result I want.

Don't make him waste time on such things. He needs to finish writing a new piece of Downward Spiral.

After a few beers contemplation it hit me. A beam of nanobots.
Imagine so many nanobots packed together, streaming like a beam, shot by a very high tech rail gun. The beam looks green because the nanobots are so. They have minute ion cubes for power. It could ride the planet gravity to engage its target and have some neat additional capabilities, such as limited tracking, accelerating, navigating inside target ship to reach vital sections before finally exploding in unison.

That also explains why the QEP beam hits the Sunbeam and there's a 2-3 sec gap before anything goes boom!

It's coming.

That's an interesting hypothesis, and one I quite like. And were it not for one detail, I'd back it as an alternative.

The problem is that we need to affect the trajectory of the Aurora somehow. If you're firing your nanobot stream fast enough that they're going to impart impact acceleration, then you're probably firing them so fast that they're going to be splattering on the hull. Now, we could apply some Star Trek brand handwavium (available at these fine retailers!) and make the nanobots out of some super-strong, ultra-dense material so they don't splat like gnats on a windshield, but if we do, then we've made it likely that these high-speed, high-mass, really-tiny objects will just punch straight through the ship. (Going at that speed and with little cross section, it's much more likely that they would pierce the fabric of the ship rather than stick to it. Kind of like how soft body armor can catch a bullet but an arrow or knife will usually go through - by applying less force but in a smaller footprint, the effective force is sharply increased.)

Besides, Coolness Level 10 aside...do we really need to go to that kind of trouble? To make a weapon like that work, you'd need a molecular factory (like a Universal Constructor) to churn out nanobots for the gun, some way to keep them in storage but not running down their power supplies, some way to accelerate them without breaking them or frying their logic systems, and finally, they'd need time to do their work. The whole nanobots-ate-my-neighbors thing that the (horrible) Day the Earth Stood Still remake ran was visually impressive but totally impractical. More steps means more chances for things to go wrong. Since the Precursors built their QEP with the idea that it could stand guard over 4546B indefinitely without maintenance and without fail, logic strongly points to as simple a system as possible that can still accomplish the goal.

Still...I really like it.

Maalteromm

scifiwriterguy wrote: »

@Maalteromm is absolutely right: the QEP can't be a hitscan-type weapon

Yeah, I was kinda rolling with @jamintheinfinite_1 reference to FPS games cheats. I did not mean hitscan in a physical sense, rather on the computer game sense that there is no elapsed time between the shot and the target being hit. There is no projectile, you hit the button and wherever you're aiming at is instantly hit.
In that sense the "computer game" aimbot becomes unmissable.
Our real world aimbot is indeed very good, however it's nowhere infallible. That's why such systems fire a barrage of bullets. Also, there are other systems concurrently being developed to deal with the same threat of incoming missiles. Each appear to excel in different situations.

Now, following the great explanation on physical hitscan weapons, I got lost on how it is know that the Aurora was in fact pushed to a new trajectory?
I always imagined that it was the lack of propulsion, which did not allow it to maneuver properly when approaching the planet for the slingshot.

scifiwriterguy wrote: »

That's an interesting hypothesis, and one I quite like. And were it not for one detail, I'd back it as an alternative.

I also have considerations against particle beams.
First and foremost, PB are mostly ineffective in the presence of atmosphere. Second, if it was a PB, the Sunbeam should've suffered its effects as soon as it was hit, no after a visually mensurable delay of a few seconds.
Third would be regarding the other beam traits: "slow" velocity and the time window for the target to react, susceptibility to magnetic shields (which deep space crafts should employ to protect against cosmic rays) and such.

Now, regarding the Bots hypothesis, whom don't even need to be nano. They might range from small particles to bullet sized. They don't need to be frail, as it could comprise of a solid state crystal computer. The precursors clearly held a lot of tech regarding crystals and computing. And warping. Flying bots that can warp to bypass defenses.
The Precursors manufacturing processes seem to work fine regarding Ion Cubes. The Self-Warping Quarantine Enforcer Units, aka Warpers, doesn't seem to suffer with power outages either. And accelerating the bots without braking can be done in a rail gun, similarly to how we accelerate a maglev train.

The more I look at it, the more it feels like tiny bots are the way to go.

Truth is, something feels off with the QEP. Maybe we shouldn't try to explain it realistically (even in a sci-fi setting).