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Gravimetric Drives

CadetNewb

Well-Known Member
A 'Gravimetric Drive' is essentially a fancy way of saying Graviton Drives, right? I was told so on the IRC, but the article doesn't seem to be consistent with that. A drive that works by manipulating gravity to either repel or pull an object along wouldn't be inertia-less, would it? I thought that ships and so forth using it would still have mass, and resist any attempts to change its state of motion. That they're subject to being nullified by Anti-FTL fields (which no longer work in setting anyways) also strikes me as odd.

Am I mixing up two different things, or is it just written weird?
 
The inertialess aspect would be that the drive can create a field that counters the inertia while its propelling the ship. So that the people on board are not slammed by the gravity and black out or worse.
 
Cadetnewb, you're kind of stirring up vague stuff I'd rather see left alone. Is there a reason you're compelled to explore and define this more?
 
If there is something that needs to be elaborated on farther in regards to technology in order to remain consistent I applaud Cadet for his attention to detail. Good eye Sir and fair point
 
Few in this community use gravimetric drives other than me. I want to know what moves him to further define them rather than leave them open to interpretation.
 
Most Geshrinari Shipyard designs feature the Geshrinari Graviton Engine, which is mainly for use near a planet or in a system where gravity is a factor. While technically feasible to use it to fly say from the surface of the earth to the moon. It would be a slow flight since the engine efficiency would be low due to the microgravity. Hence most ships would switch to STL engines once in orbit.
 
It's because I'm trying to update the Aggressor; if you're worried it'll mess with your portrayal of it as a GM, can you tell me how you've had it Fred? Chances are, I'll go with your interpretation.

And that makes some sense Nashoba, though, I think that could be overcome by just pumping more energy into the drive or having it be a powerful enough design to the point the micro-gravity simply doesn't matter. If a Graviton Drive can bring a Power Armor from 0-60 mph in one or two seconds, it probably isn't too much of a concern at this point.
 
That is well within its capability.

Given how a gravity drive work. you need a gravity field to interact with. Even pumping the power you will still see a significant drop of
 
I think your post got cut off. But what you're saying is that instead of creating its own gravity or anti-gravity to move itself around, it works with pre-existing ones? If that's the case, it'd be useless in space though, so I always thought it generated its own gravitons.
 
Looking through ship/fighter drives, I did notice that the sublight speeds are very high. A pair of Type-33 battlepods closing on each other would be pushing 0.85 lightspeed, and these are heavy fighters. I think that STL speeds can be divided by a factor of 10 and still be fairly realistic, though it would make a mess of previous RP. Exiting on the edge of a system, it will take about a week by sublight drive to reach the middle of the system (Pluto is about 6 light hours out, so at 0.04 sublight, it's 150 hrs/6.25 days). To reach earth, it would take about 6.1 days. So no lightning raids from the system periphery. Currently, at 0.4c, it only takes 15 hours.

I'm not calling for a system change, the travel and combat system is so entrenched in the RP that any change will massively overturn a lot of stories, just that speeds get any higher and we'll be talking about closing speeds faster than light. We're close to hitting a limit here.
 
Nightowl, we have had numerous discussions on speed over the years. They never proceed very far.
 
You asked
CadetNewb said:
If a Graviton Drive can bring a Power Armor from 0-60 mph in one or two seconds, it probably isn't too much of a concern at this point.
Click to expand...

The answer is Yes.
 
Oh no, you already answered that one. This is what's got me scratching my head next;

Rather than interacting with a gravity field that was already there, I always thought it generated its own gravity in the form of a vector, and had it so close to itself that nothing else would 'fall' in that direction.
 
It depends on the nature of the drive. What you are describing is more of the Combined Field System. You could create something similar using graviton fields. But I wouldn't call it a Graviton Drive per say.
 
Nightowl said:
Must... resist...

"You mean they went nowhere fast?"
Click to expand...
Lol... Yes. I was fairly interested in your assessment of the situation as well regarding speed, though it takes me a few reads to wrap my head around the math portion despite It's relative simplicity.

I'm not terribly great with numbers truthfully I think many people could relate to that. Which is certainly why the retort for your physics wasn't coupled with another calculation. You should think about trying for setting and technology status considering your aptitude in a variety of science.
 
@Nashoba , that seems to go against everything I know about how the systems work.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought that systems that interacted with pre-existing graviton fields, such as the gravity well of a planet, were basically 'repulsor craft' like those in Star Wars. Not necessarily by name, but by nature in that by interacting with the planet's gravity field, they'd basically manipulate or push against it to repel themselves off the ground and move in the same manner, hence the name. Meanwhile, I thought that a Graviton/Gravimetric Drive would generate its own graviton particles/radiation and project it in a way that only the vehicle itself was pulled into them.

This doesn't seem anything like a Combined Field System at all, which, again from my own understanding, is basically a warp or fold bubble. A bending of reality itself that moves the ship by distorting space so that it goes from point A to point B really, really fast.
 
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