• If you were supposed to get an email from the forum but didn't (e.g. to verify your account for registration), email Wes at [email protected] or talk to me on Discord for help. Sometimes the server hits our limit of emails we can send per hour.
  • Get in our Discord chat! Discord.gg/stararmy
  • 📅 May and June 2024 are YE 46.4 in the RP.

NAM Directed Scalar Array

Not approved. It's just basically another aether shock array. Also, it's a crappy precedent to allow it to overcome protection against scalar rays. That would allow it to basically insta-kill anything. Not cool.
 
2 AU?

Somehow that range just seems rather large to me.
 
I really wish people would stop using Scalar so much - if we could leave it behind with the Great White Beam and its ilk this setting would be that much better. The science behind it is honestly terrible.
 
Zakalwe said:
I really wish people would stop using Scalar so much - if we could leave it behind with the Great White Beam and its ilk this setting would be that much better. The science behind it is honestly terrible.

Mm-mmm, delicious Great White Beam.
 
I'd recommend its non-approval on the grounds its a superweapon. Those (not always, but more often than not) take the fun out of roleplay; what's the point in deploying fighters, PA, and using small-group tactics when you can just press the button and wipe everything out instantly? There's a reason we've been phasing out Aether mass destruction weapons.

At the very least it should be an extremely slow refiring single shot weapon so as to be "just a big cannon" instead of a doomsday device.
 
Two things:

1. This is decidedly not a superweapon. Almost all armor and ships use damper fields (which is just an anti-gravity thingy, which most races have). Provided they have that on, no, this doesn't do squat to them.

2. Is the Tolchok's approval void?
 
Oh, I assumed it was a big, overwhelm-PA-and-small-vessels-with-ease superdevice since it was mounted on a battleship. The weapon lacks a DR rating I wasn't sure what exactly the strength of it is..perhaps you should add one, or at least a paragraph giving a general outline of how powerful it is?
 
It's scalar. It doesn't actually have a DR. Unless hampered with a Damper Field, it just fries your nervous system, blows out your electronics, blows up your bombs, etc.
 
In other words, a conditional 10 or 9? Scalar brings absolute destruction to what it affects, but it can easily be countered.

In other words, it would read like this:

Scalar Array: DR 9 (or DR 0, if gravitic shielding is in effect).
 
Actually, except for the Scalar energy used in Lightning shields, scalar radiation doesn't harm materials like metal or plastic. It's all rather confusing at first, but it's also pretty widely used in canon.
 
That's sort of what I meant. It does absolute damage to what it DOES affect, everything else is left alone. Plus, damage is reduced to zero anyway if the damage-prone parts are shielded anyway.
 
It's like an EMP, but with electro-gravity rather than electro-magnetism.
 
I still think 2 AU is too much for the range!
 
If this thing is rendered useless by dampening fields, wouldn't it be totally useless as a cutting-edge battleship weapon? I mean given the fact that the only races who don't use dampening fields are the weakest ones, like the Abwehran or Azorean, whom would be easily beaten with regular guns anyways.

That is, unless it has a conditional DR as MissingNo suggested.
 
Don't scalar waves behave as beam weapons? If so, range wouldn't be such a big factor if we just consider that it goes at 1c like laser-type weapons.
 
Jess: It first struck me to use scalar radiation on the Tolchok after I used it with the Mishhu at the Battle of Valaad, where it provided ample point defense against torpedoes and was useful for quickly and lethally dealing with injured, but not destroyed, starships.

Fred: I kinda got the impression it was more of a radiation emitter as opposed to a beam, but I always assumed it did indeed travel at C.
 
True. If you know torpedoes are coming, even if you can't intercept them with direct fire point-defense systems... sending a few scalar waves where you assume the torpedoes will come might destroy them before they connect.

A SMX Battleship the Miharu fought in its first mission actually did that to spare itself from eating two AS-7 anti-matter warheads in its flank.
 
RPG-D RPGfix
Back
Top