Reference Gaming Theory and Philosophy Discussion Thread - Article Open Call!

Okay folks - that's enough.

 

You're right Mitth. If an escape pod is jettisoned in hyperspace it will not be able to exit hyperspace unless it has its own hyperdrive, if the pod even survived the separation. As for an individual being jettisoned into hyperspace I'm pretty sure the sheering effects would tear an individual apart, akin to a hypervelocity collision. The stresses of hyperspace are quite grate, so great that just about any interference while traveling can tear a ship apart. There's no way a humanoid body could take those sorts of stresses regardless of a protective suit or similar device.

 

Actually, that's an interesting notion. How do you define "exit"? Could you, say, suit up and exit the ship via an airlock while it was in hyperspace, spacewalk over to a different airlock, and re-enter?

And hypermissiles ... never mind a pile of scrap metal, what about an asteroid? Then the cost of it would be only the cost of a hyperdrive, a sublight drive to get to hyperspeed [Kahn pointed this out in the chat], a nav computer, and a bit of effort in drilling. It'd be a rare GM that would allow it, though.

 

Well going for a space walk and being shoved out an airlock are a few different things. I can't say for sure since its not been done in any source that I know of but if you went on a space walk in hyperspace but stayed within a ships hyperdrive/space field, you'd probably be safe. Sorta like how a fighter or other ship attached to a docking port a larger ship should be able too.

 

Just thought of something, Hyperspace Asteroid ~ Galaxy Gun.

So in a way it was already done, just with a device opperating on the principles of the earliest hyperspace launch terminals that made only the need for the drive to maintain and then pull back out once reaching the target.

To tired to type on about this, but just had to once that popped into my head.

 

Well as I talked about with Xani in RPFchat the Galaxy Gun didn't fire hyperspace missiles. Yes its missiles traveled through hyperspace but they dropped out of hyperspace before reaching their target and hit at sublight velocities. This is one reason why the Galaxy Gun is very much more reasonable than 'hyperspace missiles'. They're in the end more accurate, purpose built, not hodge-podge together, and they can be set to destroy a city up to a while planet, and after wards the planet could eventually be resettled. Hyperspace Missile would just lay waste to the planet and it'd be of no use to anybody.

 

Actually, it'd depend on the size of the asteroid - a tiny asteroid could crater a city and leave the rest of the planet (relatively) untouched. Aiming is still a problem though.

But! Something else that also came out of the chat was the idea of using Hyperspace Missiles like Galaxy Gun projectiles anyway - you need to put sublight engines on the asteroids to get them to hyperspeed anyway (yes?) and if you're doing that, you might as well have it drop out of hyperspace and accelerate towards a chosen target rather than just drop out of hyperspace and have momentum carry it to a target. The end result is still Asteroid Of Doom From Outer Space, but is potentially more accurate and devastating.

I really want to try this now.

 

You actually do have an in-universe reference for this, though admittedly it's a bit dated: in the book Han Solo at Stars' End Han actually proves himself thirty years ahead of the BSG curve and airlocks a traitor from the Millennium Falcon while it's in hyperspace. (He had a reason for it, honest). The actual process isn't graphically described, but rather shudderingly is simply put: "Outside the Falcon's protective mantle of energy, the patterns of force that had made up [the guy] ceased to have any coherent meaning."

As to the hyperdriven torpedo: been there, done it, albeit I never got round to actually using it in combat. In IBOP LSA's restrictions on this sort of weapon were that you needed to purpose build an entire Corvette chassis around the weapon, you only had a few shots out of it before it required refitting and rearming, and you lastly had to figure out how to miniaturise a Crystal Gravfield Trap and mount it on the missile so it could decant fast enough upon detecting a minor gravitic source (i.e. the centre of an ISD or somesuch.)

The theorem here being: artificial gravity generators create a mass shadow against hyperspace. Turn off your hyperdrive's safety features that cause it to decant on detecting a gravitic mass in its path, point a starfighter at the nearest ISD, kick in hyperdrive, and -- boom.

 

Thats pretty much what we did in AFaS with the two remote fighters, but at the same time we had em loaded with high explosives in case it didn't work and they dropped into real space too soon and simply slammed into the target. That was of course on a very small scale, something bigger would need a lot more time and money.

At most I've only used the HIMS/Safety Feature thing once outside of AFaS, and that was in 100 ABY, when a Nebula-class Star Destroyer used an HIMS to drop out of hyperspace inside a planets atmosphere to take up a defensive position above a target on the surface. A sort of Star Wars variation of the Adama Maneuver from the re-imagined BSG. I'm not even sure if an HIMS is entirely capable of passing through an entire planetary sized gravity well myself.