[Mongoose]

Hmm...maybe a little group called the Feyadeen?

[-Norbert-]

So in BP canon a beam is useless once the magnetic bottle doesn't surround it....
So does that mean that in theory the UEF, with the knowledge and parts they gained form the two Anemois, could develop a device that disrupts the magnetic bottles and thus prevent any beam from being fired in an area around the device?
That would certainly be a step up from the way the UEF jamed beams in WiH 1, which left slashers and AAA beams active.

Another wild idea, though not so much as a UEF vs GTVA weapon, but rather a possible anti-shivan weapon.
Could a ship with beam turrets just initiate those magnetic bottles without actually firing the beam?
If yes, those could be used to interfere with enemy beams, leading them astray.
Or maybe they could even stop the beams "forward movement" by proceting such a magnetic field a millimeter in front of the turret, thus causing the plasma to backfire and take out the turret it came out of and melting a piece of hull around the turret with it in the process.

Or course the enemy could then employ something like different frequencies or somesuch, to prevent this method form being the ultimate weapon and make sure it can only be used a few times as a story device, while not working most of the time.

[Evangelist]

In other words.  If I were the UEF, I've be terrified of what would happen once the GTVA truly started building powerful beam cannons.  Their tech is way beyond the UEF's.  It would also explain why no UEF ships are equipped with them, since the technology would require extensive study of Shivan subspace based technologies to even understand, and that is something the GTVA have had in spades.

The one thing I don't quite understand about this point, though, is that Sol was the center of Terran space during the Great War, when all of the data on Shivan technology was collected in the first place.  All of those scans of the Lucifer you collected during "Playing Judas," coupled with analysis of the Lucifer's attacks on allied forces, would have gone straight to GTA High Command in Sol.  They also would have access to whatever pieces of the Lucifer managed to survive after its destruction (probably not all that much, but you never know).  Given how the "fringe colonies" of the GTVA were able to reverse-engineer and implement beam cannons on a widespread scale, I have a hard time seeing how the far more industrialized Sol system couldn't do the same.  The data on those GTI experiments couldn't all have been lost when the node was sealed, could it?

The way I look at it is that the Shivans basically fell apart after the destruction of the Lucifer, and that it is hinted even in mainstream canon that Shivan weapons operate on similar principles to each other.  Shivan subspace technology is very wide spread, so after hunting down the remnants of Shivan forces, coupled with any captured data from the GTI rebellion (if you take Silent Threat Reborn as canon, the remnants of the construction platforms), and you get a massive leap in technological prowess.

The Sol sector would have data collected on the Lucifer's beam cannons, the remnants of what survived the explosion, and not an awful lot else.  The GTVA would have all of that, the Vasudan science corp, a far more militarized attitude, working examples of Shivan weapons technology, the GTI, and more importantly the desire to reproduce the cannons.  The GTVA also had Vasudan science as well, and it is hinted that it was Vasudans who first produced workable beam technology and were the first to effectively deploy it on a warship (the Sobek).

Having a centralized government desperate to prevent another Great War would do wonders for weapons development.  I also kind of hope for something of a sucker punch for the UEF, and that attempting to reproduce ETAK does them the same kind of vicious pain it did to the remnants of the NTF.  It'd be pretty awesome to see UEF fighters/capital ships in a staggered line with GTVA beam cannons spraying at Shivan cruisers.

Hopefully the Shivans will ruin the party in the next campaign.

[Evangelist]

So in BP canon a beam is useless once the magnetic bottle doesn't surround it....
So does that mean that in theory the UEF, with the knowledge and parts they gained form the two Anemois, could develop a device that disrupts the magnetic bottles and thus prevent any beam from being fired in an area around the device?
That would certainly be a step up from the way the UEF jamed beams in WiH 1, which left slashers and AAA beams active.

I obviously have nothing to do with BP canon, but considering beam cannons are a pretty wild idea as they are in the form Freespace has them in (particle accelerators are actually much easier to design) you'd need a pretty powerful magnetic field to turn aside the kind of particles coming at them.  The trick of beam cannons would be that the field and its projected form (the technobabble bit) could only be maintained at suitable levels of field strength in a straight line due to the specific solution of the field equations being employed.  Employing a field of equivilent strength but spread over a larger area would require more preparation and if they can do that, they may as well equip beam cannons themselves.

Another wild idea, though not so much as a UEF vs GTVA weapon, but rather a possible anti-shivan weapon.
Could a ship with beam turrets just initiate those magnetic bottles without actually firing the beam?

Possibly, but you'd only deviate it over the length of the crossection of the beam.

If yes, those could be used to interfere with enemy beams, leading them astray.
Or maybe they could even stop the beams "forward movement" by proceting such a magnetic field a millimeter in front of the turret, thus causing the plasma to backfire and take out the turret it came out of and melting a piece of hull around the turret with it in the process.

The situations that I described in my previous post are entirely fictional as no such column of magnetism is even theoretically possible without numerous external sources which would be where the subspace technobabble comes in.  If subspace takes on the idea of brane theory, you could with some technobabble reduce a three dimensional object in space time to a perimeter representation of it on the higher order dimension, representing a tunnel between two points, through which magnetic fields would propagate linearly.  Of course, it'd be quite hard to block off then.  I also have a horrible feeling it'd progagate in every direction still, but nevermind.

I'm not even sure a disc of magnetism is possible.  They're probably best off with the disruptor guns they've got.

[-Norbert-]

Possibly, but you'd only deviate it over the length of the crossection of the beam.

But what exactly would happen at the place the "bottles" meet?
Would the "defener bottle" rip a hole into or otherwise destablize the fields of the attacker and thus lessen the intenity of the beam from that point on, because plasma would leak out the sides of the "attacker bottle"?
Or could they even cancel each other out completely at the point of contact, resulting in the plasma dispersing at that point, the same as if it reached the maximum distance of the "attacker bottle"?

I'm not even sure a disc of magnetism is possible.

They don't really have to make a disc.
Instead of generating a magnetic bottle with nothing down the middle, they could generate a "full" magnetic cylinder ending directly on top of the enemy beamturret. That would prevent the plasma from ever going inside the enemy "bottle" or if the cylinder ends a bit in front of the turret, there would be an enclosed room into which the turret pumps more and more plasma.
At worst case for the firing ship, the plasma couldn't go forward and thus either go backward or bust out of confinement in every direction once the preassure inside get's too high, thus damaging the firing ship. At best case the fields are much stronger close to the origin of the fields and thus the bottle has more integrity than the block, which would make the plasma punch through the block while being contained in the bottle.
Unless of course the fields of the two ships interfere with each other somehow, which would bring us back to the point above the 2nd quote.

[-Sara-]

Besides the science behind beams, I always assumed the initial beam weapons of the GTVA were very different from their Shivan counterparts, more primitive while the BP era beams may be closer to the Shivan version. I imagined that Shivans used advanced particle beams based on technology the GTVA barely understood in the second Shivan war while GTVA beams were more of a release of energy, focussed into a beam by compressing a lot of plasma in a core to gain a buildup of energy. After making the Kayser and understanding Shivan particle weaponry much better, I then imagined future beam technology of the BP era is perhaps closer to the Shivan equivalent. Seems I'm way off?

[General Battuta]

Not that far off. The BP-era beams are closer to their Shivan equivalents, whereas the earlier FS2-era ones were a bit more kludgy.

If you read the tech descriptions for some of the Shivan beams you'll find they're pretty scary.

[-Norbert-]

Or play AoA without disarming the Shivan beams, that's even scarier

[Evangelist]

But what exactly would happen at the place the "bottles" meet?
Would the "defener bottle" rip a hole into or otherwise destablize the fields of the attacker and thus lessen the intenity of the beam from that point on, because plasma would leak out the sides of the "attacker bottle"?
Or could they even cancel each other out completely at the point of contact, resulting in the plasma dispersing at that point, the same as if it reached the maximum distance of the "attacker bottle"?

I can't even begin to describe the behaviour of a gas under such an impulse.  Essentially the magnetic field would form a bottling effect under normal circumstances, but it is entirely possible that you'd get outgassing in one direction, or you may even get some of the plasma travelling DOWN the other beam.  Which would be self defeating.  Everything I know about electromagnetism suggests the fields would keep propagating with only local disturbance so you'd get a brief interference/discontinuity.

I'll get back to you on that.  The equations for modelling that kind of behaivour are..  unpleasant, if I remember right.

[redsniper]

Shivan beams violate thermodynamics, yo. That has very scary implications.

[NGTM-1R]

Shivan beams violate thermodynamics, yo. That has very scary implications.

Considering their primaries do (recall the Kayser does stuff with Zero-Point energy), that's not terribly surprising, nor unpleasant since the GTVA can do it.

[General Battuta]

Shivan beams violate thermodynamics, yo. That has very scary implications.

Considering their primaries do (recall the Kayser does stuff with Zero-Point energy), that's not terribly surprising, nor unpleasant since the GTVA can do it.

ZPE energy doesn't violate thermodynamics in any meaningful sense. In particular it doesn't violate the second law.

Nothing about the Kayser seems to suggest any sort of problem with thermodynamics since it requires vast energy input (a rather prohibitive amount, as gameplay shows.) The fact that whoever wrote its absurd technobabble threw in 'zero point energy' does not on its own provide any evidence of thermodynamic conflicts.

[NGTM-1R]

ZPE energy doesn't violate thermodynamics in any meaningful sense.

You can't get out of the game.

...except you can.

[General Battuta]

ZPE energy doesn't violate thermodynamics in any meaningful sense.

You can't get out of the game.

...except you can.

If you're quibbling about the wording, ZPE doesn't violate thermodynamics.

[Astronomiya]

*snip long discussion of beams and planetary frying*

Most of this is pretty much correct; however, there are a few points I would like to add.  If the beam plasma is from the main reactor core, the beam should be absolutely blinding; remember we're not dealing with temperatures like the surface of the Sun but the core of the Sun, which is about 1.5E7 K instead of 5780 K, or about four orders of magnitude higher.  This puts its blackbody peak somewhere in the gamma region, and the optical output would look deep blue and fry everyone's eyeballs within about 100 km (note that I mean that quite literally...).  Not to mention the Bremsstrahlung.  Given the visuals do not support this in the least, either a) the plasma cools off something fierce during the channelling from the reactor core, or b) the plasma does not come from the reactor core, but rather another place (one of the cooling loops, perhaps?).  Either that, or the cockpit windows on fighters aren't actually transparent, but are screens of some kind, and the computer produces all the visual and aural stimuli the pilot receives.

Throwing subspace in the mix to make the magnetic bottle is a good move, because such long cylinders of magnetic field away from any source are not possible in reality.

With regards to the planetary bombardment Vasuda Prime received, it happened what, 50 years ago by the time of BP?  32 years until the Second Incursion, and then another 20 or so until the construction of Sol Gate, right?  Most of the radioactive isotopes produced would be gone by that point (the fallout produced by a nuclear weapon is pretty representative of what would be generated in this instance), so the remaining damage would be the sheer amount of energy pumped into the planet.  We are given that the Shivans bombarded the planet for 13 hours, with probably 100 or so ships (SWAG, just so you know).  The Lucifer would have made up most of the broadside; I'll assume it has half the energy output of a Sathanas, or about 60 GT every 10 seconds.  The rest of the Shivan fleet probably just matches this, so call it ~10 GT per second being dumped on the surface.  This makes the total amount of energy dropped on Vasuda Prime about 500,000 GT, or 500 teratons.  For reference, the K-T asteroid released about 100 TT of energy.  Therefore, as an approximate model, we can imagine what would happen if the Shivans merely dropped five 10 mile wide rocks on the planet instead.  While the craters would probably still be molten 50 years later, the surface would by no means be uninhabitable, or even completely sterilized; after all, about 50% of Earth species survived the K-T event.  Perhaps the Vasudans simply didn't want to bother, or wanted it left as a monument to the fallen or something like that.

I can't even begin to describe the behaviour of a gas under such an impulse.  Essentially the magnetic field would form a bottling effect under normal circumstances, but it is entirely possible that you'd get outgassing in one direction, or you may even get some of the plasma travelling DOWN the other beam.  Which would be self defeating.  Everything I know about electromagnetism suggests the fields would keep propagating with only local disturbance so you'd get a brief interference/discontinuity.

I'll get back to you on that.  The equations for modelling that kind of behaivour are..  unpleasant, if I remember right.

They needn't be.  Just remember that B is a vector field, so the total field is found via simple vector addition.  What you would want to do to disable the beam is provide an equal and opposite magnetic field, which would exactly cancel out the one the beam cannon is making.  If their targeting is accurate enough, disabling beam cannons would be simple; simply aim your cannons at theirs, turn them on, and supply no plasma.  Even if it is not a perfectly aligned shot, it should still provide enough of a disruption to either severely reduce the beam power reaching its target or deflect the beam away from its intended target.  Of course, you would want to make sure you are producing a field with the right helical spin; otherwise, you would create a chanelling effect bringing the beam right to your doorstep.  The reason we never see something like this is because the targeting systems on capital ship beam weapons just aren't accurate enough to do this kind of thing.

Here's an idea for the BP staff:  if the UEF develop and/or capture beam cannons, maybe they could realize this and slave targeting to an AWACS vessel or something.  Maybe that would provide data accurate enough to pull this off.  It would make for an interesting mission, and make protecting your AWACS even more critical.

[-Sara-]

Maybe splt this into a BP-science thread? Just seems the whole plot fanspec derailed a little and changed into the science of beams discussion.

Spoiler:

Did anyone speculate on what mission Al'fadil got captured? Maybe a foiled strike with Pegasus fighters, thus explaining how the GTVA allowed those to fall into UEF hands?

[-Norbert-]

I was always hopeing, though not quite believed, that Al'Fadil only made it look like he was captured, while really defecting to the UEF. Though he would have left his subordinates in the dark of course, maybe because he feared some of them would still report him to the GTVA higher ups despite how much they like him.

What you would want to do to disable the beam is provide an equal and opposite magnetic field

If it was pure magnetics. But that would still leave the subspace component a big unknown.

[Astronomiya]

If it was pure magnetics. But that would still leave the subspace component a big unknown.

To my mind, the subspace component is what helps generate the magnetic field in the first place, but has no other real effect besides that.  It certainly isn't what damages the ship.  Now, obviously how the subspace components of the respective beams interact is a big unknown, that's true, but given the behavior of beams that we can see in-game (beams can be extremely close to each other and have seemingly no effect on each other), I doubt it figures very highly in the scheme of things when determining beam behavior.  My guess is that the subspace component behaves somewhat like space in GR does; curvature is additive, so two beam-producing regions of subspace passing next to each other simply produce two beams passing next to each other.  Of course, I could be totally wrong about all of this, because we have no real idea what subspace actually is, how it affects things in normal space, etc. (well, there is the tech room technobabble, but I'm not paying attention to that).

[-Norbert-]

And now for something completely different:
I just replayed AoA and the conversation between Shiva and Vishnu ticked off a train of thought.

Before the 14th battlegroup turned up the Shivans didn't put much effort into finding and destroying the Sanctuary.
But when the 14th arrived, they sent in massive numbers of ships and were even willing to fight Vishnans in order to destroy the GTVA ships rather than let them go back to their universe.

Did the Shivans know about the orders to invade Sol? Were they only attacking in such force, because the 14th battlegroups true purpose was to "destroy"?

[Dilmah G]

Well keep in mind that prior to the sensory racket the Fourteenth's arrival was causing in the AO, the Shivans most likely didn't even know where the Sanctuary was half the time. In my view, it wasn't through lack of trying, I'm sure the Shivans must have given them hell at some stage to have wiped the ship's air wing almost clean, but I'm sure the majority of the time that the Sanctuary's crew were doing their best to keep their heads below the parapet.

And thus avoid being obliterated by the Shivans.