[Col. Fishguts]

Originally posted by ngtm1r


Well, let's examine that.

You'll slow down. Okay. That's a given. Your weapons range will decrease drastically. Also a given.

Whatever FS fighter weapons are, I highly doubt they would work underwater. If they're plasma blobs, there's no chance in hell that they would work.

Salt water killing your engines...iffy. You're not running conventional rockets but fusion-powered ducted plasma, so this is highly debatable.

A convential (chemical) rocket would probably work better in water, than an extremely high-tech plasma system, relying on EM-fields and extreme high temperatures. You had to make very sure that no salt water gets in contact with the engine, not even via the "exhaust". Salt water is a good conductor = bad day for electronics that get wet.

Think about the fact that most FS craft are able to withstand the sheering and compression from a small nuke before you mention water pressure. Trust me, they can handle it.

Spacecraft are built to hold an atmosphere inside, against the vacuum. So, it's kinda hard to say what would happen if it was exposed to a large external pressure. And a nuke going off in vacuum doesn't produce any pressure either, maybe a shockwave made out of vaporated remnants of the bomb itself.

But I agree, that you could probably build a sub-fighter with FS-aera technology.

Isn't speculative technobabble wonderful ?

[MicroPsycho]

it would be cool if your shield held in an atmosphere or whatever to protect the ship from the pressure, but as soon as the shields break (even a small hole) the ship implodes from the pressure! It'd be a neat gameplay feature

[NGTM-1R]

Originally posted by Col. Fishguts

Whatever FS fighter weapons are, I highly doubt they would work underwater. If they're plasma blobs, there's no chance in hell that they would work.

That still leaves the Subach, Mekhu, Promethus (laser/laser-esque), Circe (generic EM pulse), and Maxim (oxygen-independent projectile). The Maxim would suck like you would not believe, and the others would have their range and/or damage drastically reduced, but they would still work. The Kayser is a question mark.

Originally posted by Col. Fishguts
A convential (chemical) rocket would probably work better in water, than an extremely high-tech plasma system, relying on EM-fields and extreme high temperatures. You had to make very sure that no salt water gets in contact with the engine, not even via the "exhaust". Salt water is a good conductor = bad day for electronics that get wet.

Relevance? Presumeably the engine will be active before it is immersed, and it would turn any water trying to flow into it into vapor instantly. Also assumes that the electronics would be exposed; the electromagnets that make it function wouldn't be exposed, they'd be shielded as a matter of course. You'd put plastic over them to prevent normal, above-water corrosion. That's waterproof.

Originally posted by Col. Fishguts
Spacecraft are built to hold an atmosphere inside, against the vacuum. So, it's kinda hard to say what would happen if it was exposed to a large external pressure. And a nuke going off in vacuum doesn't produce any pressure either, maybe a shockwave made out of vaporated remnants of the bomb itself.

That's nice.

One problem. FS missiles are almost uniformly impact-fuzed.  Some of them are even designed to impact, penetrate and then detonate (Harpoon?). Direct skin-to-skin contact with a detonating nuclear weapon will transfer the full amount of kinetic energy. They can take the full force of that, so they can withstand incredible pressures.

[Fade Rathnik]

That makes the density of the hull matterial would be rediculously high. Besides once you start going faster than 100 knots underwater you start supercavitating and that is a whole other world of underwater dinamics and phisics. Look it up

[Col. Fishguts]

Originally posted by ngtm1r
....(laser/laser-esque)..

That's the point, we don't really know what they are, even if the tech room says laser. So their operation under water is doubtful

Relevance? Presumeably the engine will be active before it is immersed, and it would turn any water trying to flow into it into vapor instantly. Also assumes that the electronics would be exposed; the electromagnets that make it function wouldn't be exposed, they'd be shielded as a matter of course. You'd put plastic over them to prevent normal, above-water corrosion. That's waterproof.

Granted that that works, you'd still need a LOT more thrust to move something the size of a fighter trhough the water.

One problem. FS missiles are almost uniformly impact-fuzed.  Some of them are even designed to impact, penetrate and then detonate (Harpoon?). Direct skin-to-skin contact with a detonating nuclear weapon will transfer the full amount of kinetic energy. They can take the full force of that, so they can withstand incredible pressures.

Yes, the Harpoon is supposed to work that way. The nukes on the other hand detonate on impact (thus on the surface) which would produce some pressure (how much would be interesting to know), but your typical fighter doesn't survive a direct hull hit from a bomb, does it ?

[aldo_14]

I think you'll find all these problems are fixed using an inversed quantum magnetic thingiefield.

[Col. Fishguts]

Or....you could just go with the particle-of-the-day™ solutions Star Trek offers.

[Pnakotus]

Can we not joke about such horrible things?  I mean, really: that **** killed Star Trek, lets not tempt fate.

[NGTM-1R]

Originally posted by Col. Fishguts

That's the point, we don't really know what they are, even if the tech room says laser. So their operation under water is doubtful.

So you're going to ignore the tech room? Pretend canon doesn't exist? Then I accept your concession of the point.

Originally posted by Col. Fishguts
Yes, the Harpoon is supposed to work that way. The nukes on the other hand detonate on impact (thus on the surface) which would produce some pressure (how much would be interesting to know), but your typical fighter doesn't survive a direct hull hit from a bomb, does it ?

The Harpoon's yield is in the kiloton range, easy. Certainly it's more powerful then the FS1 MX-50's "medium payload (16.5 Kt)".

[Col. Fishguts]

Originally posted by ngtm1r
So you're going to ignore the tech room? Pretend canon doesn't exist? Then I accept your concession of the point.

No, I consider the tech room to be canon.... the pseudo-scientific technobabble canon that it is. That's all fine for cool explanations of the different weapons.

But I don't accept tech room descriptions as scientific arguments in a hypothetical discussion about the physical difficulties of operating a FS fighter under water, simple as that.

[FireCrack]

I'm preety sure the tech room specificaly says that "laser" was only a term given to them becasue they were similar to "lasers" in sci-fi of the 90's.

[Lynx]

Albeit at that sort of depth is it not completely, utterly pitch black anyways? With powerful lamps only lighting a few metres?

Yeah, but on the other hand, computer games shouldn't enter a serious relationship with reality anyways.

But it turns out it's already been done, by a German company, and it looks so gorgeous that we decided to leave it to the pros. Try it if you can find a copy, it's not bad.

I own a copy of that game, and it sucks, hardcore.

But where there's water, there's life, no?

Not necessarily. Water itself isn't the source of life, you could very well end up with an ocean that doesn't contain the necessary organic compounds to develop life on some planet.

You could build a decent submarine fighter with todays technology, but it's neither needed nor feasible in current conditions.
And lasers work underwater too, though some wavelengths are especially affectected by the water, and the absorption is pretty high so they'd be quite short ranged in could be essentially useless in certain conditions.

Looking at the speeds, FS craft's speeds are about right for fast submerged vehicles, IIRC the highest conventional  speeds you can achive in water are about 80-120 km/h.

One important thing the engine lacks would be localized light sources - There'd surely be underwater installations with bright spotlights and so on, and some craft would mount lights too, and it'd be nice to have some sort of spotlight on your craft, too.
It'd be cool to have that one even for space based missions, the starfurys in B5 mounted some spotlamps too and it looked damn cool when they searched that freighter with them in the first episode. You could probably modify the code used for weapons illumination, or lightmaps like used for the players flashlights in older FPS could work too if you wanted to implement something like that.

[FireCrack]

I was preety usre we had localised light sources too... do we not?

[Anaz]

The light sources are from lasers and beams. A hackish way to do that would have a fire-turret sexp with a repeat count of 999999, firing a 0-range laser at something far away.