[Mav]

Uh, that wouldn't really be antimatter - because you WANT the exact opposite of normal matter for the "usual" antimatter reaction to occur...

Dunno, but as far as I can see, Top antiquarks (or whatever is the right name here is - Top quarks themselves are "ordinary" matter, just very heavy and short-lived) would mostly act like some radioactive radiation, just a lot of it.

And for the question if they could penetrate Shivan capship-shields... I'll have to search for us' nearest science node to let him answer that - mind you, it'll only be some light yea... *ooops*, damnit - that should be a surprise
Anyway, still I'd say in the FS setting, the Shivans are much more likely to have such strange stuff...

[Scooby_Doo]

I suppose you'd have to have 50% top quark matter, and 50% antitop somehow kept seperate.  However come to think of it, just use regular top quark and have yourself a very nasty very massive mass driver.

[Mav]

Yep   (though the Lucy woul propably still be shielded too well; believe me, the only serious way for GTVA to take one down is do what they did at the end of FS1...)  - if you can keep it stable, that is. Otherwise, your whole ammo-depot is going to shower you and your ship with heavy radiation.
And I know what I'd use if you'd stabilize it with microscopic (actually, nanoscopic) shields...

[Herra Tohtori]

<real-physics-nitpic>
Ehh, no offense, but quarks dont really act this way. 

AFAIK ever since the initial cooldown after the big bang when the quarks were bound into hadrons by strong nuclear interaction (or gluons, if you prefer the particle name for that interaction), they have been bound to other quarks. The result is that quarks don't exist separate any more, because when you try to separate them from each other, you have to insert so much energy to increase the distance between quarks that the tension level actually will turn into more quarks which will be bound together likewise...

</nitpick>

It is possible that creating conditions like immediately after Big Bang (read: a heck of a lot energy density, talking like a galaxy in a tip of a needle or more) could restore energy into quark-gluon plasma, but it's extremely hard or even impossible to turn matter into that stuff.

Further more - hadrons are divided into two subgroups, baryons and mesons. Baryons are groups of three quarks bound by a gluon; mesons are actually quark-antiquark pairs.

Obviously FS2 isn't actually bound to follow real physics, but it could be speculated that meson bombs actually manage to turn mesonic matter into quark-antiquark pairs for a little while by a magic field that disables strong nuclear interaction/disrupts gluons or whatever, after which the free quarks and anti-quarks promptly annihilate each other, which releases a heck of a lot energy... I sppose that's as plausible as it gets when you consider means of making bombs out of mesons (which, for the most part, are actually remarkably short-lived particles anyway and normally decompose into other, more normal particles in a very short time).


 

[Mav]

*urgh* ... thanks, I mostly know - maybe I just assumed too much without detailing it... :


1)Keep in mind FS is a fictional universe.

2)When he said "Bottom quarks" I assumed he meant hadrons made from three Bottom quarks, or at least something like that.

3)Sure, the leftover quarks are bound - but at colliders you can get some "free" quarks more or less - just that they next-to-immediately decay through various processes  (remember me writing about "short-lived" and "would mostly act like some radioactive radiation"?) - that's (more or less) the main point WHY those large colliders were built...
And also why we know about these heavy quarks - as far as I'm informed, there shouldn't be any left over of them from the big bang, since they long ago should all have been decayed to lighter particles.

4)The fact that they decay is because they have the possibilities to. Now, I just assumed *some* hypothetical shield/field (which certainly isn't the same - something like SF "shields" doesn't seem to have ANY place in current-day physics; but then again, it's fictional and we also don't know the future) that could somehow be utilized to block those decay channels... aw, well.


So - now what to continue with?

[BengalTiger]

Update, Official this time (since it's posted by me  ):

The bullets got glows now.

Tech specs on the bullets:
projectile caliber: 1000mm (yes, TEN meters)
projectile length: 20 meters
projectile propulsion: some kind of 10m L/25 caliber railgun I have to model...
projectile weight: circa 930 tons (the bullets have some 5 times larger volume than the GE Dash 9-44CW, so they'd be about 5 times heavier.)

So first off is the Anti-Capship round, with Cherenkov radiation from the Meson container visible (or whatever the blueish/purplish glow on the Meson Bomb is), red stripe marks this type. This type will do the most HP's damage, but with a small radius shockwave, since it's meant to pierce the external bulkhead and explode inside the enemy ship.


Second goes the indirect fire support, yellow stripe and a smaller meson bomb due to the fact a miniature subspace drive has to go somewhere. Less damaging, but longest range, by far. This type will also have a small shockwave to simulate exploding after getting inside the hostile ship.


Third is the nasty antifighter round, prefragmented with a glowing proximity fuze on it's nose and a green stripe. Notice the lack of the carbide penetrator in front of the stripe. This one will have a weak shockwave of it's own and launch a bunch of smaller munitions (the size of Trebuches , 250m range and a shockwaveing explosion).


Time to do the tables.
P.S. I've read the theories about meson bombs in the FS Wiki, where they write:

More than likely a great portion of quarks and anti-quarks then find each other and annihilate, creating a lot of radiation, which turns the surrounding matter into blazing hot, rapidly expanding cloud of plasma that has a lot of thermal and kinetic energy. This is the obvious shockwave of the explosion.

Aren't beams some kind of Sci-Fi plasma shot out at near light speed?
If so- these bullets (at least the 2 types with meson devices) will do damage to the Lucy despite it's shields.
P.P.S. By small shockwave I mean 300 to 500 meters.

[Mav]

Well, I'm not sure why those beams should be shieldpiercing at all - for the aaaf I can understand it at least a bit because of the small diameter, read high focussation... but as for capship-beams, it always seemed somewhat strange to me. But yes, I know - it's canon that those cannons do pierce shields (...sorry about that dumb joke ) .

But at least as long as I don't know why it's supposed to happen for capship beams, I can't really argue if it should happen to "meson devices" too.

Anyway, it's your mod, so feel free to realize the behaviour you want for them .

[TrashMan]

Second goes the indirect fire support, yellow stripe and a smaller meson bomb due to the fact a miniature subspace drive has to go somewhere. Less damaging, but longest range, by far. This type will also have a small shockwave to simulate exploding after getting inside the hostile ship.

If it's fired from a massive railgun, won't it have a obscene range allready?

Also, why put subspace drives inside a shell, wouldn't it be better to put them in a missle?

[gevatter Lars]

It would be fun to see a ship firing its shell...then it disapears and hits the enemy from a total different direction or you could shoot at people at the other side of the system or on the other side of a planet.....strange idea.

When you are going for the "open subspace inside a ship" thing. I doubt that you would need any explosives at all. Just make sure that the shell comes out fast enough and let it rip apart the internal structure of the target. I doubt that any ships internal would be build strong enough to withstand such brute force. Sometimes throwing rocks is the best thing ^_^

I allways thought that any subspace or beam-in-ship weapons where some kind of overkill. You are mostly defenceless against it. Beam a big bomb near the reactor...boom...or a small bomb into the bridge and you will take out of action for some time.
Hell place some small charges all over the ship and you could take over the ship with little resistance.

[BengalTiger]

Little update on the subspace driven shell:

Shell just after warping out, flying at 400 meters per second:


And just after impact (notice the Lilith got pushed to 52 meters per second)




Now I just need a way to make the antifighter round act like flak (exploding when near the enemy and not requiring a direct hit) and still have the model visible, and it'll be almost ready.

[BengalTiger]

Minor Update:

"remote detonate" flag does the trick.

Problem:

When I add the "spawn name, amount" flag, the bullet flies in the direction the turret was facing in the beginning of the mission (i.e. the normal).
Is it my tbl-ing error or do I need to do something more to make the direction it's shot at change with the rotating turret?

[Wanderer]

No... Its a crude hack made by [v] to get retail FreeSpace defensive spawning weapons to work. AFAIK no way to fix it until either that gets changed by SCP or you use scripts to detonate the weapon.

[BengalTiger]

OK...
guess the antifighter bullet will either end up with a big shockwave to simulate the shrapnell flying around or simply get cancelled.

Release date: 2-4 days.

[colecampbell666]

This is looking better and better.

[BengalTiger]

Behold Ye, The Ultimate Flak Shell:




During the test:

impact:


moments later:


The shell can shoot down a Seraphim in one indirect hit (the "remote detonate" flag makes the bullet go boom when it's some 10-20 meters away from the target, making it waaay more efective).
If there are other Seraphims really close to the explosion, then more get shot down (on my tests, I counted max 3 by 1 shell when it exploded in a wing of 4).
This bullet, like my already done (and almost fully tested) anti capship and fire support round shoots once every 15 seconds and has a speed of 400 m/s.

Release on Tuesday if I don't find any bugs.

[Titan]

total sweetness

[diceman111]

I wouldent want to be near the ship that fires these shells when that one is destroyed since it would have a large stock of small meson bombs aboard

[BengalTiger]

Good point. Be sure to make the dying ship armed with these have a special explosion when making missions.

To do:
-unify launch and flyby sounds and some other really small things,
-pack it all up in a .rar file
-get it hosted.

[Mustang19]

For hosting you can just use Hades Combine, you know? If it's a big file and they ask you if the community finds it worth the bandwith, just show them this thread.

[Cobra]

We can never have enough bombs on the site. :heh: