austenandrews

Re: Future Sci-Fi I firmly believe there will always be frontiers.

Re: Starship Size Comparison Website Cross-browser dynamic HTML is a royal pain.

Re: Imperial Ground Equipment

Re: Star Wars - The Jedi Academy Campaign: The Final Chapter No reason a Sith can't just be supremely expert at various weapons technologies - an unmatched combat pilot, an unerring shot (beyond the ability of many Jedi to deflect), etc. Give him a skyspeeder with a mounted blaster cannon and he's Hell On Wings. Add in strong TK usable from a cockpit and he's practically unbeatable. Or heck, maybe he can just use TK to control the machines from a point of safety.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Cool. Is there a list of what they are?

Re: Imperial Ground Equipment

Re: Imperial Ground Equipment Technically all the above reasons applied. Chewie's use of technology screwed up the "primitive Wookiees v.s. high-tech Empire" scenario. The availability of little people and low cost of outfitting them meant that the not-Wookiees ceased to be giants.

Re: Anybody out there playing Doctor Who Hero? Mickey had potential as a character, but he played the same note over and over and over.

Re: Anybody out there playing Doctor Who Hero?

Re: Imperial Ground Equipment Wookiees got changed to Ewoks because little people were easy to find at the time, but seven-footers were extremely rare.

Re: The Last Word Every hit counts! Personally I'm pulling for the pirates, too. I'm a little surprised the ninjas are doing so well.

Re: The Last Word Pirates always get the last word!

Re: Advanced energy sources: Some thought and pretty big numbers. Once short space hops are commonplace, I expect this to be the norm anyway. Why be packed in close? Much to the dismay of real estate speculators, alas. "That's the problem with space - there's too d*mn much of it!"

Re: The CyberComedy Challenge Comedic Extreme The entire planet is perpetually overcast. The greenhouse effect raises temperatures and melts Antarctica. The new steppeland is populated by megacorporation headquarters. At Christmastime, the entire giftgiving world's finances flow toward Antarctica. This sets up a planetwide harmonic of resources with Xmas gifts flowing from the North Pole and money flowing to the South Pole - a sort of capitalistic gulfstream (which is plane to see). Since the common man loses money in this exchange, historians refer to it as the "polar fleecing." Consumer confidence wanes, resulting in a stock market crash known as the "polar bear." To placate the populace, corporations issue a new credit card. People quickly dig themselves deep into debt. This credit card is named the Polar Express (don't heave loam without it). Convention Everyone wears leather or latex.

Re: Random SF Science Questions Do they ever explain why alien robots transform into a single Earth vehicle each? Or is that one of those "why don't the stormtroopers hit anybody?" questions?

Re: Random SF Science Questions What's Cybertron, a planet that transforms into the Death Star or something?

Re: Necrons

Re: Advanced energy sources: Some thought and pretty big numbers. Of course "feasible" is extremely relative here, but I think we'd be feasibly looking at a source that normally produces very short-lived antimatter (given the odds of rapid annihilation in any space that man is likely to go). Insert technology that isolates the antimatter before it would normally be annihilated. If the frequency of antimatter were small, heat from ambient annihilation wouldn't necessarily be great. Of course I can't imagine a source of short-lived antimatter that wouldn't be inherently high-energy to begin with (unless we get into virtual particles in a vacuum or somesuch).

Re: Advanced energy sources: Some thought and pretty big numbers. Cosmic rays, quantum vacuum, etc. We can't harvest antimatter from such phenomena at present, but even if harvesting is never possible, they suggest possible means of production in some future technological era.

Re: Advanced energy sources: Some thoughts and implications. Right, this is what I meant. Thank you for being clearer than I.

Re: Advanced energy sources: Some thoughts and implications. That makes sense. But are we confident that's the only way to manufacture antimatter?

Re: Idle thinkings on BattleTech You could do what I always do with differently-sized combatants - subtract DCV modifiers. 1) Mech A has -4 DCV. Mech B has -4 DCV. When they fight, neither has a DCV penalty (-4 - -4 = 0). 2) Mech A has -4 DCV. Mech B has -7 DCV. The difference is -7 - -4 = -3. When they fight, Mech A has normal DCV and Mech B has -3 DCV. 3) Mech A has -7 DCV. Mech B has -7 DCV. When they fight, neither has a DCV penalty (-7 - -7 = 0). It has its advantages and disadvantages.

Re: Random SF Science Questions

Re: Advanced energy sources: Some thoughts and implications. If the manufacturing process requires less energy than the output, it becomes a fuel, right? Is there some reason to think antimatter production can't cross that threshhold?

Re: Random SF Science Questions