Don’t be silly, Pieter. Ali’d use that knowledge for medical research. Like… ‘do Drifters catch Kyonoke?’
3 Likes
This talk of starcakes not only has me hungry, it also makes me think.
The Drifters themselves appear to be infomorphs, and by converting a cadaver into a suitable host, they remove the host form’s needs for respiration and consumption of chemicals for energy. I suppose since they plug into their ships directly and fly around, I would assume the host bodies have batteries, but must be charged somewhere, like on a ship or in a dedicated bay, like a barrack.
So what fuels the hives and the ships themselves? To charge the host, and to utilize such powerful weaponry, there must be a power source strong enough to supply such needs.
Excuse me, @Alizabeth_Vea - if I may be allowed to call you that - do Drifter Battleships of all classes explode in the same color? Isn’t that color green?
2 Likes
Unless the carcass is just a thin flesh suit on top of exceedingly severe cybernetics, it should still require life support. There’s potential technologies that can emulate this, of course, but it’ll still require energy and certain chemical processes. The required oxygen is easily provided from compressed sources and injected in nano-lattice constructs that embed themselves in whatever bloodstream equivalent they’re using, just like fairly common emergency body-mods available to those of us who live in perpetual risk of vacuum exposure or emergency medical use when secure airways can’t be established.
You can’t escape neither entropy nor energy requirements though, so their biological components however extensive or minuscule they are, will still require nutrient flows of some description.
I’m curious what you’re trying to get across here, or what you’re asking?
2 Likes
This is an excellent question, and one that demands an answer!
2 Likes
Just Alizabeth.
Secondly yes. Green explosions are the second most arousing thing ever.
3 Likes
Not many objects explode or detonate green on the visible light spectrum. Usually it’s blue or a form of red, yellow, or orange. And try as I might, I have found no green explosions… save two events.
The Seyllin Incident, and Caroline’s Star.
Both of which I found to be the result of an extremely unstable isotope which detonates when disturbed in the green spectrum.
Isogen-5.
While I will admit their bodies likely need some form of nourishment, I firmly believe that the Drifters use small concentrations of Isogen-5 as a form of fuel.
I mean, what else could generate that much power in such a relatively small package? The double layered shields, the weapons that bend space-time to ignore all forms of damage resistances.
I cannot say if the Drifters were the cause of the Seyllin Incident or Caroline’s Star, but I feel confident that samples of the Drifter Battleship explosion residue would be positive for Isogen-5.
Now that I got that out of the way - and I don’t feel like it was a big reveal - why would Drifters need cadavers for hosts at all? Why not just build a robotic form to control? The grey matter has already undergone cell degeneration before you harvested it, so there shoudn’t be anything to gain from doing so, unless there is a non-functional reason, such as appearance, or some as of yet undetermined strength from doing so.
Either way, we need to find what the Drifters use to reconstitute their cadaver hosts, and possibly learn from that why they do so. Where are the autopsy reports after that Battleship jammed the live feed? I saw them once, haven’t seen them again.
2 Likes
Argon is the answer you’re looking for, particularly in drifter ships, as they utilise it in their tracking system.
It is also produced in the event of a Supernove, a la Caroline’s Star.
1 Like
Is it a supernova? Last official statement that I’ve heard for the Superluminal Stellar Anomaly of YC116 was that the origin point is co-located with the star of W477-P - but not necessarily the star itself, and no other statements I’ve found specifically mentions a supernova.
1 Like
The star itself, or rather what’s left of it looks like it went through a supernova phase. But hell, I’m no astrophysicist, consider consulting Brutor Science Guy on whether it is or not.
1 Like
“Caroline’s Star” breaks so many laws of physics it’s not even funny. No, it is not a supernova, unless every damn measurement we’ve ever done when it comes to Jovian space are completely and utterly wrong. Assuming that we’re not, since doing otherwise would imply our ability to travel our own bits of New Eden is sheer and utter luck, the Caroline’s Star event has to be superluminal in nature. Not just apparently superluminal like certain quasars and such, but actually superluminal.
This is unfathomably frightening on countless levels. The sheer scale of the event combined with it pretty much disregarding what we know about time and space boggles the mind. Try to imagine a warp bubble encompassing not merely a ship, but entire regions worth of space. That is of course not to say that is what’s going on here, but it’s the scale of things we’re dealing with here. Either a breakdown of physics as we know them, to the point where everything we do know is utter nonsense and reality is nightmarishly beyond our comprehension, or a display of technology and power so vast that it too pretty much defies comprehension.
This is why you do not poke the Drifters needlessly. This is why I’ll stick to fighting other capsuleers for fun and profit, while patiently waiting for the moment when I can ram something sharp into the heart of the Empire.
It’s because the scales whoever or whatever caused Caroline’s Star are operating on are quite simply so far beyond us that I’d very much rather we didn’t get more of their attention than we absolutely bloody have to.
… I swear, if this universe of ours was a movie or a book or something, it’d be laughed at for being utterly nonsensical.
1 Like
And yet we have to know what exactly are we dealing with, and hopefully in time to prevent another of such event happening right inside the homestead, not just at the doorstep. In order to do so, we are going to have to poke and prod at the Drifters.
Preferably dead Drifters.
1 Like
That’s kind of the thing, though, Miz. The Drifters had no reason we know of to crush the Jove-- other than their status as patrons and protectors to a plague that had descended on stuff the Drifters likely care about.
If the Drifters care about what we do, it’s likely far too late to avoid their attention. In all likelihood, even if we do nothing at all, the damage is done, and we’re next.
2 Likes
dafuq is an ancient erp?
2 Likes
… Eh. I guess it’s natural if a technology’s been around in a culture for long enough that nobody remembers where it came from that it gets mixed up in the “common origin” theory pretty easily. It’s still kind of funny how often someone comes along claiming to know something about that, though.
Anyway-- one of the weird things about Drifter technology and weapons is that nearly everything they do, from semi-autonomous turret fire to, well, blowing up, has that weird green color, and a fair amount of it has a light-distorting visual lensing effect. (Not sure I’m using that terminology quite right …).
2 Likes
It’s actually not. The engineering logic behind rifter weaponry is rather easy to understand. The methods used to achieve the weapon’s effects are pretty rudimentary by today’s standards, to the point where the effect can easily be replicated with stuff bought from a “Young Physicist” store. The real catch that I’m struggling with is the energy efficiency of the blast. Even if it’s only as half as strong as our modern doomsdays, it’s still mounted on a battleship hull, with significantly less powergrid and fuel capacity than a titan.
2 Likes
Uh. Okay-- would you like to explain, for our audience, exactly what we’re being hit by, Ms. Nieyli? (And I’m not speaking just of the doomsday.)
2 Likes
To put it simply, plasma. The distortion effect you witness is light being scattered by the electromagnetic field used to contain and guide the beam. If you’re interested I could do a short presentation for you and all interested parties on the design and mechanics of the weapons system.
1 Like
On the contrary, there is always a reason for things, not matter how impossible, improbable, or bizarre they are. We simply do not have the understanding of why, or how.
It wouldn’t make sense to me if they used Argon as the power source for the weapons. Sure, use Argon as a component for the tracking system, but there must be a source of power for it.
I was proposing earlier that Isogen-5 is their power source. Granted, it is highly unstable, but if allowed to release energy at a steady and constant rate without allowing for disturbances, it could provide all the energy the ship would need. And it would explain the double shields, as it would need extra defense when the ship itself, its armor and hull, are not designed to take extended punishment.
Funny, I thought about how the double shield works. It acts as a reactive shield layer, much like how reactive armor works. When the second shield is depleted, the Drifter sends out the remaining particulate that comprised the shield out as a localized ECM burst, disrupting our target locks. When this occurs, the Drifter has no shields for a brief period as they have been shut off to allow for the ECM burst to occur. Then the shields are quickly reactivated and the ship is covered again before any damage could be done to the armor, as no target locking speed to date could lock and fire on the Drifter for any appreciable damage before the shields are up again.
I agree with the electromagnetic containment field guiding the beam, but I can not agree with the projectile being comprised of plasma. I have taken a few samples of data from the last two excursions into Sentinel and Vidette, using Core and Combat probes as well as directed gravimetric and magnetic scans to analyze the datum from the weapons discharge.
In addition to the appearances of the railgun and blaster discharges being visually different from the Lux weapons - as hybrids are a form of plasma-based weaponry, and mechanically no other hybrid exists to date besides the Hellbore system, and the Lux weapon system is most definitely not a Hellbore - the readings are much different, reading high in the gravimetric and magnetic signatures, and the probes registering the exact moment of discharge as a form of a spacial anomaly, registered like a red signal to identify wormholes.
As far as I can determine, the Lux weapon systems are the result of the Drifters utilizing Talocan-based spacial tech as a form of weaponry, directing anomalies with their chaotic and otherwise unpredictable effects towards a target, and removing the very fabric of the armor, hull, and important life-support and safeguard systems that keep our vessels in one piece. The weapons discharge, creating a “long” wormhole, stretched across a magnetic containment field, making contact with our systems, and promptly disabling and reenabling the containment field to “swallow” parts of our ships, whisking them away to wherever they go, be it to a place so uninhabitable that our components are disintegrated or torn asunder on the molecular level, or to a deliberate location, a place that is controlled by the Drifters, by which would make the Lux weapons directed wormholes with the intent of stealing material for use in their vessels.
It could be why there are so many ships after all this time, and even the hosts themselves. They use the inorganic material as construction and resource units, and the… organic material from our crews as… sustenance…
I think I’m going to be sick. Excuse me.
1 Like
It most certainly is plasma.
Please consult the following material:
The greenish cloud is a telltale sign of plasma hitting the Paladin’s hull and a heat transfer occuring, turning the plasma back into nitrogen and oxygen, along with the argon used as an insulator that gives it the distinct hue. It’s not a plasma round, such as the Minmatar Phased Plasma rounds, it’s a beam of pure plasma being generated at the origin. It’s why it looks nothing like what you’re used to seeing. Again, I could do a presentation on the system, if you’re interested.
Moreover, the Argon is not used to power the system, it’s simply a byproduct from distilling liquid air that is used to produce the green laser used in the targetting system, amongst other things.
2 Likes
Well… that sounds profoundly less fictional of a discovery. But if it is indeed the actual operation of the weapons, I will listen to understand how they work.
Phooey. You took the wind out of my sails.