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garhkal
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 Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2013 3:24 pm Post subject: |
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One thing i don't see being addressed is power. Something like this would definitely be a power hog, and either be of short duration or require a big power pack. In addition it would definitely ping scanners looking for 'non normal' stuff when going through customs.
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jmanski
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| Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2013 6:27 pm Post subject: |
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I think its a cool idea. I say roll with it.
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Jedi Skyler
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| Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2013 10:09 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | One thing i don't see being addressed is power. Something like this would definitely be a power hog, and either be of short duration or require a big power pack. In addition it would definitely ping scanners looking for 'non normal' stuff when going through customs. |
Why does it have to be a power hog? The stats for that palm-sized Image Caster (that Qui Gon had in Epi I) has a power source that lasts for 24 hours' worth of use. As it's obviously not a large power source, and will be powering several projectors that are actually smaller than the Image Caster, I'd think that a capable power source would easily fit in the bracers. |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2013 1:27 am Post subject: |
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While that image caster did have a decent power source, it was not interfacable as this will be, nor did it have to power multiple holographic imagers.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2013 4:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Jedi Skyler wrote: |
Why does it have to be a power hog? The stats for that palm-sized Image Caster (that Qui Gon had in Epi I) has a power source that lasts for 24 hours' worth of use. As it's obviously not a large power source, and will be powering several projectors that are actually smaller than the Image Caster, I'd think that a capable power source would easily fit in the bracers. |
Because all the tech in Star Wars is power hungry by our standards. Look at the XJ-6 airspeeder than Anakin borrowed in Attack of the Clones. Despite the fact that it is about the size of a car but has twinengine with a power output of 30 megawatts, hundred of times the power required for a modern car.
It's about low to mid level fighter jet power, squeezed into a smaller package, and for a reasonable price.
So while neat holotech probably does require a lot of power, providing that power probably isn't much of a problem or that big a deal in the Star Wars universe. We can probably assume that thier devices can generate and store energy at orders of magnitude far greater than our current devices, and at a fraction of the cost. |
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Mikael Hasselstein
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| Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2013 4:48 pm Post subject: |
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| atgxtg wrote: | | We can probably assume that thier devices can generate and store energy at orders of magnitude far greater than our current devices, and at a fraction of the cost. |
Agreed.
That probably also speaks to Garhkal's point that it would also be a lot easier to detect than RW devices would be with the same detection equipment.
But what kind of customs regimes are there? I guess it depends on each system's politics, which would vary tremendously. |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2013 6:16 pm Post subject: |
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And it might also depend on each planet in a system.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2013 9:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Mikael Hasselstein wrote: |
That probably also speaks to Garhkal's point that it would also be a lot easier to detect than RW devices would be with the same detection equipment. |
Yeah. All that power would make their vehicles much easier to detect.
I also suspect that since the SWU seems to have cracked the problem of cheap, limitless energy, broadcast power is probably an option, too. And that would make things stand out even more to scans.
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But what kind of customs regimes are there? I guess it depends on each system's politics, which would vary tremendously. |
It could, and not only by system,or planet, but by nation, province ,city even by culture, but...I suspect in the long run it wouldn't vary as much as it could. My thoughts are that since customs generates revenue, and since most governments want money, certain practices and regulations will get standardized throughout most of known space. Most governments won't want to make things to difficult for commerce.
Of course, in a galaxy with millions of inhabited systems, even if 99% of worlds follow the same rules, there are still quite enough exceptions for a GM to have fun with. |
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Jedi Skyler
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| Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2013 11:58 am Post subject: |
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| So, are you saying that weapons detectors ONLY detect power supplies? If that were the case, I'd be thinking that a LOT more would be going off than I've ever seen in a game. I would think that heavily cyborged people would set them off. |
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2013 1:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Jedi Skyler wrote: | | So, are you saying that weapons detectors ONLY detect power supplies? If that were the case, I'd be thinking that a LOT more would be going off than I've ever seen in a game. I would think that heavily cyborged people would set them off. |
No, but "weapon detectors" have to be detecting something. I mean there is no one thing that can be used to ID something as a weapon. It's not like a fantasy setting where you can just detect something magically. The sensors have to be sensing for something in particular, or, and thing is more likely, sensing for several somethings in particular. Things like energy, shape and mass, targeting arrays, and so on all help to tag likely weapons. Then a computer probably compares the readings with a checklist algorithm, and against a database of known weapon types and then makes a decision.
Energy levels would be a big part of it, though. Heavily cyborged people probably aren't hitting high enough power levels to trip off the big gun detectors.
For example, the main guns on an old Iowa-class battleship packed over 360 megajoules of energy (yeah, it's not electrical energy, but chemical, but let's ignore that for now). Since a Joule is equal to 1 watt-second, that means that a shell from an Iowa-class battleship packs about 20 times the energy of the engines on an XJ-6 speeder produce over one second of time. So any weapon detector that is being used to look for capital ship weapons is probably looking for a much greater energy signature than a cyborged lifeform is going to have.
Something like an ISD is simply putting out so much energy (just to power the weapons) that it would be foolish not to be looking for energy signature levels.
On the other hand, something like an electrical storm, or erupting volcano puts out more than enough energy to trip the energy detectors, but fail other things on the checklist and so don't detect as weapons. |
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Mikael Hasselstein
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| Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2013 3:11 pm Post subject: |
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| atgxtg wrote: | | No, but "weapon detectors" have to be detecting something. I mean there is no one thing that can be used to ID something as a weapon. It's not like a fantasy setting where you can just detect something magically. The sensors have to be sensing for something in particular, or, and thing is more likely, sensing for several somethings in particular. Things like energy, shape and mass, targeting arrays, and so on all help to tag likely weapons. Then a computer probably compares the readings with a checklist algorithm, and against a database of known weapon types and then makes a decision. |
Don't blasters work by the igniting of a gas, like Tibanna? Maybe they (also) detect for that.
As I've read about sensors, it seems like these do detect for combinations of signals, rather than signals from a single detection mechanism of a single thing. Maybe that's how Star Wars universe technology is superior to our own, in that it has the computing power to detect for pattern across specific signs. |
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garhkal
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Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2013 6:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Jedi Skyler wrote: | | So, are you saying that weapons detectors ONLY detect power supplies? If that were the case, I'd be thinking that a LOT more would be going off than I've ever seen in a game. I would think that heavily cyborged people would set them off. |
In some places they do just that. The person with cyborg tech better have copies of his paperwork from getting the work done to show why he has it!
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jmanski
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| Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2013 6:03 pm Post subject: |
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like folks with steel plates now. If you can't prove it... tough luck.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2013 6:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Mikael Hasselstein wrote: |
Don't blasters work by the igniting of a gas, like Tibanna? Maybe they (also) detect for that. |
They could. It is probably part of how the sensors ID something as a weapon. If it has energy it could be a weapon, but if it has energy AND blaster gas, then it's probably a safe bet to ID it as a blaster.
| Quote: |
As I've read about sensors, it seems like these do detect for combinations of signals, rather than signals from a single detection mechanism of a single thing. Maybe that's how Star Wars universe technology is superior to our own, in that it has the computing power to detect for pattern across specific signs. |
They would have to detect and analyze multiple things to be able to detect some of the things sensors can detect in Star Wars. The more complex thing you are trying to detect the more complex the detection scheme.
For instance to detect for a particular species they would need multiple sensors that could determine if something was a living organism, and then be able to filter out all the other lifeforms by selective criteria.
It's kinda like how advances in technology on Earth since the time of the OT have allowed us to do things that were SciFi back in the 1970s. Heck, at the risk of switching SciFi settings we now have those PADDs that seemed so neat on Trek in the 80s and 90s. Our phones are more powerful now have more features than our top computers did back in the 70s. With technology as advanced as Star Wars who knows what they can really do?
One little throwaway bit of tech starts a whole domino effect. For instance, if the small generators in Star Wars are so powerful, and cheap, then they can afford to use a brute force approach to a lot of problems. Which fits with the 1930s-40s Sci-Fi genre that Star Wars emulates. And that also means that they have some compact way of transferring vast amounts of energy with thinner "wires", and some way of dealing with the thermal waste energy that goes with high power.
It's not just one big piece of technology, but all the little support technologies that must exist for that big tech thing to be practical. |
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Jedi Skyler
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| Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2013 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Mikael Hasselstein wrote: | | atgxtg wrote: | | No, but "weapon detectors" have to be detecting something. I mean there is no one thing that can be used to ID something as a weapon. It's not like a fantasy setting where you can just detect something magically. The sensors have to be sensing for something in particular, or, and thing is more likely, sensing for several somethings in particular. Things like energy, shape and mass, targeting arrays, and so on all help to tag likely weapons. Then a computer probably compares the readings with a checklist algorithm, and against a database of known weapon types and then makes a decision. |
Don't blasters work by the igniting of a gas, like Tibanna? Maybe they (also) detect for that.
As I've read about sensors, it seems like these do detect for combinations of signals, rather than signals from a single detection mechanism of a single thing. Maybe that's how Star Wars universe technology is superior to our own, in that it has the computing power to detect for pattern across specific signs. |
That's pretty much what I figured; the sensors would be scanning for a certain set of criteria.
Even in the SW universe we see evidence of tech evolution; weapons sensors were changed, at least for a time, so they didn't detect lightsabers since the Jedi were exterminated. I read in one of the novels that lightsabers pinged the sensors as some form of electric shaver...lol |
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