Hordes of Disintigrators
Paul Dale writes about Disintigrators:
"Currently disintegrators are basically worthless weapons, they
get less 'free' hits than meson guns, they are affected by
armour, they don't get internal damage hits. When you also
consider that they are expensive, large, heavy & suck power like
nothing else they become totally useless"
"Strengthening a disintegrator is the way to go."
Disintigrators in Trav
How do they work?
According to Book 4 Mercenary, Nuclear dampers "may be used to
increase or decrease the stability of atomic nuclei. Projecting
from two different stations, the intersection of the two
transmitted broadcasts produces a series of nodes and
anti-nodes. In the area of the nodes, the strong nuclear force
is enhanced making the nucleus more stable. In the area of the
anti-nodes, the strong nuclear force is depressed, making the
nucleus much less stable. Anti-nodes are focussed on incoming
nuclear warheads, causing them to shed neutrons at low energy
levels, rendering the warhead inoperable."
"The damper is later developed into a disintigrator weapon,
beginning at tech level 16."
OK! If that's how disintigrators work... Well, what happens to
those neutrons? If you are going to disintigrate a large object,
you are going to give off one hell of a neutron storm! Anyone
nearby will get blasted.
OOPS! What about mass difference? When an atom loses a neutron
it looses mass. This mass is converted into energy. (That's how
atomic fission works!) So when your ship's hull starts loosing
neutrons it is going to gain energy. Heat. Presumeably, the
heat is sufficient to vaporize the material being vaporized.
Thus the target disintigrates.
UH-OH! That's not what happens! According to Adventure 3:
Twilight's peak (the only time we see disintigrators ever
described in action) The target just "vanishes". No heat, no
radiation storm. The target just disappears. "Control is
sufficiently precise to vanish one man from a crowd or destroy a
party's (sic) weapons while leaving everything else intact."
Rationalization: (How it works when Scott is Ref and crazy
enough to try to deal with ancient artifacts)
The energy released is drained away from the target by the weapon
and goes toward powering the weapon. After all, disintigrating
an object in the manner they describe requires one hell of a lot
of energy.
In an ancient TL 24 pistol, there is sufficient power
stored to disintigrate a certain amount of mass. As soon as the
disintigrator is fired it disintigrates that mass and drains off
the energy of the reaction to recharge itself. If the energy was
NOT drained off (as might happen if the pistol malfunctioned) the
energy is released into the environment and the pistol is now
drained. (note that the energy released into the environment is
going to be on the order of several kilotons.)
Advice to anyone finding a 300,000 year old disintigrator:
Don't fire at close range...
With a Shipboard disintigrator, you would have a choice:
either disintigrate a certain amount of mass for a split second
which would release the fission energy (several kilotons...) or
absorb that energy to maintain the disintigrator beam.
The first type of attack will give off huge amounts of radiation,
and energy. The second attack would merely vaporize a certain
amount of mass in the target. Either way, I do not see how armor
is a defence. The anti-node of the disintigrator can be focused
inside the ship. (Thus you could have an internal explosion in
the kiloton range)
Disintigrating mass might be more desirable if you want to
capture a ship. (just replace the missing components and plates)
But which ever type of attack you like, the damn thing has to be
more deadly than the TL 8-9 particle accelerators which the rules
say it is on par with. (Actually less so because it doesn't get
an automatic hit!)
Which brings me on to the use of nuclear dampers as defences. It
occurs to me, that unless a target vessel knows what it is being
attacked with, it will not be able to do anything about it. A
software program will have to be set up for the dampers to defend
against disintigrators. Until the defender has seen a
disintigrator and experimented with it, they will not be able to
defend against it.
Scott Kellogg
Look Out! Double Adventure Five is Coming!!!!!!!