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The Technology of TFTD


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would my medikit be able to cook me some toast?

wouldnt a thermal tazer cook a lobsterman?

if i poke this thing on my desk do you think it would jiggle?

just joking with them..... dont really have any questions, but if you can answer the last one it would be pretty funny

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Perhaps the gauss weapons derived their power source from plasma weapons, but never quite borrowed the projectile type and propulsion mechanism.

 

See, gauss weapons need a lot of energy to charge the coils that propel the bullet. It would be inconvenient for X-Com soldiers to be carrying a miniature power reactor on their backs (imagine the Real Ghostbusters). I don't think it would fare well underwater.

 

So, they could have used the technology that powers plasma weaponry and then converted it for use with uranium slugs instead of elerium (as e115 had run out, and synthetic elerium was still a long way off -- but even then, I don't think elerium would last very long if exposed to salt water). Thus making a miniature nuclear reactor small enough to seal inside the watertight casing of the gauss weapons.

 

Hmm, I wonder why they never modelled weapon failures? I'm imagining small thermo nuclear explosions occuring every once in a while whenever a gauss pistol jams (for worst-case scenarios, I mean). :)

 

- NKF

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Well I got 2 more questions:

 

How do you throw things under water?

 

How do sonic weapons fire in a particular direction? The sound should go in all directions at once.

 

 

Bevan: A thermal tazer would probably cook anything it came in contact with. Given enough power it would make the water surrounding the lobsterman boil and therefore cook him just like they do with the smaller ones that you can buy at the grocery store.

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The tazers go the other way and freeze their enemies, I believe. Would be a nice thing to have if you live anywhere along the equator.

 

Of course, I suppose some genius could perform a little tweaking and turn one into a portable kettle element. :)

 

- NKF

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bevan Posted on Jun 16 2003, 12:30 PM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

would my medikit be able to cook me some toast?

wouldnt a thermal tazer cook a lobsterman?

if i poke this thing on my desk do you think it would jiggle?

just joking with them..... dont really have any questions, but if you can answer the last one it would be pretty funny

 

Hmmmmmmm. I am supposing the thing on your desk is your computer so if you poke the monitor hard enough while its on your finger would go through giving you an electric shoke which could probally kill you be my guest and try it out :devil:

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  • 3 weeks later...

This is just my understanding of TFTD Gauss versus 'Regular' Gauss.

 

Judging by the stuff in the TFTD booklet, how Plasma weaponry 'appears' to work, etcetera...

 

A TFTD Gauss rifle is no more related to the standard 'Gauss cannon' with acceleration magnets than gunpowder bullets are related to it. (Well. That's an exxageration.)

 

Plasma weapons, IIRC, worked by accelerating particles with anti-gravity waves. These particles are, to my understanding, usually considered to be moving so fast as to ignite. That'll only really work in atmosphere, though, and so I generally take Plasma weapons to be accelerating particles that have been energized and heated by Elerium, (Possibly particles of Elerium,) causing a 'beam' of superheated particles. This doesn't neccesarily require fusion, and the intense temperatures involved, but can get more than hot enough to do serious damage. ('Plasma' can be caused by Fusion, which is basically, uhh... The inside of a star.)

 

Now Gauss weapons are apparently an adaptation of Plasma weaponry, and from what I understand, are based on accelerating microscopic particles in beams or 'clumps', not shells.

 

Basically, as I understand it, take sand. Throw it at someone. Notice how it stings? Now accelerate it at them at some ridiculous speed like mach seven. Painful, huh? Well, consider this, somewhere in the UFOpedias it mentions using Gallium Arsenide capsules/shells. (Which I translate to being near microscopic in scale...)

 

Anyway. I do recall reading somewhere that Gallium Arsenide, or whatever it was, was some really nasty stuff. (Possibly Radioactive, I don't *quite* recall now.)

 

But. If my theory here is correct, the TFTD gauss rifles are firing microscopic particles, probably radioactive, in clumps through water. My fluid dynamics isn't too strong, and this might actually result in all the particles halting after a few inches, but the way I pretend it goes is the particles are too small/energetic to get caught up on water.

 

This is just my opinion based on everything I've managed to dredge out about this stuff. I'm no major league scientist. =P

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So do you think a plasma shot would be more of a beam, or kind of like a ball?

A ball. The superheated gas would be compressed into a very small ball by the anti-gravity/magnets and then it would be propelled out of the weapon. There would have to be some way of reducing the interaction between the plasma and air (such as the ball projecting its own anti-gravity field to repulse any oxygen/nitrogen atoms). Another way to avoid atmospheric bleeding might be to project it as a beam but the power requirments most likely would be too excessive for a hand held weapon.

However if the speed of the ball was high enough it would look like a beam to an observer as the light path of the ball would remain on the retina for a moment.

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Well, you could also take it from the perspective of the plasma weapon 'Squirting' superheated particles, which would initially be in a form of beam, but as it ignites with air around it and falls prey to turbulence, the beam would get 'compressed' as it travelled, forming a sort of turbulent, very very fast, burning ovoid.

 

Maybe?

 

(Ps - Check the Gauss weapons entries in the UFOpedias. It talks about particle streams and anti-protons, not slugs and magnetic waves. TFTD Gauss is, as far as I know, not 'Normal' Gauss.)

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My idea concerning the Gauss technology of TFTD is that it uses magnetic accelerators to compress and propel forwards the stream of anti-protons mentioned on the UFOPedia. There's a number of accelerators built into the weapon and as the anti-protons travel from one another they gain speed. The need for the 'shell' comes from the fact that anti-matter quickly interacts with matter in an explosive way so the anti-protons would have to be prevented from interacting with matter until the target.

The term 'Gauss' is what confuses me the most since there's a number of physical and mathematical formulas that use it. It is more associated with magnetic functions but the ideas of the mathematican Gauss form the basis of algebra and usually a bell shaped curved on a xy plane is called a Gauss curve.

That can also be related to TFTD in two ways: first it represents how the power of the weapons builts up fairly fast (y-axis) over time (x-axis). However it also shows how fast the power decreases after reaching its maximum. Considering the notion of the 'shell' this would show that its speed will quickly drop after reaching its maximum, affecting range.

However the Gauss curve also shows the usual random distribution the results in a certain interval. For instance as the pellets of a shotgun leave the barrel they will follow several directions (the scatter effect). A few will follow trajectories that will cause them to completely miss the target but the majority will fly on paths that will make them hit it. Thus Gauss might also be related if the TFTD weapons (like the pistol) would instead fire anti-protons like a shotgun. However that doesn't seem to be the case on TFTD considering what I've said before.

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  • 1 month later...

Maybe that aren't bubbles of air but bubbles of methane... you see, they are probably nervous when they get into battle :devil: :)

 

Seriously though... TJ, why don't you tell them about the weapons we talked about a month ago? it may be an interesting thing to discuss about in this topic...

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  • 2 weeks later...

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