Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
So, I'm in the process of designing a laser for my campaign. Not really a laser, but rather an extremely long range cannon that fires pure magic.
After reading through the posting guidelines, I "think" it should be okay for me to put in the images that compose pretty much the entire design so far, but please correct me if I'm wrong and I'll see if I can make a gallery or some such for them.
Here's the laser arranged by layers. Below layer three it's still very much a work in progress.
Here's the supplementals. So far there's just the one.
This is a doodle that embarrasses me to no end. Sadly, I don't have a working scanner so everything I draw is entirely one the computer, which admittedly lowers the quality of my work.
And this is something which I did in Paint.net because I had it open, and didn't really feel like actually doing text-only documentation at the time.
I'll say right now, the reason they're all called "Layers" is because when I drew them, they were actually all in layers just like that. Top to bottom there were seven layers.
The reason this is homebrew is because the main firing process will be pretty much entirely ad hocced via lengthy agreements and bribes with my DM. The idea is that once an hour or so (for balance/flavor reasons), a mini-gate of sorts is opened, and the as-yet undesigned Firing Array in the as-yet undesigned firing column will draw out like, raw essence of fire or shadow or some other element determined by where the gate goes to, and pump it into one of the cannons, of which there's eventually probably going to be about 15. So it's really powerful and cool, but at the same time it's the sort of thing that really only governments can afford, and it takes a while to reload.
So far I'm mostly just looking for thoughts, and in particular ideas on figuring out how much time aiming should take. If it turns out someone has ideas on where needed parts might already exist in the rules, that'd be just awesome on a bun.
Just a little background information, this arose from a conversation where I was describing my new gestalt artificer/wizard solo character to a friend. We came upon "What's the coolest thing you could build?" and I said "The Death Star". He responded with "Go for it.", and thus was born the idea of a space-laser that my player could build.
Quick Edit: My own DM just pointed out to me that in his campaign at least, Immovable Rods anchor themselves to the nearest celestial body with non-negligible mass, so the Anchor already exists, just in the wrong shape and not nearly powerful enough to resist say, an asteroid impact that would send it flying off into space.
Quick Edit2: It occurs to me that these images make the post really really long looking. How do you do spoiler tags? I've seen them around, but I don't post here terribly regularly so I myself am not quite sure how to do them. I'm gonna go look around for it, but if someone could tell me that'd be great. If they're already in spoiler tags when you read this, feel free to ignore it.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
Why are you using a "laser"? There are better ways to do space based weaponry. The below assumes that you are expanding the falling damage rules to be more inline with real physics.
Step 1: Turn etheral and head down under a mountain a ways.
Step 2: Cast a transdimensional disintegrate to make a cave. Cast disintegrate repeatedly until you have a 20x20x20 foot room.
Step 3: Fill a bag of holding with adamantium.
Step 4: Shapechange into a golem
Step 5: Use Fabricate to turn the adamantium into a hollow column that has a hollow section 15 meters long and 5 wide in the middle and walls 1 foot thick. 5 meters from the bottom should be a small shelf that sticks out an inch or so and runs around the entire column.
Step 6: Use greater teleportation to teleport the acceleration chamber, standing vertical, into its hole.
Step 7: Use Stone Shape to make a base that will hold the acceleration chamber firm.
Step 8: Create a small construct using the feat Rudimentary Intelligence to give in an Intelligence score.
Step 9: Cast Telepathic Bond on the construct.
Step 10: Make the bond permanent.
Step 11: Teleport the construct into the bottom of the acceleration chamber.
Step 12: Give the construct a ring gate on a 5 foot tall metal pole.
Step 13: Use Soverign Glue to glue a ring gate to the top of the acceleration chamber (not linked to the constructs gate, and so that items come out the end pointing down and from now on referred to as RG 2).
Step 14: Cast Teleportation Circle on the shelf, it should teleport to right below the top of the acceleration chamber.
Step 15: Make it permanent.
Ammunition:
Step 1: Create an adamantium missile that weighs less than 100 pounds.
Step 2: Use Animate Object to animate the missile.
Step 3: Make Animate Object permanent.
Step 4: Use Craft Contingent Spell to put a contingent Energy Immunity (Fire) spell on said object with an activation condition of "Touches air after the phrase "Arm Missile Number (Insert missile number here)" is spoken and then not touching air for at least 30 seconds.
Arming:
Step 1: Select a missile and speak its arming phrase.
Step 2: Drop the missile through the ring gate linked RG 2 one.
Firing:
Step 1: Place the ring gate linked to the one the golem has above your target
Step 2: Order the golem in the bottom of the acceleration chamber to raise his ring gate up through the teleportation circle.
---
There you go. You can accelerate the missile up to significant fractions of the speed of light. If you want more shots per day just use missiles that weigh less.
Now if you aren't using expanded terminal velocity rules it is a lot easier.
Falling damage maxes at 20d6, and so does the damage something takes when being hit by a falling object.
Step 1: Create a frame that is 17 feet tall and can hold 4 ring gates. The 2 at the top are stacked on top of eachother with the side facing down being the active side. The 2 on bottom are also stacked on top of each other but with the side facing up being the active side. The 2 ring gates in the middle should be linked to eachother. The distance between the 2 in the middle should be 15 feet.
Step 2: Turn etheral and head down under a mountain a ways.
Step 3: Cast a transdimensional disintegrate to make a cave. Cast disintegrate repeatedly until you have a 20x20x20 foot room.
Step 4: Shapechange into a golem.
Step 5: Teleport the frame into space.
Step 6: Use Fabricate to create an airtight sheath for the frame.
Step 7: Teleport the acceleration chamber into the excavated chamber.
Step 8: Create a 1 pound ball of adamantium.
Step 9: Drop it through the ring gate linked to the very top gate in the acceleration chamber.
Step 10: Have the gate linked to the very bottom gate in the acceleration chamber pointed at your target.
There you go.
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Now if you want KEW platforms I will get into creating orbiting satellites in my next post.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
Simple problem with that. There is a limit on how much weight a ring gate can send.
The other problem is that I really freaking enjoy the idea of a LASER. Just marking the target, and then in about fifteen seconds, a beam of solid light impacts and spreads outwards in a circle, levelling everything in its path.
Really the goal here isn't to break the game, it's to make a really awesome cinematic weapon that is nothing short of the coolest artillery ever.
So, absolute power is not the goal here, the goal is for it to be cool. Power is cool, but I don't want to just end the game by being able to crush nations and epic foes alike underfoot by level 10.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Serania
Simple problem with that. There is a limit on how much weight a ring gate can send.
Yes, the first one can fire 1 one-hundred pound missile per day or 100 one pound objects. The second can fire 1 one pound object per day. You just create more acceleration chambers. Or you don't even bother with the acceleration chamber as you don't need it.
Get a 1400 foot long pole and use hinged adamantium disks that way a pound each. Use disentigrate to make a 1410 foot deep, 10 foot wide hole. At the top build a metal room with a roof that can support the 1400 foot pole. Use Sovereign Glue to glue the pole to the roof. At the bottom of the hole have a ring gate, directly under the pole. More precisely have a stack of 15 of them, all with the active side facing up. That is enough to fire 1 round per miniute.
Quote:
The other problem is that I really freaking enjoy the idea of a LASER. Just marking the target, and then in about fifteen seconds, a beam of solid light impacts and spreads outwards in a circle, levelling everything in its path.
Except lasers interact badly with atmosphere. And a 1 pound object traveling at .1c will leave a trail like your talking about. And everything in its path will die.
Quote:
Really the goal here isn't to break the game, it's to make a really awesome cinematic weapon that is nothing short of the coolest artillery ever.
It's not about breaking the game, its about getting an effect for the smallest amount of trouble and with the least amount of house rules. The pole version that does 20d6 uses no house rules at all.
Quote:
So, absolute power is not the goal here, the goal is for it to be cool. Power is cool, but I don't want to just end the game by being able to crush nations and epic foes alike underfoot by level 10.
With the pole option you won't be able to. Breaching a hewn stone wall will take an average of 12 shots. 20d6 seems like a lot but its not enough to 1 shot most dragons even at max, much less average damage.
Now the first option, that gets you multimegaton yields.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
Who said anything about an actual 'laser' or 20d6?
I'm firing Primal Fire from the Plane of Fire itself, this **** does 20d6 per shot and there's fifteen chambers.
Really, trust me, if there was some simple reason this didn't work, I would have noticed it by now.
And If I wanted an entirely different system that fires solid slugs, I would have asked for it by now.
Also, think about it this way.
You're talking about purchasing fifteen matched sets of 40,000 gold Ring Gates. So far, my entire STATION which can fire one shot an hour, or upto 15 at once after an equivalent amount of charging so far is in line to cost less than a hundred thousand.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
Has your DM approved the system you want to use? And the damage can go up to whatever you want.
As for aiming the laser, unless you build in a thruster system then you have to go with orbital speeds, LEO means you could target any given place in the orbit once every 90 minutes. You would need more than 1 satellite to be able to hit anywhere on the planet. As for how you aim, you either put a beacon on the target and have the satellite align its self with the beacon (make the whole satellite a sentient construct with 14 int and a +6 item and maxed ranks in Knowledge: Physics) or you target it by hand (how you do this gets very involved, you need to launch at exactly the right angle and at exactly the right time, even a second off would miss by miles).
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Emperor Tippy
As for aiming the laser, unless you build in a thruster system then you have to go with orbital speeds, LEO means you could target any given place in the orbit once every 90 minutes. You would need more than 1 satellite to be able to hit anywhere on the planet. As for how you aim, you either put a beacon on the target and have the satellite align its self with the beacon (make the whole satellite a sentient construct with 14 int and a +6 item and maxed ranks in Knowledge: Physics) or you target it by hand (how you do this gets very involved, you need to launch at exactly the right angle and at exactly the right time, even a second off would miss by miles).
One word: Magic. If I read it right, the sattelite remains in a geostationary orbit thanks to its anchor spell. The projectile is just magical energy.
To be honest, for someone who once rearranged the entire galaxy as part of a marriage proposal, and who reccomends stuffing trillions of Solars in enclosed spaces on an almost daily basis, you seem awfully concerned about physics. :smallwink:
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
[edit] Dude above me covered it perfectly. [/edit]
The fact that it can't shoot at a lot of the planet would be a problem, if this character ever had plans to leave the main continent. But since this is relatively low-cost compared to some possibilities, even if I chose to travel the unknown seas and seek the unknown other side of the world (They still think it's flat around here for the most part), I could probably just build another by that time.
Interestingly, in another non-solo campaign we're actually ON the other side of the planet. It's a really crazy place. Trees made of rock, we unleashed some kind of tiki-god brand of evil, and I had a vision after about five minutes on it, and I'm not even mildly magical in that campaign.
This brings up the slight concerns of the fact that this worlds planet is freaking HUGE. Seriously, we travelled 117,000 miles on an airship heading west before we found more land. I discussed with him why we aren't just being crushed under the gravity, and he said that it's largely hollow. Apparently that's actually going to be some big revelation to use sometime. It'll still be revelationy once we get in, because we have no clue what the big secret is that's in there. I'm guessing that gods live in there, since even clerics are still never really sure if they're just tapping into a kind of psionic/magic energy or if they're actually talking to the nonexistent gods of the realm.
I feel stupid, because it totally just occurred to me that that trip was way shorter than it should have been. Like, by far. It should have been about four days longer, given that our DMs "At the speed of plot" airship only moves a comparatively sluggish 500mph.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mewtarthio
One word: Magic. If I read it right, the sattelite remains in a geostationary orbit thanks to its anchor spell. The projectile is just magical energy.
A satellite in geostationary orbit is traveling at twenty some thousand miles per hour.
Quote:
To be honest, for someone who once rearranged the entire galaxy as part of a marriage proposal, and who reccomends stuffing trillions of Solars in enclosed spaces on an almost daily basis, you seem awfully concerned about physics. :smallwink:
It depends on what I am doing. Epic magic tells the laws of physics to shut up and sit down. Attempting to make space lasers is different. It's one thing if you just say "It's a magical satellite that can fire a disintegrates beam once every 8 hours and the beam deals 40d6 damage to everything within a 50 foot radius and disintegrate the first 10 feet of earth as well". That would be one thing. But when you try to explain it you may as well go all out and do it with physics.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mewtarthio
The projectile is just magical energy.
Yes but it still propagates in a straight line. And being just the tinest bit off at the start is a big difference over 20,000 miles.[/QUOTE]
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
To me, this particular brand of magic is the equivalent of a hitscan weapon. It travels at "Instant Speed". You fire, it's there. Mostly because my DM doesn't HATE me, and it makes things so much simpler.
Like I described in the last picture, the idea is that the Firing Array eye-thing will communicate with the engine and have it turn until it's super accurate.
This would take a while, because it'll have to use the divination lens I'm gonna design it to get it more accurate like a bubillion times until it can actually hit a target the size of a person, but really it's not meant for mobile targets anyway.
I did mention the Carpet Bombing option though, where it can fire all the shots very quickly over a straight line to try and hit someone.
Technically, you could probably make a version of true strike to just aim it accurately instantly, but it'd be expensive as hell and more than a little overpowered if you ask me. Really, this is meant to be like "Call in the Airstrike" and it takes like thirty seconds but then something is just annihilated.
I could set a beacon somewhere and have time to get the hell out before it fired, and that in itself is cool. Especially if the beacon is something I could get someone to carry, like a marble. Maybe I could just start cursing people with it, and at any given time if they piss me off they're a pre-set target and it'll fire automatically if they break certain conditions. Like a ten times more "OUCH" version of Geas.
Also, when did I ever try to explain it?
The gate spell that gates in more ammo, the loading process, the diagrams, seriously. The total info on the ammo, how its fired, and how much damage and such it does at this point amounts to "It's Magic".
I just felt like mapping it out, because it makes it easier to place a price on it, and if my DM says "A meteor hits it", this way I can say "I don't give a ****, it's made of Obdurium and it doesn't move, ever, and it's full of a swarm of those repairing wasp bugs from MM4, so shut up."
Edit: Holy hell, just took time to look up a KEW Platform. This is AWESOME. That's just so cool...
It's not quite what I'm going for, as it fires solid projectiles and not magic, but I its totally a similar design. From a side view it looks like what my station will, ideally.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
This reminds me of the Nullspace Cannon from Fantastic Science.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Emperor Tippy
A satellite in geostationary orbit is traveling at twenty some thousand miles per hour.
What I think he was going for was a fixed orbit where it's pretty much the moon but with revolution instead of rotation.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
So he wants a geostationary satellite. In that case aiming is as simple as pointing the barrel in the right direction, you have a lot fewer calculations to make.
Hmm, this thread is enticing me to make a whole constellation of attack satellites that will cover every square inch of the world at all times. It would take about 70 birds to do it from LEO. 3 to do it from Geo (if you exclude the poles, significantly more if you want to cover the poles).
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
The nice thing is, the satellite can easily cover the entire tract of land in which this campaign will take place. Like, the entire several continents are all clustered around each other, and from space, it's pretty easy to find a spot where they're all in view at once.
Like, on a globe, you could stand like a foot away and see a big circle that shows all the land mass that I will likely ever set foot on.
One thing I'm worried about a bit is what if the DM gets annoyed and sends space monsters after it or something? It can repair itself and is absurdly hard, but there's still a chance that a dedicated enemy could destroy it, so I need to find some way to attack at things on the station, without harming the station. Maybe include just genuine spell turrets attached to immovable rods around the station.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
A geostationary satellite can cover 1/3 of the earth (if you exclude everything within 25 degrees of either pole. So yes, one should be able to cover your whole campaign area.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
Maybe after I've been to college and back I'll know as much trivia about satellites as you. That would be nice. Then again, gonna be an Actuary. At least I'll be good at math :P
Anyway, back to the topic.
I'm working with my DM on this, and still looking for ways to describe various features of it in ways that already exist in the game if possible. Also, I'm definitely considering getting like, a chaingun of sorts built around the sides of the main barrel, so that even if out of ammo for the big guns, it can still provide air support. Maybe create some kind of new round.
I know I considered making what amounts to a really crappy potion of dispel in the form of a fragile rod, loading it inside a bullet casing, and writing an explosive runes on the the inside of it. On impact, the little rod would break, fail utterly to dispel the runes, and they'd go off, doing some nice damage. The downside is that it requires a casting of a spell to create each and every bullet. But on the upside, I'm pretty sure you can get wands of Explosive Runes. I already talked to my DM about it, asked him how small of a surface I could write an explosive runes on, and he said yeah, I could easily write one onto say, the surface of a dime. It'd take a microscope to read it normally, but I could.
I like the idea of using the explosive runes bullets, even though I'm sure there's a million other ways to do it. Someone else probably already knows where to find rules for making a fireball item that goes off on impact that I could use as shells :P
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
I'd just like to say that I think this is a really cool idea.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
Bump, I guess?
Really, noone has anything to add?
There's a lot more design work to do, but I'm holding off on it until I've actually played some more in the game I'm wanting to build it in.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
I've got a contribution.
You were worried about defense of the space laser right? Well, use a different model of the laser to defend the first one. It dosen't even need to be custructed with the same materials, so it could be a bit cheaper. Instead of the laser, perhaps some kind of short range weapon. I can't think of one, but I'm sure you could. :smallsmile: In fact, three of them would be best, positioned in a triangular fashion above the laser, so no accidents when firing it.
A quick pic to show what I'm talking about.
Three of them works better than one because then an enemy can't hide on the other side of the laser opposite of the Def-turret.
EDIT: Acutaly, those defence turrets need to be dropped a bit lower. Probably about even with the laser. I forgot that it realy dosen't have to turn all that much to sight up a target.
Re: Space Laser! (Semi-large images)
That could work. I remember asking my DM about something similar, I think? I need to see if he'll let me make Immovable Rods anchor to the nearby big one so that they won't like, drift apart. And I think I'd probably build them out of fairly strong materials as well, since in a solo game I'm likely to accumulate a fair bit of wealth, and it's better to just spend more money on them once than to replace one every six months when space zombies attack :smallsmile:
