Reply With QuoteAlso, people think Death Stars aren't very practical, but when you analyze the power requirements for planet-shattering beams, it turns out to be the most efficient form possible.
And also very cool.Originally Posted by Quaro
Also, people think Death Stars aren't very practical, but when you analyze the power requirements for planet-shattering beams, it turns out to be the most efficient form possible.
Umm... holding a mirror kinda nullifies the weapon no?
No. Mirrors aren't perfect reflectors so portion of the energy gets through and wrecks the mirror. Also, I think there's a limit to the intensity of light that can be reflected, even instantaneously.
Plus mirrors are good for certain wavelengths - less so for others. But yes that was a concern for the original anti-ballistic lasers (more that a polished rotating surface of a rotating missile could be a very cheap and potentially very effective countermeasure). These are old designs too - I worked a summer in college at TRW about 20 years ago with a guy who was working on putting big chemical lasers into 747 type planes to use as battlefield air/missile defense.
The problem with laser weapons is the power requirement. With bullets, it's about converting chemical energy into physical force. With laser weapons, you're trying to dump energy into a target, except that the energy has to come from somewhere, and you want to make sure as much of it ends up at the target as possible (instead of being lost as light/heat along the way).
- Alan
Rail guns > laser guns.
Agreed lasers are pretty wimpy compared to mass drivers. Now a particle beam... that would be awesome...
Rail Guns would be a very cool future tech since we're not really all that far off on that.
Likewise theres viable laser weapons out there as well.
Mechs aren't remotely there or even that feasible, especially for combat operations.
Exoskeletons, however, would be a passable tech for the game since they do exist and militaries have a plan for them.
Man there is a lot of hating on Mechs going on here. In Civ IV I usually played the NEXT WAR mod that came with beyond the sword. That added several tech at the end game and some mechs. I loved sending my mechs and enormous tanks to squish the tiny humans... err um enemies of my peaceful nation.
I wouldn't mind seeing the sci fi techs be an option at game creation though.
I like the way you think!
Nah, traditional "mechs" are silly--it's the unmanned ones you have to worry about. Exoskeletons are somewhat feasible, but power is still a problem. Wait, what were we talking about again?
- Alan
LOL - Yeah, I think this is about a game that allows desk jockeys to take over the world. Very serious stuff. I'm thinking mechs will somehow be okay in the game, and I trust the people who have carefully crafted one of my favorite addictions over the past couple of decades to do a decent job with it. Everyone can always make a clunker, but the chances are pretty slim in this case.
All the people hating on mechs need to report for immediate emergency treatment of their fun hating condition.
Of course mechs aren't real world feasible, but neither is half the shit that happens in a Civ game. Doesn't stop them from being seriously cool.
...and yet for some reason people object to dragons in Civ. Why do these people hate fun?
(I actually would happily play a Civ mod where dragons ridden by elves fight mechs armed with rainbow cannons. But that's what mods and variants are for.)
Assuming you're talking about me, I guess the distinction between sci-fi and fantasy is meaningless to you. That's okay. To each their own.
I personally am not "hating on" mechs per se. I loves 'em, I do. I was just agreeing with the initial objection that they don't fit into the Civ canon to date. 'Cause they don't. But I look forward to giving them a spin in Civ V.
Mechs are the sci-fi equivalent of chain mail bikinis: easy on the eyes, but don't make a lick of sense.
I get the distinction just fine. Dragons and giant bipedal war robots are fantasy, autonomous tracked military vehicles and micro-UAV swarms are science fiction. :)
Um ... I hate to say it, but if that's your view then no, you don't really get the distinction at all. Kind of surprising to me as I never imagined someone on here wouldn't. It seems to me you just have an "okay for Civ" and "not okay for Civ" pair of categories in this discussion. If that works for you, then go with it but try to keep in mind that it's not the same.
I personally think a better argument for your side of things is "If there are going to be mechs, then why not have dropships and/or space cruisers?" I mean heck, if it's okay to travel to Alpha Centauri - something that would take the fastest man-made object at its peak speed (one of the Helios probes, thanks to a "slingshot effect" around the sun) close to 20,000 years - then why not have spaceships battling it out between the stars? Not many fans of Civ would accept that so easily, and at least there you could find some common ground to start from.
Civilization V is available for pre-order from zavvi.com for £9.95 and free shipping for UK orders. According to zavvi.com, that's a £30.04 saving from the RRP.
That's quite a price drop for a game that hasn't even been released yet.
Edit: The offer has expired. The price is currently £34.95.
Last edited by Greybriar; 07-15-2010 at 05:50 AM. Reason: Offer expired.
My joking point is that mechs will never exist. They aren't in the category of "some day, we may develop the technology that will allow us to build this things" that, say, spaceships destined for Alpha Centauri occupy. Giant, bipedal war machines are silly sauce, because they do nothing that can't be done better by a tracked or flying vehicle, and because the square cube law hates them.
War mechs and dragons are equally improbable flights of fancy.
It's true, of course, that "science fiction" includes plenty of things that are fantastic and impossible, which is why I attached the smiley. ("Psionics" are science fiction, for example, or once were; I think they may have slid back into fantasy since the death of John Campbell.) I think it's fair, however, to say that fantastical science fiction has not been an element of the Civilization series before now, and sits uneasily with the historical theme of the game in a way that harder science fiction does not.
And ... I missed the smiley. My mistake. That's what I get for posting at work <facepalm to cover embarassed face>
I think mech inclusion is the least of CivV's worries. Coming out after Civ. IV is the number one worry. Getting rid of stacks is another.
Technically, I'd say that spaceships bound for Alpha Centauri are even less likely than mechs--or at least equally unlikely. The logistics of interstellar space travel and colonization are so far beyond our current technological capabilities that depicting it is not so much a meaningful prediction as it is a "wouldn't this be cool?" scenario. Much like mechs.
As has been mentioned in the thread already, the Alpha Centauri thing is based on the race to the moon. It's a part of history that everyone understands, and as such, it's a perfect fit for Civ. Mechs, on the other hand, are sheer sci-fi fantasy.
When your criteria for including something in Civ is "wouldn't it be cool?", you end up with Call to Power. Remember how well that worked.
And for the record, I think mechs are cool. And I have no idea whether adding mechs in Civ V works or not. I look forward to finding out, and I'm happy to give Firaxis the benefit of the doubt. But I reserve the right to be skeptical.
-Tom
So if you're extending the tech tree out a bit -- which is a great idea -- what do you put after "Modern Armor"?
I bet they had a meeting to address this issue, and one of the guys on the team (the one wearing the Neon Genesis Evangelion t-shirt) was all "Mechs!" And everyone laughed a little bit, and then they were all "But no, seriously," and then they sat there for a few minutes in silence, and then somebody tentatively was like "Future Armor, maybe?" and everyone kinda made that little dismissive crowd noise, and finally someone was like, "I dunno, mechs might kinda work."
I think since humans have been off the Earth and stood on the Moon(so they say), there is 'evidence' that humans can someday(if all goes right) colonize another world.
If some guy back in the day said he could sail around the world, the people of his day could reasonably scoff at that outlandish claim IF sailing ships hadn't been invented yet. But once a guy can sail from here to there, then it's all just a matter of determination to sail from here to WAY in the hell over there.
On the other hand, nothing like a fire breathing dragon that is typically encountered in fantasy has ever been known to exist, anywhere, anytime in our world. Therefore, scoffing and calling it pure fantasy is justified.
Mechs seem like they'd fit fantasy but they don't. We have Predators flying missions these days. Those are just remote control planes. Imagine suggesting to someone back when the B-52 was rolled out "Yeah that's cool but someday what's REALLY going to make a difference is a small remote controlled plane with a propeller engine, just like the kind my kid has."
Just because mechs don't have an application in the here and now, that we can see, is no reason to think they never will or never can.
I agree, but can you think of an analog to this in previous Civ games? The good ones, I mean. Civ has always steered clear of crazy sci-fi tech stuff in favor of relatable things like the cure for cancer and clean energy.
On one hand, I'm glad they're trying new things. On the other hand, I'm worried the new things might seem silly and out of place.
-Tom
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