The Omega Solution - Molecular Destabilizer

[Kaed]

So, it doesn't come up very often, but the station self destruct/nuke is really dated and ancient code.  It plays an animation of what I assume is the original SS13 station model (nothing like the station you are actually on) exploding and then everyone on the server is floored and locked into paralysis, and everyone on the station itself is just set to dead.  It also causes a bit of lag at times.  So I came up with a more !!Fun!! way to do it, and I thought I'd ask for some feedback.

• Instead of the station exploding with a dated animation, the MD causes all organic, positronic, and mechanical 'life' to destablize and explode.  What this means is that everyone on the station gibs.
• Due to gibbing being a particularly expensive process as far as processing power, a check will be included that staggers out the gibbing to prevent the server from lagging. This also means that there will be a lot of screaming and things during laggy/highpop days where people around you are exploding and you know your doom is coming but you can do naught to stop it but pray to the unmerciful gods.
• No one will be paralyzed anymore, nor will people off the station itself be affected but this mass gibbing.  Eventually, all that will be left is oil and gore and piles of organs.  Threats neutralized.
• This makes a bit more sense in the context of Nanotrasen, because why would they blow up their expensive station when purging all life on it and sending in a cleanup crew would be so much cheaper?
• Might need to sprite and redescribe the mercenary nuke to be a portal MD.  Or just remove it.  What do you think on this one?

[N8-Toe]

if I'm being honest. the nuke has STYLE points. and the self destruct currently does the advantage of destroying sensitive data, and any other threats that may not be of a living type. 

[Butterrobber202]

have we considered what implications a biological weapon of this scale would mean for warfare between empires in our lore? (Assuming that could occur at some point.)

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

A lot of games differentiate between nuking and what is usually called a "neutron sweep". 

Stellaris has a weapon that sweeps a planet of all life but keeps it intact, where the planet cracker (nuke) destroys the place.

Pandemic swine flu does the same.  You can nuke a city or neutron bomb it to delete the city or leave everyone in it dead with the buildings intact.

So this would be great! A lot more scifi than a nuke. Its got a great mouthfeel for our scifi setting.

17 minutes ago, Butterrobber202 said:

have we considered what implications a biological weapon of this scale would mean for warfare between empires in our lore? (Assuming that could occur at some point.)

Same as any WMD....

 

Edited April 23, 2019 by Marlon Phoenix

[Kaed]

2 hours ago, N8-Toe said:

if I'm being honest. the nuke has STYLE points. and the self destruct currently does the advantage of destroying sensitive data, and any other threats that may not be of a living type. 

Eh. I would argue it's out of style.  Sensitive data is less valuable than an entire three floor station built into an asteroid.  You can retrieve stolen sensitive data once you get the news of the station being purged.

As for 'other threats', lol.  I don't think you understand how powerful this is going to be.  Any mob on the map, from the smallest floorbot to a big juggernaut, will explode with this 'bomb'.  The only things that will survive it are ghosts, the AI eye (but not the AI itself) and Nar-nar.

 

2 hours ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

A lot of games differentiate between nuking and what is usually called a "neutron sweep". 

Stellaris has a weapon that sweeps a planet of all life but keeps it intact, where the planet cracker (nuke) destroys the place.

Pandemic swine flu does the same.  You can nuke a city or neutron bomb it to delete the city or leave everyone in it dead with the buildings intact.

So this would be great! A lot more scifi than a nuke. Its got a great mouthfeel for our scifi setting.

Same as any WMD....

 

It's a little stronger than a neutron sweep, and uses baloneymancy to affect all living and synthetic entities, but yeah. 

[Arrow768]

Definitely a interesting idea.

[ben10083]

Interesting idea, but instead of just being gibbed, how about everyone turns into goop or ashes?

[Conspiir]

The science behind this confuses me.

 

What causes it to explode the robots with computer chips, but not the many computers on the station? The laptops? The request consoles? The news reporters? The autolathes, protolathe, chemheaters, anything with a chip?

 

 

[ben10083]

27 minutes ago, Conspiir said:

The science behind this confuses me.

 

What causes it to explode the robots with computer chips, but not the many computers on the station? The laptops? The request consoles? The news reporters? The autolathes, protolathe, chemheaters, anything with a chip?

 

 

Postibrains, Robotic chips, and MMIs are likely affected due to their unique intelligence (also it doesn't have to be 100% realistic to work).

[Conspiir]

1 hour ago, ben10083 said:

Postibrains, Robotic chips, and MMIs are likely affected due to their unique intelligence (also it doesn't have to be 100% realistic to work).

Kaed said floorbots (and it is assumed medibots and mopbots as well) would be affected. Those don't have chips at all.

[ben10083]

1 hour ago, Conspiir said:

Kaed said floorbots (and it is assumed medibots and mopbots as well) would be affected. Those don't have chips at all.

Floorbots and other similar bots have robotic chips as well, although inferior to ones used in robots, would still be affected.

[Conspiir]

13 minutes ago, ben10083 said:

Floorbots and other similar bots have robotic chips as well, although inferior to ones used in robots, would still be affected.

They aren't made using them. Only proximity sensors. If we want to explain it that way, then circuits need to be created for these inferior bots to be built with. But... that just makes them another chip device.

 

Which still raises the question in my mind: if it's destroying the Roomba (that's actually just a motherboard--with some sensors and a broom), why is it not destroying all the station hardware that's just a motherboard--i.e., computers, laptops, any buildable machine?

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

1 minute ago, Conspiir said:

They aren't made using them. Only proximity sensors. If we want to explain it that way, then circuits need to be created for these inferior bots to be built with. But... that just makes them another chip device.

 

Which still raises the question in my mind: if it's destroying the Roomba (that's actually just a motherboard--with some sensors and a broom), why is it not destroying all the station hardware that's just a motherboard--i.e., computers, laptops, any buildable machine?

Because of the effect if the bomb on intelligent creatures.

[Conspiir]

3 minutes ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

Because of the effect if the bomb on intelligent creatures.

A cleanbot isn't an intelligent creature in any capacity. Roombas are not liable to take over the world.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Thats just how the weapon works. It may be strange, but its a weapon of science fiction.

[Kaed]

4 hours ago, Conspiir said:

The science behind this confuses me.

 

What causes it to explode the robots with computer chips, but not the many computers on the station? The laptops? The request consoles? The news reporters? The autolathes, protolathe, chemheaters, anything with a chip? 

 

Bluespace magic. Baloneymancy.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Like jackboot said, it's sci fi, and SS13 can get pretty soft at times. You don't need to explain everything, the important part is it's a more interesting way to all die than everyone on the server being perma paralyzed and the station crew just dropping dead because 'explosion' that can't be processed on the map itself. 

The real reason is that it targets all mob/living on the map, which includes some tiny bots and all pets and such.

Edited April 24, 2019 by Kaed

[Conspiir]

22 minutes ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

Thats just how the weapon works. It may be strange, but its a weapon of science fiction.

 

1 minute ago, Kaed said:

Bluespace magic. Baloneymancy.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Like jackboot said, it's sci fi, and SS13 can get pretty soft at times. You don't need to explain everything, the important part is it's a more interesting way to all die than everyone on the server being perma paralyzed and the station crew just dropping dead because 'explosion' that can't be processed on the map itself.

I literally can't accept that. I don't think you guys get it. You cannot say this weapon destroys these chips but not those chips if both chips are made the exact same. That's beyond science fiction. You can't handwave that. "Oh, it's bluespace" is not acceptable.

[Kaed]

10 minutes ago, Conspiir said:

 

I literally can't accept that. I don't think you guys get it. You cannot say this weapon destroys these chips but not those chips if both chips are made the exact same. That's beyond science fiction. You can't handwave that. "Oh, it's bluespace" is not acceptable.

Fine, geez.  It's a prototype semi-sentient AI that runs a bluespace destablizer that can see the entirety of the station and asteroid and telegibs anything on the station that is not part of the station architectural layout using the mechanics we already have in place in telescience, just applied for hostile purposes.  They don't even need to figure out destination coordinates, it just splatters whatever it finds all over the hallways with an improper teleport.

Edited April 24, 2019 by Kaed

[Conspiir]

13 minutes ago, Kaed said:

Fine, geez.  It's a prototype semi-sentient AI that runs a bluespace destablizer that can see the entirety of the station and asteroid and telegibs anything on the station that is not part of the station architectural layout using the mechanics we already have in place in telescience, just applied for hostile purposes.  They don't even need to figure out destination coordinates, it just splatters whatever it finds all over the hallways with an improper teleport.

Okay, we can work with that.

 

How do we account for the bluespace inhibitors? Like, if someone hid next to one. And about the asteroid. What is it using to sense outside of the station? (And in the maintenance tunnels, too, I guess.) Even our actual AI can't.

 

Also, hm. I don't think that mass telegibbing can be reflected mechanically. The point of this suggestion is to try to give a better, more complete explanation and execution than the one we have. If holes are left behind, there will just be another one of these threads in 3 months saying "the execution we have now is poor, let's change it" so we need to have as many bases covered as possible, or not waste resources to change anything at all. Why replace a smelly fish with a smelly cephalopod?

[ben10083]

I really do not see the problem with the small oversight of janibots

We have a blood worshiping demon that actually exists, yet never shown to be public

We have Glorsh, who disappeared because "reasons"
We have teleporting bears

We have a artillery cannon that is somehow able to teleport Bluespace shells into a specific area

We have Bugs who live in a VR paradise and never die due to "unknown technology"

The list goes on. Overall, such a small oversight is not a dealbreaker.

[Dark1Star]

+1 I like this idea, would be pretty amazing and sad to see your friend blow up, and start crying and then you blow up.

[Conspiir]

50 minutes ago, ben10083 said:

I really do not see the problem with the small oversight of janibots

We have a blood worshiping demon that actually exists, yet never shown to be public

We have Glorsh, who disappeared because "reasons"
We have teleporting bears

We have a artillery cannon that is somehow able to teleport Bluespace shells into a specific area

We have Bugs who live in a VR paradise and never die due to "unknown technology"

The list goes on. Overall, such a small oversight is not a dealbreaker.

There is an explanation for each of these. Their existence is not contradicted by the explanation. I'm not asking for total realism. I'm totally fine with a science fiction explanation. But that explanation has to be complete and make sense. There are times when "bluespace" is acceptable. This just isn't one of those cases.

 

Since this is not the first iteration of a thing, but the second, it must be improved upon. The general idea is good, but it must be better than what we have and it must be solid and not self-contradictory or lacking. There should not be oversights that are found before implementation, or it should be adjusted.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Do you have any ideas Conspiire?

[LorenLuke]

Possible alternative, don't know how lag heavy it might be-

Just make an atmosphere-blocking 'bluespace' tile that replaces the tile it's on. This slowly spreads from its tile until it's surrounded by others (on all sides), then winks out into nothing. Make it travel through walls/doors more slowly, and have the weird gibbing/matter destabilization effects only be at random within a tile or two. So you have this relatively quickly (2/3 walking pace) expanding, all-consuming thing.

Code wise, each one can just... Look for turf/simulated around it, change it, then when it's surrounded by bluespace turf, change to a different tile with just a space appearance (saves on processing power). Touching the bluespace tiles means instant death. And it eats everything. Suffice to say, if you have a nuke, it's basically doing the same thing as this.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

4 minutes ago, LorenLuke said:

Possible alternative, don't know how lag heavy it might be-

The primary purpose is to remove lag from an all-instant detonation.

 

Btw you're describing a bluespace cascade

Edited April 24, 2019 by Marlon Phoenix