I love watching missile fleet battles, though since disruptors and strike crafts are the other both weapons you usually use in missile builds they ruin the view. SC are fine if limited in number, but that disruptor array sinply looks terribly awful. What is it anyway in terms of science? Some sort of weaponry focusing on Heisenberg's uncertainity principle?
What are phase disruptors, and how to visualise them more nicely?
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To my knowledge...Star Trek writers needed Klingons to have a ranged weapon that would sound less elegant and more brutal than a phaser. That at least is (allegedly) the term's origin. I don't know if a more scientifically backed concept wound up associated after the fact.
It's very sci-fi, but the concept to a phase disruptor is that your emitting something that causes matter to spontaneously disorganize/shift/skip along the phase gradient( plasma>gas>liquid>solid). Solids become gases, gases become solids, ect and emit/consume all the energy normally involved into/from all the adjacent matter with all the attendant secondary effects.
the mechanism to make such an effect happen is nothing but conjecture though, since we only know of limited exceptions to how things change phases, and then those are mostly water being weird.
the mechanism to make such an effect happen is nothing but conjecture though, since we only know of limited exceptions to how things change phases, and then those are mostly water being weird.
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I'm guessing it "disrupts" the atomic and molecular bonds, that's how I always understood it.
So, materials would lose solidity, the degree of which depends on the starting point of the affected material. Something not very solid gets vaporized or completely atomized.
So, materials would lose solidity, the degree of which depends on the starting point of the affected material. Something not very solid gets vaporized or completely atomized.
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"Disruptors fire high-energy bolts that weaken and destroy the molecular bonds that hold the target's constituent atoms together. They are capable of passing through shields and armor to wreak havoc directly on enemy hull and crew."
This sounds like some kind of subatomic gravity wave since it's not stopped by anything. A gravity wave of sufficient amplitude and short wavelength would indeed rip molecules apart and not be stopped by armors or shields. It wouldn't look like anything though, it'd be invisible.
"These upgraded disruptors fire bolts of more destructive ion Particles at targets."
This sounds like a ion cannon to be honest. Standard Sci-fi trope. However it should not ignore armor and shields by the description so I'll say this one is an outliner. It should look like a glowing beam since high energy particles are very hot and give off light.
"Extremely high-yield disruptors that fire quantum energy charges causing incredible damage to those unfortunate enough to get in their way."
This seems more like the regular disruptor however it also sounds like it needs new physics to explain.
However these are mostly techno-babble terms than anything realistic and realism has never been a thing Stellaris has (or should) concerned itself with, so just make them look like energy beams that give off light. TBH lasers shouldn't create visible beams either if we want to be realistic, but nobody would like that.
This sounds like some kind of subatomic gravity wave since it's not stopped by anything. A gravity wave of sufficient amplitude and short wavelength would indeed rip molecules apart and not be stopped by armors or shields. It wouldn't look like anything though, it'd be invisible.
"These upgraded disruptors fire bolts of more destructive ion Particles at targets."
This sounds like a ion cannon to be honest. Standard Sci-fi trope. However it should not ignore armor and shields by the description so I'll say this one is an outliner. It should look like a glowing beam since high energy particles are very hot and give off light.
"Extremely high-yield disruptors that fire quantum energy charges causing incredible damage to those unfortunate enough to get in their way."
This seems more like the regular disruptor however it also sounds like it needs new physics to explain.
However these are mostly techno-babble terms than anything realistic and realism has never been a thing Stellaris has (or should) concerned itself with, so just make them look like energy beams that give off light. TBH lasers shouldn't create visible beams either if we want to be realistic, but nobody would like that.
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So from what I, thanks to you guys, now understand, is that the difference between laser weapons and disruptors lies in the emitted form of energy; latter are sending actual particles at the targeted matter to destroy the bonds between the atoms while former emit concentrated light streams which also targets the atoms themselves, ultimately not only leading to destabilisation and thus phase change but destroction of the matter.
Since the battles take place in the void neither should cause visible effects unless hitting any form of matter, and if so then lasers would cause very intense light, almost like can be seen when things explode, while the effects of disruptors would only be seen as the hull continously desintegrate untill it completely change phase. I definetely can imagine better visualisations for both, would be cool if they worked on it for Stellris 2....
Since the battles take place in the void neither should cause visible effects unless hitting any form of matter, and if so then lasers would cause very intense light, almost like can be seen when things explode, while the effects of disruptors would only be seen as the hull continously desintegrate untill it completely change phase. I definetely can imagine better visualisations for both, would be cool if they worked on it for Stellris 2....
All questions of realism in visualization are tempered by the desire to see Cool Energy Beams coming out of one ship and hitting another.
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Are you, by any chance, using ion disruptors in your office, or is it just the casual ruby laser?
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Stellaris is completely and totally soft sci-fi. Absolutely any explanation of disruptors is basically garbage from top to bottom, much more so than any other weapon because the way they operate is dependent on also knowing how OTHER totally soft sci-fi technologies work - that being the shields they pass straight through.
With soft sci-fi the trick to maintain suspension of disbelief is not trying to explain how the things work. It's to have specific rules of what they do and then sticking to those rules so the audience can just accept that a certain thing does a certain thing. We don't, after all, tend to have any idea whatsoever about any part of the process that happens to allow me to flick a switch and get a bright light, we just know the names of some of the stuff and what it will do.
Disruptors don't just ignore shields....they ignore armour. That's the part which makes them so impossible to try and explain, and makes them space magic powered by authorial fiat. It makes no sense how a disruptor can pass through armour without damaging it while still damaging the internal hull. It is, however, a consistent rule so whatever I don't care. They're like 40k bolter rounds. Through illogical space magic the 'mass reactive' warhead of a bolter shell somehow knows when it has penetrated into a target, despite targets having wildly varying outer layers ranging from all types of armour and clothing to bare skin which can also be of wildly varying density and toughness, and explode inside. It makes absolutely no sense, but it's just what they do, they do it consistently (even to the point of extreme close range potentially not allowing the warhead enough time to arm and pass straight through the target in different books by different authors), so there's no problem.
With soft sci-fi the trick to maintain suspension of disbelief is not trying to explain how the things work. It's to have specific rules of what they do and then sticking to those rules so the audience can just accept that a certain thing does a certain thing. We don't, after all, tend to have any idea whatsoever about any part of the process that happens to allow me to flick a switch and get a bright light, we just know the names of some of the stuff and what it will do.
Disruptors don't just ignore shields....they ignore armour. That's the part which makes them so impossible to try and explain, and makes them space magic powered by authorial fiat. It makes no sense how a disruptor can pass through armour without damaging it while still damaging the internal hull. It is, however, a consistent rule so whatever I don't care. They're like 40k bolter rounds. Through illogical space magic the 'mass reactive' warhead of a bolter shell somehow knows when it has penetrated into a target, despite targets having wildly varying outer layers ranging from all types of armour and clothing to bare skin which can also be of wildly varying density and toughness, and explode inside. It makes absolutely no sense, but it's just what they do, they do it consistently (even to the point of extreme close range potentially not allowing the warhead enough time to arm and pass straight through the target in different books by different authors), so there's no problem.
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Since mesons don't interact much with other particles, it has been theorized that meson weapons could indeed pass through practically anything without damaging it. If timed so the mesons decayed explosively inside the target, that would be an example of a weapon, based on known physics rather than space magic, that could pass through armor and damage the underlying structure of the ship.
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All of the above, or perhaps none of that. One thing is for sure: it is some sort of Kajigger, of that there is no doubt.
The idea of timing a meson weapon to precisely enter a maneuvering ship and explode inside it IS space magic.
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While this is far away from a military use the "passing through armor and damaging internal stuff" part is used in brain cancer therapy. Particles are accelerated by a particle accelerator to a point at which they behave as a wave and not as a particle anymore, while passing through the skin, bones and healthy brain matter they are losing exactly the amount of energy so that they get back to the particle behaviour exactly in the cancer cells and destroying them.
So it is not magic from a physical point of view but from an engineering point of view because you would need extremely accurate information of the armor thickness and composition at exactly the angle you are firing on the other ship and doing this through dense metals is a completely different beast than doing it hrough human tissue.
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My ship weapons harness the energy of superheated vegetable oil to fire scalding beams of organic corrosive mass to dissolve enemy armor and hulls. this is possible due to Ramsay's 3rd law of the fry chef, and the Law of Universal Cuisine.
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In my headcanon, disruptors also ignore the hull and somehow strike at the crew. A bit like some real-life road bombs can kill people without piercing armor, the blast pushes the vehicle up in an instant, and people are more sensitive to extreme acceleration than metal. Except it works in space and something something technobabble.
Of course it doesn't fit with how you can give extra hull points to the ship, or several other parts of the gameplay, but I like the idea.
Of course it doesn't fit with how you can give extra hull points to the ship, or several other parts of the gameplay, but I like the idea.
You are all wrong.
Disruptors are basically high-tech squirt guns that fire a concentrated stream of Science Juice!
It's super effective!
Disruptors are basically high-tech squirt guns that fire a concentrated stream of Science Juice!
It's super effective!
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