Plasma Projectiles Versus Metal Armor

[gibberingmouther]

So, I'm considering the match up between Goku and, let's say, an armored mech.

I wrote out rules for a GURPS game based on Dragon Ball flavor and powers but kind of a more logically consistent version of that universe that I have written probably a couple dozen pages about so far. So, the "kamehameha" or hadouken type attack is basically air that is heated by ki and compressed telekinetically also by ki and then sent off to the opponent telekinetically. Once the projectile reaches the opponent, the telekinesis is released so that the super heated air or plasma rapidly explodes (close to what would happen with such heat and pressure) into the target. The particles of ki transmit energy from the spirit body (the full explanation is TL;DR) and in addition emit photons that match the "color" of the person's personality at a deep level ... whatever that means exactly, I don't know, but it looks cool. So the telekinetically contained blast will have a bright color like in the anime - Freiza's might be purple, and Goku's yellow-ish. This *is* a game world where ki use can become a super power, but not to the level where Goku can destroy the moon or a planet. But he should be able to blow up a pesky robot pretty easily at his level of training and ability.

If you compress and heat the air enough you get plasma, which would be a higher level version of the ki blast in my game world. So, I know plasma cutters can cut through metal pretty easily, but they also have an electric charge associated with how they work. Would a regular plasma projectile - say from an advanced ki blast - be able to melt through heavy armor like a mech might have?

Mechs, just as a side note, are possible in this game world because of "super science": the gods put special crystals and ores and things all around the universe, like a scavenger hunt for scientists, that can be used for special science-y technologies, like for example an "Iron man battery" type energy source that could be used to fuel a mech or flying cars.

 

[trurle]

This is a question my sons asked several times before. Here was my answer:

Looking on these compressed-air projectiles, you see the user of technique is not fried by heat of their own projectile, and therefore, if assuming:
1) Air compressed adiabatically, no heat added or drained
2) User of "kamehameha" do not have magical radiant-energy shield
, the pressure of "fireball" is about 20MPa and temperature is about 2100CThe effect on targets would be very similar to fuel-air munitions - i.e. "fireball" would realistically tend to smash or toss armoured enemies instead of melting through or ripping the armour.

Extremely compressed blue-colored fireballs (9000C and 500MPa) are theoretically have some armour penetration comparable to howitzer artillery shell, although it is not clear how user would survive parasitic heat of these during launch.

P.S. If the color is dominated by source other than thermal emission (for example, by personality as you propose), the "fireballs" must be even colder and less dense than in the examples above.

 

[gibberingmouther]

This is a question my sons asked several times before. Here was my answer:

Looking on these compressed-air projectiles, you see the user of technique is not fried by heat of their own projectile, and therefore, if assuming:
1) Air compressed adiabatically, no heat added or drained
2) User of "kamehameha" do not have magical radiant-energy shield
, the pressure of "fireball" is about 20MPa and temperature is about 2100CThe effect on targets would be very similar to fuel-air munitions - i.e. "fireball" would realistically tend to smash or toss armoured enemies instead of melting through the armour.

Extremely compressed blue-colored fireballs (9000C and 500MPa) are theoretically have some armour penetration comparable to howitzer artillery shell, although it is not clear how user would survive parasitic heat of these during launch.

Okay, that is definitely some good information! Thank you.

The idea is the ki user - like Goku - could and usually would have a telekinetic force field around their body, the strength of which would depend on their power level and how much total energy they have to divert to it. The "power level" in GURPS terms is how must "spirit energy" you can spend per turn on these various things. I even wrote a formula to describe how the "spirit energy cost" of using telekinesis goes up the farther away from the ki user's body the telekinesis is being applied:

spirit cost = w * TK * (a - b)^2 + minimumcost

w is the weight in the "spirit" unit, the value of which will depend on how the gods want use of ki in the universe to be calibrated

TK is the constant value in Newtons you are applying to the object to move it. If TK is not constant it will be an equation and then the formula gets more complicated

a and b are the distances from the ki user (which i modeled as a particle) in meters. these are both the initial and final distances for the position of the object you're using TK on and the initial and final distances from the ki user (one is for calculating the energy requirement and the other is so you can multiply it against the weight value).

minimumcost is supposed to be for when you're applying telekinesis to your own body - so the distance from your body is zero. this only works right if you model the ki user as, say, a circle rather than a point. but then the math gets more complicated. the unit for minimumcost as for the "spirit cost" in total is spirit-joule-meters.

So, my question for you would then be whether a force field could ward off this "parasitic heat"?

 

[trurle]

You need a sort of incredibly effective personal "anti-heat" force field to launch something as destructive as dragonBall or other typical fighting-game attack.
I think the main reason why (realistic) forcefield during attack is absent in most animes is because it ungainly - tends to hide figure of protagonist and make fight less visually appealing.
The early seasons of "slayers" anime on the other hand had some SF roots, therefore in "slayers" formation of launch-moment shields during magical attack is shown in more details though.

 

[gibberingmouther]

So I want to have my rules logically consistent at least at the macro scale if that makes sense. Ki particles are massless and might be the size of photons ... not a particle physics buff but I don't think it matters too much here (heh heh). You could set up a skin-tight telekinetic force field around your body using ki, or maybe give yourself some air buffer. The force field wouldn't be there all the time - it depends on how strategy tells you to use your energy in order to have the best odds of winning the fight.

So, if you're on the receiving end of a ki blast, you might use your telekinesis to slow it down to a reasonable speed and then just use a force field around your hands and like a shield around the front of your body where the impact zone is so you can diffuse the blast. If it's really hot you would have to maybe use more force shield and wait for outside air to come in (or use TK to pull it in faster) so that heat differential gets down to a level where you won't die... I guess holding your breath might be required a part of the strategy?

Now that I think of it shouldn't the telekinesis containing the blast prevent the heat from leaking out if it's dense enough? The way telekinesis works is it's a vector field (of just generic force vectors) controlled by your mind. The energy flows into your "spirit body" (the "spirit"/psychic analog of your real body that can channel energy and transmit it to the ki particles) from the "divine spark" (since ki was invented by the gods to replace the powerful magic they lose when they assume mortal form ... again, a lot of lore here so TL;DR) which is also where the ki particles come from. The ki can create these force vectors around it; if you're a user of destructive ki, it can agitate the matter (usually air) near it so it gains thermal energy; if you're a healer that's complicated but instead of ki blasts you get healing.

So ... I think you could create a dense enough force field that it would repel kinetically agitated atoms. The key thing here is that telekinesis is cheapest and strongest when it's right against your body. I think this should work - the key thing is that the force field is dense enough, basically, and a denser force field means more force vectors which theoretically costs more though the way I have implemented things in GURPS is not exactly like a mathematical model. But since TK applied to your own body or very close to it is super cheap I think this is reasonable.

 

[trurle]

So, if you're on the receiving end of a ki blast, you might use your telekinesis to slow it down to a reasonable speed and then just use a force field around your hands and like a shield around the front of your body where the impact zone is so you can diffuse the blast. If it's really hot you would have to maybe use more force shield and wait for outside air to come in (or use TK to pull it in faster) so that heat differential gets down to a level where you won't die... I guess holding your breath might be required a part of the strategy?

Do not forget the main killing effect or receiving end would be realistically the force of expanding air trying to knock you down and toss your body. Therefore, the skin-conformal field will protect poorly, you will need something anchoring to ground below to transfer momentum to something besides your body.

Now that I think of it shouldn't the telekinesis containing the blast prevent the heat from leaking out if it's dense enough? The way telekinesis works is it's a vector field (of just generic force vectors) controlled by your mind. The energy flows into your "spirit body" (the "spirit"/psychic analog of your real body that can channel energy and transmit it to the ki particles) from the "divine spark" (since ki was invented by the gods to replace the powerful magic they lose when they assume mortal form ... again, a lot of lore here so TL;DR) which is also where the ki particles come from. The ki can create these force vectors around it; if you're a user of destructive ki, it can agitate the matter (usually air) near it so it gains thermal energy; if you're a healer that's complicated but instead of ki blasts you get healing.

To contain radiant heat the forcefield must be non-transparent. This is the only physical restriction.

So ... I think you could create a dense enough force field that it would repel kinetically agitated atoms. The key thing here is that telekinesis is cheapest and strongest when it's right against your body. I think this should work - the key thing is that the force field is dense enough, basically, and a denser force field means more force vectors which theoretically costs more though the way I have implemented things in GURPS is not exactly like a mathematical model. But since TK applied to your own body or very close to it is super cheap I think this is reasonable.

This part is irrelevant. Heat conduction is very minor (<0.1%) contribution to the damage made by the ball of super-compressed air. Main killers would be momentum transferred by shockwave and radiant energy.

 

[gibberingmouther]

Okay, the part about shockwave momentum and radiant energy is news to me! Cool!

As for the force field needing to contain the radiant energy, that's great because I already decided it should work that way so it still looks cool and the ki blast is the color emitted by the ki particles. It's very important that powers be cool looking, lol ...

Also, thank you! You really helped me out here.

 

[Rive]

he should be able to blow up a pesky robot pretty easily

That is a bit problematic. If you take it as if it is the main power what you see shooting toward the target then those limitations @trurle mentioned previously are valid and render these techniques at most anti-personnel level.
I think you should modify this so that what can be seen would be just the leakage: this way you can set the energy level more freely.

 

[gibberingmouther]

That is a bit problematic. If you take it as if it is the main power what you see shooting toward the target then those limitations @trurle mentioned previously are valid and render these techniques at most anti-personnel level.
I think you should modify this so that what can be seen would be just the leakage: this way you can set the energy level more freely.

I'm not worried about the heat differential or the radiant energy because you can just make a really dense force field. Maybe I could make the rules so that - again, this is more about lore than game rules - the force vectors can merge into a sort of continuous force bubble without needing to have a really dense field of force vectors. Thus you can contain the energy of your blast without needing to use a ton of energy - a lot of energy, yes, but not as huge an amount. Again, it's a psychic power so you could have it so this force field also works on radiation.

Since you're containing the radiation as well as the compressed heated air, I don't see why you couldn't set the energy level to whatever you want, as long as your power level enables you to use that much energy for your telekinesis. The one issue is that the farther away from your body, the more expensive it is to use telekinesis. So, for a very powerful ki blast relative to your power level, the range might be forced down because of this since you can only maintain the force field for a little ways away from your body - unless maybe you can make a force bubble that doesn't need your energy to keep on containing the blast. For something like the kamehameha I don't know if this would work though ... the telekinesis would ordinarily be a sort of tube for that technique, with the tube opening up like a horn (the instrument) at the target, and the part around the hands being where the air is sucked in and heated and then propelled through the telekinetic force field tube. Easy to imagine, hard to explain. For a "full power" kamehameha to have much distance I'd have to alter the rules a bit, maybe allowing for some kind of shaped force bubble. I'll have to think about it!

Weak anti-personnel blasts could have a pretty long range though, without needing any kind of rule for "force bubbles". So, I am going to try to write out the math for the heating effect of the ki *if I can*, and then I'll see how the ratio for how strong the telekinesis is for your power level to how strong the heating effect is for your power level (and how quickly the cost goes up as the distance from your body increases) would have to be for the powers to work best.

 

[Nik_2213]

Would a ceramic-based 'top coat' similar to tanks etc 'chobham armour' be able to shrug off multiple hits' radiant energy ?

You're talking 'shuttle re-entry' heat-shield temperatures, though not 'sustained' ??

The air-blast is a different matter. IIRC, the Russians studied the blast effects of tac-nukes on tanks, came up with 'Object 279 Kotin'...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_279

YMMV...

 

[trurle]

Would a ceramic-based 'top coat' similar to tanks etc 'chobham armour' be able to shrug off multiple hits' radiant energy ?

You're talking 'shuttle re-entry' heat-shield temperatures, though not 'sustained' ??

The air-blast is a different matter. IIRC, the Russians studied the blast effects of tac-nukes on tanks, came up with 'Object 279 Kotin'...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_279

YMMV...

Chobham armour is effective against fuel-air explosions or something similar. Steel armour is effective too though. During short temperature pulse, heat is simply absorbed and conducted by thick armour plate, without producing any damage. Plasma erosion rates at surface are actually measured in micrometers per second, if the plate as whole is cold.

 

[gibberingmouther]

Well I got rid of the whole idea of ki blasts being projectiles made of compressed heated air in a force bubble. Instead, they are made up of particles that react to intentions like ki itself is. I'll go into a little bit of detail while I'm at this.

The whole game world is based on the idea of a dream world - it makes sense to me because I have a lot of vivid dreams that have plots - so I can say that everything is made out of some kind of "psychic energy". Also, your soul has a "spirit mind" contained in its core part that works to inform your intuition and subconscious - it is important for a number of reasons in my game world, but one thing it does it helps you control ki which is made up of a ton of particles when you're using it, so since the spirit mind can kind of process more than your regular mind it helps with a person using and controlling their powers. The seat of personality and consciousness is still in your regular mind though.

So, ki is made up of particles that typically emit photons after they come out of your "divine spark" (the source of "spirit energy" for your super powers) and the photons have different colors depending on what your personality is like as a deep level - because it's cool, and your ki and energy is unique to you. You're either because of who you are either a user of "destructive" ki or "healing" ki, never both. And the ability to use ki itself comes from gene(s) that give you the ability to sense your ki….

You can channel energy into your ki - as the ki puts out photons, eventually it will dissipate when the energy runs out. Unrelated to the energy "inside" the ki particles is your ability to channel your spirit energy into it from your spirit body and thus use telekinesis or make force bubbles. Energy is lost when channeling to ki from a distance so your telekinesis costs more energy the farther away from your body. You can with effort alter the photon output to intensify it and try and blind your opponent or turn it off to hide your ki. You can turn your ki into "destructive" ki, which your ki blasts are made out of. They, unlike regular ki, have mass (but it's only inertial and doesn't react to gravity), a weak negative charge, and the ability to turn their energy (energy contained inside, and not channeled like the energy for telekinesis) into a sort of "heat" aura that gives kinetic energy to matter close to it. The kinetic energy imparted of course diminishes with distance from the ki particle, and I'm not sure about the direction. You have control over how much of the energy contained in the particle is turned into this "heat aura" to allow for greater penetration when destroying things! You can also use the energy inside the particles to move them around, but mainly you would use your telekinesis (or possibly your throwing arm!) to accelerate and launch the projectile.

Oh, and this is all copyright George Young, 12/2/2018! My avatar is a picture of me. Actually a while ago, but I'm not done with the process of putting this all into my game PDF yet.

 

[gibberingmouther]

Also I'll talk about lightsabers and the Force while I'm at it since it's similar.

Lightsabers are not plasma based. Instead, their blades are very similar to what ki blasts are made of and the particles are held in place by telekinesis from the Force crystal. Except the particles can absorb and emit photons the same way as silver atoms in a mirror - so you can deflect laser attacks but not blaster bolts like in Star Wars canon.

Kind of a question here. I was thinking that the lightsaber blades might be hollow in the middle (ironically, kind of similar to the toys but the particle layer would be thicker) because that would require less energy and might give it a better swing because of the moment of inertia? Not sure about that!

The blade particles have the same "heat aura" that the ki blast particles have. What I forgot to mention is that ki blast particles are immune to the "heat aura" of other ki blast particles but can vaporize or disturb ki blast particles with much weaker energies. Anyway, this is helpful so the lightsaber particles don't need extra telekinesis to be held in place against the heat auras of their neighboring particles, though the kinetic energies would cancel out the particles not on the surface of the blade (or the hollow interior). I've decided, now that I've been thinking as I write, that the directions are not random but are just outward radially from the particle's center - for both ki blasts and lightsabers. Lightsabers similarly don't react to the heat aura of other lightsabers or else you wouldn't be able to spar with them!

The crystal is either transformed by the Force (made up of a lot of dead things' minds and spirits) directly, or some crystal is chosen by a Jedi who channels the Force into it for a year or a few years every day until the psychic blueprint is sufficiently imprinted on the crystal and the "spirit/Force energy" is in there as well. Again, this is a dream world so it makes sense that the Force being a huge intelligence would have some mind over matter ability. I prefer sticking with the idea that a physical channel is needed - thus, the Jedi or Sith. So the Jedi does not go on a spirit quest to find the crystal destined for him but rather takes an ordinary crystal and channels Force into it bit by bit over a long period of time. The lightsaber hilt could similarly be made of "Force metal" which is shaped and made out of regular metal, but then focused on so it is immune to the lightsaber's heat. It might be able to be affected by regular "non psychic" heating though.

Anyway, no midichlorians! They are just not necessary. Instead, conscious things have souls which have an energy they're made of. Not sure yet about all the metaphysics, though this is kind of a side project apart from the main thing which is my reinterpretation of the Dragon Ball universe. The only real role of this soul is to provide a "spirit brain", but like I did with Dragon Ball there could be more detail depending on what works for this universe. The Jedi and Sith are chosen - possibly at conception, or when the soul is given, or even many years before birth. They tend to be the cream of the crop and are considered to have what is needed for a Jedi or Sith. The Force does something to their soul - changes it somehow - so they are able to be Force channelers. I haven't figured that part out yet, but based on all the ideas I've put together for this, it's probably not going to be a big leap for me or someone else to come up with something that makes sense.

Finally, there might be some other Force based technologies - specifically, a technology for interstellar travel. In my Dragon Ball game, there are magical hyperspace crystals which allow you to enter the hyperspace dimension temporarily (it exists because the over-god designed the universe this way - i.e., magic). Depending on the energies involved, you can travel there for how long you need to, and more energy might allow the length scaling to be amplified. 1 meter could be 1 light year, or 1 meter could be 100 light years. Haven't worked out the details, or I wrote them down but don't remember them. So anyway interstellar travel in the Star Wars universe could be similar, except it's based on the Force.

Again, copyright George Young 12/2/2018. My picture is my avatar.

 

[member 656954]

I'm late to the party on this one, but if you have telekinesis, you don't need to be throwing plasma about, surely. Just reach into the brain of your opponent and smoosh it around a bit. Or pluck their eyeballs out. Or collapse their lungs. If you can remotely reach into objects, traditional weapons are redundant.

 

[gibberingmouther]

I'm late to the party on this one, but if you have telekinesis, you don't need to be throwing plasma about, surely. Just reach into the brain of your opponent and smoosh it around a bit. Or pluck their eyeballs out. Or collapse their lungs. If you can remotely reach into objects, traditional weapons are redundant.

My game mechanics are complicated. You can PM me if you want to look at my very long PDF file, but basically telekinesis is one of the weaker abilities in this game verse because a lot of things are resistant to it. Plasma it turns out though is also not very effective when you have energy blasts and magic.

 

[member 656954]

telekinesis is one of the weaker abilities

That sorts out my worry, TK is pretty powerful if left unchecked, you definitely need a counterbalance.