The third tech video of my sci-fi RPG role-playing campaign setting, this time WEAPONS! The role-play stream can be found here: / itstabletoptime / profile
You got your science backwards on those rods. If you used some sci-fi wibbly-wobbly to change the mass of the rods to nearly zero, then fired them at near-to-light speeds, as the mass returned, the rods would slow down considerably, due to conservation of energy. See, force is basically mass times acceleration (F=ma), so if you reduced the mass to "almost zero" then accelerated it to "almost light-speed", then you'd just be slowing it down. So, let's say near zero is 0.0001 milligrams (since that's as close to absolute zero degrees kelvin that we can get, [0.0001K of helium gas] so it's a good scientific stand-in for "near zero"). You then accelerate that to around lightspeed, which is 299,792,458 m / s. Now, if you accelerated your rod to, .75 c (or 3/4 the speed of light), the force of that would be 224,844,343.5 * 0.0000000001 kilograms = 0.02 N For reference, the punch of the average adult is about 1000 newtons According to some simple math, a rod that is 10cm in diameter and 1 metre long will be approximately 152 kilograms. Like I said, force is mass times acceleration, so if you keep the force (0.02N) the same, and the weight was added back, just by doing that formula backwards, the bar would slow down to just 3.04 m/s. For reference, the average adult can run at 8 m/s. You would do more damage if you put on a space suit, jumped out and punched a nearby ship. And these numbers are inflated, because that's a pretty "high" near zero, and rail guns don't actually fire their ammunition at lightspeed, so I'm being pretty generous by saying it's 0.02N. That's just based on your numbers, but in reality it would probably be magnitudes weaker. But, like i said, you got your science backwards. What you're asking for isn't impossible, you just need to fix the formula. Let's say, instead of _lowering_ the weight, you *increased* it, whilst also cancelling out gravity, since you don't want to change the tides every time you suddenly increase the tungsten rod gravity to moon-like proportions. In fact, that's a good weight, the moon. How heavy is the moon? Without abbreviation, the moon is 7,350,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg. Let's use the same force as before, and see what happens. First of all, the thing would barely be moving, at several septillionths of a metre per second. But, as the mass returned to the rod, it would speed up to . . . well, actually, it would be several trillion times faster than the speed of light. Now, clearly, in practice, it would be a lot slower than that, since it would slow down due to special relativistic time dilation, but the point is, the mathematics is sound. If you make it heavier, rather lighter, when the weight returns, it would speed right back up. And since you'd be using a railgun, which can already fire things really fast, you'd only have to increase the weight by 10,000 percent to make it 100 times faster. And since the kinetic bombardment concept from which this is based on uses 9 ton rods each about the size of a telegraph pole, falling at terminal velocity; by firing the rod faster, you can get the same thing from a rod that's barely a metre long.
Hey Shad. I just stumbled across your channel whilst looking at sword terminology. I wish I had come here sooner, but there's just soooooo much material online. I had a lot of fun listening to your plans for your RPG universe. I have a history with AD&D and RPG games, and found myself on a nostalgic journey back in time, as I listened to your ideas. When you were talking about travelling FTL by moving via parallel universes, I couldn't help thinking about similar concepts like hyper space in Babylon 5, or even more, plane walking in AD&D. I enjoyed delving into moving via the Shadow Plane in the Forgotten Realms books, starring Erevis Cale, a lot. Similarly, your ideas about reducing mass and accelerating it to near light speeds really brought me back down memory lane, to when I discovered the whole universe surrounding the Mass Effect games. There mass changing/accelerating weapons aren't only possible for star ships, but also for personal weapons. The weapons shave a bit off a metal blocks inside them, alter the mass of those shavings, and accelerate them. Like some of the other people posting here, I think that the Deconstruction Ray should be stopped by the Spatial Integrity Field, as it is a high-energy weapon. There are plenty of ways to circumvent the shield already, if I understand the concept correctly. I keep thinking about the personal Holtzman shield from Frank Herbert's Dune, which only allows slow mowing objects through. About the Quantum Nuclear Torpedos, why are nukes so often considered: hit = destroyed. There are facilities here on earth today that are considered capable of surviving a nuclear strike below a certain yield. If you couple that with Sci-Fi advances in materials and shielding, wouldn't structures/star ships in space, which would have some level of nuke resistance, be a possibility? I again think of structures like the Citadel from the Mass Effect games. In any case, your videos instantly got likes from me, and you caught yourself another subscriber - I enjoy your knowledge of weapons/armour and your sense of humour. I hope to have many enjoyable moments on your channel in the future. Kudos and salutations from Scandinavia.
+SolarMichael Thank you my friend, your support and encouragement is wonderful. If you want to see this RPG in action the whole campaign is complete and uploaded over on Tabletop time. It was a lot of fun. It's funny, the deconstruction ray was always there in the campaign, but was never used. The mass and gravity generators were though, mhu ha ha ha.
As for your Shields beating the Deconstruction ray, yes the shield should win. They were designed to defeat high energy attack and the D-Ray is a high energy attack.
you can counter ANY energy weapon with a mirror. if they are eletro magnectic waves, they can be reflected by mirrors, just like light, you could destroy any super laser weapon ship by reflecting the ray with a mirror. that is, suposing you have a perfect mirror for whatever wave lenght is been used as weapon, but in a setting you can create matter and freely manipulate it... yeah, any military ship will have it.
Ship based weapons: Another from my imagination. Fire Bugs is what i call them. You would have a small robot brain mounted on a popcan sized battery, and a small high delta V ion engine. The bulk of this system is devoted to 1.) fuel capacity, which translates to high delta v. and 2.) software coding.( so no one else can controll your Fire Bugs) You simply deploy thousands of these Fire bugs to attach themselves all over a target ship, and boom. With enough of them you effectively have remote control of another ships physical orientation. After you have that, it cant chase you, aim its primary weapons at you, and in some cases all its weapons. You can use an opponents ship as a shield, or use its weapons for defence of your own ship if your good enough at reprogramming another ships sensors remotely. Another added benefit is that you can flood another ships sensors with thousands of sensor contacts, maybe useful, maybe not. But still cheap and easy.
You should also make it so that torpedos can have different kinds of warheads and can be remotely piloted. The torpedo tubes can also be used to launch probes.
I write sci fi myself, in my sci fi world the energy weapons are split into 2 camps, plasma and lasers Lasers, typically rifles, and typically very cheap, the defense against them is so old and so cheap that its integrated into clothing and used to avoid sun burns Plasma, more comon than laser weapons, by a large margin, they exist in the forms of rifles pistols, and swords, called plasma foils, the swords are very much like light sabers if you've heard of 'protosabers' same idea but the power pack is wrist mounted, its still heavy but the weight can be compinsated for the one bit I never mentioned is that all of the gun weapons, are flint lock based, they use a mechanism of force enhancing servos to increase power generation so they can charge up a shot, lasers also require more pumps on the mechanism (its supposed to be reminscent of a ram rod on a flintlock but it also kind of resembles the water gun brand super soaker) to fire a fully charged shot, than the same sized plasma weapon, it was deemed cheaper and more effective to create a mechanism to charge up a single shot than to create bulky batteries for one or more shots because among other things they're bulky, and heavy even for just one shot, the plasma foils are different, they use fancy tech that does not work the same because rather than imparting an electrical feild to a mass of plasma, it simply generates a feild, and uses the Dragons spark to generate plasma from the air not dissimilar to the guns accept they use special charged gas, because it gets hotter, and they're litterally chucking the shit away where as when the plasma foils are deactivated the heat is absorbed back into the weapon and slowly released into the environment (Dragon Sparks, are harvested from actual dragons BTW, some of the smart ones even have trade deals with political groups, because its an organ they have multiple of, and they grow back, a small electrical charge can convert gas to plasma relatively cheaply)
Thanks for those explanations! Please take a peek at the comments I left at part 1 and part 2 of your explanation for more ideas and suggestions. One thing I'll repeat here: Say we have a given barrel length and energy per second to fire a projectile (aka distance over which a constant acceleration is applied). The longer a projectile is being accelerated with the given force the more kinetic energy it has. The lighter the projectile is the faster it gains speed and thus the sooner it leaves the barrel - at which point it regains its full mass and conservation of energy means that if the kinetic energy of the projectile stays constant but the mass increases it slows down by the same factor. If one the other hand a heavier projectile is accelerated it gains speed slower and thus takes longer to leave the barrel. It therefore has a significantly higher kinetic energy when it leaves the barrel. It then lowers back to its normal mass and multiplies its speed by the same factor, instantly accelerating to insane speeds ... Next: one can dodge lasers and light-speed attacks in space. Light Speed is not Infinite Speed. it is 'merely 'very very fast. With very very far distances that gives one time between the attack being launched and it arriving at ones location during which one can react. Of cause one needs the same time to become aware of the attack thus one has no time to react to an attack - true. However if one regularly and randomly changes ones direction a little bit (eg just by ones own ship size in the time an attack would need to get from the enemy to ones own location) then one would no longer be at the position they aimed at. Therefore they miss. This makes it a guessing game between the pilot ("You will never guess that I moved this way!") and the gunner ("Ha, that pilot is stupid, he almost moves top right on every third dodge!") rather than a matter of seeing the attack and reacting to it or a matter of weapon accuracy ...
My philosophy regarding "realism" in technologies for things like faster-than-light travel and deflector shields is closely akin to the saying, "It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." The central problem with trying to explain such things in any significant detail in terms of current knowledge is that any workable approach would have to be far beyond the understanding of current science. In that kind of situation, the more detail an explanation gives, the less chance there is that a workable solution will fall within or at least close to the explanation. It is generally easy for me to suspend disbelief when explanations are superficial enough to have a character of, "Let's assume this works even though we have almost no idea about how it might work." Providing details about specific parts of how fictional technologies work is sometimes useful if the details add pseudo-realism to explanations of technological limitations. But explanations with the level of detail you give here destroy my ability to suspend disbelief regarding how the technologies supposedly work, so the only way I can restore my ability to suspend disbelief is to reject the specific explanations as wildly improbable and fall back on the idea that there might be some way to accomplish the same thing.
Hmm, well your deconstruction rays would be the perfect point defense against rods, or the nukes. So those are nullified, unless they're going for saturation attacks, which would probably be the only way of engaging and destroying star ships. You can modify/create gravity. Project a strong enough field around your ship, and it'll wrap light...so lasers would bend around the edge of the field. It could also crumple/destroy physical objects approaching and trying to enter it. Not to mention you already have em shields which can deflect things. No reason I can see why you can't gravitational shielding, with EM shielding being projected inside it, with point defense deconstruction rays to hit anything physical that may make it through. Or fore the ray at approaching rods, and let your two type of shields deal with the remnants. Not too mention lasers, or nuke tipped counter missiles both as longer ranged point defenses.
When I was watching the 1st session, I kept thinking of a concealable weapon for Riot in his arm. I imagined a kinetic drive system, basically two small wheels in his wrist with a magazine feed behind it. The wheels spin up and the magazine pushes a projectile between the two wheels and propels the projectile through a short barrel to impart spin and stability and then exits. The projectile is the fun bit, a ceramic bullet of sorts that is similar to a toxic broad or tom bomb head arrow. Very sharp, but folds out to triple or quadruple its cutting surface area. The ceramic is of course treated in a field generator for better tensile characteristics. So the end result is a sub sonic, quiet discharge, non ferrous short range defensive weapon. That also has no recoil. I also imagined boring things like ionic blade projectiles, and sensor fused explosives to detonate inside the target. Also micro rocket or gyro jet projectiles for this system, for longer range uses. Only useful against unarmored organic targets, the micro rockets could have shaped charge chemical explosives for some amour piercing capability, but with limited overall damage potential. Such small charges wouldnt be able to make much of a hole. What do you think Shad? Is this a weapon youd like to incorporate? If so what sort of game stats would this weapon have?
Hey man, thanks for your feedback and suggestions, they're awesome! So I’m going to answer all your posts in this one. The ceramic projectile idea is great, It’ll mostly be up to Jazza if he wants to incorporate them but I see no problem setting wise. Essentially the ceramic projectile would come under my lethal energy weapons but I have nothing against the players individualizing their weapons, or even getting unique effects based on their individualization even though they would still be classed the same. I do see your logic in making it non ferromagnetic to get around the E.M. shields, very clever, but I probably described the E.M. shields incorrectly or maybe I just need to tweak them. Functionally I want the em shields to be able to deflect all incoming projectiles. This is mainly for gameplay reasons, not sound logic.I know EM shields really shouldn't be able to do this if they function of Electromagnetism, so maybe I’ll change them to be another Pulse Field Generation field frequency, and I’ll call them a Deflection Shield, or even Deflector Shield. There certainly needs to be some cool type of explosives. I’m thinking of a universal grenade, called something like a Uni Bomb, the size of a marble that comes with several functions. First option would be explosion strength, from a football field to a small firecracker, the next would be things like surface adherence, limited target locks, proximity detonation and remote detonation. You firebugs are interesting, I'll need to think about it. I totally agree with you about the Decon Ray and shields. One of the difficulties in a very advanced sci-fi settings is that any weapon anyone can think of could most likely be supported by the world’s technology level. which means logically there should be trillions of effective and powerful weapons around. Trying to think of them all or even remember them once figured out would melt my brain. I feel The key is in generalizing most weapon effects into simple categories.
I am Shad Would the deflection shield work against small particulates moving at non lethal speeds? reason I ask is, one of the ceramic projectiles could keep the sensor fuse and detonate outside the shield, and spread a chemical weapon. Whether it is a poison or a binary compound that ignites is up to the end user. Another idea that occurs to me depends on whether or not the shield itself could be covered by particulates. Kinda like a paint grenade, so who ever is in the shield would have to shut it off to get rid of the obscuring materials, if only for a second. Still an opportunity to someone with a higher initiative who is delaying for just such an opportunity. Only other thing I can think of to use against a deflection shield is a glue grenade, to immobilize the target. I like the universal grenade idea, but I would limit its size to firecracker up to say a couple sticks of TNT in blast size and power. Anything bigger would be way to dangerous on a star ship in the vacuum of space and micro gravity environment. But thats just me. But the possibilities of a device that can have its blast changed are very cool. Loads of shaped charge and fragmentation potential. In my own home brew settings I like to have specific damage types for different effects. Energy types could be specific to ranges of the EM spectrum, or generalized down to heat, cold, acidic, electric and so forth. So you could limit the effectiveness of shields, one could be effective against all types but not have a great threshold potential, while others could be limited to one or two but have a much greater potential against those specific types. You might have guessed I play with a lot of munchkins, and they are constantly testing the limits of what they can get away with. As a result I tend to think like one now lol.
Arbhall McDougall Some more great ideas! The deflection shield would work against anything moving a little faster than a thrown object. walking speeds would go straight through. Now gass would go through as well, that’s a clever idea. I won’t tell the players this as I would rather them figure this loophole out, or I’ll just use it against them. Rob is a likely candidate, he’s the big munchkin on the team. He’s asked for a list of all the pulse field frequencies and is asking how each one works.
I am Shad lol that is a bad sign! But yeah Id say make the list and give it to him, see what he comes up with so you can stay one step ahead of him. Kinda makes me think of the Hotzman shields from Dune, they were excellent at dealing with explosions and kinetic attacks, but anything moving below a certain threshold could pass through easily. The downside of course was the whole energy feedback loop if the Hotzman effect was exposed to coherent energy effect like a lasgun, which resulted in an explosion that resembled a small tactical nuke. Watch out for martial arts experts with chemical explosives, simply placing a weapon inside the field.....and .......chunky salsa. I cant wait to have a look at the rules for your game, Im very excited to make use of them and host games with my group.
Arbhall McDougall Yeah I've given him the list. He’s asked questions about using a graviton interaction field to enter D-drive whilst holding onto an enemy, leaving him there, and then popping back. I've warned him about the distance multiplication in D-drive, its 8000, and if he moves a meter he will have moved eight kilometers in the real world. Now its up to him and if he doesn't realize that the planet he is on is moving very fast due to its orbit and that if he enters D-drive while at that velocity he will be moving at the same speed in D-drive meaning when he moves back he would be several hundred thousand kilometers away from the planet, well that's his fault. MHUU HA HA HA HA HAA. He's a robot, he'll survive. I haven't read dune but a saw part of the movie, that a slow blade penetrates the shield, and my deflection shields are a little like that. Yes that’s the advantage with martial arts in this setting, they get through the shields, that’s why Ion-blades are used so prevalently, but you’re right, a bomb would work even better than an Ion blade. I’m jazzed you want to see the rules. The alpha will be out when I finish writing it. The rules are all there, I just have to write them out in rulebook form catering for people who have no idea what a pen and paper RPG is. If you use our system and stream your game or youtube it, let us know and we’ll plug it on Tabletop Time.
As I understand the technology behind rods, they are next to useless in spaceship combat. As you mentioned, ships are often protected by various shields and they can stop solid matter from hitting the hull. Even if it has own "force" field to get it through - and it will lower it´s cost efficiency - it will do little damage. If you multiply small weight of rod by its HUGE speed, you get ENORMOUS energy, that´s right. But impact alone doesn´t create explosion. You need solid mass in which impact creates vibrations and their effect is disintegration of object - if fast enough it´s practically explosion. Spaceships are generally build from metal plates with many big rooms inside. There will be no vibration and thus no explosion, just nice small hole through the ship. It is possible destroy spaceship with rod? Yes, if you hit engine or something similarly vulnerable to smallest impact. But wouldn´t be such spot hidden from targeting or engineered not to explode from impact???
This is a very good point mate, one that I had not considered. My question is about structural strength. generally the hull of a ship will be structurally stronger than a rod, so you would expect the rod to crumble and explode over pocking a hole, unless the extreme velocity changes it?
Even extreme velocity of rod doesn´t change nature of destruction, only power. I assume ships aren´t heavily armed - they have force shields - so rod will go through them like knife through butter and leave nice small hole. It can do more significant damage to heavily armored hull, but in that case it would be rod, which disintegrates in impact. As I understand, rods aren´t made from some explosium, they won´t create big bada boom with shock-waves. Rod will just fall apart so fast, it can look like explosion. And the damage to hull will go only as far as vibrations through its outer shell... even with super extreme velocities it will be pretty much just superficial. But even so, the rods will be devastating in bombardment of planets or another solid structures.
Matúš Fekete Mass effect 1 has a similar concept of sheering a grain off a block then super accelerating it into a lethal round. This is simply part of a video game that has been applied. Scientifically, your argument has full merit so the next thing to determine is the density and internal structure of the rod so it can shatter and impact into shrapnel.
what about non-directed energy weapons? Such as Guns, Cannons, missiles, Railguns, Boltcasters, etc? Surely they will do well irregardless of the tech level as high-technological levels doesn't make you magically immune to high velocity objects tearing into you. For instance, what about a pistol that instead of having gunpowder, the area behind the bullet was instead some form of battery, or otherwise energy storage device, and it's energy is used up in accellerating the bullet to absurdly high speeds via rail/coilgun dynamics. Or perhaps a railgun that mid- accelleration liquifies the projectile, causing it to come out the muzzle as a superheated liquid metal, Boring its way into targets, while at the same time incinerating, vaporizing, and other wise burning the target while being far more capible at unloading it's energy into the target, as a liquid will be more willing to deform and spread out than a solid slug. Or a gun who's chamber is injected with the propellant of a certain charge that can be increased or decreased depended on the target, imagine 1x load for an armored human, 30x load for a tank, 80x load for a starfighter, 150x load for a starship, etc. Directed energy weapons should not be the only contender in sci fi, i posit.
about the rods: Why don't they slow down, when the regain their mass? Where does the contraimpulse go, and where does the energy come from. And if the laws of thermodynamic don't apply in your world, is energy still a resource?
hey shad, did you know that everything is slightly magnetic or diamagnetic...with enough energy and the right coil you can effect even fruit with a magnetic field.... they have a coil now that can make strawberries and tree frogs fly....so there is lots of sound reason why someone who is able to make a large enough battery... and a strong enough cable to support that much current....(both must exist to support the lethal energy weapons).... could build a smaller personal shield that could deflect what it needs to.... only problem is with how you described ion blades they would be affected most by this....because ions become more or magnetic or diamagnetic depending on their charge (it's one of the models for deep space engines.... ionize the "fuel" and push it through a electromagnetic field at a very high speed. its very efficient and there are no moving parts to cause harmful vibrations) but that would make it very hard for ion blades to be the only thing that can make it through the shield....i could see that they might warp, fly out of the user's hands, or maybe even shatter
well, you have quite a nice setting but you forget about some facts. you have the technology to alter matter with your fields explained in the 2nd video and thought to that explanation you would be able to create fusion reactors as energy sources. so energy would really not be a problem but you also have the technology to create antimatter wich would render every other weapon to nothing... you might even use antimatter to create energy for you because that would be even more effective. also if you have the technology to create any sort of matter you can create every type of matter and so you might be able to use beam technology so by decomposing anything you can send the data at the speed of light (or via quantum entanglement instantly (but i heard of no such technology in your universe)) to a receiver and rebuild the stuff there.
what about having different defence systems, to conter different weapons? All those Pulse field Generator weapens could perhaps be contered with your own pulse field generator, which messes with the effect it intends to to. This could end in a battle between the different computerpowers of the ships.
Shields could work by having plasma at the temperature of the sun being held in place by electromagnetic fields that would vaporise any projectile that passes through it. As for energy weapons they could be repelled by the electromagnetic field it's self :-)
Different calibers have different ranges though a .22 doesn't have the range of 9 mm and so on. I agree that having massive amounts of differing weapons will bog down the game and even over whelm the player choice. With that said, one would want to use longer range fire arms at times, for example in an assassination attempt on an NPC political leader.
Hi again, Shad Thank ou for your answer. :) it was very inspirational, so would you believe it to be plausible for a biological individual, such as a human clone, to be infused with nanobots which are able to alter the individual's exterior. Hair colour, skin where it turns invisible or into a metal surface?
Great question and very inventive too. First, I have no idea what the nanobytes would have to do to make such changes, it could very well be utterly impossible, but this is fiction and in the end we can just say it can happen, that's the great thing about fiction though its always better to try and base things even the slightest bit in reality. I suspect it would be easier for the nanobytes to change hair and skin color then changing the skin into metal or making it invisible. Changing atomic properties such as carbon into iron (making skin turn into metal), requires restructuring the protons and neutrons of an atom, something that requires manipulating the nuclear forces, which requires some BIG technology and energy, not sure nanobytes could do it, also it's hard to tell how a body would react to it's skin changing into metal, but remember that this is fiction, always do what's awesome. In the end sometimes it can be better not to try and explain things, especially if you have no idea how it's done. Explaining things based on incorrect science makes one look more like an idiot then if they just say, I don't know how it's done, but this is what it does. Hope I made sense.
You could also use the holo fields like Mackie uses for disguises. Just projected over a fabric surface instead of an area in space. Technically it would be easier to do since theres actually something to work on, as opposed to making a beam or cone of light just stop in the middle of nowhere. You could also use it to blend in with the surroundings and just stand still for a sort of invisibility. With a fast enough processor you could even move and be invisible. But yeah nano machines could also easily change the surface color of things, just by changing the way light reflects off of the surface. And because they are nano machines it wouldnt matter if your changing the surface properties of a jacket or a human/ meta human hair. Anything would be possible really. Its just a question of whether or not you can carry enough nano machines to continuously change the colors to be invisible. But gradual changes over gross surfaces like skin and hair wouldnt really take much.
Thank you Shad and Arbhall for your input. I can see that holographic reflection could be a more believable approach to invisibility. It could also give a good obstruction for my chosen protagonist. That the person must stand still to not be seen. Now, concerning the skin to metal transformation/modification, I can see what you mean when it comes down to de- and reconstructing the atomic structure of the human DNA and the fact that even if it is possible to bypass that structure with nanos fueled with a power source similar or plentiful enough like fusion or atomic power, the lack of flexibility from skin to metal could be a problem.... How about Kevlar instead of metal. As far as I remember Kevlar is a carbon fibre used in bullet proof vest. But is Kevlar also capable of stopping sharp weapons like knives and shrapnel?
As Litchfield No, Kelvar is terrible at dealing with edged weapons and abrasion attacks. Its whole thing is that all the fibres are held together in bundles which together are stronger than they are individually. For Kevlar to be effective against an edged weapon it needs help, like a steel plate or a series of ceramic plates designed to deflect or stop an incoming blade. But following your reasoning I can tell you a nano bot probably could cover tissue and skin with metal, and give it metallic structures for strength. But I wouldnt bother with that. Id use Nanos to restructure skin to resemble crocodile or alligator skin. or on the extreme end the skin of an Ankyllosaurus. Actually have plates of bone in between the skin layers for protection, with insulating layers of cellulose between them all. That way you retain your organic functions, and gain all the protection from kinetic attacks and some thermal insulation. It would be really obvious and hard to conceal but it would also be really effective and offer a lot of protection.
You got your science backwards on those rods. If you used some sci-fi wibbly-wobbly to change the mass of the rods to nearly zero, then fired them at near-to-light speeds, as the mass returned, the rods would slow down considerably, due to conservation of energy. See, force is basically mass times acceleration (F=ma), so if you reduced the mass to "almost zero" then accelerated it to "almost light-speed", then you'd just be slowing it down.
So, let's say near zero is 0.0001 milligrams (since that's as close to absolute zero degrees kelvin that we can get, [0.0001K of helium gas] so it's a good scientific stand-in for "near zero").
You then accelerate that to around lightspeed, which is 299,792,458 m / s.
Now, if you accelerated your rod to, .75 c (or 3/4 the speed of light), the force of that would be 224,844,343.5 * 0.0000000001 kilograms = 0.02 N
For reference, the punch of the average adult is about 1000 newtons
According to some simple math, a rod that is 10cm in diameter and 1 metre long will be approximately 152 kilograms. Like I said, force is mass times acceleration, so if you keep the force (0.02N) the same, and the weight was added back, just by doing that formula backwards, the bar would slow down to just 3.04 m/s.
For reference, the average adult can run at 8 m/s.
You would do more damage if you put on a space suit, jumped out and punched a nearby ship.
And these numbers are inflated, because that's a pretty "high" near zero, and rail guns don't actually fire their ammunition at lightspeed, so I'm being pretty generous by saying it's 0.02N. That's just based on your numbers, but in reality it would probably be magnitudes weaker.
But, like i said, you got your science backwards. What you're asking for isn't impossible, you just need to fix the formula. Let's say, instead of _lowering_ the weight, you *increased* it, whilst also cancelling out gravity, since you don't want to change the tides every time you suddenly increase the tungsten rod gravity to moon-like proportions. In fact, that's a good weight, the moon. How heavy is the moon?
Without abbreviation, the moon is 7,350,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg. Let's use the same force as before, and see what happens.
First of all, the thing would barely be moving, at several septillionths of a metre per second. But, as the mass returned to the rod, it would speed up to . . . well, actually, it would be several trillion times faster than the speed of light.
Now, clearly, in practice, it would be a lot slower than that, since it would slow down due to special relativistic time dilation, but the point is, the mathematics is sound.
If you make it heavier, rather lighter, when the weight returns, it would speed right back up. And since you'd be using a railgun, which can already fire things really fast, you'd only have to increase the weight by 10,000 percent to make it 100 times faster.
And since the kinetic bombardment concept from which this is based on uses 9 ton rods each about the size of a telegraph pole, falling at terminal velocity; by firing the rod faster, you can get the same thing from a rod that's barely a metre long.
Hey Shad. I just stumbled across your channel whilst looking at sword terminology. I wish I had come here sooner, but there's just soooooo much material online.
I had a lot of fun listening to your plans for your RPG universe. I have a history with AD&D and RPG games, and found myself on a nostalgic journey back in time, as I listened to your ideas.
When you were talking about travelling FTL by moving via parallel universes, I couldn't help thinking about similar concepts like hyper space in Babylon 5, or even more, plane walking in AD&D. I enjoyed delving into moving via the Shadow Plane in the Forgotten Realms books, starring Erevis Cale, a lot.
Similarly, your ideas about reducing mass and accelerating it to near light speeds really brought me back down memory lane, to when I discovered the whole universe surrounding the Mass Effect games. There mass changing/accelerating weapons aren't only possible for star ships, but also for personal weapons. The weapons shave a bit off a metal blocks inside them, alter the mass of those shavings, and accelerate them.
Like some of the other people posting here, I think that the Deconstruction Ray should be stopped by the Spatial Integrity Field, as it is a high-energy weapon. There are plenty of ways to circumvent the shield already, if I understand the concept correctly. I keep thinking about the personal Holtzman shield from Frank Herbert's Dune, which only allows slow mowing objects through.
About the Quantum Nuclear Torpedos, why are nukes so often considered: hit = destroyed. There are facilities here on earth today that are considered capable of surviving a nuclear strike below a certain yield. If you couple that with Sci-Fi advances in materials and shielding, wouldn't structures/star ships in space, which would have some level of nuke resistance, be a possibility? I again think of structures like the Citadel from the Mass Effect games.
In any case, your videos instantly got likes from me, and you caught yourself another subscriber - I enjoy your knowledge of weapons/armour and your sense of humour. I hope to have many enjoyable moments on your channel in the future. Kudos and salutations from Scandinavia.
+SolarMichael Thank you my friend, your support and encouragement is wonderful. If you want to see this RPG in action the whole campaign is complete and uploaded over on Tabletop time. It was a lot of fun. It's funny, the deconstruction ray was always there in the campaign, but was never used. The mass and gravity generators were though, mhu ha ha ha.
As for your Shields beating the Deconstruction ray, yes the shield should win. They were designed to defeat high energy attack and the D-Ray is a high energy attack.
Thanks for another great video Shad.
you can counter ANY energy weapon with a mirror. if they are eletro magnectic waves, they can be reflected by mirrors, just like light, you could destroy any super laser weapon ship by reflecting the ray with a mirror. that is, suposing you have a perfect mirror for whatever wave lenght is been used as weapon, but in a setting you can create matter and freely manipulate it... yeah, any military ship will have it.
Ship based weapons:
Another from my imagination. Fire Bugs is what i call them. You would have a small robot brain mounted on a popcan sized battery, and a small high delta V ion engine. The bulk of this system is devoted to 1.) fuel capacity, which translates to high delta v. and 2.) software coding.( so no one else can controll your Fire Bugs)
You simply deploy thousands of these Fire bugs to attach themselves all over a target ship, and boom. With enough of them you effectively have remote control of another ships physical orientation. After you have that, it cant chase you, aim its primary weapons at you, and in some cases all its weapons. You can use an opponents ship as a shield, or use its weapons for defence of your own ship if your good enough at reprogramming another ships sensors remotely. Another added benefit is that you can flood another ships sensors with thousands of sensor contacts, maybe useful, maybe not. But still cheap and easy.
You should also make it so that torpedos can have different kinds of warheads and can be remotely piloted. The torpedo tubes can also be used to launch probes.
13:27 the moment I fell in love with this channel
Funny how Shad is so passionate about accuracy in medieval architecture and such... and then when it comes to physics there's these vids.
I write sci fi myself, in my sci fi world the energy weapons are split into 2 camps, plasma and lasers
Lasers, typically rifles, and typically very cheap, the defense against them is so old and so cheap that its integrated into clothing and used to avoid sun burns
Plasma, more comon than laser weapons, by a large margin, they exist in the forms of rifles pistols, and swords, called plasma foils, the swords are very much like light sabers if you've heard of 'protosabers' same idea but the power pack is wrist mounted, its still heavy but the weight can be compinsated for
the one bit I never mentioned is that all of the gun weapons, are flint lock based, they use a mechanism of force enhancing servos to increase power generation so they can charge up a shot, lasers also require more pumps on the mechanism (its supposed to be reminscent of a ram rod on a flintlock but it also kind of resembles the water gun brand super soaker) to fire a fully charged shot, than the same sized plasma weapon, it was deemed cheaper and more effective to create a mechanism to charge up a single shot than to create bulky batteries for one or more shots because among other things they're bulky, and heavy even for just one shot, the plasma foils are different, they use fancy tech that does not work the same because rather than imparting an electrical feild to a mass of plasma, it simply generates a feild, and uses the Dragons spark to generate plasma from the air not dissimilar to the guns accept they use special charged gas, because it gets hotter, and they're litterally chucking the shit away where as when the plasma foils are deactivated the heat is absorbed back into the weapon and slowly released into the environment
(Dragon Sparks, are harvested from actual dragons BTW, some of the smart ones even have trade deals with political groups, because its an organ they have multiple of, and they grow back, a small electrical charge can convert gas to plasma relatively cheaply)
Thanks for those explanations!
Please take a peek at the comments I left at part 1 and part 2 of your explanation for more ideas and suggestions.
One thing I'll repeat here:
Say we have a given barrel length and energy per second to fire a projectile (aka distance over which a constant acceleration is applied).
The longer a projectile is being accelerated with the given force the more kinetic energy it has.
The lighter the projectile is the faster it gains speed and thus the sooner it leaves the barrel - at which point it regains its full mass and conservation of energy means that if the kinetic energy of the projectile stays constant but the mass increases it slows down by the same factor.
If one the other hand a heavier projectile is accelerated it gains speed slower and thus takes longer to leave the barrel. It therefore has a significantly higher kinetic energy when it leaves the barrel. It then lowers back to its normal mass and multiplies its speed by the same factor, instantly accelerating to insane speeds ...
Next: one can dodge lasers and light-speed attacks in space.
Light Speed is not Infinite Speed. it is 'merely 'very very fast.
With very very far distances that gives one time between the attack being launched and it arriving at ones location during which one can react. Of cause one needs the same time to become aware of the attack thus one has no time to react to an attack - true.
However if one regularly and randomly changes ones direction a little bit (eg just by ones own ship size in the time an attack would need to get from the enemy to ones own location) then one would no longer be at the position they aimed at. Therefore they miss.
This makes it a guessing game between the pilot ("You will never guess that I moved this way!") and the gunner ("Ha, that pilot is stupid, he almost moves top right on every third dodge!") rather than a matter of seeing the attack and reacting to it or a matter of weapon accuracy ...
u r epic m8, love your stuff
My philosophy regarding "realism" in technologies for things like faster-than-light travel and deflector shields is closely akin to the saying, "It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." The central problem with trying to explain such things in any significant detail in terms of current knowledge is that any workable approach would have to be far beyond the understanding of current science. In that kind of situation, the more detail an explanation gives, the less chance there is that a workable solution will fall within or at least close to the explanation.
It is generally easy for me to suspend disbelief when explanations are superficial enough to have a character of, "Let's assume this works even though we have almost no idea about how it might work." Providing details about specific parts of how fictional technologies work is sometimes useful if the details add pseudo-realism to explanations of technological limitations. But explanations with the level of detail you give here destroy my ability to suspend disbelief regarding how the technologies supposedly work, so the only way I can restore my ability to suspend disbelief is to reject the specific explanations as wildly improbable and fall back on the idea that there might be some way to accomplish the same thing.
Hmm, well your deconstruction rays would be the perfect point defense against rods, or the nukes. So those are nullified, unless they're going for saturation attacks, which would probably be the only way of engaging and destroying star ships. You can modify/create gravity. Project a strong enough field around your ship, and it'll wrap light...so lasers would bend around the edge of the field. It could also crumple/destroy physical objects approaching and trying to enter it. Not to mention you already have em shields which can deflect things. No reason I can see why you can't gravitational shielding, with EM shielding being projected inside it, with point defense deconstruction rays to hit anything physical that may make it through. Or fore the ray at approaching rods, and let your two type of shields deal with the remnants. Not too mention lasers, or nuke tipped counter missiles both as longer ranged point defenses.
When I was watching the 1st session, I kept thinking of a concealable weapon for Riot in his arm. I imagined a kinetic drive system, basically two small wheels in his wrist with a magazine feed behind it. The wheels spin up and the magazine pushes a projectile between the two wheels and propels the projectile through a short barrel to impart spin and stability and then exits.
The projectile is the fun bit, a ceramic bullet of sorts that is similar to a toxic broad or tom bomb head arrow. Very sharp, but folds out to triple or quadruple its cutting surface area. The ceramic is of course treated in a field generator for better tensile characteristics.
So the end result is a sub sonic, quiet discharge, non ferrous short range defensive weapon. That also has no recoil.
I also imagined boring things like ionic blade projectiles, and sensor fused explosives to detonate inside the target. Also micro rocket or gyro jet projectiles for this system, for longer range uses. Only useful against unarmored organic targets, the micro rockets could have shaped charge chemical explosives for some amour piercing capability, but with limited overall damage potential. Such small charges wouldnt be able to make much of a hole.
What do you think Shad?
Is this a weapon youd like to incorporate? If so what sort of game stats would this weapon have?
Hey man, thanks for your feedback and suggestions, they're awesome!
So I’m going to answer all your posts in this one.
The ceramic projectile idea is great, It’ll mostly be up to Jazza if he wants to incorporate them but I see no problem setting wise.
Essentially the ceramic projectile would come under my lethal energy weapons but I have nothing against the players individualizing their weapons, or even getting unique effects based on their individualization even though they would still be classed the same.
I do see your logic in making it non ferromagnetic to get around the E.M. shields, very clever, but I probably described the E.M. shields incorrectly or maybe I just need to tweak them. Functionally I want the em shields to be able to deflect all incoming projectiles. This is mainly for gameplay reasons, not sound logic.I know EM shields really shouldn't be able to do this if they function of Electromagnetism, so maybe I’ll change them to be another Pulse Field Generation field frequency, and I’ll call them a Deflection Shield, or even Deflector Shield.
There certainly needs to be some cool type of explosives. I’m thinking of a universal grenade, called something like a Uni Bomb, the size of a marble that comes with several functions. First option would be explosion strength, from a football field to a small firecracker, the next would be things like surface adherence, limited target locks, proximity detonation and remote detonation.
You firebugs are interesting, I'll need to think about it.
I totally agree with you about the Decon Ray and shields.
One of the difficulties in a very advanced sci-fi settings is that any weapon anyone can think of could most likely be supported by the world’s technology level. which means logically there should be trillions of effective and powerful weapons around. Trying to think of them all or even remember them once figured out would melt my brain.
I feel The key is in generalizing most weapon effects into simple categories.
I am Shad Would the deflection shield work against small particulates moving at non lethal speeds?
reason I ask is, one of the ceramic projectiles could keep the sensor fuse and detonate outside the shield, and spread a chemical weapon. Whether it is a poison or a binary compound that ignites is up to the end user.
Another idea that occurs to me depends on whether or not the shield itself could be covered by particulates. Kinda like a paint grenade, so who ever is in the shield would have to shut it off to get rid of the obscuring materials, if only for a second. Still an opportunity to someone with a higher initiative who is delaying for just such an opportunity.
Only other thing I can think of to use against a deflection shield is a glue grenade, to immobilize the target.
I like the universal grenade idea, but I would limit its size to firecracker up to say a couple sticks of TNT in blast size and power. Anything bigger would be way to dangerous on a star ship in the vacuum of space and micro gravity environment. But thats just me.
But the possibilities of a device that can have its blast changed are very cool. Loads of shaped charge and fragmentation potential.
In my own home brew settings I like to have specific damage types for different effects.
Energy types could be specific to ranges of the EM spectrum, or generalized down to heat, cold, acidic, electric and so forth. So you could limit the effectiveness of shields, one could be effective against all types but not have a great threshold potential, while others could be limited to one or two but have a much greater potential against those specific types.
You might have guessed I play with a lot of munchkins, and they are constantly testing the limits of what they can get away with. As a result I tend to think like one now lol.
Arbhall McDougall Some more great ideas!
The deflection shield would work against anything moving a little faster than a thrown object. walking speeds would go straight through.
Now gass would go through as well, that’s a clever idea. I won’t tell the players this as I would rather them figure this loophole out, or I’ll just use it against them. Rob is a likely candidate, he’s the big munchkin on the team. He’s asked for a list of all the pulse field frequencies and is asking how each one works.
I am Shad lol that is a bad sign!
But yeah Id say make the list and give it to him, see what he comes up with so you can stay one step ahead of him.
Kinda makes me think of the Hotzman shields from Dune, they were excellent at dealing with explosions and kinetic attacks, but anything moving below a certain threshold could pass through easily. The downside of course was the whole energy feedback loop if the Hotzman effect was exposed to coherent energy effect like a lasgun, which resulted in an explosion that resembled a small tactical nuke.
Watch out for martial arts experts with chemical explosives, simply placing a weapon inside the field.....and .......chunky salsa.
I cant wait to have a look at the rules for your game, Im very excited to make use of them and host games with my group.
Arbhall McDougall Yeah I've given him the list. He’s asked questions about using a graviton interaction field to enter D-drive whilst holding onto an enemy, leaving him there, and then popping back.
I've warned him about the distance multiplication in D-drive, its 8000, and if he moves a meter he will have moved eight kilometers in the real world. Now its up to him and if he doesn't realize that the planet he is on is moving very fast due to its orbit and that if he enters D-drive while at that velocity he will be moving at the same speed in D-drive meaning when he moves back he would be several hundred thousand kilometers away from the planet, well that's his fault. MHUU HA HA HA HA HAA. He's a robot, he'll survive.
I haven't read dune but a saw part of the movie, that a slow blade penetrates the shield, and my deflection shields are a little like that.
Yes that’s the advantage with martial arts in this setting, they get through the shields, that’s why Ion-blades are used so prevalently, but you’re right, a bomb would work even better than an Ion blade.
I’m jazzed you want to see the rules. The alpha will be out when I finish writing it. The rules are all there, I just have to write them out in rulebook form catering for people who have no idea what a pen and paper RPG is.
If you use our system and stream your game or youtube it, let us know and we’ll plug it on Tabletop Time.
As I understand the technology behind rods, they are next to useless in spaceship combat.
As you mentioned, ships are often protected by various shields and they can stop solid matter from hitting the hull.
Even if it has own "force" field to get it through - and it will lower it´s cost efficiency - it will do little damage.
If you multiply small weight of rod by its HUGE speed, you get ENORMOUS energy, that´s right. But impact alone doesn´t create explosion. You need solid mass in which impact creates vibrations and their effect is disintegration of object - if fast enough it´s practically explosion.
Spaceships are generally build from metal plates with many big rooms inside. There will be no vibration and thus no explosion, just nice small hole through the ship.
It is possible destroy spaceship with rod? Yes, if you hit engine or something similarly vulnerable to smallest impact. But wouldn´t be such spot hidden from targeting or engineered not to explode from impact???
This is a very good point mate, one that I had not considered. My question is about structural strength. generally the hull of a ship will be structurally stronger than a rod, so you would expect the rod to crumble and explode over pocking a hole, unless the extreme velocity changes it?
Even extreme velocity of rod doesn´t change nature of destruction, only power.
I assume ships aren´t heavily armed - they have force shields - so rod will go through them like knife through butter and leave nice small hole.
It can do more significant damage to heavily armored hull, but in that case it would be rod, which disintegrates in impact. As I understand, rods aren´t made from some explosium, they won´t create big bada boom with shock-waves. Rod will just fall apart so fast, it can look like explosion.
And the damage to hull will go only as far as vibrations through its outer shell... even with super extreme velocities it will be pretty much just superficial.
But even so, the rods will be devastating in bombardment of planets or another solid structures.
Matúš Fekete Mass effect 1 has a similar concept of sheering a grain off a block then super accelerating it into a lethal round. This is simply part of a video game that has been applied. Scientifically, your argument has full merit so the next thing to determine is the density and internal structure of the rod so it can shatter and impact into shrapnel.
The Dominator from Psycho-Pass
what about non-directed energy weapons?
Such as Guns, Cannons, missiles, Railguns, Boltcasters, etc?
Surely they will do well irregardless of the tech level as high-technological levels doesn't make you magically immune to high velocity objects tearing into you.
For instance, what about a pistol that instead of having gunpowder, the area behind the bullet was instead some form of battery, or otherwise energy storage device, and it's energy is used up in accellerating the bullet to absurdly high speeds via rail/coilgun dynamics.
Or perhaps a railgun that mid- accelleration liquifies the projectile, causing it to come out the muzzle as a superheated liquid metal, Boring its way into targets, while at the same time incinerating, vaporizing, and other wise burning the target while being far more capible at unloading it's energy into the target, as a liquid will be more willing to deform and spread out than a solid slug.
Or a gun who's chamber is injected with the propellant of a certain charge that can be increased or decreased depended on the target, imagine 1x load for an armored human, 30x load for a tank, 80x load for a starfighter, 150x load for a starship, etc.
Directed energy weapons should not be the only contender in sci fi, i posit.
about the rods:
Why don't they slow down, when the regain their mass? Where does the contraimpulse go, and where does the energy come from.
And if the laws of thermodynamic don't apply in your world, is energy still a resource?
hey shad, did you know that everything is slightly magnetic or diamagnetic...with enough energy and the right coil you can effect even fruit with a magnetic field.... they have a coil now that can make strawberries and tree frogs fly....so there is lots of sound reason why someone who is able to make a large enough battery... and a strong enough cable to support that much current....(both must exist to support the lethal energy weapons).... could build a smaller personal shield that could deflect what it needs to.... only problem is with how you described ion blades they would be affected most by this....because ions become more or magnetic or diamagnetic depending on their charge (it's one of the models for deep space engines.... ionize the "fuel" and push it through a electromagnetic field at a very high speed. its very efficient and there are no moving parts to cause harmful vibrations) but that would make it very hard for ion blades to be the only thing that can make it through the shield....i could see that they might warp, fly out of the user's hands, or maybe even shatter
+Nathan King Some very cool thoughts mate, thanks heaps for sharing!
I am Shad anytime!
well, you have quite a nice setting but you forget about some facts. you have the technology to alter matter with your fields explained in the 2nd video and thought to that explanation you would be able to create fusion reactors as energy sources. so energy would really not be a problem but you also have the technology to create antimatter wich would render every other weapon to nothing... you might even use antimatter to create energy for you because that would be even more effective.
also if you have the technology to create any sort of matter you can create every type of matter and so you might be able to use beam technology so by decomposing anything you can send the data at the speed of light (or via quantum entanglement instantly (but i heard of no such technology in your universe)) to a receiver and rebuild the stuff there.
How would you see your own or the enemies blades, when it is only a molecule thick?
Oh my gad...
jerome96114 in the most settings, only the edge is monomolecular... Or holographic highlighted, like in Mass Effect (Omni-Blades)
what about having different defence systems, to conter different weapons? All those Pulse field Generator weapens could perhaps be contered with your own pulse field generator, which messes with the effect it intends to to. This could end in a battle between the different computerpowers of the ships.
+MusikCassette Mmm, good idea!
Shields could work by having plasma at the temperature of the sun being held in place by electromagnetic fields that would vaporise any projectile that passes through it. As for energy weapons they could be repelled by the electromagnetic field it's self :-)
How would you fire through your own shield out?
Maybe the shield could disperse around whatever you are firing for the millionths of a second that the projectile is passing through? :-)
I know this wont make a difference but what about the firing types for the energy weapons as in semi or full auto or burst
using the pulse field generator could you not transport people into alternate dimensions
Have you ever written a book in this setting?
👍 .
hulk brigandine
Void Shield generator
Different calibers have different ranges though a .22 doesn't have the range of 9 mm and so on. I agree that having massive amounts of differing weapons will bog down the game and even over whelm the player choice. With that said, one would want to use longer range fire arms at times, for example in an assassination attempt on an NPC political leader.
Your weapons would propably have as high chance to vaporize operator as target.
:-D
Just saying...
Hi again, Shad
Thank ou for your answer. :) it was very inspirational, so would you believe it to be plausible for a biological individual, such as a human clone, to be infused with nanobots which are able to alter the individual's exterior. Hair colour, skin where it turns invisible or into a metal surface?
Great question and very inventive too.
First, I have no idea what the nanobytes would have to do to make such changes, it could very well be utterly impossible, but this is fiction and in the end we can just say it can happen, that's the great thing about fiction though its always better to try and base things even the slightest bit in reality. I suspect it would be easier for the nanobytes to change hair and skin color then changing the skin into metal or making it invisible. Changing atomic properties such as carbon into iron (making skin turn into metal), requires restructuring the protons and neutrons of an atom, something that requires manipulating the nuclear forces, which requires some BIG technology and energy, not sure nanobytes could do it, also it's hard to tell how a body would react to it's skin changing into metal, but remember that this is fiction, always do what's awesome. In the end sometimes it can be better not to try and explain things, especially if you have no idea how it's done. Explaining things based on incorrect science makes one look more like an idiot then if they just say, I don't know how it's done, but this is what it does.
Hope I made sense.
You could also use the holo fields like Mackie uses for disguises. Just projected over a fabric surface instead of an area in space. Technically it would be easier to do since theres actually something to work on, as opposed to making a beam or cone of light just stop in the middle of nowhere.
You could also use it to blend in with the surroundings and just stand still for a sort of invisibility. With a fast enough processor you could even move and be invisible.
But yeah nano machines could also easily change the surface color of things, just by changing the way light reflects off of the surface. And because they are nano machines it wouldnt matter if your changing the surface properties of a jacket or a human/ meta human hair. Anything would be possible really. Its just a question of whether or not you can carry enough nano machines to continuously change the colors to be invisible. But gradual changes over gross surfaces like skin and hair wouldnt really take much.
Thank you Shad and Arbhall for your input.
I can see that holographic reflection could be a more believable approach to invisibility. It could also give a good obstruction for my chosen protagonist. That the person must stand still to not be seen.
Now, concerning the skin to metal transformation/modification, I can see what you mean when it comes down to de- and reconstructing the atomic structure of the human DNA and the fact that even if it is possible to bypass that structure with nanos fueled with a power source similar or plentiful enough like fusion or atomic power, the lack of flexibility from skin to metal could be a problem....
How about Kevlar instead of metal. As far as I remember Kevlar is a carbon fibre used in bullet proof vest. But is Kevlar also capable of stopping sharp weapons like knives and shrapnel?
As Litchfield No, Kelvar is terrible at dealing with edged weapons and abrasion attacks. Its whole thing is that all the fibres are held together in bundles which together are stronger than they are individually.
For Kevlar to be effective against an edged weapon it needs help, like a steel plate or a series of ceramic plates designed to deflect or stop an incoming blade.
But following your reasoning I can tell you a nano bot probably could cover tissue and skin with metal, and give it metallic structures for strength. But I wouldnt bother with that.
Id use Nanos to restructure skin to resemble crocodile or alligator skin. or on the extreme end the skin of an Ankyllosaurus. Actually have plates of bone in between the skin layers for protection, with insulating layers of cellulose between them all.
That way you retain your organic functions, and gain all the protection from kinetic attacks and some thermal insulation.
It would be really obvious and hard to conceal but it would also be really effective and offer a lot of protection.