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> Sidenote 2: cloaking devices are often misused in science fiction. When a ship is cloaked, it is invisible, which means it lets through all light from behind.
by shoo 2y ago
> Sidenote 2: cloaking devices are often misused in science fiction. When a ship is cloaked, it is invisible, which means it lets through all light from behind. This means that this light is not entering the cloaked ship, which means that cloaked ships must be blind. This would be a fantastic story element since it greatly disadvantages any cloaked ship, but it is always missed.
Tangent: which fictional universe (book / game / movie / etc) has a great sci-fi space combat story element, and what makes it interesting?
I recommend Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War series: one of the series' assumptions is the existence of ansibles for FTL communication -- in this universe, ansibles are deployed as fixed satellites/stations to provide communications for system-system commerce, finance, etc. There is a telecommunication megacorp that has a monopoly on ansible technology (Ma Bell ...in space) with it's own private corporate navy to defend their monopoly. As the series rolls on, other kinds of ansibles are encountered that are useful for military applications, and the last couple of books include fleet battles where the eponymous Ky Vatta develops tactics to exploit the informational advantage from FTL comms, vs making decisions based on information from ship scanners, subject to light speed scan-lag. Certainly not the first novel to consider FTL comms -- Le Guin introduced the term in the 60s -- but one that explores the consequences in a mil-sf series. https://www.goodreads.com/series/41099-vatta-s-war https://www.goodreads.com/series/41099-vatta-s-war
edit: incoherent recommendation #2 -- there is some other book/series, the name of which i cannot remember, that really spelled out what space fleet action could be like with fleets engaging each other at extremely high delta-v. it did not at all resemble the ww1 fighter plane dogfights in space we see depicted in popular science fiction movies, books, games & space opera.
- p_l 2y agoLost Fleet[1] has fleet combat often take seconds during passes at extreme relative velocities Honorverse[2], starting with second released book[3], introduced FTL comms in a world that until then could only detect certain events at FTL speeds - it's one of the main things that leads to very fast evolution of warfare in the sector of space which spills wider and wider. I think its take on impact on warfare seriously predates Vatta's War (still have to read Vatta's War, the first four novels in Familias Regnant universe were very good, have to one day get back and finish the series and take on Vatta's War). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Fleet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Fleet [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Honor_of_the_Queen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Honor_of_the_Queen
- close04 2y agoTangent but I don’t really agree with the premise of the quote. Being cloaked wouldn’t need to imply no light enters the ship. A sufficiently advanced ship wouldn’t need to “bend” incoming light. Instead it could even absorb every single incidental photon and particle and then actively emit one with the expected behavior as if there was no object in that region of space. E.g. absorb photon on one side, emit one photon on the other side.
- mysteria 2y ago> Instead it could even absorb every single incidental photon and particle and then actively emit one with the expected behavior as if there was no object in that region of space. E.g. absorb photon on one side, emit one photon on the other side. Honestly this is how I imagined all the sci-fi cloaking devices worked from the start. The surface would basically show what it looked like on the other side and the people inside the ship could still see out normally.
- lesuorac 2y agoCould also just let in like 1e-51% of the light and now it becomes a game of who has sufficient technology to detect a ship-sized darker spot. I guess you can get a similar effect by having a garage door beam set-up where you flash a bright light and try to detect a cloaked ship passing through the "beam" by seeing them take too long to re-transmit a photon.
- actionfromafar 2y agoOr a tiny opening in the cloak where the cameras/sensors are.
- justsomehnguy 2y agoLensman /me runs away