Would HV ships need an extreme makeover for a TV series?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:"I'm ... ... going ... to tear ... you ... limb from limb."

Which suggests the slow communication via ftl may not be totally amenable to tv.

Just don't show them trying to hold a dialogue. I've always found it weird that they'd send sentences and wait 45 minutes for a reply in the books. And it looked like they had the camera on them all the time!

No, if you're not in real-time range, you want to send as much information as you can in your one message. And if you're on real-time range, you have the dreaded "you're on mute" problem

But as many of us know with emailing our bosses, you don't want to send TOO much, because you open up for a "tl;dr" symptom. Or they focus on the first paragraph or the last paragraph of your message to the detriment of the rest of what you needed from them.

Well, it did give Crandall plenty of time to pass pinecones. And many of the crew time to write last wills and testaments.

HV weaponry may need a makeover as well. Flechete guns will give little kids, and some adults, a nightmare. Certain HV weapons are amongst the most vicious in all of Sci-Fi. The Klingon disruptor is supposed to be painful, but the pain doesn't last long at all. Flechete guns on the other hand.

And how are they going to portray people from heavy grav worlds? I suppose that shouldn't be much of a problem with today's technology.

Flechete guns are not really much worse than shotguns (think with OO buckshot) and flechette rounds have been available for shotguns for a long while.

Your more or less talking about the difference between showing an actor shot with a machine-gun (full up machine gun like a M2 50cal or a "gatling" style with high speed rotating and barrels) showing impacts.....or sawing the opponent in half (but not neatly) with a tri-barrel or even just a SAW from a fixed position. And movies/tv constantly show people being shot with semi-automatic stuff or sub-machineguns.

If you want to go interestingly graphic you could do slow-mo shots of plasma blowing out of conduits from missile or energy fire and cremating people in the way. Or structural members impaling crew from the same kind of damage

Perhaps Nimitz shredding some Massadan assassins face with "only" two hits with one arm -on the way to the next target where he repeats the process and rips the guy's throat out at the same time. The Director will slip in what they think they can get away with for violence and not lose any sleep.

Brigade XO wrote:Flechete guns are not really much worse than shotguns (think with OO buckshot) and flechette rounds have been available for shotguns for a long while.

Your more or less talking about the difference between showing an actor shot with a machine-gun (full up machine gun like a M2 50cal or a "gatling" style with high speed rotating and barrels) showing impacts.....or sawing the opponent in half (but not neatly) with a tri-barrel or even just a SAW from a fixed position. And movies/tv constantly show people being shot with semi-automatic stuff or sub-machineguns.

If you want to go interestingly graphic you could do slow-mo shots of plasma blowing out of conduits from missile or energy fire and cremating people in the way. Or structural members impaling crew from the same kind of damage

Perhaps Nimitz shredding some Massadan assassins face with "only" two hits with one arm -on the way to the next target where he repeats the process and rips the guy's throat out at the same time. The Director will slip in what they think they can get away with for violence and not lose any sleep.

I have heard the comparison of flechete guns and shotguns before. Not that I am disputing the accuracy of the comparison, but I simply can't reason it in my head. I suppose if a shotgun was fully automatic and chewed you up like a chainsaw.

Traditional depictions of machine gun attacks are simply bodies being shown with multiple jerking motions from each impact. Flechete guns would have to show the chainsaw like damage of barely attached limbs and ligaments protruding with pulsing blood from massive bodily damage.

I think I'm going to be sick.

Flechette guns are basically operating like shotguns which instead of using a bunch of sub-calliber round balls, they are a densely packed set of tiny arrows. Or perhaps really tiny spears which are a small diameter but extremely strong and inflexible material with a pointed tip and some sort of aerodynamic attempt at stabilization on the base end- that could be made extremely sharp.
Not sure what they would use in the RMN to operate a flechette gun but you have two options. One would be more like a traditional shotgun shell with a chemical propellent pushing out the cluster of projectiles with some sort of base wad on it. the other would be using a powered mass-driver- which probably would give you more velocity.
These things are designed to blow right though things. But the individual projectiles are lighter than military grade pulse rifle projectiles. They will spread out-as they travel- but the effect is a lot of little holes rather than one or a few large ones. A lot of little sharp pointy things going all the way though your body.
You will leak a lot, there will still be energy transfer but more spread out across the area hit. Wound channels.....lots of them with corresponding organ and bone damage. So, lots and lots of little holes right though your body and fluid leaking everywhere. This is going to end up giving a roughly circular pattern of perhaps 3' diameter at 60' of distance( 12gage #9 shot performance in skeet) . Some of that in the body, some in the head, arms, legs, etc.

Might even push you back but then you will drop like a marionette with the strings cut.

The theory being that this stuff may not penetrate actual heavy armor (like say a Marine's battle armor) but an armored skin suit at close range isn't going to keep it out. What it is not designed to do is shoot through stuff like bulkheads. Next question: how "big" are Flechette rounds. If you make them twice the diameter of a a 12gage shotshell, you get more projectiles so denser pattern.
There is a reason shot guns are very effective in clearing trenches, rooms, alleys.

If the invisible laser/graser route was taken it would be cool to see the beams being briefly visible as they ionize ejected gasses and vaporize small pieces of debris from previous battle damage. Especially in large salvos of laserheads. The beams would initially be invisible but the impacts would produce light and as soon as stuff starts flying off the hull everything in the paths of the beams could flash as they pass through the debris.

I remember watching an interview with one of the expanse authors and he was talking about how they briefly contemplated the "no sound in space" thing for the show but ultimately decided it wasn't practical because there's only 2 mediums with which to communicate information to the viewers, visual and audio. He said if you take one half of that out of the equation it takes a lot away from the viewing experience. I can't help but feel like that same concept would apply to something like completely invisible weapons. Maybe the combination of all the illuminated ejecta and the laserhead's nukes would be enough to keep it from feeling empty.

Well it has been quite some time since I last haunted this forum, and I did have an idea how to stay reasonably canon but still create reasonably distinct national and type identies for a visual medium. I might as well repeat myself, though as for the 'should energy weapons be visable question' I would note that warship particle screens and anti-rad fields fill the space inside the sidewall and do represent a signficiant degree of energy dispersion appearently, I'd imagine that openning the gunports and for the matter the sensor ports could be visually represented by variations in a shimmer.
Now as for the easy visual differentiation, it is not too hard, yes the general shape of a warship is pretty set, but how that shape is formed could vary greatly. Even before you get into surface mount gubbins and physical ports (other than standard small craft docking ports) can vary from navy to navy. SLN gubbins have always struck me as a good place for some art deco inspiration.
For example the manties, being the perfection are utilize extremely smooth organic hulls and for their truly recent ships there is no sign of where the armor belts are (matrix integration and such)
The products of haven use pyramidal frustrums for their hammerheads, I'd make their spindles polyhedral cylinders rising number of sides as ship size increases. For heavily armored ships the belts are visible because the unarmored sections on frames that bear heavy armor are visibly lower, and so forth.
The Andies would be angular but smooth they don't go to the effort of deliberately hiding their armor but they don't have their armor just sitting on top.