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Hypothetical question:

If a large (size class 2 or larger) asteroid ship Jindarians say, were struck by a sufficiently powerful laser or other energy weapon that could generate significant heat during a star fleet battles game turn/impulse, would the vapor generated as multiple tons of rock get incinerated, be sufficient to move the ship one star fleet battles tactical hex back, in the direction opposite of the shield facing where aforementioned energy weapon beam struck?

This could be the basis for a previously unknown (and unpublished) new empire primary weapon…one that does both damage AND causes an (involuntary) retrograde movement on the targeted ship.

Wow.
what a concept.

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Monday, June 30, 2025 - 07:40 am: Edit

Not if we're using anything like real physics.

Remember, a hex in SFB is 10,000 km and turns are short. Deposit enough energy for that level of recoil, and the entire ship is vapor and we're looking at vapor from the exploding ship recoiling that fast.

That said: You could probably technobabble about warp field interactions with the vaporized material providing a pseudo-force which causes the ship to move.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, June 30, 2025 - 07:49 am: Edit

Douglas, thank you.

Just an idle thought.

I was thinking that such a game mechanism might for a different kind of special scenario rule.

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Monday, June 30, 2025 - 08:05 am: Edit

You can technobabble it easily enough if you want such a mechanism for something, it's certainly no worse physics-wise than most of the rest of the setting and weapons.

Is it a good game rule/scenario/mechanism strikes me as a lot more important to SFB than plausible physics.

By Mike Curtis (Nashvillen) on Monday, June 30, 2025 - 08:55 am: Edit

Not to mention if you laser the Jindo ship enough you might produce enough handwavium to make it work.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Thursday, July 31, 2025 - 07:37 pm: Edit

High Noon has issued a recall for some of its Beach Variety packs because they contain Celsius energy drink cans that were mistakenly filled with vodka seltzer, leading to potential unintentional alcohol consumption. Consumers are advised to check for cans with silver lids and specific lot codes and to dispose of them if found.

They should have just announced the mistake, quietly remove the error cans and watch the rush....

By Roger Rardain (Sky_Captain) on Sunday, August 03, 2025 - 11:26 pm: Edit

I saw that Loni Anderson passed away today.
She was 79, passed after a lengthy illness.

For those too young to remember, one of her biggest claims to fame was Jennifer the receptionist on "WKRP in Cincinnati".

By Roger Rardain (Sky_Captain) on Sunday, August 03, 2025 - 11:26 pm: Edit

Deleted.

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Sunday, August 03, 2025 - 11:58 pm: Edit

WKRP in Cincinnati

Now THAT was a funny show.

--Mike

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, August 04, 2025 - 07:15 am: Edit

With God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, August 04, 2025 - 10:24 am: Edit

“Film at eleven “, Doctor, Johnny Fever.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, August 30, 2025 - 11:30 pm: Edit

SUBMARINE RAIDER, free on YouTube, a 1942 propaganda movie including Japanese admirals who order pilots who disappointed them to jump overboard.

Before the war starts, two brothers are on watch. One is a counter-spy who tracks Japanese spies, which seem to be everywhere. The other is a submarine captain. A carrier (with no escorts?) is headed for Pearl Harbor from due west and sends a fighter to destroy a yacht that spotted them. (Wasn't that in some other movie?) The sole survivor, a beautiful American socialite, is rescued by the submarine and helps them ambush the carrier after it attacks Pearl Harbor.

This includes a Navy helm order I have never heard: "Up rudder!"

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, August 30, 2025 - 11:34 pm: Edit

PRIMEVAL and PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD
Streaming on Amazon.
These series, the first British and the second Canadian, are part of the same universe. Anomalies (balls of light) appear randomly around London and Vancouver and are wormhole passages to earlier times, not necessarily including dinosaurs but always including something dangerous. The teams have to catch the critters and get them home before the space-time continuum is destroyed.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Sunday, August 31, 2025 - 03:41 pm: Edit

IIRC, the VFX people behind 'Primeval' were the same folks who did the original 'Walking With Dinosaurs.'

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, September 17, 2025 - 04:30 pm: Edit

MAYFLOWER II
A movie on Prime video.
Hilariously bad scripting. On a future Earth, the government is using fear of a population crisis to control the population. Private land is confiscated to force people to live in cities where the government can control them. People are paid to accept sterilization. The only legal church uses a bible heavily edited by the government. Children are brainwashed by teachers that government and safety are good but uncontrolled freedom and runaway family size is dangerous. Underground Christian groups secretly refurbish an old Galactic Virgin spacecraft to escape to a free space colony where they can safely read the original but now illegal bible.

I cannot tell if this thing was shot by Evangelicals trying to be serious or atheists trying to write a spoof. That may be why it is enjoyable, anyone can enjoy the (so bad it’s good) movie and think the movie is on their side.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Wednesday, September 17, 2025 - 08:52 pm: Edit

You made me curious, so I went digging. It was written by Greg Lammiman and directed by Dallas Lammiman, both of whom are very much Evangelicals, and who have a history of producing this sort of stuff.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, October 12, 2025 - 11:26 pm: Edit

Our local PBS channel broadcast “Hunt for Red October”.

Pretty good flick, still holds up entertaining wise.

Forgot that one of the U.S. Navy formations talked about in the movie was the “New Jersey Battlegroup.”

Great lines.

“One ping Only, Vasily”.

By Robert Russell Lender (Rusman) on Monday, October 13, 2025 - 07:23 am: Edit

There are a handful of videos online describing the events of the real life story that inspired Tom Clancy's novell.

Here is one of the better ones I've seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh0N3iG-7Uc

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, October 13, 2025 - 07:48 am: Edit

Hunt For Red October is free on YouTube.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, October 27, 2025 - 06:29 am: Edit

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE

This is a nuclear war film. A single missile is fired at the US by (no one knows whom), targeted on Chicago. With 18 minutes to go, we watch the situation unfold in three chapters, first from the perspective of the White House Situation Room, then from the perspective of United States Strategic Command, and finally from the perspective of the President himself. The three chapters are shown one after another, but cover the same time period. Someone you hear on the phone in one chapter is shown talking on the phone in another chapter. It is brilliantly written and acted. The ending is disappointing (we never find out who launched it, if it did contain a nuclear warhead, if the warhead worked) but ya know, I decided it was best this way. No doubt, someone an hour later told the president who fired it, and the president proceeded to punish the bad actor, and I suppose that any ending would have been just one of many possibilities and it was best to leave the possibilities unresolved. The film is well worth watching (Netflix) and so far as I know accurate enough in the technology and decision making.

Not to give away much, but the missile is launched from somewhere in the Pacific that nobody expected a missile to come from, so nobody saw who fired it. One would assume it was fired from some kind of ship, and you'd have to admit that all five possible culprits (Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, some military officer who had a bad day and fired without orders) would have a reason to shoot and a scenario to shoot only one missile.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Monday, October 27, 2025 - 09:35 pm: Edit

Saw this trailer and gonna watch it!

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Tuesday, October 28, 2025 - 05:08 am: Edit

Watched and had mixed feelings. It could be a great kickstarter movie for several spin offs.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, October 28, 2025 - 08:00 am: Edit

I think they could do a post-impact sequel where they try to figure out whodunnit.

Scenario for Iran. They load the missile on a nondescript freighter, steam to the North Korean coast, launch, then sink the freighter in very deep water and the crew escapes in something, say a fishing boat.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Tuesday, October 28, 2025 - 08:54 am: Edit

Or, it being Iran, the crew doesn't escape but instead "martyrs" themselves.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Tuesday, October 28, 2025 - 09:23 am: Edit

They can tell EXACTLY where any given sample of fissile material comes from. NEST is amazing.

Clancy talks about this in "The Sum of All Fears"

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, October 28, 2025 - 12:40 pm: Edit

Nest can only do that if they have a sample from the producing reactor. They did it in that book only because it was a US made bomb.

By Burt Quaid (Burt) on Tuesday, October 28, 2025 - 04:31 pm: Edit

Is it safe to assume they have samples from most of the world’s reactors and therefore can narrow the search area down?

Burt

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, October 28, 2025 - 09:05 pm: Edit

I would think that the Russians and Chinese and Iranians and North Koreans would prefer you did not have sample of their reactor material.

That said, I suspect that the NSA reads enough mail to identify the guilty within a day or two.

My response as president for Iran and North Korea and probably China is going to be to go to the back page of the book for that country, and select the most overwhelming and brutal attack plan I can find. I am not going to play games here, I'm going to put somebody out of the country business. I am confident that I can sink every Chinese missile sub before it launches and nail every ICBM launcher before it gets them ready to fire. (That may not be true any more; I am thinking of the days they had 12 silos and now they seem to have 400.) So I should escape further loss. I might comment that in the case of China it's going to be WARPLAN MAXIMUM plus the Three Gorges Dam. When that wall of water comes down that valley, China loses a billion people and over half of its capacity to produce anything. I will be the greatest war criminal in history but who says I cannot aspire to greatness?

Russia is another question. They have the most ICBMs, and have decades of planning for retaliation. They simply have too many silos that are too far from the coast for me to get them all with one sweep.