ShadowDragon1 Wrote:| DarthMeow504 Wrote:Exactly right. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Shiva laser is a world conquering weapon, no doubt about it. |
plausible speculation. But where would the first Shiva Laser get all the energy to do that, some sort of back-up generator seemed (sounded like it kicked in when the laser was activated) to be powering it, where would the raw matter (to be re-assembled) be stored?
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IMO it would take alot more memory and engineering technology that's 50-100 years more advanced than what it contained on Flynn's master-key disc to accomplish that. Even then, that computer and the laser siphoning all the power from the entire city's power I think. |
e=mc2, my friend... a single kilogram of matter converted to energy (and what do you think the digitizing process does? It transmutes matter back and forth from energy) is the amount of energy contained in the Hiroshima bomb. That is more than enough energy to power anything, thank you very much. If the Shiva required as massive a power source as you say, Flynn would need a lot more than a backup generator, he'd need a nuclear power plant in his basement. Power generation will not be a problem.
We don't know exactly how much matter a Shiva the size of Flynn's basement unit can process at a time. We do know it's at least enough to process an entire human adult at once, so let's say 250 pounds just for sake of argument. It can store two adults worth of matter in it's "buffer" at minimum, as Kevin's matter was stored and Sam's was added to it. Two adult's matter was stored, even if only one of them were scanned/rezzed at a time. So we have a minimum of 250 pounds per rez cycle and a 500 pound buffer. As to time per cycle, well in the first movie rezzing in Kevin took about thirty seconds. In Legacy, it seemed nearly instantaneous. So if no time was cut from Legacy's sequence, it can process a minimum of 250 pounds per second, once for intake and another for output. Worst case scenario is that it processes matter at 250 pounds per minute, but I choose to interpret that as too slow for Kevin's doomsday prediction to be true and thus prefer the 250lb/2second rule. That's still rather slow. Those tanks, and especially that ship, are gonna take a while at that pace.
So logically, the first thing you'd want to do is increase your processing capacity, or as I like to call it your rez bandwidth. So the first thing you'd want to do is add a second laser to allow simultaneous input and output. That gives you a minimum of a quarter ton per second of rez bandwidth. Most likely that task could be accomplished in the first minute or less, if the Shiva assembly is no more than a few tons in total weight. That's a very generous estimate, as it didn't seem that damned huge in the film. Your rez bandwidth as you're outputting that second laser is 16 seconds per ton. As soon as that second laser is complete, you double your bandwidth, and can now process at 8 seconds per ton. Two more lasers could then be completed in the time it took to create the second one. Now you're at 4, processing matter at a rez bandwidth of 4 seconds per ton. In the same amount of time, you make four more, for a total of eight, bringing your rez bandwidth to 2 seconds per ton. Then you do it again, again doubling the amount of lasers to 16 and your rez bandwidth to 1 ton per second. Now you're starting to make some progress! Roughly five minutes since you started firing the Shiva. Where the wall of Flynn's basement once was there's now a small cavern carved out and a cluster of Shiva lasers where only one was. Nobody even knows what's going on yet.
It keeps going. Every ten seconds at one ton per second it can create a ten ton vehicle that carries a mobile Shiva. Each one about the size of a moving van. Six per minute. So after ten minutes total (five to create the 16 laser cluster, five to make the mobile platforms) you have thirty of these things ready to go. Ten minutes, have the cops even been called? Does anyone even notice what's going on beneath the surface? Probably not, and there's very little chance of being able to do anything if they did. The police, if they're even aware of anything at all, are en route with a patrol unit or two which almost certainly haven't arrived yet.
The Shiva cluster takes 5 minutes, just for cooling, to be charitable. Ten minutes steady operation, five minutes cooling. But the 30 Shiva mobile platforms are not resting. They're ready to roll. They break through the surface to street level and move out. Each takes a different direction and spreads out, finding itself a nice spot with something large in the range of it's laser like a building or other piece of infrastructure. First thing it does is use the 500 pounds in it's buffer that it picked up on the way out to build a barricade around itself, a process which takes about 5 seconds. It's not a lot, but 500 pounds of high strength alloy in the form of a geodesic dome framework with plating over it is nothing to sneeze at So while Cluster 1 is cooling, each mobile platform has driven a short distance away and encased itself in a cocoon of metal sufficient to repel personnel and small arms fire, which is the worst the local police could throw at it even if they were to attack immediately instead of taking any time to stop and try to figure out what the hell is going on.
At minute 15, those 30 lasers begin the same process. In ten minutes, they'll have another 30 mobile platforms ready to go. EACH. Thirty times thirty is NINE HUNDRED mobile platforms ready to roll out. We're 25 minutes into the invasion and the cops are still trying to figure out what in the hell is going on. The first units arrived at Flynn's in tie to find a hole in the ground with 30 mysterious trucks coming out of it, a hole which was sealed behind them in mere seconds. They called it in, and put out an APB on those trucks, because something is going on and they want to know what the hell it is. So long as they cannot route officers to the stopping point locations and get through the barricade domes protecting the platforms in under ten minutes, they'll be suddenly overwhelmed with 900 of the damned things ready to repeat the process. And they'll have to get them all, too, because each one that survives will spit out thirty more mobile platforms. In under thirty minutes, if none are destroyed in the small time available, there are 900 mobile platforms. Too many for any police force to hope of dealing with. Fifteen minutes later, there's 27,000 of them. That's TWENTY-SEVEN THOUSAND. In about 45 minutes from the first moment of the first laser firing.. Good luck stopping them with any force you can assemble in that amount of time.
Those 27k mobile platforms spend the next next fifteen minutes rezzing up 5 tanks each to protect themselves with (one fifty ton tank per minute after rezzing up to a 16 laser cluster) and cooling down. It's now an hour in and you have 27,000 rezzing clusters protected by a force of 135,000 tanks. You are now authorized to shit bricks.
Every minute thereafter, each of those 27k rezzing stations can produce 1 tank, five 10 ton attack helicopter type vehicles, or 5 mobile Shiva platforms. Let's say that, to make sure they cannot all be wiped out by a WMD strike, the next five minutes are spent making clusters of 2 tanks, 10 choppers and 5 Shiva trucks. Those clusters are then sent out to spread out and begin the whole process again. That's 27,000 of these mobile groupings with plenty of firepower to escort the mobile Shiva platforms and make sure they make it where they're going. Each one drives an hour away from the epicenter of the invasion. They arrive at their destination and spend five minutes building up to a 16 laser cluster and building an armor shell and another five minutes creating more mobile clusters. At two hours and fifteen minutes, you have 54,000 rez clusters spread over a diameter of approximately 60 miles, and the forward stations ready to unleash more mobile clusters to expand farther.
In the meantime, Cluster One can be spending it's time doubling and redoubling it's Shiva lasers, bringing it to 64 within minutes of the first thirty trucks rolling out. It fortifies it's position, and makes more Shiva trucks as necessary to replace any that are destroyed in the early waves, just in case. It produces protective units, again just in case. Then it multiplies it's laser capacity four times more, to 1,024 lasers. This is in minutes 15-30 from Moment Zero. Cluster One is now a fortified base with plenty of armor, tanks, artillery / antiaircraft / antimissile cannons (consider each one roughly equivalent to one tank), assault helicopters, and a rez bandwidth of 64 tons per second. Pretty damned sweet for just thirty minutes! From that point on it can rez up one tank or a half dozen assault choppers per second, making it certain to be able to replace units faster than they're destroyed. It's pretty much unkillable at this point.
It's surrounded by a ring of 27,000 rezzing stations, which at the 1 hour and fifteen minute mark can begin fortifying and increasing their capacity as well. That's in addition to the 135,000 tanks already there. Say they each go to 128 lasers per station, for a rez bandwidth of 8 tons per second. Each one can then crank out a 32 ton fighter plane (the size of the F-22 Raptor) every 4 seconds. Let's call it every six seconds to be generous and allow time for cooling. That's ten planes per minute. Or 270,000 per minute for all rezzing stations in the first circle combined. If each spends five minutes rezzing up assault choppers for defense before upping it's capacity and beginning on the fighter planes, each is defended by 5 tanks and 25 choppers. So without Cluster One and without rezzing up any more defensive units, that's a total of 135,000 tanks and 675,000 choppers defensive force and an offensive force of 270,000 fighter planes PER MINUTE for as long as they need to make them.
You really hardly need Cluster One or the second (and subsequent!) rings to have an unstoppable army at that point, but you will anyhow. Every hour and 15 minutes another ring is replicated, should you need them. Or you can just stick with the first two rings around Cluster One and start sending out flying Shiva platforms instead of rolling ones escorted by choppers or planes and build a new central Cluster in every city , and have a new central cluster and two rings within three hours of arrival.
Exponential functions are a bitch, aren't they?