The Nightstar Zoo

It seemed like it might be useful to start a thread where we recorded all the canonical things that Howard tells us in one place, so that we don't have to go archive-diving later. This then, is that thread.

Everything here is canonical (i.e., appeared in a strip, a footnote, or was forum-blessed by Howard as "How it Works in the Schlockiverse").

Any mistakes are mine; please point so I can fix them.


Teraport and TAD:

1. When you teraport, you are reduced to gravitic packets.
2. The packets are then pushed through nanoscopic wormholes to their destination.
3. The process takes a human-measurable amount of time, with the exact duration increasing based on the mass to be transported. It takes about 6 seconds for a ship the size of the PDCL to teraport.
4. As per this post, modern TAD systems work not by shooting / disrupting the wormholes, but by suppressing them, using the same technology that the teraport uses to form them in the first place. Two posts later, Howard also states that there have been at least four generations of TAD.)
5. According to this comic, there have now been at least 9 generations of teraport, and earlier versions were less comfortable for the passengers.
6. TAD systems can be turned off.
7. TAD systems can be tuned to recognize certain teraports as "friendly" and leave them alone
8. Per Howard's comment (see below, in this thread), Petey defeats TAD systems, not through any clever tricks or superior technology, he simply has more power available (cf the core generator), and opens wormholes so large that the TAD system is not able to suppress them.
9. Per Howard's comment every non-Petey teraport ever shown has required a teraport to "carry" the teraportee along. Petey is able to create a wormhole from anywhere to anywhere, thereby teleporting (not teraporting) an object without the need of a teraport device.
10. It is possible, when teraporting, to convert the momentum of the teraportee into mass (and presumably vice-versa).

If a teraport's packets are hit by a grav pulse or a coherent beam weapon (e.g. laser) before they have fully reassembled, the person or object being teraported is destroyed. This is NOT how a TAD system works, however, as explained above.


Schlockiverse Gravity and Gravitics
In this thread, Howard stated that gravitational propagation is FTL in the Schlockiverse for purposes of detection, but not necessarily for all purposes. This obsoletes this comment.

In this post, Howard gave us several useful facts: 0) Gravitic drives (i.e., ship engines) can only accelerate you up to about 0.6c (*), 1) It can change your velocity enormously 2) but only within limits; (up to about 0.8c relative to your startpoint due to relativistic effects mucking up the teraport) 3) doing something that mucks up the teraport can cause you to die or blow up.

(*) Actually, he says that gravitic drives can't accelerate you faster that without you encountering practical limits such as running out of fuel. I speculate that if you had some way of resupplying via teleport, maybe you could keep accelerating.


THOOOOMMM! and Blam!
In the footnote to this comic, Howard explains how Schlock's plasma cannon allows him to fly.

In this comment, Howard states that Schlock's plasma cannon is a 'stream', (i.e., not a bullet). (Note: the turret that Howard is referencing is this one.)

In this comment, Howard explains that good tracer ammo does not leave a trail pointing back to the shooter.


Communications, Travel, and Other Infrastructure
Hypercomms are FTL, as per the footnote here.

Ships and ship sizes:
The Athens was a destroyer with a pair of 60m primary annies.
Petey has a class of ship called the "Devastator" , about which we know nothing.
The Plaited Daisies is an "Extortionator" class ship and has a 10,000 meter primary annie.
So does the Cloak of Untrammeled Dignity(Picture)


Neutronium, Annie Plants, and Power Issues

In this forum post, http://zoo.nightstar.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=17381&start=25 Howard says that annie plants make their own neutronium out of regular matter.


In this post, Howard explained the power requirements of a UNS destroyer. This demonstrates, as he says, that primary plants are needed for combat but smaller plants can easily handle everything else.

In this post, Howard told us that the power of annie-plants is not additive (at least, not in linear fashion). (That's a paraphrase.)

In this post, Howard said that you get more energy out of neutronium than it took to produce the neutronium from normal mass in the first place. (Note that this does NOT break the laws of physics...it just means that converting the regular mass into neutronium is an low-cost process that costs less than the e=mc^2 energy value of the mass in question.) Howard also said don't think too much about this because it's a "black-box plot device."



Thanks to everyone who pitched in links, corrections, and further explanation!

_________________
After 3 long, weaponless years, I became the wielder of the Doobie/Dobie gun!

Wormholes! Not black holes.
Black holes don't lead to anywhere but your doom.

Re #5... wormhole detection is FTL, but it need not be due to the propagation of gravitic distortion of real-space. If I need to retcon the physics a little bit, we can simply postulate a device similar to a hypernet transceiver which detects "neighboring" wormholes by the "vibrations" induced in the nanoscopic wormhole it maintains.

--Howard

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Creator and Cartoonist, Schlock Mercenary

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20011125.html
Found your six second link, and some imagery about coffee makers and baseball bats.

I don't know how much of that is hard doctrine about teraport time frames, but it seems like you could get a TADs system running in 6 seconds, and random teraports wouldn't be too effective if you could trail with something decidedly less massive.

As for TADs shooting stuff, I got the impression that they worked like special EM field generators since they work 800 meters underground. In fact there were three overlapping sets of fields in that underground fortress. http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20041007.html

Maybe they really are just pulsing gravitic fields which do propagate through space a normal speeds less than or equal to c. That would explain their utility as weapons against the Dames. The Dames only interact with our universe through gravitic distortions, and millions of gravitic noise generators springing up overnight as the teraport wars began certainly made them unhappy.

If long range gravity field noise producers are the only thing keeping the galaxy safe, then a sufficiently powerful ship should be able to neutralize the gravitic field noise around it and teraport out of hostile space. Punching through the fields like Petey can do seems like you would need to open the wormholes and manipulate gravity fields on the far end before you hopped through yourself. Sounds complicated. And dangerous. Something you'd prefer to do with someone else's battleplate rather than your own.

Yes, it's possible. Petey has proved that. However, it's very, very difficult. You would need to exactly cancel EVERY move of the TAD field, which, one would assume, was not entirely regular. I suspect the TAD is more targeted in its disruption that a system-wide pulse, which would make it harder to counter, but I suspect Petey's system works by using his gravitics to counter the detectable effects of what he is porting in (much more power needed, but much more reliable and stealthy) so that the gravy gun attached to the TAD is never ordered to fire in the first place.

_________________
I shall now be known as Wolfie, bearer of the Mohawk of Doom and Non-frizziness!

*cue evil laugh*

Actually, what he's doing is creating really large wormholes, well-defined wormholes. The smaller ones don't disrupt it. Stopping Petey with a TAD is like trying to jam a 50,000 watt transmitter with the iTrip radio attachment on your iPod.

--Howard

_________________
Creator and Cartoonist, Schlock Mercenary

Drat. An on-the-fly teraport cage made out of gravity would have been so cool.

_________________
I shall now be known as Wolfie, bearer of the Mohawk of Doom and Non-frizziness!

*cue evil laugh*

So basically, he is doing what the Gatekeepers told everyone else they did only without lights and mirrors?

And he solved the efficiency problem that had Kevyn go 'Eureka!' by just having a galactic drive as a generator for the energy.

Well, sure. I mean, if you have the energy to spare, why not? It's easier than an on the fly teraport cage made out of gravity.

I hope he's closing them after he's done.

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"Misery loves an escape pod so that it can watch from a safe distance as company is vaporized by overwhelming force."--Vexxarr

No, we haven't seen any evidence that he solved the efficiency problem, merely that he has enough energy that efficiency is irrelevant.

_________________
I shall now be known as Wolfie, bearer of the Mohawk of Doom and Non-frizziness!

*cue evil laugh*

That, and he can use lots of merely small wormholes instead of one big one like the gatekeepers did.

Big enough to be immune to TAD disruption, but small enough that he can make lots in the standard teraport style.

Added the link about Howard intending to show us King Xinchub's the Prandial's escape.

_________________
After 3 long, weaponless years, I became the wielder of the Doobie/Dobie gun!

Anyone else find that incredibly amusing?

Chinchub not only betrayed his keeper in favor of the prandialists, but he warped the essencially populist movement to allow a monarch, then stepped into that role.

Bravo, really.

This thread from the keenspot forums a while back may be of interest:

http://forums.keenspot.com/viewtopic.php?t=67165

It covers some time travel and gravity propagation issues.

I'm not sure you can really say either of those things happened. His "keeper" still appears to be right there, by his side, sharing power. That would appear to be a step UP from embattled and beseiged ruler of a world in revolt. It seems to me that Xinchub (note the spelling) and our purple friend simply made a better figurehead in the process of solving the problem.

Secondly, just because there is a populist movement to create better living conditions for the people at large does not mean such a movement is fundamentally opposed to a monarchy. Provided the right candidate is available for the role, a single sovereign (as is the case in monarchies, dictatorships, and similar systems) is often the fastest way to acheive dramatic social change. Given the state of civil war which was occurring, the rise of Xinchub to power behind a prandialist platform would not be at all out of keeping with the beliefs of the prandialists. After all, making food available to everyone is what the prandialists sought in this war, and having a monarch who allowed such a goal to be acheived would be perfectly in line with their aims. There is no reason why a popular movement for social change could not desire a monarch to bring their aims to fruition. Given that, it could hardly be said that acheiving the over-riding aim of the prandialist movement was "warping" it.

_________________
I shall now be known as Wolfie, bearer of the Mohawk of Doom and Non-frizziness!

*cue evil laugh*

How do you know that they achieved that goal? "Free food for everyone!" sounds good - until you consider those annoying little details like where the food is supposed to come from, how is distribution to be managed, etc...

Another Keen forum post may be useful as well.

Ship Classifications. the second Howard post.

Possibly because they hailed him as "King Xinchub the Prandialist" in a manner and setting which can only lead us to surmise that he was a successful prandialist. Since the term prandialist refers to a philosophy of ensuring everyone gets food, whether they can afford it or not, the only other possible assumption is that he failed at it and everyone is cheering because they have either gone mad or been lobotomised and he is still dressed up from a recent masquerade party.

_________________
I shall now be known as Wolfie, bearer of the Mohawk of Doom and Non-frizziness!

*cue evil laugh*

He could be pointing guns at them but the cheering seems genuine to me.

Good man, sorta.

Per this strip, we know that an shipboard annie plant has a "primer" plant to restart after a shut down.

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Howard Tayler figured out that Betsumei is a girl three years before I did. Showoff.

Finally armed, thanks to Ishidan.

Primer plants, which seem to be small secondary annie plants if I interpret Kevin's sentence correctly.

Makes sense. All the difference between a low-output annie's singularity and a high-output singularity is some evaporation time.

Added Howard's comment about converting mass into energy being efficient. Also added the "Neutronium..." and "Miscellaneous" headers, just for slightly neater organization.

_________________
After 3 long, weaponless years, I became the wielder of the Doobie/Dobie gun!

What I'd like to know is how antimatter grenades work, as shown in the recent strip: http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20070208.html

and here

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20070207.html

One says essentially that you can't protect your loved ones by throwing yourself on an antimatter grenade.
and the other shows some goons being blown away (complete with a trail of burning bits moving away from the epicenter of the grenade) by this grenade, with the goons acting as a protective wall for Kevyn's survival.
And the one after that shows elf's armoring fused, presumably by the heat of the explosion.

I like how the plot is proceeding towards having Kevyn and Elf naked as savages, but antimatter grenades look exactly like any other kind of grenade with a shiny "it's antimatter" glittertext thrown in front of it, which is disappointing and kinda confusing.

I'm sure you also noticed that the goons were a great deal of distance farther away than 'point-blank' and it still ate through all of them.

It was more elf threw him clear of the blast, and the blast took care of the goons for them

Please note:
The BigBang.

Updated the number of generations of TAD from 4 to 9 as per today's comic.

_________________
After 3 long, weaponless years, I became the wielder of the Doobie/Dobie gun!

Teraport cage walls must be unbroken for the cage to work, although they can be open at other times.

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20070225.html

"...Figured the walls would have to be unbroken" ~Kevyn

Maybe it works on the same principles of a Farday cage... A Farday cage can be made of mesh walls and still work.