Nanite Swarm Environmental Factor

Tremulous Evil Genius Think Tank
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Well with quantum mechanics in general the concept that various attributes are essentially multiples of some indivisible units, applies to a lot of the particles’ properties, even its size, but not necessarily to their relative positions/motions. In most physics theories, spacetime is treated as if it is infinitely divisible. But there are some theories that apply a limit to how small spacetime can be divided, like in Loop Quantum Gravity:

With that said, Trem’s game engine definitely has a limit to the continuity of its positions and movements. floats are used for the components of the vectors, and floats have even more in inaccuracies due to its rounding errors. The minimum subdivision between two floats, depends on how far from 0 you are, as the smallest decimal that can be added to or subtracted from a given integer value in a float depends on the number of significant digits for that float (not to mention the inaccuracy introduced by number not based on a power of 2). One of the effects is if a player is traveling a very high speed (like a certain amount well above 10,000 quake units per second), you can noticeably see the player teleporting from point to point at decent sized distances (you can achieve very high speeds on the Z Slide map using the portal gun).

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22

I did not read everything, but ain’t an EMP an Electric Discharge? If so, with a sufficient power, you could disconnect cells causing either permanent or temporary damages in any organic part touched by the wave.

One thing that makes an EMP (If we stay in the grenades, if we just make a deployable, it could be as powerful as we want or at least as long as it has a good source to draw the electricity from.) less viable for a mind-altering gadget is that it would require a huge amount of electricity (If I recall, that’s what is used in the EMP’s), and providing such amount would require a grenade the size of a soccer ball. (And no it’s not easy to throw a soccer ball filled with materials to contain all that energy, not to talk about the possible stability-issue from such a high power stocked in such a tiny space.)

But it would be possible to achieve effect that would end up hurting the target in a permanent way or at least a temporary way enough to get it/him in a significant disadvantage.

Anyway.
As for the nanites, they are technically possible as well.
All you would pretty much need is a way to make a high quantity of them (Which is far from obtainable currently, even with the current science advancement.)
As for in tremulous, Nanites are entirely possible, and depending on how it is used, it could end up being used in both offensive and healing/defensive situations.
The thing is that it would also make the use of EMP and pretty much any other weapons not Nanite powered pretty useless as Nanites could be used to literally just destroy the connections between each cells of the body. (With enough nanites, it can take from a few minutes to a few dozen, concidering the limited amount you can have in a Nanite Grenade/Injector, it is highly improbable to have enough to cause instant death, so This would make this a overtime effect (Pretty much like the current poison) but would affect the maximum amount of health possibly. (Unless you allow friendly nanites from medistation to regenerate the damages.)

(After reading a little about edaq’s posts)
There is always a smaller distance (Considering that to have something visible, it MUST be made out of something. It cannot be completely empty. Personally I like to think that the whole universe is a big version of what we discover. So basically, it will be near impossible for the humans to ever discover the smallest distance or even the smallest particle

Anyway, all that wall just to say that Nanites would be a pretty nice idea in my opinion :stuck_out_tongue:
and that it would fit tremulous a lot.
Even if Nanites can be OP, depending how we limit them, they can provide a great feature.

Just as a side-note for those who are not familiar with nanites:
(If I recall well, it has been a while since I read about nanites.)
They are basically little robots who does a specific action over and over and gets charged by different method (either by another nanite or in a charging station in the device they are sent from.) They can also be a one way use and die right after their action. (In this case they are mostly used for damaging a target. Tissues, Muscles, Brain and such are often a great target as they might cut some connections in between cells which might cause problems afterward.)

Ok… Time for me to stop writting… (I have been writting for 30 minutes already.)

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23

You wrote a good post, I really enjoyed reading through it. :slight_smile:

Let’s picture a nanite, theoretical of course.
A simple mechanism, a coil, a condensator and a tiny processor, or even better, a small processor cell. In great quantity they can support each others’ magnetic and electric fields, processors interconnecting and enabling them to direct energy to allow themselves to move around. The body of a nanite should be of a spiked, or any other shape that will allow multiple nanites to form a claw to pick up even a small dust particle. They would be ineffective and brain-dead (circuit-dead?) In low quantities, but in large swarms their processing power and energy control level would rise. Of course, they would need some kind of a recharge pod, solar powered, geothermal or other, also serving as a small factory to produce new nanites.
As they were supposed to be builders or medics from the start their edges are very sharp, to allow for surgeries and maintenance work. Also, their processors could have an extensive knowledge of human anatomy, which in the case of going rogue is going to help them to kill efficiently. As they possess a powerful magnetic field, they could fling single or multiple individual nanites with high speed, this ability could go down in power as the swarm would be destroyed.

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24

Something we should consider is that nanites are a technology, and keeping with the theme in Tremulous of human tech versus alien biology, nanites should be strictly a human thing. So if a type of nanite is used to directly help humans, they should generally be designed with human structures and/or human anatomy in mind, while if a type of nanitie is used to attack aliens, they should generally be designed with alien structures and/or alien anatomy in mind.

With that said, aliens could have a/some counterparts to the nanite concept, like an alien virus, or some other kind of alien swarm.

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25

Testing complexes could have had some alien samples to test nanites on, which could explain it knowing the aliens anatomy. But the same would apply to the viruses. If both are to be used in an offensive AND healing/protective way.

But… it comes to the point where if we make both races have different variations of the same basic idea, having an offensive nanite system would not have the same terminology or even the same system as a virus system. (A virus doesn’t have a brain to act per say whilst the nanites does. Viruses are biological evolutions, whilst the nanites are artificial creations.)

But depending on what the nanites were based of, they could serve the exact same thing as the viruses does. (I mean that if the nanites were based on a virus structure, it would kinda do the same thing, but if it was altered to attack the aliens instead, it would not affect the humans. (But for some rare crazy bugged nanites.))
And also, if the nanite is made on the same structure as a virus, it needs a few modifications to allow damaging the aliens. (Since aliens are technically invulnerable to viruses as we know them. (Or they are not affected by them the same way we are, they might even get boosted from such effect.))

All that to say that offensive nanites that attacks aliens could not be too impossible, depending on what is available to the human scientists.
Same applies to the aliens, the viruses produced by the swarm’s heart might be altered by having samples analyzed by a successful enough overmind. (A single kill would be enough for the aliens to process the whole human body. (Because of the DNA mostly.)

But I do agree that it should have some limitation on both side and both side should have their own version of this idea.

Also, a small specification here (Not entirely sure on that one, but I’m going to throw it out anyway.):
Nanites must act in group whilst viruses can act on their own. (Just think of a cold or any other sickness. Viruses grow and infect other cells, but they can start all by their lone self.)

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26

Generally a virus infects a cell, and replicates itself in the cell, and eventually the cell bursts spreading the replicated viruses. As a side note, viruses also play an important role in evolution:

Nanites do not necessarily have to have a central intelligence, but they could be directed by an emergent swarm intellegence, which has potential to do very complicated things with large numbers of agents, while the individual agents might be relatively simple. Swarm intelligence exists in nature, which has been a major source of inspiration for technical applications.

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27

Viruses actually can serve evolution or any kind of progression by the way they implant their parasitic DNA into a cell. If we were to replace parts of the DNA virus plants to a useful DNA that can, for example, cure a deep genetic illness, or we could inject a plasmid thatis a self replicant strain of DNA that gives the cell additional abilities and can be present only in the first cell, but it can then transfer itself to other cells by the way of conjugation.
And since aliens are probably masters of DNA splicing, they could become more protected from a type of a weapon if it is used too much against them, and scientifically explain that plasmid banks in the creep replace parts of the DNA to match the battlefield.

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That’s what I tried to mean on my texts, but you’ve put it better with links :stuck_out_tongue: (I really need to read back on a few things for ideas here.)

Anyway, as for this idea.
I would really like seeing nanites/viruses in tremulous, either by making an entire new race which would use these at their advantage (Pretty much just like that mod with the 3rd faction Robot one, but rearranged to be more fitting with the nanites/viruses.)
or some weapons/armors/items/evolutions for both teams. (Maybe a few present aliens evolutions could have variants that uses the virus as a weapon, like shooting it in a spray instead of shooting a garb and so on.)

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