When two humans land on a planet with their shell-person companion at the helm, they think they are prepared for anything. Ponies was not among their definition of "anything," however.
8589222 FYI Keith Laumer's bolos do not have an organic brain. They are extremely fast efficient computers, massive memory capacity and redundant processors. the war hull is larger than you could conceive of with Crusader, the bolo in Nfires Legacy, having tread segments that are larger than a soviet T72 main battle tank. The story is one of the best takes on the workings of the mind of a Bolo that I have seen and well worth the time to read it
8891429 How do they not just sink into the crust? That much mass, even spread out that much, would suffer from square/cubed law very quickly. I mean, look at some of the prototype tanks Germany used. Those things barely made it to any battles because the battle would be over by the time they got towed out of every other bog.
Being thermonuclear powered, at worse case they can hydroplane over the ground the same way a dirt bike can hydroplane over open lake water. Current record apparently is 212km. Thats a Long lake.
Thats the reason why my Shed has a formed underside, for planing sand dirt and water with heavy loads at speed. But Im no good at storytelling, so mentions are there for years, but nothing written.
For that, Im so very glad of authors like this who can actually create the worlds imagined.
8891522 Thermonuclear powered? Thermonuclear refers to using a fission bomb to trigger a fusion bomb. They would likely be fusion powered, which is pretty darned good. As for hydroplaning, that's all well and good unless you want to stop.
8891534 That's just getting silly at that point. There is a reason why tanks are not made much bigger than they are today, and why their dimensions are not adjusted anymore (that is, the scale of track length to spacing between them).
Hmm, it's too bad they apparently don't have any maintenance robotics that could disconnect (physically) the disabled interfaces preparatory to the great ejection. Twilight should keep their research in the restricted area of the library, this could have pretty bad consequences... But that's for another story! To Kiera: do you feel a song coming on? Keep going! ;)
The biggest BOLO are less than 3 times the weight, given, than that of current terrestrial earth moving equipment, while being a unitary whole body, with double articulated grouped track bogies for terrain following and steering etc, giving vastly greater track surface. This means that for a given track pressure, BOLOS can be Vastly heavier than in the books and still run on average surfaces.
8892017 Wait, you said fusion powered? That kinda implies at least a K1 or K2 civilization, neither of which should really be bothering with ground combat anymore. I mean, any ship powered by a fusion reactor is more deadly a weapon than any tank you could build. Remember, the smallest space-based engineering project of a K1 or a K2 is usually indistinguishable from a planet-killing weapon.
Anyway. I'll give you that a 14kt tank could be built, and (with external power, like the Bagger 293) could probably safely move at 1km/h (like the Bagger 293).
Pretty much the only thing stopping us building a compact, as in 10 metre diameter core whose support equipment can fit inside an aircraft carrier, is that it relies on the use of laser sparkplugs, which have only just been shown working, not on the full amrket, and wont because of the hard kill of IC engines.
Pity really. The one thing everyone who wants energy security and it depends on the evil of fossil fuels. Another pity is that all the renewable fossil fuuel companies were announcing spectacular results from initial production runs, but couldnt get going because the price of oil suddenly tanked from $120 a barrel, to well below their expected in mass production $50 a barrel.
High pressure compression ignition fusion is old stuff. That wuld be say 25 metre long by 10 metre diameter internal, liquid hydrogen shielding and fuel breeding etc etc maybe as little as 2 metres thick needed, with only another couple metre solid mass shiuelding and support.
Hmm, I just checked. Apparently that chunk of aircraft carrier moved on land in the UK was 11 thousand tons and used nearly 2000 wheels spread over multiple Module carriers. If that ran over your foot, it would definitely be Prints of Wails.
8892082 First of all, I want to tell you I really like your idea of combining McCaffrey's universe with ponies and I'm enjoying your take on it. Now onto Bolos.
My first encounter with Bolos was by this story in the early '70s. It's a short story I read in an anthology when I was 8 or 9. It gives you a good feel for Bolos. As for your comment about Ships and no ground combat, well that is a flawed argument. You always need ground pounders to hold territory, of course, unless you destroy the planet. That's wasteful. You recolonize it after you wipe out the indigents. So you need to actually take it.
Bolos were armed with the same weaponry as Ships. Where a Bolo was, nothing could fly, they denied air superiority. They could take out spacecraft in low orbit. Offensive systems of Bolos Earlier units were termed Continental Siege Units. The later models were referred to as Planetary Siege Units.
When I first saw The Terminator all I could think was they were not Bolos (thank Celestia), similar but inferior. What sets Bolos apart is that they have personalities and for all intents and purposes are soldiers and people... even more advanced than Data from Star Trek the Next Generation. They have honor, duty, and even love. They've gone on roaring rampages of revenge and won encounters without firing a shot through diplomacy and guile. Keith Laumer created a universe and let other authors play in his sandbox. It is every bit as detailed as Star Wars' or Star Trek's extended universes (or now F.I.M.) WARNING TV TROPES LINKhttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Bolo
I was very glad I ran into your story again after I lost it with my last computer. It was a great and entertaining idea executed beautifully. I will continue to read and follow it and hope everything turns out good and there is a happy ending. Anne had happy endings. Keith, not so much.
8589222
FYI
Keith Laumer's bolos do not have an organic brain. They are extremely fast efficient computers, massive memory capacity and redundant processors. the war hull is larger than you could conceive of with Crusader, the bolo in Nfires Legacy, having tread segments that are larger than a soviet T72 main battle tank.
The story is one of the best takes on the workings of the mind of a Bolo that I have seen and well worth the time to read it
Will the next change be to Griffon/Hipogriff of will the Magic slap them right back to Breezie, or settle for Changeling?
8891429 How do they not just sink into the crust? That much mass, even spread out that much, would suffer from square/cubed law very quickly. I mean, look at some of the prototype tanks Germany used. Those things barely made it to any battles because the battle would be over by the time they got towed out of every other bog.
8891440 You'll have to keep reading!
8891501
Being thermonuclear powered, at worse case they can hydroplane over the ground the same way a dirt bike can hydroplane over open lake water. Current record apparently is 212km. Thats a Long lake.
Thats the reason why my Shed has a formed underside, for planing sand dirt and water with heavy loads at speed. But Im no good at storytelling, so mentions are there for years, but nothing written.
For that, Im so very glad of authors like this who can actually create the worlds imagined.
8891522 Thermonuclear powered? Thermonuclear refers to using a fission bomb to trigger a fusion bomb. They would likely be fusion powered, which is pretty darned good. As for hydroplaning, that's all well and good unless you want to stop.
8891501
Eventually BOLOs got anti-grav units, lets them skate over land at 500km/h and faster.
On top of that, they used the standard Unobtanium style sci-fi ultra-light ultra-dense hull material
8891534 That's just getting silly at that point. There is a reason why tanks are not made much bigger than they are today, and why their dimensions are not adjusted anymore (that is, the scale of track length to spacing between them).
8891539
What's silly is how much they weighed. The first gen of BOLOs was 300 tons, and the ones in Legacy - Crusader and Athena - are over 33000 tons
8891574 At this point they aren't science fiction, but science fantasy.
Oh!? A batpony? looks like its time to eeeeeeeeeeeee...
8891575
8891574
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_universe
Don't know how you got on the topic but here is a great source of info about bolos.
8891957
Heh 👋 that was our fault.
Hmm, it's too bad they apparently don't have any maintenance robotics that could disconnect (physically) the disabled interfaces preparatory to the great ejection.
Twilight should keep their research in the restricted area of the library, this could have pretty bad consequences... But that's for another story!
To Kiera: do you feel a song coming on?
Keep going! ;)
8891539
The biggest BOLO are less than 3 times the weight, given, than that of current terrestrial earth moving equipment, while being a unitary whole body, with double articulated grouped track bogies for terrain following and steering etc, giving vastly greater track surface. This means that for a given track pressure, BOLOS can be Vastly heavier than in the books and still run on average surfaces.
14 thousand ton Bagger 293 16 MW Power
8892017 Wait, you said fusion powered? That kinda implies at least a K1 or K2 civilization, neither of which should really be bothering with ground combat anymore. I mean, any ship powered by a fusion reactor is more deadly a weapon than any tank you could build. Remember, the smallest space-based engineering project of a K1 or a K2 is usually indistinguishable from a planet-killing weapon.
Anyway. I'll give you that a 14kt tank could be built, and (with external power, like the Bagger 293) could probably safely move at 1km/h (like the Bagger 293).
8892082
Pretty much the only thing stopping us building a compact, as in 10 metre diameter core whose support equipment can fit inside an aircraft carrier, is that it relies on the use of laser sparkplugs, which have only just been shown working, not on the full amrket, and wont because of the hard kill of IC engines.
Pity really. The one thing everyone who wants energy security and it depends on the evil of fossil fuels. Another pity is that all the renewable fossil fuuel companies were announcing spectacular results from initial production runs, but couldnt get going because the price of oil suddenly tanked from $120 a barrel, to well below their expected in mass production $50 a barrel.
High pressure compression ignition fusion is old stuff. That wuld be say 25 metre long by 10 metre diameter internal, liquid hydrogen shielding and fuel breeding etc etc maybe as little as 2 metres thick needed, with only another couple metre solid mass shiuelding and support.
Hmm, I just checked. Apparently that chunk of aircraft carrier moved on land in the UK was 11 thousand tons and used nearly 2000 wheels spread over multiple Module carriers. If that ran over your foot, it would definitely be Prints of Wails.
8892082
First of all, I want to tell you I really like your idea of combining McCaffrey's universe with ponies and I'm enjoying your take on it. Now onto Bolos.
The Last Command~ Keith Laumer
My first encounter with Bolos was by this story in the early '70s.
It's a short story I read in an anthology when I was 8 or 9. It gives you a good feel for Bolos. As for your comment about Ships and no ground combat, well that is a flawed argument. You always need ground pounders to hold territory, of course, unless you destroy the planet. That's wasteful. You recolonize it after you wipe out the indigents. So you need to actually take it.
Bolos were armed with the same weaponry as Ships. Where a Bolo was, nothing could fly, they denied air superiority. They could take out spacecraft in low orbit. Offensive systems of Bolos Earlier units were termed Continental Siege Units. The later models were referred to as Planetary Siege Units.
When I first saw The Terminator all I could think was they were not Bolos (thank Celestia), similar but inferior. What sets Bolos apart is that they have personalities and for all intents and purposes are soldiers and people... even more advanced than Data from Star Trek the Next Generation. They have honor, duty, and even love. They've gone on roaring rampages of revenge and won encounters without firing a shot through diplomacy and guile. Keith Laumer created a universe and let other authors play in his sandbox. It is every bit as detailed as Star Wars' or Star Trek's extended universes (or now F.I.M.) WARNING TV TROPES LINK http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Bolo
I was very glad I ran into your story again after I lost it with my last computer. It was a great and entertaining idea executed beautifully. I will continue to read and follow it and hope everything turns out good and there is a happy ending. Anne had happy endings. Keith, not so much.
8977400
Not to derail this conversation for more than a few comments, have you read NFire's Legacy ?
Oh look, bat pony. Get that mare a mango, bat mares love mangos.