starcraft2.com update - Broken Wide story

[Shadow Archon]

I also like how it gives you a respect for how horrifyingly dangerous the Banelings are. When a little blister of the green stuff products the same reaction as a grenade, (survivable in a CMC), but they've got enough of the explosives to overfill a morbidly obese dog, they've gotta be scary as hell when they're coming in swarms.


X

l33telboi calculated how much damage a Baneling would do at spacebattles.

First, here's the description on the size of the explosive blister Ayers found: "I decided to dissect one of the smaller blisters, an angry green specimen the size of my fingertip. I charged up the med-laser and made a small incision." And here are the after effects: "And I woke up two hours later in the med-bay with my skin burning. Lieutenant Orran was standing over my gurney, his face sick with worry. He told me how the grenade had brought him running, how he had found me underneath a collapsed wall in the next room. That's when I glanced down and saw the remnants of my suit. The entire right side looked like a candle that had been held to a flame: the armored plates had been fused together. The lieutenant told me that, the next time I wanted to "off" myself, I should remove my armor first. Yeah, he's a funny guy."

A small finger-tip size blister was enough to kick a fully suited medic into the next room of bunker-esque location. A lower limit for this would be to assume it's a modern grenade, about a megajoule in yield. Though that's a serious underestimate since modern handgrenades don't tend to throw around fully suited marines through the walls of fortified underground bunkers.

Assume the blister was spherical with a diameter of 3 centimeters and you get a energy per volume ration of 1 megajoule per 0.0000141m^3. The volume of a baneling would be something like 0.5m^3, assuming it's a meter in diameter. That'd mean the baneling is something like 40,000 times more energetic then a handgrenade. Of course we'd have to factor in that the blister in question was just explosives while the baneling is the explosives plus the carrier. Whatever the case, the baneling should be in the double digit gigajoule region in terms of explosive yield as an extremely conservative estimate, a more likely estimate would be in the triple-digit gigajoule region.

Of course this all assumes the author did the math, which he probably didn't. And it'd also mean the token baneling is between MOAB and small nuclear explosive in terms of yield. Which is absurd and should therefore be accepted without question as highly scientific fact, as is traditional on spacebattles.

[Brutaxilos]

I thinks I know why the Zerg have been unusually silent these 4 years

[KillaKhan]

I think by the size of his fingertip, he meant in the CMC.
because a normal sized piece of blister wouldn't seem to be that powerful, but I bet the CMC's have bigger fingers than humans xD

[MattII]

I think by the size of his fingertip, he meant in the CMC.

Well that would give us around a 1" cube of the stuff (she says the blister is the size of her fingertip, rather than her whole finger) I figure, so it's very powerful, but possibly not unbelievably so.

[Visions of Khas]

The entity-consciousness part is what got me interested. Was the Hive working on its own accord, or specifically directed by Kerrigan? My concern centers on the communication between Kerrigan and the genetic testing ground, ie why wouldn't it telepathically communicate the exact genetic code? Was it allowed to work independently to forge the modifications, or did Kerrigan meddle with it from time to time, saying "Take these introns and place them here, yadda yadda yadda..."

[GRUNT]

I just didn't buy the "shooting spores to other planets" thing.

Ditto : |. I mean, Kerrigan can see through the eyes of any given Zerg at any given time, and I'd imagine that genetic information like the creation of the Banelings could just be communicated without the need for spore cannons .

Still, cool story, but I think the Dominion tends to be portrayed too often as a caricature of dictatorship in just about every story and in the manga.

[Hav0x]

Ditto : |. I mean, Kerrigan can see through the eyes of any given Zerg at any given time, and I'd imagine that genetic information like the creation of the Banelings could just be communicated without the need for spore cannons .

We don't know what kind of range that ability has. These Zerg could have been sent far beyond what she can control personally.

Still, cool story, but I think the Dominion tends to be portrayed too often as a caricature of dictatorship in just about every story and in the manga.

Well they ARE a dictatorship. It's meant to show you why Raynor has a burning hatred for them.

[Kimera757]

The entity-consciousness part is what got me interested. Was the Hive working on its own accord, or specifically directed by Kerrigan? My concern centers on the communication between Kerrigan and the genetic testing ground, ie why wouldn't it telepathically communicate the exact genetic code? Was it allowed to work independently to forge the modifications, or did Kerrigan meddle with it from time to time, saying "Take these introns and place them here, yadda yadda yadda..."

I think Kerrigan directed it. However, both her training and her work in Hybrid prove that she's not a geneticist.

Also, the info on banelings said queens directed their evolution, so those would presumably have been the scientists.

[Pandonetho]

Still, cool story, but I think the Dominion tends to be portrayed too often as a caricature of dictatorship in just about every story and in the manga.

Agreed.

Well they ARE a dictatorship. It's meant to show you why Raynor has a burning hatred for them.

Yeah, but seriously I think they're going a bit too far with it. Every single time anything Dominion shows up it always has something to do with subordinates going rogue or something. Do these people seriously not know how to control their own troops?

[sandwich_bird]

Perhaps the priorities in school are different in the Koprulu sector.

Quite obviously a school 500 years in the future 60 000 light years away where 12 year old kids learn genetics.

My point is, I don't even think it's possible to teach genetics to 12 years old kids. Even if this is in the future and light years away, unless they are all genetically enhanced kids or that they somehow have devices to transfer data directly to their brains, I can't see that happening. I'm sure that if I search around I could find studies that prove that.