The Rebel Faction

Fractal Assembler Swarm

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Fractal Assembler Swarm

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<tr><td>The Divine protocols mandated a maximum efficency be set across the Imperium, this efficency ment that an optimal use of both energy and resources must be achieved in any operation in which they must be used. While this was first being applied to the planets and their populations the Imperiums own fleet came under deep scrutiny as well. Full of specialty class vessels which filled specific roles was wastefull, and to the number of ships built, to an extreme. Using advanced simulation and virtual enviroment algorithms multiple designs were feilded by the Intelligence web, but in the end only a single one fulfilled the protocols mission will remaining completely effective.

Composed completely of fractal assemblers (self-recognizing self-similar in appearance) the ship itself becomes little more than an assembler cloud held together by its own assemblers. Based upon the concept of Van der Waals interaction assembler manufactured setae with fine nanostructure were designed, that added to the assemblers of the intended ships design, would increase the adhesive surface density of each individual assembler. Consisting of hollow, nested, microscale diamondoid tubes each Assembler is armed with these spatulae in order retain their grip with surrounding Assemblers. The innermost tube is tipped in hairs that are the scale equivalent of spatulae, and the spatulae are tipped in numerous carbon nanotubes, they in turn end in hundreds of yet smaller nanotubes. The smallest nanotubes, technically known as 'fibre', are 0.4nm in diameter. The nested tube structure of the setae allows them to telescope, lengthening to bring as many of the tiny hairs they bear on their tips into contact with the surface being bonded to, in this case each other.

Being formed formed completely from assemblers grants the vessel certain specific benifits as well as unforseen limitations. The predesigned benifits were originally intended to allow the vessel adaptability to whatever situation it was presented with in that its own assemblers would be able to arrange and structure themselves into different shapes and complex structures for building and repair. What this adds to the vessel is an ability to create any known technology, from its own form, that might be required of the moment. In practice this is proven to be anything feilded by normal Daemun vessels that do not require exotic matter or volitale resources (such as blaster gas.) A normally disabling situation in most respects, this still allows the vessel to form most basic ships components such as shielding devices, Daemun specific zero-point energy generators, engines as well as radiation specific beam weapons.

As well, in much the same way that the ship holds itself together, it is able to divide any numerable number of times into smaller sizes, each a fractal of the original appearance. There are two possible manners of dissemination in this respect, cloud and partial. A partial dissemination would involve a sizeable chunk, from fighter sized pieces all the way up to technological mitosis, breaking from the vessel and forming into its own smaller vessel to preform its own specialized role. In this the size of such a chunk would only be limited to the amount of resources required to form the systems intended to be formed within it, as the resources to shape itself can only come from itself. A cloud dissemination would be the total breakdown of the bonds keeping the vessel locked together as a whole, this type of dissemination could be used in many different ways; from enveloping an asteroid to use its resources to illicit repairs and form new assemblers to replace destroyed ones, to enveloping a disabled ship to break it down and reverse engineer it, to even spreading across portions of a world to breakdown and record organic data to be stored and virtualized.

Unlike most vessels who retain a computer core of information by use of the ship, this vessel is operated by the intelligence of the Imperium itself. In and of itself this is no different than any former vessel of the Imperium, where Mysteri had command and control functions deep inside the ships mainframe where lack of a crew might come into place. The vessel itself on the otherhand has no crew, and thus its mass of assemblers act as a constant node to the Intelligence web, their invidual computational power added together to form a massive node of assembler computing, keeping the swarm either 'maned' by an all present control by the overmind of the Intelligence Web. This is best stated by saying that the ship itself is 'dumb', containing no information or commands of its own, but is completely run by its connection to the Web, which is thus 'smart'.

Assemblers can do some truly miraculous things, but they are not exempt from the laws of physics. Assemblers are subject to the laws of conservation, motion, gravity and so on. Whatever material an assembler is made of reacts to external energies and to other chemicals in the normal manner of that material. Assemblers, by their very nature, are incredibly tiny. A basic engineering limit of being small is that it's hard to move fast. Even the most advanced assembler clouds can barely muster speeds faster than a running man can achieve. The faster an assembler travels the more it must contend with atmospheric resistance. Assemblers can usually travel much more easily in vacuum than it can within a gaseous medium. Assemblers that are not designed to operate in liquid are often unable to overcome the resistance of the medium; the assembler is typically designed to reach its target by drifting with the prevailing current. Assemblers are often positively buoyant because of their low weight, though agents made of especially dense materials may be neutrally buoyant. Most assemblers can only submerge by forming clumps that are large enough to sink (and therefore large enough to detect via sonar) or by attaching themselves to more massive objects. Finally, low inertia makes assemblers highly vulnerable to adverse weather conditions. Assemblers find it difficult to operate in a driving rain or in gale force winds. No known assembler can be effectively deployed in the face of a hurricane or tornado.

Assemblers are made of matter, and that matter behaves normally according to its nature. Diamondoid has the same qualities of reactivity and conductivity as natural diamond, corundumoid has the same properties and vulnerabilities as corundum, and so on. Assemblers that are made of naturally corrosion-resistant materials are vulnerable to adhesives that gum up the works or simply impede movement. Some assemblers can simply "eat" their way through such an obstruction, but this slows the advance toward the primary target. The best way for Assemblers to defend themselves from chemical attack is to disperse widely enough that some of them will be outside of the area of effect. This defense, while highly effective, also increases system lag as the units have to communicate with each other over greater distances. No material, no matter how strong, is immune to a sudden application of kinetic energy. Stronger materials simply require more input energy before failing. Assemblers are too small to have much structural strength even when they are made of exceptionally strong materials. A sharp impact destroys every assembler that it hits. Small size makes nanoweapons difficult to target with most kinetic energy weapons, however, so projectiles and close combat weapons are ineffective. These limitations are primarily noted for cloud form vessels, but some data holds true for when in vessel form as well.</td>
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Ship Type:
Swarm
Crew:
0
Troops:
0
Cargo Capacity:
0
Hull:
Variable
Shields:
Variable
Length:
2000 meters
Speed:
Variable dependant on technology
Weapons:
Variable dependant on technology
Special:
Variable dependant on technology
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