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Species Wolf
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Size 1127 x 685
See more from Strype
(Commission for 
thealphastormy )
She waited patiently for days on the hilltop, hiding under a cloaking field until her mark showed himself. The officer was riding through the countryside in an open-top groundtruck, inspecting the terrain personally to make sure the troops had captured everyone in the small province for labor and processing. Adjusting her sights on his smug smirk, visible under the transparent faceplate of his helmet, she ran through calculations in her head. The rangefinder scored him at 2.65 km. the air was humid but cool, and the rain would probably bring her shot down about an inch or so.
She flipped the main power switch for the rifle, and savored the sound of it quietly humming to life, charging its capacitors for the big shot. Soon enough it would be firing a steel rod through her target's cranium at 3500 meters a second, and probably doing a decent number on the truck's other occupants and the truck itself from the overpressure wave.
She smirked just a little as she took aim. The gun was a gift from one of her mentors, a custom-crafted railgun, lovingly named "Terminus", built with materials and components much more expensive and effective than the standard-issue sniper railguns, though a fair bit heavier, a signature of it's creator's near-complete disregard for the weight of his creations, himself strong enough that it mattered very little if a gun weighed three kilos or twenty.
Quietly, she waited for just the right moment, just the right angle as the truck moved down the road, and finally, the moment was perfect. She squeezed the trigger, and the gun barked like deafening thunder...
Goddamn, I LOVED working on this picture. It just came together so perfectly, Every stroke flowed out so naturally, and exactly where I wanted it. I love working on rainy pics, and Stormy's one of my biggest fans, too, so it was extra satisfying.
Stormshadow Thunderpaws © her player
Art © the guy who doesn't mind how hard you party in his pants, because he got his crotch scotchguarded lat week, me
EDIT: 1920x1200 Wallpaper can be downloaded HERE http://www.megaupload.com/?d=X70AHZUG ENJOY!
thealphastormy )She waited patiently for days on the hilltop, hiding under a cloaking field until her mark showed himself. The officer was riding through the countryside in an open-top groundtruck, inspecting the terrain personally to make sure the troops had captured everyone in the small province for labor and processing. Adjusting her sights on his smug smirk, visible under the transparent faceplate of his helmet, she ran through calculations in her head. The rangefinder scored him at 2.65 km. the air was humid but cool, and the rain would probably bring her shot down about an inch or so.
She flipped the main power switch for the rifle, and savored the sound of it quietly humming to life, charging its capacitors for the big shot. Soon enough it would be firing a steel rod through her target's cranium at 3500 meters a second, and probably doing a decent number on the truck's other occupants and the truck itself from the overpressure wave.
She smirked just a little as she took aim. The gun was a gift from one of her mentors, a custom-crafted railgun, lovingly named "Terminus", built with materials and components much more expensive and effective than the standard-issue sniper railguns, though a fair bit heavier, a signature of it's creator's near-complete disregard for the weight of his creations, himself strong enough that it mattered very little if a gun weighed three kilos or twenty.
Quietly, she waited for just the right moment, just the right angle as the truck moved down the road, and finally, the moment was perfect. She squeezed the trigger, and the gun barked like deafening thunder...
Goddamn, I LOVED working on this picture. It just came together so perfectly, Every stroke flowed out so naturally, and exactly where I wanted it. I love working on rainy pics, and Stormy's one of my biggest fans, too, so it was extra satisfying.
Stormshadow Thunderpaws © her player
Art © the guy who doesn't mind how hard you party in his pants, because he got his crotch scotchguarded lat week, me
EDIT: 1920x1200 Wallpaper can be downloaded HERE http://www.megaupload.com/?d=X70AHZUG ENJOY!
Category All / All
Species Wolf
Gender Female
Size 1127 x 685px
It's called "photoshop grass brush." Not a lot of amazing there.
welp, as someone who doesn't use Photoshop to know better... it looks amazing to me.
I dunno... I got PS... and I still think he did a helluva job on it...
Then again... I have PS... I USE Paint Tool SAI... ROFL X3
Then again... I have PS... I USE Paint Tool SAI... ROFL X3
I've seen Photoshop Grass Brush well, and I've seen it used poorly... In this, he used it VERY well.
He also used blur, motion blur, some static effects and other things... but what you see is rain, grass, forest, a realistically viewed laser (that looks fucking amazing, by the way), etc. Just because he used tools, doesn't make the detail he has gotten from them any less outstanding.
He also used blur, motion blur, some static effects and other things... but what you see is rain, grass, forest, a realistically viewed laser (that looks fucking amazing, by the way), etc. Just because he used tools, doesn't make the detail he has gotten from them any less outstanding.
Good eye! I used 9 layers of grass, each blurred for their focal depth. Used a different technique for the falling rain, basically a dot, the wind filter, then the motion blur, rotated it, saved it as a brush, turned up the size, opacity, and scatter jitters, and applied THAT to 5 different layers, drop size changing for distance from the viewer, a single red line, layer set to screen mode, sliced it up with the eraser, and adjusted the opacity down so it didn't overwhelm, then of course several layers of ambiance to set up a subtle light gradient to draw the eye to the subject, as well as desaturating the background and ground a bit again to draw the eye to the subject.
....SCIENCE!
....SCIENCE!
KICK ASS
I wouldn't have put a laser sight on it, since they can give away your intentions, but the piece is more than enough to compensate for that.
I wouldn't have put a laser sight on it, since they can give away your intentions, but the piece is more than enough to compensate for that.
Er... yeah, As I used to escentially /be/ a sniper so far as the technalities go, (long distance shooter) I have to agree that putting a laser pip on this is kinda silly.
Distance + Lasers = HEY LOOK AT ME TRYING TO SHOOT YOU.
Rain + Lasers = Almost completely inneffective after about 30 or so meters.
Also, Lasers arn't effected by gravity. Bullets, no matter how heavy, or how fast they go, always are, and they further they travel, the more they're effected - thereby making a laser that much more inneffective.
If anything I would have ditched the color red and gone with some kind of simmery lense effect 'cutting' through the rain to indicate some kind of unheard of yet futuristic targeting system which we don't know about.
Elsewise, the composition looks good, ... tho I'm not so sure about the sitting position, prone would have been more favorable for the kind of distances being mentioned in this paticular shot. Chalk it up to some kind of amazing auto stabilization hardware perhaps? :}
Distance + Lasers = HEY LOOK AT ME TRYING TO SHOOT YOU.
Rain + Lasers = Almost completely inneffective after about 30 or so meters.
Also, Lasers arn't effected by gravity. Bullets, no matter how heavy, or how fast they go, always are, and they further they travel, the more they're effected - thereby making a laser that much more inneffective.
If anything I would have ditched the color red and gone with some kind of simmery lense effect 'cutting' through the rain to indicate some kind of unheard of yet futuristic targeting system which we don't know about.
Elsewise, the composition looks good, ... tho I'm not so sure about the sitting position, prone would have been more favorable for the kind of distances being mentioned in this paticular shot. Chalk it up to some kind of amazing auto stabilization hardware perhaps? :}
Not to mention this soldier stands in the open without any kind of cover or camouflage suit. At very least he could roll around in dirt for a moment before taking the position.
So he's not only going: hey look at me I'm shooting at you with laser clearly visible in the rain, he also yells: hey look at me I'm in shiny bright blue battle armour!
It's nearly as funny as battle armours with random lights on them.
So he's not only going: hey look at me I'm shooting at you with laser clearly visible in the rain, he also yells: hey look at me I'm in shiny bright blue battle armour!
It's nearly as funny as battle armours with random lights on them.
Still doesn't explain why there's no stock on the gun, which would be particularly important if its effect range is over 2 miles.
Seems like the recoil would probably kill her...
Seems like the recoil would probably kill her...
If you read the story it mentions a cloaking feild surrounding the sniper. In the first line actually.
We use laser rangefinders on nice, modern gun sights already. The caption describes her using same. It seems eminently reasonable to assume that we caught her in a moment of using the laser rangefinder.
No No No, again, Lasers + Rain = Completely inneffective. Each droplet of water is like a lense, multiply that by a couple of million lenses over a nice long distance, and you have such a scattered reading to the point of uselessness. The only way to overcome this is a much wider apature with equally large wattage output... and you can see the problems with this.
Put simply, a laser rangefinder would read between 1 and 20 odd meters, rapidly changing value in a rainstorm.
Put simply, a laser rangefinder would read between 1 and 20 odd meters, rapidly changing value in a rainstorm.
I thought that as well. But I rationalized it to myself by just assuming that the armor she's wearing is capable of becoming almost entirely mobile. Eliminating the body movements that a prone position and support would reduce. Haha, or at least that's what I came up with! Imagine the accuracy possible with that though if all of your random body movements were dampened out to 0 and you had an overlaying HUD tied into all sorts of fancy range finding drop/wind correction software. Automatic analysis of wind patterns a long the way to the target from visual data gathered by the system. Or in her case, a very fancy scope that does all that! It certainly would take a lot of the skill out of it though.
who cares, its an awesome picture, for all you know it could be the rangefinder or something, looks cool anyway.
I used to be an extreme distance shooter. I do know better. Read the previous relevant comments before posting plox.
when i see the rain it reminds me of BFMV and there song tears don't fall
Damn. That's one hell of a gun. :) Excellent job. I love the story with it too.
Absolutely BEAUTIFUL, Stype. :D I love the rain effects, and the tech is stellar as well. :D
lol at the tags
Epic coloring, reminds of spartan armor too <3
Epic coloring, reminds of spartan armor too <3
I really like the laser. It's distorted like it would be in rainy conditions. Way to go man! Love this piece!
Great job on the rain effect and dripping water from the rifle and armor. The grass is also amazingly detailed, and I like the story too. Personal Railgun - now that would be cool.
I agree with the water dripping from and splashing on her armor, but the grass is just one of the default brushes in Photoshop.
Oh, bugger, well at least I have the excuse of never having used Photoshop - still looks cool.
This definitely looks awesome. And that rifle she using isn't a rifle.. it looks almost like a railgun! X3
But awesome job on the picture. Love the details & the rain effects ^.=.^
But awesome job on the picture. Love the details & the rain effects ^.=.^
And that's percisely what it is, a railgun, the story narrative says it.. i wish i had one like it.
Hehe, with the power to launch a bullet at such velocities, it makes the railgun a perfect heavy weapon, due to the penetration power it has. I lvoe railguns, this is an excellent job. Awesome work! ^^
Personally, I'd go prone with a gun that big. Aiming is difficult enough as is. XD
And then someone called her a casual for playing Halo instead of Call of Duty.
that is...intense. damn Strype! That is some awesome shit.
-Wipes the tear from his eye- It's beautiful.... ;-;
I want a high res version! D: I wanna use it as a wallpaper.
I want a high res version! D: I wanna use it as a wallpaper.
I can't give ya the hi-rez of the pic (only my commissioners get the actual fullsize) BUT! refresh the page, there's a link in the artist comments to nab the 1920x1200 wallpaper
Aaah drats. But awesome there's a link! :D Thanks for tellin' me ^^
I still can't get megaupload to actually let me download via these links... It keeps complaining about an 'elevated number of requests from this IP' and gives a timeout which never actually times out, just restarts...
Is anyone else getting this?
Is anyone else getting this?
So... Much win... When I get a bit better at digital art I'm actually thinking about a lot of military-styled/oriented artwork.
Consistently I find that 'bad-ass' is the only adjective that can adequately describe a lot of your work, especially ones like this with a military element to them. Brilliant work. ^^ I love that gun, and the rain.
That grass looks beautiful and the armor is beautifully done, as usual.
The person on the other end of that gun must be having a really bad day.
The person on the other end of that gun must be having a really bad day.
The grass looks like the grass brush that comes with Photoshop. I've used it before. :B
indeed it is. I just used a dozen layers, changing the brightness and running them through the gaussian blur filter til they blended and gave a depth of field effect
The rain effect is amazing and the background and armor is wicked.
It's simply because they're talking about a reality in which Newtons law applies.
lol, if a .50 cal will penetrate an engine block of a foxbody mustang, I do believe, placed well enough it will devour a few poor souls standing in the wrong place at the right time!
Yep, it is. For example: The .44 Raptor Magnum can penetrate seven people in a line if it has the right ammunition.
Like I mentioned, reality is an issue. A .44 Remington Magnum will, with an effective bullet, will penetrate 10-18" or so in gelatin. The FBI's minimum penetration is 12" to be considered an effective round. So assuming it doesn't hit a bone, a long shot with a Desert Eagle in .44 will, as the lower velocity will penetrate better due to less expansion, might have a small chance of penetrating, but almost certainly not killing, a second person if they're standing directly behind the first.
Jacketed hollow point. Expanding bullets are sort of a requirement for self-defense, and unless someone's going to be wearing armor, the best way to stop someone.
Modern JHP are in fact designed not to penetrate a target with enough energy to kill a second person. Too much liability. The good ones are designed to be able to blow through an arm with enough residual oomph to screw up someone's chest cavity, while a straight shot to head or torso would stop the bullet.
Yep, right on. Though as velocity decreases, expansion will decrease, and penetration amongst many JHPs will increase too. If you're on THR, you probably know all about that, though.
In fact I am. It's why my "vampire killer" class JHP of choice is the Hornady Critical Defense, the kind with the cavity packed with rubber. "Chicago load" of choice is Remington Golden Saber heavyweights... though I'll happily take Winchester Ranger SXT (SXT stands for Same eXact Thing, a follow-on to the infamous Black Talon) - they're 95% as good as GS, and less than half the price... but typically only sold to law enforcement; the rest of Winchester's civliian line pretty well blows and is completely untested.
That's three shots, one kill, though. To get enough penetration, using an FMJ or non-expanding bullet is necessary, and it's unlikely to have the terminal effects to wound someone badly enough to effectively kill them.
You can almost hear the quiet pattering of rain on the suit. I liked that excerpt too. Fit so well with the artwork.
Also tags made me lol
Also tags made me lol
One of the best pics from you yet.
I hope to catch you when you open up commissions again ^.=.^
I hope to catch you when you open up commissions again ^.=.^
until their ears fly out of the pink mist that was their head, which isn't long
"Hey bob?""Yeah?""What's that li"-BOOM!
As always, your work is most impressive, not many artists would give the attention to detail on the background, much less the grass, that you do. You sir, are the best artist I know of, and probably the best in the world. Keep it up.
As always, your work is most impressive, not many artists would give the attention to detail on the background, much less the grass, that you do. You sir, are the best artist I know of, and probably the best in the world. Keep it up.
I'd say wow, but the word doesn't contain enough syllables to convey the awesomeness of this picture.
being able to see the sections of the laser as it passes through the raindrops is amazing
Awesome image. I would've thought she would've been in the more stable prone position instead of kneeling for such a long shot.
I strongly agree as well, but for the purposes of the composition of the piece, we went with the up on one knee pose
The composition works for this for the dramatic. Just goes against sniper training.
So does standing in the middle of a field with zero cover. :p Camo shield or not...
It's good to hear you say that. My faith was nearly shaken by the kneeling-supported-ness, here.
And yes, the composition just would NOT have worked prone.
And yes, the composition just would NOT have worked prone.
could this POSSIBLY be the one shot from Gears of War 3?
kinda looks like it, killer job
kinda looks like it, killer job
Absolutely amazing! Reminds me of Raynor's sniper rifle in SC2, and the penetrator rounds. 1 shot, 50 kills!
awesome! Reminds me of my fave gun from a mod to Fallout, the Winchester CK. Very nice depth here, and the rain looks amazing.
WOAH, this is the best artwork I've ever seen in my entire life. The rail gun remains me quite alot of tau (war hammer 40k).
Railguns aren't recoiless, If it's still moving 3500 meters per second at 2.5 kilometers, then 1), we're probably talking about roughly twice that at the muzzle, and 2), we're probably talking about a 250-gram projectile (to have a sectional density capable of a decent shockwave), and 3) we're still talking about a projectile that's gonna have one hell of a signature, as it breaks the sound barrier at the muzzle. The target might not have time to react, but I'll bet his friends do.
oh trust me, I know that gun is gonna kick like a bionic mule on PCP, but hey, it's sci-fi. There's probably some kind of kinetic energy-absorbing device in the gun. And yes, the signature is gonna be loud, probably leave a trail of flame, but hey, she's got one helluva head start at that range
Speaking as an active Designated Marksman, I can safely tell you that any rapport heard by the unlucky recipient's comrades will be mostly, if not totally negated by the psychological effect of being decorated with their late friend's skull fragments. A sniper is a wonderful precision tool for removing high-value targets and, with a large enough caliber, equipment, but their physical effect on the battlefield is far outweighed by their sheer psychological presence. Trust me, no one's gonna step up to be the bait to draw the second shot while the others try to locate and return on the shooter.
And then there's this: http://video.adultswim.com/robot-ch.....er-calvin.html XP
I dunno, any society that can produce manportable railguns, can produce manportable MAD (magnetic anomaly detectors), and self-targeting antisniper systems. Hell, if EVERYONE is dead, a system like that should still be able to get a sniper. We're developing systems like that now, and we don't even have a decent railgun.
You're correct. The WARLOC system is able to detect the general azimuth and elevation of a shooter by analyzing the trajectory of any round that passes within it's range of sensors. However, it's only good for an educated guess as to the general direction of a shooter's position, and that's only at the time of his firing.
A skilled marksman will position himself not only to take advantage of natural cover and camoflage, but also to enable himself to quickly move to adjacent areas to avoid detection and reprisal from his target group.
As for the railgun, we may not have an man-portable system, but the navy has completed their 10.6 MegaJoule prototype, which fires a 3.2kg projectile with a muzzle velocity of over Mach 7, and they're in the process of building their 32 and 64MJ prototypes. Thusfar, DARPA has the most conventionally applicable design, a 9MJ 90mm cannon. I'd say that's pretty decent, considering the Navy-10MJ's projected accuracy of 5 meters within a range of 200 nautical miles.
The closest we have to nearing THIS particular model is in developement at Yugoslavia's MTI. Their EDO-1 used projectile mass of .7g and reached 3,000 m/s at the end of a .7m barrel, fair for a small-arms rifle. The standard M16 fires a 5.56mm round at just under 1000m/s.
Sorry.. when talking guns and mil-ware, I get alittle carried away. XD
A skilled marksman will position himself not only to take advantage of natural cover and camoflage, but also to enable himself to quickly move to adjacent areas to avoid detection and reprisal from his target group.
As for the railgun, we may not have an man-portable system, but the navy has completed their 10.6 MegaJoule prototype, which fires a 3.2kg projectile with a muzzle velocity of over Mach 7, and they're in the process of building their 32 and 64MJ prototypes. Thusfar, DARPA has the most conventionally applicable design, a 9MJ 90mm cannon. I'd say that's pretty decent, considering the Navy-10MJ's projected accuracy of 5 meters within a range of 200 nautical miles.
The closest we have to nearing THIS particular model is in developement at Yugoslavia's MTI. Their EDO-1 used projectile mass of .7g and reached 3,000 m/s at the end of a .7m barrel, fair for a small-arms rifle. The standard M16 fires a 5.56mm round at just under 1000m/s.
Sorry.. when talking guns and mil-ware, I get alittle carried away. XD
Ahh; see, the Israelis have a low-tech solution: Once the general location of the sniper is known, you call in artillery on the entire area. Either you kill the sniper, or the sniper runs out of hiding places in the blasted moonscape that's left. :)
True, true, but in the time it takes that team to call in the fire support and the fires team to send the ordinance, one of two things will happen... Either that sniper will displace quick, fast, and in a hurry... or he's a suicidal mindf$#%, in which case for that period, that team is at his mercy, or lack thereof
Ok, so im one of those people that I'm not big into guns, but can respect and admire the technological aspect of them. reading your posts, I dont blame strype for announcing his love for you. You could damn near write poetry with how you explain the specs and scenarios of various weaponry. You,sir, might end up creating a fanbase, if you haven't already, lol.
Thank you, good sir. In 7 years of active service, war and it's execution has become my business, and as unbecoming as it may be to most, I make a point to know my business as thoroughly as possible. Sir Francis Bacon put it best... "For also knowledge itself is power".
Well its definitely rare i get to see the words of a designated marksman... While I will never probably see the front line being a computer tech for the airwing, I never get tired of hearing about the guys who are seeing it first hand.
Well before anyone gets the wrong idea, there's something I need to note.
A 'Designated Marksman' is not a 'Sniper'. Just for your information.
A Sniper is a highly trained specialist, and operates in a two-man team with his spotter. They are skilled in advanced fieldcraft, such as camoflage and wilderness survival, and often infiltrate deep into enemy territory without immediate support, relying only on their own abilities. Snipers typically use bolt-action rifles, as they are more reliable, accurate, and they can avoid chucking a spent cartridge and possibly giving away their position or leaving evidence of their presence behind. However, if the mission requires, they can use a semi-automatic rifle to great effect, and usually have both styles carried between them and their spotter in addition to the spotter's carbine.
A Designated Marksman is a fire-team member, who works as a specialist among a standard infantry team of 4 to 8 members. He has no dedicated training, and is more or less a standard infantry soldier who has been recognized with a skill for long-range, accurate shooting. Normally, for U.S. forces, he will use an M16A2/A4 rifle, rather than an M4A1 carbine, for greater range and accuracy, and extend it's effective targeting range with the addition of a magnifying optic, such as an ACOC or a Hunting Scope, like mine.
On occasion, and more often than not with dedicated Infantry and Marine units, a DM will be issued an M14, giving him far greater range and stopping power than the M16 could provide. However, a DM will NOT use a bolt-action, because he is a rifleman first, and needs to be able to engage close-range targets as well, in which case a bolt-action would hinder his combat capabilities.
Also, on an organizational note, Snipers are treated as a special asset, like EOD and SF teams, and are therefore directed at least at the Battalion level. A Designated Marksman, on the other hand, is treated like any other soldier, and is subject to the same standard chain of command.
Hope that clears up any possible confusion.
A 'Designated Marksman' is not a 'Sniper'. Just for your information.
A Sniper is a highly trained specialist, and operates in a two-man team with his spotter. They are skilled in advanced fieldcraft, such as camoflage and wilderness survival, and often infiltrate deep into enemy territory without immediate support, relying only on their own abilities. Snipers typically use bolt-action rifles, as they are more reliable, accurate, and they can avoid chucking a spent cartridge and possibly giving away their position or leaving evidence of their presence behind. However, if the mission requires, they can use a semi-automatic rifle to great effect, and usually have both styles carried between them and their spotter in addition to the spotter's carbine.
A Designated Marksman is a fire-team member, who works as a specialist among a standard infantry team of 4 to 8 members. He has no dedicated training, and is more or less a standard infantry soldier who has been recognized with a skill for long-range, accurate shooting. Normally, for U.S. forces, he will use an M16A2/A4 rifle, rather than an M4A1 carbine, for greater range and accuracy, and extend it's effective targeting range with the addition of a magnifying optic, such as an ACOC or a Hunting Scope, like mine.
On occasion, and more often than not with dedicated Infantry and Marine units, a DM will be issued an M14, giving him far greater range and stopping power than the M16 could provide. However, a DM will NOT use a bolt-action, because he is a rifleman first, and needs to be able to engage close-range targets as well, in which case a bolt-action would hinder his combat capabilities.
Also, on an organizational note, Snipers are treated as a special asset, like EOD and SF teams, and are therefore directed at least at the Battalion level. A Designated Marksman, on the other hand, is treated like any other soldier, and is subject to the same standard chain of command.
Hope that clears up any possible confusion.
I remember hearing a story that my dad (retired Master Gunnery Sergeant) told me of a fire team that was going through a small village in Iraq. While i cant remember the numbers, there as a specific amount of enemy fatalities due to this team....and the highlight of the story was there one less round accounted for than fatalities. A Designated Marksman had gotten two with one shot.
Also...me having glasses, much prefer the ACOC to ironsights, however have come to realize that windage calls are harder to make. I suppose that staring at a computer screen all day could be justification enough to get higher up on the lasik hit list, but i havent tried it yet.
Also...me having glasses, much prefer the ACOC to ironsights, however have come to realize that windage calls are harder to make. I suppose that staring at a computer screen all day could be justification enough to get higher up on the lasik hit list, but i havent tried it yet.
Speaking as an RF transmissions troop, any society that can produce man-pack railguns and man-pack MADs can ALSO do magnetic anomaly spoofing to throw off the self-targetting anti-sniper systems. Every radar, every area-denial system, every communications jamming contingency that has ever been created or planned has had ECMs to neutralize it fielded right after - or at least every one that's been levelled against the US has.
Wouldn't emitting even more EM radiation with an ECM package make the sniper even more visible to MAD's?
And all that snipers survivability is still dependent on his targets being miserably equipped, prepared for attacks and having absolutely no support of any kind on standby...
What if they had advanced sensors that could detect a person at long range (Sufficiently advanced satellite imaging that can spot electromagnetic signatures from orbit through clouds for example. An orbital MAD basically. Or heart beat sensors. Or some other such system. If you can build the kind of tech you need build something like that suit and its cloaking tech, you most likely also have sensors that can be that much more sensitive than what we have today.), support (a nearby tank, UAV or aircraft that could take a shot at the snipers position before he can relocate after firing, if not even sooner (assuming they have advanced sensors of some kind and at the minimum of paranoia required to have someone watching said sensor feeds, or a computer to simply watch for suspicious things (like say, a lone person sitting at long range giving off a huge amount of EM radiation, trying to conceal his position and is not a equipped with friendly IFF, for example), in which case they'd properly detect the sniper even before he/she could get in position to take a shot at them)).
And of course, once the sniper takes that shot, the victims (or their support) could simply deploy a pack of hunter-killer style UAV's to find anything living within several kilometres of their position...
And all that snipers survivability is still dependent on his targets being miserably equipped, prepared for attacks and having absolutely no support of any kind on standby...
What if they had advanced sensors that could detect a person at long range (Sufficiently advanced satellite imaging that can spot electromagnetic signatures from orbit through clouds for example. An orbital MAD basically. Or heart beat sensors. Or some other such system. If you can build the kind of tech you need build something like that suit and its cloaking tech, you most likely also have sensors that can be that much more sensitive than what we have today.), support (a nearby tank, UAV or aircraft that could take a shot at the snipers position before he can relocate after firing, if not even sooner (assuming they have advanced sensors of some kind and at the minimum of paranoia required to have someone watching said sensor feeds, or a computer to simply watch for suspicious things (like say, a lone person sitting at long range giving off a huge amount of EM radiation, trying to conceal his position and is not a equipped with friendly IFF, for example), in which case they'd properly detect the sniper even before he/she could get in position to take a shot at them)).
And of course, once the sniper takes that shot, the victims (or their support) could simply deploy a pack of hunter-killer style UAV's to find anything living within several kilometres of their position...
Radar ECMs operate exclusively by emitting "even more EM," and are quite effective, so...no. The amount of EM isn't what does it, it's how it's emitted; so even if the ECMs were all physically located with the sniper, it doesn't mean they'll be ineffective per se.
The sniper's survivability is, indeed, dependent on his being better equipped and prepared than his target. If the target is better equipped and prepared, you don't try to take the shot. You wait until you have the advantage, THEN shoot. You wait until, I dunno, your target has set off in a lightly armored ground vehicle, away from base support systems, into a civilian population zone where the expected threat is much lower and they'll let their guard down. Like the sniper has here. This is an age-old stealth technique known as "not being an idiot."
If you have people sensors, you either don't put people near them, or you learn how to shield against them. If there are UAVs in the air, you don't fire. If there might be sensors that'll sniff you out but you aren't sure, you research, you relocate, you do anything but take the shot anyway, and if the shot is just that important, you send in a kamikaze and LET 'em take it anyway. The problem with devising hypothetical weaponry, tactics and defenses is that for any scenario, it is possible to come up with just one more weapon or one more defense that make the attack completely impossible. The problem with that is that had that defense existed, the attack would never have been made to begin with. The simple fact that the sniper fired means they were ahead in the weaponry race at the time, because the bottom line is that it all boils down to the same thing it always has: you out-wit, out-endure, or out-maneuver your enemy. Technology has changed at an immeasurable pace in the last 300 years, and yet the same critical thinking that applied in the revolutionary war still applies today.
But to be sporting about it, what I would really do for an ECM? This. Even the best sensors can be spoofed - in fact, arguably, this gets easier the more sensitive they are - and if a sniper can get into one position, they can get into two. Or five. Or ten. And if a sniper drops ten spoof kits in various locations around their intended target, and when the shot comes up, triggers them all to go nuts just before they pull the trigger, which "sniper" do the anti-sniper systems go after? What do you do when your sensors suddenly go apeshit and eleven "people" take forty or fifty "shots" ranging between 500 yards and 5km, and then ALL of them "run away," and you have to figure out which one just put a real projectile through somebody's eyesocket? What do you do when three of those spoofers are just a little bit smarter and actually DO put a real projectile through somebody's eyesocket, instead of just making EM signatures? All your reliance on technological superiority just fell over, and the only way you really know what direction the shot came from is the physical evidence around the dead guy - and you don't even know which dead guy was the real target. Welcome back to 70 hypothetical years ago.
The sniper's survivability is, indeed, dependent on his being better equipped and prepared than his target. If the target is better equipped and prepared, you don't try to take the shot. You wait until you have the advantage, THEN shoot. You wait until, I dunno, your target has set off in a lightly armored ground vehicle, away from base support systems, into a civilian population zone where the expected threat is much lower and they'll let their guard down. Like the sniper has here. This is an age-old stealth technique known as "not being an idiot."
If you have people sensors, you either don't put people near them, or you learn how to shield against them. If there are UAVs in the air, you don't fire. If there might be sensors that'll sniff you out but you aren't sure, you research, you relocate, you do anything but take the shot anyway, and if the shot is just that important, you send in a kamikaze and LET 'em take it anyway. The problem with devising hypothetical weaponry, tactics and defenses is that for any scenario, it is possible to come up with just one more weapon or one more defense that make the attack completely impossible. The problem with that is that had that defense existed, the attack would never have been made to begin with. The simple fact that the sniper fired means they were ahead in the weaponry race at the time, because the bottom line is that it all boils down to the same thing it always has: you out-wit, out-endure, or out-maneuver your enemy. Technology has changed at an immeasurable pace in the last 300 years, and yet the same critical thinking that applied in the revolutionary war still applies today.
But to be sporting about it, what I would really do for an ECM? This. Even the best sensors can be spoofed - in fact, arguably, this gets easier the more sensitive they are - and if a sniper can get into one position, they can get into two. Or five. Or ten. And if a sniper drops ten spoof kits in various locations around their intended target, and when the shot comes up, triggers them all to go nuts just before they pull the trigger, which "sniper" do the anti-sniper systems go after? What do you do when your sensors suddenly go apeshit and eleven "people" take forty or fifty "shots" ranging between 500 yards and 5km, and then ALL of them "run away," and you have to figure out which one just put a real projectile through somebody's eyesocket? What do you do when three of those spoofers are just a little bit smarter and actually DO put a real projectile through somebody's eyesocket, instead of just making EM signatures? All your reliance on technological superiority just fell over, and the only way you really know what direction the shot came from is the physical evidence around the dead guy - and you don't even know which dead guy was the real target. Welcome back to 70 hypothetical years ago.
You still require an opponent dumb enough to leave his defences behind, not patrol the area/conduct sensor sweeps/UAV flyby's.
Unless you have highly favourable terrain (urban areas), a lone sniper camping out would get spotted by advanced sensors, and if he's packing a ton of EW equipment to keep those sensors from spotting him, then he/she better hope that his target doesn't notice all the jamming/spoofing instead and get suspicious.
Say your sniper knows the enemy's got UAV's with thermal and optic imaging doing regular flyby's of pretty much everything within 20 kilometres of their base (because those UAV's are cheap to mass produce, and since they have lots of other uses the enemy likes to use large amounts of them), and to top it off the enemy even has surveillance satellites watching that area (along with the rest of the continent). Your sniper therefore brings a sneaky "cloaking field" to hide from optics and presumably disperse his body's heat signature.
Here comes the problem. That field is likely going to use so much energy to bend light like that, that its easily detectable by MAD's, if not by enemy radio operators due to the amount of EM static it produces.
But by using this, you tip the enemy off to the fact that you are in the area, the enemy gets paranoid and sends out UAV's designed to sniff out cloaking fields, and your sniper is now dead. EW options like scrambling or spoofing the drones sensors and using decoys would only delay the snipers capture/death, since for every counter measures there is a counter-counter measures, and the enemy likely has a lot more resources available to hunt down people near their bases than the sniper can bring along.
The problem is this, in trying to cheat one set of enemy sensors, your sniper sets off another set. And as sensors for detecting people get more advanced. Thus your sniper needs to be safeguarded a lot of different means of detection, while at the same time, needs to worry about those safeguards making him more visible to OTHER sensors. As the ways in which the sniper goes up, say sonics (heart beat sensors (that can track people by the sounds their hearts/breathing make) or to detect machinery (cooling fans or other moving parts in almost any kind of machinery, in extreme cases even the humming of electrical wires)), pheromones (machines that can pick up scents better than any animal can) or maybe even psionics.
And all of that isn't even touching on advanced detection platforms. Say a drone controlled by a computer (smart but not necessarily a full AI) scattered over the area you are watching. Tripping over mechanical insects that can track you by scent from several kilometers away and heart your heart beat several hundred meters away and still spot you if they ever get line of sight on you, every hundred meters you move, will seriously hamper any sniper.
And every countermeasure you use to hide, might easily give you away to any number of other types of detection.
Thus the problem isn't there there aren't safeguards against enemy sensors, its that those safeguards will likely be spotted by other sensors.
Unless you have highly favourable terrain (urban areas), a lone sniper camping out would get spotted by advanced sensors, and if he's packing a ton of EW equipment to keep those sensors from spotting him, then he/she better hope that his target doesn't notice all the jamming/spoofing instead and get suspicious.
Say your sniper knows the enemy's got UAV's with thermal and optic imaging doing regular flyby's of pretty much everything within 20 kilometres of their base (because those UAV's are cheap to mass produce, and since they have lots of other uses the enemy likes to use large amounts of them), and to top it off the enemy even has surveillance satellites watching that area (along with the rest of the continent). Your sniper therefore brings a sneaky "cloaking field" to hide from optics and presumably disperse his body's heat signature.
Here comes the problem. That field is likely going to use so much energy to bend light like that, that its easily detectable by MAD's, if not by enemy radio operators due to the amount of EM static it produces.
But by using this, you tip the enemy off to the fact that you are in the area, the enemy gets paranoid and sends out UAV's designed to sniff out cloaking fields, and your sniper is now dead. EW options like scrambling or spoofing the drones sensors and using decoys would only delay the snipers capture/death, since for every counter measures there is a counter-counter measures, and the enemy likely has a lot more resources available to hunt down people near their bases than the sniper can bring along.
The problem is this, in trying to cheat one set of enemy sensors, your sniper sets off another set. And as sensors for detecting people get more advanced. Thus your sniper needs to be safeguarded a lot of different means of detection, while at the same time, needs to worry about those safeguards making him more visible to OTHER sensors. As the ways in which the sniper goes up, say sonics (heart beat sensors (that can track people by the sounds their hearts/breathing make) or to detect machinery (cooling fans or other moving parts in almost any kind of machinery, in extreme cases even the humming of electrical wires)), pheromones (machines that can pick up scents better than any animal can) or maybe even psionics.
And all of that isn't even touching on advanced detection platforms. Say a drone controlled by a computer (smart but not necessarily a full AI) scattered over the area you are watching. Tripping over mechanical insects that can track you by scent from several kilometers away and heart your heart beat several hundred meters away and still spot you if they ever get line of sight on you, every hundred meters you move, will seriously hamper any sniper.
And every countermeasure you use to hide, might easily give you away to any number of other types of detection.
Thus the problem isn't there there aren't safeguards against enemy sensors, its that those safeguards will likely be spotted by other sensors.
You just ignored what he said!
If you had THAT many countermeasures to snipers, then any half decent organisation would NOT dispatch a sniper to deal with whatever it is!
If you need them/it dead, just nuke the area! you'd have to prepare the area to have that many countermeasures, so either ambush them when they move from that area, or like i said, nuke em! snipers aren't the only way of killing someone!
Personally, your looking far too much into this - like i said,
that many countermeasures = don't send sniper.
But its nice to see so much thought and detail! :D
If you had THAT many countermeasures to snipers, then any half decent organisation would NOT dispatch a sniper to deal with whatever it is!
If you need them/it dead, just nuke the area! you'd have to prepare the area to have that many countermeasures, so either ambush them when they move from that area, or like i said, nuke em! snipers aren't the only way of killing someone!
Personally, your looking far too much into this - like i said,
that many countermeasures = don't send sniper.
But its nice to see so much thought and detail! :D
You haven't done the whole "war" thing. You also haven't read Strype's scenario layout in the description. A few things to note.
1. You can NOT be that paranoid ALL the time. It just doesn't work. You can't function. Commanding general? Maybe. Some field officer who only gets an open-topped truck as his transport? Oh, hell no. Especially not working for a rag-tag militia like this.
2. Even if you could be that paranoid all the time, you cannot outfit new territory with sensor coverage that quickly. Also, you cannot outfit new territory at all, because if you are that paranoid, you have already run out of money. You are a militia, remember, not a world superpower.
2. UAVs are NOT cheap, and have no other use besides intel and light attack. Why do I say this? Because MANNED aircraft provide intel, light attack, heavy attack, and cargo haulling - and the last two more or less require people. Even if you got UAVs to the point where they weren't that expensive in and of themselves, each UAV still requires a team of about ten people working directly on it, in theatre, to function; and people are very, very expensive. You are a militia. If you can afford one of these, you are very, very lucky.
3. Spy satellites will NEVER be useful for live imaging, period. Reconnaissance birds are not put into geostationary orbit. That a) is WAY too expensive, b) limits your coverage BADLY, and c) puts you way, way, WAY WAY WAY WAY too far above your target. Spy birds are in very low, usually polar or highly inclined orbits, just like mapping satellites and for the same reasons. That gets you close (less than 150 miles up, versus 22,300 miles up) and gives you MUCH better coverage - a polar orbit bird will at some point pass almost directly (and really fucking quickly) over every point on the earth's surface - but as a side effect, there is no such thing as "live satellite view," EVER. But alas, you are a militia, and you cannot afford several hundred million dollars to launch your own recon bird, so never mind!
4. What the hell good is a cloaking field that makes you louder? Why even bother bending the light with a cloaking field? Machine vision is not even remotely as good as biological. We are VASTLY better image processors than our silicon counterparts. If you want to hide from sight, use camouflage, or hell, use distance. 2.65km, for instance, would be sufficient! If you want to hide from sensors, use cloaking. There is also no reason any cloaking device should make you any louder in EMI than you already are - PERIOD. Ever. If it does, it fails as a cloaking device. If you question the reasoning behind this, here is the Wikipedia article on destructive interference. Read up!
5. The scenario in this picture has the sniper in a VASTLY superior technological position. That's sort of the point. Stop trying to reverse it. If the situation were reversed, THERE WOULD BE NO SNIPER. Not because she would be dead, but because she wouldn't have come to begin with.
1. You can NOT be that paranoid ALL the time. It just doesn't work. You can't function. Commanding general? Maybe. Some field officer who only gets an open-topped truck as his transport? Oh, hell no. Especially not working for a rag-tag militia like this.
2. Even if you could be that paranoid all the time, you cannot outfit new territory with sensor coverage that quickly. Also, you cannot outfit new territory at all, because if you are that paranoid, you have already run out of money. You are a militia, remember, not a world superpower.
2. UAVs are NOT cheap, and have no other use besides intel and light attack. Why do I say this? Because MANNED aircraft provide intel, light attack, heavy attack, and cargo haulling - and the last two more or less require people. Even if you got UAVs to the point where they weren't that expensive in and of themselves, each UAV still requires a team of about ten people working directly on it, in theatre, to function; and people are very, very expensive. You are a militia. If you can afford one of these, you are very, very lucky.
3. Spy satellites will NEVER be useful for live imaging, period. Reconnaissance birds are not put into geostationary orbit. That a) is WAY too expensive, b) limits your coverage BADLY, and c) puts you way, way, WAY WAY WAY WAY too far above your target. Spy birds are in very low, usually polar or highly inclined orbits, just like mapping satellites and for the same reasons. That gets you close (less than 150 miles up, versus 22,300 miles up) and gives you MUCH better coverage - a polar orbit bird will at some point pass almost directly (and really fucking quickly) over every point on the earth's surface - but as a side effect, there is no such thing as "live satellite view," EVER. But alas, you are a militia, and you cannot afford several hundred million dollars to launch your own recon bird, so never mind!
4. What the hell good is a cloaking field that makes you louder? Why even bother bending the light with a cloaking field? Machine vision is not even remotely as good as biological. We are VASTLY better image processors than our silicon counterparts. If you want to hide from sight, use camouflage, or hell, use distance. 2.65km, for instance, would be sufficient! If you want to hide from sensors, use cloaking. There is also no reason any cloaking device should make you any louder in EMI than you already are - PERIOD. Ever. If it does, it fails as a cloaking device. If you question the reasoning behind this, here is the Wikipedia article on destructive interference. Read up!
5. The scenario in this picture has the sniper in a VASTLY superior technological position. That's sort of the point. Stop trying to reverse it. If the situation were reversed, THERE WOULD BE NO SNIPER. Not because she would be dead, but because she wouldn't have come to begin with.
All of which are perfectly sound arguments, if not for one thing. The scenario is in a futuristic setting where technology has progressed since what it is capable of today. That means better sensors, cheaper UAVs and the like. The problem is that this scenario depends on technology being largely the same as it is today.
If the snipers technological superiority is so vast, why does her bosses even care about that militia? Couldn't they just send in one squad of über advanced soldiers in powerarmours simply wipe out the entire camp rather than wasting days waiting for the sniper to finish her job? If the militia can't afford UAV's how are they going to pay for powerarmoured troops or guns big enough to hurt heavy powerarmour after all...
Consider how expensive computers used to be 50 years ago. Considering that, what makes you think UAV's will still be highly expensive a hundred more years of technological refinement? Or that sensor systems won't get a similar level of improvement? Or that improvements in space travel (which Strype has made plenty of references to in the past) won't make satellites dirt cheap, or at least cheap enough that even a small country can afford some...
My point is that to assume modern infantry tactics perfectly apply to warfare 50 or even 100 years from now, is overly simplistic. Just consider tactics from a hundred years ago, back when semiautomatic pistols where the height of cutting edge technology and semiautomatic rifle still was still 20-30 years in the future.
If the snipers technological superiority is so vast, why does her bosses even care about that militia? Couldn't they just send in one squad of über advanced soldiers in powerarmours simply wipe out the entire camp rather than wasting days waiting for the sniper to finish her job? If the militia can't afford UAV's how are they going to pay for powerarmoured troops or guns big enough to hurt heavy powerarmour after all...
Consider how expensive computers used to be 50 years ago. Considering that, what makes you think UAV's will still be highly expensive a hundred more years of technological refinement? Or that sensor systems won't get a similar level of improvement? Or that improvements in space travel (which Strype has made plenty of references to in the past) won't make satellites dirt cheap, or at least cheap enough that even a small country can afford some...
My point is that to assume modern infantry tactics perfectly apply to warfare 50 or even 100 years from now, is overly simplistic. Just consider tactics from a hundred years ago, back when semiautomatic pistols where the height of cutting edge technology and semiautomatic rifle still was still 20-30 years in the future.
1. Why yes, yes it WOULD be easier to send in a squad of ubersoldiers to level the camp. Why aren't they, do you suppose?
2. You are a warlord. You control 150 small cities in hostile territory, and you command a force of 8,000 soldiers. Let's be really really liberal and say you need 8 men to crew every 2 UAVs. You need four men to access your intel bird; you can dedicate four men and a ground station to analyze intel on location as soon as the bird passes overhead, or have four men in a central location to analyze and then relay intel to the field, but this requires you to dedicate 300 men to maintain a communications network (instead of 200). Your intel bird passes overhead once every five days. You need at least 20 men available, and at least 15 on patrol at any given time in each city, to enforce laws and keep the people of that city from rebelling violently. At least 10% of your force at any one location must be devoted to maintenance - power, food, shelter, etc. At worst, your men can work 12 hour shifts. Ten of your cities have high-value targets that will be attacked if you don't have a force of at least fifteen men and 2 UAVs dedicated to the protection of that target exclusively. Any city in which you do not have enough men will be subject to snipers in the hills. Go.
2. You are a warlord. You control 150 small cities in hostile territory, and you command a force of 8,000 soldiers. Let's be really really liberal and say you need 8 men to crew every 2 UAVs. You need four men to access your intel bird; you can dedicate four men and a ground station to analyze intel on location as soon as the bird passes overhead, or have four men in a central location to analyze and then relay intel to the field, but this requires you to dedicate 300 men to maintain a communications network (instead of 200). Your intel bird passes overhead once every five days. You need at least 20 men available, and at least 15 on patrol at any given time in each city, to enforce laws and keep the people of that city from rebelling violently. At least 10% of your force at any one location must be devoted to maintenance - power, food, shelter, etc. At worst, your men can work 12 hour shifts. Ten of your cities have high-value targets that will be attacked if you don't have a force of at least fifteen men and 2 UAVs dedicated to the protection of that target exclusively. Any city in which you do not have enough men will be subject to snipers in the hills. Go.
You are STILL basing your assumptions on the technology being no more advanced than modern UAV's and computer processing.
By the time we have rifle sized railguns that do not need a new barrel every other time its fired, practical powerarmour and "cloakingfields", do you really think no more advances in automation, sensors and data processing have come along? That no major state or corporation has long since put a major effort into making semi or fully autonomous machines that don't need constant human supervision? That computer programs that can monitor and analyse massive amounts of sensor data far more effectively than any human operator could, not only cutting the number of people needed to monitor the UAV's sensor feeds, but also giving you far more accurate intel with the same sensor feeds than human operators ever could have given you.
And since all of those fields (automation, computer processors, image analyses and improved sensors) have huge civilian applications, meaning competition between civilian companies will make the technology in all those fields cheaper, more efficient, more reliable and more available than technologies in fields that are strictly the purview of the military (like powerarmours, railguns and "cloakingfields", fields that I personally see little civilian applications for, but maybe that's just me...).
By the time we have rifle sized railguns that do not need a new barrel every other time its fired, practical powerarmour and "cloakingfields", do you really think no more advances in automation, sensors and data processing have come along? That no major state or corporation has long since put a major effort into making semi or fully autonomous machines that don't need constant human supervision? That computer programs that can monitor and analyse massive amounts of sensor data far more effectively than any human operator could, not only cutting the number of people needed to monitor the UAV's sensor feeds, but also giving you far more accurate intel with the same sensor feeds than human operators ever could have given you.
And since all of those fields (automation, computer processors, image analyses and improved sensors) have huge civilian applications, meaning competition between civilian companies will make the technology in all those fields cheaper, more efficient, more reliable and more available than technologies in fields that are strictly the purview of the military (like powerarmours, railguns and "cloakingfields", fields that I personally see little civilian applications for, but maybe that's just me...).
...and at that point, people will be obsolete, and there would never have been an invasion of a province to begin with, because the people in it would be of less value than the machines that would be defending it. In an effort to be helpful, I have drawn you the following map:
. <--the point
you are here --> O
. <--the point
you are here --> O
So you agree that such snipers would be strategically and tactically irrelevant by the time the technology she uses is perfected to the point that it can be used on a battlefield, due to other technological advances (such as automation)?
No, I don't agree at all. Far LESS relevant? Sure. But my big issue with what you're trying to say is twofold:
1. You are inventing an enemy that Strype does not describe.
You are trying to re-define the battlefield and THEN insist that it's implausible as you've drawn it - which is TRUE, but it wasn't true UNTIL YOU FUCKED IT UP. People with the level of technology you so wooden-headedly insist on assigning these folk do not attempt to capture a province with ordinary footsoldiers and open-topped ground transports if they've got satellites and robot airplanes and mecha and fusion-powered ice-cream scoops and all that nonsense. It would be like killing a mosquito with a flyswatter when you have a perfectly functional mosquito-tracking hunter-killer laser system sitting on your desk. Further, if they're equipped like superbadasses because the tech is CHEAP rather than because they're just well-funded, they don't capture provinces AT ALL, because they can't get around the cheap and available defenses the entrenched populace has laid down for years to keep from being invaded!
2. You are inventing this battlefield based on hypothetical technology you don't know beans about.
And I don't mean to sound egotistical, but, well, I do. I'm not pulling my arguments out of my ass, here. A railgun isn't some far-future weapon based on fairies and black magic; it's based on a principle of magnetics that you employ every time you ring a doorbell or activate your car's power locks. The only thing that keeps us from having man-pack railguns right the hell now are power storage density limitations; we either can't get enough energy into a small enough space, or we can't get it back out again fast enough. The Navy's weapon is plausible for them because they have all the space on their ships to put their massive cap banks in. Batteries will store more juice in a smaler space, but inconveniently like to catch on fire or explode if you try to dump the whole load at once. If we had battery technology that was capable of storing that much energy AND sustaining a near-instantaneous discharge rate, there would be railguns in Afghanistan right now. Magnetic anomaly detectors? Those, in slightly modified form, would be "radios," and we already have those. Remote heartbeat detectors? Being fielded by fire and rescue personnel right now. This is not far-future stuff, and consequentially, your assertion that everything else will be super-amazingly awesome and fantastically cheap by the time all this exists is...well, wrong.
But as far as satellites and sensor capability? I've spent several years now doing satellite communications for a living. I don't think you understand how close to the theoretical limits we already operate. Yes, there is, in fact, a hard limit on how sensitive you can be to electromagnetic radiation, and that limit is based on the oscillations of the atoms that make up your probe/antenna/sensor/whatever you call it in your application. There is a receive level below which the atomic oscillations of the metal in the antenna itself is in fact louder than the signal you're trying to listen for, and below that level, you cannot hear. There is room for improvement in the noise figures of existing amplifiers, yes, but at the moment, very high-end receiving amps are cryogenically cooled to lower the amount of atomic vibration in the material itself! It's just not going to GET much better than that - even if we get room-temperature superconductors, the cutting edge of RF technology already EMPLOYS superconducting materials.
If you want live imaging or live magnetics detection from your satellite, though, it cannot be moving relative to the earth. This happens in one magical (and very crowded) ring around the equator at exactly 22,300 miles up. That's geostationary orbit. That's also at LEAST 223 times farther away from the planet than you want to be to see anything - the ISS only orbits at ~130 miles, for pity's sake, and something like a mapping satellite will be orbiting below THAT. And if you are in geostationary orbit, you are halfway through the outer ring of the Van Allen belts, so you're not as protected from background radiation or solar flares or even the normal noise of the solar wind. That's not THAT big a deal when you're a big COMSAT and you've got people blasting you with RF from the ground, but if you're listening for things people are radiating by accident, you MUST be closer to the planet. The advantage of using a satellite dish is that it makes your signal extremely directional so the amount of power you have to push drops DRASTICALLY; you push everything in only one direction in a tiny sliver barely a degree across. But most things that generate RF don't generate all of it in one direction, they spray it out all over the place. To equal the amount of power I have to push to reach the birds I work with, a "cloaking field" (which by necessity must radiate in all directions) would have to be radiating about 600,000W - or the equivalent of about 700 household microwaves - and I wish whoever's trying to stand INSIDE that good luck surviving (although on the upside, that cloaking field would make some fantastic instant bacon). And this is ignoring completely the fact that the entire point of a cloaking field is to appear to radiate absolutely nothing.
RF rocks, but we have for most practical purposes reached the limits of the power of our rocking. We are asymptotically approaching the theoretical limits of what is possible with mathematically perfect equipment. Why did you THINK I kept implying that those perfect sensors weren't coming?
1. You are inventing an enemy that Strype does not describe.
You are trying to re-define the battlefield and THEN insist that it's implausible as you've drawn it - which is TRUE, but it wasn't true UNTIL YOU FUCKED IT UP. People with the level of technology you so wooden-headedly insist on assigning these folk do not attempt to capture a province with ordinary footsoldiers and open-topped ground transports if they've got satellites and robot airplanes and mecha and fusion-powered ice-cream scoops and all that nonsense. It would be like killing a mosquito with a flyswatter when you have a perfectly functional mosquito-tracking hunter-killer laser system sitting on your desk. Further, if they're equipped like superbadasses because the tech is CHEAP rather than because they're just well-funded, they don't capture provinces AT ALL, because they can't get around the cheap and available defenses the entrenched populace has laid down for years to keep from being invaded!
2. You are inventing this battlefield based on hypothetical technology you don't know beans about.
And I don't mean to sound egotistical, but, well, I do. I'm not pulling my arguments out of my ass, here. A railgun isn't some far-future weapon based on fairies and black magic; it's based on a principle of magnetics that you employ every time you ring a doorbell or activate your car's power locks. The only thing that keeps us from having man-pack railguns right the hell now are power storage density limitations; we either can't get enough energy into a small enough space, or we can't get it back out again fast enough. The Navy's weapon is plausible for them because they have all the space on their ships to put their massive cap banks in. Batteries will store more juice in a smaler space, but inconveniently like to catch on fire or explode if you try to dump the whole load at once. If we had battery technology that was capable of storing that much energy AND sustaining a near-instantaneous discharge rate, there would be railguns in Afghanistan right now. Magnetic anomaly detectors? Those, in slightly modified form, would be "radios," and we already have those. Remote heartbeat detectors? Being fielded by fire and rescue personnel right now. This is not far-future stuff, and consequentially, your assertion that everything else will be super-amazingly awesome and fantastically cheap by the time all this exists is...well, wrong.
But as far as satellites and sensor capability? I've spent several years now doing satellite communications for a living. I don't think you understand how close to the theoretical limits we already operate. Yes, there is, in fact, a hard limit on how sensitive you can be to electromagnetic radiation, and that limit is based on the oscillations of the atoms that make up your probe/antenna/sensor/whatever you call it in your application. There is a receive level below which the atomic oscillations of the metal in the antenna itself is in fact louder than the signal you're trying to listen for, and below that level, you cannot hear. There is room for improvement in the noise figures of existing amplifiers, yes, but at the moment, very high-end receiving amps are cryogenically cooled to lower the amount of atomic vibration in the material itself! It's just not going to GET much better than that - even if we get room-temperature superconductors, the cutting edge of RF technology already EMPLOYS superconducting materials.
If you want live imaging or live magnetics detection from your satellite, though, it cannot be moving relative to the earth. This happens in one magical (and very crowded) ring around the equator at exactly 22,300 miles up. That's geostationary orbit. That's also at LEAST 223 times farther away from the planet than you want to be to see anything - the ISS only orbits at ~130 miles, for pity's sake, and something like a mapping satellite will be orbiting below THAT. And if you are in geostationary orbit, you are halfway through the outer ring of the Van Allen belts, so you're not as protected from background radiation or solar flares or even the normal noise of the solar wind. That's not THAT big a deal when you're a big COMSAT and you've got people blasting you with RF from the ground, but if you're listening for things people are radiating by accident, you MUST be closer to the planet. The advantage of using a satellite dish is that it makes your signal extremely directional so the amount of power you have to push drops DRASTICALLY; you push everything in only one direction in a tiny sliver barely a degree across. But most things that generate RF don't generate all of it in one direction, they spray it out all over the place. To equal the amount of power I have to push to reach the birds I work with, a "cloaking field" (which by necessity must radiate in all directions) would have to be radiating about 600,000W - or the equivalent of about 700 household microwaves - and I wish whoever's trying to stand INSIDE that good luck surviving (although on the upside, that cloaking field would make some fantastic instant bacon). And this is ignoring completely the fact that the entire point of a cloaking field is to appear to radiate absolutely nothing.
RF rocks, but we have for most practical purposes reached the limits of the power of our rocking. We are asymptotically approaching the theoretical limits of what is possible with mathematically perfect equipment. Why did you THINK I kept implying that those perfect sensors weren't coming?
Oh, uh, one more brief factoid: to hit a satellite with comm-signal intensity at 100mi. up, rather than 22,300mi. up, an isotropic radiator would have to be radiating 240W, instead of 600,000W. If I'm doing my math right, the free-space loss over distance is about 46dB lower for the closer target. So when I say you want to be in a lower orbit, I mean you REALLY FUCKING *B*A*D*L*Y* want to be in a lower orbit.
Yes, heartbeat sensors and the like are current technology and railguns are being developed. But current railguns require you to carry around a small nuclear reactor to power them, must have half their barrel assembly removed after every few shots and are so big the smallest mobile firing systems we have are purpose built WARSHIPS. The problems in making a man portable and halfway useful railgun far outstrip the difficulty of improving radio antennae with nano engineering and exotic materials.
And since you apparently know so much, care to explain how that "cloakingfield" isn't magical technology? Unlike UAV's.
Or a man portable battery that can power even a single shot from a railgun, let alone many? Unlike, say improved computer systems for automation and image analasys.
Or a powerarmour that can absorb the bone shattering recoil from firing a projectile of any useful size at well over 3500 metres per second? I mean, you can't simply make a projectile so small the recoil wouldn't be a problem, or it would be too small to carry much kinetic energy let alone deliver it to its target.
New technology is part of science fiction. Its sort of the defining part of what sets science fiction apart from other types of fiction. What I'm saying is that it doesn't make sense for all those OTHER technologies to have been left in the stone age while powerarmours, railguns and "cloakingfields" specifically where developed.
And considering how many times computer hard drive storage capacities have been redefined and transcended the "mathematical limitations" of how much data can be stored, until a new technology for storing data that is more effective comes along, I wouldn't be so quick to assume that we won't see either new ways to make antennae that compensate for its materials instability, new more stable materials or both.
And since you apparently know so much, care to explain how that "cloakingfield" isn't magical technology? Unlike UAV's.
Or a man portable battery that can power even a single shot from a railgun, let alone many? Unlike, say improved computer systems for automation and image analasys.
Or a powerarmour that can absorb the bone shattering recoil from firing a projectile of any useful size at well over 3500 metres per second? I mean, you can't simply make a projectile so small the recoil wouldn't be a problem, or it would be too small to carry much kinetic energy let alone deliver it to its target.
New technology is part of science fiction. Its sort of the defining part of what sets science fiction apart from other types of fiction. What I'm saying is that it doesn't make sense for all those OTHER technologies to have been left in the stone age while powerarmours, railguns and "cloakingfields" specifically where developed.
And considering how many times computer hard drive storage capacities have been redefined and transcended the "mathematical limitations" of how much data can be stored, until a new technology for storing data that is more effective comes along, I wouldn't be so quick to assume that we won't see either new ways to make antennae that compensate for its materials instability, new more stable materials or both.
1. Regurgitating the corollaries to my points as though they were supposed to be new information is possibly not the best way to argue against them. You can carry the railgun theory a little farther on your own if you'd like to catch up; I don't intend to repeat myself (again).
2. Ah yes, nano- and exotics! The two magical words that make all technology better. Except when they don't. Laboratory-refined superconducting copper is not good enough for you? Oh, great, you've never done any machine work either, have you.
3. The technology to mask or spoof EM signatures (cloaking, for all intents and purposes) has been around since the Cold War. QED.
4. Recoil? Srsly? Smear the force over time. That is how this is ALWAYS done. Firearms 101. If you want a direct comparison, muzzle velocity on the Navy's rail gun is 2,400m/s; the Barret .50cal rifle's is ~800m/s. A slug a third the size of the Barrett's and three times the speed carries equivalent energy and has a slimmer profile, which would provide greater penetration, lower susceptibility to winds, a flatter trajectory, and recoil equal to the Barrett's already famously low amount. Fuck power armor. Notably, that theoretical projectile would weigh in at 1/192nd the weight of the Navy's discarding sabot rail round, and thus require approximately 200 times less energy to fire.
5. Science fiction is part science (reality) and part fiction (imaginary). If your issue with the picture is that it is unrealistic, your argument needs to carry a little science. Start using some damn science.
6. No hard drive has ever overcome basic scientific restrictions on storage density. Go back and do your homework again on that one.
2. Ah yes, nano- and exotics! The two magical words that make all technology better. Except when they don't. Laboratory-refined superconducting copper is not good enough for you? Oh, great, you've never done any machine work either, have you.
3. The technology to mask or spoof EM signatures (cloaking, for all intents and purposes) has been around since the Cold War. QED.
4. Recoil? Srsly? Smear the force over time. That is how this is ALWAYS done. Firearms 101. If you want a direct comparison, muzzle velocity on the Navy's rail gun is 2,400m/s; the Barret .50cal rifle's is ~800m/s. A slug a third the size of the Barrett's and three times the speed carries equivalent energy and has a slimmer profile, which would provide greater penetration, lower susceptibility to winds, a flatter trajectory, and recoil equal to the Barrett's already famously low amount. Fuck power armor. Notably, that theoretical projectile would weigh in at 1/192nd the weight of the Navy's discarding sabot rail round, and thus require approximately 200 times less energy to fire.
5. Science fiction is part science (reality) and part fiction (imaginary). If your issue with the picture is that it is unrealistic, your argument needs to carry a little science. Start using some damn science.
6. No hard drive has ever overcome basic scientific restrictions on storage density. Go back and do your homework again on that one.
But you are assuming the same thing,
Generally, offence is always head of defence - new weapon system developed - new defences developed to protect against it. No one will make a defence for a system which doesn't exist.
Putting that back into context, we can assume that the snipers cloaking field is adequte to cloak him from all automated defences and detectors.
If it wasn't adequet, he wouldn't be there. But lets just say that some new detection system caught him out, an experianced sniper would have an escape plan and would leave the area. A newer sniper would be dead.
You seem to be very caught up in the detection aspect of this, Yes - detectors would have advanced. BUT SO would everything else, like the CLOAKING DEVICES and other tricky pulled by the sniper.
And as said earlier, kill the target when he's not prepared for it, not when he's buried up to his tits in defences. Thats something you seem to just ignore yourself.
Generally, offence is always head of defence - new weapon system developed - new defences developed to protect against it. No one will make a defence for a system which doesn't exist.
Putting that back into context, we can assume that the snipers cloaking field is adequte to cloak him from all automated defences and detectors.
If it wasn't adequet, he wouldn't be there. But lets just say that some new detection system caught him out, an experianced sniper would have an escape plan and would leave the area. A newer sniper would be dead.
You seem to be very caught up in the detection aspect of this, Yes - detectors would have advanced. BUT SO would everything else, like the CLOAKING DEVICES and other tricky pulled by the sniper.
And as said earlier, kill the target when he's not prepared for it, not when he's buried up to his tits in defences. Thats something you seem to just ignore yourself.
I think he's trying to say that in the future, you are never not buried up to your tits in defenses - which then makes me wonder how the invading force here would have taken over the province to begin with, since it, presumably, is ALSO buried up to the tits in defenses, and entrenched, with home field advantage. Also, hooray, we've broken FA's comment formatting! :D
Awesome! LET THE CONFUSION COMMENSE! XD
He's totally off the point now, he's just picking bits of what you said and throwing it back at you with more bullshit attached. Don't get me wrong, i fucking love sci-fi! i have a whole universe based off it! But slasher has just gone off the point now, your map was very accurate.
OBVIOUS TROLL IS OBLIVOUS TO OBVIOUSLY CORRECT COMMENTS ON OVERIES.
He's totally off the point now, he's just picking bits of what you said and throwing it back at you with more bullshit attached. Don't get me wrong, i fucking love sci-fi! i have a whole universe based off it! But slasher has just gone off the point now, your map was very accurate.
OBVIOUS TROLL IS OBLIVOUS TO OBVIOUSLY CORRECT COMMENTS ON OVERIES.
Yeah, it's...it's weird. I have rarely had an argument that needed me to do all the thinking FOR BOTH SIDES as much as this one has. :P I like batting trolls around. They get their jollies, I get mine, everybody has a little fun; but I get the suspicion this guy's actually not trying to troll, he's just honestly that lazy and/or 'tarded.
Yeah, too much effort for trolling, intresting stuff none the less! The calcutions you did were very impressive btw! i did A level physics, so i kinda know what your on about XD
...actually I think I botched that a little; to have the same energy at three times the velocity, it'd have to be 1/9th the mass, not 1/3rd. Whoops. All the same, though...
...oh, and hey, thanks for the watch!
...oh, and hey, thanks for the watch!
Now you insinuate that I'm the troll?
Who's been using all the derogatory remarks about who?
Who's been making ludicrous remarks about science never improving?
If there's is anyone here trolling anyone, it's you. Though I suppose I am to blame for rising to the bait.
Who's been using all the derogatory remarks about who?
Who's been making ludicrous remarks about science never improving?
If there's is anyone here trolling anyone, it's you. Though I suppose I am to blame for rising to the bait.
No, read the damn post! for god sake! it seems like you just ignore key points!
i said you'd put in too much effort to be a troll.
i said you'd put in too much effort to be a troll.
Thats alright! :P
You seem pretty intresting and like a nice person! so why not XD
You seem pretty intresting and like a nice person! so why not XD
THis piece is beautiful; the armor, the way the rain makes the laser beam partially visible, the shading on the background; the steelness of the shooter and the proper stance as well.
However...
Any true sniper (or marksman) worth his (or her) salt, knows that cover and concealment is vitasl to the stalk.; standing on a hill, wearing a bright blue suit of armor is like wearing a sign that reads "I AM HERE - SHOOT ME" around your neck. But despite that, I like this.
However...
Any true sniper (or marksman) worth his (or her) salt, knows that cover and concealment is vitasl to the stalk.; standing on a hill, wearing a bright blue suit of armor is like wearing a sign that reads "I AM HERE - SHOOT ME" around your neck. But despite that, I like this.
Well, technically, the cloaking field mentioned in the description likely makes her impossible/difficult to see, making her color irrelevent and her positioning less a negetive than it would be in today's tactics and technology, and she is likely only visible to us so as to actually be a picture worth viewing.
Okay, that makes sense - cloaking or Thermo-Optic Camouflage would be logical.
Lovely rain and bg here, the splash effects are awesome
Awesome! This is the most beautiful future armor and weapons you've done yet IMO.
Wow. You are amazing when it comes to rain. I mean, seriously, it ain't easy to pull off rain in art, especially in realistic themed art (and I classify your stuff as "realistic", as opposed to cartoonish or "hyper realism"). The dripping of the water off armor and gun is also really, really nice, and adds a great deal to the piece overall. The armor and the gun remind me a little of the Tau and their rail rifles from Warhammer 40K, though that bad boy is much bigger (and much longer range). And the environment, from grass to sky to the distance, looks increadible.
I do have one qualm about the piece, which may stem from my lacking knowledge of firearms. I believe that red line is a laser sight, but at a range of 2.6 kilometers, wouldn't the need to correct for falloff make it less than useful? Then again, with the sheer speed of the projectile, I suppose the falloff would be minimal (only an inch from what you say). However, such a light has the potential to give away a shot, and I'm not sure if even modern snipers utilize them either. I guess I'm also just not sure about the merits of using one, positive or negetive. But, you know the military and weapons more than I do. That's just my take on the matter. I see the laser sight as being a potential tip-off, minimal as it may be.
I do have one qualm about the piece, which may stem from my lacking knowledge of firearms. I believe that red line is a laser sight, but at a range of 2.6 kilometers, wouldn't the need to correct for falloff make it less than useful? Then again, with the sheer speed of the projectile, I suppose the falloff would be minimal (only an inch from what you say). However, such a light has the potential to give away a shot, and I'm not sure if even modern snipers utilize them either. I guess I'm also just not sure about the merits of using one, positive or negetive. But, you know the military and weapons more than I do. That's just my take on the matter. I see the laser sight as being a potential tip-off, minimal as it may be.
Hell, the 'laser' could even be the after-affect from the shot. At velocities that high, with a firing platform THAT heavy (which reduces recoil also), the shot could well be long down-range before any noticable shifting of bodies occurs.
It's still an amazing piece of composition, this is a helluva new bar you set for yourself, Strype.
It's still an amazing piece of composition, this is a helluva new bar you set for yourself, Strype.
The laser could also be a data-link to a guided bullet, providing targeting updates in real time over its very short flight.
Hell. At one minute of accuracy, which is damn good for a sniper rifle -- most military rifles in that role are 1-3 MOA guns -- I get a circle 60" wide into which the slug will go. Add in the recoil, and you'll probably make the accuracy worse. (Google calculator gives me a circular error probable of 30.3486323" at the stated range)
This implies that doing brain surgery at two and a half kilometers will require some sort of actively steered projectile, though I hate to think of how difficult engineering a guidance system to survive a railgun launch is from both a mechanical and electrical standpoint. I propose a non-ferrous projectile for most purposes, as a great deal of energy will be lost converting steel to a permanent magnet - but a moving magnet will induce eddy currents, so a hit or near-miss with a supermagnet will have profound EMP effects on the target; this may be an acceptable tradeoff when electronic equipment (like automated antisniper mortar systems!) is in the vicinity of the target.
I propose a barrel-launched adaptive munition "B.L.A.M." electronically guided by inertial navigation and command guidance data sent from the firing platform, as the hardened armor-penetrating nose of the projectile will be a lousy place to put imaging guidance sensors, even before frictional heating results in a plasma shockwave forming around the nose of the munition akin to the frictional heating on atmospheric reentry experienced by orbital vehicles.
This implies that doing brain surgery at two and a half kilometers will require some sort of actively steered projectile, though I hate to think of how difficult engineering a guidance system to survive a railgun launch is from both a mechanical and electrical standpoint. I propose a non-ferrous projectile for most purposes, as a great deal of energy will be lost converting steel to a permanent magnet - but a moving magnet will induce eddy currents, so a hit or near-miss with a supermagnet will have profound EMP effects on the target; this may be an acceptable tradeoff when electronic equipment (like automated antisniper mortar systems!) is in the vicinity of the target.
I propose a barrel-launched adaptive munition "B.L.A.M." electronically guided by inertial navigation and command guidance data sent from the firing platform, as the hardened armor-penetrating nose of the projectile will be a lousy place to put imaging guidance sensors, even before frictional heating results in a plasma shockwave forming around the nose of the munition akin to the frictional heating on atmospheric reentry experienced by orbital vehicles.
Reminds me of the fusion rifle in the Traveller series of games. Basicly projects a nucklear explosion forward with magnetic fields. Same fields keep the shooter from receiving lethal rads in the process.
That makes this an amazing pic beyond what it already is.
That makes this an amazing pic beyond what it already is.
Traveller. From mongoose publishing.
More specifically, Supplement 4 : Central supply catalogue.
More specifically, Supplement 4 : Central supply catalogue.
The detail is so great that this could be mistaken for a scene in an anime.
That's something a Spartan from Halo would use. Most impressive.
Every time I see your work, it makes me wanna commission you. I would but I'm abit on the save up for my own place fund. XD
Every time I see your work, it makes me wanna commission you. I would but I'm abit on the save up for my own place fund. XD
STRRRYYYYPE you wont see this comment [way down the list] BUT THATS INSANE :D :D im going to go draw a railgun nao!
The badassery in this is indescribable. Also, as an avid shooter myself, I doubly approve.
Wow das ist ja mal echt der Wahnsinn ein sehr sehr geiles bild ich bin Sprachlos und muss gestehen das ich echt baff war als ich das sah ^^
Great work! This pic is really stunning and a great way to show the HALO Sniper Rifle in Action...hmmmm... i love Sniperrifles....*noms on one*
Great work! This pic is really stunning and a great way to show the HALO Sniper Rifle in Action...hmmmm... i love Sniperrifles....*noms on one*
Ahh damn mistreated the armor for Halo ^^ i'm sorry... it seems like it's more a custome build one still..a heavy cool gun!
SUPERB! Like it was etched in steel! The dripping water drops, the overall rain haze, the laser beam broken here and there due to the rain, the grass...Strype, you not only shot and scored, you smashed the backboard to pieces! SOLID!
would there happen to be a 1600 res desktop background of this pic somewhere? :)
...Firing a railgun from a one-legged kneel. Heh, they'll probably stick this in the next Call of Duty game. AKIMBO RAILGUNS! >_>
This is by far, one of my favorite pictures ever. Nothing in this picture was bad at all. It's my new backround.
This. Is. Spectacular. I've never commented on your work before, but I've been a long time admirer. I just had to say something regarding this piece. It's amazing. An inspiration.
/gush.
/gush.
hmmmmm strype my good sir. only one kill with hat beast. come now she must pull a jim raynor! one shot fifty kills! ;) god i love that mission...
Holy shit, two other people that know about this series.
Volume eleven is sitting on my night stand at the moment. :D
Volume eleven is sitting on my night stand at the moment. :D
Yes... :} I started reading it back in 1988 I belive when it first came out. I've faithfully been reading it since every new volume comes out, no matter where on the planet I've been. However, I didn't know volume 11 was out? I'll have to investigate further.
is to far away to make it sound like that, it would be like "BOOM..(bullet traveling)..HEADSHOT!!!!" :D
I really love the runoff on the battery pack on the back. The rain dripping off the knee and matting down the tail on the tail and head are exceptional, and the story really gives it that added level of realism. One thing that bothers me is the ear piece.
I now that it's a cross for Canine and Human anatomy, but an earpiece always just seemed.... off to me... I think it would be fun to design a custom earpiece for anthros For dogs/cats with sharper hearing it might be just as effective to have the microphone resting just below the ear. possibly just adhered to the fur?
All in all this is an awesome piece of art and is a wonderful reminder of why I have you on my watch list ^_^ Keep up the awesome work. :D
I now that it's a cross for Canine and Human anatomy, but an earpiece always just seemed.... off to me... I think it would be fun to design a custom earpiece for anthros For dogs/cats with sharper hearing it might be just as effective to have the microphone resting just below the ear. possibly just adhered to the fur?
All in all this is an awesome piece of art and is a wonderful reminder of why I have you on my watch list ^_^ Keep up the awesome work. :D
Dude..... Dude.. totally looks like a Rifts Character I have and yea I'd say check their books cause they do have a fairly realistic take on that kind of Tech.. esp Railguns... <_< >_> FOR THE COALITION!!!....
Dang. Bravissimo! One of the best pieces I've seen on FA of late!
Awsome. I need to get a commision off you . You're too good not to have one from.
Jebus, I knew that had to be a rail as soon as I saw it. Now I want one. *pouts* But damn, the water dripping off of her clothing and body looks so FLUID and true to realism. You continue to make my jaw drop EVERY time you post something.
dude, from loser to artist, i commend you. I know i need practice, and this proves it... that is one of the most epic scenes ive seen all day, and now i gotta say, im a little envious. BUT! one thing...
the pic looks perfect.
will dissappear now...
the pic looks perfect.
will dissappear now...
The gun remember me an impulsions rifle from the taus Fire Warriors (warhammer 40000)
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA.....in_873x627.jpg
Indeed, very nice pic :)
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA.....in_873x627.jpg
Indeed, very nice pic :)
Badass perspective on the rail weaponry! Really fuckin' cooL! :D This is better the porn x3
Love the Rail Gun, also like the little story that goes with it. Amazing job.
Dude, this is... Freaking AWESOME! I really don't know how else to put it right now
Pretty damn sweet railgun design you got there. The scope looks familiar though, looks like the one on the Halo Series' Sniper Rifles. Coincidence?
And did I mention how amazingly sexy this piece of art is?
And did I mention how amazingly sexy this piece of art is?
The rain effects dripping on that sniper is Manson! And the narrative gets me so pumped up!
awesome picture. The image in itself is breathtaking but the added story really helps cement the mood.
All in all an awesome piece of work. ^.=.^
All in all an awesome piece of work. ^.=.^
Wow this is absolutely wonderful, the atmosphere in the background and your rain effects are excellent!
http://www.therob.me.uk/wp-content/.....rewarrior1.jpg
Just reminded me of that.
Just reminded me of that.
so much epicness is put in to this pic it's out standing and if i had a kick ass gun like that dosen't really matter because it would be the last thing they saw before death and i'm pretty sure she said something along these lines after her eye leaves the scope " damn now that was a tastey head shot but all in all freaking love your work
have to say i love the rain effects, and the tech as always is awesome, dude, keep it up!
Insta fave and watch I lurv the armour and the drenching rain and the riflee and each blade of grass..
gorgeous. just
gorgeous. just
wow your art is always amazing, love the rain effects and the dripping you did
"See no Evil, Hear no Evil."-> My Father, Former Finnish sniper.
I prefer it clean, Quiet and no witnesses, In this case there were fucking alot to clean, Judging from the sound that Railgun did, But the "No Witnesses" criteria dercreases the importance of the others.
And hoping to see more of yer Arts.
I prefer it clean, Quiet and no witnesses, In this case there were fucking alot to clean, Judging from the sound that Railgun did, But the "No Witnesses" criteria dercreases the importance of the others.
And hoping to see more of yer Arts.
Coolest. Gun. EVER!!! Wait; does it have the controls to a satellite laser cannon weapon?
Not to nitpick the description on such a ridiculous concentration of awesome (Especially when it was for my significant other), but wouldn't a tungsten spike fit a railgun better?
Tungsten or uranium would have better sectional density, and make better tank-killer rounds, yes.
Depleted uranium, I'd hope XD i'd imagine getting better distance on the more massive rounds due to better resistance to air friction ripping things apart at that speed.
Don't forget the potential for the slug to melt due to electrical arc heating followed by atmospheric friction.
And it does look like everything came together so well, too!
Love the laser sight effect, as well!
Love the laser sight effect, as well!
Looks a bit like that rifle from BF:2142.. Damn if I can't remember the name, nor the faction that used it.
Great work!
Great work!
Well, uh... That's one lazer I won't be chasing... ^^;
I friggen love how you do rain... And I'm glad you like doing it. :P
I friggen love how you do rain... And I'm glad you like doing it. :P
![[koh]](http://a.furaffinity.net/1427867562/[koh].gif)
Have ta say, i really enjoy the "At LEAST one kill" bit. This whole thing is gorgeous, and people need to stop complaining about the default brush. The grass looks damn fine, and if you had to use the brush to make the rest of the pic look gorgeous, well then, i say good onya. The girl looks amazing, i want the gun, and you are brilliant. +fave.
The rain is done very extravagantly. Loved it lots. Her armor and peripherals look very much like something you'd see in the Ghost in a Shell series. More love. ^^ I can't really complain about the grass *can't draw it worth a damn myself* but it is really well done and the varying shades are nearly perfect to the perspective; however, it seems just a tad bright where she's sitting and almost makes it seem as if there's a spotlight on her specifically. All in all, very well done picture and even better story to go with it.
Is it just me, or is that the sniper scope from one of the Halo games, and the carry-handle too?
Oh btw, where can I get a gun like that? </obligatoryfanwank>
Oh btw, where can I get a gun like that? </obligatoryfanwank>
definitely inspired by the sniper rifle from Reach, but the rest of the gun was something I came up with, jeez, sometime in 2007, in a pic I never posted. I showed Stormy the rifle, and she fell in love with it, so I passed it off to her
The Sniper Rifle looks like a bit of the Sniper Rifle from Battlefield 2142 : http://tech2.in.com/media/images/im.....r4_450x360.jpg
But the Whole Picture AMAZING WORK
But the Whole Picture AMAZING WORK
damn that is really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really SWEET :D><
Epic. Just...amazingly epic. What more can I say? Every detail is just awesome. Breathtaking.
Oh yeah, a gun like that and a person behind it that skilled is a guaranteed kill.
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4531488 <- Same military schooling, evidently. :P
The one in that picture and the one here are two different guns. The gun developed in the picture has been around for three years.
I'm aware of that, I'm just saying there's a shared mindset here - that one shot with a big gun can be worth much more than a multitude of alternative weapons. Didn't mean to offend or anything. :C
...
I have to ask.
Why the basic photoshop grass brush? Why not mix it up with individual strokes, or a variance of vegetation? She might as well be popped up in a golf course for all I know. I really want to like this piece, but the use of a beginner's tool just... baffling. I have a low res screen, and the grass doesn't look too layered, but the second my fiance loads it up on his high res monitor, you can see every line and layer that you put in there. It doesn't blend at all, nor look natural. :c
We live on pretty flat land, and very rarely do you see open fields like that with no shrubs or other types of grass.
I have to ask.
Why the basic photoshop grass brush? Why not mix it up with individual strokes, or a variance of vegetation? She might as well be popped up in a golf course for all I know. I really want to like this piece, but the use of a beginner's tool just... baffling. I have a low res screen, and the grass doesn't look too layered, but the second my fiance loads it up on his high res monitor, you can see every line and layer that you put in there. It doesn't blend at all, nor look natural. :c
We live on pretty flat land, and very rarely do you see open fields like that with no shrubs or other types of grass.
Personally, i think the grass looks great! your just being picky!
mmm, you're right, shrubs and weeds would probably help it out a lot. ah well, something ot keep in mind for next time. Thanks for the input!
You know she's gonna have a hard time steadying the shot with that pose. But, then again, something tells me that it's probably ok if she's not *exactly* on.
wow! this picture is amazing! i really love the effects you put into it, the detail is tunning, and it has a really creative story too!
Wow, thats some amazing work there. I love the rain effect... the armor and the rifle are just awesome :D
Every new story you make for you pictures, besides giving them life, are a great concept for a movie or book. You rock!
Really liking how you did the rain on this, especially the way it drips down him in a huge flow, it looks very nice. I'm a sucker for anything involving being in the rain, really. Just not IRL.
Great job on the detail dude.
Great job on the detail dude.
My kinda girl...
Also... my kinda gun.
We built one back in college... weighed in at around 30 pounds, uses the guts of a .22, and a shit tone of copper wire, tinfoil and parchment. The car battery we used to charge for shots isn't included in that weight figure, and the ammo came in a 50 point box. Headless 16d nails. She was a hoot.
Also... my kinda gun.
We built one back in college... weighed in at around 30 pounds, uses the guts of a .22, and a shit tone of copper wire, tinfoil and parchment. The car battery we used to charge for shots isn't included in that weight figure, and the ammo came in a 50 point box. Headless 16d nails. She was a hoot.
course... it wasn't anywhere near as pretty as the one you drew there...
But all I can see is the scope smashing her eye socket when she fires. It looks very odd with no stock to brace against her shoulder, something literally *all* rifles need to have.
I agree completely. When I made the model of it, I was thinking about that.
LOL at the tags:
"light armor sniper rail rifle railgun rain grass field storm and like a mime having sex youll never hear it coming"
"and like a mime having sex youll never hear it coming"
LOL at the tags:
"light armor sniper rail rifle railgun rain grass field storm and like a mime having sex youll never hear it coming"
"and like a mime having sex youll never hear it coming"
BRO, I DUNNO
WARHAMMER ASSASIN-SNIPERS SHOOT A KILO-HEAVY BULLETS-
ON THEIR PISTOLS.
WARHAMMER ASSASIN-SNIPERS SHOOT A KILO-HEAVY BULLETS-
ON THEIR PISTOLS.
Great beyond words. Like... I'm clueless about what feedback I can give!
Well i must say this looks quite schmick,
Reminds me of the Tau from W40k,
And to all those pointing out inaccuracies I have one thing to remind thou of
the ever so essential "Rule of Cool".
Reminds me of the Tau from W40k,
And to all those pointing out inaccuracies I have one thing to remind thou of
the ever so essential "Rule of Cool".
Eeet seems so un-necessary that so many rant on the uselessness of lazer, but this is the future, an Rail guns, essentually Magnetically propelled Projectiles { i might be thinking Gauss} but still... at such velocities that gravity is literally not a factor, nor windspeed or distance, the shell would crack the target in mere seconds and shatter bone & metal alike >:3 who wouldn't wanna see that? :D
it btw :3
Would SO wanna see a Vindicare Assassin of the Imperial Guard Maybeh next one... :O
it btw :3
Would SO wanna see a Vindicare Assassin of the Imperial Guard Maybeh next one... :O
being a man with the brain of a toddler, the image of an animal with a gun excites me.
I love this a lot. I love it so much that the only thing that's at all wrong with it is that the projectile should be tungsten as opposed to steel. And that has literally nothing to do with the drawing per se. Yay for an awesome drawing.
Our weapons will be boxy in the future.
Our weapons will be boxy in the future.
platform lacks proper bone support, heh heh.
I love the rain so much in this, always a great job with water.
I love the rain so much in this, always a great job with water.
So she takes the shot that kills the commander, then the other members of the group, which were hiding all around the settlement, jump out and kill the rest of the bad guys...that's what I'd do, strike like a hammer during the confusion.
Wow... great pic.
Epicly done, especially the grass. Nice back story, and rain effects.
The weapon reminds me of a Tau laser rifle though.... but they actually HAVE railguns. And rail rifles. Best heavey weapon in the game of Warhammer 40k.... 72 inch range (on a board, that's almost the entire thing, if not more) 10/10 strength, Armour prercing rating of 1 (the best)... if you his a single guy with that.... "They never found the body"
Absolutely great work there Strype. Found you while browsing an art site, link to here, saw this pic, and LOVED it.
Epicly done, especially the grass. Nice back story, and rain effects.
The weapon reminds me of a Tau laser rifle though.... but they actually HAVE railguns. And rail rifles. Best heavey weapon in the game of Warhammer 40k.... 72 inch range (on a board, that's almost the entire thing, if not more) 10/10 strength, Armour prercing rating of 1 (the best)... if you his a single guy with that.... "They never found the body"
Absolutely great work there Strype. Found you while browsing an art site, link to here, saw this pic, and LOVED it.
Wow that is, as all here said, amazing! The detail is astounding and what a wonderful job you did on the rain effects ^.^
OMG, that's one kickass picture! I love the environmental effects :D
Also, i LOOOOOOVE Sniper gurls
Also, i LOOOOOOVE Sniper gurls
You know, someone posted this on Wallbot. And the kids on there are sure having a hard time figuring out what everything is, some say it's halo armor and starcraft guns and others say this and that, and etc.
Why would I even bother reading the description, was art not made to be seen not read.
Wow the rain looks amazing, especially where it is hitting the armor. Very cool gun design as well, great work as always.
Is it weird that I didn't even read the story -- just looked at the pic -- and immediately knew that was a railgun?
This has to be my favourite picture from you, Strype. Brilliantly drawn, and I love every part of it. Great job, here ^^ Instant fav.
uhhh, what's the difference between a railgun and a gauss-gun. All I know is that they both use electromagnets to fire bullets farther than conventional weapons that need gunpowder.
The name of the player's character made me bang my head on my desk enough that I now have a red indentation on my forehead, but the image is quite awesome. :D
That reminds me most of Phantasy Star Universe, but looking at it closer it's Armor and the scope is form halo, but the rifle is alot like the GRM 7, 8, and 9 star rated rifle... Just saying.
An officer in an open top vehicle? Sounds like that officer was begging for that shot. Brilliant detailing, it really makes you feel like you're in the AO.
Out in the open, unbalanced position, laser in the rain.
Who gives a fuck? You can be wearing a pink neon sign, it won't matter because the target only has enough time to "What the fu"*BLAMDEAD*
Awesome piece. I gotta get on your waiting list one of these days.
Who gives a fuck? You can be wearing a pink neon sign, it won't matter because the target only has enough time to "What the fu"*BLAMDEAD*
Awesome piece. I gotta get on your waiting list one of these days.
Love this piece, but since Megaupload was taken down the wallpaper size is no longer accessible. Any chance you could remedy this?
unfortunately I lost the fullsize when my old computer up 'n shit the bed. kinda sucks, cuz I'd totally use the fullsize for my personal portfolio
I could at least send you the wallpaper sized one again. I managed to find it again on one of my other computers. I was being lazy setting up my new tablet when I was trying to get it from here again :P
Are you saying you have the full sized one ? Could I have it too ?
If Strype OKs redistributing it. I'd prefer not to step on any toes.
I just wondering how you made this rain? Are you only using the white color? Or is it a defined paint brush?
special brush, several layers, gaussian blur of varying degrees on each layer, and the rain striking her and dripping off her done manually with the default brush
Oh, I just forgot... Can you tell me where you can find that special brush? Thanks a lot ;)
deviantart. search for rain brushes. I cant remember which set I grabbed. I actually pick up quite a few brushes from there
The wallpaper link doesn't work anymore. Do you still have this in a higher resolution? I would love to have a copy.
this is amazing the gun looks like a tau pulse rifle that's adds even more epicness to this awesome picture
Sadly no. this was done on my old computer, which died a sudden and horrible death and I wasnt able to back it up before it died
I'm pretty sure i got the high resolution version on my last PC. I'll pull the hard drive this weekend and get back to you.
I'm certain I still have the higher quality one on my laptop or my iPod, if you never got it.
Also, to Strype (if you see this), I can upload and give you the wallpaper sized image to relink on the description. IMO, this is arguably your best work (at least, for me), and I think it'd be a shame for the higher quality version to be "lost forever"
Also, to Strype (if you see this), I can upload and give you the wallpaper sized image to relink on the description. IMO, this is arguably your best work (at least, for me), and I think it'd be a shame for the higher quality version to be "lost forever"
You would be very kind to do so!
Please secure permission from Strype firstly, and shall await the re-linking here!
Please secure permission from Strype firstly, and shall await the re-linking here!
I'll give him another day, then I'll upload a password locked file for you to download and note it to you if I get no reply, and send him a note to ask him directly. I found the file on my laptop, so it's just a matter of putting it up :3
It was given in a note.
http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/.....1.png~original
http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/.....1.png~original
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