Completion 7.9/8.9

He smiled. “My dear girl, in Culture history alone it has been about nine thousand years since a human, marvellous though they are in so many other ways, could do anything useful in a serious, big guns space battle other than admire the pretty explosions … or in some cases contribute to them.”

“Contribute?”

“Chemicals; colours. You know.”

Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints is an Abominator class General Offensive Unit (GOU). They are the most advanced Culture Warship we see in the series and likely most powerful Culture ship in the series. It along with the 2000 other Abominators spread around the galaxy disguised as picket ships (demilitarized Offensive Units) act as a rapid response force to deal with unexpected quickly unfolding events.

Unlike generic Culture Citizens and most Culture Ships/Minds, Warships don't like violence, they LOVE it. They love it so much will make a perfect recording of battles so they can replay it for themselves and show off it to their Offensive Unit friends to make them jealous. You can think of them as kind of like a police dog straining at the leash desperately hoping they will get cut loose and allowed to do the job they were designed for.

Meta

Because no individual ship in the series gets feats in every category there will be a fair amount of feats from ships that aren't FOTNMC. These feats will be marked with something like (-100 years) or (-2000 years) this will indicate when they take place in the Culture series timeline relative to Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints.

If you run into some kind of terminology that isn't explained properly it might be described in greater detail here. If it isn't then tell me.

Weapons

It is unknown exactly what weapon mix FOTNMC is carrying so this section will cover the various weapons that could be used by a Culture/Equivtech Warship.

Displacer Based Weapons

Displacer based weapons are weapons that use Displacers the Culture's version of a teleporter to deliver munitions to the target. Displacers themselves work by bundling up a spherical volume of space into a singularity and sending it off to the target through hyperspace. Displacer range is inversely proportional to the volume being Displaced and proportional to the power that goes into the Displacement. So if they want to get longer range they would ether need to increase the amount of power going into it or decrease the volume being displaced. There are a few caveats. While the exact odds depend on era (-700 years for this) Displacers have a chance of failure which in this case is 1 in 83,000,000 Displacing something into something else like a coffee cup into someone's head would cause their head to explode. Attempting to Displace something through something that is blocking it 4-dimensionally will result in something reminiscent of an antimatter detonation. If a Ship was to say Displace a <1 meter diameter volume around a person's head who wasn't in the fetal position it would Displace their head plus some stuff around it but leave the rest of their body behind.

• (-800 years) Could have microscopic bombs that can tear planets apart. This is likely referring to "nanoholes".

• (-800 years) CAM (Collapsed Antimatter) which is described as needing a few tons to destroy a planet.

• [(-900 years) Plasma Impulsers which against a drone the Ship was trying just to disable was described as being as powerful as a small nuclear blast.]()

  • In a different instance a blast that made a one kilometer diameter crater was described as a small nuclear blast

• (-900)Against other Culture Warships this should be at least a few light years for several of its weapons. As in this sequence Killing Time is being engaged by multiple ships in a 30 light year diameter formation.

  • Alternate

Directed Energy Weapons

• An older (-1450 years) General System Vehicle (think like a flying city that can carry millions to billions of people though in this context more of a flying military base as it is configured for war) combination of Gridfire and CAM destroys Vavatch which is a fourteen million kilometer diameter ring.

• (-0 years)in a realistic simulation Lineguns, which are likely some kind of gravity based weapon, can compress matter to densities in excess of neutron matter.

• It maybe be possible that breaking from high speeds sufficiently hard can cause a Gridfire Incursion. Though the GSV in this quote is much larger and has far more mass than any GOU.

• A gravity-wave impactor used by a less advanced civilization kills the crew of a ship leaving them as smears on the wall but leave the hull mostly undamaged.

• [CREWs (Coherent Radiation Emission Weapon which is the Culture's term for a laser weapon)]()

  • Those used in the construction of an Orbital's Plate are described as being able to to be described as crust busting weapons. Though considering how large a plate is that really shouldn't be surprising.
  • These can be fired from hyperspace at real space targets (a maser is a microwave emitter).
  • We should note that the speed of light is faster in Hyperspace so their effective range vs things in hyperspace or targets in real space while the GOU is in hyperspace should be much longer than real space vs real space. On the low end there is minutes of delay when sending messages across decades. On the high end it is possible for real time communication at 20,000 LY

• [Particle beams through they have basically no feats.]()

Effectors

Effectors are a combination of electronic warfare, sensors and weapon with some extra utility. They basically allow the Ship to sense or manipulate the electromagnetic force at range. Like with most Culture stuff they can be blocked by things which can block things coming in from a 4th spatial dimension.

• (-800 years) Could swamp Earth from 1978's electromagnetic specturm with whatever it wanted from beyond Betelgeuse which is ~548 90/-48 light years away from Earth.

• a (D)ROU is able to hacks a parts of a less advanced civilization's spaceport from light years away.

• (-900) This is the PoV of LOU Attitude Adjuster as it is being manipulated by ROU Killing Time with its Effectors (as Killing Time is trying to get information from it) and eventually is forced to, as the Culture would put it, auto-euthanize.

• (-900 years) ROU Killing Time takes over a less advanced Mind which causes it to self destruct.

• (-1450 Years) Removes limiters on the main computer running an enemy homeworld allowing it to become a Mind in all but name to end the Culture Idiran War.

• (-1450 years)The Effector on Clear Air Turbulance a ship that is significantly less advanced than contemporary Culture ships can "suck and blow" which likely refers to energy.

• GCU Grey Area forces a human to "live" through some of the atrocities he committed from the other side.

• A GOU creates a light show with its Effectors

• (-900 years)A Drone (equivtech to the Culture) being controlled by something FAR more advanced than the Culture "sucks" the mind state of another drone out of its body.

• A LOU was able to "suck" out a human's mind state before they died. This mind state is later stuck into a regrown body

• An Affronter ship (less advanced than the Culture also -900 years) forces some of a Drone's nanomissiles to self destruct with an Effector over the course of a millisecond.

Miscellaneous/Generic Statements about Firepower

• (-900 years) FTL missiles

  • (-1450 years) These ought to be more powerful than the Mind self destructing their brains which can destroy planets.

• (-800 years) A GCU (think like the Culture's equivalent of the USS Enterprise from Star Trek but with arguably less militarization) should be able to either create or procure a black hole capable of eating the Earth.

• (-800 years) Said GCU could also likely make a virus that would wipe out humanity.

• Idiran War era (-1450 years) ships are capable of destroying planets from beyond their star system and causing stars to go nova from light years off.

• As referenced in the Idiran War by the Numbers page they can also do "sequence position change or large induced mass loss". This also mentions that several "spheres" and "rings" were destroyed in the war. These are likely referring to Dyson Spheres and Larry Niven style Ringworlds.

  • Though we know from this description of the Twin Nova Battle that all 6 were destroyed.

• A much older demilitarize ROU was said to be able to waste planets even without its principle armament (to which it responds any silly GCU could do that).

Kinematics/Reaction Times

• [STL Speed/Acceleration] (years) A General Contact Unit is able to travel from Earth to Mars in a few minutes starting from a stable Earth orbit.

  • On that day, Mars was 5.7 light minutes from Earth.

• [STL Speed/Acceleration] A GSV moves several kilometers possibly so fast that the people that were about to board can't react to its departure and bump into a field that is now separating them from the vacuum of space (Note: "Hub" is the Mind in charge of the Orbital it was docked to).

• [STL Speed/Acceleration] [In a realistic simulation, peer enemy ships are able to go from a fraction of c to stationary over the course of a few thousand kilometers.]()

• [FTL Cruise Speed] Older ROUs (-500 years) can hit 87600c during normal operation.

• [FTL Cruise Speed] An unknown Ship type could circumnavigate the Milky Way in a few years. If this is the edge of the galaxy then 2 years would require an average speed of ~170,000c, 5 years would need ~70,000c.

• [FTL Cruise Speed] A Ship (-700 years) could cross 100,000 LY in less than a year (>~100,000c). But due to the Grid outside the galaxy being more "tenuous" which would slow the actual intended journey down to taking 2 years (~50,000c).

  • This is also interesting because (-800 years) they could "cross the galaxy in a year" which does show that Banks either accidentally or intentionally made sure to show technological progression even if it is rather subtle.

• [FTL Burst Speed] A Superlifter said to be faster than contemporary ROUs can hit 221,000c but only for a few hours.

• [FTL Flank Speed] Travels some amount of light years (as it travels around and scans multiple ships in a 30 light year diameter formation and also needs to go into and out of their range) within 11 microseconds.

• [FTL Acceleration] a GSV's normal maximum acceleration is ~10.5 c/s.

• [FTL Deceleration] During a normal stop, a GSV is able to decelerate at around 1300 c/s.

• [FTL Emergency Back UP] [Culture ships are capable of using warp which is a real space FTL method. Though it is much slower than hyperspace.]()

  • A ship somewhat less advanced than the Culture can hit 2400c via Warp.
  • Some ships which are considerably less advanced than Culture ships manage to get hundreds of times the speed of light.

• [Perception Times] A GSV Mind is able to do quite a bit of thinking while a Linegun is in the process of killing it by passing through it end to end. As described it was over in a microsecond but that isn't the whole story. A GSV Mind from this era are on the order of a dozen meters long in real space and somewhat thin. If the Linegun was propagating at C (which is to be expected of a gravity based weapon going through real space) the whole ordeal start to finish would have taken at most ~40 nanoseconds going along the Mind's long axis. If it was moving at the speed of hyperlight (as might be expected if it took place in hyperspace) you could probably drop that by MANY orders of magnitude even if the Mind was somewhat bigger in hyperspace.

• [Perception Times] A Culture Mind describes itself as having billions of thoughts per second vs a human's 20-30 (when they are in times of extreme stress). If these numbers are taken at face value you would be looking at something like for the mind 2-66 nanoseconds being equivalent to a human's perception of one second

• [Perception Times] To a Mind (and also the personality of an alien it is running) half a second could last subjective life times.

• [Perception Times] [When in full combat mode an OU is able to do a number of things before a less advanced computer can even cycle (considering modern computers cycle billions of times per second that is decent), before its shuttle can move a few meters (which given that it was likely moving FTL at the time results in some insanely low numbers) and some aliens would appear frozen even on the scale of subjective years.]()

• [Reaction Times] A General Contact Unit is able to tell that its own message is being looped back to itself in a picosecond.

• [Reaction Times] Manipulates Displace that is in progress leaving a Drone behind.

  • Displacements can be picosecond scale events.
  • [Other times last long enough they seem like they are visible to humans.]()

Durability/Damage Mitigation/Endurance

• A GCU could survive a with the right precautions supernova.

• An Orbital can survive anything short of the star it is orbiting going supernova. Though Orbitals are a lot bigger than ships

• A (-1450 years) GCU can survive in the surface layers of a star.

• [A LOU ( years) not only is perfectly happy sitting around in a solar flare it also is happy to extend a 1000km diameter solar sail to use the solar flare to propel it out of the sun it was sitting in.]

• A Idiran War era Culture Ship is killed by nanoholes and another one is heavily damaged by AM.

• Culture Ships have a "trapdoor" system which upon detecting a sufficiently energetic event within the ship it will displace it away. As described you could set of a nuke in a room and it is likely that no one would notice except the Mind who obviously would have had to have been operating the Displacer.

• [An Affronter ship (less advanced then the Culture) is able to use a combination of lasers and Effectors to destroy a over 100 nanomissiles in a millisecond.]()

  • Nanomissiles are .1x1 mm so they are rather small. To put that in perspective a 1mm long strand of human hair would be around the size of a nanomissile.
  • In the feat we get a distance traveled (less than a kilometer) and time (1 millisecond) for how far the missiles moved. Even if "less" meant ten meter that gives is an astronomic acceleration rate of 20,000 kps² or 0 to 10%c in ~1.5 seconds.

• [After doing considerable damage to its engines by running extremely hard, Killing Time was expected to be able to self repair its engines over the course of a few days as well as replenish the munitions it used against a fleet of older Culture vessels.]()

• [The Culture is capable of energy to matter conversion. That combined with Grid taps which would allow them to essentially draw unlimited amounts of power from the Grid can free them from things like supply lines.]()

  • Though we should note generally major changes to the ship tend seem like they get done a lot faster if they can get stuck in a General Bay and the Ship/Shipyard don't need to manufacture anything from scratch.

Sensors/Intelligence

• [Sensors] A warship can be expected to untraceably monitor an area from the next solar system over with enough fidelity to tell the person they are monitoring what they last ate even if they were under 100 kilometers of rock.

• [Sensors] With its Effectors monitors every transmission, and computer on Earth in the 1978.

• [Sensors] Monitors a fleet of older (-500 years) Culture ships from some fairly large amount of light years away. It would need to be that far because it at a minimum can't be closer than

• [Sensors] A warship ( years) could tell someone what they had for breakfast while they are underneath a 100 kilometers of rock in the next solar system over.

• [Sensors] [Able to detect weapons fire from light centuries away.]()

• [Sensors] Notices the Excession block its view of a distant galaxy.

• [Sensors] A GCU equivalent could be expected to detect a drone the size of two hands pressed together from its relativistic effect on space time from it merely going a 280 kps (Lorentz factor = 1.0000004). This also carries the implication that Displacers can deposit their target at extremely specific velocties

• [Sensors] A LOU knowing where to look can target a light second diameter volume and detect a small emission of hyperspace light from a Drone up to 20,000 light years away.

• [Sensors] Possibly hyperbole but might be able to count every cell in a human's body from a light years off.

• [Sensors] Because they scan things in 4-dimensions hiding something behind 3-dimensional things is useless.

• [Sensors] A Fast Picket is able to take a complete image of someone down to the atomic level.

• [Sensors] Detects and removes surveillance equipment from a human. Some of which is reminiscent of dust

• [Intelligence] Self destructs in such away there is one 4dimensional path through the conflagration that the ship's Mind can survive. It also sets the detonation in such away it acts as a code for the Mind's current condition.

• [Intelligence] Possibly hyperbole but a Culture Citizen describes the difference in relative intelligence between a Mind and a human not incomparable to a human vs a bug or maybe a human vs a bacteria in their saliva.

• [Processing Power] A Culture Mind is able to simulate universes though it is unknown how complex these are.

• [Processing Power] (years)If a Mind simulates living things too well or they end up getting rights as sentient beings and morally can't be deleted.

• [Memory] A Hub Mind contains every moderately significant/useful information ever collected by the Culture.

• [Memory/Possibly Processing Power] Information density high enough that you could fit a map of the galaxy accurate down to the millimeter in a sugar cube. If the map is able to stay accurate then that would require some insane level of processing power in order to properly simulate the n-body problem with billions of objects.

Miscellaneous/Uncategorized Capabilities

• Will not read minds even if they can unless given permission.

• Warships normally are either perfectly black, reflective or projecting a hologram of what is on the opposite side.

• Minds can do a great deal of multitasking holding millions of conversations, observing various stellar events, monitoring in system objects and more.

  • Theoretically it could have conversations with all 50 billion inhabitants simultaneously while also running everything else.

• (-1450) A ROU needs ~1% the power output of a small star to run its hyperspace engines.

• A GSV's fields can move billions of tons of material around.

• A ROU can project fields out several light seconds.

• A GCU can manufacture tiny bugs that can monitor buildings without being detected on a planet like Earth in the late 1970s

• A GCU can produce bugs so small that their main problem with stability is caused by the random movement of atoms/molecules in a fluid/gas.

• An Affronter ship (less advanced than the Culture at the time -...) bends space to make it so a drone which was trying to fly away from it instead is traveling parallel to it.

• A ship's internal fields can make it look like things are moving on their own.

• A GCU makes a "real" Star Wars "light sword" for a citizen.

• A GCU was able to use its outer fields to camouflage itself against the stars well enough that a human couldn't pick it out.

• They can get some limited form of prescience via interactions between the Grid and antimatter which could let them look nearly a millisecond in the future. Though this is never brought up anywhere else and we don't know if it can actually be used in combat.

• Culture Minds will self destruct their ship rather than be subverted by outside forces.

• [A GSV can reduce its density such that it is comparable to a cloud.]()

• Similar to a module (think like a shuttle or flying apartment depending on size) use displacers to move soundlessly through a planet's atmosphere even at supersonic speeds.