Vega Strike Forums

etheral walker and travis, I made you both a new thread:

Realistic and strategic mod: AI

Btw. PeteyG, how about if you lead the naming, fun, look-and-feel and those things? Do with it as you like.

pontiac, if you want to do something as well, go ahead!

And that goes for everyone else as well.

MKruer, how about you doing the story?

Shrike wrote:

DiGuru wrote:Ok.

New informal poll:

How could a space sim without dogfighting fighters possibly be fun?

Fun is a subjective term. Some people have fun playing chess via email.

Yes. Battles might take hours, but they would probably consist of: deploying some recon drones and a shield of missiles, spotting the enemy, deploying weaponry, waiting a bit, lots of shooting, thinking, deploying some more weaponry to fill the gaps, reacting to hostile weapons coming close, deploying some more weaponry, looking around and taking stock, EVASIVE ACTIONS, spotting another hostile, etc.

Until you or the other runs out of weaponry.

You're fighting strategic battles over lightseconds. How do we make sure you feel involved?

In reference to both questions above, I suppose something like Command & Conquer might work, where you direct fleets/groups in battle rather than just toodle around in one ship.

Yes. We would need a 3D user interface, but look at the enormous crowd of people who both like C&C and space sims!!!

Should that be restricted to one battle at a time, or could there be more than one going on if you have bad luck?

Dunno. Guess it would depend on how interactive you had to be to fight a battle. You can't be very good at strategic thinking if you spend all of your time under pressure to think tactically.

True. But we want everything to have a smart AI. That's easier than you might think: we don't need one massive AI that knows and does it all, we only need a score of small AI's we can 'tag' to an item. The result is almost always surprisingly realistic.

What would be the difference between a drone and a fighter?

One has hardware and one has wetware?

Is there another way than dumbing down the enemy and making you much more powerful to win dogfights?

Yes, don't dogfight. Maybe you could use the D&D model of rolling a dice and then adding a bias.

Agreed. But if no virtual humans dogfight, we can have the AI and weaponry run rampant and make VERY impressive fireworks!

Should fighters be able to do it all and kill all, as long as a player is virtually inside? Should that go for drones as well?

Not at all. Someone said something about "plinking BBs" off the hull of a CapShip. I think that is relevent. There are bound to be things that are just too big for a fighter alone to do any significant damage to.

Agreed. As long as you are on that massive, very well protected large ship instead of a fluky fighter, we can have any amount of scenario's not to have you 'die' all the time.

How smart is a computer supposed to be? A lot dumber than a cheap calculator?

That depends on how far in the future you are projecting. Those who predict that Vernor Vinge's Singularity will come to pass, are projecting it to occur by 2034 at the latest. If you project far enough in the future, then unmodified human intellect will probably be about the lowest form of intellect.

Yes. And if you look at 'A Deepness in the Sky' from Vernor, you see that he predicts (and I agree), that software doesn't scale linearly. It always needs more time and is at most half as smart as you would like it, because it depends on everything that was written before.

I agree, that intelligent computers (no AI's, as you said) will probably happen at some time in the future. But programs are *MUCH* better at controlling machinery than we will ever be.

is there artificial gravity, or should I make rotating rings on cap-ships?

FlyingAce, I think that artificial gravity could be done by making or capturing a small singularity (black hole). But I don't know how the others would feel about that. And it would only work for truly huge structures.

For small ships, I think they have to accelerate to have gravity at all. For large ships rotating sections would be very nice.

But it is up to you. You make the rules, as long as they are realistic.

I don't know about this whole strategy thing. If I want space strategy, I can go play Homeworld (or wait for HW2).

The reason VS is cool, is because hardly anyone is working on even commercial space flying games.

I personally am not terribly excited by something that goes so far beyond the scope of what Vega Strike is right now. Too much trouble for too little benefit.

PeteyG wrote:I don't know about this whole strategy thing. If I want space strategy, I can go play Homeworld (or wait for HW2).

The reason VS is cool, is because hardly anyone is working on even commercial space flying games.

I personally am not terribly excited by something that goes so far beyond the scope of what Vega Strike is right now. Too much trouble for too little benefit.

Good point.

And as this is your forte, it's up to you. But I would (of course ) like to comment.

As you need a large ship anyway, trading would be the best way to earn money. And, if we make it a crime to destroy those awfully expensive (capital) ships, we can even RENT one.

But that rent has to be paid. We need money!

So, we rent this large ship. We don't have any (or much) money to fit it out with weaponry. What do we do?

We trade.

And if the shooting starts, we run away as fast as we can! Until we have the money to buy some very nice, expensive, lethal weaponry. And some very cool and expensive AI's to direct it.

Gunships (with long-range pulse lasers that pack a hell of a whallop) should be extremely expensive and only fit the hangars of the biggest ships.

Or something like the above. What do you think? It's yours to decide.

DiGuru wrote:

Shrike wrote:Hahahah. Ok, how about this:

Every five feet, my CapShip's hull has mounted a winch, spooled up with some thin, but really strong carbon nanotube cable. So let's say I start my ship spinning at oh, 10 rpm and then spool out my cables to a length of, oh, 100,000 meters. The tips of the cables will be moving at some ungodly speed, and the window that the missle will have to pass through is five feet wide and a moving target. Harder to hit even than the bunghole that ol' Luke Skywalker had to nail on the Death Star.

Hey, it could work!

Still, I think in your example you are giving stealth too much credit. Even if you don't bounce back a radar reflection, that doesn't necessarily stop me from seeing you.

What if I don't use radar? How about if I just use a laser that paints all the space around me? In that case, you would show up as a spot where the laser stopped. Even if you used gravitronic cloaking, the laser's beam would not be traveling in a straight line when it passed around you, thus you would be revealed by the distortion.

The spectrum of the laser doesn't really matter, as long as my detectors could watch in that spectrum. As long as you couldn't see it, it wouldn't look like active pinging to you.

<space fighter pilot>
Man, I'm so damned stealthy, I could just shit!

<sensor chief on capship>
Hey Cap'n...um, we got an anomoly in the lidar. Looks like one of them 20 ton cloaker jobs and it's coming this way.

<captain on capship>
Oh yea? Well that last one didn't react at all to the EMPs. Okay, bring us about to 031, 209, 254 and light off the main afterburners. Let's see how he likes getting smacked right in the kisser with 80 million thrust/tons of anti-grav.

That nanofiber shield idea is very interesting. I have to think about that one.

Stealth in space is indeed pretty overrated. For starters, it would most probable be passive (ie. turn all emissions off and cool the hull), or work like an adaptive armor as MKruer suggested. That would work like cancelling out radar or a laser, by measuring the wavelength and sending an opposing one to cancel it.

But stealth would only work for long range, as you would spot the light blocked from distant stars. Even projecting that light on your hull would only work if you don't deploy some sensor drones. Which would enhance your resolution big time.

So yes, it would be very unprobable for a fighter to be able to come close and not be spotted.

Just Eliminate Stealth form the Mod, Stealth is an advance concept and I highly doubt that early ships would even have such armor on top of that the “radarâ€

PeteyG wrote:I don't know about this whole strategy thing. If I want space strategy, I can go play Homeworld (or wait for HW2).

The reason VS is cool, is because hardly anyone is working on even commercial space flying games.

I personally am not terribly excited by something that goes so far beyond the scope of what Vega Strike is right now. Too much trouble for too little benefit.

Im with you. This whole strategy thing is something that is happening in the next level, but as for us, we are just grunts

"if you have too many cheifs, the tibe will starve" - me

[quote="MKruer"]
Just Eliminate Stealth form the Mod, Stealth is an advance concept and I highly doubt that early ships would even have such armor on top of that the “radarâ€

Btw.

PeteyG, if you make up your mind about the name of the mod, just state it here. It's yours to decide anyway.

Ahhh, what pressure! I suppose Real Space Combat: Cool Story-Related Subtitle would be my best choice.

I'm thinking that if we have limited jump capabilities, then that would drastically reduce the need to reflect light-lag and such. Which would be a Good Thing, I think.

I realize something now, and I feel bad about it. It is with great irony that I quote Ratbert_CP from much earlier in the thread.

Ratbert_CP wrote:I *want* to fly the Sci-Fi equivalent of a P-24 around the backside of a moon in order to do battle with nefarious pirates, or try to make sure that the outer-space parallel of a tramp steamer makes it into "port" in a seedy section of a backwater system. Heck, I keep thinking of whipping up a visual and functional estimation of the old seaplanes that shlepped cargo all over the South Pacific. Without the dogfights and small-craft mechanics, you're basically devolving into something more akin to Stars!, Galactic Civilization, and any other of the high-level strategy/political simulators. As you've mentioned, all space travel will, out of neccessity, be computer controlled, leaving us enlightened apes to pray the family jewels make it out of cryo with no long-term side-effects...

I stopped understanding the words he wrote after reading "First of all... realism sucks". Now, I understand their true wisdom.

In short: we still gotta be able to fly ships around manually and pull the triggers (but not always aim) ourselves.

PeteyG wrote:Ahhh, what pressure! I suppose Real Space Combat: Cool Story-Related Subtitle would be my best choice.

I'm thinking that if we have limited jump capabilities, then that would drastically reduce the need to reflect light-lag and such. Which would be a Good Thing, I think.

I realize something now, and I feel bad about it. It is with great irony that I quote Ratbert_CP from much earlier in the thread.

Ratbert_CP wrote:I *want* to fly the Sci-Fi equivalent of a P-24 around the backside of a moon in order to do battle with nefarious pirates, or try to make sure that the outer-space parallel of a tramp steamer makes it into "port" in a seedy section of a backwater system. Heck, I keep thinking of whipping up a visual and functional estimation of the old seaplanes that shlepped cargo all over the South Pacific. Without the dogfights and small-craft mechanics, you're basically devolving into something more akin to Stars!, Galactic Civilization, and any other of the high-level strategy/political simulators. As you've mentioned, all space travel will, out of neccessity, be computer controlled, leaving us enlightened apes to pray the family jewels make it out of cryo with no long-term side-effects...

I stopped understanding the words he wrote after reading "First of all... realism sucks". Now, I understand their true wisdom.

In short: we still gotta be able to fly ships around manually and pull the triggers (but not always aim) ourselves.

Don't worry PeteyG.

Yes, the aiming could only be done short-range. But, the difference between our mod and something like Stars! (or MOO, or whatever), would be that you can be there, in the thick of the action, and do whatever you want!

And nobody asks of you to control entire star systems! Just your ship, that's all. All the background is just nice for trade and scenery, as far as you are concerned.

And battle... Hah!

You launch a screen of recon drones. Take a good look around. Spot some enemy. Launch your fighter drones, missiles and gunships (if you have any). From that point, it is completely up to you if you want to jump in, look around and order all actions by hand, or leave it all to the computer.

So, if you like fighters, you can have any amount your ship can carry! And the battle isn't over when the one you're inside is shot down. Just switch to another one and go on!

strategy/1st person. me likes. sorta like darkspace meets freespace

FlyingAce wrote:strategy/1st person. me likes. sorta like darkspace meets freespace

Cool. Me too. And I think a lot of others, if they can think of other nice things to do than flying fighters.

Ok. And now for something completely different!



I don't like it a bit, as I am a technician by heart and just want to make nice things.

But.

We need to do some marketing as well. (Good thing we don't need to think commercially as well, as this is all for free )

So, how are we going to do that marketing? Just send a lot of personal- and e-mail messages? Fortunately, I don't know much about marketing. But we need someone who does!

Who can and will do that?

hmm, I can see a potential problem. while you're fighting the enemy in a fighter, a bunch of enemy fighters attacks your main ship. you'll need a strategy readout in the HUD to stay aware of current threats.

FlyingAce wrote:hmm, I can see a potential problem. while you're fighting the enemy in a fighter, a bunch of enemy fighters attacks your main ship. you'll need a strategy readout in the HUD to stay aware of current threats.

Good point.

So, we need to have two HUD's: a large one for the current ship, and a small one for the base ship to warn us of enemies.

Good thinking, FlyingAce!

I think everyone on this thread needs a reality check. Some of you are coming up with ideas and not keeping in mind the consequences of those ideas. The good thing or maybe bad this is that everything you are coming up with, the devices, are making the mod more into Rylix then I think any of you are aware of.

BTW the model you created is great. But for comparative prepossesses it would be a SECOND GENERATION starship for Rylix

and here follow a third generation one:

MKruer wrote:I think everyone on this thread needs a reality check. Some of you are coming up with ideas and not keeping in mind the consequences of those ideas. The good thing or maybe bad this is that everything you are coming up with, the devices, are making the mod more into Rylix then I think any of you are aware of.

BTW the model you created is great. But for comparative prepossesses it would be a SECOND GENERATION starship for Rylix

Hi, MKruer.

For starters, thanks for all the support we get from you! And we're not planning to dissapoint you. I think merging our mods would be great.

But we want to do a completely different thing than you. We have just one basic rule: it should be realistic. It should only use things that exist today.

And we can do it. It will be great. The first. The best.

Ok. We do use something that doesn't exist today: small jumps over large distances, within the solar system. That sucks, for realism. But we need it to make the game fun. Damn!

So, if we use one improbable thing, why not use more? If we want to be able to use fighters, we need shields and some inertial supressing thingy to make them handle like airplanes and not make the pilot into some wallpaper, and we cannot use computers, we have to make weaponry into toys for the damage they do...

But do we stop there? We want engines to use power to accelerate, and stop us when we release that power, don't we? We want space to behave like the air around us! And it is too large! It should be small! And empty, no nasty collisions!

It depends. If we don't need to use fighters above all, we don't need anything that doesn't exist today. For single-player. We can speed up time for boring journeys. For multi-player, we need something that doesn't let you spend months in real-time over each journrey. Some kind of jump engine.

And that's it. We only need some kind of jump engine. All other things we could want, exist today. And that's the goal for this mod.

That is, unless we require fighters...

DiGuru wrote:If we want to be able to use fighters, we need shields and some inertial supressing thingy to make them handle like airplanes and not make the pilot into some wallpaper, and we cannot use computers, we have to make weaponry into toys for the damage they do...

I disagree strongly. We just need to use a little creativity to make it work.
To handle the G forces: (which don't even need to be SUPER high) Pilots suspended in liquid! nano-hardened internal organs! or something!
On computers: There are many many disadvantages to relying solely on remote or automated technology. There are many bonuses to computer aided human control.
Weapons: Who says weapons have to be hideously overpowered? Not me. Fighters are fine just as long as we make sure lasers aren't the Ultimate Weapon.

DiGuru wrote:But do we stop there? We want engines to use power to accelerate, and stop us when we release that power, don't we? We want space to behave like the air around us! And it is too large! It should be small! And empty, no nasty collisions!

No! Fighters don't need to be that way. We just gotta balance it. And with some limited jump capability, there's no excuse why ships shouldn't get close enough to be in danger of bumping into each other.

DiGuru wrote:And that's it. We only need some kind of jump engine. All other things we could want, exist today. And that's the goal for this mod.

Well... surely we could take into account reasonable advances in technology over the next x years until the time the mod is set. I mean, we all know that technology won't freeze between now and the future. We'll come up with new alloys for hull construction, new biotechnology, maybe even a little bit of fusion... we just don't want to go crazy and develop shields, holodecks, or transporters or something.

DiGuru wrote:That is, unless we require fighters...

We should. I'm telling you, we should.

Ok where to start. Ah lets try realism.

Here is realism for you. In the future the real future, do think that a private citizen could even own their own ship. Not likely, even corporations would find it difficult to own anything substantially larger then a shuttle. Just looking at inflation vs technology the current space shuttle costs 2 billion US dollars. Fast forward 60 years that 2 billion is now 50billion. That would mean that a ship like the 2001 discovery would cost a few trillion dollars.

Ok let’s pretend that you could owe a ship. Who are you going to fight? Space pirates? It doesn’t make senses it’s far easier to seal money electronically then try to hijack a space ship and sell it. That’s realism.

Let’s now talk about humans in space. Why should we even be there? We will have AI to live and die for us so realistically we would just stay at home or maybe migrate to mars at that point.

Finally there is a game out there that has EVERYTHING you want. True realism, it even has the corny alien artifact that you seem to insist on having. The game is called Lightspeed it was developed in 1986. Stop trying to convert a first person space sim into a real-time strategy, which in it self is an oxymoron because really there would be so much lag because of time delays that it would BE real time.

Everything for Rylix is theorizes facts, yes even artificial gravity.

If you are so prone to jump into theorizes facts. i.e. folding space why not make the jump in other areas? At lest that is many times more likely then finding alien artifacts in our solar system.

What it really boils down to it the short sightedness to fully account for all theorizes advances in technology. And hence you will end up with nothing more then a very lagy real time strategy game.

Your one rule “We have just one basic rule: it should be realistic. It should only use things that exist today.â€