Realistic-style mod

DiGuru · Post by **DiGuru** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 10:04 pm

Hi, guys

I stand corrected on the armament of the F/A-22. My info is clearly outdated.

And I think that this is a great discussion! Sure, it is in the future, so we don't know. I try to project what I think will happen. But that doesn't have to be the case.

I just wanted to sketch a more realistic picture and explain that we could do the things we want in it. Like remote-controlling a drone instead of flying a fighter.

But I agree, we can make it whatever we want. And we should! If we can agree on something, love it and declare it 'very possible', that would be great. It most definitely doesn't have to be MY vision! And I will never say that I know how it has to be done.

And it has to be fun. That is the most important part. But that does not mean, that it has to be dogfighting in fighters. There are other things that can be at least as much fun. And I think we should try to explore them a bit and see where we get.

And I agree, that it would be worthwile to see if we can find a counter to each attack. And if we design such a counter, it doesn't have to exist, as long as we deem it possible for it to exist in the future.

DiGuru · Post by **DiGuru** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 10:28 pm

About lasers: you can divide them into continuous and pulse lasers. And both can have a fixed or variable wavelength. And all can be 'visible' (long wavelength, not nescessary visible light) or X-ray lasers (very short wavelength, not only X-ray).

Against continuous, visible light lasers, a mirror will offer great protection. They don't do very much damage, but the damage over time adds up. And they are small.

Against visible light pulse-lasers, a thick coating of ice would offer good protection. They do huge amounts of damage, packed in a very short pulse. And they are very bulky (they mostly consist of heavily cooled capacitors and superconductors to deliver a massive amount of electricity in a very short time) or bomb-pumped (use an exploding atom bomb for power).

Against an X-ray (or Rontgen) pulse laser (they would be extremely huge and radioactive if continuous), only a very thick armor offers (some) protection. But they have to be bumb-pumped and are very hard to focus, so they are short range.

A laser with a variable wavelength is tricky to deploy well and does not do very much damage (and hard to make into a pulse laser), but they can be tuned to do the most damage against a specific material. Great for cutting holes in capital ships from a safe distance!

Is this useful?

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 10:37 pm

Yah. We'll need to detail all the tech stuff sometime.

I think that a neat way to do lasers would be to have a very short pulse, followed by a very high cooldown/recharge period (maybe like a minute or something). This would make a battle looking maybe something like this...

1. ships shoot their lasers at each other, doing a bit of damage (if they hit)
2. they get closer and shoot missiles
3. they swat at the incoming missiles with point defense
4. one or both of them try to close to close range, and use the short range / heavy damage weapons.

eh? or something like that?

DiGuru · Post by **DiGuru** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 11:00 pm

Sounds nice, PeteyG.

But should that be the only way to do combat? I would like to deploy some gunships with large pulse lasers and some gatling turrets, a few drones armed with 2 missiles each (high-speed, plain nucleair or bomb-pumped lasers) and a small continuous laser. And some drones carrying a small pulse laser.

The gunships would start shooting at the enemy, while the drones would fly towards it. When they would come into missile range, they would fire their missiles and retreat a bit to intercept enemy missiles with their laser.

When the enemy launches his own stuff, the gunships would shift their target to them. And they would try to take out everything that comes close with their gatling turrets.

During combat I would take control of the drones and other weaponry to see if I could improve the odds. And for a nice view, of course.

When the enemy got the upper hand, I would launch all missiles I had left and deploy them as mines and run away. When the weaponry of the enemy would come close to the missiles, I would instruct them to take it out. And when I was some distance from the battle field, I would start dropping nucleair bombs to scramble the sensors of the enemy and hopefully take out the remaining weaponry that was chasing me.

And if that would fail, the enemy could shoot my engines and board me. And demand ransom money.

Or would that be no fun? But we can do both as well!

Post by **mkruer** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 11:05 pm

DiGuru wrote:And I agree, that it would be worthwile to see if we can find a counter to each attack. And if we design such a counter, it doesn't have to exist, as long as we deem it possible for it to exist in the future.

This is where the idea of the plausible impossible comes in. The idea is just like you said, but the real big trick is to make it consistent through out. And that mean that if you change the underlying universe slightly, you have to, see how it effect everything else.

As for the Lasers Yes it is helpful. One of the ideas not mentioned is adaptive armor. The concept is this. Lasers all have frequencies in the spectral band. The idea of adaptive armor is that when light hits the object the armor reacts by shifting the color to create wavelength cancellation. Right now, it is a concept, but there have been experiments that prove that it can be done, but I do not think anyone has ever tried it using solid objects.

DiGuru · Post by **DiGuru** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 11:13 pm

Yes! Adaptive armor. Great idea. The variable laser would be the best to go against that one. Nice!

And it would be interesting if we could make a ship that is highly robust and stealthy. Adaptive armor (to minimize reflection), very efficient engines (very focussed) and stuff like that. Small. A very good frequency-hopping radar and excellent passive sensors. A large retractable dish or such. It would make a great scout. Great for exploring.

Post by **mkruer** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 11:28 pm

I should just add you to the Rylix group, but you have to understand that you have to work inside the give frame work, which at this point dose not seem to be a problem. However because I am try to stylize the concept. It may require a little bit more of the creative solutions. One of the main thing is that, yes there are fighters, and yes they are controlled by human pilots. Point defense system was an idea and implementing it on a fighter is valid protection and would not break my weight to power rule. The good news is that I have already a system in mind from my old RPG days to totally standardize all energy requirements. That includes both the firing and armor side.and

Post by **mkruer** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 11:38 pm

Another funny thing about Lasers is that you cant see them LOL, no need to worry I have a good solution for that too. Let me just say this. It would really suck if you lost all your sensors LOL

DiGuru · Post by **DiGuru** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 11:58 pm

LOL, yes I know about the invisible lasers. But I didn't want to suggest right away to do away with them, as I think most people would disagree.

I would love to hear some more about your Rylix project. And I would love to work on a realistic space sim (mod). I can program anything and I want to see if I can make some nice realistic ships when I have figured out Wings 3D.

And I don't mind people flying fighters (I like it myself), but I would really love to fight a battle more or less like I described. If you think that might be possible as well, write me up right away!

Ratbert_CP · Post by **Ratbert_CP** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 12:02 am

On topic this time, I swear! (Forgive me if I managed to skim the post (or miss the thread) that already describes this...)

I don't think anyone mentioned this, but dynamic laser arrays are quite handy things. This is from several year-old memory, so bear with me...

I had the pleasure of being shown around the USAF High Energy Weapons lab(s) in Albequerque, and the stuff they have there (even just the stuff *I* could see) was pretty cool. One of the things they were woking on (besides throwing EMPs at F-16's, and flying MIG's around) was syncing up the microwave emitters for SDI. When you aim more than one emitter at a target, the power increases linearly. Unless they're in phase, in which case, it goes up geometrically (or at least, more than linearly)... So, getting these things in phase is kinda important (if you want to pop a lot of popcorn from space).

Anyhoo, they were working with these gigawatt microwave emitters that were about the size and shape of a theatrical can light. They were figuring a way to be able to quickly get them into phase without having to to do too much work on-site (i.e., in orbit)..

Why the long prologue? Focused energy emitters become commodity items. If you have the money and space, you add more emitters. When your ship takes damage, you may lose some emitters. If you're lucky (targetting would be too tricky to be skilled), maybe you knock out your opponents link system, effectively turning down the power on his weapon(s). For capital ships, you could even have the joy of rearranging your emitters after battle, trying to redistribute power appropriately... At least, it gives you a(nother?) premise to have energy weapons degrade, rather than "on/off" damage models.

Heck, you can do the same for kinetic weapons. Part of that same tour was seeing the SHIVA star. A hangar full of massive capacitors that create a collapsing magnetic field strong enough to rip off a 2-3 foot section of the steel barrel (about 6" in diameter) when the dime-sized projectile got stuck. Oh, ripped off, thrown through the hangar roof, and landing about a quater mile away... Again, you project the size of these capacitors getting smaller, then you suddenly have commodity energy discharge where your size and money determine how big of a field you can generate, and therefore how much speed/energy is put behind the projectile.

DiGuru · Post by **DiGuru** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 12:12 am

Great ideas, Ratbert_CP!

Focused energy emitters could also be used to 'cook' missiles that are doing a random walk, as they have a large area of effect. That would be another counter against them!

And something like the SHIVA star would make it possible for railguns to be short. They would fire slowly and still be bulky, but it would be better than using a tube hundreds of feet in length.

Does anyone have an idea how we could counter those metal pellets?

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 12:23 am

Yeah... staying the heck out of range. If you're far enough away, you can see them coming and alter course. It's not like they'll be traveling even an appreciable fraction of lightspeed, so your scanners out to be able to pick them up.

Projectile weapons are good for short range. I think they'd pack more whallop than energy weapons, but they'd be dumb and not be very effective beyond a certain range.

DiGuru · Post by **DiGuru** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 12:41 am

Yes, dodging the pellets would probably be the best way. Or clear a path with some nucleair bombs if there is no way to do that. But, while they don't go very fast (relatively speaking, compared to lasers), projectile weapons in space actually have the longest range of all weapons! They won't slow down unless they hit something or come close to a planet or star (gravity).

So, when you want to take out an enemy at extremely long range, while staying stealthy and not knowing exactly where he is, you can fire a dense pattern of pellets in the right direction. If the other doesn't react in time, you will probably take him out.

EDIT: PeteyG, you are right, I agree completely. But I couldn't resist the temptation to look at it in this way, as that seems just the sneaky thing to do when you're a pirate.

Post by **mkruer** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 12:53 am

Well if you are all interested and can work inside a framework then I can add you to the Rylix group. If you like it and are willing to contribute feel free to post otherwise. If you donâ€™t like it then let me know and I will remove the distraction in the forum for you. I just ask that until such time until the first public release is made, that you keep all the information inside confidential.

DiGuru · Post by **DiGuru** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 12:59 am

MKruer, agreed. Write me up! I'll keep it confidential. I will probably keep on ventilating ideas, but if you think I go off course, just tell me. I did lots of (corporate) projects myself, so I know how it works.

Shrike · Post by **Shrike** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 2:45 am

Duality wrote:If I forgot, aren't realistic travel supposed to go at infinate speed?

Sure...until you hit a grain of sand and your ship is destroyed.

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 11:26 am

Shrike wrote:
Duality wrote:If I forgot, aren't realistic travel supposed to go at infinate speed?
Sure...until you hit a grain of sand and your ship is destroyed.

I may be wrong, but the last time i heard of it, the light speed was the (assumed) highest speed possible, and even at this speed you will get many problems with your now infinite mass (faster -> more mass) .... Hated physics in school, so i may mixing up something here.

And even at this speed a grain of sand is not very funny

Pontiac

FlyingAce · Post by **FlyingAce** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 2:12 pm

well, you could turn you and your ship into tachyons, (or use a tachyon feild) (tachyons are like normal matter cept they can't go any slower than the speed of light.)

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 2:43 pm

FlyingAce wrote:well, you could turn you and your ship into tachyons, (or use a tachyon feild) (tachyons are like normal matter cept they can't go any slower than the speed of light.)

So here we are, turning matter into pure energy

Isn't this something like beaming?

Can tachyons travel faster than the speed of light?

pontiac

DiGuru · Post by **DiGuru** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 3:35 pm

The speed of light isn't exactly the same everywhere. It gets a bit less when the medium around it gets more dense.

So, if a particle, like a proton, traveling very close to the speed of light, would hit the athmosphere, it would travel faster than the local speed of light and turn into a tachyon.

It would start to bleed Cherenkov radiation, until it had slowed down to less than the local speed of light. And turn into a normal particle again.

And when it would hit the ground or the sea, it would become a tachyon once again.

So, a tachyon is just a particle that goes faster than the local speed of light.

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 4:34 pm

Whoa whoa! Where's all this 'coverting the ship into tachyons to sidestep the whole speed of light thing' coming from?

Would we really want to have something like that in a 'realistic' space mod?

DiGuru · Post by **DiGuru** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 4:49 pm

Am informal poll:

How many people here wouldn't mind if dogfighting in fighters wouldn't be the only way to do combat?

How many people wouldn't mind if ships didn't look like airplanes and were not streamlined?

How many people wouldn't mind if your engine(s) would be long pipes that wouldn't sprout flames?

How many people wouldn't mind if it was impossible for a small ship to counter any attack? I.e. if you use one kind of armor, you would be protected against some weapons, but not others?

How many people wouldn't mind if there were no shields?

How many people wouldn't mind that combat would mean: trying to hit the other with a weapon he can't counter while trying to prevent him doing that to you? I.e. shoot the missile down, dodge the pellets, because when they hit it means destruction?

How many people wouldn't mind that they couldn't possibly take out a capital ship with a fighter?

Ratbert_CP · Post by **Ratbert_CP** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 4:49 pm

PeteyG wrote:Whoa whoa! Where's all this 'coverting the ship into tachyons to sidestep the whole speed of light thing' coming from?

Would we really want to have something like that in a 'realistic' space mod?

I'd have to agree... Perhaps some discussion on how far into the future you're going to project technology. If you project that a spaceship will move through normal space at a "significant" fraction of light speed, you need to define "significant". Remember that once you get into relativistic speeds, you have to contend with infinite mass, time dilation, and all sorts of fun things like that. [OK, time dilation has more to do with accelleration than actual speed.]

Let's also discuss gravity, while we're at it. Are you assuming some form of gravitron field will be developed, allowing a ship to maintain internal gravity? Or will you rely on centripedal(?) force to give your crew an up and down? If you rely on a spinning ship for crew comfort/sanity, you now have a huge gyroscope, and turning becomes... problematic. If you go with gravitron fields, you better put some limits on them, as a powerful gravity well does wonders for focusing and deflecting visible light weapons (as well as kinetic weapons).

There are certain leaps of technology that need to be made, but are you still going to ground your mod in the current Newtonian/Einsteinian concept of gross and quantum physics, or are you going to really branch out into MIB-land?

Dang it, I need to learn to drink coffee *before* I start posting...

Ratbert_CP · Post by **Ratbert_CP** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 5:05 pm

DiGuru wrote:Am informal poll:

An informal answer (and possibly an unwelcome one, after my first, ill-advised post...)

DiGuru wrote:How many people here wouldn't mind if dogfighting in fighters wouldn't be the only way to do combat?

Works for me. Dogfighting is what allows a game to take the FPS into space. But then, FPS isn't the holy grail...

"There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - W. Shakespeare, Hamlet

DiGuru wrote:How many people wouldn't mind if ships didn't look like airplanes and were not streamlined?

Only as long as you tell me they aren't atmospheric craft. Spheres make good space ships...

DiGuru wrote:How many people wouldn't mind if your engine(s) would be long pipes that wouldn't sprout flames?

Makes sense, but Homeworld was nice in it's "tracer" visuals... It's a gameplay issue.

DiGuru wrote:How many people wouldn't mind if it was impossible for a small ship to counter any attack? I.e. if you use one kind of armor, you would be protected against some weapons, but not others?

Rock, paper, scissors. Running away and/or hiding is a perfectly valid battle plan...

DiGuru wrote:How many people wouldn't mind if there were no shields?

I wouldn't mind, providing you keep balance, Grasshopper...

DiGuru wrote:How many people wouldn't mind that combat would mean: trying to hit the other with a weapon he can't counter while trying to prevent him doing that to you? I.e. shoot the missile down, dodge the pellets, because when they hit it means destruction?

Hmmm... Not quite as fun (even if it is realistic). Unless you can figure out a way to make the interface interesting. A corrollary question would be "How many people like AWPs in Counter-Strike?" Unless the dance is fun, headshots suck. (IMO, of course.)

DiGuru wrote:How many people wouldn't mind that they couldn't possibly take out a capital ship with a fighter?

What? No communications turret on the the Koh-Dan flagship? No exhaust port on the Death Star? No power coupling in the Federation Drone Carrier?

Capital ships are destroyed by capital ships, sabotage, Murphy's Law, torpedoes, and very rarely, overwhelming numbers of small ships. Note that a torpedo can be delivered by a smaller craft (the concept of a "hidden" unit like todays subs and stealth planes will doubtfully go away).

Shrike · Post by **Shrike** » Thu Jul 17, 2003 5:39 pm

DiGuru wrote:Am informal poll:

How many people here wouldn't mind if dogfighting in fighters wouldn't be the only way to do combat?

Wouldn't bother me at all. I'd prefer more strategy oriented types of space battles.

How many people wouldn't mind if ships didn't look like airplanes and were not streamlined?

Personally, I'd prefer it if space ships didn't look (or act) like air ships.

How many people wouldn't mind if your engine(s) would be long pipes that wouldn't sprout flames?

Makes no difference to me, if I'm sitting on the bridge I can't see the engines anyway. If I want to see what the engines are looking like, I'll tell Scotty to aim a vidcam at them.

How many people wouldn't mind if it was impossible for a small ship to counter any attack? I.e. if you use one kind of armor, you would be protected against some weapons, but not others?

Thus, the outfitting of the ship requires strategic thinking. I'd prefer it, IF the ship outfitting interface were improved.

How many people wouldn't mind if there were no shields?

Depends on what the shields are and what they do. A (visible spectrum) laser point defense system which can cover an area fast enough would look just like a shield, and work just about the same, so it could be called a shield. As for imaginary electro-gravitronic-plasmoid-bubblegum shields that make you bounce in some direction at 20,000 clicks/time unit when you smack into another ship; those I could do without.

How many people wouldn't mind that combat would mean: trying to hit the other with a weapon he can't counter while trying to prevent him doing that to you? I.e. shoot the missile down, dodge the pellets, because when they hit it means destruction?

One hit one kill, and the skill is getting that one hit on the other guy? Sounds like a possible excersize in frustration to me.

How many people wouldn't mind that they couldn't possibly take out a capital ship with a fighter?

There is a reason why I fly the Cargo Ship; it's the biggest damned thing I can buy and it's got loads of auto-tracking turrets that can cover my ass in any direction. I've got no use for fighters, except to explore some nook or cranny in an asteroid that my CS is too big to get into, or to use a jump which is embedded in an asteroid field and I can't get to it with my CS. If I had a detachable shuttle (with jump engine), I wouldn't need a fighter at all, except maybe as an escort.

If I'm flying a Carrier, there shouldn't be any reason why I couldn't launch and recover a shuttle or fighter which just happened to have my ass strapped into it. If I'm Captain of a Carrier, I should be able to jump into whatever my ship has on hand and go out flying and then come back. Hell, for that matter, a CapShip really should have a "Captain's Cutter"...something like a small armed uxury shuttle.