Realistic-style mod

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mkruer
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Post by mkruer »

Now rethinking about it, that would be nifty :lol:
I know you believe you understand what you think I said.
But I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

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Post by DiGuru »

MKruer wrote:
DiGuru wrote:MKruer, I think we could agree completely about all of it, when we would say that the realistic and strategic mod is in the near future, while Rylix is in the far future.

Agreed?
You could still be in the Rylix universe. It’s just that it would have to be placed around the year 2060 in the Sol system i.e. before they screwed up. The other thing is that you would be limited to ion engines only. As Faster then light travel has not been made possible. I could set an arbitrary date of 2065 or so for the first one way mission to another star. I would actually welcome this, it saves me a shoot load of back history, and it’s before everything changes. I would also win in the fact that 2060 ships are still in existence in 2153. and then we find out just how clunky those ships really are.

There are just a few things you would have to abide by.
Certain stuff could not be done (not a big problem)
You need to follow the terminology.
And eventually AI’s would be removed.
Agreed, as long as short, in-system jumps can be possible and we have some artifacts, wormholes or whatever to link some other systems.

You can write the history of our mod as well, if you like. I like the story you did for Rylix.
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Post by mkruer »

DiGuru wrote: Agreed, as long as short, in-system jumps can be possible and we have some artifacts, wormholes or whatever to link some other systems.

You can write the history of our mod as well, if you like. I like the story you did for Rylix.
Unfortunately those last two would seriously damage the consistence in the Rylix Universe. About the only way around this would be the use of the Compression Ring. i.e Jumpgate and perhaps pre warp drive. This would allow you to reach lest then 100% light speed. And the Jumpgate would be a one way ticket to another system until a return gate has been built, and I don’t think people will want to wait for 20 years either.
But I am flexable wit the date, and I don’t mind at all the AI’s develop the technology.
I know you believe you understand what you think I said.
But I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

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Post by DiGuru »

We don't need much systems, as we can fill them up with lots of things to do. That's why I asked about artifacts: they are just things you discover, unknown origin, that form a jumphole to another system. Three or four systems total would be enough.

And make one artifact that would link to something different. Something sneaky. Something hard, with a nice reward. Whatever you want.

:)
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Post by mkruer »

DiGuru wrote:We don't need much systems, as we can fill them up with lots of things to do. That's why I asked about artifacts: they are just things you discover, unknown origin, that form a jumphole to another system. Three or four systems total would be enough.

And make one artifact that would link to something different. Something sneaky. Something hard, with a nice reward. Whatever you want.

:)
I would need to check my dates for system expansion. But the "artifacts" world defiantly have to be out. Alien races in the Rylix Universe are sparse. That’s why Rylix is 16,000ly away and it would be another 16,000 till you reach the nearest know race. Becisdes the Sol system is Huge. Rylix takes place inside only the Rylix system
I know you believe you understand what you think I said.
But I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

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Post by DiGuru »

Yes, but artifacts don't have to be from a known race. They're just ancient, origin unknown. They might trigger the science you need in Rylix for the creation of jump drives!

And I would love a sneaky, dangerous, different destination for one of them. You could even make a storyline in Rylix, that would lead you back to that and do... Something!

But you write the story, do you? Please?
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Post by DiGuru »

Yes, I would like the Sol system to be the main place. The other systems don't have to be very interesting. Or perhaps one of them, to make trade more interesting.

But I would like the story to have you solidly in the Sol system, but an artifact (or whatever) is discovered! And it will lead to another system. Boring. Until someone discovers another artifact that leads to a new system with at least one habitable planet. Bingo!!!

That would be the background I would love. It could trigger all that would come after that.

Can you make the story like that?
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Post by DiGuru »

Btw. If I were a pirate, I would want a base in the boring system that is in between. And there are very probably a lot of other dangerous things in there!
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Post by mkruer »

Got I never though I would be on the other side of the fence on this, but one of the themes it the we ARE alone. And the thing that brought us back together was or near destruction. Later when we discovered hyperspace communication we found out that we were not alone and it was this that was one of the major catalysts that sent us to the stars.

I guess I find it funny that after all this time of you saying you can’t use this or that, now we are on totally opposite grounds LOL. History can still be changed, its just how to do it. Hoping to find artifacts even in the local group of stars is unrealistic. Chances are that nothing is there, and even if it was, it has been so long that the artifact has deteriorated



Right now this is how Rylix Prehistory goes.

Sometime between 205x and 212x 15 colines need to be founded. I have back historys for 2 of them Rylix i.e Prealos and Kellryon both are the most distant systems. The four nearest habitat star systems are still 200ly to 500ly away and none of them are as “goodâ€
I know you believe you understand what you think I said.
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Post by Shrike »

MKruer wrote:
Shrike wrote:
MKruer wrote: I think that is oblivious, but then again you need to look at it form this perspective. The best way to counter another fighter is still with another fighter especially when you add stealth to the equation.
Now it becomes a question of scale. Say a human is flying a 20 ton fighter, and I, as the Captain of some gargantuan CapShip decides to spark off a 20 ton seeker droid at the fighter. All else being equal (stealth, thrust etc.) the droid will win if it can take more Gs than the human.

Even if the seeker is remotely piloted by a human, instead of some on-board AI, the human sitting back in the CapShip won't have any Gs affecting him, thus he can out-maneuver the fighter.

Same net effect.

Or, how about I spark off a 20 ton missle which has an effective radius so big that no amount of maneuvering will get the fighter out of range in time? Stealth won't matter at all if the fighter is in the blast area when the thing goes off.

For that matter, I could spark off a spread of a half-dozen 10 ton EMP missles to be certain that I'll nail him with one, then let my Gunny get in some practice drills while the poor fighter pilot is sitting dead in the water.

I think the -best- way to counter a fighter is with a big enough weapon that the fighter just doesn't stand a chance.

"Quantity has a quality all its own." - Lenin
How about I take my stealth ship and while you are pining away with active radar giving away you location and making you a much easier target, I close to a hundred kilometers and launch a few stealth torpedoes at you. If you send out drones even better now your are really broad casting away to maintain constant UL.

I have spent 100million and maybe another 10million on all the missiles and to destroy a ship that costs several billion.

Oh an I forgot. You can not rely on EMP’s my ship could be hardened.

"even quantity gives way to the laws of economics" - Me

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.
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Post by Shrike »

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
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Post by Shrike »

DiGuru wrote:What is an AI?
There is no such thing. If something is intelligent, then it is genuine, and thus not artiificial. If I was a machine intelligence, I'd probably get pissed at constantly being referred to as "artificial".

So, would the tactical computer of a future spacecraft be an AI? Most likely not. It would be like a 'regular' computer as we know it. Number-crunching. Making vectors into splines that would confirm to a specific goal. Dumb. But extremely functional. Lethal.

Why do you think most autonomous, armed planes are still remote controlled? They want a human to command the firing of that possibly lethal weapon. With all consequences.

What is the difference? I order a missile to 'launch and destroy'. The deed has been done. Why would I be needed to actually pull the trigger? As that would only instruct the computer to fire the weapon anyway...
I think a tactical computer in a future warship will be intelligent. It will have its limitations, just as the crew of a warship today does. Limitations imposed by procedure and protocol, not the by the inherent capabilty of the intelligence itself, again, just as a warship today does.

When the Captain of an aircraft carrier sends out planes to protect the ship, then once a threat has been detected, the Captain gives permission for the pilots to act. It is not the Captain who pushes the button to fire off an air to air missle, but whoever is in control of the plane. And even then, most of the time the pilot will have orders which will allow him to fire even without the permission of the Captainl, if he is fired upon first.

Tactical intelligence systems in the future will operate much the same. Perhaps the defensive systems will have more autonomy to act than the offensive systems, but there will be circumstances where they will be allowed to act even without being told to do so.

What you describe is trust. Our systems today are so new, and so stupid, that we -cannot- trust them. That is why a human must be in the loop, not so much for responsiblity, but simply because we cannot trust our systems. In the future, that will be different. Our systems will have become so sophisticated and intelligent, that we will be able to trust them.

<tac-comp>
Cap'n, there is one of those 20 ton cloaker jobs out there, and it's headed this way.

<captain>
Yea, well if it sneezes funny, smoke it.

<tac-comp>
It just lit us up with a narrow beam directional targetting laser. I smoked it.

<captain>
Way to go. I'm gonna go take a dump. If any more of them show up, smoke 'em as soon as they get in range.
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Post by Shrike »

MKruer wrote:Nope, I am not saying that. What I am saying is that we well never let it get so far out of hand until we know why its works, or more importantly why we work. With all the being said the. Rylix is already decked out till about 12,500 ESY there are areas that I am trying to avoid and AI for now is one of them. But to make it indifferent from your POV, who says that you can’t be a machine? Hell I have them running around rampant in the Rylix system already. The physics is the same, its almost boils down to human vs non human. Dose it matter? Nope.
It does matter, since hardware can take a whole lot more to kill than wetware. Humans can't take many Gs. Humans don't have backup systems. One good whack in the head and it's all over. Loss of air pressure and it's all over. Hardware doesn't have those vulnurabilities.
In a democracy, two wolves and a sheep take a majority vote on what's for supper. In a constitutional republic, the wolves are forbidden on voting on what's for supper, and the sheep are well armed. - Anonymous
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Post by FlyingAce »

could fighters be more effective by having their main purpose be recon/ bomber escort like in starlancer? bombers could be a bit bigger than fighters and carry big hunking torpedoe(s) (yes, the torps are very big) that they use to take down capships. of course, the bombers would have no other defenses, because they devote most of their power to carry the torp. I like the idea of bombers hurting the capships instead of fighters. from a WWII standpoint, it's more realistic :roll:
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Post by DiGuru »

MKruer wrote:Got I never though I would be on the other side of the fence on this, but one of the themes it the we ARE alone. And the thing that brought us back together was or near destruction. Later when we discovered hyperspace communication we found out that we were not alone and it was this that was one of the major catalysts that sent us to the stars.

I guess I find it funny that after all this time of you saying you can’t use this or that, now we are on totally opposite grounds LOL. History can still be changed, its just how to do it. Hoping to find artifacts even in the local group of stars is unrealistic. Chances are that nothing is there, and even if it was, it has been so long that the artifact has deteriorated
Well, we could make a realistic mod that operates entirely in the Sol system. We would still need short jumps, space fold jumps is fine by me.

Some undestructabe artifacts could be nice as flavour, but we can do without them.
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Post by DiGuru »

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.
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Post by peteyg »

I think that a Sol-centric setting would be very cool. I wouldn't entirely mind a few other systems to be accessible through whatever ancient alien artifact device uncovered in the asteroid belt or wherever. But Sol-centric would be very cool.

Mini jumps... not such a bad thing, I don't think. I think they should be nice and power hungry though. Length recharge times to prevent cheesy abuse. Plus they're an already implemented feature! So that makes it even easier.
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Post by DiGuru »

Shrike wrote:<tac-comp>
Cap'n, there is one of those 20 ton cloaker jobs out there, and it's headed this way.

<captain>
Yea, well if it sneezes funny, smoke it.

<tac-comp>
It just lit us up with a narrow beam directional targetting laser. I smoked it.

<captain>
Way to go. I'm gonna go take a dump. If any more of them show up, smoke 'em as soon as they get in range.
Now THAT is exactly how I envision flying a space ship through a 'bad' neighborhood!

:lol:

But, unfortunately, we have some of the same constraints as all the others: while we can and will use computers that are pretty smart, we do have to write their programming. So, they can be smart, but not *that* smart.

But if we don't use fighters anyway, we don't have to make it so they can be used at all, so our fleet of weaponry can be pretty smart and lethal.
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Post by DiGuru »

PeteyG wrote:I think that a Sol-centric setting would be very cool. I wouldn't entirely mind a few other systems to be accessible through whatever ancient alien artifact device uncovered in the asteroid belt or wherever. But Sol-centric would be very cool.

Mini jumps... not such a bad thing, I don't think. I think they should be nice and power hungry though. Length recharge times to prevent cheesy abuse. Plus they're an already implemented feature! So that makes it even easier.
Yes, I agree. And if we make those small jumps only possible if there are no other objects nearby, we retain the 'real time' feel and make it impossible to jump away from battle. Although it would equally be fun to have the really huge ships jump anyway and take with them all the small stuff around them :)
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Post by DiGuru »

FlyingAce wrote:could fighters be more effective by having their main purpose be recon/ bomber escort like in starlancer? bombers could be a bit bigger than fighters and carry big hunking torpedoe(s) (yes, the torps are very big) that they use to take down capships. of course, the bombers would have no other defenses, because they devote most of their power to carry the torp. I like the idea of bombers hurting the capships instead of fighters. from a WWII standpoint, it's more realistic :roll:
Well, it depends. Sure, it can be done. As we make up all the rules, we can make anything possible. But we want to be things as realistic as we can make them.

So, to make sure you don't 'die' almost every battle while in a small ship trying to close the range, the best way to do that is not being in that small ship in the first place.

But if you make a stealthy ship that shoots that torpedo from very long range, sure, why not?
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Post by DiGuru »

PeteyG, could you come up with a nice name for the mod?

And could you make some nice shots (like you great splash-screens) for the look-and-feel? That would be great!
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Post by DiGuru »

Btw. For communication and remote-control, we can also use lasers or radar beams. Our point defence lasers would be more than powerful enough and easy to aim, as they have a tracking mechanism built in. And the radar beams would use things like frequency hopping anyway, so there is no reason not to embed information as well.

And as we have communication lag anyway, we would only need those to 'see' through the sensors of the remote device and order it's computer. Manually aiming your weapons wouldn't work over large distances, but ordering the computer to fire would.

So, the communications could be radio for general orders, and laser and radar for point-to-point communication. And when we use solid-state radars, we can just mount some plates all around, so there is no need to aim your ship or drone.
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Post by peteyg »

Well, I will brainstorm here a few potential names for the mod.

I will be assuming that we're going to have people living all over the solar system, and there will be a big economy with lots of trading. There will be outlaws lurking about, and there will be rival governments.

Solar Strike
Space Unlimited (haha, too much like Freespace)
Stellar Privateer
Real Space Combat
War in the Void
The Mars Rebellion: Rise and Fall of the Solar Empire
The Second Solar War

From this short list, I would be partial to 'Real Space Combat', with a more descriptive subtitle.

Something like... Real Space Combat: The Mars Rebellion (or whatever, depending on what is going on storywise)

Splash screens would be possible, though in the future. I expect I will limit the actual work I do on this stuff until I've gotten at least a good handle on the Star Trek mod, and my work for 0.4.0 is completed.
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Post by DiGuru »

Great, PeteyG!

Or, if we want to be the predecessor of Rylix:

Real Space Combat: Rise and Fall of the Solar Empire

That's about what Mkruer wants from it, I guess.

And it sounds great!!!
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Post by DiGuru »

FlyingAce, I'll make a new thread:

Realistic and strategic mod: modelling

That's yours, to lead the modelling.
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