A new take on wormholes

The most appropriate place for Questions, Queries, and Quandaries regarding the nature of the Vega Strike universe and its past, present, or future history. Home to the occasional unfortunate RetCon.
MC707
Venturer
Venturer
Posts: 555
Joined: Sun Jan 18, 2009 5:18 am
Location: Quito, Ecuador.
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by MC707 »

Deus Siddis wrote:Actually, that is probably a somewhat unrelated balance issue. Those ships are impossible to maneuver because their conventional thruster levels are set too extremely low for their mass. Trying hacking yourself a Tesla, Vigilance or Thales to get an idea for how agile the other ships in the 400 meter to 2 kilometer long scale are.
No one has yet rebalanced any of the ships large than the 200 meter long mule, if I am not mistaken.
If I balance some ships, could it be possible for me to send this to someone who could implement this to SVN? After all, thats what the community should be doing (helping VS).
My Machine: OS: Ubuntu 8.10 (intrepid) 64 bit in a 500GB Maxtor HD @ 7200 RPM, Windows Vista PsyChoses Edition 2009 32 bit in a 500GB Samsung HD @ 7200 RPM CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz GPU: nVidia GeForce 9400 GT @ 1024 MB RAM: 3891 MB
Earthlings|The End of the Internet?|FreeWebsite
Fendorin
Elite Venturer
Elite Venturer
Posts: 725
Joined: Mon Feb 26, 2007 6:01 pm
Location: France, Paris

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by Fendorin »

MC707 wrote:
If I balance some ships, could it be possible for me to send this to someone who could implement this to SVN? After all, thats what the community should be doing (helping VS).
Of course you can help !!!
the best way should be post your units.cvs modified file (and other files if you rewrote them )
Like that we can test it straight the way before be in SVN
and it's easy for some administrator or some people have a SVN acces to put it .

Thanks MC707 to help us
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by safemode »

The overall intent of VS is not to be a game that takes place on planets or in-ship and just happens to travel around in space sometimes. It occurs in space, and just happens to be on planets or in-ship sometimes. While, it may be harder to create engaging content in the expanse of space, it is the overall function of the game to do so. Everything else should be supplementary to that goal. Planet side content should contribute to space content, and it should motivate the player to spend more time in space, not more time on the planet. In-ship content should contribute in the same way. What we are totally missing is a plot and campaign, but those are just details. I dont think VS will ever have a singular defined plot that allows one to play the game and have an ending. What would be ideal, i think, is a set of campaigns and plots that create a continuous game environment, and we sprinkle set and defined missions and campaigns within those that can be started and completed but there the dynamic aspect of the universe and such would be highly integrated into that system, making every VS universe entirely unique.

There is immense potential in making planets incredibly large immersive 3d environments for the player to explore and do things and eventually take them to another location in the universe to continue the game. The problem is, that would be a totally different game from VS. VS is a space combat and trade game at it's heart. We dont need to create a new game (or more) to make it complete. Some things just need to be tweeked. There are ways to make a 5 minute transit journey fun and engaging and meaningful to the plot of the game without completely rewriting things.

And yes, i'm aware I can break the thread up. I didn't mean that i didn't want any conversation not related to the wormhole FTL travel, just that i do want to keep it in focus as the _serious_ suggestion, with other stuff being much less thought out at this point.

The path to fixing in-system FTL is not as drop in and instant as wormhole travel. We'd have to create the content, perhaps the stuff i suggested to start with, and then start slowing things down. This is why i wanted to make it a point to handle them separately, first wormhole travel, then we debate and discuss how we handle in-system ftl and get the content worked out before modifying the transportation mechanism.

So basically, to discuss the in-system FTL is to discuss content creation and what should fill the time during transit. Which I'm saying is something basically for another thread. What should be the focus here is the canon explanation and theory of intra-system and inter-system travel.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
MC707
Venturer
Venturer
Posts: 555
Joined: Sun Jan 18, 2009 5:18 am
Location: Quito, Ecuador.
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by MC707 »

Fendorin wrote:Of course you can help !!!
the best way should be post your units.cvs modified file (and other files if you rewrote them )
Like that we can test it straight the way before be in SVN
and it's easy for some administrator or some people have a SVN acces to put it .

Thanks MC707 to help us
np thanks for answer Fendorin!
safemode wrote:What would be ideal, i think, is a set of campaigns and plots that create a continuous game environment, and we sprinkle set and defined missions and campaigns within those that can be started and completed but there the dynamic aspect of the universe and such would be highly integrated into that system, making every VS universe entirely unique.
I agree. Games with a sole plot and/or campaign tend to die soon when all missions have been done. *Exploiting* VS' ability of a dynamic universe for that matter would be very unique indeed.
safemode wrote:There is immense potential in making planets incredibly large immersive 3d environments for the player to explore and do things and eventually take them to another location in the universe to continue the game. The problem is, that would be a totally different game from VS. VS is a space combat and trade game at it's heart. We dont need to create a new game (or more) to make it complete. Some things just need to be tweeked. There are ways to make a 5 minute transit journey fun and engaging and meaningful to the plot of the game without completely rewriting things.
VS might be a space combat and trade game at its heart... but we shouldnt limit ourselfs. We have the possibility to make this (already awesome) game a yet better game with 3d planetary environments and 3d walkaround bases. That would make VS way more realistic and broad, increasing VS' *lifespan* for players.
safemode wrote:And yes, i'm aware I can break the thread up. I didn't mean that i didn't want any conversation not related to the wormhole FTL travel, just that i do want to keep it in focus
sorry for going off topic :oops:
My Machine: OS: Ubuntu 8.10 (intrepid) 64 bit in a 500GB Maxtor HD @ 7200 RPM, Windows Vista PsyChoses Edition 2009 32 bit in a 500GB Samsung HD @ 7200 RPM CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz GPU: nVidia GeForce 9400 GT @ 1024 MB RAM: 3891 MB
Earthlings|The End of the Internet?|FreeWebsite
jackS
Minister of Information
Minister of Information
Posts: 1895
Joined: Fri Jan 31, 2003 9:40 pm
Location: The land of tenure (and diaper changes)

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by jackS »

safemode wrote:SPEC has evolved to fit a void in gameplay, rather than force gameplay to be created around spec.

People were bored with WC style cinematic autopilots. At the same time, they didn't want extremely long transits, so time dialation was used.

This wasn't good enough though, some people didn't want to wait 10 minutes to get from planet to planet while nothing happened. Though, when time dialation is pushed to extremes, it caused lots of errors to occur, both in gameplay and in game logic.

So, SPEC is created to give the ship a massive velocity boost without changing time slices. Spec is an improvement, but soon people are upset that it takes 5-10 minutes to get from planet to planet still, and so still use time dialation in conjunction. At some point SPEC capacitors are made infinite, cuz running out adds too much time to the transit.

So SPEC is revamped. Ramp up times are shortened, ramp down times are shortened. The distance SPEC works from a gravity well is shortened, the overall effect is a massive decrease in time to get from planet to planet.

That's what happens when you have pressure on developers to deliver something playable now, when the right solution would have been slower but in the long term the better choice.

Granted, the idea of spec may have come from an idea in canon, but it seems more likely it came about the way described above and was added to canon. In any case, it's nearly impossible to write canon around gameplay instead of the other way around, and you see that problem with SPEC.

I'm not so sure i'd go with a navigatable internal ship setup....as that would basically require a whole new game. But there are plenty of things that can be done that wouldn't require that drastic of a rewrite.
One thing not mentioned in the above, but that is necessary to consider in the genesis of in-system FTL is that one of the specifications that came down from on high was that the in-system flight model had to be multi-player viable. Namely, time dilation was never going to be considered as a viable option (but the mechanism was still useful for debugging and was left in). This, even more than the chorus of voices calling out against the aesthetics of having no sense of transit between points of interest was a key determiner of much of what was done with SPEC.
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by safemode »

You have a couple of major logic problems to deal with when you discuss in-system FTL.

If you want the ships to remain in-play during transit, then you have light speed to deal with. A ship moving between planets and such at any relativistic speed also poses a serious serious problem. That is, a ship of any decent size moving at relativistic speeds has a _MASSIVE_ amount of kinetic energy. So much so that the idea of not just using ships as kamakazi missiles into planets or bases becomes to great to ignore, and nearly impossible to defend against. Even if you blew up a ship hundreds of kilometers away, it's particles are still going to come at you at the same velocity and rain tiny fiery hell on you.

So then, we try and find a way around inertia. Unfortunately, any movement (or non-movement) in 3d space has inertia, it's a property of matter btw :). So then what if the ship didn't move, but space did? That's the question that SPEC asks. Space can move faster than light, so that's a plus, space can stretch and contract, so that's decent. We even have all these ideas in science fiction about using space to push ships forward at fantastic speeds. Unfortunately, SPEC ignores those ideas and instead tries to do what they do across normal space. That's why it falls on it's face. We try to shoe horn an effect that only works if we jump outside of the 3d universe, into the 3d universe so that we dont sacrifice something we want to be able to do during transit and that's navigate freely. No amount of attempting to explain it helps. It just doesn't work.


I think an answer to in-system travel is going to require a much more creative solution than even my bose-nova idea for inter-system travel.

I can't think of any that allow for free-travel. Fixed travel is doable, but free travel at practical speeds, i dont think anyone can come up with something.

For the fixed travel. I would say we might be able to do a probe type setup like i was brainstorming about earlier, only avoid using nanites. Instead perhaps, slightly larger robots get fired out at very fast speeds, they travel to a position selected by the user. Then they interconnect and create a type of jump engine similar to the one in your ship. This creates a second pole to your ship and a short range jump nexus link is formed between your ship and this probe. So, you would use the same tech you use to jump to another system, only you'd have to create a temporary nexus link over a much shorter distance. anyways, just an idea.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
RedAdder
Bounty Hunter
Bounty Hunter
Posts: 149
Joined: Sat Jan 03, 2009 8:11 pm
Location: Germany, Munich
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by RedAdder »

That's a really nice idea to have probes that work similar to stargates.

You could have a hotkey where you could deploy probes to all navpoints in a system and a countdown would show under the navpoint when targetted how many time you need to wait till the probes arrive. It would kind of suck to be in a system for the first time, so this definitely would need to be saved in the savegame. Of course, it would teach you about the vast distances involved.

Regarding inertia cannot be overcome, how if you could create an invisibilty cloak that worked against inertia?
It wouldn't necessarily mean you could move faster than light, just you could accelerate faster.

As to the idea being far out, there are already cloaks being designed for microwaves and longer wavelengths, so it's just taking the concept to another level.
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by safemode »

as for the probe idea:

I was thinking you would have a 3d nav system HUD that allowed you to pin-point place probes anywhere in-system (unless restricted by radar range). This allows somewhat pseudo-free travel. Like you mentioned, some sort of status indicator would let the player know when things were ready.

Normal planets and bases may have "public" terminals setup around them. A single node that you have to request permission to use via the comm system, the base would then theoretically, calibrate the node to your ship and allow you to jump to it. Making relations with factions even more important to the game.

Other players could even destroy your jump probes. Attempting to use one too close to a base may cause it to automatically defend itself (who knows who is launching that probe? ). Probes would obviously have to be bought, so they're a valuable commodity. And they'd likely be reusable by retrieving them after use if you want. since most bases and planets would have public terminals (except the un-inhabited systems), most people would not just leave their probes laying around. Since they would likely be stolen and sold for cash by other passerbys or destroyed.

as for the inertia idea:

inertia isn't like a particle/wave that can be blocked and nullified. I would liken it to a marble on a stretch of frictionless fabric. At rest, the fabric is pulled down at the center of the marble by gravity of the earth. Now, by putting a force on that marble, we cause have to push the marble out of the depth of the depression in the fabric, (moment of inertia), and by doing this we cause a sort of ripple effect behind the mable where the fabric springs back up. Since it's frictionless, this occurs forever, causing the marble to continuously fall in and then get pushed forward by the previous position it had been falling into.

in space, you dont have the gravity of the earth beneath your spaceship (way out in space for instance). What you have is your own gravity, and the space you're depressing is the space you are inhabiting (space is inside you down to your subatomic particles). The overall effect is the same however. To insulate against this effect would require that gravity be a wave, because you would have to create an exact opposite wave to your own ship's gravity wave (effectively making you have 0 gravity and thus no inertia).

Again, such a technology is a dangerous thing to pretend exists in the game, since the ability to use an "anti-gravity" field as a weapon is fairly decent.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by Deus Siddis »

Imho, the probe idea is worth considering, but it opens up some difficult issues to get around:

1) Accelerating a larger object to speeds anywhere near c is going to cause some major 3rd law kickback against the ship that fires it, unless it has the huge power source and fuel supply it'd need for independent acceleration (in which case it'd be like torpedo-sized or larger) unless maybe instead the ship keeps firing photons at it as it travels to accelerate it once it has already been launched (which might be really inefficient and too slow).

2) It will take several years to just get a probe to a neighboring system at speeds near c, and thus this method of travel doesn't replace SPEC as a buff to an attacking faction, something jackS mentioned earlier.

3) It will still take like several hours or half a day to cross the radius of a system of planets in realtime (and that's if the probe got up to 0.5 c in something like an hour). Without time compression, ship/station interior stuff to do or realtime planetary environments to explore to pass the time, this would basically ram gameplay down the throat of a mishtali competitive eater.

4) Strike craft would no longer exist. (Instead anything like them would be light patrol craft or ultra light warships).

5) Transports and space trade would no longer exist. (Just teleport what you need between stations or planets directly).

6) Thrusters would be very limited in usefulness.
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by safemode »

1. The probe is actually several small components. So the individual thrust is not necessarily great, as the mass is small. Think of it like a shotgun blast. They create the probe once they reach the destination. This is not nano tech though, so no nano-plague issues.

2. We dont use this method to go system to system, because it takes too long. Natural nexus's are used for system to system travel. Now a faction that is desperate as hell would use this method though. Yes it would take years, but that's years faster than any other method. It wouldn't be a single jump either. The fleet that bypasses does it in legs, leaving behind the probes, so that only a small number of ships are needed to setup the path at first, then the rest of the fleet just daisy chains in rapid fire through all the jumps. something like that.

3. Nearly every system would already have "public" nodes setup around planets and bases. You'd only use your private probes to travel off the beaten path.

4. Strike craft would still be necessary, you can't simply sneak behind enemy lines. SPEC or no spec would not alter how ships attack other ships and such.

5. Teleporting would not negate the space trade, You'd still need to take the cargo to the planet's surface and any nearby bases. Public nodes would not be setup _everywhere_ just in the most important places. The less important or simply too close to warrant another node, would require transport ships and such. Also, they only link up intra-system .... you'd still need something to pass things from system to system. In the end, it's much simpler to do it in a ship, then to just have the cargo floating in space and being pushed around by 3rd parties (who we have to trust wont steal anything).
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by Deus Siddis »

safemode wrote:2. We dont use this method to go system to system, because it takes too long. Natural nexus's are used for system to system travel. Now a faction that is desperate as hell would use this method though. Yes it would take years, but that's years faster than any other method. It wouldn't be a single jump either. The fleet that bypasses does it in legs, leaving behind the probes, so that only a small number of ships are needed to setup the path at first, then the rest of the fleet just daisy chains in rapid fire through all the jumps. something like that.
Well you're still talking upwards of 100 times longer to make an interstellar journey off the beaten path versus SPEC, starting from the time things are set in motion to the arrival of the fleet. But maybe that is enough to fullfill any strategic requirements.
4. Strike craft would still be necessary, you can't simply sneak behind enemy lines. SPEC or no spec would not alter how ships attack other ships and such.
Ship acceleration is blown up to the strategic level by SPEC, so that small, high acceleration Strike craft can intercept larger craft that otherwise might not be caught up to. But strike craft would not be any faster than larger ships, nor stealthier (if that is what you mean?) if all travel is done by the probes.

Realistically speaking (since this thread is based on being realistic) what other distinguishing advantage is there to strike craft? If there isn't any then they'd cease to be strike craft, which would greatly mix up combat gameplay and more of the canon, since VS inherits a focus on them from WC. This isn't necessarily a bad thing at all, but it is something that would need to be considered if going down the probes route.
5. Teleporting would not negate the space trade, You'd still need to take the cargo to the planet's surface and any nearby bases.
Why not just teleport it to the planet's surface or nearby bases?

Also, shuttling cargo down to a planet's surface is outside the realm of VS as a space game as you've defined it earlier since if it is not considered directly related to space trade or the space trade gameplay that is a large part of VS (plus it would require seamless planetary flight.)
Public nodes would not be setup _everywhere_ just in the most important places.
Why not though, if things as small and cheap as probes lying around are all you need for instantaneous transport of the goods?

And if probes are for some reason extremely expensive, then why not just shoot them around from destination to destination and then teleport the cargo containers in place. Are ships much cheaper than probes?
Also, they only link up intra-system .... you'd still need something to pass things from system to system.
I don't understand, what realistically prevents the probe teleporters from working over greater distances?

And if you do need the TWHON jump network for one-shot inter-system travel, and if there wasn't already a jump station sitting by the intersystem jump point to get cargo there instantly, then again you'd just send a probe.
The less important or simply too close to warrant another node, would require transport ships and such.
If you mean transport ships traveling on conventional thrusters, then even to visit a neighboring planet is going to take a very, very long time for realtime gameplay.
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by safemode »

Deus Siddis wrote: Well you're still talking upwards of 100 times longer to make an interstellar journey off the beaten path versus SPEC, starting from the time things are set in motion to the arrival of the fleet. But maybe that is enough to fullfill any strategic requirements.
Well, less than 100 times, but still plenty fast for any use we'd have from it. It is so long that it makes it very unlikely someone would use it to go system to system, which is highly necessary for the differentiation between inter-system travel and in-system travel. If we had free traveling spec the way we have it now, we'd see a lot more of what the Aera did rather than have it stand out as a one time event.

For everyone else using it in-system, the slowdown would hardly cause a problem for gameplay, since nobody would have any real reason to go that far off the beaten path.
Ship acceleration is blown up to the strategic level by SPEC, so that small, high acceleration Strike craft can intercept larger craft that otherwise might not be caught up to. But strike craft would not be any faster than larger ships, nor stealthier (if that is what you mean?) if all travel is done by the probes.

Realistically speaking (since this thread is based on being realistic) what other distinguishing advantage is there to strike craft? If there isn't any then they'd cease to be strike craft, which would greatly mix up combat gameplay and more of the canon, since VS inherits a focus on them from WC. This isn't necessarily a bad thing at all, but it is something that would need to be considered if going down the probes route.
"Catching up to people in spec" is BS. it's a flaw in how the game actually represents spec. If we're going to spec correctly, then the ships that are in spec aren't traceable in realtime, let alone can interact with your ship while it's in spec as well.

Besides, that's intercepting, not striking. A strike craft is used during combat situations, you want a ship that is fast enough to evade turret fire and other enemy craft for pin-point attacks on parts of bases or warships. This has nothing to do with SPEC or teleporting. All the different variety of craft still have their place, because replacing SPEC with it doesn't change anything, because no ships are designed to take advantage of spec specifically, since spec is mostly ship-agnostic. SPEC was supposed to have a tiered approach much like how reactors are tiered so that larger ships have larger spec drives and capacitor banks compared to smaller ships. etc etc.
5. Teleporting would not negate the space trade, You'd still need to take the cargo to the planet's surface and any nearby bases.

Why not just teleport it to the planet's surface or nearby bases?
Teleporting requires intense magnetic fields to create zones of absolute zero in a vacuum. They also must be linked to another one. Creating this on a planet's surface is quite a problem. Most agree to place such things in international waters so to speak, so that no single corporation takes controls or you dont get every damn city on a planet trying to create a teleportation zone. Bases in space simply dont want the security risk. While you need permission to calibrate it to your ship's nexus, if your ship is damaged or too large or whatever, it will cause a serious problem if you're inside the base.

Also, shuttling cargo down to a planet's surface is outside the realm of VS as a space game as you've defined it earlier since if it is not considered directly related to space trade or the space trade gameplay that is a large part of VS (plus it would require seamless planetary flight.)
You wouldn't in reality see your ship shuttling cargo to the surface, but you'd still have to dock with the planet after coming from the public nexus orbiting around the planet. Seamless flight isn't required. It wouldn't be bad to have, but it's hardly going to add much to the gameplay, since nothing would almost certainly ever happen during such a sequence, and it would _quickly_ become an irritation and complaint for most users who get concerned that it takes them an extra 30 seconds to dock with a planet.
Public nodes would not be setup _everywhere_ just in the most important places.
Why not though, if things as small and cheap as probes lying around are all you need for instantaneous transport of the goods?

And if probes are for some reason extremely expensive, then why not just shoot them around from destination to destination and then teleport the cargo containers in place. Are ships much cheaper than probes?
We trust the US mail system because we have laws that they abide by and have to follow. Now, would you be so candid with sending all your goods (perhaps representing your entire net worth) via a courier you've never seen before and who is not held to any laws at all ? that's what sending goods through teleportation is like without going via ship. The ship is there to ensure that the goods make it to the destination and that nothing nasty happens to it. You have to remember, not every journey goods take is gonna have only 1 leg. Most will probably have to span many nodes across other systems.

Probes are quite expensive, they're not simple things despite being fairly un-exotic in what they do. Though, the reason for the ships is due to teleportation zones needing to be out in space almost exclusively and because we dont operate by a galaxy level courier system, which we trust implicitly.
Also, they only link up intra-system .... you'd still need something to pass things from system to system.
I don't understand, what realistically prevents the probe teleporters from working over greater distances?
For reason 1 and 2 i mentioned and you responded to . The distance means the time it takes to send such probes takes _a_very_long_time. It also requires a _MASSIVE_ amount of energy to span a link that far away. Galaxy spanning nexuses are linked by the power output of stars of all sorts and sizes. We simply dont have the energy to match the output of a star in order to create an artificial link all over the place. The aera spent years building their daisy chain of links. It is a great expenditure of resources and time to undertake such an endeavor. It's just not necessary to do that anymore, and far far less efficient than just using the natural intersystem nexuses. It was a unique situation the Aera were in that drove them to be so desperate.
And if you do need the TWHON jump network for one-shot inter-system travel, and if there wasn't already a jump station sitting by the intersystem jump point to get cargo there instantly, then again you'd just send a probe.
you dont need physical stations for intersystem jumps. The nexus's are created and maintained by stars and what not throughout the galaxy. All you need to do is initiate the bosenova. It's actually less work for the ship than intrasystem travel. Like i mentioned above though, you can't do artificial links over hugely vast distances. We simply dont have the power to make the link.
The less important or simply too close to warrant another node, would require transport ships and such.
If you mean transport ships traveling on conventional thrusters, then even to visit a neighboring planet is going to take a very, very long time for realtime gameplay.
No, they'd use their personal probe to leap frog to the nearby planets and bases and such after using the closest public nexus.

say i wanted to goto the moon around earth from mars. Suppose also that earth has a public nexus. I get clearance to use the public nexus and jump in. Now i'm orbiting Earth fairly closely. I then launch my teleport nexus probe towards the moon. The probe would reach orbit around the moon fairly quickly and then assemble the nexus point. I then teleport to the moon and retrieve my probe and go about my lunar business.

That would be the general way things are done everywhere a public nexus isn't setup. Though, the likelihood you'd have to do that often is very small. Most important places have permanent nexus points setup.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
RedAdder
Bounty Hunter
Bounty Hunter
Posts: 149
Joined: Sat Jan 03, 2009 8:11 pm
Location: Germany, Munich
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by RedAdder »

Wouldn't a public nexus be the first thing destroyed in a war?
loki1950
The Shepherd
Posts: 5841
Joined: Fri May 13, 2005 8:37 pm
Location: Ottawa
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by loki1950 »

If not the first definably at a later date means of production have always been targets in any conflict that we humans have been involved in.

Enjoy the Choice :)
my box::HP Envy i5-6400 @2Q70GHzx4 8 Gb ram/1 Tb(Win10 64)/3 Tb Mint 19.2/GTX745 4Gb acer S243HL K222HQL
Q8200/Asus P5QDLX/8 Gb ram/WD 2Tb 2-500 G HD/GF GT640 2Gb Mint 17.3 64 bit Win 10 32 bit acer and Lenovo ideapad 320-15ARB Win 10/Mint 19.2
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by safemode »

Public nexus's would be destroyed only as a last resort. They would most certainly be captured first and taken control over.

Destroying them not only makes it hard for the enemy to use it but also for the conquering faction to use it. That's like an army trying to attack an island without boats and destroying the bridge. Sure they remove the way the enemy refilled their ranks and supplied the island, but they also destroy their own means of getting to the island.

It's much more likely that they would be captured and reprogrammed to only not accept the previous faction's requests to allow them to jump in. Also, it makes sense that an attacking army wouldn't be using the public nexus's to attack any of the controlling faction's bases, since the controlling faction would just deny them teleport access. So attacking a faction is fairly difficult, requiring deploying your own shadow nexus's throughout a system to stage your attacks, or go from one planet to the next and work your way across. Either way, it would be quite hard. And that makes much more sense than making it easy for a faction to sweep through a system.

Remember also, these are in-system only. The inter-system zones are not controlled by any devices.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by safemode »

In addition to everyone having to play nice because they need eachother's cooperation to make it across systems to get to other systems, we have the issues involved with pirates and such. They would have their own set of nodes they would use off the "grid" so to speak. So becoming a pirate is now really cool as you'd be inducted into this faction that does things in the shadow of normal politics. They'd have their own set of nexuses in all sorts of systems that only they knew about and used. It would be like playing a totally different game.


When a faction does make war on another, it would likely take one of two strategic moves. Either cut off key systems by taking surrounding ones over, utilizing their own nexus probes snuck across their system, or eat away from the outside in. This would be rare, and would require some serious things to be going on for one faction to wage war on another. I would think, most things would be like the cold war. Battles happen behind the scenes, things are done under the table, but everyone keeps a straight face and plays nice in public to keep the system going.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
denyasis
Hunter
Hunter
Posts: 75
Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2009 10:31 am

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by denyasis »

I like the "instant mini-jump" idea. Whether it be by jump gate nexuses or old fashioned Elite/Evochron jump drives, I think it allows the player to travel where they want in system, with out having a super long travel sequence that is void of content.

In so far as the travel sequence being void of content with SPEC or any other truely linear travel, even the Jump Nexus Gate thing to a similar extent, I would think that some content would be truely benificial. A news type system (ala Space Ranger 2) and random quests (ala I-war2's distress messages and every RPG out there) would give the player something to look at and do. They player would feel more connected to the universe and be able to particiapte in "larger" events (invasions, defense of planets/stations, etc) on they fly, simulating a universe that is more alive. A simple optional mini game(s) (they must be optional for the player! Either to accomadate for a player's taste or the focus, Traveling to a big battle would be unfortunately interupted by a mini game) such as deep scanning a system for loot, Out Of System Jump nodes, nexuses, bases, anomalies, etc, would keep the game world large, and give incentives for the player to not only play the mini game, but to explore (oh I found a nebula in the mini game - lets see what's in it!)

To that end, one would be looking at large over huals of everything from the In-System Nav map (Holy crap what the heck am I looking at! lol), to our jumping thing, to some more causual player firendly utilites for adding quests, communication texts, and random loot to space. (The only way I see a ton of content being added on a large scale would be to try to make it as inclusive for casual players to add quality content as possible)

I really like the Bose-Nova thing - And I like the instant mini-jump nexus thing.

One question (ok 2, sorry):
say i wanted to goto the moon around earth from mars. Suppose also that earth has a public nexus. I get clearance to use the public nexus and jump in. Now i'm orbiting Earth fairly closely. I then launch my teleport nexus probe towards the moon. The probe would reach orbit around the moon fairly quickly and then assemble the nexus point. I then teleport to the moon and retrieve my probe and go about my lunar business
A) if say, at some point, the player angers a faction, how do they get around? Launch their own Nexus gate while fending off attacks from said faction? What prevents the faction from just wasting the player's gate while in transit or setting up at the destinations? leading to B

B) How does the gate nexus probe travel? I get the launching part, but if were talking about limiting things to speeds of C, It would take a really long time to even get "short distances" Earth/Moon is short I guess, but when you get to distances of an AU, well that's like almost 8 minutes at C isn't it? If we do a magical, intantish arrival thing for the nexus, why not just scap the gate and use a short distance jump drive or something (limit range to fuel, reduce accuracy as distance increses or something)? same amount of magic, just something a little easier to understand for players new to the game.

I guess food for thinking. I really do like both ideas. The nexus gate thing is pretty novel and would add some interesting elemnts to the game.


Ps - Tactically speaking - If you invading a system with said nexus network, I'd blow up the "public/permanent" gates. Its simply too advantageous not to. I don't want to clog the thread, but if yur curious, I can give a good scenarios or two
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by safemode »

It's been a while but i have some time at work again (job #1) to peruse the forum a bit.

My idea with the bose-nova nexus system is not to completely remove the time it takes to travel in a system. It's not meant to be instant, because to do that would completely negate the scale of the systems, making it essentially pointless to make a huge complicated universe of systems. At the same time, we have to solve the problem of what to do through the vast void of space.

The other drawback we'd be hard-pressed to not make use of is the speed of light that limits the ship's sensors. There is untold amounts of strategy locked away in the fact that it takes time for light to reach the vast distances between parts of the universe. Yet, in game, we allow instant realtime data from all over a system. This is a wasted opportunity. We have no fog of war, and that makes all of the backstory and plots to what's going on in the game make far less sense than it could. Putting sane-limitations on sensor and informational feedback just makes everything far more immersive.

But getting back to the wormhole-type travel and to answer your questions.

Yes, nexus's would become a major strategical target. They are the highways of the systems, and thus of the faction's entire territory.
The problem with destroying them though, would be that they would then have to be rebuilt, usually in the general area that the old ones existed in. Why do that when you can much more readily take over the existing one, and not have the downtime? Now put that idea on the backburner.

A. True, the player's personal nexus would be an easy target and expendable to anyone else other than the owner. The problem is targetting it while it's in transit. It's like trying to shoot a cloud of dust traveling at the speed of light. Or perhaps a more realistic analogy would be trying to shoot down shotgun pellets from across a football field with another shotgun. That being said, the density of the group and size of the individual objects make it extremely difficult to track or detect. You wouldn't know a nexus was being built until it was well underway to being built, and by then, it may be too late to take it out before it's ready to receive it's owner. For the covert ops, where a nexus is being constructed under the noses of some base / planet, we could create stealth nexus's meant to minimize detectable cross-sections. For the most part though, the only time you'll find yourself able to take out a personal nexus is when a player leaves it there as a semi-permament node in a network they're building. In which case, the protection afforded to it is up to the player. They can hide it, place mines around it. turrets may be an upgrade option. etc etc.

B. Like i already mentioned. The nexus nodes are built by self assembling pseudo-nano sized bots. Larger than what would trigger nano-plague responses, but small enough to make the acceleration and decceleration rapid. So you can treat their entire transit as occuring at just below c, rather than spending a good deal of the distance speeding up and slowing down. They communicate between eachother in order to navigate to their destination the entire time they are traveling. This allows them to navigate around obstacles, avoid detection by maintaining a low density and cross-section. Their propulsion is non-existant. They are small enough and traveling fast enough that the density of atoms and ions in space are semi-fluid like and they sail it. Their initial kinetic energy is provided by a high energy laser pulse. Since the few hundred or so bots take up the volume of a 9mm bullet, they are accelerated on the ions from the pulse to near the speed of c almost immediately, with their little sails catching the energy and then closing up to slice through space and reduce drag. Their sails then act as rudders steering them to their destination. To slow down they assimilate atoms and ions and increase the size of their sails until they begin to function as parachutes. That along with their intake of mass slows them down nearly instantly. From that point on, they quickly replicate, feeding on the matter around them. Since nexus's are usually created around something, this is usually not a problem. When the population of bots reaches a critical level, they begin constructing the gate out of themselves. Nexus creation time is dependent on this replication phase, but you can probably expect it to take roughly 3-5 minutes. The further away from matter you create your nexus, the longer it will take though.


So we're looking at maybe a 10-15 minute wait to create a nexus from one end of a solar system to the other. this would be a one time expenditure during which, the player would be boning up on sensor data of the new system, news feeds from other nearby or previously visited systems etc. Also, multiple probes can be sent at the same time if you have them. And once they're built, you can re-use them as many times as you need. Making the number of instances where a player has to deal with waiting a long time, very low. More often, these waiting games will be over much shorter scales than across entire systems, and almost never would it be for a one-off use.

Now, you may have some other questions like:
If they're self-replicating bots, why would you ever need to buy them? you'd only need a seed bot and create as many probes as you want?

A. The company that created the bots built them to not be able to generate multiple independent probe swarms. By linking the communication protocols during manufacture, a swarm communicates only on a given protocol, and cannot communicate with bots from other swarms. In addition, the initial swarm will not replaced lost or destroyed bots. You have an original set of bots that is all that ever gets re-used. Child bots are lacking the code to make them do what the initial parent bots can do. If you re-take your parent bots back to create a new nexus, the remaining child bots cease to function. This is all hard-wired by the company that builds them. You can lose up to 1/3 of your swarm before they disable themselves as a protection. The company is in the business of making money, so they ensure that while their product is versatile, it is not self-sustaining indefinitely. Since you can't work with less than 2/3 of the swarm, and since you can't merge swarms together, and since the bots the swarm creates are incomplete by design, you can't create two probes from one. Though you can re-use your probe swarm as many times as you want so long as you dont lose 1/3 of the little guys.


If you can accelerate the little bots to c, why can't you just do that for the ship and skip all this made up stuff?

A. It's much easier to accelerate small things close to c than it is to do that to large things, especially if you have living things in the large thing. Also, we have to deal with the various simple laws of physics, like for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Well, if we're going to accelerate a small tiny mass to near the speed of light, we have to impart a kinetic energy to it. The smaller the projectile, the less kick-back so-to-speak. The less kick-back, the less wasted energy.

Why dont we use pseudo-nano sized robots for all kinds of stuff? They're really convenient.

A. maybe we do. But they're very expensive, since the risk is very high at possibly setting off the nano-plague. or we could explain their limited use to simply social stigma that's universal among all species.


anyways, back to work.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
loki1950
The Shepherd
Posts: 5841
Joined: Fri May 13, 2005 8:37 pm
Location: Ottawa
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by loki1950 »

Long time no see and great to hear you anticipate some free time in the near future and am looking forward to some help using the cmake system Windows side as there have not been any testing done there yet :wink: getting some errors about 2.4 compatibility.

Enjoy the Choice :)
my box::HP Envy i5-6400 @2Q70GHzx4 8 Gb ram/1 Tb(Win10 64)/3 Tb Mint 19.2/GTX745 4Gb acer S243HL K222HQL
Q8200/Asus P5QDLX/8 Gb ram/WD 2Tb 2-500 G HD/GF GT640 2Gb Mint 17.3 64 bit Win 10 32 bit acer and Lenovo ideapad 320-15ARB Win 10/Mint 19.2
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by safemode »

usually the compatibility warnings are harmless. Caused by simply not checking for version info, not necessarily by any sort of api incompatibility.
But you are correct, no testing has been done there to generate VC builds.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by Deus Siddis »

safemode wrote: A. The company that created the bots built them to not be able to generate multiple independent probe swarms. By linking the communication protocols during manufacture, a swarm communicates only on a given protocol, and cannot communicate with bots from other swarms. In addition, the initial swarm will not replaced lost or destroyed bots. You have an original set of bots that is all that ever gets re-used. Child bots are lacking the code to make them do what the initial parent bots can do. If you re-take your parent bots back to create a new nexus, the remaining child bots cease to function. This is all hard-wired by the company that builds them. You can lose up to 1/3 of your swarm before they disable themselves as a protection. The company is in the business of making money, so they ensure that while their product is versatile, it is not self-sustaining indefinitely. Since you can't work with less than 2/3 of the swarm, and since you can't merge swarms together, and since the bots the swarm creates are incomplete by design, you can't create two probes from one. Though you can re-use your probe swarm as many times as you want so long as you dont lose 1/3 of the little guys.
I have to say, this explanation is very weak. An intentional weakness like that would easily be gotten around, and there'd be unlimited reasons to do so when your are talking about free FTL capability more or less.

Instead, I think you might want to adjust your model for probes you don't have to buy at all, which is actually less of a departure from current gameplay mechanics.
Why dont we use pseudo-nano sized robots for all kinds of stuff? They're really convenient.

A. Maybe we do. But they're very expensive, since the risk is very high at possibly setting off the nano-plague. or we could explain their limited use to simply social stigma that's universal among all species.
Or IMHO, the nano-plague could be dropped from the game's plot altogether. I mean, there's already so many huge advanced physics and engineering issues to work out or get around to make a game like this believable, that it doesn't seem very helpful to add artificial limitations like the everpresent nano-plague.
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by safemode »

The nano plague is a plot device much like the ubiquitous nuclear mutual destruction we live in now on earth.

As for intentional weaknesses. How would it be easily gotten around?

This is the far future, technology is damn near magical compared to todays. Now, take how many people know how a computer works compared to the normal population of today. Now take how many of those people know how the computer's components actually work. Now take those people and see how many of them actually have the knowledge, equipment and ability to fabricate those parts themselves or modify them at their internal logic level...or build new ones. If you answered none, you're correct. Only major corporations with billions invested in the manufacturing technology have the ability to create the IC's involved in nano-scale electronics.

The future companies involved in robotics and electronics aren't going to produce products that dont generate income. Your lone hacker out there or even government isn't going to have the technology to reverse engineer or fabricate their own. The governments of the future will have to work with these companies. Now, you can have industrial espionage and such things going on, but it's not hard to see the future as one in which there is still a technological gradient, knowledge and technology isn't evenly distributed and mega-corporations would undoubtedly hold the employment of the most enterprising/intelligent/etc people.

I think that's one aspect that VS has glossed over. It's got trading and such capitalist economics, but when it comes to everything else, we assume some type of communist dispersal of tech availability. I dont buy that. Just because something isn't secret, and the other guy can buy it and look at it, doesn't mean they have the tech ability to actually make it. Much like how you can buy an amd chip and try to take it apart, hell, even look at it under an electron microscope and scan all the layers of the chip. You still wouldn't have the slightest idea of how to fabricate it.

In the future that VS exists in. I see the tech involved being much of a black box. Having become so complex that only the largest corporations / governments have the resources to do any sort of developing or fabrication of it. Gone are your hacker groups or homebrew people. the closest thing in the VS universe to something like that would be your industrial spies and their in-house reverse engineering teams in the very corporations that build the competing products (probably species vs species type competition).


And as for free FTL, well, i suppose over dozens and dozens of years of the tech, someone may be inclined to leak out an un-incumbered seed bot. Which would collapse the entire company economic model. And pretty much lead to chaos within systems.

ok, scratch little bots that build eachother and stuff.

I gotta go ....but i was thinking of a solution along the lines of some self arranging "bots" with a rare payload within them, a combination of a miniscule amount of anti-matter and a B-E condensate. They shoot out individually like the shot-gun analogy. Once at their destination however, they attach to eachother and create a shell of condensate around their anti-matter powered core of an electro-magnate. This is the nexus then, which can be dis-assembled via some command from your ship and you can re-use your little bots over and over again. Or they can be destroyed ...and you can buy multiples so you can leave your nexus's around if you want.

This way, you can't simply replicate the bots and get infinite nexuses, since they have to be loaded up with a very specific and costly payload, which can't simply be culled from the environment around them. In addition to that, the tech that creates the bots themselves is high tech crap in the hands of only a few companies. Something along those lines.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by Deus Siddis »

safemode wrote:The nano plague is a plot device much like the ubiquitous nuclear mutual destruction we live in now on earth.

As for intentional weaknesses. How would it be easily gotten around?
The nano plague is a plot device to fill a whole in the universe that doesn't seem to exist. There really isn't anything imbalancing about nanomachines, they are just another way to manufacture or alter things under controlled or special conditions. I don't see why from a gameplay believability standpoint, they should be avoided like the . . . plague. :)
This is the far future, technology is damn near magical compared to todays. Now, take how many people know how a computer works compared to the normal population of today. Now take how many of those people know how the computer's components actually work. Now take those people and see how many of them actually have the knowledge, equipment and ability to fabricate those parts themselves or modify them at their internal logic level...or build new ones. If you answered none, you're correct. Only major corporations with billions invested in the manufacturing technology have the ability to create the IC's involved in nano-scale electronics.

The future companies involved in robotics and electronics aren't going to produce products that dont generate income. Your lone hacker out there or even government isn't going to have the technology to reverse engineer or fabricate their own. The governments of the future will have to work with these companies. Now, you can have industrial espionage and such things going on, but it's not hard to see the future as one in which there is still a technological gradient, knowledge and technology isn't evenly distributed and mega-corporations would undoubtedly hold the employment of the most enterprising/intelligent/etc people.

I think that's one aspect that VS has glossed over. It's got trading and such capitalist economics, but when it comes to everything else, we assume some type of communist dispersal of tech availability. I dont buy that. Just because something isn't secret, and the other guy can buy it and look at it, doesn't mean they have the tech ability to actually make it. Much like how you can buy an amd chip and try to take it apart, hell, even look at it under an electron microscope and scan all the layers of the chip. You still wouldn't have the slightest idea of how to fabricate it.

In the future that VS exists in. I see the tech involved being much of a black box. Having become so complex that only the largest corporations / governments have the resources to do any sort of developing or fabrication of it. Gone are your hacker groups or homebrew people. the closest thing in the VS universe to something like that would be your industrial spies and their in-house reverse engineering teams in the very corporations that build the competing products (probably species vs species type competition).
There is simply no comparison between Nvidia being a step ahead of AMD one generation, and one organization in each major species having a strangle hold on The technology of its time for hundreds of years.

Do you know how you would address Bill Gates if Microsoft had developed nuclear power in the '80s and still nobody else had it today, except for the stripped down Nukes that only worked if they got clearance from Redmond? Like so: "Oh High, Mighty, All-Knowing, Conquering, Glorious Godlike Lord of Software and Earth, whom I tremble before in my unworthiness to even address thee . . ." And you would not want to leave out one of those adjectives either.

Sure, there's the natural network, but controlling systems belongs to those who can produce this technology for themselves, which basically means at least every faction, save maybe, pirates, luddites and uln.

. . .until someone got ahold of one of their untamed probes and had it replicate the hell out of itself then sold the clones. Then just about everyone really does have them.
And as for free FTL, well, i suppose over dozens and dozens of years of the tech, someone may be inclined to leak out an un-incumbered seed bot. Which would collapse the entire company economic model. And pretty much lead to chaos within systems.
Why collapse and chaos? SPEC and your Hyperspace model didn't introduce such problems. The invention of sailing ships didn't collapse anything. VS' gameplay hasn't been hurt by free travel yet either, no reason why it should under a new travel model.
but i was thinking of a solution along the lines of some self arranging "bots" with a rare payload within them, a combination of a miniscule amount of anti-matter and a B-E condensate. They shoot out individually like the shot-gun analogy. Once at their destination however, they attach to eachother and create a shell of condensate around their anti-matter powered core of an electro-magnate. This is the nexus then, which can be dis-assembled via some command from your ship and you can re-use your little bots over and over again. Or they can be destroyed ...and you can buy multiples so you can leave your nexus's around if you want.
Something super-rare, expensive and exotic like anti-matter would be a much more believable explanation. Still not necessary for the plot though- free travel isn't a problem you need to solve, it's impossible (and too fast) travel.
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by safemode »

Free travel would be a problem since it would make trading a nearly pointless occupation. Traveling has to have a cost, that means in time and in supply of transportation. Otherwise prices tend toward 0 due to capitalism.

Corporations can hold various aspects of technology without becoming sovereigns themselves. For instance, if Intel and Amd survive another hundred years, they would be the only companies that can produce IC's at the size and quality that they do. Nobody else would be able to fabricate them if they tried. That wouldn't change the fact that they're still just companies. It would not catapult them into some controlling status. We're not talking about 1 man holding the key to the technology, we're talking about publicly traded businesses. They have a self interest, but ultimately that self interest is answerable to their share-holders. Even today, intel and amd produce chips at a size and quality that just about nobody else can match. That hasn't made them anything more than just businesses. Despite everyone (governments and all) depending on their product without an ability to simply produce their own.

Technology in the future is going to get more closed off, more black box and way out of the reach of meddling tinkerers and hackers and mom and pop shops' grasps. As the complexity of it's fabrication increases, the number of entities able to produce it decreases. Not only does the physical difficulty of creating the products force out everyone but the biggest, but the complexity of what it does forces out all but the most skilled from designing it, let alone understanding its function.

Do you think pilots of VS's ships are going to be able to fix their stuff ala firefly in the future? Maybe some minor electrical wiring issues, some metal fabbing to fix stress damage and such. But definitely not when it comes to anything remotely related to being electronic. The population of VS aren't all quantum physicists, computer engineers, astro-physicists, mathematicians and mechanics at the same time. They're not all going into specialized schools for 35 years to learn everything you would need to learn to be able to even understand how their ship's systems work, let alone fix them and even less so, have the tools you'd need to do the job.

Think of VS's pilots as being the commercial truck drivers of today. That accounts for the vast majority of them. Then scatter in a few who would be considered military pilots and commercial jet pilots. All of those people have varying levels of skill at moving their vehicle around, but that's about where it ends. They're not capable of doing much more than that. and that's with today's tech. VS tech would likely require so many layers of knowledge to fully deal with that you'd necessitate specialization, because there simply isn't enough years in a life to grasp multiple facets.

But to get back on track, yes i do believe free travel would lead to chaos, for the reason i initially stated. We have to deal with travel in such a way that there is a cost to the player (and ai) that makes their function worthwhile. If there was no cost, then there'd be no related economy. And the game is basically dependent on there being a related economy to traveling.

The nano-plague is more of a plot device to explain past interactions between certain factions/species along with future ones. not so much about anything happening in the game currently. It also forces things to not get really out of our ability to create a believable universe. Since if nanites were allowed to exist, you'd basically have a universe of morphable everything. There would be no fixed-shape synthetic objects. Think of what that means to creating models for the game...or coding the morphing ability. A universe with fixed-state objects makes no sense in a nanite populated situation. And without fixed-state objects, a lot of things simply fall apart in the VS game, logically and practically.

So there has to be something that allows for our fixed state/shape universe. The only way we can do that is to limit or eliminate that which would make it void, which is nanites. Hence the nano-plague.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
MC707
Venturer
Venturer
Posts: 555
Joined: Sun Jan 18, 2009 5:18 am
Location: Quito, Ecuador.
Contact:

Re: A new take on wormholes

Post by MC707 »

safemode wrote:Traveling has to have a cost, that means in time and in supply of transportation. Otherwise prices tend toward 0 due to capitalism.
And so should the production of these bots. These bots can self replicate and so the companies would have 0 costs, only to then hard-wired so people themselves cannot make the bots to self replicate. By the laws of supply and demand, companies could produce infinite amounts of these bots without having production costs, which therefore would make the supply of bots increase by almost infinite. This in turn would make the prices of these bots reach infinitely low prices.
safemode wrote:Corporations can hold various aspects of technology without becoming sovereigns themselves. For instance, if Intel and Amd survive another hundred years, they would be the only companies that can produce IC's at the size and quality that they do. Nobody else would be able to fabricate them if they tried. That wouldn't change the fact that they're still just companies. It would not catapult them into some controlling status. We're not talking about 1 man holding the key to the technology, we're talking about publicly traded businesses. They have a self interest, but ultimately that self interest is answerable to their share-holders. Even today, intel and amd produce chips at a size and quality that just about nobody else can match. That hasn't made them anything more than just businesses. Despite everyone (governments and all) depending on their product without an ability to simply produce their own.

Technology in the future is going to get more closed off, more black box and way out of the reach of meddling tinkerers and hackers and mom and pop shops' grasps. As the complexity of it's fabrication increases, the number of entities able to produce it decreases. Not only does the physical difficulty of creating the products force out everyone but the biggest, but the complexity of what it does forces out all but the most skilled from designing it, let alone understanding its function.
Not only it would be illegal to keep the technology a "black box" out of the reach of everyone, it would be impossible as long as long as there is a government powerful enough to enforce laws. They HAVE to make the blueprints public, after the legal patent expires. If they would have technology that only they control, they would have a monopoly that controlled ALL traffic in space, since every ship would need that technology to travel those far distances.
For instance, do you think a puny generics company could create ANY of the medicines that Pfizer has ever created? No. Never. But what happens afterwards? The patent dies off and generic producer companies can produce medicines which took incredible research, knowledge and resources.
safemode wrote:Do you think pilots of VS's ships are going to be able to fix their stuff ala firefly in the future? Maybe some minor electrical wiring issues, some metal fabbing to fix stress damage and such. But definitely not when it comes to anything remotely related to being electronic. The population of VS aren't all quantum physicists, computer engineers, astro-physicists, mathematicians and mechanics at the same time. They're not all going into specialized schools for 35 years to learn everything you would need to learn to be able to even understand how their ship's systems work, let alone fix them and even less so, have the tools you'd need to do the job.

Think of VS's pilots as being the commercial truck drivers of today. That accounts for the vast majority of them. Then scatter in a few who would be considered military pilots and commercial jet pilots. All of those people have varying levels of skill at moving their vehicle around, but that's about where it ends. They're not capable of doing much more than that. and that's with today's tech. VS tech would likely require so many layers of knowledge to fully deal with that you'd necessitate specialization, because there simply isn't enough years in a life to grasp multiple facets.
Do you think today's truck drivers ONLY know and need to know how to move a steering wheel and press a bunch of pedals and buttons? No. Unlike in VS, they need special licenses that take years to acquire, not only to get experience but also knowledge. Truck drivers need to take tests covering unique handling qualities of driving a large, heavily loaded 18-wheeler, and the mechanical systems required to operate such a vehicle (air brakes, suspension, cargo securement, et al.), plus be declared fit by medical examination no less than every two years. They need to know what they are doing and what to do if they suddenly find themselves with an overheated engine. Pilots in VS HAVE to know how to fix stuff ala firefly if they want to survive the coldness of space.
safemode wrote:But to get back on track, yes i do believe free travel would lead to chaos, for the reason i initially stated. We have to deal with travel in such a way that there is a cost to the player (and ai) that makes their function worthwhile. If there was no cost, then there'd be no related economy. And the game is basically dependent on there being a related economy to traveling.
The same should apply for the company.
My Machine: OS: Ubuntu 8.10 (intrepid) 64 bit in a 500GB Maxtor HD @ 7200 RPM, Windows Vista PsyChoses Edition 2009 32 bit in a 500GB Samsung HD @ 7200 RPM CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz GPU: nVidia GeForce 9400 GT @ 1024 MB RAM: 3891 MB
Earthlings|The End of the Internet?|FreeWebsite
Post Reply