Update, RE: a clear example.

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.
snow_Cat
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 349
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 am
Location: /stray/
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by snow_Cat »

Classic bait;
I am basing the consortium and the 'other guy' (I'll call him Guy) on a certain [gang of] [villians] with whom I have had to deal with over the last year.

In this instance the consortium is telling Rene "Don't worry about paying us back just make certain to stake that claim, or else." and this greedy Guy figures, well if I stake the claim then we get both that claim and else. While this is clearly a conflict of interests, we are talking about the representitive of an entity that has survived ages by changing it's name and reincorporating numeons times to protect its assets and hide from past deeds. [Like producing a 555 that doesn't work because of a missing push/pull stages then lisencing the rights to a reputable trademark to dispose of them at a greater markup; or changing the internal layout of the common 741 opamp to improve power-dissapation and reduce mfg costs, then selling these 741's with incompatible pinouts to distributers AS ordinary 741's. Or lisencing a proven microprocessor design from ARM then screwing up the implementaion so badly only atem of twenty-odd RTOS enthusiasts could get the [god forsaken] [waste of time] to work; THE toggles, they literaly do nothing, just like the clock and the $1500 branded debugger.]

Also, it makes Rene seem less like a villian if he is exploiting another villian's narcissism and sets up a plot twist later when it is revealed that Guy is a 'disgraced' venture-capitalist/agent and has been embezzling money from the coffers of the consortium to pay extortion fees. Turning a massive profit, (even unethically) could have gotten himself out of this mess quite neatly.

Instead (at the end of act 2) others find themselves drawn into the thick of it as the consortium apparently collapses under the strain of trying to take the lost colony's mineral rights. Fortunately, a number of smaller entities from within the consortium quietly and quickly asimilate the major operations with none of the public ill-will or debts; and the status quo continues. It's as if they had set the whole consortium up and Guy was unlucky enough to be the trigger; not that the general public or their competitors care enough to complain.

However, you are right in correcting my remark about oversight. The consortium is an interested party, and would naturally want oversight. This is why it doesn't raise suspicion. Guy's ulterior motives for abusing that for his personal benefit are secondary.
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Alright, gottcha. I'm in graphics mode right now, but just carry on; I'll be reading
your updates.
snow_Cat
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 349
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 am
Location: /stray/
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by snow_Cat »

^ - - ^ (I'll use the wiki to insert graphics from now on- Meow; svg is allowed in the wiki too.)
snow_Cat
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 349
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 am
Location: /stray/
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by snow_Cat »

^ nn> *facepalms* Wiki not happy with underscores in username. I'll make a doppleganger later.

^ - - ^ The colony ship: it's a train (no really);
The engines are in an array at the 'head' and each carrage is built around a central truck/track that runs down the center of the cars. This design is inherently more stable than the engines at the back arrangement, and makes sense for sub-light speed interstellar travel in which it must be kept in a state of continuous acceleration. This also dictates radial symmetry for each of the cars.

Code: Select all

illustration of a ship resembling thirty sixpacks goes here
The ship is divided into five stacks with seven rails designed to seperate upon arriving at the destination to accelerated distribution.

Code: Select all

illustration of soda being passed around at a lan party goes here
Alfred Hitchcock wrote:There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.
During the collision with the mining ship the head unit broke apart and the rails seperated like a zipper with the miningship as the block. A string of cars still attached to an engine tore free at the head, tangled with a good chunk of the mining ship.

Code: Select all

illustration of 'cutaway view' goes here
As visible in the above diagram, 'the hanging' structure of the train means that any deceleration would collapse and accordian fold the cars; consequently none of the engines stopped without seperating from or collapsing the rails they were attached to.

^ - -^ (Detailed description of the collision and why it was inevitable will follow next week; I haven't an appropriate pun yet.)

In the intervening decades (which would actually make a pretty good drama/survival/horror/nightmare series) this string of cars w/ chunk of mining ship developed into a rogue (system-less) colony. The major force behind the colony's development (aside from survival) was a combination of indignation and revenge torward the mining company's role in history. If the survivors' desendants ever contact humanity again then the record would be set right.

Because it was neither practical nor safe to alter the existing cars the older carrages nearest the engine remained essentially the same, and progressively newer designs were implemented the further down the chain from the head.

Code: Select all

 illustration of the evolution of the *ship of rails* goes here :|
The ships real econonmic value would have been in the technologies developed to sustain its closed systems; technologies that easily would have changed the shape of human space flight and enabled the colonization of space itself had the ship not encountered hostile pirates so very close to rejoining humanity. The fact that these technolgies made extensive use of palladium and tantalum and would have thrust its value even higher would have only been the icing on a much deserved cake.
20100109.gif
The design of the colony ship allows us to implement it in the current engine using specailzed subunits.

An added benefit is that when it is 'cut' the engine (in the privious version) does a periodic check of every unit in game; if a subunit has a host unit then it continues to function, otherwise it goes "boom" and orphans its subunits which after a time delay also go boom. With capital ships it led to the turret crews firing after thier ship was finished; I don't see why these colonists after generations of overcoming unimaginable hardships and overwhelming challenges would not go out swinging.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Last edited by snow_Cat on Sun Jan 10, 2010 5:23 am, edited 2 times in total.
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by chuck_starchaser »

WOW! You're coming up with like a Main story for the game? Cool!
So, the player would become a professional explorer, and eventually find these lost people?
snow_Cat
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 349
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 am
Location: /stray/
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by snow_Cat »

^ · o ^ buah!? No. No, not the main story; a very detailed side plot- don't pressure me.

^- - ^ I'm designing this side plot to span two years of development, and be largely inconsequental to the main story; but one of the great pleasures (for me) in playing an action/role/adventure game is a compelling and complete backstory told through dialogue and clues throughout the setting, and ignoring this when it gets boring.
Meaning that I intend to make something that stands on its own and is completely compatible with cannon- but not to the point of being external: tvtropes.org:continuity porn. ^- - ^ And to do this I need people to bounce ideas off of, and to point out what isn't believeable, what doesn't make sense, needs to be more interesting or can be improved.

^ - -^ The colony ship (and its orphans) is the expidition's prize that is steped upon by practically everyone else pursuing the 'asteroid', and like any McGuffin it has to be believeable and/or sexy for players to accept it.
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by chuck_starchaser »

No pressure intended; I just failed to see a connection between this and the clear example story, and though
that maybe you were bored and decided to tackle a greater challenge.

Yeah, I love stories with deep background; specially if the reader, watcher or player has to think to
figure it out; --like, not too much of it spelled out. Contradictory versions, etceteras.
A good example in Privateer: Who killed Sandoval? When you think about it, it was obviously Regis, the cousin
of Roman Lynch; it's a no-brainer; yet it's never said in the story; --not even hinted. And many other connect-
-the-dots in Priv.
It becomes obvious that Origin brainstormed the background quite deeply, then only showed the tip of the
iceberg.

Collisions in space tend to result in instant transitions of solid matter to gas or plasma states due to the
speeds typically involved.
If a low speed collision happened, there needs to be some rationale or explanation for the low relative speed.
Furthermore, space being so vast, collisions are ridiculously unlikely.
You could free two birds by changing the story to an attempted docking that went wrong.
snow_Cat
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 349
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 am
Location: /stray/
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by snow_Cat »

When I said two years of development time, I meant 15 episodes with an internally consistent backstory. I have long-range plans to rotate the supporting and primary cast as different McGuffins come to the surface whilst the elements of this subplot wind about each other to peak the players interest.

The colony ship is the major focus of the expidition, Ericka and later Rene and is thus a key element of this subplot.

Yes, the player does participate in the hunt for another splinter of the colony ship, but (for reasons of not affecting cannon) doesn't find survivors.


Also, with satelite guidance/communications systems there is one very specific mode of failure that will cause a collision like this, between two vehicles initially on different non-intersecting vectors. Fortunatly for the world I was only trained with satelite systems, and have never been part of the design process.

And yes, the mining ship does try to dock with the colony ship.


However, the collision and the existing real-world processes that make it inevitable are outside the scope of what I want to focus on this week.
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by chuck_starchaser »

snow_Cat wrote:When I said two years of development time, I meant 15 episodes with an internally consistent backstory. I have long-range plans to rotate the supporting and primary cast as different McGuffins come to the surface whilst the elements of this subplot wind about each other to peak the players interest.
Excellent!
The colony ship is the major focus of the expidition, Ericka and later Rene and is thus a key element of this subplot.

Yes, the player does participate in the hunt for another splinter of the colony ship, but (for reasons of not affecting cannon) doesn't find survivors.
Gottcha.
snow_Cat
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 349
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 am
Location: /stray/
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by snow_Cat »

Collision aside, does anyboy have any question of comment to make about the colony ship?
snow_Cat
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 349
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 am
Location: /stray/
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by snow_Cat »

^- - ^ Right then.

The Reputable Mining Corporation emberked on an ambitous plan to crack (Pre-FTL) interstellar mineral trade.

Because of the great expense of interstellar travel other mining concerns that only operated in colonised systems, concentrating on the immeadiate material needs of the host system, and the predictably growing demand for fuel of civilization. Accessing uninhabited systems for minerals just didn't make economic sense as no ship of the day could carry enough material and equipment to make it profitable, not to mention the centuries of wages to be paid.

The executives at RMC saw these uninhabited systems as an untapped resource and believed that with a ship many orders of magnitude greater than any other in existance could make a profit, especially if it didn't need to keep people alive.

A series of robotic mining ships were comissioned that would be sent to uninhabited systems then strip every single asteroid, moon and planetoid it could then return with maximum haste (50-300 years time) using accelerations that would not be tollerable by humans. During this return refinement using an energy efficient chemical seperation process (not like they didn't have the time) and waste material would be crystalized and ejected (fired torward the system of origin) to increase fuel efficiency.

If the first series was successful, then self-reproducing spaceships would be launched to 'finish' these systems.

An ambitions project to begin with, however the technical difficulties involved were staggering.
The challenge wrote: "Wohld thou lahyk freez?"
At the constant acceleration of the mining ship the doppler/redshift effect approached 30%; consider that a satelite on a communications-friendly 5° Molniya orbit around the earth at 6 km/s is enough to shift a 1 GHz carrier ±20 kHz relative to a fixed station planetside. That is out, then in then back out of the human hearing range. This is also the reason that the astronauts' voices are at times indistinguishable from that which takes your order at the drive-thru.

"wŏŏ-d· yhu· līk· frīz?"
At a strait bearing from a fixed base 0.1 c becomes a shift of 111.1¯ MHz, and at 0.2 c 250 MHz. Throw in a variance of ±10 kHz from the planet rotating, another ±100 kHz from its orbit, ±670 kHz from the star floating around the center of the universe, and tack onto that frequency instabilities within {the equipment itself, external interference, reflection and incident harmonics, background noise, refraction and the MIMO effect,} and you have yourself one difficult engineering problem from a signal processing perspective.

"wĭn'dō thrē."
More difficult than predicting and then correcting for the frequency distortion whilst maintaining a frequency/carrier lock is maintaining a physical signal lock. Anyone who has ever tried to get TV-Satelite reception to work with a 'hands on' assistant knows that the minute deflection caused by a heartbeat is enough to break reception with a 'fixed' target drifting about 36 Mm (±200 km) above the equator.

[edit3: restarted my computer (for the first time in weeks) lets see what happens]

This is using reciever listening for µW, and a transmitter broadcasting MW over a distance of 36±1 Mm, to the edge of the solarsystem is ten petameters (10^16 m), and without radiooptics to focus that signal into a extremly tight beam we would need a signal measured in TW at TV satelite efficiencies to even recieve a signal. And over a distance of 4 ¼ light years (from the Sun to Proxima Centauri) that signal would need to be in the exawatt range, and that is not considering the scattering effect of thruster gasses, and the oort cloud.
Natrurally the government of the day would not allow any large spacecraft (that would return) to leave without some form of communications and mandated a series of trials to demonstrate the safety and security of robotic mining ships. Any mining sihp would have to on command goto waypoint, join formation, dock, and shut-down.

Faced with this daunting challenge (and unwilling to pay for an expensive system designed for the greater level of certainy required for manned interstellar travel) RMC opted to design their own. And the govt. of the day reconised that given the extreme value of the cargo, RMC would be allowed to keep secret the protocols used.

Years passed as RMC teetered on the brink of bankrupsy and suspended the project, but eventually one investor that was not only going to be around long enough to see the return of the ship, but also insure it. Lloyd's of Longon, founded back in 1885, has had a long tradition of investing in generational shipping ventures, and insuring others against disaster. The terms of their investment were clear: enough capital for one push to finish the first mining ship, futures in every ship that would follow.

There was one problem that neither RMC or Lloyd's knew about: the subcontractor to which the design of the communications/command module was assigned at the beginning of this project faked it.

Without sufficent qualified staff to handle the assignment correctly it fell to the work-experience who kid figured out a way to fake a demonstration, expecting that the problem would be solved later. Using a MIMO array the image of an antenna would be projected into open space and the C/C module would follow it blindly. The 'locking' effect would be triggered by shifting the focus of the antenna creating a squacking effect at the C/C module's reciever that would be virtually undetectable by any observer not within the illusion's effect.

The following protocol was defined:
  • Carrier detect, maintaing bearing
  • Three squacks for "pay attention"
  • Five for "come here (on top of the antenna)"
  • Seven for "hold attitude and shut down for fifteen minutes"
  • Other "Ignore radio for one minute"
The initial tests / Govt. inspection apeared to go smoothly. A barge was sellected because it was 'cheap' and the poor maneuverabilty meant that the contractors had time to regain control of it should it go stray. And because completion of the first ship was years away the Govt. didn't look too closely.

When the C/C module passed, the work-experience kid left for better work, and the sub-contractor (satisfied by the pass) never actually fixed the problem, instead turning over a govt-passed black-box to RMC who never inquired further.


At the time of the launch the Nemisis (named for the type of star it was sent to) was the largest robotic ship ever comissioned, measuring 10x8x6 km at launch, and designed to expande up an additional 3 km in length during refinement.

The launch (with the endorcement of futures options by Lloyd's) spurred a series of nine waves, in total 57 ships, until obsoleted by FTL travel. Retaing the same disasterously incomplete C/C module until during the construction of the third wave the first of many inevitable collistions happened.

The Reputable Mining Corporation was bankrupted by an insufficent number of mining ships returning within the first century and more significantly a number of which that profided their own pyrothechnics when they did.

RMC was parceled and sold to the Yjere Consortium among other more successful competitors, and 'decoy beacons' sent out to reduce the number of Nemisis ships with their cargos of minerals and apocolyptic-DOOM that would find their way home.



Nemisis, Reputable and 57 are references to a long running Science-Fiction series.

[GRR2: My browser went to the "submitted sucessfully page" without actually submitting the text here, either there's something very wrong with my computer or my ISP is being [villians] with a web-cache of some sort.]

[GRR1: Stupid browser didn't actually save the text that was here, it was a lot of text.]
... Redshift and signal discrimination.
... "you thought that getting satelite TV was bad."
... Government inspection/trials of systems
... "A temporary solution"

[done: posting now to keep thread alive. plz comment.]
Last edited by snow_Cat on Thu Jan 14, 2010 7:11 pm, edited 11 times in total.
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Don't forget we got a speed limit, in VS, of 97 c. Not sure what the doppler is on that, but far beyond 20 khz on 1 ghz. :D
Anyways, the economics of space and space mining, if they ever happen, will be interesting.
Right now, in RL, the first country to achieve asteroid mining will be the next superpower; but the biggest market for minerals mined in space will eventually come from space itself. It will start with a race for productivity, which will require deployment of facilities for repair and maintenance of the robotic miners and transports, as well as power collectors. Mining in space will involve in-situ refinement for starters, which means the first thing you do to an asteroid is to put big solar collectors and a smelting facility. Anyways, maintenance, once there are many asteroids on tap, will require shared way-stations/spare part depots/green-spaces where people can live long term; and a lot of the mining output will go to building stations.
Now, assuming a universe like VS with multiple star systems, the biggest consumers for mining products would be the growing settlements, which are the younger ones along the fronteer, whose first business is to mine, so production and consumption overlap in a big way.
There would be deals between explorers, settlers, industrialists and the mining companies. Each new planet or asteroid project would be such a cooperative contract. So, I don't really think that transportation is really that much of an issue in the VS universe. At least it shouldn't be. Furthermore, you probably got guaranteed profits for years simply from economic incentives: Territory expansion is for whoever grabs it first; and so explorers and miners are grabbing systems at a much lower cost than the military ever does. This can't go unnoticed.
Also, I have a feeling that comms in VS are trans-light; I could be wrong.
snow_Cat
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 349
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 am
Location: /stray/
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by snow_Cat »

(post to be deleted)
snow_Cat
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 349
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 am
Location: /stray/
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by snow_Cat »

*bump*
^ - -^ Finished RMC/Nemisis backstory, feedback is appreciated.

Next: the Colony vs the Nemisis.


The Nemisis' communications/command module (C/C module) was intended as a temporary fix, however like all things temporary it soon became permanent, and in its faults were sewn the seeds of disaster.

The original 'maintain steady bearing' trick was designed to make the remote control of guidance invisible to observers listening for commands modulating a carrier by moving the virtual origin of that carrier, has an obvious but deadly effect when the C/C module senses a real one.

Among the things you learn during first week of piloting is to never keep a steady bearing with anything you don't intend to hit or runaway from. Except when heading in the opposite direction away, keeping a steady bearing will describe an asymptotal vector, well within the margin for a collision.

This is a lesson the first waves of Nemisis mining ships were unable to learn from. Locking onto the carrier signals of other ships, stations and planets they did as they were programmed to, and maintained a steady bearing to the apparent source of transmission. Following it until it stopped, one way or another.

In the case of the mining colony, a returning Nemisis detected the colony's constant carrier and locked on to it, the highly focused signal from the colony appearing as the dominant signal. Overshooting the system it with the shipyards it was supposed to deliver minerals to, the Nemisis continued to refine and eject its waste material between the colony and the originating system.

This waste/ejecta consited of crystalized metalic compounds that was charged then ejected as a stream of plasma and very fine solids forming a barrier that distorted communications between the colony and the system- much the way that the image of a 7-seg display at the bottom of a pitcher of water becomes distorted if you take a bottle of milk and pour it over your head such that it runs into your eyes. You know the display its there but aren't able to read it.


They saw it a mile away, and yet they had no warning.

The collision unfolded predictably, to maintain bearing the Nemisis had to slow down tumbling around the colony as it kept a stable bearing from the colony's aft- transmitter. The colony having long lost communications with the originating system, and finding this other ship apparently from the system react predictably:

CR1: A ship! Do we fire the lazer?
CR2: We haven't had communication with home for a while now, -*
CR1: That a yes?
CR2: No, perhaps they sent this ship.
CR1: ... It's named "the Nemisis", and its getting closer.
CR2: A mining ship! Those robots are the only thing that can catch us.
CR1: It's tuumbling dangerously close to us. How do we tell it to keep its distance? We don't have the op-codes for a robotic mining ship.
CR2: Then home knows we will try to talk to it. Calibrate the signal so that it is recieved at emergency frequency.

(colony fore tranmitter): Nemisis. This is the colony ship, (Strelok).
(Nemisis reciever) : Squack. Squck-kk-kac-ckckckc, Squack.
(C/C module): "Pay attention."

(colony fore tranmitter): Please hold position (rustle) three-* (further.) no, ten kilometres aft. And state your intentions.
(Nemisis reciever) : Squack-ch-ckkkkk. (squcik?) squack-* (squick.) Squick, squa-ckckckc-k, Squack-squirk-ggk-k-k.
(C/C module) "hold attitude and shut down for fifteen minutes"

CR2: Its stopped tumbling and is moving off. What are we supposed to do with a mining ship anyways? It's not like we can dock with it.
CR1: I don't know I'm waiting for it to tell us.
CR2: It's going a bit further than 10 k.
CR1: Damn. It must have been confused by three-ten kilometres.
CR2: Would that not be thirty?
CR1: You said it in english not french, tabouret.
CR2: S'il vous plaît obtenir une vie.
(fifteen minutes later and the Nemisis resumes its pursuit of the colony.)
...
CR2: It's not backing off this time.
CR1: Speech recognition has never been that great, perhaps we need to speak slowly.
...
CR1: It's not responding, prepare to fire. Try to start the burn on the face rotating torwards us so as to minimize-*
CR3: Wait! What if it can only transmit in simplex.
CR2: (anxiously delays preparations to fire)
CR1: This is a duplex... Aw fine.

(colony fore tranmitter): What. Are. Your. Intentions. Over.
(Nemisis reciever) : Squack. Squack. Squack. Squack. Squack.
(C/C module) "come here."
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Snowcat, it's not a good idea to edit posts so much. First time I looked at your latest post it was short,
and you were saying the story was finished, but I didn't see where it was.
Now I came back for a second look, and your last post has grown, and now I realize that the story is
in the post prior to my last reply, heavily edited. This is very confusing. Anyhow, I'm sorry I have to
concentrate on getting the shaders debugged and working, and finish updating the mining base and
then work on the diplomacy station to use the new shaders; --specially the glass shader, as probably
Klauss will make the final commit this weekend and it will be the start of a new era in VS graphics.
I'll read and comment on the story probably early next week, once the shader dust settles. Just keep
going for now, I'm sure you're doing great work as always :)
snow_Cat
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 349
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 am
Location: /stray/
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by snow_Cat »

^ - -^ It's not your fault, I clearly need to reformat/reinstall everything. And I posted/edited to avoid having to re-type it too many times.

^ - -^ I thought that the flakyness was a result of my rarely restarting my computer, but having restarted a few times in the last couple of days it is apparent that something has come undone.

^- - ^

"Uptime" != "Stability"
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Hang on there; just a couple more days of work on shaders, I think, and I should be free to get back to this topic.
snow_Cat
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 349
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 am
Location: /stray/
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by snow_Cat »

No worries,
I'm a bit more concerned that there aren't others commenting.
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by safemode »

In VS at the moment, communication, and thus information in general, is not simulated in any realistic manner, nor explained away by any sort of advanced tech. So in this manner, anything short of explaining how radar and such doesn't seem effected by distance would require engine changes.

Changes in the engine would look something like this :

We traverse our unit list looking for units within range of our instrumentation. This is done instantly as far as the game is concerned. We then assign a time offset to each unit found and save them in a new list ordered by the time offset shortest to longest. Every simulation frame we check the offset of the first in the list and traverse it until we reach an offset that hasn't expired. This updates our displays and any info about the units. All the while another sweep of the radar or whatever will occur and insert new data where appropriate in the list. This would allow FTL data to realistically play havoc with our sensor data as we will see multiple "hits" of the same unit at the same time or previous destinations etc etc. Fun stuff.



But getting back to the story.

A super large mining ship provides a super large target and it's also going to have trouble getting near lucrative asteroids without becoming a target of them. If something happened that disabled the large ship, you are pretty screwed from an investment standpoint.

Would it not be viable that companies looking to mine other solar systems would create a swarm of smaller ships that are mostly redundent, knowing there would be losses and malfunctions along the way (solar storms and such also being a hazard, along with production quality) and launch this swarm at a system and have robots on these ships programmed to build the mining base on location out of materials at the mine? Then launch the material back to the originating system in lots at some set coordinates. The whole process would be automated and not require any long range communication at all.

Then, instead of a collision, what you could have is a case of mistaken identity. The mining swarm has been in deep space of some nearby system for decades, consuming asteroid after asteroid, extending and multiplying it's mining base complex completely autonomously, firing it's products back to the corporation that spawned it. Along comes one of the first colony super ships. The mining swarm scouts see it as a mineral rich asteroid perfectly suited for mining. The outcome is then obvious, unable to maneuver their large ship, the swarm easily overtakes the colony ship and begins strip minning it, the swarm ships use a system of pros and cons to decide if it should mine something and the colony ship manages to fight them off enough to warrant the decision to abandon this "asteroid" as it's too hazardous, but not before disabling the colony ship permamently. something like that.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by safemode »

Then you can advance the story by having survivors of the colony ship explore and then possibly inhabit the system the mine is located in, co-existing or perhaps in constant conflict with the automated base. Not possessing the weaponry to destroy it, but possessing the ingenuity to avoid being lunch.

Perhaps have the company back home figure out this has occurred but hide the fact from the public for legal and PR reasons. Perhaps the survivors piggy-backed information on one of the shipments of material back home and the company discovered it and swept it under the rug.

These peolpe may quickly adapt to life with this mining complex, perhaps eventually using it to their advantage. Distrupting operations and honing an almost uncanny mechanical ability among their descendants.

Your main character could then be a hired investigator hired by the mining company to see why this particular complex stopped sending material. You are hired rather than some internal investigation because you wouldn't be missed if the company decides to disappear you after you report your findings. Regardless, you are sent out to see what happened only to discover this mechanical civilization of humans and robots inhabiting a large asteroid belt around some nearby star. They'd become isolationist, having long believed that the rest of humanity had left them to die. Exposure to radiation and zero gravity has made them mostly completely dependent on the robots around them. While lacking the technology for replacing body parts with machines all android like, they are able to make various cybernetic enhancements to deformed body parts and the like.

A good time frame from genesis to this point where we meet the colony could be 200 years.

The whole mission could turn from investigatory to whistle blower but the twist would be you unknowingly allow the colony to access FTL technology, and in doing so, give them the vehicle they needed to enact their revenge of the rest of humanity. Setting the stage for an even larger but more familiar war plot.


edit: anyways, that's where i would go with it. You got most of your story already written as far as i can tell. so it seems like it's too late to start considering if certain aspects are believable or realistic or not ...as some may require serious rewrites to central plot devices.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
snow_Cat
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 349
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 am
Location: /stray/
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by snow_Cat »

^- - ^ Good points.

My case for a sending an interstellar supership (as opposed to an interstellar swarm) is that the efficiencies of larger entities (built on fractal or gradient process models) are greater, and therefore at a certain point it makes more economic sense to deploy a super-massive vehicle, rather than a smaller one. And given the previous development of super-massive multi-generational colony ships it makes sense that a supermassive ship would be likely to reach its destination without calamity.

In this model, the Nemisis is loaded with equipment and sent to a system where it deploys this equipment (intersystem self-reproducing swarm) which then attacks what is trapped in the Lagrangian points, and smaller planettory bodies and then loads up the main ship with the 'cream' and sends it back; possibly constructing another vehicle built on the same template if materials permit.

The Communications/Command module was intended to take control of the ship once it is in a system (either as a result of the target system being occupied or a change in address over the 50+ years a return trip takes). The C/C module is not active until the deceleration/approach to a system begins in which case it overrides other decision making systems.


The idea of a self-replicating ship attacking strange ships has been done before (Sylandro Probe, Star Control II), and there are too many ovbious safegards (ie: check for radio emissions, watch for acceleration, etc.) for it to be plausible. While, an argument could be made for an error in reproduction or sabotage, I haven't a scenario in which these vunerabilities might have escaped undetected as a system with constant opportunity to spontaneously change would be far more carefully scrutinized than a fixed one.

An automated mining base that runs ramshod over humans, and swpet quietly under the carpet for PR reasons, was seen in Little White Mouse; although nearly everbody dies a horiffic death about 60 years before the protagonist finds herself stranded there, and after unsucessfully fighting with the base's AI to send messages, and finding disrupting production insufficent to cause the AI to send a message to the owners; shuts down the base (then the author uses time travel to keep the main character isolated anyways...).


I'd intended that the player eventually does (accidently) grant not only FTL but a working jump gate to an isolated and bitter splinter from the colony; however one hornets nest (albeit the size of a solar system) will largely go unnoticed by the rest of the universe. (Side plot not main story; I'm certain someone has that planned already.)

I hadn't considered that this splinter might have encountered active mining; but the time frame seems reasonible.


I was thinkign that Rene's company would eventually hire the player to carry specailized equipment. Eventually the player is forced into a dead-end system with another (yet to be decided upon) McGuffin and Rene is forced to use the jumpgate he's been manipulating to get it (and the player) back; This forcess Rene to start collecting gates again.

His manical laugher (and decision to break away from the Expidition) comes from the idea that one can't just make a gate appear somewhere convenient; that would change everything.

"Serious rewrites to central plot devices" are what I am trying to get out of the way now, because if I don't consider whether they are believable or realistic now, someone else will later when it could be an embarassment.
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by safemode »

If you're set on the supermassive ship, I would suggest that the bulk of the ship is converted into a mining base to process material once the destination is reached. Material is extracted at various surrounding locations by smaller mining ships. Then we shoot material back to home in small chunks, providing a steady ongoing stream of material for the corporation without the huge delay in time. We can start sending material back soon after first arriving, rather than having to secure all the possible material we can hold first and then returning and then having to go back out again for more.

it would make sense that at this time, safeguards are fairly minimal in terms of how to react to other ships, as deep space like where the mining base is to be sent is fairly devoid of any other ships and would be devoid of any in the forseeable future (since we are pre-ftl here).

AI on the base would be very minimal, mostly concerned with securing and processing the raw materials to function and to send back to home in the most efficient way possible. One might expect the mining ships to have some amount of ai involved with not mining your fellow mining ships or other ships run by the corporation and such, but the colony ship would be launched a decent amount of time after and completely independent of the mining baseship.

Not that we need to say that the mining base directly attacks the colony ship. Perhaps operations by the mining base produce unforseen debris that becomes unavoidable and takes out the colony ship's communications and power. Afterwards, the mining ships detect the colony ship and with it having no power or communications, sees it as a mineral rich asteroid and begins mining it. it's here that the survivors find a way to escape the dead colony ship and make their way to the mining baseship. Setting up what would become their future colony.

In this scenario, i dont see the need for a command module, as the bulky super ship is stationary once it enters the system, and doesn't need to be taxied around. It basically becomes a huge processing factory on a massive city size scale. Initially inhospitable to humans, the colonists could convert it to something people can live in. Basically leading to an increasing connection with the machines around them and a resentment of those who have left them out in space. It my mind, the entire colony would have a deeply routed hatred of the rest of humanity. And radiation and such hazards would have caused them to be not just idealistically separate from humanity, but physically different. Combining machines to their body (though probably not surgically) to better adapt to their environment. And while the whole idea of revenge seems played out, I think they could be used as a catalyst to start one of the major wars taking place at the time of VS or just prior.

far before FTL travel: Mining superships launched to various systems around Sol system, which has been heavily mined or too crowded industrially to make much profit. Only one company backs the venture which is thought as too risky and expensive.
40-50 years after launch : First shipments from interstellar mines come in. The corporation quickly becomes one of the richest and powerful.
80 years after launch : Availability of all types of raw materials leads to an explosion of industrial activity and advancement in tech. Colony ships are built and launched to various candidate systems.

130 years after launch: Colony ship Expedition stops making daily updates to home base. No further contact is made. while not unheard of, this is still a major disaster and a rescue ship is supposedly sent, though the company in charge of this the mega corporation spawned by the first insterstellar mining program.

(at the mine 10 years prior to home base failing to recieve status updates) Mining operations on some large asteroids in the outer regions of the system result in an accidental shattering of the asteroid, sending debris in all directions. The colony ship emergency retro-thrusters to attempt to reduce the impact force of what is already an unavoidable collision many thousands of km's ahead. Unfortunately it's only able to keep the habitation section of the ship from direct impact, the reactor is clipped and completely disabled. The ship enters a tumble at a relatively low velocity, the nearby star's gravity pulling it into an orbit, and into the system. It's months later after living off reserve power that mining ships discover the colony ship (devoid of any meaningful power and having no communications) and start mining it, providing an escape vector for the surviving colonists, which measure in the thousands. (though thousands died too)

couple years after colonists reach the supership mining base: They have explored and figured out many of the systems and functions of the base. Only a fraction is hospitable, and many people are still getting sick from radiation. They create a message and send it along with the cargo of one of the mining shipments back to Sol system.

back in sol system : the colony ship's home base loses contact and sends request for a rescue effort. The company though is already aware of the colony as they just recieved a message in a shipment they just retrieved. The rescue effort is faked and the whole thing is swept under the rug. It's reported as a total loss .

Now that idea may be done and played out, but it's not the main story as far as your story goes, this would just be the general impetus that puts the plot in motion.

Now back on earth, FTL has been discovered/invented and it's been 3-4 hundred years since the mining base went active and at least 200+ years since the colony was marooned there.


It's just one of many mining bases in uninhabited and uninteresting systems devoid of jump points ( so it's not traveled by anyone). For whatever reason you come up with, you're sent to this system (possibly by jumping to a nearby system and trekking it sublight for a couple weeks)

You have no friends out here. No friendly bases to land at to buy ammo from or buy/sell goods. Now, there is a tiny minority of colonists who dont see you as a representative of a people they would like to murder in the face, and the McGuffins you meet could be these people helping you along in your journey from discovering the colony, to finding out how they were betrayed by the corporation to trying to escape with your life as they try to kill you.

Unfortunately, in your time there, you get captured, but a sympathizer breaks you out. Though, during your capture they found your FTL drive and began replicating it, being extremely handy with machines and technology, this happened extremely fast.

You make it out (assuming you complete the missions) but soon after you hear of attacks in the nearby system by an unknown mechanical deformed people. You have released your info to the public, but the effect is not as you intended. The fundamentalist religious factions take the issue as kindling in their own agendas to undermine the corporate industrial heart of humanity in Sol sector and surrounding newly colonized worlds. Now with the attacks escalating, they blame Confed and war breaks out. The mechanical faction's revenge is all but eclipsed by the scale of the war between the fundamentalist factions and the central confed faction.

This could then begin the splinterizaton of humanity in the VS universe. The war ends badly for all. But it's short. Many corporations are whiped out, colonies abandoned, mining outposts forgotten. A ripe setting for privateering.

(end rant)


The reason i keep coming back to a plot setup like this is because VS is a space game. A lot of the meat of the story you originally told takes place not in space but basically behind closed doors and in courts, or before the events the player gets involved in even occur. While I'm sure you can make that work, we might as well try and figure out a way to make the events of this seemingly unmarked moment in history lead into one of the many wars that occur in the vicinity of VS's timeframe.

Though, the one aspect of your plot that may not jive with canon at all is the idea of "gates". In VS, wormholes are natural phenomena that can't be manipulated, and never occur out in the middle of nowhere. They always exist near some other large body or between them. It's not explained why, it just is.

While not every system has a wormhole, every wormhole exists within a system. This likely has something to do with the creation of the systems but in VS land nobody knows.

So dark space stuff seems a bit of a stretch. Also, searching for ships that "happen to get near" a wormhole seems like needle and a haystack stuff, nobody would fund that or waste their time.

Rather than the end game be that nobody wins, it should lead into and set the stage for something even bigger... always lead into something else. This is an open ended game, why paint yourself into a situation where the player goes "ok, that was all for nothing"... even if there are no missions to take over from there on, the rest of the game should feel like the aftermath and what went on should have some lasting effect on the game. Though ideally, we would have more than 1 campaign and this campaign would lead into another and so on. I'd like to see the whole conflict between the lost colony ship and survivors lead to a fractioning of humanity even more than what existed and leading to all out war.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
snow_Cat
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 349
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 am
Location: /stray/
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by snow_Cat »

You raise many valid points, and I am now re-reading everythign on the 'everything you should have read' list, and looking for areas where I can integrate this with the main back-story.


There is precident for manipulating wormholes*/jumps and I've come up with a model that fits the observations. I'll need time to properly search the forums to see that what I'm describing does not conflict or re-ignite controversy.

Also, my model is incompatible with what I am proposing for back-story in that it describes dark-space jumps as only being possible between locations in darkspace w/ a great deal more energy than between systems or from deep within a gravitywell (IE: within the event horizion of a black hole.), I'll rework that.

*I'll use wormwhohles- worm howl- worm ... jumps.
I'll use jumps from this post onward.


Generations search and stewardship for a 'lost' pre-FTL colony has been done before in the 2001 Nights series in which (in one subplot) the 'family' who sold their 'genetic offspring' to the colonization project does exactly this. The colony became an obsession for this family when they learned that the colony ship/robot before it enters the system would automatically 'make' the colonists, raise them, and should it fail to find a suitable world to land them on (when they were in their late teens), it would 'let them extinguish' somewhere in space. Horrified by the implications and the sudden introduction of FTL this obsession becomes a quest, and over generations their mission becomes a quest, a corporation, a foundation, then it bankrupts itself to ensure a suitable world to land on, and nearly fails (due to human intervention) at the last possible minute.

I am trying to subvert that by making Erin the end result of a similar dynasty; that having been instrumental in the initial launch of the colony ship became obsessed with "What if they are still alive?". Sympathisers, the families of victims, and RMC (as it descends into bankrupsy) fund the initial expidition. This first expidition rescue of a small fraction of the colonists from the debris field who were not among those carried away by engines.
Witnesses to the rescue and the horrors conlonists endured spur more symphasisers and a second expidition, which promptly fails. However through brokering technologies and discoveries made in the attempt the expition eventually becomes the Expidition, a dynasty with the mandate to (first) the pursuit of this colony, and (second) to the aid of the Forsaken, for however many generations it takes.


The Expidition is the product of these events that the player encounters.


However, I need to fix these issues now, before I go further.

And thankyou for your scrutiny.
safemode
Developer
Developer
Posts: 2150
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:17 am
Location: Pennsylvania
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by safemode »

In the main story as it was written long ago, wormholes do end up being revealed as artificial ...but on a scale of tech far far far beyond anything in the VS era. It's best to just think of them as natural phenomena for now.

It may be more advantageous to your story if instead of playing with wormholes, they are testing the forerunners to SPEC technology. Perhaps being too unstable, these prototypes had features similar to spec but had many safety drawbacks and/or physical limitations but perhaps offered a feature not available to SPEC.

If you go that route, you dont have any canon conflicts, as you can explain why we dont see this tech in use now in VS (post FTL) is that it was deemed far too dangerous and unusable / not practical.

Possibly also being a huge financial snafu for the corporation funding the research, further adding to the desperate nature of needing to cover up failures and/or fake success.
Ed Sweetman endorses this message.
snow_Cat
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 349
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 am
Location: /stray/
Contact:

Re: Update, RE: a clear example.

Post by snow_Cat »

^ - -~ Just as well; there's a glaring mathematical flaw in my model of wormhole/jump propagation that I've been racking my brain with anyways.
Post Reply