Mule

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Re: Mule

Post by klauss »

safemode wrote:Actually, I'm not so sure this is true that VS has atmospheric like flight. The models appear that way, sure, but the actual in-game dynamics are very much more realistic than their models convey.

We have up and down and left and right only thrusters. These are triggered automatically with the forward thrusters when you are using your joystick.
Way back I had coded input bindings for firing them manually. It was really cool to engage "inertial mode" and drive your ship like that. And really usefull when docking in tight places.

And it was well received.

So realistic flight isn't frowned upon in VS unless you completely remove the "easy" way, which most expect. The hard way is just too hard to be the default way.

I bet it would be used more by players if it was taught in the tutorial... (and bound by default to sensible keys/controllers).
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Re: Mule

Post by klauss »

safemode wrote:I'm wondering if cones are really necessary for space thrusters.
Exposed (visible) or not, they are required. Most real designs I've seen have them, because it's what converts raw energy (either heat or whatever) into thrust. Ion engines have a magnetic cone (the magnetic field shapes the exhaust as a physical cone would in a chemical thruster), and some lack a visible cone, but many do have them.

Like here:

Image

The magnetic coil pushes the ionized gas as a cone would. Only more efficiently. Since the trajectory of the gas is predictable, other designs I've seen also include a conic-like frame that acts as cathode and keeps the exhaust electrically neutral (otherwise the spacecraft would become negatively charged).

Image

So I guess a cone wouldn't be wrong in either kind of thruster.
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Re: Mule

Post by pheonixstorm »

While looking for possible future propulsion systems I came across something interesting. Did anyone ever hear or the Ford Nucleon? Its a nice litle nuclear powered car designed in the 50's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon. My initial googling was for a nuclear rocket motor I had seen long ago mentioned in a book series ( the modern science edition of a encyclopedia I guess you could call it) called "growing up with science". Anyway, I came across a few theoretical design for other fission/fusion propulsion techs as well as good old favorites such as ion drives and ramscoops

It seems there are a lot of new research being done on anti-matter drives though the problem is still creating and storing enough antimatter or antiprotons. In most concept art yes there always seems to be a thrust cone of some type but does there really have to be a visible cone on the ship? You would easily place a casing around the main thruster for armor plating (warships) or for creating some type of vector thrust system. During some of the early ion drive tersting I have seen a cone thruster was not used in concept or lab testing. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster for a NASA lab test screenie.

So, cone thrusters are optional realisticly depending on propulsion system, but aestheitcly pleasing in game terms, yes?
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Re: Mule

Post by nphillips »

pheonixstorm wrote:It seems there are a lot of new research being done on anti-matter drives though the problem is still creating and storing enough antimatter or antiprotons. In most concept art yes there always seems to be a thrust cone of some type but does there really have to be a visible cone on the ship? You would easily place a casing around the main thruster for armor plating (warships) or for creating some type of vector thrust system. During some of the early ion drive tersting I have seen a cone thruster was not used in concept or lab testing. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster for a NASA lab test screenie.
Doesn't have to be visible...see my prior renders. The trouble is the realistic size of the thrusters. The tiny thrusters I added simply wouldn't be enough to move the ship with any reasonable acceleration. On my later renders, you see the size of the thrusters needed in order to accomplish anything remotely useful (from a gameplay standpoint).

FYI, ion thrusters are not powerful enough to accomplish what we're looking for here. Traditional combustion thrusters are most likely the best option. After that, VASIMR.
So, cone thrusters are optional realisticly depending on propulsion system, but aestheitcly pleasing in game terms, yes?
By my definition (and chuck's), they're required, based on the propulsion system. Period. Whether that cone is actually VISIBLE is irrelevant. That's the aesthetic part. For each design, should the cone be exposed or enclosed?
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Re: Mule

Post by chuck_starchaser »

nphillips wrote:
So, cone thrusters are optional realisticly depending on propulsion system, but aestheitcly pleasing in game terms, yes?
By my definition (and chuck's), they're required, based on the propulsion system. Period. Whether that cone is actually VISIBLE is irrelevant.
Well said. Ion drives don't cut the mustard, so the only real references we have are chemical and vasimr thrusters, and they both have parabolic looking cones. The vasimr's cones have coils around them. The chemical cones have cooling pipes around them, and so they look pretty similar not only in general shape but even at a first level of details. But if somebody makes thrusters that model ion engines accurately I'm not going to complain; but I'm going to bitch at people who just put conical cones pointing back and without any details, making ships look like Buck Rogers comics.
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Re: Mule

Post by pheonixstorm »

I don't know about the comics.. but I enjoyed watching the show growing up!

As for ion thrust, if the wiki page here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster is correct on experimental drives then vasimr isn't as fast as the next gen thrusters. The slowest of which has almost 3x the thrust if i'm reading this correctly. Its an intersting read, better than sci-fi warp or hyper drives.

*EDIT* I really do need to stop posting before bed... my spelling has gone to the dogs at 5 in the morning....
Last edited by pheonixstorm on Wed Feb 03, 2010 9:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Mule

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Wikipedia just keeps getting better, Thanks.

EDIT:
I read before that an ESA experiment with a 4-grid ion had surpassed vasimr, but I'm not
sure; the vasimr's main virtue is its "gear-shifting": you can sacrifice efficiency to get
much higher thrust. The comparison is probably at the high gear setting.
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Re: Mule

Post by nphillips »

Thanks for the link, pheonix.

It looks like those MPDTs would be very usable for the RCS thrusters. Heck, they're good for the main propulsion. Even the info "against" using them (per wikipedia, anyway) is their electrical consumption...but with everything else our ships are packing, 7 megawatts is pocket change.

And the size ratio, I'm assuming, is that the MPDTs are a little smaller than the RCS thrusters on the space shuttle...so my 1.5-2m openings that I originally posted might just work.

I've been trying to come up with a design for the thrusters that doesn't look horrible stuck onto the side of the Mule, but nothing looks right to me. I keep going back to that initial design, and thinking it just feels right (from an aesthetic view)
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Re: Mule

Post by Neskiairti »

the VASMIR ion engine looks pretty good.. though it still is low thrust for short maneuvering of a vehicle.. its shine really is for its high top speed and low fuel expenditure.

but in either case, roll with the numbers, increase the efficiency from 60% to 98% and increase the specific impulse quite a bit, and you have a nice sci-fi thruster.
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Re: Mule

Post by nphillips »

Neskiairti wrote:the VASMIR ion engine looks pretty good.. though it still is low thrust for short maneuvering of a vehicle.. its shine really is for its high top speed and low fuel expenditure.
Just being pedantic -- the VASIMR is a plasma thruster. But the rest of your info is dead on. The VASIMIR is a fairly efficient long-term thruster.
but in either case, roll with the numbers, increase the efficiency from 60% to 98% and increase the specific impulse quite a bit, and you have a nice sci-fi thruster.
I have a hard time swallowing a 98% efficient anything. But perhaps 70-75% efficiency, and a higher specific impulse...I think we could all agree on that :)
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Re: Mule

Post by klauss »

nphillips wrote:
Neskiairti wrote:the VASMIR ion engine looks pretty good.. though it still is low thrust for short maneuvering of a vehicle.. its shine really is for its high top speed and low fuel expenditure.
Just being pedantic -- the VASIMR is a plasma thruster. But the rest of your info is dead on. The VASIMIR is a fairly efficient long-term thruster.
Forgive my ignorance... is there a difference between ion engine and plasma thruster?
(other than the words used)
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Re: Mule

Post by nphillips »

klauss wrote:Forgive my ignorance... is there a difference between ion engine and plasma thruster?
(other than the words used)
Eeh, sort of....plasma thrusters are a subset of ions.

I think the general idea around here is that "ion thrusters" refer to the wide range of ions, but plasma thrusters are referring specifically to the electrodeless variants which have the ability to throttle the reaction.

Technically, yes, plasmas are ion engines. But for our discussions, I think we've always counted them as a slightly different animal.
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Re: Mule

Post by chuck_starchaser »

klauss wrote:
nphillips wrote:
Neskiairti wrote:the VASMIR ion engine looks pretty good.. though it still is low thrust for short maneuvering of a vehicle.. its shine really is for its high top speed and low fuel expenditure.
Just being pedantic -- the VASIMR is a plasma thruster. But the rest of your info is dead on. The VASIMIR is a fairly efficient long-term thruster.
Forgive my ignorance... is there a difference between ion engine and plasma thruster?
(other than the words used)
Typically in an ion engine you push ions of one polarity (usually positive) charge, typically by using high dc voltage grids, but some using magnetic tricks as well. One of their biggest problems is electrode corrosion.
Plasma thrusters are typically electrode-less, and use AC induction, typically mega-hertz, using internal antennas, to ionize gas and turn it into plasma. In a vasimr, this plasma is held in a toroidal region magnetically and heated to millions of degrees. The choke coil that closes this toroidal region is the throttle: the more you weaken the field, the more plasma escapes out the back, but the less the energy per unit of mass, and therefore efficiency. But anyhow, what comes out the back of a plasma engine is plasma (of mixed ionization), as opposed to e.g. only positive ions.
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Re: Mule

Post by safemode »

Trying to stick too closely to conventional tech is going to lead to a couple problems. 1. How do you extrapolate the innovation that is certainly going to occur as new materials are discovered to suit various purposes and manufacturing leads to ever smaller and more efficient versions ? In 50 years we've gone from building size computers to cell phones with many many thousands of times the processing power as those that fit in tiny pockets. We've gone in roughly the same time from combustion engines that are bulky and lung chokingly innefficient to small diesel motors that can get >100mpg and barely produce any pollution at all. To use strictly conventional tech as a basis for VS, you have to completely understand the reasoning behind material choice and size and what exactly prohibits one from making certain changes to the current design. Many things are cost prohibitive, so then we can ignore that and ask what would we use if money was not an issue? Some are manufacturing prohibitive, so we can say in 1000 years that's not an issue so what can we do then? Then there is material choice due to safety concerns or simply complexity concerns, which we can also choose to ignore and say that those things are taken care of a thousand years from now. etc etc.

The other problem is that you're gonna put a lot of effort in making propulsion at sublight very realistic, but then what? Ignore shields, ftl, inertial effects on the pilot and passengers ? Which brings to bear the question of if we are making provisions for realistic sublight propulsion (at least modelled anyway) then where on the model is the FTL engine? Where are the shield emitters? These things would likely have an external component ... What about the SPEC engine?

Out of all of those, i think a shield emitter would be the most necessary externally modelled component. Then maybe down the road, damage routines can take into account the location of these components on the ship and apply damage to those subsystems particularly. Akin to introducing the headshot to the game rather than just generic shooting.
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Re: Mule

Post by klauss »

If you want to brainstorm on that or even start implementing some of that stuff, why not start a thread about the damage model?

That's another part of VS that needs review. Right now, a unit is just a collection of stats, but there's no distinction between subsystems and upgrades - upgrades only modify the stats, so your shield emitter can't be hit because the game knows nothing about "shield emitters", it only knows that your ship has a shield strength of 3000 and recharge rate of 100/s.

In essence, the damage model needs a review just like the AI needs one. The damage model is also as messy as AI, only not that much, and full of bugs that can't be easily fixed because of convoluted code and operation.

Having a damage model that can be plugged in VS (ie, with a function that derives the stats the physics and AI subsystems need to function) yet easily maintained and tweaked would be a really productive project.

I had ideas on this subject too. Ever played MechWarrior? Well, you're talking about "criticals". They're an elegant way of modelling complex systems that can be damaged. In MW, a subsystem is mapped to a set of criticals (sometimes one, sometimes many), with a physical location, and a hit to those criticals damages the subsystem. I believe something like that would be possible to implement within VS without changing overly much code.
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Re: Mule

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Klauss, I'm not sure I'd the give damage model too high a priority. Thing is, once you start taking damage you're as good as dead, anyways. Complex damage modeling will simply end your suffering sooner. Unless we're talking about applying damage to AI's; I don't think they presently suffer any consequences to damage.
safemode wrote:Trying to stick too closely to conventional tech is going to lead to a couple problems. 1. How do you extrapolate the innovation that is certainly going to occur as new materials are discovered to suit various purposes and manufacturing leads to ever smaller and more efficient versions ? In 50 years we've gone from building size computers to cell phones with many many thousands of times the processing power as those that fit in tiny pockets. We've gone in roughly the same time from combustion engines that are bulky and lung chokingly innefficient to small diesel motors that can get >100mpg and barely produce any pollution at all. To use strictly conventional tech as a basis for VS, you have to completely understand the reasoning behind material choice and size and what exactly prohibits one from making certain changes to the current design. Many things are cost prohibitive, so then we can ignore that and ask what would we use if money was not an issue? Some are manufacturing prohibitive, so we can say in 1000 years that's not an issue so what can we do then? Then there is material choice due to safety concerns or simply complexity concerns, which we can also choose to ignore and say that those things are taken care of a thousand years from now. etc etc.
Well, the efficiency gains seen in the evolution of internal combustion engines are not all due to some continuous curve in technological achievement and progress. Efficiency was the pits back in Ford T days because oil was cheap and the rush was about being first to market. We are AT the "peak oil" point that the prophets foretold for decades, now. It was this oil scarcity curve that led to the engine efficiency curve; not "technological progress". And I remember that for nearly two decades there was NO evolution or improvement whatsoever in US cars, with the exception of GM's all electric car, forgot the name, which was a total hit, yet the company called them back in and scuttled them. They were only pretending to be trying to make better cars, but would not dare go against the wishes of big oil. What I'm trying to say is this technological progress concept is a make believe, just like intel's "moore's law", which is a marketing plan, not a law; --they could easily jump the geometry shrinks a lot faster, and by power-of-two scalings, if they wanted to.
Ion engines and plasma engines are being researched by top research agencies around the world, and with every kind of optimization in mind. The result of all this research won't be as far from its eventual evolution as the Ford T's engine was from some eventual, ultimate internal combustion engine evolution. Imagine gas had been $40/gallon and the T's engine had been designed as a cooperation between NASA and DARPA.
In any case, my position, artistically speaking, is that if we can't foretell how the vasimr will change, then we don't.
Simple as that.
We've got real life devices that are arguably the predecessors of future thrusters, and the best examples we have, so let's do them exactly like what they look like. Aesthetically you can't go wrong this way. But when people get too fancy they start making all kinds of weird looking stuff and non-sense.
The other problem
"Other problem"? There was no first.
is that you're gonna put a lot of effort in making propulsion at sublight very realistic, but then what? Ignore shields, ftl, inertial effects on the pilot and passengers ? Which brings to bear the question of if we are making provisions for realistic sublight propulsion (at least modelled anyway) then where on the model is the FTL engine? Where are the shield emitters? These things would likely have an external component ... What about the SPEC engine?
What about it? The spec engine was introduced long after tons of models were already in-game, so we can assume it is hidden inside the ship. Same with the jump drive.
As for FTL in general, my view is that spec works by reducing the inertial mass of the ship; as the mass becomes less, the speed increases, to maintain momentum constant. But I know this is your pet arguing subject, and I don't want to get into a debilitating debate, so, whatever..; you asked... ((IOW, IMO, SPEC is NOT an "engine".))
Out of all of those, i think a shield emitter would be the most necessary externally modelled component. Then maybe down the road, damage routines can take into account the location of these components on the ship and apply damage to those subsystems particularly. Akin to introducing the headshot to the game rather than just generic shooting.
Besides what Klauss said, we'd have to brainstorm about how shields work, what they do, and how they are produced; otherwise we will have to throw an egg-flipping spatula into a microwave, then set it on fire, then have a truck roll over it, then model what's left and say to all artists "this is what a shield emitter looks like"... And we'll probably have to break with canon, as JackS was firm on shields being "fields that bend space", whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean... I think our information minister watched too much StarTrek in his days.
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Re: Mule

Post by Turbo »

chuck_starchaser wrote: otherwise we will have to throw an egg-flipping spatula into a microwave, then set it on fire, then have a truck roll over it, then model what's left and say to all artists "this is what a shield emitter looks like"...
In XCOM 3, the personal disruptor shield did look like a large bulky spatula. :shock: But your point is a good one.

I'd be comfortable with visible retro and maneuvering thrusters that were small versions of whatever the main propulsion thruster looks like - nozzles for humans and nothing visible for the others. And if you're going to have nozzles, the Robotech-style thrust-vector fins on the main thrusters seem plausible -- the newest combat jets today use them.
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Re: Mule

Post by chuck_starchaser »

The problem with that kind of thrust vectoring is that exhaust velocities from ion and plasma engines are higher the higher their efficiency, typically pretty close to the speed of light. A fin trying to deflect that would be atomized in no time. Magnetic vectoring would be more realistic for ion engines; but would use HUGE magnetic intensities, whereas it is pretty easy --or at least much easier-- to turn the thruster itself. The same applies, to a lesser degree, to chemical engines in space, where getting rid of excess heat is so difficult. A fin would heat up pretty quickly and melt.
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Re: Mule

Post by klauss »

chuck_starchaser wrote:Klauss, I'm not sure I'd the give damage model too high a priority. Thing is, once you start taking damage you're as good as dead, anyways. Complex damage modeling will simply end your suffering sooner. Unless we're talking about applying damage to AI's; I don't think they presently suffer any consequences to damage.
Not at all. In fact, there are more nonvital parts in a ship than vital ones. If your hull is pounded, but a non-load-bearing part of the hull, then you can go on fighting. A lot of the structure in a ship would be to make room for cargo, to separate subsystems that have to stay apart, and things like that. Not really important stuff.

Modelling critical locations helps model that.

Furthermore, modelling critical locations would also help in getting more appealing graphical representations of damage. Blow up a thruster and an explosion could be painted on its location. Blow up a capacitor and electrical arcs could light up the ship as they suddenly discharge (causing collateral damage in the process). Blow up a noncritical section and simple debris would go floating around. Damage a fuel tank and leaking gasses could be rendered. Etc, etc...
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Re: Mule

Post by pheonixstorm »

That would make for some very nice eye candy but at std visual ranges, plus the fast paced nature of a lot of the fights I don't see people able to enjoy it. Unless you destroy the cockpit or bridge of the targeted ship. Such detail to damage would probably best fit a derilict you are trying to salvage. ARE there any derilicts modeled in the game anyway?
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Re: Mule

Post by nphillips »

I think for smaller scale ships, the traditional "fade in" damage texture is fine. But there should still be the option to target subunits...just illustrate different hits with different particle effects.

Where this sort of damage modeling pays off (visually) is on cap ships and stations. After all, blowing up a fighter is an "easy" task. Cap ships should be a huge threat, but quite hard to destroy...so you blow up their guns, or bridge (which should cripple it, but not render it dead in the water; I can't believe that a cap ship wouldn't have redundant systems controls)
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Re: Mule

Post by chuck_starchaser »

klauss wrote:
chuck_starchaser wrote:Klauss, I'm not sure I'd the give damage model too high a priority. Thing is, once you start taking damage you're as good as dead, anyways. Complex damage modeling will simply end your suffering sooner. Unless we're talking about applying damage to AI's; I don't think they presently suffer any consequences to damage.
Not at all.
I guess from the context "not at all" means in general; for a moment I thought it meant that indeed AI's don't presently suffer damage consequences; --which I'm still pretty sure is the case.
In fact, there are more nonvital parts in a ship than vital ones. If your hull is pounded, but a non-load-bearing part of the hull, then you can go on fighting. A lot of the structure in a ship would be to make room for cargo, to separate subsystems that have to stay apart, and things like that. Not really important stuff.
True, but then we have to have either a graphical map of a ship's vital parts that artists would have to produce, or assemble ships out of countless sub-units... Or did you have some new idea in mind how to tackle all this?
Modelling critical locations helps model that.

Furthermore, modelling critical locations would also help in getting more appealing graphical representations of damage. Blow up a thruster and an explosion could be painted on its location. Blow up a capacitor and electrical arcs could light up the ship as they suddenly discharge (causing collateral damage in the process). Blow up a noncritical section and simple debris would go floating around. Damage a fuel tank and leaking gasses could be rendered. Etc, etc...
This would be wonderful when fighting cap-ships, specially; then we could have long, fleet against fleet battles as depicted in the WC novels by Forstchen. I'm still not sure I'd complicate fighters with complex damage models, though; and above all, if damage consequences apply to the player, they should apply to ai's just as well; otherwise it's totally unfair.
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Re: Mule

Post by klauss »

chuck_starchaser wrote:
klauss wrote:
chuck_starchaser wrote:Klauss, I'm not sure I'd the give damage model too high a priority. Thing is, once you start taking damage you're as good as dead, anyways. Complex damage modeling will simply end your suffering sooner. Unless we're talking about applying damage to AI's; I don't think they presently suffer any consequences to damage.
Not at all.
I guess from the context "not at all" means in general; for a moment I thought it meant that indeed AI's don't presently suffer damage consequences; --which I'm still pretty sure is the case.
I'm pretty sure it's the case too. I've never seen any "if damaged anything do anything" in AI code. They only run away when they get pounded too hard.
chuck_starchaser wrote:
In fact, there are more nonvital parts in a ship than vital ones. If your hull is pounded, but a non-load-bearing part of the hull, then you can go on fighting. A lot of the structure in a ship would be to make room for cargo, to separate subsystems that have to stay apart, and things like that. Not really important stuff.
True, but then we have to have either a graphical map of a ship's vital parts that artists would have to produce, or assemble ships out of countless sub-units... Or did you have some new idea in mind how to tackle all this?
I have some ideas.
All we need are spheres (or boxes) denoting the location of criticals and hull sections.
First, you have a series of boxes that encompass hull sections - the engine creates a graph of connected hull sections to know which section connects with which, but all the designer does is delimit the sections. This is the wing. This is the cockpit. Etc...
Then there's a series of other boxes that place the critical sections, this is the engine, this is the cockpit, this is capacitor, this is the shield emitter, etc...

The engine assigns thus criticals to hull sections. When a section is hit, damage applies to that section alone. When a critical is hit, the associated system gets degraded. When a hull section looses structural damage, the graph lets the engine analyze which other sections would "split apart" - I don't think we can show splitting yet, but the damage system could account for it, so if a wing gets pounded too hard, wingtip hardpoints and their weapons get destroyed as well.

Really simple. I don't think it would impact performance, and best of all, a default graph could be created simply by using the engine exhausts and the mountpoints so that human intervention is only needed to enhance the automatically generated description.
chuck_starchaser wrote:
Modelling critical locations helps model that.

Furthermore, modelling critical locations would also help in getting more appealing graphical representations of damage. Blow up a thruster and an explosion could be painted on its location. Blow up a capacitor and electrical arcs could light up the ship as they suddenly discharge (causing collateral damage in the process). Blow up a noncritical section and simple debris would go floating around. Damage a fuel tank and leaking gasses could be rendered. Etc, etc...
This would be wonderful when fighting cap-ships, specially; then we could have long, fleet against fleet battles as depicted in the WC novels by Forstchen. I'm still not sure I'd complicate fighters with complex damage models, though; and above all, if damage consequences apply to the player, they should apply to ai's just as well; otherwise it's totally unfair.
Yep... I agree. It would be unfair.
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Re: Mule

Post by Neskiairti »

nphillips wrote:I have a hard time swallowing a 98% efficient anything. But perhaps 70-75% efficiency, and a higher specific impulse...I think we could all agree on that :)
well the VASMIR claims up to 65% efficiency.. :P with some magical sci-fi technobabble we can reasonably (read believably) increase that efficiency. Most of the efficiency lost is through heat anyway. Some special material that produces far far less heat than copper wiring for instance.. would increase that quite a bit.
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Re: Mule

Post by klauss »

Neskiairti wrote:
nphillips wrote:I have a hard time swallowing a 98% efficient anything. But perhaps 70-75% efficiency, and a higher specific impulse...I think we could all agree on that :)
well the VASMIR claims up to 65% efficiency.. :P with some magical sci-fi technobabble we can reasonably (read believably) increase that efficiency. Most of the efficiency lost is through heat anyway. Some special material that produces far far less heat than copper wiring for instance.. would increase that quite a bit.
They already claim they got 98% efficiency in one of the steps (the helicon antenna I think), so 95%+ efficiency overall in a thousand years doesn't seem stretching it too far.
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