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.