FTL Communications

[GAlex]

ok ok!

I'll explain my point of view in brief.

let's rip apart exhotic teories and suppose that for insystem comms we have the old good radio-waves (c-fast), and for in-galaxy comms we have a sort of medieval internet with drones jumping trough gates, hub to hub, transferring messages (do they ride a space horse?).

well, let's say I'm flying my ship in the proximity of earth. noone that is light-mins away from me (mars or venus) can trace my position and route, since transponders emits signals that are delayed by distance, and when someone receives that, i'll be somewhere else. and this is bad, 'cause I can fire my SPEC drive that IS capable of FTL (i've seen speed multiplier of 3000000) travel, and reach a poin of space BEFORE my transponder signals.

for me, this is unacceptable by gameplay standards, as is unacceptable FTL Travel (so bring down SPEC multiplier).

BUT if we find some sort of FTL comm system, it won't affect gameplay at all. more, how can I intercept a ship in space (to achieve a mission for example) without FTL transponders? I simply can't.

once, piracy could be run by sailing the trade routes on a bidimensional surface (the seas), and the trade routes was quite conventional, but space is vast, and I could approach a port from every possible direction without being traced until too near to police controlled space.
on the other side, how can police hunts pirates without being able to trace them?

[Reuse]

@Galex:

You are right. Limiting the speed at which information propagates would introduce several problems, which are not present now. It would make life in VS much more complicated.

But complicated things need not be annoying. There is also the possibility for very interesting gameplay aspects, which aren't present in any space game. And therefore make make VS stand out of the mass of space action games.

But still, chances that such features are used in a way that do not ruin gameplay are very slim, since nobody has any experience with it.

[Ryder P. Moses]

Hm, I forgot that sometimes SPEC could exceed lightspeed. That is pretty terrible. A speed cap of around 1/3 C would be about the maximum sensible amount, maybe half if space starts expanding.

As for interception... well, that's not a problem, anyway. Even back in the days of seafaring you never engaged an enemy way the hell out in the middle of an ocean- encounters took place at the arrival or destination point, or maybe near either along an obvious course on those occasions (far more common back in the days of wind power) when there was only one clear approach open to the enemy. You wouldn't track the pirate ship, you'd try to figure out the location of the pirate base. At most, a pirate might lay down a SPEC-interdictor directly between a high-traffic station and the nearest jump point, although without built-in courses or any compelling reason to make one approach over another, that'd only be an effective tactic when there was no gravity well or other large blockage in the way anyways.

[forlarren]

Well as for interception. I have only played PR so Vega Strike is a bit new to me. But dose anything stop FTL drives? How expensive are they? Do they require fuel, and if so how much? Can FTL trajectory be traced?

Lets just say any gravity well over X gees prevents FTL at Y distance, then interception can be done in the presence of planets, moons, or possably large asterorids. Is there an artifical way to prevent FTL? Gravity generators, EMP weapons, radiation projector designed to confuse/disable the drive? If so how large are these weapons? Small weapons like a EMP torpido could be carried by a fighter but only last a small amount of time. Larger more permanent FTL blockers would require larger dedicated ships but could prevent an opponents egress permanently.

What about fuel? How much dose a FTL drive use? If only a little then using multible FTL hops as a evation tatic would be a standard practice. But if fuel is expensive or quickly drained then calculating an opponents location based on possable refueling locations is possable.

When entering FTL can a ship be tracked by calculating its last known speed/direction? Can FTL be ajusted in mid flight, like Startrek?

Some times its best to answer these types of questions backwards. What game mechanics do I want to support, then use the FTL engine/comms model that fits that system.

Sorry to go off on a FTL drive tangent, but comms and drive systems are very closely tied when looking at the problem from a game balance/design view.

[Halleck]

I think that other ships have enough gravity to interfere with SPEC. So, if you want to outrun and intercept someone, you would have to have better thrusters or disengage your speed cap before they do (so you are feeding a larger number into your spec multiplier). Then, you can try to catch up or intercept them in order to interfere with their spec field, but this is easier said than done.

[klauss]

let's rip apart exhotic teories

If the rumor of commercial quantum cryptography devices already existing is true, quantum comms (and thus FTL comms) are not that far-fetched anymore.
That would make a tempting option for explaining FTL communication, plus would make the universe much more interesting, gameplay-wise, since there would be critical repeaters/quantum sources scattered over the system you could watch/avoid/destroy - remember that outside those "fast paths", information travels at c... so all you have to do to remain undetected, is never approach a relay station.

[hellcatv]

I think the biggest caveat of the quantum stuff is that the data may not be transmitted---i.e. the fastest information can travel is "C" along any axis of space---now in a high dimensional crinkly space, this could tunnel through a wormhole as well

[Reuse]

@klauss:
well quantum cryptography was implemented, but it had the capability of doing 3-bit cryptography(afaik) and was very slow. So it is far from beeing usable.

@hellcatv:
One of the advantages of quantum stuff is that everybody knows it, but almost noone knows something about it. So you can tell stories and still sound scientific

I think the most important aspect of communication at infinite speed is, that is seems more natural to us. Introducing a speed cap on information would really affect gameplay, but it may be interest9ing after all.

[Halleck]

I would prefer the "latency" (ex. response to a distress call) to rest more with the responders than the actual speed of information. If you're out on the fringe of aera space and transmit a distress signal, expecting your loose confed allies to back you up... you can bet that they'll be tied up for the moment.

I think that we're drastically underselling our technical capability if we can't even manage FTL communication in an age where every ship that rolls off the assembly line has an FTL drive equipped. I can't help thinking this is the equivalent of jetsetting around the world in a Concorde while sending your mail via the Pony Express.

[Reuse]

FTL is not instantaneous. Even if you could broadcast a message faster than light it would take some time to reach the edge of a stellar system.

But normally one expects that a message arrives in the very moment you send it (at least in space games).

So introducing limited information speed, even if it is more than c, would change gameplay.

I admit that these points are somewhat philosophical since in VS players hardly ever want communicate with someone several light seconds away. And AFAIK, interstellar communication is impossible (I dont know what happens when your wingman is in another system).

After all the main reason why someone wants to use comm in VS is to give orders to his wingmen.

[Halleck]

And AFAIK, interstellar communication is impossible (I dont know what happens when your wingman is in another system).

Please read this thread more carefully.

But yes, I agree that gameplay should be the primary concern when we decide how fast communication can travel.

[daschapa]

FTL is not instantaneous. Even if you could broadcast a message faster than light it would take some time to reach the edge of a stellar system.

But normally one expects that a message arrives in the very moment you send it (at least in space games).

I've noticed that far ships takes more time to reply my messages than closer ones. Excuse my english.

[peter]

Lets just say any gravity well over X gees prevents FTL at Y distance [...]

That gave me an idea: what if some ships had better SPEC drives than others? Another fun and interesting way to make Vega Strike even more complicated...

@Klauss: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_cryptography doesn't have anything to do with FTL comms. It involves sending entangled photons, and measuring the received photons individually. They're still sent at c (or usually at more like 2/3 c, in a fiber optic cable.) Simon Singh's "The Code Book" has a great chapter on it, BTW.

qcrypto lets you establish a shared secret, which you can use as a one-time pad to transmit your data over a normal channel. So even if the quantum part happened FTL, both parties would know a random byte stream that was secret from everyone else, but they would still need an FTL means to transmit their real data.

If you grok polarized light, then the simplest form of qcrypto is not that hard to understand. There are complicated things that can be done to make it work in practice...

And yes, some banks in Switzerland use qcrypto to set up a secure channel over fiber optics. qcrypto has been in real-world use for a couple years now, IIRC. The wikipedia article lists hardware vendors.

And re: comms in VS: It's on the wiki now (a year after most of this thread, I know.) http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... stellar%29
And I just noticed that JackS gave me permission to tweak the description a bit (see the "discussion" tab of the page.) So I'll do that.

[grendel0226]

Okay, I read the majority of the post and skimmed the rest for anything that would make this invalid and me even more of an invalid on this subject.

Someone proved a few years ago that there's a 4th (not THE 4th) tangible dimension: time. At the moment, we can only travel in one direction in it, but in the future, might it be possible to bend it a bit as far as communication goes? We already CAN bend it physically (nuclear clocks and orbit experiment), but not to send communication.

Can we possibly make that the way we explain the communication, combined with the FTL theory, and the fact that a living, breathing humanoid would die at such speeds, being why we don't use it for travel?

For the record, haven't had an eternity to think on this, unlike how to get away with murder, so please, tell me if it's stupid, but try and be nice.

Goober out

[Halleck]

Sorry to revive this ancient thread, but I just saw this article and wanted to post it here.
It looks like quantum entanglement can be used to transport information faster-than-light after all!
http://www.gizmag.com/teleport-quantum- ... ion/32352/

[loki1950]

Long time no see lad hows it hanging

Enjoy the Choice

[Halleck]

Hey, what's up? Long time.
I'm doing well. I'm a full-time game programmer now. You can follow my current antics here if you wish: http://www.eliotlash.com/

How are things here?

[loki1950]

Pretty much same old thing not enough bodies about to do much of any thing just some hard core devotees trying to make headway,a few Privateer guys updating code to Python 3,a new modeller who's working on comm animations and a coder with blender skills been working on my own blender skills combined with makehuman to remake all the in game fixers to make them Ogre friendly.Nice blog page BTW still using the same domain I see

Enjoy the Choice

[jackS]

Sorry to revive this ancient thread, but I just saw this article and wanted to post it here.
It looks like quantum entanglement can be used to transport information faster-than-light after all!
http://www.gizmag.com/teleport-quantum- ... ion/32352/

From the article: "When two electrons are entangled (that is, when they interact physically) and are then forcibly separated" -- still sounds like it matches my understanding of the entangled particles having to have been carried around sub-light first from where they interacted, thus not violating causality, per se. One could, certainly, imagine an entangled-particle repository steadily consumed for point-to-point FTL notifications, but, I don't think I'll chase that rabbit-hole any further this afternoon.

(/me waves at fellow fogey)