ummm, physics major?

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Originally posted by UE_Research & Development:
Well, according to CNN.com, Boeing is developing (among other things) 'anti-gravity propulsion technology' for the United States Air Force. And there was some article in Popular Science a while ago that talked about some type of gravity-manipulating device. I don't know what happened to either of those projects, though.

There's a fairly big difference between looking into the possibility of and being within a few decades of being able to do anything :^)

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Originally posted by Cunjo:
actually, while that is true, that is just the reaction itself, the resulting explosion would do much more damage than the impact.

I'm sorry, but I'm not entirely sure what you mean. When you say the 'resulting explosion,' do you mean the matter/anti-matter explosion or something else?

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also, shielding would help because it gives the missle less to react to, (significantly less does not mean nothing) therefore the resulting explosion would be much smaller.

Which is why it's a good idea to include both matter and anti-matter reactants in the missile.

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Originally posted by Martin Turner:
For example, if a ship set off to chase another one, then as long as they both continued to burn fuel, the one with the higher acceleration would eventually catch or outdistance the other one. Even a fractional difference in acceleration would mean that the one caught the other long before relativistic effects came into place.

This is a little pedantic, but if the difference was small enough (or the initial separation distance great enough), then relativity would come into play.

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**However, you could not possibly build this into an EV game without going into so much explanation that it would be obvious you were fudging it.

There's another issue, in that any acceleration faster than 90 metres per second per second would simply be intolerable to any human being over a prolonged period. Even at such an acceleration, it would still take you just under 20 days to reach half light speed without taking relativistic effects into account (at 50% of light speed your mass would be 1.15 times its rest mass), so, no, you could never reach your top speed in game time.**

That depends on how close to real time the scale of game time is.

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**< snip>

If you want to take the thickness of the galactic medium into account in giving a maximum speed, you need to bear in mind that the interstellar medium is a lot less thick than the medium within a planetary system, especially close to a sun which is chucking out particles all the time. If you were flying towards the sun, therefore, the effect would be to slow you down. On the other hand, if you were flying away from the sun, the effect would be to speed you up. There's some nice SF about solar-sailing (and, of course, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe). But, of course, the effect of acceleration due to gravity would be much more pronounced, running in the opposite direction.**

It's so difficult to produce a solar sail which actually accelerates, that a normal starship would still experience not deceleration from gravity, photon pressure and drag. As velocity increases, drag increases, so even without gravity there would come a point where drag would overcome the photon pressure.

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Originally posted by Jonathan Boyd:
**quote:
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Originally posted by Cunjo:
actually, while that is true, that is just the reaction itself, the resulting explosion would do much more damage than the impact.
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I'm sorry, but I'm not entirely sure what you mean. When you say the 'resulting explosion,' do you mean the matter/anti-matter explosion or something else?

quote:
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also, shielding would help because it gives the missle less to react to, (significantly less does not mean nothing) therefore the resulting explosion would be much smaller.
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Which is why it's a good idea to include both matter and anti-matter reactants in the missile.

**

1 yes, the matter/antimatter explosion would be devestating. imagine one particle of antimatter, while it only cancels out one particle of matter, the reaction in which it does so would be more powerful than 100 similar fission reactions. (bear in mind the numbers aren't totally accurate, as this is all theoretical)

2 while that would work, it would simply make it too freakin easy to obiterate a polaris raven with a ship as small as a starbridge. so having such limitations would act as a balance to keep people from cheating.

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A warrior can shape himself to suit anything in the universe.
A master can shape the universe to suit himself.

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Originally posted by Cunjo:
1 yes, the matter/antimatter explosion would be devestating. imagine one particle of antimatter, while it only cancels out one particle of matter, the reaction in which it does so would be more powerful than 100 similar fission reactions. (bear in mind the numbers aren't totally accurate, as this is all theoretical)

You can't really have a similar fusion reaction. For a given mass of explosive, however, it is considerably more effective to use antimatter than fusionable material. A single fusion reaction in the PPP chain using 4 H atoms to generate a single 4He atom releases around 27 MeV . Annihilation of 4 H atoms would release around 2 GeV, assuming my mental arithmetic at 4am is right. A factor of 100 is about right.

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2 while that would work, it would simply make it too freakin easy to obiterate a polaris raven with a ship as small as a starbridge. so having such limitations would act as a balance to keep people from cheating.

But the point of this discussion, IIRC, was to look at realistic effects. Besides, tough enough armour and shielding, against small enough quantities of antimatter would be fine.

Edit: While I'm posting in this thread, Masamune, you might want to take a look at (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/jonathanboyd/evn/Missile.sit.hqx")this(/url) and see if any of the weapons are of any use. The explosive reactive armour might be handy if you're looking for another way to stop missiles.

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(This message has been edited by Jonathan Boyd (edited 12-30-2003).)

Man, I've tried to reply like 3 times and gotten distracted about half way through every time!

I'd just like to say that I got to look at your Clockwork plug, Jonathan, and it's a definate go. Nice work, buddy! Going back and changing 300+ outfits is going to take a while though. (Fortunately, there are probably 1-2 hundred more left to do!)

Martin, I just want to say that it is exactly the fact that the speed limits are a necessary evil that makes them so frustrating. I've known about this issue for a long time-it was the reason I put in "Velocity Shields" in the first place. Good gameplay demands that I keep them. What I really want at this point is a good pseudo-science explanation for them. Azratax suggested simply ignoring them, but given the fact that the ships are so modular, that seems like it wouldn't go over that well. V-Shields are nice in that they make a great reason for having high-speed, high-performance ships versus slow ships, and add an almost natural area to customize. You can spend your money on better engines, or better v-shields, or both, and get totally different effects. However, V-shields ARE, and most importantly SEEM contrived. Ideally, I'd like to find something that works the same way (an extra ship component for speed), but sounds more natural. I've been experimenting with making the engines provide max speed,
as well as accelleration. If we simply don't mention the whole max speed aspect, it would probably work just fine. It doesn't seem as fun to me though. The other problem is that ships with high accel will always have a high speed, which is generally the case with most EV ships, but there are examples where it would be undesireable.
Basically, I feel stuck between two situations that I don't like completely: V-shields and engines, or accel/speed linked together.

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)

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Originally posted by Masamune:
**Man, I've tried to reply like 3 times and gotten distracted about half way through every time!

I'd just like to say that I got to look at your Clockwork plug, Jonathan, and it's a definate go. Nice work, buddy! Going back and changing 300+ outfits is going to take a while though. (Fortunately, there are probably 1-2 hundred more left to do!)**

Cool. Wanted some of the ideas to see the light of day and I was never goign to get round to missionifying my story. Are there any other niggling little things you'd like me to think about? Beats writing up astrophysics practicals.

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Martin, I just want to say that it is exactly the fact that the speed limits are a necessary evil that makes them so frustrating. I've known about this issue for a long time-it was the reason I put in "Velocity Shields" in the first place. Good gameplay demands that I keep them. What I really want at this point is a good pseudo-science explanation for them. Azratax suggested simply ignoring them, but given the fact that the ships are so modular, that seems like it wouldn't go over that well. V-Shields are nice in that they make a great reason for having high-speed, high-performance ships versus slow ships, and add an almost natural area to customize. You can spend your money on better engines, or better v-shields, or both, and get totally different effects. However, V-shields ARE, and most importantly SEEM contrived. Ideally, I'd like to find something that works the same way (an extra ship component for speed), but sounds more natural. I've been experimenting with making the engines provide max speed, as well as acceleration. If we simply don't mention the whole max speed aspect, it would probably work just fine. It doesn't seem as fun to me though. The other problem is that ships with high accel will always have a high speed, which is generally the case with most EV ships, but there are examples where it would be undesireable.
Basically, I feel stuck between two situations that I don't like completely: V-shields and engines, or accel/speed linked together.

There have been concerns lately about the sun being more active. You could simply say that in the future it has got a lot more active and the solar system is full of loads of gunk - plasma, radiation, etc. This makes V-shields seem more necessary and would give you an excuse to dump in loads of interference in some systems if you wanted to.

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What about assuming that the velocity-shields are powered/generated directly by the engine assembly? If I remember correctly (and forgive me if I have something wrong), V-Shields are either plasma/magnetic (don't remember which) field that protects against incoming micrometeorites and other particle debris.

One could assume that a certain percentage of the engine plasma output (if you're using fusion reactors, you're venting plasma, right?) is diverted to a built-in projector that creates the field around the vessel by venting plasma forwards. Enhancements could include changing the way that the ration of plasma used to create the V-shield to the plasma vented for propulsion is calculated, creating supplementary generators that attach to the engines, etc. Max speed could be simulated by possibly having this ratio vary (i.e. the more total plasma output by the engines, the larger the percentage required to maintain the v-shield), and eventually reach a point where the force of the plasma being vented forwards to compensate for micrometeorite impact balances the force of the plasma being vented for propulsion...you could also talk about the plasma's interaction with ship hulls and whatnot, I suppose.

I have no idea what this'll solve, but it's (at best) a crappy way to reconcile V-shields with engines. And if this is completely off...well, at least I know I have some SS reading to do.

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(This message has been edited by UE_Research & Development (edited 12-30-2003).)

(This message has been edited by UE_Research & Development (edited 12-30-2003).)

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Originally posted by Jonathan Boyd:
**this
**

404
-Az

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Originally posted by Azratax2:
404

That's the second time I've dropped the 's'. Try (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/jonathanboyd/evn/Missiles.sit.hqx")this(/url) instead.

Edit: Amusingly, this is post 404.

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(This message has been edited by Jonathan Boyd (edited 12-30-2003).)

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Originally posted by Jonathan Boyd:
**That's the second time I've dropped the 's'. Try this instead.

Edit: Amusingly, this is post 404.**

For God's sake, that's the third time you screwed it up!

You should probably rename it "Missile.sit.hqx". Of course, then, you'll probably put the "s" on the end.

Just call it M.sit.hqx. That'll work.

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If you are just looking for some pseudo-science mumbo jumbo to explain EVx speeds, then I would suggest that you postulate three kinds of travel:
Conventional drive (eg, anti-grav, rockets, ion drive etc, used for taking off from planets or close manouvering)
Dilation-compensation drive (near light speed, but avoids all the dilation effects.)
Hyper-drive (a single burst of cross-dimensional travel)

For conventional drive, all the usual rules apply. Because conventional drive is so slow, it can take a day to get from a planet's surface to orbit.

For dilation-compensation drive, the amount of dilation compensation is determined by the power and efficiency of the engines. The maximum speed approaches light speed, and even the most inefficient dilation compensation engines can reach 50% light speed. The advantage of dilation-compensation is that not only does it compensate for relativistic effects, it also accelerates all the mass in the ship at the same rate, so that the pilot does not feel any acceleration. Unfortunately, dilation-compensation does not function close to a massive gravitic object, such as the surface of a planet.

Dilation-compensation therefore has a top-speed which is inherent in the design, but even for the most poorly rated ship the advantage of acceleration far outweighs the fact that a maximum speed is imposed.

For hyper-drive, you engage the dilation compensation but then take a shortcut through higher dimensions. The accuracy with which you can do this is subject to the ship's mass, although pirates and others may try to take risks using hacks on their computers.

Of course this is all complete rubbish, but may serve your purpose.

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Of course, if you want to go for total realism, then simply downgrade the acceleration on all ships to about one tenth of what it is now, and upgrade the top speed to something very high for all ships. Therefore, the effect would be to create a game where the player had to decide how fast he could actually go and still slow down properly at the end - just like real space travel.

This would be a neat twist on the EVx engine, and would make for arguably the most orginal TC we've ever seen, if everything else were implemented in the same way.

To make it even more hard-core SF, you could make jumping a 3-5 year experience (although, of course, to the player it would be instant because of time-dilation), and so travelling right across our corner of the galaxy would take up to 100 years. This is the basis of Ursula K LeGuin's science-fiction.

You would need to think hard about what missions could be accomplished in this kind of universe: you could do worse than start with the LeGuin classics like Left Hand of Darkness and Rocannon's World.

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Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**Of course, if you want to go for total realism, then simply downgrade the acceleration on all ships to about one tenth of what it is now, and upgrade the top speed to something very high for all ships. Therefore, the effect would be to create a game where the player had to decide how fast he could actually go and still slow down properly at the end - just like real space travel.
**

The Galaxy's Edge TC for Override tried something like that... and boy was it annoying to play. It was much more realistic than any other TC, but it was at the expense of a hell of a lot of playability.

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Originally posted by Mazca:
**The Galaxy's Edge TC for Override tried something like that... and boy was it annoying to play. It was much more realistic than any other TC, but it was at the expense of a hell of a lot of playability.

**

true, and it does put all the AI ships in a tizzy.

on another note, how about semi-reactive armorment (a material that responds to heat, and radiation by getting harder)?

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(This message has been edited by Cunjo (edited 12-31-2003).)

Any type of hyperjump system that requires more than a month of travel time for each jump would render interstellar commerce as the EVN engine does it almost meaningless. (Plus, you'd have a very difficult time developing characters in missions and such). It might be fun to think about, but I'd advise against it.

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There's really only one kind of travel in our setting- conventional. EV hyperjumps are simply extended periods of constant acceleration. Hypergate travel is travel through a dimension with a different relation to real space, so that you travel a long way in a short time. But travel through this dimension is also done with conventional propulsion engines. There is no interstellar travel, but intrasteller travel is still a slow and cumbersome process.

As it stands now, I think V-shields are going to stay. Especially with ships' exhaust clouds cluttering up the space lanes and being within a solar system, there's a lot of dangerous crap out there, so v-shields would be important. However, I think they may be an upgrade, and all ships will be capable of a certain low speed, where the hull integrity can take the impacts safely. Being an upgrade, that means that freighter captains and the like probably won't opt to install them, as they are looking for cost-per-cargo tonnage efficiency. I think having V-shields may also decrease the number of days it takes to "jump". The question now becomes whether or not I want to make v-shielding dependant on ship size or not.

Back to shield physics, I'm thinking that we may scrap the magnetic shielding, and go only with particle shielding. This way, we can use Jonathan's cool shielding idea, and it makes more weapons viable. Basically, with his system, shielding isn't a fixed amount, but a certain level of protection. Small arms can't pass through heavy shielding, but stuff that does pass through does full damage to the armor. Shield recharge is instant (well, as close as I can get to it) and represents a replenishment of the particles in the shield. This type of shielding relies on magnetic fields to control the particle cloud, but it is neither repulsive nor attractive to incoming stuff.

Lasers will pass through- the particles are not dense enough to really stop them.
Particle Beams will be stopped cold by shields, the particle being absorbed by the shield layer. However, unshielded targets will suffer heavily, and have their computers damaged (ionization). Particle beams are basically directed particle shields.
Railguns/Massdrivers/Conventional Guns will work conventionally, and have various levels of penetration power. Shots that don't penetrate are assumed to be shredded by the particle cloud and/or deflected.
Missiles and other conventional explosives are the same as guns, and have various levels of penetration power. Missiles can either explode outside the cloud and try to blast a hole in the cloud, or try to penetrate the cloud first and explode. In the first case, the missile's penetration power is determined by the warhead type (shaped charge, or not) and overall power. In the latter case, they stand a good chance of being destroyed by heavy shielding, like bullets/ railgun slugs.
EM weapons will bypass shields and cause ionization/computer damage.
Antimatter weapons, that fire AM packets, will have various effects determined by the type of AM used.

Now to run all this by the team! Thanks for your help everybody! I wonder where Starbridge is.... boy, do I have a job for him....

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)

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Originally posted by Masamune:
Now to run all this by the team! Thanks for your help everybody! I wonder where Starbridge is.... boy, do I have a job for him....

Heh, I pity anyone responsible for coding the plug right now :^)

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heh, if i had evone, id give it a shot, just for the heck of it. i'd probably find it quite entertaining. (i love tinkering with effects more than i like playing the game)

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A warrior can shape himself to suit anything in the universe.
A master can shape the universe to suit himself.

Hehhehe.... actually, I'm going to be doing the "hard" part... After that, all he has to do is look at the numbers already in the outfit, delete them, and put in a big string of Gxxx Gxxx Gyyy etc... You know, the really fun part of plug development!

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)