So, in my plugin that I'm working on, I've decided to write some really nice outfit descriptions. Then I came across the problem: oh, wait... It's too long for the space provided. To the end of solving this (hey, I've written about twenty, and they're really fun to make. I don't want my work going to waste), I came up with the idea of creating weapons manuals that you can access and read through the Mission BBC. They'd be included free with the weapons. Just to give you a taste of a couple (people might remember a couple):

A few years back, the Shkin scientists experimented with Rauther's Light Cannon as part of their research into the Rautherion Lightning. Their results: it was awful. It was a good idea, but even that many shots are completely ineffective against Carriers and other capital ships, even IDA frigates. So, they set around redesigning it. They started by opening the interior of the cannon up into non-real space. Then, using the extra space they now had, they turbo-charged the power feed, resulting in a weapon that was only slightly larger the Light Cannon, but each shot now had the power output of a Medium Blaster. But they were not satisfied, instead choosing to overhaul the power-cycle accumulator and upgrade the galvon conduit circuitry. Final result: the Light Assault Cannon that was incredibly light, had greater range than a medium blaster, had immense power, and had a very fast power-cycle output.

One of the projects of the Shkin Corporation before it was bought was increasing shielding. The Federation had managed to do this, of course, and so had the Polaris, but compared with the total strength of the shield, there was very little added power. Shkin scientists came up with the idea of simply adding another generator, which would create a dual layer shield that would alternate with the standard, providing both increased power and increased regeneration. But they soon ran across problems. Shield generators are big, awkward devices that require a large amount of power from a special adaptor. Obviously the technicians couldn't just throw another generator in there and expect it to work. So there commenced a year of research on how to adapt the reactor's power output to match the necessary feed for the generator. Eventually, they came up with this, and a few other variants. These shield mountings take a feed from the reactor, and convert it into the positive/negative line that generators use. However, there is a cost. The extra generators often proved to require different amounts of power, and it was impossible to create one mounting to fit them all. To this end, Shkin designed several mountings, each fitting two or three of the shields. This is the highest end model they produce, capable of powering the high-end Phoenix and Aether shields, but with no backwards compatibility.

This weapon is one of, if not the, most lethal weapons ever designed by man-kind. The Wraith Cannon was originally designed and manufactured by the Polaris, until Gli-Tech-nia stole the design from them and reverse-engineered the concept. It has been available for a while, and now Gli-Tech-nia has returned wth an upgrade. By increasing the de-harmonic radio-magnetic fields that support the artificial structure of the Wraithii projectile, technicians were able to vastly increase the energy output of the weapon. While it comes with an enormous cost, weight, and a low firing speed, it is capable destroying any known vessel in record amounts of time.

Linear accelerators have long been in existence for use in science. This circular tube magnetically accelerates individual atoms and quarks to speeds approaching that of light, and then smashes them into each other. It took the think-tanks of the Shkin corporation to design a linear accelerator that was a straight tube, allowing them to shoot projectiles out of them, resulting in the experimental Particle Accelerator Cannon, somewhat like a rail-gun. But in early field tests, they discovered that those small particles have extremely low energy output upon impact. So they started over from scratch. One bright young scientist came up with the idea of using packets of pure energy instead of particles. As energy is effectively weightless, much larger quantities of it can be propelled down the tube, resulting in a much higher yield. This results in a Energy Accelerator Tube that can expel immense quantities of energy at its hapless target.

In research with Aurorean technology, scientists discovered an astonishing fact: rail-guns, when fused with energy acceleration cannons, generate not a matter bolt, but a neutron-infused particle-energy bolt. As it has no charge, it can slip between any obstacles in its path, as specified by the flight computer. In practice, this creates a shield ignoring energy bolt of immense power. While heavy and slow firing, this gun's sustained volleys can destroy a Federation Carrier by ripping through its armor, puncturing its reactor, and causing a chain-reaction that will literally destroy the ship from the inside out. This gun has been christened the Spiral Cohesive Effect Gun, as it sticks neutrons together in a spiral pattern, and then wraps them around a standard particle-energy bolt, which it hurls at high speed towards its poor target.

During work on the Spiral Cohesive Effect Gun, a group of scientists noticed that the SCEG ejected more energy than was put in. Flummoxed, they ran tests to see if it somehow converted the surrounding matter into pure energy. It did not. Finally, they reached the only conclusion left to them: they had developed a method of creating energy. This effectively shot most of the current laws of physics to the junk pile. They then began trying to utilize this energy in a reactor. Finally, after nearly ten years, they have succeeded. This reactor utilizes a specially configured SCEG to generate energy. The extra energy is funneled into the ships systems, while the original energy is funneled back into the SCEG. This cycle takes about three weeks to start functioning properly, as it needs to gain enough energy to start the cycle and continue it. Until then, you will see a small reduction in all of your shipboard systems. It will avoid taking fuel, so you won't be stranded in a system for ever and ever. You will be alerted once the reactor starts its cycle properly.

Yeah... So, my question: if I included this, would anyone actually read them? I like writing them, but I don't want to take time away from the main project for something pointless.
Off topic, I believe I saw a guide to what each of the individual require/contribute bits does. Does anyone know where that is?

EDIT:
I'd also take reviews of my writing.

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 23 June 2008 - 01:27 AM

Your science is a bit... not.

Oh, well. When has that ever mattered in sci-fi?

Those look good, one-oh-one. The writing looks pretty well done, very informative. I like the idea as well.

Instead of nonreal space, you could say space from the fifth dimension or something like that to maintain the scifiness

All I'm saying is that if I wanted to up the output from the light cannon, I'd just run better accelerator coils. Sue, it'd cost you, and it'd probably fractionally bump the weight up, but I could guarantee you another 30% firepower.

It basically sounds like all he's doing is coming up with mumbo jumbo to justify a super-weapon.

The more energy you pump into something, the more energy you'll get out the other end, but you've got to have some way of generating that energy. You don't "flip something into the fifth dimension" and get it back super-duper. You get a bigger reactor or a longer barrel or a bigger slug. It's that simple.

The Polaris have powerful weaponry because they have powerful generators. Have you seen what a CPL does to your energy status? If you're looking to make lightweight, powerful weapons then I humbly submit that you come up with some new power generation system first, and make your new weapons only work if you have enough energy to do so. You can make them as light as you want, too, but be wary - if your new generator is small and produces prodigious amounts of power, you can bet your bottom dollar it'll be worth far more than the GDP of a small solar system. In fact, it'd probably be the result of a generation or two's research by an entire civilisation's scientific community... just like the anti-matter/matter reactor that the Polaris use. It'd been under development for nearly three hundred years.

Pipeline, that's precisely what I'm doing. I'm making up a bunch of random junk that doesn't mean anything, but sounds sort of interesting. Your idea of a new power system is a good one. Hmm, I'll think about it. A lot of my systems are based on needing a mounting or something to hook it up, like the shield generators. I could add some extra power generators, too.

@pipeline, on Jun 23 2008, 04:38 AM, said in Technical Manuals:

Your science is a bit... not.

You say it's mumbo-jumbo, I say it's Handwavium. I've used quite a bit of it myself, and I don't see how EV could have gotten off the ground without it. After all, FTL drives are entirely made out of handwavium, not to mention that they defy the laws of relativity.

FTL doesn't inherently defy relativity. In some solutions for the equations, it makes a lot of sense.

EV Nova tried to use as little Handwavium as possible. We very carefully researched our technologies. I remember spending a good week looking into how you go about making a real railgun, and why they were built in the first place. My father happens to have his Masters in Engineering from the very same university where the first railgun was conceived of and constructed.

So, when it comes to science and Nova, with the exceptions of the glossing over of exact details of FTL drives, we tried to be as realistic as we could, within reason.

Admittedly, the Polaris are seriously divergent, and some of the science may be wonky (or at least wildly implausible for the forseeable future), but, hey, at least we tried.

I was actually quite impressed by the amount of research that had gone into Nova tech. I mean yeah, there's some stuff that just defies explanation (what the hell is a BioRelay? And since when does energy travel so slowly?) but what'r ya gonna do? :laugh:

@pipeline, on Jun 23 2008, 08:22 PM, said in Technical Manuals:

FTL doesn't inherently defy relativity. In some solutions for the equations, it makes a lot of sense.

EV Nova tried to use as little Handwavium as possible. We very carefully researched our technologies. I remember spending a good week looking into how you go about making a real railgun, and why they were built in the first place. My father happens to have his Masters in Engineering from the very same university where the first railgun was conceived of and constructed.

So, when it comes to science and Nova, with the exceptions of the glossing over of exact details of FTL drives, we tried to be as realistic as we could, within reason.

Admittedly, the Polaris are seriously divergent, and some of the science may be wonky (or at least wildly implausible for the forseeable future), but, hey, at least we tried.

It is funny this little discussion would come up. I was just reading an introduction by Isaac Asimov contrasting and comparing the science fiction between Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. This was the exact tift that existed between them. Jules Verne was focused on using the science of the day to extrapolate future developments in technology. H.G. Wells would often just make up something, expect you to believe it was possible, and then he'd move on with the story here.

However, to actually capture and sustain the audience it is important that your explanations sound plausible. It is important to notice that H.G. Wells for example, makes a plausible explanation for why, in the "The Time Machine" the Time Traveler can actually move through time. Wells assumes time is the fourth dimension, and much like the other three, he assumes with the proper equipment, one can move back and forth through time just as one can measure in the foreword or backward direction on the other three dimensions.

I would note that at this point your explanations are really just mumbo jumbo. If you really want to make up a new sort of pseudo-science, I would suggest you go all the way. Or at least research accelerators...(you might start here Atom Smashing).

It is, however, imperative that you sound credible while writing.

On Pipelines side, or the Jules Verne approach I have a few things to say. First, the problem with trying to stick by the book on the knowledge of the day, is that that knowledge hasn't actually yielded the technology you are deriving. So you are going to have to break rules somewhere (let us point out in Nova that a shield...is just ridiculous by todays standards). We might be able to make Electro-Magnetic fields that repel some particles, but shields? Of course, I could go on about space travel being realistic, the actual bending of light about gravitational bodies, or the distances and speeds (and what is the hell is a hypergate anyway).

The point is you are always going to have to make some concessions when predicting future technological developments. I'm not knocking anyones style, just saying there are different ways to write science fiction and the important thing is that you can hold the attention of your readers.

I do have a slight problem with Pipelines approach, but it is more personal.<soapbox> Personally, I find it atrocious to assume things like absolute or relatively absolute truth in any era. There was a time when Classical Mechanics explained everything. Then there were these slight wobbles to in planets orbits that could not be explained. Before long you had relativistic quantum mechanics develop to explain things (and mind you that was a very quick over simplification of that time frame). The point is, I have problem with Physicists or sicentists that build laws or theories and then extrapolate them to the rest of the universe. It is hilarious to me that we just assume what works here...works everywhere in a universe. It is said that the speed of light is a constant...but how do we know that is true for everywhere in the universe? We really don't. We've done experiments and it seems to work on and around Earth...but we can't do them anywhere else.</soapbox>

All I'm saying by this...is keep your mind open. I'm not saying all P.h.Ds are wrong or disillusioned...but there is a lot of money in creating discovery programs, and getting grants, and being a person who can tell the world that "these are the hard and fast rules to how the universe works, and if you think differently then you are a kook or plain wrong". I have a problem with that philosophy because it has existed for a long time and in all cultures and it is a danger to all who innovate and dream.

So write how you feel, but try to keep your readers attention. If you read through it or have a few people read through it and it doesn't keep their attention, then maybe spend a week or two and try to shore up some of the assumptions you make with more factual evidence.

And again, I'm not knocking anyone's writing styles or how they like to do things, just saying, don't put yourself in a box. There are often many ways to do something. That said, I think you have a little bit of work to do on those descriptions.

Actually, before this thread got going, I was going to comment on your writing style. First of all, I'm not the greatest writer myself, but I do have some skill at it. Make sure you try to avoid reusing a word or the derivation of a work too much (science/scientists). Make sure that you don't have unclear antecedents (or weak pronouns) starting sentences as well (forum writing is different than story or even technical writing). Just a few things I saw. Try to reduce pronoun usage where possible. Also, try to limit wordiness. Go through and eliminate words and see if the sentence still makes sense. Sometimes it is okay to have more words...but generally you want to cut the number of words down.

Well that is all I have. Those are all just suggestions, take them or leave them.

Oh, and on the idea of a technical manual in the Mission BBC (haven't played Nova in a while, but isn't the BBS?) I like it. It makes sense to have some sort of technical data on a working piece of your ship.

This post has been edited by Swithich : 23 June 2008 - 11:33 PM

Well there are hard and fast rules to how things work. You aren't getting around conservation of energy or momentum anytime soon. Sure quantum physics can violate it slightly in the minutiae, but they must still hold true on average. New discoveries apply to different ways of looking at things, seldom do they invalidate old ones. Physics students still take classes in classical mechanics, along with relativity and electromagnetism, and quantum, because they all have relevance. You aren't going to be literally going faster than the speed of light, reducing the entropy of a closed system, or producing energy from nothing. However, that doesn't mean there aren't ways to "cheat" and achieve similar effects. But it is highly unlikely that anything considered a law of physics is ever going to be invalidated in a position where it seems to hold true now. Refined perhaps, expanded so it can apply to other situations. But total overturnings are highly unlikely.

I personally like working from situations that are at least theoretically possible. However, trying to go too much from real life does sometime lead to time wasted trying to make decent guesses at questions that aren't even really answerable today. Questions like "are coilguns or railguns the most reliable and effective method of launching something really fast" and "are nickel iron alloys or iron cobalt alloys going to offer the best magnetic permeability for the price" and "would electromagnetically accelerated plasma produce a back EMF?". Of course I probably overthink things a bit.

@keldor-sarn, on Jun 23 2008, 09:44 PM, said in Technical Manuals:

Well there are hard and fast rules to how things work. You aren't getting around conservation of energy or momentum anytime soon. Sure quantum physics can violate it slightly in the minutiae, but they must still hold true on average. New discoveries apply to different ways of looking at things, seldom do they invalidate old ones.

This is debatable, but I don't think it is in the spirit of the thread to argue these finer points.

Safe to say this, assumptions are made in these theories/laws. For example, I saw a program on the death of the universe the other day. Which I thought was funny, because the Physists used these laws. Except let me now change the assumptions. The universe is an open system, (ie...conservation of energy needs a closed system to apply) or let us say that the universe is already infinite. These would have thrown huge wrenches in to the physicists gears as they assumed that the universe was in someway closed or contained all there was (that is a huge assumption) or that it had finite boundaries (it may expand forever, but there was some edge).

Anyway, this is not what 0101181920 needs to be concerned with in my opinion, however, and unless this is going to move to "just chat", I'll make sure the rest of my posts focus on the technical manual idea.

Speaking of things that defy explanation, I came up with a passable theory for the incredibly ridiculous movement of ships in EV (and most sci-fi games) but I can't recall it all right now. I'll work on that.

If you guys want to keep going about how realistic stuff should be, then please do. It's very entertaining, and actually enlightening. I realize that some of my explanations are a bit wacky, to say the least, and plan to do some major editing. So, the whole concept of my plug is that Gli-Tech-nia has bought another company, the Shkin Corporation (props to whoever can tell me what book I got that from), and the aquired weaponry gradually trickles onto the market. It also lengthens the Gli-Tech-nia storyline with some new inventions and upgrades co-developed with the Shkin scientists. The most "famous" (so far, nobody knows about it. I'm going to work on some people you meet that tell you about it.) invention of the Shkin Corporation is "non-real space" (name liable to change) which they use to basically hyper-charge weaponry. So you get the Assault Cannon by taking the Light Cannon, and shifting all of the components to non-real space. From there, you replace the power generator with a much bigger one, because you have so much extra space, lengthen the focusing tube so it has a longer range, and a whole host of minor (or major) upgrades, and meanwhile, back in the "real world", you're just using the casing of the cannon as an anchor for the existence of the stuff in "non-real space". So, here's a balance idea. You can't use any of the "non-real space" items without buying a "non-real space" generator (or something like that). This allows your ship to sustain the "non-real space" surrounding its components, and if it fails, your ship blows up (I can come up with a scientific explanation for that beyond "This is an important item. It fails, you die.") Of course, I don't really want your ship to spontaneously blow up, so I probably won't put that in, because unlike the cheap Thorium Reactor, this is something people will probably buy. The generator is huge, like the size of a Viper Bay, so you won't be able to have this stuff on a fighter. (Although you might be able to get up there with the mass conversion trick. Maybe I should try to patch that.)

EDIT:
So, Swithich, actually, a lot of your suggestions were what I was trying to do. Avoid repeating of words. One thing I've noticed in a lot of plugs, and even in EVN, though to a lesser extent is that there are things like "During development, there were many problems. When development finally finished, however, it proved worthwhile." That's not an actual example, but I was trying to limit that, and, above all, remove mine from a lot of plugs by making it not bland. There are examples like. "The RAGE Gunboat is a very effective fighter. This bay will let you hold three." I was trying to make it so there's actually something to read (even if it's completely made up.) For the antecedents, were you referring to the Spiral Cohesive Effect Gun and all of that stuff? (that's some of the less believable things I've written, and plan to mainly scrap them. They might not even be included.) Reading over them again, I do see what you mean by limiting the pronoun use, but a lot of that arose from not wanting to repeat words. But could you give me a few examples of the "wordiness"? I realize they're pretty long, but that's the point. Thanks a lot for your input. (Oh, you're right about it being the BBS, but I hadn't really played much recently, either, beyond checking if my plugs work.)

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 24 June 2008 - 01:45 AM

Totally random idea, I dunno about non-real space, since that's high enough tech that it's pretty much "magic" to us at this level of scientific advancement -there's no such thing as conservation of volume, so who the heck knows about how much you could fit in a given space given infinite technology- but one thing that reminded me of was wormhole weapons. Basically the ship itself does not have a weapon, but rather a hypergate or wormhole generator or something that ties into another location that has a really really big gun aimed through the hypergate/wormhole thing. That would be pretty sweet.

Oh and would like to add that I think consistency is more important when making up non super hard sci-fi stuff rather than scientific explanation. As long as you know exactly what something does in a consistent and reasonable manner, then it's much easier to make it believable. You don't actually have to have a friggin' clue how it works, necessarily. Leaving it vague is better than saying something that seems made up or would seem obviously erroneous to an expert.

Everything you'll ever want to know about Sci-Fi, and some stuff that you won't want to touch with a 10 foot pole. That link is an extended reading project, by far. Of course, if you don't want your descs to end up something like "This is a neutron gun; It's more powerful than the proton gun and the laser gun," then I suggest you read as much as you can.

God! What is it with you and your awesome links!?! That's fantastic!

You think Handwavium is awesome? Just wait 'til you hear about Unobtainium and Techno-babble.

One of my friends invented explodium, destructium, and blastonium... I don't plan to work those in. Thanks for the link, that is fantastic stuff.

EDIT:
Just checking something. I do have an update, but I'll put it up after this experiment.

EDIT 2:
Experiment failed. Update going up.

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 27 June 2008 - 02:25 AM

Okay, sorry about the double post, but I need to let people know that there has actually been an update to this topic. Edits don't do that, unfortunately, so there you are.
Anyway, I've re-written most of the improved Wraithii one. Check it out:

This weapon is one of, if not the, most lethal weapons ever designed by man-kind. The Wraith Cannon was originally designed and manufactured by the Polaris, until Gli-Tech-nia stole the design from them and reverse-engineered the concept. It has been available for a while, and now Gli-Tech-nia, working together with Shkin scientists, has returned with an upgrade. Wraithii function by harvesting fractions of a rare, mildly radioactive and extremely unstable crystalline structure. Inside of these crystals, electrons from the decaying atoms are slowed down to less than one millionth of their original velocity and contained in a barely stable state, constantly disturbing and deforming the crystal around them. They are known as polarons. P'aedt, or now Gli-Tech-nia, facilities painstakingly extract these polarons from the crystal by generating magnetic fields undoing the deformation caused b the polarons, transferring the phonon vibrations from the crystal to a provided diamond/hydrogen slush, which is nearly as unstable as the crystalline structure. This slush is then encased in mar-graviton fields that keep the polarons stable enough for transport until impact. However, Gli-Tech-nia discovered a new crystal, found only near wormholes. It is theorized that the crystal is formed when an object goes through the wormhole. The streams of matter and energy flowing through the wormhole is so intense that it has the ability to degrade matter formations (like a ship) exceeding a certain mass. This matter, which has been basically siphoned off of the ship or other object, then reacts with the exotic matter (view separate manual on wormholes) present in the wormhole, forming a variety of highly reactive and unstable materials, many of which decay nearly instantly upon exit of the wormhole. The most stable, amazingly, is in fact this incredibly unstable crystal found by Gli-Tech-nia. It has a much higher concentration of polarons, and each polaron supports a larger amount of phonon vibrations. Upon the first discovery of these crystals, they detonated when recovery was attempted, crippling the survey vessel that found them. It took nearly a year to discover a method to retrieve these crystals, and then over a year to discover a medium into which the polarons could be transferred. Finally, Gli-Tech-nia came across an a mixture of fused helium and nitrogen, which contained the immense amounts of phonons and polarons. However, this slush mixture, while proving relatively stable to both the crystal form and the original wraithii, failed to impart a large amount of kinetic energy to the target. It was theorized that this was due to trace amounts of exotic material contained inside the polarons, which countered the delivered thrust. All attempts to extract the exotic material or negate its effects failed. The scientists, reluctant to abandon the project after the amount of effort they had put into it, branched out into less and less reasonable possible solutions. Finally, they struck on something: a simple chemical explosive. Phonons are a large part of the ability to conduct thermal and magnetic forces. The additional amounts of phonons would focus the explosion into a narrow corridor, greatly boosting the yield in that area. The scientists, thrilled by this solution, hurried through development and testing, and the weapon was ready for final testing in under six months.

About two hours of searching random, highly scientific information on Wikipedia and a variety of other sites. For all people who think that I just completely made this up, then you're wrong . Eat it up. Everything in here is technically possible, although some parts are speculation or invention of applications of technology on my part. That does not mean that I made up any scientific facts. What do you think?