Engine/Propulsion

[targon]

Sorry, but magnetic field extincts with distance in fact quite fast. You see, our Sun has really big magnetic field, and Jupiter has _even_ more, but Jupiter orbit seems to be very stable and unaffected by any forces other than gravity.

[targon]

Yep, but electromagnetic field is't thing to trash once and for all. Imagine "space railgun" drive...
Let's make two "rails" of conductive plasma (ionizing high atmosphere or simply propelling ions by some means, e.g. laser pressure) and place our ship at rail start. Then, attach this rails to some really big source of energy and Bang! But we need to stabilize plasma "rails" somehow as they will surely tend to short-circuit or disperse.

[Kuciwalker]

If we're going to have interstellar drive, I agree that we should just wave it away with "hyperdrive" or something else.

Plus, hyperdrive lanes add another layer of strategy to the game.

[Jeremy Buloch]

I like the idea of an Electromagnetic field.

We could use the Magnetic drive on a hover craft, right?

I have no feedback on the hyperdrive, cause at the moment I have no Idea what your talking about. But thats usual when I'm sleep deprived.
-J.B.- and/or someone else.

[Kuciwalker]

Hyperdrive = cheap yet effective way of putting faster-than-light travel in a book/game/movie without actually thinking of how it should work.

[Blake]

How about we say it works through the principle of quantum improbability, and if anyone stops to think about how it works, it stops working?

[Leland]

There are plenty of possibilities for realistic faster than light travel...

1. Burn unobtainium in the furnace, and your space ship breaks the speed-of-light limit. Can also be retrofitted to steam ships and trains.

2. Astronomers figure out that nearby stars are not actually far away, it is merely an optical illusion. In fact, alpha centauri is just behind Mars.

3. 21st century biologists have captured Santa's reindeer and genetically engineered them to pull space ships.

4. Magic!

[Blake]

That unobtainium sure is great stuff
(we should make it a resource, for comic value)

[Jeremy Buloch]

good ones.
If not a bit un~realistic. They should be in the end like in SMAC where there are like blake said comic books.

oh and thanks for the hyperdrive explaination.
-J.B-

[Rasbelin]

Magic, the most reliable fuel ever invented.

But unobtainium could be a nice little Easter egg, IMO.

[Kuciwalker]

Yea, it should allow construction of some uber-unit.

[Jmaster]

Here's the official definition of hyperdrive (in the Star Wars sense) from starwars.com:

Travel between star systems would be impossible were it not for the development of the revolutionary hyperdrive propulsion system. The term hyperdrive refers to the engine and interrelated systems that propel a starship through the alternate dimension of hyperspace. In hyperspace, there is no limit to how fast a starship can travel, and thus interstellar distances can be traversed in mere minutes.

Not very helpful; it explained away how it worked. Which I think will have to be done at some level, because physics as we know it says it's impossible. All that achieving the speed of light requires infinite energy stuff. Of course in a different dimension things might be different, making it easily explained away.

[Leland]

I still maintain that the best explanation is no explanation... we know it's magic anyway, but for sake of the atmosphere it's better not to mention it in the game so as not to ruin the mood . Therefore, the less the inner workings of hyperdrives or other magical technology are explained, the better. All the player needs to know it how the stuff works (e.g. "hyperdrive gets you from point A to point B in time T").

[Kuciwalker]

We should have the hyperspace mass shadow stuff, though. Interdictors would be awesome.

[Jeremy Buloch]

There are theories that conflict with the known laws of Physics such as gravity, I think. Anyways my meaning is:
Things can be found possible if once impossible. Such as flight or space travel. That is now possible. So who is to say its impossible to have hyperdrives? There may very well be a way to do that. Yet our civilization is not advanced enough to be able to accomplish going through hyperspace. We wont ever know unless there is a scientific breakthrough. We could use hyperspace travel in the game but I think it is un~nessecary because their has been talk about going through a wormhole rather than going through hyperspace. So therefore we should talk about wormholes, should we not?

This thread was intended on making ideas of the engines of the units not the colony ships.
- Just to make the point across.

-J.B.-

[Kuciwalker]

Wormholes - ick.

That limits travel a bit too much.

I don't think that we should have complete, off-starlane-type travel, but there should be some sort of choice in, say, where you come out in the system. Stuff like that.

[Jeremy Buloch]

Yes, but the original travel to the Planet would be through a wormhole. Now if we are going to use the traveling to other planet stuff then we would need a form of propulsion to do that such as "HyperDrives". So Therefore they might be needed. We however dont know. Since no story has been made officially the background story. So we should actually start discussing the story before we discuss this. Once we know what is in the story we can then discuss whats going to be in the story.
-Just my un~organized thoughts.
-J.B.-

[Blake]

You know, it IS possible to travel to other planets at sublight speeds. It just takes a while.
If you had an engine capable of giving off a constant 1gee, I believe you would get to Alpha Centuria in about 5 years (that is earth time, not traveller time). You could get to AC in about 6 years just thrusting for half the time. I did the calculations once, but they are boring calculations and I'm really not inclined to do them again . Just do the simple calculation c / (10m/s * 86400) (speed of light divided by acceleration times seconds in 1 day) for the number of days to reach light speed, ignoring relativity. In this case it comes out to 347 days. Granted, you cant ignore relativity, but relativistic effects dont kick in until quite close to c so the spaceship will be going a good percentage of c, I would guestimate 70% of c.

The problem is you cant easily mantain 1gee of thrust for a year in deep space. The mathematics&physics behind this are obscure enough we can just ignore it.

BTW - I'm still fond of simply moving the planets closer together. That would involve starting with the benevolent aliens saying "Right humans, we have found you a nice patch of space with a few dozen habitable systems very close together, like 1-2 lightyears apart. We know that isn't very likely, but you cannot comprehend just how much space we have explored. Now humans, hop thru this wormhole and say bye-bye to earth, forever"

Also, the flagship should be equiped with a hyperdrive, because the flagship will actually be constructed from the remains of the colony ships, the cores of which will be built with alien technology including that required to navigate the wormhole. That means early in the game the player can quickly explore and launch small colonisation/invasion forces (they have to fit in the flagship) but puts a clamp on any early large scale wars (unless willing to spend 10 years in transit, which is not much different to civ games, but the enemy will see this snail paced invasion force several years in advance)

[Kuciwalker]

Who wants to wait a few years for their invasion force to arrive?

[Gateway103]

Who wants to wait a few years for their invasion force to arrive?

Hmm... have you not played Civ and/or MOO series? You always have to move your produced units/ships to enemy cities/planets, taking a few turns usually. If one turn is one years, that translates to a few years minimum for your invasion force to arrive, especially in early/mid games

-Gateway103

[Blake]

Originally posted by skywalker
Who wants to wait a few years for their invasion force to arrive?

The enemy?

One problem with war in civ games is it is too cheap, without excessive resources devoted to scouting the enemy can sneak up (thru the fog of war) and attack with no warning. In fact, sneak/suprise attack is pretty much the most effective strategy. (along with overwhelming force, which is ALWAYS the most effective strategy, but rarely a useful one)

I feel that is wrong, stealth and sneak attacks should be things you have to work for.

Ideally, players should get around 3 turns warning of an impending invasion so they can prepare:
1st turn: Yikes! Incoming bogeys. Build orders set at nearby locations to build defenders.
2nd turn: Newly built Defenders are ordered to the (expected) site of attack.
3rd turn: Battle.

3 turns of warning gives existing defenders 2 turns to arrive, allows for one turn of newly built defenders to reinforce the target (2 turns of defender construction at the target itself)

Do not worry that warning will limit your options, on the whole it makes the game a whole lot more strategic, you have to consider what your enemies response will be and more importantly what your enemy thinks you are doing.

Players will need the warning to prepare, because fighting will be fair. Unlike in Civ3 where defense is like 4 times as strong as offense (which relies on overwhelming), in StP there will be no "offense" and "defense" bonuses. This means defenders NEED to meet offenders head on with an equally powerfull force. Like in all RTS games, there will be static defense (towers, space stations, that sorta thing) which will give defenders a bonus, but at a cost - it cant be moved.

Early warning of intruders also allows for the wonders of stealth (it's like how you cant have good without evil ), your enemy will have a certain degree of confidence given by his scanner range. This can quickly be turned into paranoia by stealth. I remember one Stars! game, where I was driven quite paranoid by my super-stealth neighbour "ally", one turn I built about a hundred scouts with powerfull scanners and sent them off into deepspace to "flush out" his fleets "hiding" in my territory. My scouts didn't find a thing, I have to wonder what my "ally" thought of my antics.

Now, the reason for planets is it puts players a sensible distant apart, and we have more freedom to define game mechanics for good strategy and playability. Because players do not have a understanding or real-life exceptions of how space combat should work, it's a lot easier to rationalise things like stargates giving infinite movement.

It packages territory into neatly defended bundles and with the large empty voids of space between planets reduces the burden of defending large empires. It also allows for more fair defense/offense.
It seperates territory, when you capture a planet, you have a few turns to clear it of resistence and dig in, your enemy has a few turns to evaluate whether or not to try to take it back. When you see the enemy coming to reclaim what is theres, you can choose to retreat, reinforce etc.

And one of the best reasons for multiple worlds, it's very easy to scale the universe without running into problems. Want a short game for 3 players? Have a universe with 10 planets. A long game for 16 players? Have 200 planets.

While all those things are basically possible to an extent on a single planet, it's not possible to have them work in natural ways, movement rates have to be really really slow and it only gets worse as the world size (in tiles) increases.

[targon]

Blake, I hope you mean "planets" as "habitable worlds in distinct starsystems". Single planet pined to the map is strange looking, highly unrealistical and simply boring.
OK, if we accept your idea (along with big game turns) we may trash all these unsci-fi "hyperdrives" and "wormholes", and respect principle of casuality, among other things. Let's our ships will travel near c speeds (nothing wrong with it, just let some time for technology to advance). It is't any wrong for the empire-building (it's very planned part anyway) and can't impair combat part (as victim will be warned in 3 turns anyway)

[Blake]

Well, I meant habitable systems. The rest is mostly decorative, but uninhabitable systems WOULD give protection from scanners. I dont really object to the idea of having a lot of systems but only like 10% that can be (fully) colonised. Just know when I give planet numbers, I refer to habitable systems to give an idea of how many developed worlds a player might be managing.

I would still be inclined to keep hyperdrives, if only to speed up the pace later in the game. The first third, or so, of the game should be limited to c, with prehaps the flagship being equiped with a shiny hyperdrive so players that like to explore dont get bored with too many turns in deep space.

[targon]

Originally posted by Blake
Well, I meant habitable systems. The rest is mostly decorative, but uninhabitable systems WOULD give protection from scanners.

Yep. The same again. What does exactly your "habitable system" mean? System with the only habitable planet vs. system with the only unhabitable planet, aren't you? Did your forgot about all these stuff like gas giants, asteroid rings and whole bunch of interesting stuff? This unhabitable sites may be still of some impotance due to:
1) More scientific approach (how you imagine generation of _the only_ Earth-like planet?)
2) Nice graphics for player to stare
3) Strategic impotance (outposts, fuel, scanners etc)
4) Resources
5) Terraforiming possibilities for later game

[Kuciwalker]

I think that you should have to rely on scouts to defeat the enemies stealth, not just passive sensors.

The way we should make stealth harder is make people able to see ships under construction (with their scouts). This way, you would see your enemy building a fleet, or you would see that there was a fleet buildup (different thing; a fleet buildup is sending ships to the point from which you are going to attack).

[Kuciwalker]

You should be able to build small colonies, for mining or maybe for shipyards, in asteriod belts or on planets/moons (usually airless ones). You should be able to build Cloud City-esque things in gas giants. Orbital space stations around uninhabited planets. You can have habitation domes or whatever.

[Blake]

The Stars! way of scanning works very well. Scanners have a range (say 100ly), cloaked fleets have a cloak%, say 90%. That means, the fleet must stray within 10ly of the scanner to get detected. Assuming the enemy correctely guestimates your scanner range, they can safely skirt around all non-mobile scanners, meaning that randomly patroling scoutships would be the only way to have a chance of catching the cloaked fleets.

Okay, back to habitable. By that I mean, a planet where the colonists are realistically going to bother to set up a thriving civilisation complete with cities. Non-cities will be able to be built on many worlds, like colonies, military outposts, defense clusters, scanners, research stations. But generally, it will be up to the colonists to immigrate to a world and turn colonies into real cities.

[Jeremy Buloch]

You know, it IS possible to travel to other planets at sublight speeds. It just takes a while.
If you had an engine capable of giving off a constant 1gee, I believe you would get to Alpha Centuria in about 5 years (that is earth time, not traveller time). You could get to AC in about 6 years just thrusting for half the time. I did the calculations once, but they are boring calculations and I'm really not inclined to do them again . Just do the simple calculation c / (10m/s * 86400) (speed of light divided by acceleration times seconds in 1 day) for the number of days to reach light speed, ignoring relativity. In this case it comes out to 347 days. Granted, you cant ignore relativity, but relativistic effects dont kick in until quite close to c so the spaceship will be going a good percentage of c, I would guestimate 70% of c.

The problem is you cant easily mantain 1gee of thrust for a year in deep space. The mathematics&physics behind this are obscure enough we can just ignore it.

I like the Idea of this 1gee of thrust thingy. We wont have to explain to the user how the math works so therefore it would work quite fine. Also I think it would be ok to have an amount of time that the vessel would arrive. Example: The vessel starts at point A going at a certain velocity say 1 gee and arrives at point B in 3 years which would be 3 turns and seem realistic to the user instead of arriving at point B in the same turn which would seem a bit weird.
-My thoughts on that subject.
-J.B.-

[Jeremy Buloch]

So what type of Drive would accomadate such a speed?
I currently have no Idea. Also I currently have no time to look one up.
Wait could an Ion Drive be able to? Or EM propulsion?
-J.B.-

[Jeremy Buloch]

I read on a website this:

"The fastest way to get from here to another star, Antares for example, is to accelerate at one G for half the trip, turn around, and then decelerate the rest of the way. With modern ramjet fusion engines you can do that. After about a year you're going close to light speed. At that point, you can't really speed up much more, but what happens is that time slows way down for you. It works out to be about two years of travel for you, including some time on Antares, but since Antares is about thirty light years away, by the time you get back more than eighty years have gone by for those who stayed behind. Can you imagine how it would be to come back after a trip, and find everybody you knew dead or ancient, and everything different? Your only friends would be your crewmembers and you would get pretty sick of them after two years." "http://www.4raccoons.com/~wayne/longway.html"

So would "Ramjet fusion engines" be the answer?
-J.B.-