2nd attempt; space armarda

[Kenta'arka]

usually governments share the icons of their tech, but some (default: anarchy and despotism as they are available without tech) got their icons assigned by pediaicons.txt.

#START CIVILOPEDIA ART
#Non-Tech Govts
#ICON_GOVT_ANARCHY
art\civilopedia\icons\anarchy large.pcx
art\civilopedia\icons\anarchy small.pcx
#ICON_GOVT_DESPOTISM
art\civilopedia\icons\despotism large.pcx
art\civilopedia\icons\despotism small.pcx
#End non-tech Gov'ts

But I guess it will work with all governments if you want

 

[WildWeazel]

Originally posted by Smoking mirror
but having all sorts of trouble adding resources and governments. just gonna take time I think, that and lots of unknown critical failures...

What kind of problems are you having with resources? I've had some experience playing with them, maybe I can help.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

The unit in the bottom right corner of your clip looks kind of like a sunbrairo! Maybe I could use it as a flavor spaceship for the American Cultures in my own mod.

 

[subbss]

Which clip do you mean....which page....post number?

 

[subbss]

What happened to this? Smoking mirror.....where are you?!
Anything happening with this?

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

I love the idea of this in fact.... well, you'll see

anyway, i have a suggestion for a new type of government-

Imperial Republic
basically, a few days ago, I was thinking about if the Roman EMpire had survived, what it might have, government wise, evolved into- this is basically the result

The imperial republic, a quasi-democratic form of government elects magistrates on the local leval, and in that respect has full democracy, inlcudong up to the plaetary, and system wide scale(I think that would be approprite for the mod), however, this is where democratic thought get foldeded into that of republic, and then empire

these magistates, governors and the like then form a council overseeing a province, and elect one provincial govenor to act as the head of the province, in addition, a senator is choosen, as well as a tribune of the people (thus representing a three teird government, executive,legislative,and judicial branches, mind you that the function of tribues, and senators would have changed in function somwaht by this time in the idea)

the Tribune is basically a high judge, along with a panel of lesser tribunes, acting somwaht in the form ofg a supreme court, though the Emperor ofcourse keeps the righ tto overturn the choices of the court, if ratified by the senate

that said, the way an emperor is put onto the throne is not for terms, but is indeed for life, unless there is wide branching majority to dethrone him, or untill the emperor abdicates the throne- the emperor is ratified in most cases by an agreement of the military (the centurate council), and the senate on a candidate, the ratiying of the candidcy by the the judicial branch

the emperor has extreme power, but is limited by Imperial law, that which offers a great deal of personal liberty, including allowing local provinces to have subset laws, though the emperor dose not have to obey those laws if in the province, as he is governend by Imperial law alone

economy wise,a great deal is over seen by the government, lest the wealthy buissness be in such a position to try to prop itself up into a rebelling government of systems, and in many ways, the economic policy could be seen socialistic free market economy

Xen.....commander of Rome's space fleet!

 

[Smoking mirror]

Don't worry, Ive got all the models and everything, am working on a "test" scenario at the moment for another subject but its taking ages. Just started a new job working for the council planning department, so not much energy left at the end of the day.

Will work again on this at some point, have to make a alpha version with just a few units etc first so people will get suckered in to helping out.

 

[A Viking Yeti]

Sorry I've been gone for so long... My internet explorer had a very weird error that stopped me from viewing this (and many other, grrr) sites. Sorry to bump, but in my spare time (not viewing websites, grrr again), I made some terrain graphics... Namely, many stars. I replace the mountain graphics with a variety of stars, and left many of them blank too (in case I decide to use them in a random map, "star-chains" would look very odd; however, with only a single mountain you get a single star, bianary star systems are possible too, along with clusters -just not so close together). I also replace the bonus grassland with clouds of dust, very small stars, 'mini-nebula', and even a black whole (small as it may be, you can blame that on the size of the bonus resource boundries).If you (or anyone else, for that matter) wants to see them, I'd be happy to post a preview of them.

BTW: If it's not too much trouble, could you tell me where you saw that ion propulsion engine, sounds like a really cool idea and I'd lke to know more about it. Thanks, and sorry again for bumping...

 

[Smoking mirror]

Actualy I'm starting to get back in to the idea of a space scenario, still need units though, theres no way I can make them all myself.

Can't remember when I first saw the ion engine idea, new scientist I think, Its actualy a popular current idea for cheap space propulsion.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Its interesting, because my next project will probably be a Sci-Fi Scenerio as well.

Looks good Smoking Mirror!

 

[subbss]

There is a NASA mission called Deep Space 1 that uses a working ion drive and has succesfully intercepted and taken pictures of comet Borrelly. It is now in orbit around the sun and is still working fine.

 

[A Viking Yeti]

TO SM: I could try to make a couple units; tell me what units you still need and I'll see what I can manage (a description would be helpful too). I can probably make some smaller, interplanetary ships (I'm not that good with textures and smaller=less work ) -at least the models for them anyway.

TO subbss: I have to look that up on google or something, with that flight time and speed it sounds very effecient indeed. Too bad it's not as fast, but eh... Thanks for the link too.

 

[Bluemofia]

if i remember correctly, Ion engines in real life provides slow propulsion, but it speeds up eventually, and it is nothing like the star wars ones. another thing that relates to an ion engine is a solar sail. it does generally the same thing, uses ions/other particles not propellent for thrust (except that it gets it's from the sum), slow at first, then speeds up later, but it can't really lift off from a planet without a rocket's help.

 

[A Viking Yeti]

I'm not sure what the Star Wars ones were supposed to be, but I doubt that it is anything realistic. I think the ion engine's acceleration is better than a solar sail's, right? Well, depending on the size of the sail and the distance from the star. It (the ion engine) seems good for extended travel, when propellant fuel would run out too quick, though.

 

[Bluemofia]

a solar sail is better for short distance travel, because it uses the solar wind for fuel. but, once you get to the Termination shock (when the 1,000,000 MPH solar wind is reduced to 250,000 MPH), the solar sail won't be too effective, and when they reach the heliopause (where the sun's magnetic field and solar wind stops) a solar sail is useless, then you reach the interstellar winds and you get blown in some direction.

for long distance travel, use a solar sail first, then fire up the ion engines

EDIT: yes, the size of a sail will make a difference, but scientists plan (if someone will ever approve solar sails) to launch one in orbit with conventional rockets, and then let it unfold and catch the solar wind.

 

[A Viking Yeti]

That would be cool, especially since it doesn't require any fuel. I bet no one 100 years ago ever though people would actually make it feasable to not only travel into space, but then to ride on particle emissions from the sun... Then again, they didn't think we could break the sound barrier either (I'm not sure if that was 100 years ago or farther back, but I'm pretty sure that the speed of sound was a gennerally accepted speed limit).

 

[Smoking mirror]

Yeah, The ion engine would be the general engine of any first age of space travel. It would be prety pointless for interstellar space flight (unless you had a couple of thousand years handy to travel to the next star), but would be handy for slowly moving around the solar system. All you would realy need for iondrive would be available out in the asteroid belt or even in the ort field beyond pluto so it would be a usefull engine for civs with limited resources. For inter stellar travel you would need at least nuclear propulsion, with antimatter being much more effective (100% fuel to energy conversion).

I'm thinking actualy that a good early design for a space ship (beyond shuttles and crude strut and wheel probes would be a sphere. Peter F hamilton uses a sphere as the general design for a space ship in his "nights dawn trilogy" as they have to pass through small wormholes.

From a modding point of view, a sphere would be an exelent unit choice, as it would require the fewest animations to get a set of units ready for use. Just one large sphere, with different weapon effects and propulsions could then be modded by stephs multi unit utility to create different types of unit. Another earlier type of unit would be the "flying pringles tube" which again could be modded to produce different designs.

 

[A Viking Yeti]

Nuclear, plasma, or antimatter drives seem like the only feasible ways to travel to another star-system (although, no matter how close you get to the speed of light, the closest star is somewhere around 4 light-years away; so beyond that, it would require some sort of teleportation or time manipulation device). As for antimatter, the mass to engery proportion is good, but it would require quite a bit of energy to store (electromagnetic feilds, anit-gravity, and near-absolute 0 conditions); you also have to produce it on board (most likely, at least any time in the near future). Seems like the ships would have to be very large...

The pringles & sphere-style ships seem good at low speeds, but near the speed of light they don't seem very 'astro-dynamic', if you will. I guess that's why they went through wormholes, though...

About the ion engine, DS1's ion drive need 152 lbs of xenon propellant to travel for that time... But I thought the whole idea behind it was that it only required electricity to run. Do they derive the electric power from this xenon fuel (I was under the impression that most sattelites used a plutonium rod, and converted the radiation into engery), or was I mistaken about the whole ion drive idea?

 

[Smoking mirror]

I'm not totaly sure about the ion drive idea, its not a pure energy drive so I guess it needs something to propel in order to get a pushing force. The xenon gas acts like a fuel for the drive even though its not "consumed" once all the xenon is expeled the ship is out of fuel (I think, I'll have to look it up)

Anyway, here is a shot of what the sphere ship could look like. I can make two or three tech versions with additional size and colouration differences to show the different units;

 

[Smoking mirror]

If anyone feels like making a "pringles can" ship that would be great, its a prety simple design, a thick cylinder with a rocket nozel at the back end and a satelite dish at the front end.

Use two main colours (in adition to any greys, browns and golds) Blue (for civ colour) and green as a "hot" colour which I can do a colour replace on to create different variants.

My sphere design has a ring of "weapon ports" at the front which can be used to either mount lazers or rail guns or to hold "combat wasps" (automated mini fighters which can double as missiles), or dumbfire torpedos.

The Sphere or pringles tube would be "in system" ships only, loading on board light hugger transports or later on utilising thier own (or city based) wormholes.