2nd attempt; space armarda
- Thread starter Smoking mirror
- Start date
I have an idea, perhaps the game could be made where ships with weak engines could be land units, the sea would be just outside the solar system and the ocean would be deep space so units can be limited to in-system or can be limited to deep space like if you have a ship with an engine that will not run if it is too close to a source of gravity like the sun. For units that can travel between systems (in-system and deep space) you would make the units air units with very long ranges.
Bluemofia
F=ma
yes, but get far enough away, like 10 billion miles, and the solar power gets pretty pathetic.
WildWeazel
Going Dutch
That, and, by definition, a satellite orbits something.
Bluemofia
F=ma
not the voyager and pioneer probes, they dont orbit anything
WildWeazel
Going Dutch
That's why they're called "probes", and not "sattelites"
Smoking mirror
Ships Captain
Yes, thats been very much my idea, if you tried to fly a shuttle from one solar system to another, it would take centuries, the engine just wouldn't be big enough. plus you wouldn't have enough power, oxygen or food to last the trip, even if you were stored in suspended animation that would still require energy and maintenance. Imagine if a mechanical system malfuctioned on a ship full of sleepers, with no one around to fix it (and robots couldn't do the job (unless they were very advanced, like with human level AIs) and they would still require a power source.
Interstellar ships need to be beyond huge, they have to have thier own shielded power source, within the hull to be protected from micro metors or full blown asteroid strikes. They have to have oxygen recycle systems, even better is to have a mini ecosystem on board, with botanical gardens etc.. A up to date maunfacturing center would be more than usefull, as spare parts could be millions of miles away. They also have to mount all this in a rig that can be rotated within the armoured shell of the star ship for rotational gravity. And all thats before you get to engines powerfull enough to accellerate the whole lot up a significant portion of the speed of light. These are very expensive ships, easily costing the same as a small solar system fleet or habitat city and they have one role, travel between star-sytems. Anything else is just a waste of resources. So they bring an onbard fleet for things like local towage or territorial disputes, the mother ship may not even stick around long enough to wait for thses ships to return, so they would be bought and sold along with the cargo.
Below is a rendering showing comparative real ship scales, obviously this would be impossible to represent, unless I made all the solar system ships two or three pixels across (perhaps something to think about for a future project). So the in system ships will be in proportion to each other and the inter system ships will be in proportion to each other, but the difference between the two scales is difficult to represent using civ III Graphics engine.
Attachments
Smoking mirror
Ships Captain
This is why I want to make in-system space land terrain, and deep space sea. Inter stysem ships will be given a powerfull bombard attack, so that they can attack ememy fleets and habitat cities on the edge of the solar system, but will not engage in close range ship on ship attacks with solar ships. Inter stellar ships are heavily armed and armoured, but are too big and expensive to be risked in conflcts with smaller ships. It would only take one acurate antimatter missile to penetrate the hull of a lighthugger or a lucky shuttle attack on an engine naecell and all that hardware would be history. Likewise its not possible for shuttles snad the like to head out in to deep space to try to hunt down interstellar ships, they are much too slow to track down a speedy light hugger. However I may make a couple of special "coastal" ships later, smaller expendable ships with solar system weaponary but with all the equipment needed for a jaunt out beyond pluto.
PS, progress is slow because I'm job hunting at the moment and my girlfiends flat got burgled on friday night.
PS, progress is slow because I'm job hunting at the moment and my girlfiends flat got burgled on friday night.
Celeborn
Silver-Death
SM that star map you posted earlier... do you know of a place where I can find out which stars are clusters and which are single stars?
For the Satallites:
You could have the satallites be air units with very limited range and have it require a star resource connected to the city to build.
One of its actions would be to automate it to go in circles around the city that created it and 1. if it was a military satallite it would auto-attack any enemy units within its range, or 2. if it is a civilian satallite it could act as a limited mobile sensor outpost that revealed fog of war.
Another action would be manual moves where it could be moved like a civ2 air unit and "hop" from city to city as long as the city was within its range (and the city it travels/rebases to has to have the star resource (don't know how that could be done
).
Or make the satallites sea units that must end its turn in a sea square (and mod sea squares to only be two squares surrounding an island of land with the star resource on it
.
This would be useful along unsettled borders af your empire.
Hope you understand me... I don't
!
You could have the satallites be air units with very limited range and have it require a star resource connected to the city to build.
One of its actions would be to automate it to go in circles around the city that created it and 1. if it was a military satallite it would auto-attack any enemy units within its range, or 2. if it is a civilian satallite it could act as a limited mobile sensor outpost that revealed fog of war.
Another action would be manual moves where it could be moved like a civ2 air unit and "hop" from city to city as long as the city was within its range (and the city it travels/rebases to has to have the star resource (don't know how that could be done
).Or make the satallites sea units that must end its turn in a sea square (and mod sea squares to only be two squares surrounding an island of land with the star resource on it
.This would be useful along unsettled borders af your empire.
Hope you understand me... I don't
!
Bluemofia
F=ma
first of all, if they are a sink in ocean unit, they can't sink in coast, or sea, and i can't think of a way to make it a sink in coast, and sink in ocean. maybe you can make it a sink in sea, to get rid of that problem. and you can just give it a 4 movement, so you can manage to get to the nearest planet if they are pretty decently spaced.
A Viking Yeti
Carnal Leviathan
I still think it should be a cheap air scout, since they'll obviously run out of energy. The only 'permanent' satellites that we use are in orbit, and we have to fix and mainain them all the time. Maybe you could make it an immobile land unit, with airdrop ability so you could make stationary outposts.
Also, to SM, yes iterstellar ships would have to be massive. And advanced, considering all of our mini-ecosystem projects have failed. Biodomes and the like, are very hard to maintain; an interstellar ship crew would have to take turns going into cryostasis, so that someone was there to maintain the ship and the biodome. I agree that any sane genneral would NEVER send such an expensive piece of equipment into ship on ship battle with a fleet of system-fighters; it would suicide, but what will the bombard animation be? Will many smaller system-fighters depart from the intersystem or stellar ship? Seems like aiming a gun, considering the scope of the game, would be highly inacurate.
Also, to SM, yes iterstellar ships would have to be massive. And advanced, considering all of our mini-ecosystem projects have failed. Biodomes and the like, are very hard to maintain; an interstellar ship crew would have to take turns going into cryostasis, so that someone was there to maintain the ship and the biodome. I agree that any sane genneral would NEVER send such an expensive piece of equipment into ship on ship battle with a fleet of system-fighters; it would suicide, but what will the bombard animation be? Will many smaller system-fighters depart from the intersystem or stellar ship? Seems like aiming a gun, considering the scope of the game, would be highly inacurate.
Smoking mirror
Ships Captain
Yeah, firing any kind of direct effect weapon from 1 or 2 AUs would be fairly pointless. Lasers and particle beams would be scattered, diffused or partialy blocked by space dust amd micro meteors, while any projectiles would be pointless, as they could easily be dodged with a few random course changes as it would take hours or even days for the projectile to reach its destination.
On posibility would be a swarm of near relatavistic missiles. Any single missile could be defeated by anti-missile lasers (once the missile was within range) but if a swarm of missiles (perhaps more than 1000) was released at the same time, and accelerated up to near light speed... There would be problems with guidance, manuvering at that speed would be difficult, but some of the missiles would be likely to hit something. A smaller swarm (say 100 or so could be used traveling at a slower speed but equiped with stealth technology (either anti radar tech or cryoarithamatic engines).
For the satelites try to think of them as civ III spearmen. Their only real use is as defence units, sure you may move some of them to a weakly defended city in an emergency or as an escort, but generaly they just sit and a city and wait to beat any attackers. Satelites would be the same, for the most part, cheap defenders of a habitat city. However, I'm thinking of making two satelite types, A smaller, box shaped beam weapon, usualy found in groups (1/2/1) and a large Super satelite, with a much more powerfull single shot weapon, perhaps a railgun, or fusion burst gun (leathal defending bombard 3 1/2/1). The super satelite would be a little more expensive, but would only be effective if used in combination with other deffenders (where it would be quite dangerous).
On posibility would be a swarm of near relatavistic missiles. Any single missile could be defeated by anti-missile lasers (once the missile was within range) but if a swarm of missiles (perhaps more than 1000) was released at the same time, and accelerated up to near light speed... There would be problems with guidance, manuvering at that speed would be difficult, but some of the missiles would be likely to hit something. A smaller swarm (say 100 or so could be used traveling at a slower speed but equiped with stealth technology (either anti radar tech or cryoarithamatic engines).
For the satelites try to think of them as civ III spearmen. Their only real use is as defence units, sure you may move some of them to a weakly defended city in an emergency or as an escort, but generaly they just sit and a city and wait to beat any attackers. Satelites would be the same, for the most part, cheap defenders of a habitat city. However, I'm thinking of making two satelite types, A smaller, box shaped beam weapon, usualy found in groups (1/2/1) and a large Super satelite, with a much more powerfull single shot weapon, perhaps a railgun, or fusion burst gun (leathal defending bombard 3 1/2/1). The super satelite would be a little more expensive, but would only be effective if used in combination with other deffenders (where it would be quite dangerous).
Smoking mirror
Ships Captain
I've been reading about star syestem formation, and it would seem that every thing depends on the jupiter type planet. There are for different types of star system that could result form a sun our size, depending on the density and composition of the dust cloud that forms before the planets.
#1 "sol type system" very likely to support life, earth is shielded by jupiter (which is as big as all the other planets combined) from asteroids as they are easily caught in its gravitational pull and sucked in. This is called a "cold" or "good jupiter"
#2 "a hot jupiter system" as the cloud of dust in the outer star system combines in to planets it is likely to form a jupiter sized super gas giant. If it is bigger than our own jupiter or has a partner near its own size, it tends to interact with near by gas giants in a catastrophic way. The jupiter "migrates" in to the inner system in a spiral, destroying the other planets like skittles. Often it is stopped just short of the star, where it is locked in tidal orbit; One side facing out, forever cold, while the other always faces the sun, creating an enviroment which can boil steel. this kind of system is quite common.
#3 "an eliptical jupiter system" If the jupiter type planet is not caught by the star during its migration it tends to be cast in to a violently eliptical orbit, being extremly cold in the outer system, and exremely hot in the inner system. Its possible that these orbits can stabalize in to a "hot jupiter" system.
#4 "a non-jupiter system" if no giant gas giant is created, only lots of smaller ones, the inner planets are under constant threat from any asteroids that tend to pass through. Only a planet with a very thick atmosphere would be able to protect itself.
This means on the face of it, the systems within 12 light years of us are unlikely to contain life, as the chance of a type one system being encountered are actualy quite low. However, a type one system may contain more than one earth type planet.
#1 "sol type system" very likely to support life, earth is shielded by jupiter (which is as big as all the other planets combined) from asteroids as they are easily caught in its gravitational pull and sucked in. This is called a "cold" or "good jupiter"
#2 "a hot jupiter system" as the cloud of dust in the outer star system combines in to planets it is likely to form a jupiter sized super gas giant. If it is bigger than our own jupiter or has a partner near its own size, it tends to interact with near by gas giants in a catastrophic way. The jupiter "migrates" in to the inner system in a spiral, destroying the other planets like skittles. Often it is stopped just short of the star, where it is locked in tidal orbit; One side facing out, forever cold, while the other always faces the sun, creating an enviroment which can boil steel. this kind of system is quite common.
#3 "an eliptical jupiter system" If the jupiter type planet is not caught by the star during its migration it tends to be cast in to a violently eliptical orbit, being extremly cold in the outer system, and exremely hot in the inner system. Its possible that these orbits can stabalize in to a "hot jupiter" system.
#4 "a non-jupiter system" if no giant gas giant is created, only lots of smaller ones, the inner planets are under constant threat from any asteroids that tend to pass through. Only a planet with a very thick atmosphere would be able to protect itself.
This means on the face of it, the systems within 12 light years of us are unlikely to contain life, as the chance of a type one system being encountered are actualy quite low. However, a type one system may contain more than one earth type planet.
Monacle_Man
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2004
- Messages
- 19
Whens the Tentative release date for this mod?
I would enjoy being a beta tester if im needed....
This sounds very cool
I would enjoy being a beta tester if im needed....
This sounds very cool
When I said have the satallites auto attack, I meant more like suicide mines (3/1/2) that upgrade with a higher explosive yield and a faster engine (5/1/3).
Like this: (constantly speeding around the city like electrons around a nucleus)
*_____*____*
*____[city]____*
___*_______*
The "__" are to keep the shape right in the post, they are empty space.
Like this: (constantly speeding around the city like electrons around a nucleus)
*_____*____*
*____[city]____*
___*_______*
The "__" are to keep the shape right in the post, they are empty space.
A Viking Yeti
Carnal Leviathan
Yeah, I think we kinda relized that. I would have 2 types: 1 for defense, the other a scout satellite. These scout satellites would be just for the early game, since right now sending out a shuttle for a scout ship isn't feasable (and probably won't be for a while). Eventually, these satellites would upgrade to small, short range scout ships.
As for the solar system ideas: I think that a 'sol' type system also has a likely chance of becoming a bistellar system. If our Jupiter had been a little larger, and had ignited, then we would've had 2 suns. Actually, we probably wouldn't be alive, in that case. Not to mention the fact that a tristellar system would definatly complicate things, as the gravitational pull on the planets would alter depending on the solar orbits. I.e. in an eliptical Jupiter orbit, if the solar orbit and planetary orbit were in sync, they might cancel each other out into a type 1 system. A system with several Neptune to Saturn sized planets could block a lot of asteroids in a type 4 system; if another star (such as a bistellar system) were far enough apart, and close to the same size they could hold a planet in between them. The planet would have no nightime, just two evenings and mostly day. They would also have no seasons.
BTW: To anyone diapointed by the statistics concerning the number of liveable solar systems, don't worry. 12 light years if a VERY small distance in the scheme of the Galaxy, not to mention the Universe.
As for the solar system ideas: I think that a 'sol' type system also has a likely chance of becoming a bistellar system. If our Jupiter had been a little larger, and had ignited, then we would've had 2 suns. Actually, we probably wouldn't be alive, in that case. Not to mention the fact that a tristellar system would definatly complicate things, as the gravitational pull on the planets would alter depending on the solar orbits. I.e. in an eliptical Jupiter orbit, if the solar orbit and planetary orbit were in sync, they might cancel each other out into a type 1 system. A system with several Neptune to Saturn sized planets could block a lot of asteroids in a type 4 system; if another star (such as a bistellar system) were far enough apart, and close to the same size they could hold a planet in between them. The planet would have no nightime, just two evenings and mostly day. They would also have no seasons.
BTW: To anyone diapointed by the statistics concerning the number of liveable solar systems, don't worry. 12 light years if a VERY small distance in the scheme of the Galaxy, not to mention the Universe.
Bluemofia
F=ma
Smoking mirror
Ships Captain
Well, I'm already racking up the unit count by including two types of satelite, Perhaps a scout probe would'nt be too difficult though. The new technique I'm using for death animations is realy speeding up my turnover. Its still Slow work though. 
The large satelite is almost done now, heres a preview, as you can see, I made a slght change from the shuttles in using non coloured smoke, this blends better with the magenta, and has a smooter result;
The large satelite is almost done now, heres a preview, as you can see, I made a slght change from the shuttles in using non coloured smoke, this blends better with the magenta, and has a smooter result;
Attachments
Smoking mirror
Ships Captain
with the early units, I don't want the deaths to be too dramatic, I want to leave some extra bang! for the later ships. T start with the death is realy just the failure of the internal systems. Perhaps the ship is not even fully destriyed, but the crew are either dead or in need of imediate rescue. You cant real see the smoke above, but thats because of teh dark background, something I'm going to have to figure out for the later ships.
On the subject of a second sun, It is a potential problem, even if it was much bigger, jupiter would only be likely to form a brown dwarf, and this could make mars habitable, however, this extra mass would cause interaction problems as said before with the threat of it becoming a hot jupiter.
On the subject of nearby stars Epsilon Eridani has a Jupiter sized planet has been detected orbiting this star at a distance of 3.2 AU (480 million km). This is a little closer than our jupiter but not so close to risk a hot jupiter, especialy as Epsilon Eridani is cooler than our sun.
Alpha Centauri is a binary system
Sirius has a white dwarf companion star
As does Procyon
61 Cygni is binary
& Epsilon Indi has a couple of brown dwarf stars orbiting it at about 1500 AU. they ar oo far out to be native jupiters, so may just be capured supermasive gas giants ejected from thier home system.
Tau Ceti is the only other single Sol like star in the 12 LY radius, and the only likely candidate for a second earth. It is 11 light years away from earth.
On the subject of a second sun, It is a potential problem, even if it was much bigger, jupiter would only be likely to form a brown dwarf, and this could make mars habitable, however, this extra mass would cause interaction problems as said before with the threat of it becoming a hot jupiter.
On the subject of nearby stars Epsilon Eridani has a Jupiter sized planet has been detected orbiting this star at a distance of 3.2 AU (480 million km). This is a little closer than our jupiter but not so close to risk a hot jupiter, especialy as Epsilon Eridani is cooler than our sun.
Alpha Centauri is a binary system
Sirius has a white dwarf companion star
As does Procyon
61 Cygni is binary
& Epsilon Indi has a couple of brown dwarf stars orbiting it at about 1500 AU. they ar oo far out to be native jupiters, so may just be capured supermasive gas giants ejected from thier home system.
Tau Ceti is the only other single Sol like star in the 12 LY radius, and the only likely candidate for a second earth. It is 11 light years away from earth.
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