2nd attempt; space armarda
- Thread starter Smoking mirror
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Smoking mirror
Ships Captain
The idea is not to move normal (tardyonic) matter at a speed faster than light, but to transform that matter to a tachyonic form, that is capable of moving faster than light. However, it remains to be seen whether humans could suvive such a drastic state change.
Many of my current ideas are culled from a set of books, but I've been planning a space version of Civilization for years. I don't usualy read far future science fictionas in my view its hard enough trying to predict what the future is going to be like in six months let alone five centuries. I like all the extra info, try not to think of it as complication. but rather as added detail. I've no idea what teh third and fourth ages of the mod are going to be like, so I need all the extra ideas I can get.
In response to the many people who have mensioned the eliptical explosion in my death preview;
There are no shock waves in space, and any visible explosion would be made up of emitted light, burning gas and ejected debris. This explosion would be funneled and deformed by the nature of different parts of the ship. In this case, the skin is very tough, with protective bulkheads to protect against intusive force. In the preview, the ship suffers a reactor core breach caused by damaged to other systems in the ship. The skin remains mostly intact, while the softer interior structure of the ship is quickly destroyed from within. The blast travels up and down the length of the ship until the skin ruptures and the explosion explodes outward.
There are many ways an explosion could look, if the interior were stronger than the skin or it were sectioned in to compartments the explosion would apear eliptical perpendicular to the axis of the ship instead of paralel. I could rationalize my decision all day but in the end I think it just looks better that way.
My decision for the size of the map is not wholy based on comunication distances. There are more than a hundred stars within twenty light years of us, and even using a huge map and very small systems (just a few squares across) you couldn't fit them all in and still retain a realistic transit time between them.
Heres what I'm thinking of for the map, I've got a much more detailed one but overall this one shows relative distances and possitions pretty well;
Attachments
Smoking mirror
Ships Captain
This would be an exelent starting map anyhow, around 24 star sytems (if you count Proxima Centuri) say each one big enough for at least two to three cities (with slight bunching) thats around 70 cities, not bad on a map thats about 90 % water.
Alpha centuri is a trinary system, two main stars an orange and yellow dwarf plus proxima centuri (a small red dwarf) 0.24 light years away.
Epsilon Eridani is an orange dwarf star slightly smaller than our own sun which is a yellow dwaf. These stars are most likely to have a terran type planet orbiting them. The following are yellow or orange dwarf stars with the possibilty of usefull planets;
Alpha centuri A and B
61 cygni is a binary system of orange dwarfs.
Epsilon Indi is an orange dwarf orbited by two small brown dwarf stars at 1500 Au (one Au is the distance from the sun to the earth).
Tau ceti is the nearest single yellow dwarf star, with a good chance of an earth type planet.
Thats a possible 7 earth type planets, rare enough to make each one a luxury resource in its own right. However, other reddwarf stars may have habital planets nearer to the sun, but they would be more at risk from solar flares and the like. On the subject of flares, I have source that notes which of the stars on the map are flare stars (possible volcano sites in the mod).
You can get a look at this map, and the 20 light year map at this site;
Universe
Alpha centuri is a trinary system, two main stars an orange and yellow dwarf plus proxima centuri (a small red dwarf) 0.24 light years away.
Epsilon Eridani is an orange dwarf star slightly smaller than our own sun which is a yellow dwaf. These stars are most likely to have a terran type planet orbiting them. The following are yellow or orange dwarf stars with the possibilty of usefull planets;
Alpha centuri A and B
61 cygni is a binary system of orange dwarfs.
Epsilon Indi is an orange dwarf orbited by two small brown dwarf stars at 1500 Au (one Au is the distance from the sun to the earth).
Tau ceti is the nearest single yellow dwarf star, with a good chance of an earth type planet.
Thats a possible 7 earth type planets, rare enough to make each one a luxury resource in its own right. However, other reddwarf stars may have habital planets nearer to the sun, but they would be more at risk from solar flares and the like. On the subject of flares, I have source that notes which of the stars on the map are flare stars (possible volcano sites in the mod).
You can get a look at this map, and the 20 light year map at this site;
Universe
Smoking mirror
Ships Captain
The other point to this is that even if we did use a 20 light year radius there are only about 22 likey habitable star sytems in that radius. If you argued for the possibility of at least two almost inhabitable planets (including mars like planets and the moons of gas giants) in each of those systems thats only gives you 44 viable city locations if you want to use true planet based ground units. With eight civs thats about five cities each at full expansion. in the begining it would be impossible to find a planet for every faction inless you spread them unrealistic distances from the earth. (which is Ok if you want most of the factions to be aliens).
Also remember, that the distances between systems vs the size of the systems is already unrealistic in the 12 LY model, if you wanted a model that showed every planet in a system (instead of a small selection of the most important) and you also wanted your systems to be twice as far apart as their size (the real figure is 5,000 times that) you would need a truly gigantic map.
I'd like to at least make the mod semi-realistc, which means setting a scale where true planet based ground units are too small or specialised to count. So I recomend that the smallest unit be a shuttle group or deffence satelite. Yes, In therory I would like to have a mod scaled to individual planets, and have true ground based combats but for that you would need a map that featured only our own solar system to have any sort of realism. Perhaps when I've finished thas mod I would consider a solar system scale mod.
Also remember, that the distances between systems vs the size of the systems is already unrealistic in the 12 LY model, if you wanted a model that showed every planet in a system (instead of a small selection of the most important) and you also wanted your systems to be twice as far apart as their size (the real figure is 5,000 times that) you would need a truly gigantic map.
I'd like to at least make the mod semi-realistc, which means setting a scale where true planet based ground units are too small or specialised to count. So I recomend that the smallest unit be a shuttle group or deffence satelite. Yes, In therory I would like to have a mod scaled to individual planets, and have true ground based combats but for that you would need a map that featured only our own solar system to have any sort of realism. Perhaps when I've finished thas mod I would consider a solar system scale mod.
embryodead
Caliph
I like the fact that you're using real space map and have some respect to theoretical physics. Most games and movies make me sick because they're lacking that (I'm ELITE fan if you know what I mean 
).
).
embryodead
Caliph
Aren't there only three of them? all of which are part of one Alpha Cent(a)uri system which is a triple star system (A+B+Proxima). I don't know any other in the nearest space, while the rest has usually just catalog numbers.
Smoking mirror
Ships Captain
Originally posted by embryodead
I like the fact that you're using real space map and have some respect to theoretical physics. Most games and movies make me sick because they're lacking that (I'm ELITE fan if you know what I mean
Yeah, most designers look at the sparsity of information about the nearby starsystems, and think, Oh well thers not much to go on, and man are scientists un-original in naming things, I may as well start from scratch.
Its one of the reasons I don't read much Far future science fiction, cos it tends to verge on the fantastic. Movies and games are just as bad, my pet hate is whenever any one portrays mars they forget that it has only 1/3 our own gravity.
As far as I can tell, Centuri is only used in reference to the three stars in the Centuri star system, Centuri A & B and Proxima Centuri (so called becuase its the colosest sun to us).
I'm still trying to decide what In-system units to feature in the first two eras. I've decided so far on;
Giant shuttle (settler)*
Mining ship (worker)
Retrofitted mining ship (captured worker)
defence satelite (spearman)
Shuttle (warrior/charriot)
Freighter/hauler (Archer/swordsman)*
And for the second era
Armoured deffence station/monitor (pikeman)*
Assault ship (enslaving longbowman)
Corvette (horsman/knight)
Destroyer (medieaval Infantry)*
Battlebarge (musketman/weak-rifleman)*
Cruiser (weak-cavalry)*
Any ideas? I want the first era ships to have a sort of improvised quality about them, tools of science and engineering forced into the role of warship. In the second era you begin to find the first dedicated Warships.
Remember they should be in-system ships, designed to travel between the planets, Try to decide whether they should be small enough to be transported by lighthugger or whether they should be part of a local fleet.
*All these craft count as big ships. I'm thinking of making lighthuggers only carry foot troops (small ships), so that big ships like battle barges have to be built on location and any invader has to rely on smaller ships like corvettes or assaultcraft. Later the higgs field modulator will get around this problem by providing "inflatable" battleships. It will also limit wormhole travel (via airports).
If you have any artistic skills I'd love to see some concepts, I need inspiration!
embryodead
Caliph
I don't have any "manual" skills really, I only design humanoid units in Poser... Look at Cyborganics previews in space terrain mod thread, he put up some new planets / stars and offered graphical help.
actually, i would be happy to try to help make some concepts, the problemis, design wise, I have always preferred the big bad, sort of "shiny heavy industrial look"- you know, somthing that looks like it could kick ass as opposed to things along the line of ships that have a feild generator to make them into big tough ships...
Bluemofia
F=ma
i know i am a bit of a science freak, but after reading some of the last posts, faster than light is not possible with ANY matter that i know of, only massless particles (photons, therietical gravitons, etc.).
a time machine can be created by using complex wormhole technology by creating a stable wormhole, lining the inside with an anti gravity material, and sending it on a long trip at a nice fraction of the speed of light, and have it return in about 10 years on the onboard clock. and since time passes more slowly for the space ship and the wormhole, you travel into the past thru the wormhole that has aged more.
a good weapon that can usually destroy a planet's larger inhabitants (anything bigger than cockroaches) using heat to ignight the atomosphere, and killing the survivors with a well placed anti matter bomb to the core of the plannet. besides, anti matter particles are constantly being created at fermi lab for the accelerator, so anti matter shouldent be too hard to collect.
another thing, for the nukes, you can always just use a mini black hole, because therieticly, if you take all the heavy hydrogen in the world's oceans, you can create a hydrogen bomb so powerful, it would destroy the world. any survivors would find a mini black hole there, the result of matter compressed from external pressure.
a possible great wonder for tech level 4, is a naked singularity, or a black hole without an event horizon. this, would allow the breaking of any law of physics, but uncontrollably. to create a naked singularity, you have to throw enough charge on to the black hole, or if it is spinning fast enough. but, a presence of 1 naked singularity in the universe would cause cosmic anarchy to rule over the entire universe.
a time machine can be created by using complex wormhole technology by creating a stable wormhole, lining the inside with an anti gravity material, and sending it on a long trip at a nice fraction of the speed of light, and have it return in about 10 years on the onboard clock. and since time passes more slowly for the space ship and the wormhole, you travel into the past thru the wormhole that has aged more.
a good weapon that can usually destroy a planet's larger inhabitants (anything bigger than cockroaches) using heat to ignight the atomosphere, and killing the survivors with a well placed anti matter bomb to the core of the plannet. besides, anti matter particles are constantly being created at fermi lab for the accelerator, so anti matter shouldent be too hard to collect.
another thing, for the nukes, you can always just use a mini black hole, because therieticly, if you take all the heavy hydrogen in the world's oceans, you can create a hydrogen bomb so powerful, it would destroy the world. any survivors would find a mini black hole there, the result of matter compressed from external pressure.
a possible great wonder for tech level 4, is a naked singularity, or a black hole without an event horizon. this, would allow the breaking of any law of physics, but uncontrollably. to create a naked singularity, you have to throw enough charge on to the black hole, or if it is spinning fast enough. but, a presence of 1 naked singularity in the universe would cause cosmic anarchy to rule over the entire universe.
Vadus
pretend the impossible
@Bob McDob:
The map looks cool, especially the starlanes
but remember, that the AI can't work fine with one tiled pieces of Land. The AI woun't colonize other plantes
The map looks cool, especially the starlanes
but remember, that the AI can't work fine with one tiled pieces of Land. The AI woun't colonize other plantes
embryodead
Caliph
This is the only thing that you have to change in order to create any fiction about long distance space travel. If we don't scrap relativity, we may forget about any space conquers.
If you are a science freak, you should know how absurd is the idea of creating artificial wormhole, not to mention that by entering a wormhole you would most likely cease to exist, that is, if you didn't hit singularity a moment before
Therefore, I don't see a problem in allowing faster-than-light travel without any explanation, because in practice this is as much impossible as creating wormholes, phase engines and other wicked ideas for space travel.
Smoking mirror
Ships Captain
With current technology its impossible to cryogenicly freeze someone.
Theres lots of ideas from science fiction, the first question to ask is is it possible or not, then to think about what degree of technical advancement you would need, (many ideas can get thrown out here) how much energy would be needed to acheive it & finaly what side effects or difficulties would need to be overcome.
In the case of wormholes, theoreticly they could be possible, you would need realy very advanced technology, able to manipulate gravity and the nature of reality at a quantum level. Thirdly it would take a great amount of energy to open even a small wormhole, and that energy requirement would probably increase with the size of the wormhole but not perhaps with the distance covered as a wormhole is a tunnel through reality from point to point, it doesn't actualy have any length. One of the big problems with wormholes is how exactly you would "target" them. Whats to stop the other end opening inside a sun (atracted by its gravity) or somewhere random.
However, I don't think faster than light travel, or wormholes would be absoloutly essential for a space mod. Imagine your self as a space captian, its very much like being in the army or navy during a war, Long periods of inactivity followed by short bursts of hectic activity. You might travel for two hundred years frozen in your cryocrypt with your ship on auto pilot, just to fight one battle that could have been called off by the time you got there. In some respects its like being a ship officer in napoleonic times, you could be fighting against a french vessel of the coast of austrailia while back at home your nation has been at peace with the enemy for several years. If the map is 24 light years across and you travel from one end to the other at one quarter the speed of light it only takes you 86 years to complete your journey. For a napoleonic ship captain that would be too long a mission, but for a culture with cryogenic facilities and anti-aging drugs it would be a regular day (or 31,000) at the office.
Bob McDob I realy like your ship designs, especialy the dreadnought in the lower right. Have you tryed making any animations your self? Unit animations for a space mod are prety easy, you don't realy need to work about shadows, and the animations are a peice of cake, just a flash of light for the guns and slow dismemberment or change of graphics for the death animation.
I am thinking of using something like the starlanes in the mod, though the alternaives are to have groups of stars like luytens star and procyon or Sol and alpha centuri surronded by an "Island" of sea/local space, with large areas of ocean/deep space separating them. this would make short hops possible, but stop any early leap to the outer sytems (though I think that could be fun).
One Idea that I had this morning at work was to make rivers into "atmosphere" and surround certain planets with a river on all side of the square, havn't tryed it yet, so I don't know if its graphicly possible (or easy), though I could just make rivers invisible.
The point is that it would allow citys placed on or near planets with an atmosphere to grow to size twelve without an aqueduct (oxygen plant) And could be combined with desert to create a flood plains area around certain lush planets ("oxygen rich" atomsphere), that would boost population in nearby cities.
Also It would give planets with an atmosphere a defence bonus, and would mean that you needed a special tech (space elevator) to get any movement benefit from roads (which I'm thinking of making space stations, or refueling points).
Imagine how popular this would make terran planets, with a high food bonus on the square itself and a halo of floodplains around the planet, it could quicky beome a very populous city location.
Theres lots of ideas from science fiction, the first question to ask is is it possible or not, then to think about what degree of technical advancement you would need, (many ideas can get thrown out here) how much energy would be needed to acheive it & finaly what side effects or difficulties would need to be overcome.
In the case of wormholes, theoreticly they could be possible, you would need realy very advanced technology, able to manipulate gravity and the nature of reality at a quantum level. Thirdly it would take a great amount of energy to open even a small wormhole, and that energy requirement would probably increase with the size of the wormhole but not perhaps with the distance covered as a wormhole is a tunnel through reality from point to point, it doesn't actualy have any length. One of the big problems with wormholes is how exactly you would "target" them. Whats to stop the other end opening inside a sun (atracted by its gravity) or somewhere random.
However, I don't think faster than light travel, or wormholes would be absoloutly essential for a space mod. Imagine your self as a space captian, its very much like being in the army or navy during a war, Long periods of inactivity followed by short bursts of hectic activity. You might travel for two hundred years frozen in your cryocrypt with your ship on auto pilot, just to fight one battle that could have been called off by the time you got there. In some respects its like being a ship officer in napoleonic times, you could be fighting against a french vessel of the coast of austrailia while back at home your nation has been at peace with the enemy for several years. If the map is 24 light years across and you travel from one end to the other at one quarter the speed of light it only takes you 86 years to complete your journey. For a napoleonic ship captain that would be too long a mission, but for a culture with cryogenic facilities and anti-aging drugs it would be a regular day (or 31,000) at the office.
Bob McDob I realy like your ship designs, especialy the dreadnought in the lower right. Have you tryed making any animations your self? Unit animations for a space mod are prety easy, you don't realy need to work about shadows, and the animations are a peice of cake, just a flash of light for the guns and slow dismemberment or change of graphics for the death animation.
I am thinking of using something like the starlanes in the mod, though the alternaives are to have groups of stars like luytens star and procyon or Sol and alpha centuri surronded by an "Island" of sea/local space, with large areas of ocean/deep space separating them. this would make short hops possible, but stop any early leap to the outer sytems (though I think that could be fun).
One Idea that I had this morning at work was to make rivers into "atmosphere" and surround certain planets with a river on all side of the square, havn't tryed it yet, so I don't know if its graphicly possible (or easy), though I could just make rivers invisible.
The point is that it would allow citys placed on or near planets with an atmosphere to grow to size twelve without an aqueduct (oxygen plant) And could be combined with desert to create a flood plains area around certain lush planets ("oxygen rich" atomsphere), that would boost population in nearby cities.
Also It would give planets with an atmosphere a defence bonus, and would mean that you needed a special tech (space elevator) to get any movement benefit from roads (which I'm thinking of making space stations, or refueling points).
Imagine how popular this would make terran planets, with a high food bonus on the square itself and a halo of floodplains around the planet, it could quicky beome a very populous city location.
embryodead
Caliph
To create (unstable) wormhole the least you need are two discs of near-blackhole mass material (ie. neutron star), size of our star system and thickness of Earth. Now spin these disc to near-lightspeed and create a second set on the other side (to which you will travel by foot first, I assume ). Assuming that this might be "possible" because there is some hypothetical "technological advancement" is as much absurd as faster-than-light travel, that was my point. Just scrap relativity and make a game with ships moving in turns, no questions asked. The rest can be done well without "cheating".
). Assuming that this might be "possible" because there is some hypothetical "technological advancement" is as much absurd as faster-than-light travel, that was my point. Just scrap relativity and make a game with ships moving in turns, no questions asked. The rest can be done well without "cheating".now here is somthing I know a little about
thats not true, what is tru, it impossibel to cryogenically freeze someone for more then 8 minutes with out cause irreperable damage to vital organs- the problem is not the freezing, but the fact that ice crytals punture wounds in tissues... I would think once soe sort of gelitin can be made that can more or less conrol cyrtal development can be created (not as far fetched as you might imagine) it is possible Cryo can finally comeinto the spot light as a real medical (and space colonizing) procedure
Bluemofia
F=ma
Originally posted by embryodead
If you are a science freak, you should know how absurd is the idea of creating artificial wormhole, not to mention that by entering a wormhole you would most likely cease to exist, that is, if you didn't hit singularity a moment before
ahh yes, a rotating black hole happens to have a ring singularity. all you have to do is to travel thrugh the ring by going thrugh a polar path instead of a equatorial path.
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