RF resonant cavity thruster or EmDrive in Aurora

[filippe999 (OP)]

The title is fairly self-explanatory, the inclusion of the EmDrive in Aurora.

If you're unfamiliar with them, simply put: they are thrusters that don't require propellant(fuel) only electricity to generate thrust, Aurora being a very resource-management oriented game it could greatly benefit from a drive technology that only uses generator power and convert it to thrust.

In Aurora they could work similar to energy weapons, require reactor power, but no fuel, and they could be designed to favour efficiency or thrust, differently from normal engines which both decrease or increase linearly.
Also in Aurora, normal empires are classified as Trans-Newtonian and thus the main argument against those engines, which they violate the Newton third law of motion, could be ignored.

The ship would still need to carry fuel if it had any shield systems regardless, but being able to move around without consuming fuel is a great idea specially in a sci-fi theme, and the whole "trans-newtonian" theme screams that these engines will be plausible for use in-game.

Thanks, Filippe999.

[83athom]

The thing is fuel would still be required anyway to power the reactors. As it is now, some of the engine techs are EM drives now but are included with a built in "reactor" that requires fuel.

[filippe999 (OP)]

But directly, power plants don't seem to require any fuel, this engine would get it's power from them.

[bean]

Power plants don't require fuel because the fuel requirements involved are essentially rounding errors in the grand scheme of things, and it didn't make sense to include the logistical overhead (think about PDCs if this doesn't make sense).  Shields do require fuel because they require time to charge up, and thus if they didn't cost fuel it would be a good idea to keep them at full power all the time.  Even the longest beam weapon battles are only going to involve charging capacitors for a few hours at the outside.  The fuel cost of shields during those same few hours, even if being constantly charged, will be fairly negligible, and the same goes for the weapons (which probably would require less fuel than the shields themselves.)
An emdrive obviously breaks this rather badly, in that the reactor would now run continually, and thus should require fuel.  Also, Aurora drives are not really rockets, and don't work like rockets.  And it would be near-impossible to balance. 

[Vandermeer]

Also, the EM-Drive is in the game, called photonic engines. Requires much research, and of course nothing comes from nothing, so they still require fuel, as the intense radiation that they use as propellant is still created in matter-antimatter reaction.
That is already the penultimate energy conversion tech, as you cannot contain more energy in a point of space other than all dense matter you can place there without it becoming a black hole. If you still need that kind of energy to move a ship, and expend it as fuel, which in Aurora, evident by the various AM-engines (incl. Photonic), it does, then there is simply no room for any non-fuel consuming engine concept anymore I fear.
At least not without introducing further physics breaks. ...Hmm, we have compressed fuel cells, so that is something in that direction at least.

[filippe999 (OP)]

Well to propose balance on this suggested new-type of engine:

• it's max EP would be 50% of your current engine level;
• It would require a specific power system that focuses on long-term/renewable sources of energy(Solar panels, hydrogen scoops, then said hydrogen is feed to a fusion reactor, etc) this Emdrive power system in itself would ONLY be used to power the engine as it is custom-made for a specific, previously researched EmDrive;
• About EmDrive Engine design, they would be big, max size 100HS, regardless of size they could be used as commercial engines(which company would not use a fuel-free engine?), thrust and power requirements increases linearly with size, namely a 100HS Emdrive engine would be equivalent in thrust to a 25HS normal engine of same drive level;
• As the power plants for this engine would be custom made for a researched EmDrive, size of the generator would be 50% the size of the engine it is made for, options here could be researched power boosts, which would decrease the weight, but increase the explosion chance in the same way normal power plants do.

Cost wise they could be the same but due to the added complexity of the engine building it would be a challenge, perhaps 2x the build cost.
There, that way it covers the power plant running continually, and nerfs the EmDrive.

[Vandermeer]

You want the fantasy of such drive system to be in Aurora, which I can understand. Aurora is beside the initial trans-newtonian assumption however very realistic and mathematic, and your proposition just doesn't meet the requirements in matters of consistency here.
As said, the EM-Drive is already in the game, and it doesn't do what you proposed, as even this type of engine evidently has to get energy from somewhere, and it just happens to evaporate tons and tons of fuel/raw-matter still... . You are not going to be able to squeeze in any 'economic' drive here without changing Aurora base lore and inventing a second new trans-thermodynamic physics break.
Aurora has said that the energy requirements for moving thousand tons of ship at half lightspeed through space are such that even photonic drives consume x ton fuels per x ton engine and working hour. ...After this you can't just come and invent the same drive system again "but this time it doesn't use fuel". That is simply too fantastic with that kind of explanation. Nobody here would swallow this.

Now, if you had something else as an explanation, then that could be forged into a suggestion. I am myself not opposed to the fuel-less weak drive idea per se, but it needs a believable explanation.
Sci-Fi that doesn't get current facts right, is lesser Sci-Fi.

[83athom]

You cannot break the E = mc² Law of the Universe. In order to get energy, you need to expend mass. Whether this is in the form of direct propulsion, or turning into energy to use for EM Drives through reactors, you still need to use Fuel. Regular materials (Hydrogen, etc) cannot produce the energies required for trans-newtonian devices, hence why you have to use a trans-newtonian fuel source (Sorium). All of the end level Engines are already/can be considered EMdrives so there is no point in adding another branch of engines. Also, hydrogen scoops? Like the Sorium Harvesters that already exist and do the exact same as what you want them to do?

[bean]

Also, the EM-Drive is in the game, called photonic engines.

Strictly speaking, no.  The EM-drive uses magicphysics to supposedly be more efficient than a straight photon drive.  The explanation changes every time you ask, but they usually start talking about Mach effects.  (Nothing to do with the speed of sound, something about pushing off the universe.)  I'm very skeptical of the whole thing, particularly given that it passed several tests that it should have failed if the theory was correct.  Measurement error seems like the best bet at this point, particularly given inconsistency between tests.

It would require a specific power system that focuses on long-term/renewable sources of energy(Solar panels, hydrogen scoops, then said hydrogen is feed to a fusion reactor, etc) this Emdrive power system in itself would ONLY be used to power the engine as it is custom-made for a specific, previously researched EmDrive;

Solar panels don't have nearly the power density to make something like this work.  And hydrogen scoops don't work because there isn't enough hydrogen in deep space.  Certainly not at the speeds you see in early-day Aurora.  Bussard ramjets don't start working until around .1 C, IIRC, which is 30,000 km/s.  Even my high-tech games don't see anything bigger than a fighter (or maybe a few FACs) going that fast.

In essence, though, you're proposing a very big, very slow engine that doesn't use fuel.  Besides violating what I consider to be the spirit of the game (I'm not a fan of reactionless drives), it just doesn't seem worth it.  I suspect that even with the cost of fuel infrastructure, you're better off in the long run with a conventional engine as you have it laid out.  The alternative is for everyone to switch to EM-drive for commercial ships, and maybe warships, as obviously superior.

[Vandermeer]

Strictly speaking, no.  The EM-drive uses magicphysics to supposedly be more efficient than a straight photon drive.

My apologies, also to filippe, I did not know the details of this drive. EMDrive sounded like they just use radiation pressure, like we have already done, so that would have been a photonic drive again. ...But this is something different. I now vaguely remember having read that wiki before, well.

It will probably be like the spotted faster-than-light neutrinos of Gran-Sasso, or the Voyager probe who mysteriously accelerated once entering interstellar medium, - all measurement mistakes.
However, my hope and feeling is that this microwave chamber actually does something different. The enormous interference from all the echos therein could indeed impair with "the universe" in such way that we see a small casimir-effect grasping from outside (thanks to the shape not uniform and directional). Because that much interference could cause a significant enough portion of virtual particles to be impossible to spawn, hence higher pressure from outside than comes from inside= force. That would kind of be "pushing of the universe" indeed, wherever that counter-impulse may land.

Hehe, you know what? If microwave chambers can be used to generate casimir-effect, then we would actually got ourselves hand on an important warp drive ingredient(*1): Positive Space curvature, slightly as it may be in potential. Remember that anti-gravity talk from yesterday?


I still feel like this concept is wayyy too much on the edge for now though to be accepted in harder science Aurora. Just think of the hindsight ridicule if this turns out to be yet another misleading path.


*1=(not that there aren't enough counter left..)

[Paul M]

Look up "Sawyer EM drive" and more importantly look up the rebuttal to it.  It is utter garbage, and the results if positive are either errors or outright faking of data.  The Sawyer paper made me wonder but I ignored that since he claimed to produce thrust and so I ignored the "this does not make sense" part of the explaination, then I read the rebuttal paper and it is clear that it is garbage.  It is fraud, plain and simple.  Does not work, can not work.  It basically shows scientists are easy to fool since it is expected that one doesn't lie outright about your results.  This is something that paranormal frauds have been exploiting for years.

On to Aurora, you can't have a fuel-less drive system not because of pseudo physics but simply because fuel is an inherent game limitation.  The infrastructure costs of any empires fuel chain are immense.  You have refineries, you have reserach invested in making the refineries more efficient, you have research invested into fuel harversters, you have reserach into fuel use efficiency, you have colonies set up solely as fuel depots, you have tankers, you have refinery ships, you have to mine the sorium and this all then feeds back into the overall strategic range of your ships.  Then your ships have to carry fuel, which means space used by fuel tanks.  Larger ships need more fuel as they have higher power needs to achieve a reasonable speed.  Feeding the beast becomes a full time job in fact.

In no case is there any way as far as I can see that you can balance the inherent advantages of a fuel less engine in Aurora.  It would give you an unlimited range ship.  It would save you a teremendous amount of research and space inside your ships.  It would save you the resources you otherwise have to invest into fuel infrastructure (refinery ships, refineries, and tankers).  50% reduction in output is a sad joke.

Also solar power is utterly inefficient, it only works on satalites as they have minisule power needs.  Ion drives for example are strongly limited in output due to the fact you have only a few hundred watts of power from your panels.  They also don't work much past the orbit of jupiter.  I'm not sure what other sources of fuel or power you might have...hydrogen ram scoops would work but then you have hydrogen not sorium or some other source of fuel.  Hydrogen unless you couple it to a fusion or plasma drive isn't itself that useful.  You need deuterium and tritium for a fusion reactor to make a torch not the basic stuff you find in the wild.

[Vandermeer]

Look up "Sawyer EM drive" and more importantly look up the rebuttal to it.  It is utter garbage, and the results if positive are either errors or outright faking of data.  The Sawyer paper made me wonder but I ignored that since he claimed to produce thrust and so I ignored the "this does not make sense" part of the explaination, then I read the rebuttal paper and it is clear that it is garbage.  It is fraud, plain and simple.  Does not work, can not work.

Thanks for the pointer. I will look it up, but currently I am to busy, so don't wonder if I come back to this in like 3 days to 3 months.

[Prapor]

The title is fairly self-explanatory, the inclusion of the EmDrive in Aurora. 

If you're unfamiliar with them, simply put: they are thrusters that don't require propellant(fuel) only electricity to generate thrust, Aurora being a very resource-management oriented game it could greatly benefit from a drive technology that only uses generator power and convert it to thrust. 

In Aurora they could work similar to energy weapons, require reactor power, but no fuel, and they could be designed to favour efficiency or thrust, differently from normal engines which both decrease or increase linearly. 
Also in Aurora, normal empires are classified as Trans-Newtonian and thus the main argument against those engines, which they violate the Newton third law of motion, could be ignored. 

The ship would still need to carry fuel if it had any shield systems regardless, but being able to move around without consuming fuel is a great idea specially in a sci-fi theme, and the whole "trans-newtonian" theme screams that these engines will be plausible for use in-game. 

Thanks, Filippe999.

At someone burns by combat fleet left without fuel? You can also ask the button - "to win".

In Aurora, IMHO, there is a large anti-physical problem - liquid vacuum in which the maximum speed depends on the engine power, not from fuel reserve  and engine efficiency

[Iranon]

We have absolutely no need for this because we already have something better conceptually (less complicated, more flexible):
A scale of power multiplier tech where the efficient end may as well use no fuel for all the difference it makes.
At 0.1 power multiplier,  the biggest  reasonable fuel load (40% of engine size) can keep engines running for literally hundreds or thousands of years.