Newtonian Aurora

[shadenight123]

mmm space is empty right? how about a sonar sort of thing? wouldn't trans-newtonian waves generated by objects moving in trans-newtonian environment go "back" faster than usual? like a bat-like sensor for catching flies.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

wow, sounds like the wish list of features is comming on as well. looks like ship to ship combat is heading towards being slower and seriously closer to toe to toe. Question is are 5 second ticks going to be too long in these instances?

Also if you are revamping the weapons and energy systems any thoughts on separating laser generators from the turrets and just giving them an output power to divert to various turrets?

Yes, five second ticks may be too long. I may add a one second option, or add sub-pulses to even small timesteps in combat.

I haven't even looked at lasers yet but they will likely be very different than standard Aurora.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

mmm space is empty right? how about a sonar sort of thing? wouldn't trans-newtonian waves generated by objects moving in trans-newtonian environment go "back" faster than usual? like a bat-like sensor for catching flies.

Active Sonar is very similar to active sensors in Aurora, at least in principle. However, the idea of 'waves' generated by objects is interesting. Perhaps objects moving above a certain velocity appear larger to active sensors, due to a detectable 'bow-wave' in spacetime .

Steve

[Mel Vixen]

Detection of an energy spike is something I am considering.

Depends what you mean by computer-controlled. 'Remotely piloted' would be simple enough as I would replace crew quarters with some type of 'quantum entanglement device' that allows instant control over interstellar distances. 'Computer controlled' in the sense that you can't tell the ship what to do, would effectively be the same as creating an NPR ship on your side.

Steve

I was actually thinking of something like a "Crew equivalent" thus [impending technobubble] some kind of installable computer with an expert system, machine learning algorithms etc. [/impending technobubble] that operates a ship instead of a crew but has trade offs say in reactiontime, energy-consumption or whatever.

For many things i would like to have "robotic"-ships because i cant see a couple of poor guys staying out in space for decades just to mine a asteroid, doing geosurveys or hauling infrastructure from planet to planet on no end. 

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I was actually thinking of something like a "Crew equivalent" thus [impending technobubble] some kind of installable computer with an expert system, machine learning algorithms etc. [/impending technobubble] that operates a ship instead of a crew but has trade offs say in reactiontime, energy-consumption or whatever.

For many things i would like to have "robotic"-ships because i cant see a couple of poor guys staying out in space for decades just to mine a asteroid, doing geosurveys or hauling infrastructure from planet to planet on no end. 

It's a interesting idea. The game-play issue would be coming up with something different enough for robotic ships that a significant decision was required as to whether to use them.

Steve

[Din182]

Maybe if the crew of a ship feels like it's a suicide mission, they could just refuse to go? Like if you're sending a Geosurvey ship straight to the enemy homeworld, they won't go? But a robotic ship wouldn't care.

[shadenight123]

Maybe if the crew of a ship feels like it's a suicide mission, they could just refuse to go? Like if you're sending a Geosurvey ship straight to the enemy homeworld, they won't go? But a robotic ship wouldn't care.

conscripts could become at risk of going rogue and becoming...tadah SPACE PIRATES!
and you could reduce the risk by adding officers to command those ships, (maybe call them commissars and have them carry a revolver)

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

conscripts could become at risk of going rogue and becoming...tadah SPACE PIRATES!
and you could reduce the risk by adding officers to command those ships, (maybe call them commissars and have them carry a revolver)

There are plenty of reasons why a robotic ship could be a good idea. There have to be corresponding disadvantages though or it's not a decision . This is probably better addressed in the suggestions thread though as it isn't specific to Newtonian Aurora and could equally be applied to normal Aurora.

Steve

[Rastaman]

Playing as a machine race would be nifty. The population must be built with minerals. It needs maintenance and fuel to live. Can colonize a wider variety of worlds, including hard vacuum worlds. "Biology" research enhances the machines and makes them smarter, faster etc. Or it allows you to research and enhance specialist sub-types e.g. for high accelerations (newtonian and gravity), soldier robots, worker robots, fighter pilot robots, research robots...

Should be quite a different experience.

[shadenight123]

There are plenty of reasons why a robotic ship could be a good idea. There have to be corresponding disadvantages though or it's not a decision . This is probably better addressed in the suggestions thread though as it isn't specific to Newtonian Aurora and could equally be applied to normal Aurora.

Steve

well, there could be the risk of the ai going rogue and turning into a starswarm ship or even a self replicating tend toward extermination of living organism machine.

or there could be the "error 32" risk, or if it gets into a system with highly charged particles (nebulaes?) it risks frying itself. and hardware countermeasures and the like would actually become useful in "steeling" from this problems the technological ships.

[wedgebert]

well, there could be the risk of the ai going rogue and turning into a starswarm ship or even a self replicating tend toward extermination of living organism machine.

or there could be the "error 32" risk, or if it gets into a system with highly charged particles (nebulaes?) it risks frying itself. and hardware countermeasures and the like would actually become useful in "steeling" from this problems the technological ships.

There's not much risk in a ship going rogue outside of the loss of the ship (and any relevant information it carried) and the potential risk of an extra armed combatant out there.  Given that (outside of the starswarm) there don't exist any shipbuilding components, a rogue ship is on its own until it runs out of ordnance and fuel.

I think a better risk is something like the AI Revolt from Sword of the Stars.  If the ships are built with actual AIs (instead of expert systems), a rogue ship that encounters other AI ships should be able to attempt to convince the new ships to join it.  Less starswarm, more pirate.

Combining the two could be fun.  If you encounter a derelict vessel and refuel it for your own use, you might end up with all your AI ships in orbit suddenly switching teams to the alien vessel that promised them a future that didn't involving chasing down comets billions of kilometers away using a single Nuclear Pulse engine.

[boggo2300]

Playing as a machine race would be nifty. The population must be built with minerals. It needs maintenance and fuel to live. Can colonize a wider variety of worlds, including hard vacuum worlds. "Biology" research enhances the machines and makes them smarter, faster etc. Or it allows you to research and enhance specialist sub-types e.g. for high accelerations (newtonian and gravity), soldier robots, worker robots, fighter pilot robots, research robots...

Should be quite a different experience.

Well Steve Traveller: NE gives one possible drawback to AI ships
Vampire fleets of revolted player AI ships would be like Precursors that appear in exactly the wrong places!

And one thing Aurora of any description needs is SPACE PIRATES!

Matt

[Antagonist]

Well, as for AI ships, increased power requirements has been mentioned, but also increased vulnerability to microwave weaponry.  If your 'computer core' gets hit it's game over for that vessel.  I would consider these AI cores to harbor weak AIs, aka non-sentient AIs that operate within a known domain and pre-existing simulations and tunings.

I can support AI cores instead of crews for vessels with 'fire-and-forget' missions, like... missiles and fighters.  Especially fighters, reducing life support means you can pack more guns on it.  Your automated miner perhaps as well.  In my view, all vessels already are packed with AI systems and so forth, just leaving high level command and functions to its crew.  I would suggest that a ship with AI core count as possibly 80% crew training (maybe 50% with improvements in research?), to indicate the combination of customizable automation and highly trained crew can out-think and out-fight a weak AI.  Additionally, AI ships won't ever receive commander bonuses, least not without the in-system quantum entanglement communication remote control Steve suggested, but that would mean it will not work without a commander in-system or without a backup AI core

As for an AI race, well, while they CAN survive in hard vacuum it is still a bad idea.  Every time there is a solar flare there is a panic about our satellites and power stations and transmission lines, all for good reason (if overdone in some cases).  What protects earth and its electronics is both the magnetosphere and the atmosphere.  On a ship it can be assumed that shielding is part of the hull (certainly is for organic passengers), but on alien worlds radiation and temperature would still very much be a concern.  Worlds with little atmosphere or little magnetosphere would need its citizens to include shielding into their design, greatly increasing their cost (perhaps modeled by infrastructure?).  On warm worlds there is greater need for cooling systems and on cold worlds the efficiency of any moving parts can be greatly reduced through freezing (combination of humidity and cold).  Additionally, on atmosphere-less worlds heat sinks would have little effect, greatly affecting the logistics of waste heat and temperature control.  Perhaps through their feet?  Though even that would be limited compared to worlds with atmosphere.

Slightly different topic, on FTL I recently ran across this, which seems very similiar to Newtonian FTL with similiar intended limits(biggest difference is instant travel).
http://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/forum_ftl_tech.html

EDIT: As for not-always-on active sensors, I see that as a potential source of undesired micromanagement... What about if not enough power exists to run it constantly, it supports lower power or delayed modes?  Lower power might be the ability to lower the sensor sensitivity in exchange for less power use.  Delayed mode might be switching on the sensor for 5 minutes, off for 5 minutes to reduce power use, though in this case it will result in a delay of up to 5 minutes before a new contact is spotted, potentially fatal for warships but of less concern for expendable scoutships.

@Steve: Do you still use the email address listed in your forum account?

[Elouda]

I'd put this in a seperate topic, but as these pretain directly to Newtonian Aurora, I thought it would make more sense to post them here.

Now that we have ships with accelerations, what about having those limited by crew type/technology, etc. Races from high grav planets would have an advantage here, which is a fair tradeoff given that they have less planets to colonize in return. Essentially, at G levels above say twice the races natural maximum (ie, 3.4g for humans) an extra delay is added to order changes; until at around 6x (10.2g for humans), order changes are not possible. So you could program in a high acceleration manuever, but once it starts you cant do anything until its over. Obviously, AI cores might no have the same issue, but could have other downsides, like limits to crew bonuses, no commander bonuses, high power requirements, susceptibility to microwave and EW weaponry.

These effects on crews could be mitigated though technology, either through bioegineering your crews to be more grav resistant, or through some alternative method like gravitic reduction systems.

Regarding sensors from the last poster, a low power mode might be an option, along with a pulsed mode that could be automated. Ie, On 1min, off 2min, etc. If you're looking at sensor changes, I thought I'd bring up the ability to activate sensors independently of each other on a ship with multiple systems. Would make power management more interesting too.

Any plans to have passives require some low amount of power to run? Same for lifesupport etc.

[UnLimiTeD]

Everytime I visit this tread, I'm happy.
So many things I've wanted for so long, and now it all comes into place.

While we're talking about AI and realistic weapons, I'd like to raise a question:
Why do they work the way they do?
Kinetic Impact is fine, explosives, in the power range of strategic nukes, is also understandable.
But Lasers?
All I can think of is very high energy waves, like Gamma-Rays, to erode the Material; but that would pass straight through and thus have 200% armor penetration, or excessive heating of the target material, likely by means of lower energy, higher wavelength- beams.
As far as I can tell, while the effect might be abstracted as the same, the working would be different.
Will that have an impact?

Then there is stuff like EW.
As far as I can tell, an EMP is something that can be created, nukes for example could be used to such an effect, but microwaves are more used to fry living beings, and thus should more be an anti-crew weapon like flechettes and shot used on the ships and artillery of old (in  game terms old).

It also raises the question of ship defenses.
Couldn't a ship employ a strong enough magnetic field to make projectiles whizz past?
Would it be possible to engineer "reactive armor", or in this case an automatic defense field, to split incomming projectiles to lessen their armor penetration?
And looking at modern nano-materials, like Graphene, might it be possible that an armor of the space era is a lot more sturdy than todays, but might suffer heavily from Heat and acid?

And now that weapons are actually effective based on their speed, is a shield a solid forcefield to stop them, will it be offensive and weaken/disintegrate them, or does it slow them down?

As for sensors, if you include an automatic "flickering" option to periodically light up space once every 10 seconds for five, it'd be too easy for combat purposes, as long as theres a single defensive sensor.
Maybe add a delay until you can use that sensor for targeting?

For the heat dissipation, sure, simplify it, you'll figure it out, you always did; but complexity wouldn't me much of an argument if you already have as complex things as powergrid management (I've been waiting on this for sooooo.....  ), on the other side, todays prototype insulations are already able to seemingly dissipate heat waves into nothing by having pores smaller than IR-wavelength, and if FTL Aurora does still include forcefields/shields of sorts, a very high tech laser from heat-resistant material could use it's own heat to fuel it's fire. (Literally.^^)

Damn, I'm exited by this.
This is awesome.