Newtonian Aurora

[bean]

Steve: Nuke test looks very cool.
I suppose I got carried away by abuse of the burden of proof fallacy.  My apologies.

[chrislocke2000]

Steve

Congrats on the first missile test! Must be great to start to see your hard work coming together - can't wait to have a look myself!

You mentoned previously that you had a survey ship up and running and doing a geo survey of sol. With the new fuel consumption changes it would be interesting to see a comparison of the time it will now take to do the survey compared to current Aurora. As a quick test I just ran the following ships round sol with no stops for fuel or resupply and no officer assigned to reduce survey time.

Code: [Select]

Tribal class Survey Ship    1,600 tons     162 Crew     357 BP      TCS 32  TH 80  EM 0
2500 km/s     Armour 1-12     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/2     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 0
Maint Life 22.85 Years     MSP 558    AFR 5%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 2    5YR 31    Max Repair 100 MSP

Nuclear Pulse Engine E8 (2)    Power 40    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 40    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres    Range 281.3 billion km   (1302 days at full power)

Geological Survey Sensors (2)   2 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
That ship took 8.56 years (ignoring the outlying comets), I'm asuming an equivalent tech Newtonian ship is going to take an order of magnitude longer and have massively higher fuel consumption?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Steve

Congrats on the first missile test! Must be great to start to see your hard work coming together - can't wait to have a look myself!

You mentoned previously that you had a survey ship up and running and doing a geo survey of sol. With the new fuel consumption changes it would be interesting to see a comparison of the time it will now take to do the survey compared to current Aurora. As a quick test I just ran the following ships round sol with no stops for fuel or resupply and no officer assigned to reduce survey time.

Code: [Select]

Tribal class Survey Ship    1,600 tons     162 Crew     357 BP      TCS 32  TH 80  EM 0
2500 km/s     Armour 1-12     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/2     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 0
Maint Life 22.85 Years     MSP 558    AFR 5%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 2    5YR 31    Max Repair 100 MSP

Nuclear Pulse Engine E8 (2)    Power 40    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 40    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres    Range 281.3 billion km   (1302 days at full power)

Geological Survey Sensors (2)   2 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
That ship took 8.56 years (ignoring the outlying comets), I'm asuming an equivalent tech Newtonian ship is going to take an order of magnitude longer and have massively higher fuel consumption?

Based on my testing so far, surveys are going to take a LOT longer unless you support your survey forces with several fuel tankers (and in that case you will need to produce the fuel in the first place). As you estimated, many years for a geological survey for example. In my test game, a geo survey ship has surveyed the inner planets and perhaps a third of the asteroid belt in one year. This is an interesting dynamic because it means that survey information is far more valuable than in the past and an Empire will have to seriously consider its survey strategy, rather than simply trying to survey everything.

Steve

[UnLimiTeD]

I could have different volumes and densities for each component but that would be a lot of work to add a level of complexity that probably doesn't add a lot in terms of gameplay. I have to draw a line somewhere.

Steve

I know you've probably reached a decision there, but for the sake of argument, I'm not quite dropping it yet. 

I can accept the argument that modeling the density of materials would go too far, in the same sense that you didn't want to incorporate regular materials for the sake of not getting it overly complicated.
However, you could easily abstract it.
Given the current code, you could just reduce the mass of the ship by a percentage, based on an arbitrary value, for example the weight to volume ratio of a space shuttle.
Given the raw data here, I've calculated a base value for it, using the following assumptions:

As length, I picked 32 meters, which is close enough given it's obviously not a cube, and omits part of the fins and all that jazz.
Given the rather inaccurate data provided by that site, I just assumed it to be 5x5 in height and width, which is probably a rather generous assumption.

With 32*5*5 (I have this mad feeling of totally missing something right now), I got a total of 800 cubic meters; given that I fully expect to miscalculate something here, let's just assume half of it.

However, the full load of the shuttle seems to be, according to wikipedia, around 109 tons.
So, to take the middleground between what is in game now and the cheap calculation I just pulled off, you could reduce the weight of a ship by roughly 35%.

This would change the given freighter from:

Atlas class Freighter    9,393 tons standard     35,393 tons full load      28 Crew     431.1 BP
Length 220m     Armour 1-176     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0

to:

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Atlas class Freighter    6,105 tons standard     32,105 tons full load      35,393 tons volume      28 Crew     431.1 BP
Length 220m     Armour 1-176     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0

Now, I obviously don't know too much about the subject, but I think this wouldn't be too much coding effort, and as with the exhaust problem before, you could just change the fuel consumption to account for that; In this case it would probably go down a bit again.

Though, now that I think about it, crew spaces should probably handle only half as many persons after that model, maybe 2 or 3 per ton.

As for railguns, does that mean we'll have to expect the muzzle velocities to go down by an order of magnitude? After all, a somewhat similar change was enacted on engines to keep with the realism.

[Mel Vixen]

Based on my testing so far, surveys are going to take a LOT longer unless you support your survey forces with several fuel tankers (and in that case you will need to produce the fuel in the first place). As you estimated, many years for a geological survey for example. In my test game, a geo survey ship has surveyed the inner planets and perhaps a third of the asteroid belt in one year. This is an interesting dynamic because it means that survey information is far more valuable than in the past and an Empire will have to seriously consider its survey strategy, rather than simply trying to survey everything.

Steve

It might be more economic to use drones with Geo-sensors. Sol has 428 System objects. If i assume that a geosurvey drone cost as much as a Thermal-sensor-buoy (~ 0.06x Tritanium   0.375x Boronide   0.75x Uridium) plus a small drive as first stage (lets asume thats an additional 1/10th materials) i get to:


1.1*428*0,06  = 28.248 Tritanium
1.1*428*0,375 = 176,55 Boronide
1.1*428*0,075 = 35,31  Uridium


Given that the drive does not need to be that fast you could make savings on the fuel. But going with 1500 liters you would need 642000 Liters.

You would still need a launching platform though which would give this approach some additional base-costs. Also one should remember that 428 Sol-object include ~300 asteroids and most people tend to ignore them. You could also repurpose these buoys as surveillance system if you add some passive thermal sensors. In asteroid-belts this could double as early warning system.    

edit: Oh and gives you a timeadvantage if you can start these buoys in a 1minute increment.

[Mormota]

I suppose their geo sensors should be made less effective, or drone geo sensors should require a special tech, or ship-based geological surveys will never be used.  Unless that is exactly what Steve wants.

[UnLimiTeD]

I'm pretty certain they will have the same efficiency by size as regular ship sensors, which is to say, they'll survey a lot.
I can see a good speed-advantage in drones, but not cost-wise.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I can see a lot of advantage to buoys. The survey ship won't have to decelerate at each target - the buoy will decelerate itself.    Buoys were the first thing to pop to mind when thinking about surveying under a newtonian scheme. 

Furthermore, it's looking like fuel efficiency/fuel carried will be the limit on survey ships, not sensor efficacy.  Ironically better sensor tech would improve buoys way more than it would improve ships...  assuming you can just make a lighter buoy, anyway. 

[Mormota]

I'm pretty certain they will have the same efficiency by size as regular ship sensors, which is to say, they'll survey a lot.
I can see a good speed-advantage in drones, but not cost-wise.

It doesn't seem to cost a large amount of resources to build the drones, but fuel might indeed be the problem.  Though I suspect Steve will increase Sorium availability to account for the greatly increased fuel use.  Either that, or the RNG will be able to really screw the player over.

[UnLimiTeD]

As I calculated above, the ships really *should* be a third lighter, under the most unfavorable conditions.
This could be easily abstracted by reducing the fuel cost a bit again, given the calculation that might it go higher was based on the shown mass, which is actually the volume.

[bean]

As I calculated above, the ships really *should* be a third lighter, under the most unfavorable conditions.
This could be easily abstracted by reducing the fuel cost a bit again, given the calculation that might it go higher was based on the shown mass, which is actually the volume.

The shuttle is not the best example to use.  It operates under entirely different constraints from a typical NA vessel.  I already asked Steve about density, using numbers from AVT. 
Crewing shouldn't really go above around 1/ton and 1/2-3 tons is more accurate.

[Din182]

If it is possible to reclaim drones, you could just fire them from Earth use 50-90% of the fuel to get to and stop at the target, then the rest to get back. You wouldn't have to worry about the cost of lots of new drones. Of course, fuel would be an issue, but you could make it have lots of fuel and go very slowly between multiple targets before returning to refuel.

[Mel Vixen]

Actually the question would be to which extend buoys or drones can be programmed? What would you need essentially? Atleast "Moveto" and "Survey object". If Steve feels fancy he could even write a up a code that calculates how much the rocket would need to accelerate/decelerate 2times to get there and back again (minus the Oldman, Lizardchicken and the sequels McGuffin).

[UnLimiTeD]

The shuttle is not the best example to use.  It operates under entirely different constraints from a typical NA vessel.  I already asked Steve about density, using numbers from AVT. 
Crewing shouldn't really go above around 1/ton and 1/2-3 tons is more accurate.

Certainly agree with you.
The numbers I calculated were a compromise between current Aurora, where mass=weight, and an (albeit bad) reallife example; indeed, a compromise heavily shifted to current Aurora.
In the same vein, the crew housing would only be changed in the general direction of realism;

This would save Steve a bunch of work, as he'd only need to use one general multiplier for now.
Sure, ultimately, the best solution short of calculating material densities would be to have A specific size to weight ratio for every ship parts, with crew compartments and empty fuel tanks being rather light, and engines being rather heavy;
But he's got so much awesome stuff to get his head around, I suppose we should be happy with what we get, so I figured a small change has a lot higher chances of being easy to implement, and thus be well recepted.

On second thought, my calculation obviously had the error of not factoring armor, which would be 100% weight.
This could actually be interesting, an Armored ship will become noticeably slower, but not necessarily much bigger.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

i think the problem is not just the effort involved, but that it's adding complexity and additional numbers for players to deal with.  So there needs to be discernable gameplay benefit. 

Armor adding to mass but not volume is interesting though. Hmm-mm.