Not to creep you all out, but I''ve been *stalking* the forums for this post =) And here it is.

I presume the "energy-absorbtion" shields would allow you to use the absorbed energy in weapons discharges (dump the power into a phaser bank and let her rip), but if you hadn''t considered that, please do. =)

Also, the "cloud" thing versus "personell" interested me. You may already have considered this, but if not...well, I think it would rock if marines in combat-spacesuits could board an incapacitated ship, bypassing the ship-to-ship or shuttle-to-ship boarding options. (Don''t get me wrong. Considering this game and it''s attitude, I really think all *three* of these options should be included.)

Though this may actually be beyond the scope of this project =) there are two reasons that ships can fire its own laser weapons thru its own shields. (Shields have no effect on physical shots like slugs or missiles, of course.)

1. The shields are angled deflectors with slits between them that lasers may be fired through.
2. The laser weapons are ST-like "phasers" that are fire on a wave-length that the shields allow thru.

Now, if you include these options, I think it''d be neat to include the option for opponents to exploit those openings. To either determine the wave-length they need to fire thru, or to somehow detect where the slits between the deflectors are. Likewise, the ship captain should be able to develop or have the ability to alter the deflector angles/change the wave-length of both its own phasers and its own shields.

That may be too complicated, but perhaps you''ve already considered it.

ooooo, I cannot wait for a demo!!! Though I understand it maybe almost a year before that happens =)

Something akin to the technologies from the Honor Harrington series by Weber (1st 13 ebooks are freely available, legally...) would be interesting.

Probably in the high end department.

I like the sidewalls & wedge. These are a planar gravity wave powerful enough to shread matter, and in the same order of magnitude as the surface of a neutron star(for a 1st generation sidewall, ship wedges are much more powerful).

The wedge is projected ''above'' & ''below'', and in militray ships, they have 2 planes of gravity & a sidewall between those planes.

Then sides are then closed off by sidewalls, however the front and the back remain open. And its physically imposible to completely enclose a ship with sidewalls attached to the wedge (bubblewall, which is a spherical sidewall is another story, but vastly less powerful than a wedge).

So the ship in the sidewalls & wedge looks like this

This types of technology arent nearly as clinched as some of the stuff you have listed here.

In answer to your question ("Could they just keep changing shield frequency"), Yeah, I guess so...but they''d have to change their own phasers in tune with it. If that were the game, it could come down to the other ship trying to determine what algorithm you''re using to modulate your shields, and configuring it''s phasers to that.

Yeah, that''s *way* too complicated...which is why I stuck with the simpler recommendation. =)

The seam snipe is a cool idea. =) I''m too tired to think any deeper than that. Time for bed.

quote:Original post by Wavinator

I have a space for something weird like this in the form of ancient artifacts. This is interesting.

This type of thing wouldnt really fit into the game as anything else. It would be a very mixed bag to obtain this type of technology. While it can offer much, stealth is not its middle name.

quote:That must take ALOT of power. Maybe powered by feeding a singularity? And do ships just fly through things to attack? I can''t imagine munitions or even lasers doing that well inside. And what happens when two ships collide?

The wedge/sidewalls arent directly powered by the ship. Impeller nodes generate a region of space which is quasi-hyperspace, and in Honorverse hyperspace, there exist massively powerful gravity waves. The nodes basicly pull down a very tame gravity wave into real space.

Since the wedge/sidewalls are gravitational in nature, forget about KE attacks against them. Gravitational attacks can induce feedback in the generates themselves can cause the generaters to fail, but this is even more exotic.

When a sidewall/wedge runs into normal matter, the normal matter goes poof into a cloud of rapidly expanding plasma and is chucked away from the sidewall/wedge by the gravitational shear(if you have tech which allows you to land on the surface of a neutron star, you might be able to bypass a sidewall easy).

When a wedge hits another wedge, the lesser wedge (and attached ship), get turning into plasma. When 2 wedges of equal strength collide, both ships are reduced to their atomic compoents. Needless to say, loosing 2 8 million ton ships due to a slight navigation error while in formation is not a happy sight.

The common weapon is a very powerful gamma ray laser focused by exterme gravitational lensing (similar effect to a sidewall/wedge). Since a laser is mass-less, it isnt effected like matter is when it passes through an extreme gravity field.

They use bomb pumped version which are mounted on missiles to deliver them to the target, and the ship''s have a broadside armaments which are composed of more powerful versions than the missile''s energy armaments. However, if your in range of the enemy with your energy weapons, the enemy is aready firing.

Closing to energy range is the equivelent of getting into a H2H fight with a grizzly bear, but with the ability to bailout at any time by rotating the wedge to face the enemy.

The wedge can provide as much acceleration as your inertia dampeners(and ship structure) can handle. Going from relative 0 m/s to +0.9c in less than a second isnt much good if you turn the interior bulkheads to plasma from the sudden acceleration. Also inertia dampeners in Honorverse have a really nasty property, the only warning you have of them failing si the crew turning to a not so chunk paste. Thus pushing the inertia dampeners beyond the operational safty parameters is tangent to a very mess death.

quote:Yeah, I have to admit that lasers and missiles are the elves and dwarves of the science fiction world. Unfortunately, Star Trek and Star Wars have gotten us into the habit of thinking of space warfare as akin to World War II. What it really should be is deadly, instant, and the strict province of well-funded governments. But that would be boring.

Yup. Thats how it would be, now onto how to make it interesting.

quote:This stuff is for people who play Terrans, who I''m going to (for the sake of workload and art) make dominant.

That is a very reasonable move. The number of different technologies isnt very important. Its the number of interactions between the different technologies.

If I have a Inertia dampeners #1, and Inertia dampeners #2 there should be more thena just their capacity to act as Inertia dampeners.

Inertia dampener #1 might have a low max acceleration, but within that domain it is near 100% effective.

Inertia dampener #2 might have a much high acceleration, but only in a limited direction.

Then alien inertia dampener #1234 might be only being effecive at high acceleration. Drop below it minium acceleration, and the inertia dampener might as well not be there.

Thus combining the use of alien inertia dampener #1234 & Inertia dampener #2 should be posible, but would require computer upgrades to allow you to switch between them while on the fly and more energy to power them. Then you need to find engines which actually need this type of setup. If your using chemical rockets(aka modern rocket technology), that combo is a complete waste of time.

Then someone might just use Inertia dampener #1, and fill the thing with missiles which use drive system #4321 which can out run the ship with inertia dampener #1234 & Inertia dampener #2.

quote:But how up for understanding strange alien play styles would you be? A gravity wedge isn''t really all that different from shields that do damage on contact, AFAICT.

The wedge is actually a honorverse''s primary STL & FTL drive system The fact that it can be used as a defense and a weapon is just a bonus.

quote:Really different defenses would be a liquid hull that can split into globs to avoid fire and wrap around ships when it hits (David Brin''s Uplift series), but that would be a UI evil. The more exotic the weapon or defense, the more likely it''ll be hard to understand and balance.

Perfect balance is evil. You dont want it to be perfectly balanced. A perfecly balanced system is inherently very stable and generally has very low levels of dynamics to the interactions.

Emergent properties are near imposible to achieve in a system with perfect balance, and just as hard to achive in a system without any balance.

And that is boring.

Shield and laser frequency or modulation:

The sensors on the ship should perhaps be able to detect the frequency of an enemy laser if it hits. The sensors shuold however NOT be able to detect the frequency or modulation on the shield on the enemy ship (or at least you''ll need extremely good sensors to do it). Changing the frequency or modulation should not be instant, but take a few seconds at least. That way you avoid "invulnerable" ships with ever changing shields.

Engineering miracles are still possible - They manage to hack the enemy''s computer and download their frequency, by a stroke of luck you happen to pick the correct frequency, someone on your crew devises a way to change frequencies quicker, but at the cost of computer power/energy/shield lifetime. etc.

Holes in shields when firing own ordnance:
This should be a very advanced tech: 1. It''s not really realistic - a shield is a continous area isn''t it? 2. It''s a major advantage/improvement over having to turn off one''s own shields to fire.
Enemies should be able to fire through the same holes at the player''s ship.

Own missiles and projectile weapons should also be hindered by shields. One way to avoid it could be to place the cannon/launcher/projector outside the shield (some kind of pylon that sticks outside the shield. This should perhaps lower the shields efficiency, and the hardpoint would obviously be easier to destroy. Another problem would be that missiles and shells can''t be reloaded without sending out a reload "bot" or ship. Otherwise the shield must be dropped to fire or a hole opened.

Shields as a continous area:
Each shield should be a single "entity" - if it get''s hit then the entire shield gets drained, not only the part that gets hit. This makes it easier to implement (I think) as well as being more realistic IMO. The shield should have a "efficiency" value - if you increase the area of the shield then the energy/m2 decreases. This can be used to determine how much energy the shield can reduce or absorb. If you want to protect a single very important area you can reduce the size of the shield to only cover that area, but the amount of energy that gets reduced increases.

Fixed reduction:
I see in the original post that the shields reduce damage with 50%. Perhaps it would be better to set it to reduced a fixed amount of energy instead; Say an enemy laser has an output of 10MW. If the shield can reduce it with 5MW then you reduce with 50%. If the enemy get''s a bigger gun - say 50MW then the shield reduces it with 10%. I don''t see the logic with having the shield improve as the enemies weapons improve. Also if you improve your own shields then you may be able to block all of the enemy laser. If this is not desirable you can implement a limit that let''s say 10% of the enemy laser through no matter what.

Regenerating shields:
In the original post you say that the regenerating shields have the highest energy signature. Perhaps it should be possible to turn off the regenerating to lower the energy signature and increase stealth. A tradeoff may be that the shields continously drains when they''re not being recharged so you sometimes have to take a chance and recharge them. Drainage shouldn''t be too high though.. Balance issue.

Spectrum shields:
I don''t see why the damage should be 50% greater if the shield doesn''t match the color of the laser.. It would be more logical that the laser just went through as if the shield wasn''t there. Is it amplified by the mismatching shield?

Jammers/Counter Jammers
Jammers work by sending out a powerful signal (usually directional) on the frequency someone wants to listen to, effectively drowning out the signal. It''s like putting headphones with loud music on the head of one person who tries to talk to another. The signal that the person being jammed sends out is sent out as normal and unless the reciever is being jammed or is in the same direction as the jamming signal is directed to (J---->T---->R), it recieves it without problems. What they may do to avoid the jamming is to change frequencies (Obviously the ones being jammed must decide which frequency) or the nonjammed party must increase it''s signal strenght (In the headphones example - shout to be heard over the music)
IE it''s done to the reciever not the transmitter. A counter jammer could be a powerful sensor or computer that manages to filter out the jamming signal so they can hear the message.

I''m not certain how radar jammers work, but I suspect it''s in a similar fashion - They send out a signal on the radar''s frequency so that the radar is unable to determine the distance to the target. The direction however becomes much easier to see (On a cirular radar screen you''d see a while line from the center to the edge in the direction to the jammer. I don''t know if it''s possible to make a counter jammer in that case, but it may be possible to boost the radar signal (but it would have to be extremely much boosted - jammers are typically several times stronger than the signal), or continously change frequencies. In space however changing frequensies have an additional problem - if you change frequncies every second, the maximum range on the radar becomes 1/2 light second.

Point defence:
AFIK these are automatic turrets that have relatively slow turning speed (changing heading and "altitude"), fast rate of fire and low "calibre". As such they might also be able to attack enemy fighters that moves directly towards or away from the ship. Mines would be a peice of cake to target if they "notices" them - I suspect mines have a fairly low signature compared to missiles and fighters.
Normal turrets should also be allowed to target missiles, but since they probably have a lower rate of fire,higher calibre and faster turning speed, they''re more suited to tracking fighters that attack at an angle (moves along the side of the ship etc) and thus needs the higher turning rate.


Ah, well... I''ve written as much as I feel like for now, but I''ll probably return later with more ideas..
I''ve mentioned it before - my dream is to make a space-sim / RPG a bit like your game (except I''ll focus on the space-sim/ FPSish part) so I''m probably going to be using a few of the same ideas