Gravity As Gameplay

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September 13, 2004 03:35 PM

Quote:Original post by Sandman
Don't forget decceleration - it's all very well designing your ships around thrust in one direction, but you're also going to need to reverse that thrust at some point, and you don't really want your entire crew to suddenly fall onto the ceiling.

Of course, you could simply rotate your ship around so it's pointing the other direction before accelerating, so you're always accelerating along the same axis. This would be good for smallish ships, (it would also save you needing an extra bunch of engines on the front of the ship for decceleration) but for a very big unmanouverable ship this could be a bit of a pain in the arse. Another alternative would be to build the occupied areas of the ship as a series of rotating compartments, that can rotate automatically to align themselves with the axis of thrust. Of course, you'd probably still end up with some parts of the ship in inertial no-mans-land, but that would certainly fix the problem - at the cost of requiring extra infrastructure.

Yeah, my thought was that native ships generally reverse course and applied steady thrust to decelerate, whereas Galactic ships simply drifted to a stop. This would make the Terran vessels more gritty, sort of like in Babylon 5.

I like the idea of rotating interiors. This poses and interesting structural problem, though. Since you'll be worried about configuring the interior of your ship, the tradeoff would be that "gymballed interiors" would necessarily be smaller and proportionally shaped. So they might not work for certain sections, such as engineering where the reactor lives.

--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...

Wavinator

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September 13, 2004 03:48 PM

Quote:Original post by teamonkey
* I'd say that rotating any ship in the opposite direction would be much more effective than adding reverse thrusters. You'd save a lot more mass that way. The only problem might be if the ship's got a rotating section as it will resist that change (think spinning top etc.).

Yes, or spinning bicycle wheel. I thought this could be represented quite simply by making a delay between when the section(s) stopped rotating and when you could start manuevering.

Quote:
* In the same way, you wouldn't need to stop the rotating section to thrust, only if you needed to change orientation.

The only excuse here would be stress on the rotational assembly. It's designed, say, to get up to 1 G in a particularly direction, perhaps using maglev rails. Putting 8Gs on it laterally then would be a very bad idea, and hence it would need to be secured or would be damaged.

This may be FAR too anal. But my suspicion is that adding things like this actually makes the world come alive, because it imposes quirky limits that flesh out the world. (It's like commonly used "mages can't wear knight's armor" rules that technically don't make sense but give the world more gravitas).

Quote:
* In any case, if a ship was built where the apparent direction of gravity changes for whatever reason, the insides of the ship would take that into account. For example, if the ship will mainly accelerate and decelerate, then floors and ceilings must be interchangable. Walls too, maybe. Some features might have to appear on both the floor and the ceiling (e.g. stoves in the galley, and what about toilets?) which might be another reason to limit that sort of thing as much as possible.

The core ships in the game, the highrunners (think Millenium Falcon or Cowboy Beebop) have to land on planets, accelerate and decelerate as well as manuever aggressively in combat. Most are belly landers in order to distribute the weight of the ship.

This means that the average ship has between 2 and 3 directions, not including aggressive thrust (in which case everything is secured).

To handle both belly landing and constant, long term acceleration, I see a kind of laddered design: Tables in a galley, for instance, would come connected to the floor, and the floor, table and chairs would be suspended as one piece between two pillars. Stations and things like beds or toilets would actually be boxed pods capable of also rotating while mounted to the wall (though you wouldn't want to be using them while the ship was hard accelerating or jinking [grin])

Quote:
* If a ship were to change direction the change might be imperceptable near the centre of the craft (well, you'd turn, but air resistance in the ship might make you turn with it, making it less pronounced), but might manifest itself as a force several times that of Earth gravity further out.

Yes. I'm thinking that this, along with defensive reasons, might be why sensitive equipment and the ship's bridge would be in the center of most ships. (Who needs windows when you have viewscreens).

Quote:
* If you can create a force that can simulate gravity, you can also use that force to cushion against unwanted gravitational effects.

Agreed. I'm cheating here a bit because a central feature of surviving a crash landing are crashwebs, which generate brief inertial field at the moment of impact (crashlanding may be a side effect of high-G FTL manuvering / racing around planets).

--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...

Thermodynamics

443

September 13, 2004 03:49 PM

Gravity should not be a battle consideration unless it is very graphical and easy to understand. For instance:

Quote:Quote from logs of Frigate Philly:
We was flying along mindin' ow own bidness. Sumbody just came up an' shot our ass. We wasn't doin nuttin' either.

As soon as the ship takes damage it is thrown into red alert (this can also be switched manually). Since the Frigate Philly can be easily be broken into 3 main areas (bridge, cargo and engineering) three progress bars show up. These bars represent everything from people getting to stations, to cargo being latched down, to the mess hall putting lids on the pots. These progress bars should move at different rates (the mess hall might take longer than the bridge). This would be a great area for stat modification. Once all of the progress bars are completed you can turn without harm to your ship. HOwever, thats too easy.

Lets say this happened next:

Quote:Frigate Philly logs
So I looked at who was doin da shootin, and wouldn't cha know it, there was a big ol' Caddy 'bout ta hit me. So I jumped outa da way like anybody else, even wid my broken hip.

Now, there is going to be the circumstance where you need to turn before the ship is prepared. This is the beauty of the progress bars. At a glance you can tell what is going to be injured and roughly by how much. You make a turn and the remaining portions take a percentage (perhaps chance) of damage. After a brief pause the bars will continue to rise until completed or the ship is accelerated in some other way. The pause would be another area for stat change. Experienced crews would recover quicker.

As a note: Straightline flying is no fun. I don't play driving games to go down a straight road. If every turn or acceleration is going to have these ramifications, there should be something else to work on while the ship is going straight. Perhaps crew disputes or design plans or nebula analysis or raiding the cargo for the enclosed wine. Whatever. The only flying I want to do is going to be stuff involving some kind of acceleration.

I thought of something else but I just lost my train of thought. Maybe more will come later.

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Wavinator

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September 13, 2004 04:03 PM

Quote:Original post by Spoonster
...
I'd say that's a given for any starfaring culture. They won't begin using spaceships on a large scale until they've figured out how to keep the crew in decent health.

Good observations, but I have to point out: The environment is post-apocalyptic, so the species in the galaxy are climbing back up the tech ladder. With this premise, it's possible that races are rediscovering starflight using a haphazard mix of old and new.

Does it make a difference to you if there's a good reason to have gravity, storywise? I know this is a factor of suspension of disbelief for many. I can overcome that angle, but the question of the counter-intuitive nature of gravity then comes up. Will you understand why you're being affected by these things (my guess is yes); then, will you have fun dealing with the different tradeoffs (rotating sections cost X but give you Y with Z drawback; whereas hiring crewman from low-G asteroid colonies will cost X but... etc.)

Quote:
- Some engines might rely on very short bursts of high acceleration (like chemical rockets). This would force the crew to spend much more time coasting, and so could increase the chance accidents related to the lack of gravity. (Not sure if this is a good idea, considering I just said coasting shouldn't influence the crew. Maybe certain engines just have a special "burst" property, which lets them accelerate better, but also eats much more fuel, and, because it'll require more coasting time, will also create a chance that some no-gravity related accident/event happens. So it's not something gradual, but a binary property an engine either has or doesn't have. Because I dont think it should be a problem at all for normal engines.)

I'll have to weigh the tradeoffs here. I do like the idea of different engines having different consequences. It makes upgrading, one of the most fun activities in an RPG, very in depth.

Quote:
- If the ship's artificial gravity mechanisms have been damaged, the entire ship will have no gravity until it's fixed.

This could also have a tradeoff. What if you decide not to train your crew in zero-G operations (given that some planets have higher tech and maybe use artifical or Galactic tech) and then a saboteur strikes? Your people will be less effective and defending and repairing the ship, even though you saved thousands in training.

Quote:
- If other parts of the ship has been damaged, it might be neccesary to shut down the artificial gravity mechanisms before it's possible for the crew to repair the damage.

Nice tradeoff.

Quote:
Basically though, I think it should be kept as special states that only applies some times. During normal flight, it shouldn't be an issue at all, but when one of the above situations occur, you might enter the high- or low gravity state, with all the penalties and chances of accidents that follow.

And just to clarify, is this because of the potential management headache or because of story / worldbuilding expectations of how the universe should work. The latter I can handle with plausible reasoning, but the former is the greater concern.

--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...

Wavinator

2,020

Author

September 13, 2004 04:07 PM

Quote:Original post by Ubik
I once read a "hardcore" sci-fi book where the story happened on a high gravity planet. The writer (scientist of some sort) told in the book, that he did not have any artificial gravity machinery, as it would have caused troubles that are usually ignored.

Wouldn't happen to be Hal Clement, would it? He's a master of this stuff.

Quote:
At least he mentioned that the difference of potential energy between the areas of normal gravity and artificial gravity would prevent a object to move from one environment to another.

Hmmmm... Interesting, I didn't know about this. So getting an object across would be energy intensive. It might be an intersting story background reason for why Galactic and native technology can't be blended.

Quote:
I guess that it meant that the space warping nature of gravity would make impossible to have sudden changes in gravity. Think about water making walls on the sea. (Okay, this is not the best analogy but you get the point. I hope.)

Yes, although I'd imagine that the you might have a gradual "hill" to climb when entering artificial gravity if it were stepped gently enough. Even gravity on the earth is not constant everywhere.

Quote:
The changes of gravity (even gradual, if on a short distance) would also stress a lot any structure, so a ship with any sort of arti-grav - regular grav -mix would be, well, if not impossible, then at least impractical.

Another good excuse for not mixing the two.

Quote:
But finally, yes, i would enjoy if a space game had some gravity-related content. And in a game it does not have to be so exact, as long as it follows its own rules, thus not breaking the suspension of disbelief.

Glad to hear it!

--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...

Ubik

1,339

September 14, 2004 02:34 AM

Quote:Original post by Wavinator
Wouldn't happen to be Hal Clement, would it? He's a master of this stuff.

Yes, Hal Clement and Mission of gravity, I should have checked that before posting. Lazy me. :)

Robert L. Forward's Dragon's egg has some interesting gravity related stuff too, might be worth checking if you are not familiar to it. It also has very interesting and very well descripted aliens. But that's already off-topic.

When talking about forces, inertia comes to play. Perhaps ships based on Galactic tech could use the artificial gravity to make the ships highly maneuverable and passengers would not suffer from any incomfortabilities. Gravity would simply pull to another direction than the force from acceleration.

The gravity producing mechanism also offers a good chance for balancing. Gravity mechanism would produce a gravity field representing some mass (one earth for one G), or alternatively it could be something like ships mass * G. Bigger gravity requires more energy, so producing full gravity for a big ship would mean that there is not that much energy to absorb the inertia forces, making the big ships less maneuverable.

rrc2soft

139

September 14, 2004 07:00 AM

Quote:Original post by Wavinator
Thinking 3rd person if you choose to board, otherwise it's abstract 'over the comms' reports. Not sure if I can squeeze in any really significant player micromanagment of the battle outside of the section you're in at this point. So you'd be 3rd person, fighting directly with your character, taking cover, setting priorities and objectives for your crew, then getting back up and pressing the attack.

It could be very cool, since the gravity conditions inside ships will be different depending on their actual state, enabling different styles of gameplay for just one type of action sequence. Moreover, those gravity conditions will be direct consequence of the player's actions before boarding the ship, giving the player a feeling of "i did this..." [smile].

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frostburn

380

September 14, 2004 09:52 AM

In my opinion the simplest thing would be to let inertial dampeners and artificial gravity be common tech. If I remember correctly from other posts your're going to have a graphical representation of the ships and environment (was it 1st or 3rd person? doesn't matter). If things have to be designed so that everything can be used in zero g and during acceleration etc I'm afraid that the ships won't look anything like a combat vessel (and would be extremely hard to crate). "Flattish" (wider and longer than high) ships capable of belly landing would probably be designed to have the "front" on the "top" - the engines would be placed on the underside. I'm gussing they're pretty bulky, so ships can't be very low. Radiation is also a factor - the engines should be placed as far away from the "command deck" (and living quarters) as possible in case of readiation leak. The "traditional" sci-fi ships with the engines in one end and "cockpit" in the other is more sensible in that regard. With no inertial dampeners and artificial-g such a ship would have to be built dual purpose for belly landing. Triple purpose with coasting.

Definitions:
Inertial dampeners (ID) remove the effect of acceleration of the ship for the people inside. This means that even if the ship is accelerating they feel like the ships velocity is constant.
Artificial gravity (AG) pulls them to the floor (or pushes them if you're using push gravity. It doesn't matter except where to put the AG generators [smile]). The AG devices should be [a] plate(s) that covers the area that needs AG (floorplates in habitable areas - hence ST:Enterprises name for them - floorplates).

ID and AG may produce energy signatures that's detectable by other ships. A sound tactic in stealth missions can be to turn off the devices. Ships designed to be very stealthy could be made completely without these devices.

AG might also be used to create propulsion in some exotic engines, but that's beyond the scope of the topic.

Suggestions:

Don't make this scientifically correct. Stresses between AG and natural gravity should be disregarded (even making it so that it feels you're walking up a hill when you cross the transition is impossible to do graphically.)

Let all ships have intertial dampening and AG, but give it a bit of a size so that people won't ask for anti-g suits or guns or things like that.

Not everything needs to have AG. Cargo holds and the like doesn't need them. Perhaps they should have ID to avoid destroying the cargo during acceleration. Perhaps the two technologies could be linked.

I assume the "playing field" is going to be huge (interstellar). If travel between stars is sub-C you'll have to deal with relativistics. If you're using wormhole, hyperspace, etc. you're already using at least as exotic technology as AG. I can't see why you shouldn't allow AG but allow "shortcuts". If you're using Super-C speeds you need huge acceleration and ID would make this tolerable for the people inside.

Inertial dampening and combat: As stated, ID removes effect of outside acceleration from the inside of the ship. ID may be controlled by a computer and while it's capable of correcting the steady acceleration of the ship (after all it gets information from the helm), shock effects by explosions will still cause things inside to be bounced around. If the ID device is in disrepair, damaged or destroyed the effects will be worse. Effects wary from a light shaking from an explosion to being thrown across the room to not being able to dampen engine acceleration (pulled toward the engine during acceleration).

Fighters: If you're using manned fighters you have to have ID. A normal human can survive 12Gs for a few seconds, but a missile can sustain heavy Gs without any problem (my cellular phone survives 200G - I would have been crushed). ID in fighters can remove for example 95% of pulling Gs, making it able to be much more manouverable. AG may not be needed.
The alternative is to only use missiles and drones. Or robot pilots [smile].

Artificial G and combat: If AG is knocked out or turned off things inside become weightless (assuming ID works). If you really want to have zero-g fighting inside the spaceships you can let the AG devices be very suspectible to energy fluctuations etc.
AG can sometimes also be used as a weapon. If you mount gravity plating in the roof as well as in the floor you can pummel intruders by swithcing the direction of the gravity. It might also be possible to increase the gravity to above normal, either crushing them (but then you'd probably do damage to the ship as well), or letting them feel what an insect feels when it's put in a jar and shaken. Everything not secured will also be thrown about though.

You could give your soldiers extensive Zero-G training so that if the ship is invaded they'll have an edge during combat by turning off AG. If they have no training and the AG is disrupted they'll flap about like the frogs they sent to the ISS recently. It wasn't pretty.

And finally, in Zero-G combat, remember - The enemy's gate is down.

Kars

184

September 14, 2004 09:58 AM

Quote:
This also would mean that ships can only thrust at the gravity tolerable to their weakest crew members. So low-G crew could only tolerate a few multiples of their maximum gravity before blacking out or even dying.

Just a though, I remember seeing a movie quite a while agao (Abyss I think) where a divers suit was filled with a bretable liquid so the diver could withstand more presser and go deeper. Don't know the science behind it (if there actually was any), but if it is sound....

- Insted of gravity you have a liquid filled ship. The crew get around by swiming (exercize) and are slightly less affected by suddon gravity shifts.

Quote:
When a native tech ship thrusts, gravity is along the axis of acceleration. This means that walls become floors and ceilings while some cooridoors become drop shafts (down is now sideways).

I picture a ship with curving tubes for hallways and sphears or elliptoids for rooms. Crew would be trained to roll down tubes if they weren't strapped in. Equipment would be on tracks or "roll" with the gravity.

Also I would see ALL equipment having velcro, magnets or some other way of automaticly clinging to the wall, otherwise being in the galley when when gravity changes would be a big hazerd with all the kinves and all flying around.

I am assuming that the acceleration would not be the smoothest process so you would wind up with someone having to get their "space legs" simalar to what sailors do. Of course this is probabbly too much detatil for you game.

Quote:
Walls "magnetize" all personnel, causing them to slowly drift toward any wall in zero-G.

Very good idea.

KarsQ: What do you get if you cross a tsetse fly with a mountain climber?A: Nothing. You can't cross a vector with a scalar.

Spoonbender

1,258

September 14, 2004 10:20 AM

Quote:Original post by Wavinator
Good observations, but I have to point out: The environment is post-apocalyptic, so the species in the galaxy are climbing back up the tech ladder. With this premise, it's possible that races are rediscovering starflight using a haphazard mix of old and new.

Good point, but still, would they jump back into their old crumbling spaceships if they knew their muscles would be reduced to jelly by the time they reached their destination? It might be postapocalyptic, but they're still so much in control of their tech that they feel comfortable about spaceflight.

Quote:
And just to clarify, is this because of the potential management headache or because of story / worldbuilding expectations of how the universe should work. The latter I can handle with plausible reasoning, but the former is the greater concern.

Basically, to keep it simple for the player. I agree, the latter is simple enough to work around, but I think it would become too much of a headache for the player, if he constantly have to monitor the exact amount of gravity on the ship, and keep track of which effects it has on his crew. I'd prefer to know that normally, there are no ill effect, as the crew is operating (mainly) under normal gravity, and then occasionally, I'll get into the other situations where there might be high or no gravity, and then I'll have to deal with that.

I think this whole gravity thing opens up for a lot of interesting aspects, just don't overburden the player with the micromanagement. I'd say that normally, the crew can take care of themselves. They know how to handle gravity (or lack thereof) on a spaceship. The ship will have the neccesary facilities for this as well.

Gravity should only be an issue in special events. (During battles/boarding, if a ship is damaged and/or being repaired, during emergency acceleration, or similar)

Gravity As Gameplay

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Gravity As Gameplay

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