Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: ShadowGorrath on June 04, 2008, 07:56:12 am
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Might not be a good title, but how much do we know in real life about the universe, that can proove FreeSpace as totally impossible?
Ship speed: as not to need to resuply so often, and due to subspace, it isn't needed very high.
FTL travel: there is this thing called wormholes here, being researched. But who's to say that something like subspace can't exist ?
Shivans and Vasudans: it's impossible to find any life outside our Solar system with out current tech... And compared to them too. Who's to say that they DON'T or DO exist? We may never know.
Etc.
Might have played too much FS2 for starting this kind of topic, but what the heck. Post your opinions wheter you think that something like FS2 is possible in real life.
P.S. If I get flamed, I'm removing this post and pretending this never happened. :p
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About subspace , didn't the us army told that they're working on it for the next 10/20 years to come?
i use to read news about this one or two years ago , they told they could travel to mars within 3/4 hours instead of 9 mounth with conventional propulsion...
about speed of ship in freespace , actually rocket and shuttle travel really faster than 80 m/s , they're too slow to be realistic in freespace but i guess fighting with a bullet speed would be far too much difficult to play :lol:
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Beam weapons would take a hell of a longer time to be realised, and reverse engineering alien technology wouldn't be so damn easy or fast either.
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if we were to fight at bullet speed, shouldn't we have invented an AI program who could fight for us ?
a one you would control like in the RTS games ? no more pilots dying, only drones.
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AI can be reprogrammed and turned against very easily. Even worse if you take over what controls it, then your whole force would turn against you.
And as I said about the engine speed- they're so low because there's no need of higher fusion engine speed, because of subspace. And it's so low not only because of subspace, but because they are fusion drives, and thus you would need to resuply all ships very often. It's inefficient that way. Or maybe the speed in-FS-universe is like the one we have in our current spaceshuttles.
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Engine speed? The subspace drive has the unfortunate side-effect of always being partially 'online', and creates drag through the grip it maintains in subspace. *shrugs* Works, right? xD But that wouldn't explain why you couldn't go super-fast if your subspace drive got damaged.
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And as I said about the engine speed- they're so low because there's no need of higher fusion engine speed, because of subspace. And it's so low not only because of subspace, but because they are fusion drives, and thus you would need to resuply all ships very often. It's inefficient that way. Or maybe the speed in-FS-universe is like the one we have in our current spaceshuttles.
IMO that's a bad explanation... I am under the impression that the speeds are relative to the sector, and that you are actually travelling at a million miles a second at some random speed, but all the things in the sector are all moving at the same constant speed, so relative to each other they are travelling at the speeds given in game. Then, using a bit of imagination, everything makes sense!
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Would be hard to fight at all at that kind of speed. But would make sense.
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FreeSpace < Real Life
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FreeSpace > Real Life.
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I should probably change the topic title, as the real question I was going for is: Would something like FS be possible in RL ?
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And as I said about the engine speed- they're so low because there's no need of higher fusion engine speed, because of subspace. And it's so low not only because of subspace, but because they are fusion drives, and thus you would need to resuply all ships very often. It's inefficient that way. Or maybe the speed in-FS-universe is like the one we have in our current spaceshuttles.
IMO that's a bad explanation... I am under the impression that the speeds are relative to the sector, and that you are actually travelling at a million miles a second at some random speed, but all the things in the sector are all moving at the same constant speed, so relative to each other they are travelling at the speeds given in game. Then, using a bit of imagination, everything makes sense!
Okay, wait. You are aware that this is the way everything works in real life, right? We call them inertial reference frames.
It doesn't change anything about Freespace to say that, because that's just the way reality is. Speed measurements are always taken relative to an arbitrary reference frame.
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I should probably change the topic title, as the real question I was going for is: Would something like FS be possible in RL ?
no I think it's fine, I was just kidding :p
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Okay, wait. You are aware that this is the way everything works in real life, right? We call them inertial reference frames.
It doesn't change anything about Freespace to say that, because that's just the way reality is. Speed measurements are always taken relative to an arbitrary reference frame.
Yes, I do. But I was just spewing some random stuff that makes some kind of sense in a FreeSpace context. But I just think that game mechanics aren't reliable. Anyway.
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Okay, then I agree with you wholeheartedly. Which I find myself doing a lot. You're a sensible dude, Snail.
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Don't forget about the explosives. According to the techroom, Fury/Tempest dumbfire missiles have the firepower of an atomic bomb... If that's how much firepower a Fighter can bunch, just imagine one of them doing a strafe on a planet's surface. Hell, I can't even imagine the damage caused by bombs if detonated on the surface.
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The problem with the speed system is that even if you are measuring speed relative to an inertial reference frame, you should be able to accelerate infinitely relative to that frame - there is no speed cap (until you run out of fuel ;)). But FS's physics are not intended to simulate real physics (AKA Newtonian Physics).
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*SNIP*
Shivans and Vasudans: it's impossible to find any life outside our Solar system with out current tech... And compared to them too. Who's to say that they DON'T or DO exist? We may never know.
*SNIP*
Shrodingers cat..... :nervous:
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I'm going to brain anyone who says "well it's not realistic because there's no sound in space! lololololol!". That always comes up in these discussions.
That is all.
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You kinda can have sound. If you're shooting, or something impacts your ship's hull.
And if you want to see almost real newtonian in-game, try HomePlanet. It's very realistic ( ammo, fuel, types of flight cruise and glide, really strong missiles, etc ). It's much harder than FS, as you need skills, but controls in general are similar.
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The problem with the speed system is that even if you are measuring speed relative to an inertial reference frame, you should be able to accelerate infinitely relative to that frame - there is no speed cap (until you run out of fuel ;)). But FS's physics are not intended to simulate real physics (AKA Newtonian Physics).
Yes.
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The problem with the speed system is that even if you are measuring speed relative to an inertial reference frame, you should be able to accelerate infinitely relative to that frame - there is no speed cap (until you run out of fuel ;)). But FS's physics are not intended to simulate real physics (AKA Newtonian Physics).
IIRC, there is something called Relativity and it hasn't been disproven yet.
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Well for one thing there wouldn't be aliens (Vasudans) that look so close to humans
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They developed in similar conditions to our. Except for the harsh planet, that's why they're physicaly stronger than us.
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Engine speed? The subspace drive has the unfortunate side-effect of always being partially 'online', and creates drag through the grip it maintains in subspace. *shrugs* Works, right? xD But that wouldn't explain why you couldn't go super-fast if your subspace drive got damaged.
Way to go! :p
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The problem with the speed system is that even if you are measuring speed relative to an inertial reference frame, you should be able to accelerate infinitely relative to that frame - there is no speed cap (until you run out of fuel ;)). But FS's physics are not intended to simulate real physics (AKA Newtonian Physics).
IIRC, there is something called Relativity and it hasn't been disproven yet.
Right, so there should be an overall speed cap -- you'll never move faster than C.
But Freespace ships don't get close.
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AI can be reprogrammed and turned against very easily. Even worse if you take over what controls it, then your whole force would turn against you.
Yes, it's definitly very easy to reprogram a machine flying at several hundred kph in outerspace while firing at you and protected by layers of armour that .50 cal rounds would have trouble penetrating. Yep. Very easy.
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AI can be reprogrammed and turned against very easily. Even worse if you take over what controls it, then your whole force would turn against you.
Yes, it's definitly very easy to reprogram a machine flying at several hundred kph in outerspace while firing at you and protected by layers of armour that .50 cal rounds would have trouble penetrating. Yep. Very easy.
Agreed. Sorry, shadowgorrath, but I think you're not quite understanding the actual functioning of AI.
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Yes, it's definitly very easy to reprogram a machine flying at several hundred kph in outerspace while firing at you and protected by layers of armour that .50 cal rounds would have trouble penetrating. Yep. Very easy.
Battlestar Galactica called. Said something about you being wrong. :p
You really shouldn't assume that reprogramming has to take place during the battle. As BSG pointed out it would be a complete disaster if the enemy/terrorists/GTI rebellion got inside the AI routines during peace time and took them over. Even putting in an obscure but crippling crash would be enough to severely damage the enemy if you knew how to trigger it.
During war there are any number of chances of destroying the entire enemy force with a single covert op against the base that runs them all.
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Well for one thing there wouldn't be aliens (Vasudans) that look so close to humans
It could be possible that there was a very, very old race that planted the Vasudans, humans and maybe Ancients as seeds on lots of planets as an experiment. I guess that the Brahmans that Darius mentioned in BP would be this concept.
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Yes, it's definitly very easy to reprogram a machine flying at several hundred kph in outerspace while firing at you and protected by layers of armour that .50 cal rounds would have trouble penetrating. Yep. Very easy.
Battlestar Galactica called. Said something about you being wrong. :p
You really shouldn't assume that reprogramming has to take place during the battle. As BSG pointed out it would be a complete disaster if the enemy/terrorists/GTI rebellion got inside the AI routines during peace time and took them over. Even putting in an obscure but crippling crash would be enough to severely damage the enemy if you knew how to trigger it.
During war there are any number of chances of destroying the entire enemy force with a single covert op against the base that runs them all.
Well, er, if there's a base that 'runs' all the AIs, isn't that rather silly? Modern drone control seems to suggest they'd be handled by a bunch of guys in trailers...probably parked on the hangar decks of a number of different destroyers.
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Yes, it's definitly very easy to reprogram a machine flying at several hundred kph in outerspace while firing at you and protected by layers of armour that .50 cal rounds would have trouble penetrating. Yep. Very easy.
Battlestar Galactica called. Said something about you being wrong. :p
You really shouldn't assume that reprogramming has to take place during the battle. As BSG pointed out it would be a complete disaster if the enemy/terrorists/GTI rebellion got inside the AI routines during peace time and took them over. Even putting in an obscure but crippling crash would be enough to severely damage the enemy if you knew how to trigger it.
During war there are any number of chances of destroying the entire enemy force with a single covert op against the base that runs them all.
It would be a disaster; you're correct. But BSG is a TV show, not real life. As awesome BSG is, we're comparing FS to real life, not FS to BSG. AFAIK, the systems in BSG were infiltrated solely by Six because Baltar let her in. Any decent security system in this situation IRL would require a multi-person only access, they'd have a secured workplace, most likely a secure living place as well, along with myriad other precautions.
Also, I'm assuming were talking about genuine AI, not just remotely controlled stuff, right? AFAIK in modern times the MQ-1 Predator is remotely controlled, but the MQ-R8 Fire Scout has actual AI like that.
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Still, it is a weakspot. Plus, the AI ships need to be linked to somewhere at least to be fully efficient. And all you need is to hack it.
Also, we know about space tech and the future as much as a blind man can see something. For all we know, there can be some other reasons for ships in FS not being like they are now ( except probably faster than they are ingame ). I mean- not being able to fly so fast, fighters faster than capital ships, being able to normally stop in space, etc.
Though it seems that ships are considered quite fast in-game. In the first mission for example, the Vasudan transports have no subspace drives, but they fly off the big planet quite far away.
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People like to say aliens wouldn't look like us, and that makes some sense intially, because human form isn't really too efficent. But we evolved this way for a reason, and in the absence of comparison, there's really no reason not to assume aliens would look like us either.
Yes, human form is vunerable and inefficent. But what you must understand is that we have come as far as we have because we are not very well adapted physically to our environment. We had to manufacture the adaptions, we had to be smart to do that. If you don't believe me, look at the dolphins. They may very well be just as smart as we are, but they are so well-adapted to their environment they didn't to make tools and build buildings or anything else.
So I would expect an alien race to be rather like us. They're not really well-adapted to their home environment, but they do have the means to manipulate it (hands or something like them).
Regarding speed: considering the number of times you see planetary bodies about and they're not moving away from you at tremendous velocities, speed is almost certainly relative. to the largest object nearby in an interplanetary sense.
Regarding AIs: The real problem with such a system would be in the IFF. AIs don't do nonlinear thinking nearly as well as people, so they can be much more easily tricked or trapped. You don't even have to hack the AIs, just present them with IFF coding that says you're friendly and perhaps a visual mod mockup to make it look so too. They'll probably be programmed to return fire if fired upon, but even so, you'll do a lot of damage before they get the chance to do some back.
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We are far away from the planets and other celestial objects anyway. Besides, the game engine doesn't really allow realistic planets, so who's to say that we couldn't see it moving in real ?
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FTL travel: there is this thing called wormholes here, being researched. But who's to say that something like subspace can't exist ?
In fs intersystem and intrasystem subspace usage is very much like wormholes anyway. The other thing is i don't see why there can't be wormholes and subspace at the same time? Star trek has wormholes and subspace.
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Heh!
That reasoning is great! I wish it was applied more often.
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We are far away from the planets and other celestial objects anyway. Besides, the game engine doesn't really allow realistic planets, so who's to say that we couldn't see it moving in real ?
Good Luck called. It wants you to note that Lucifer was not at all in motion during the mission, which makes no sense really. Everything else in the mission certainly can move around. Except your nav has decided since it's the largest object in the area, it's the thing you need to be "at rest" to compared to everything else.
But more to the point, arguing limitations of the game engine to explain this sort of thing doesn't cut it. We are presented with a self-contained reality in the game and this is the reality we must deal with while explaining things. If engine limitations force something then you must explain it within the reality, not just go "well it was the game engine" because that's not a part of the reality you're trying to explain.
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Heh, you're probably right. Forgot about the Lucifer.
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Most scientists who theorize on the issue believe that alien life wouldn't look like anything on earth.
How much of a coincidence is it that Vasudans have 2 arms, 2 legs (that are all oriented with the same kind of movement), the same basic body shape, 2 eyes, 1 nose, and one mouth in the exact same pattern, fingers, etc. ?
In fact the whole idea that aliens look like huge weird versions of creatures on earth (insects, fish, lizards, mammals, etc.) is probably completely wrong.
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It could be possible that there was a very, very old race that planted the Vasudans, humans and maybe Ancients as seeds on lots of planets as an experiment. I guess that the Brahmans that Darius mentioned in BP would be this concept.
How about this?
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But they developed in almost the same conditions as humans did. That means, that they had to become at least similar to how we are now.
And also, could be that.
P.S. FS2 intro cutscene. Ships move fast.
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It was a desert planet.... how is that similar to a planet 70% covered by water?
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I'd have to agree with Mr. Wang. There's probably some greater force* which is making things evolve with 2 arms 2 legs, etc.
(*a greater force may still not be your God, your God may vary)
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It depends on your point of view, really.
Everything what happens in real life makes sense. Then, people start doeing things with it what make it look cool.
Everything that happens in Freespace is cool. Then, people make up theories to let it make sense as well.
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Some of you people seem to have horrible misconceptions about how AI works and how easy it would be to "hack". Of course, remote control would be exceptionally vulnerable to jamming but by the time FS is supposed to take place, AI would be much more advanced than you might expect. As for sabotage while writing the AI, a decent security policy and some decent engineering practice should fix most of that.
There seems to be at least one person who thinks there's an absolute frame of reference for some reason. Please stop basing your views of how reality works on movies with atrocious science. Star Trek is not representative of reality either.
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I agree on both points.
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Viruses were originaly created by and for the military and OS makers. Now, everyone and his/her grandma can hack or make a virus.
A lot of people can make AI now too, for PC games and etc. But who's to say that it won't get out of control to become too-risky for actual military use ?
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Oh, don't go down the "AI will think for itself and rule the world" road please.
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I'm not. All I'm saying, is that AI would become a common thing, where someone will be able to reprograme someone's robotic dog, or a military super fighter.
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It's not easy to hack military AI. I mean sure, it's possible, but it's still pretty damn hard and probably not worth the effort.
What were we talking about again?
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If FS is possible in RL, and how it would be like.
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I'm sure the fighters will come with full source code and compiler on board, will use some commonly used architecture and not bother with any encryption, verification etc. and allow just anyone full control.
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if we look closer on how things are in our world. If we have AI's controlling ships, either they don't think and don't surpass their programs, then they can be hacked (even if it's hard, just program another AI with abilities to crack another one). If the AI think by itself and don't follow any rules to evolve, then it can't be cracked, but maybe won't be used by military since they don't control it like they want, (they would still have the same control on AI that they have on humans) but it could allow smaller ships (without survival equipement, nor place for human in it)
didn't someone though about BSG series for that ? the cylons can't crack human spaceships, they need to infiltrate their systems to do that. (sorry I don't remember the doctor's name which "betrayed" humanity)
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Baltar ?
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yes (although people may disagree with the fact I used the verb "betray" to qualify him)
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Viruses were originaly created by and for the military and OS makers. Now, everyone and his/her grandma can hack or make a virus.
A lot of people can make AI now too, for PC games and etc. But who's to say that it won't get out of control to become too-risky for actual military use ?
Viruses were originally made by college students as pranks. I'm pretty darn sure. In fact... eh, no, apparently, the first ones were on the ARPANET, hmm... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_notable_computer_viruses_and_worms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Virus#History (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Virus#History)
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if we look closer on how things are in our world. If we have AI's controlling ships, either they don't think and don't surpass their programs, then they can be hacked (even if it's hard, just program another AI with abilities to crack another one). If the AI think by itself and don't follow any rules to evolve, then it can't be cracked, but maybe won't be used by military since they don't control it like they want, (they would still have the same control on AI that they have on humans) but it could allow smaller ships (without survival equipement, nor place for human in it)
That's really a false dilemma. Updating of programs by no means has to be done in real time, and most likely wouldn't given that it would be much cheaper to put in the cheapest computer that works. It could be done between missions on whichever base runs them, using data collected from the mission. But more importantly, this has nothing to do with how easily it could be hacked or cracked. If we assume AI will advance, then we can assume cryptography will similarly advance or at least still exist in some form and you'd still have to convince this fighter you want to hack that it should listen to you.
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You're making hacking it out to be some kind of huge complicated problem.
All you have to do, really, is get into his firecontrol or targeting or IFF coding and turn it from something that makes sense into a bunch of zeros. You don't have to do something fancy. You just have to render it inoperable. Hell, you don't even have to get all of it. Just a small bit. It doesn't take much to bring a huge, complicated bit of code crashing down like some kind of concrete slab house of cards. If you don't believe that, consider how simple it is to bring your PC to a grinding halt. Change one character in the correct place, and there are a lot of places to do it, and you'll never get the thing to work again. An AI of the type you propose would be vastly larger and more complex and have vastly more in the way of weak points because of it.
Put simply, because of its vunerablity to sabotage, such a construct would never be accepted for military service in large numbers. It can't be made secure enough. In relatively small numbers, perhaps, and hence with easily controlled physical access to them, but even then the cost of creating and deploying something like this against the cost of a human pilot wouldn't be very favorable.
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You seem to have leapt straight past getting into it at all. Even if you did make it in, the code could simply be read only while in combat and completely replaced each time between battles. If you sabotaged the base with the code, they could have backups of working code.
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Ok, let's talk about tech part. Firstly, we all know that FS2 technology is vastly superior to our current tech. I mean, you don't see a lot of beam and flaks going off in outer space each day eh? Whats even more shocking, is we havn't designed a ship that is capable for space combat. Once we solved that, we still got the problem of fuel. Ahhh....scientists say that within the next 70-100 years fossil fuel will deplete. Imagine what happes when we put in the cruisers and destroyers? I don't think (with the current supply of fuel) that we could make it pass something like a freighter. In FS, I remember they use uranium, obviously, we almost don't use radioactive substances right now at the moment. So how are we going to develop the technology if we don't even use it?
One last thing: the brakes inside outer space. Surely we all know we press 'z' to slow our ships down. But remember in outer space, there is no force to stop us or even slow our ships down. We would be continuing to fly and fly until we hit something physical.
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Actually they use a hydrogen isotope named Deuterium, which is found in small to medium quantities in gas giants, so they'd have a plentiful supply of fuel for their big fleets.
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Orions use fusion pile generators. And all three races have gas miners so i assume they use deuterium gas in their reactors. I don't remember uranium being mentioned anywhere at all. Could be wrong though. . .
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As for brakes, I'd bet my shell they use retro thrusters.
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I don't remember uranium being mentioned anywhere at all. Could be wrong though
They use depleted uranium in thier armor and I think in the maxim.
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I meant in a power generation capacity :)
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You seem to have leapt straight past getting into it at all. Even if you did make it in, the code could simply be read only while in combat and completely replaced each time between battles. If you sabotaged the base with the code, they could have backups of working code.
Actually, I didn't. You're talking about a very widely deployed weapons system if you intend to replace all manned fighters with it. This makes it an impossiblity to secure physical access to it. Somebody, somewhere, will be able to obtain physical access to the ship and its specifications and coding. Once that's out there, it's only a matter of time before a vunerablity is found. Or many vunerablities.
Because of its widespread deployment securing the ship against electronic sabotage while it is between missions is an effective impossiblity; it would be an utter nightmare, and cost many times what actually deploying the ship did. Whether it faults out before launch and never leaves the hanger, or problems only crop up in flight, it would be a relatively simple matter to ensure a squadron of them isn't working at the correct point in time. It may or may not be a long delay, depending on whether you can alter the backups as well, but even a delay of five minutes in getting fighters off the deck would be unacceptable.
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Given that hostile fighters self destruct when disabled, I'm sure that wouldn't be too hard to achieve some sort of system to deny hostile access to the technology.
If we ignore that and physical access is obtained, I guess you'd be hoping for some sort of long term storage. So, assuming that it actually has some non-volatile storage that's still in working order, how do you propose to gain access to the data contained therein? Hope the storage controller will do what you tell it to? Access it manually and hope it uses some sort of system you recognise?
Your argument about security on its base doesn't really apply since access to the base would allow similar sabotage to pilots or piloted ships. Alternatively, with that sort of access, one could just break the base itself.
Also, it relies on the assumption that every drone would be using the same program which doesn't work if we allow per base or per drone learning or even any of the usual upgrades.
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currently fighter (I mean planes ones) use computer to fight. using computer systems to fire.
If it was that easy to hack a system, then we would come back to our first plane which haven't any computer in them...... goodbye F-22 and Co, everyone in a crappy camel .... great don't you think ?
No seriously there is already drone systems for human sized operation currently in development for the army.
I don't think the army of tomorrow will be exclusively computers but I think for fast action and precise needed fights (like the ones we could have in space), computer will be used more than humans. and for the fight in which we need inteligence a human will still be required.
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It wouldn't be too difficult to built space weapons with current technology, but there is an international treaty against it
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It wouldn't be too difficult to built space weapons with current technology, but there is an international treaty against it
Poor Ronald.
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I would be surprised if the U.S. government didn't have some super-secret space weapons development program somewhere though.
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Well we won't find out until it's used to wipe out China or some other country.
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It wouldn't be too difficult to built space weapons with current technology, but there is an international treaty against it
And exactly which idiots decided to sign this treaty? Nuclear weapons are far worse for general health than an orbital cannon...
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Actually, I believe the big concern was orbital nukes, which could be dropped at any time and with little warning.
So it's the worst of both worlds that's being banned.
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Oh. Well, in that case...at least allow guns pointing OUTWARDS.
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But then people can be like "I will blowz up ur spacestation!"
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And why would they do that?
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Some people are psychotic. Some people are terrorists and like to blow up expensive sh*t.
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Besides, would anyone seriously believe that a country spent millions of dollars building guns in space and didn't intend to use them for warfare on other nations?
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Oh. Well, in that case...at least allow guns pointing OUTWARDS.
Two second burst of thrusters, and those are no longer pointing outwards. ;)
...I'd bet my shell...
:lol:
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Some people are psychotic. Some people are terrorists and like to blow up expensive sh*t.
How many terrorists or psychotic people will gain control of an orbital weapons platform?
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How many terrorists or psychotic people will gain control of an orbital weapons platform?
You never know... Bush might have one ...
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How many terrorists or psychotic people will gain control of an orbital weapons platform?
You never know... Bush Bosch might have one ...
;) :D
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Dude, Bosch has 10 Orion destroyers and a Hecate. He could destroy modern day Earth in like 2 minutes.
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Dude, Bosch has 10 Orion destroyers and a Hecate. He could destroy modern day Earth in like 2 minutes.
Don't forget the Iceni.......
and I know I just thought it appropriate joke for the topic! :)
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Your argument about security on its base doesn't really apply since access to the base would allow similar sabotage to pilots or piloted ships. Alternatively, with that sort of access, one could just break the base itself.
Also, it relies on the assumption that every drone would be using the same program which doesn't work if we allow per base or per drone learning or even any of the usual upgrades.
Drones are easier to screw up then piloted craft, and more importantly, screwing up a drone is more difficult to detect, because it leaves less in the way of physical signs. Damaging a system truly vital to a manned craft tends to leave marks; engine, controls, things like that. Put simply, a manned craft could have total computer (even total electrical) failure and still come back. A drone won't. They would also, perforce, require more work to maintain, raising the number of people who have access to the drones above what is required for manned craft.
And just to make a final mockery of the argument, saying that it would be as easy to access the computers on the drones as it is to obtain access to the main computer of a destroyer? Come on. The base or ship will have far fewer vunerablities both because its systems are simpler and because there is only one of it, meaning each vunerablity is not duplicated ten or a hundred times.
This learning argument is ridiculous. First, we don't even know if it would be true. Second, they're all going to come out of the factory the same way, and upgrades or learning or whatever you want to call it are going to add to, not alter, their base programming. The vunerablities they came out of the factory with may be eliminated by post-factory patching, but it's just as likely that new vunerablities will be added.
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You're saying that a ship most likely controlled using a computer can come back after being disabled, but a ship controlled by a computer directly can't?
Surely one could sabotage the program used to control the fighter when piloted similarly to how one would sabotage the drone software. I seem to recall an event where a decent number of piloted ships are sabotaged, some even being completely destroyed, without any sort of early detection too.
I think we can include obvious things like checksums and maybe some guards. You may wish to read up a bit on machine learning too.
Saying that something is easier to sabotage because there are a lot of them is a bit absurd. Consider that to sabotage one computer with X vulnerabilities requires at least one action while sabotaging Y things each with the same X number of vulnerabilities would require at least Y actions. Why would a computer program designed to operate a large ship be simpler than one designed to operate a small ship? Would there be a simple command console on the outside of each drone so that anyone passing by can do whatever they want with it?
I'd like to know how you'd find these massive vulnerabilities so quickly given that you still haven't shown that you can obtain a complete version of the drone code.
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I imagine that replacing human pilots with AI would require less people. If there's a problem with the AI, fix the problem, upload and apply the fixes to the other AI craft. You'd still need your team of engineers to maintain the craft. And probably just one team of software techies to constantly improve the software, fix the bugs, and fix any reported problems. That team would probably be a company that makes stuff for the military. I can see where a release schedule similar to debian stable. You certainly don't want your craft with bleeding edge software, oh god debian sid is a nightmare.
In the mean time remote control features to override AI would definitely be kept for reasons when the time arises to need to do remote control.
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I have to say that I found Spicious' argument pretty compelling, ngtm1r. Given the prevalence of computers on fighters (or FS ships), it doesn't seem like there's really all that huge a difference.
Plus, heck, I think everyone agrees today that unmanned aerial combat is the future of aerial warfare, just because machines are so much less fragile and it takes away the mass requirement of a life-support system. That would go triply for space warfare.
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*snip*
*snip*
It's all fine and dandy up until a surgical strike takes down your control centre, or the enemy starts filling the sky with EMP blasts.
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Hence the AI rather than remote control (which of course has many other weaknesses).
EMP is overrated and would likely have the same effect on piloted ships, whatever that effect may be.
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Actually, you just have to keep your own fly boys out of the skies or at least, bait them into range of EMP battery, if they're using remote control, a signal disruptor would do fine.
For AI, I'd say ... create a system disruption field, and activate it once the drones are in your target area, and make sure your fly boys have bugged out.
And make sure your ejection seats work, just in case.
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Might not be a good title, but how much do we know in real life about the universe, that can proove FreeSpace as totally impossible?
Ship speed: as not to need to resuply so often, and due to subspace, it isn't needed very high.
FTL travel: there is this thing called wormholes here, being researched. But who's to say that something like subspace can't exist ?
Shivans and Vasudans: it's impossible to find any life outside our Solar system with out current tech... And compared to them too. Who's to say that they DON'T or DO exist? We may never know.
Etc.
Might have played too much FS2 for starting this kind of topic, but what the heck. Post your opinions wheter you think that something like FS2 is possible in real life.
P.S. If I get flamed, I'm removing this post and pretending this never happened. :p
I know that you won't hear sounds in space.
I know also that if your going in one direction with your ship and you turn, it will take time to adjust due to inertia. Sorta like in the game Allegiance, if any of you played it.
I do think there are other races in the galaxy, being the only ones is too good to be true. Freespace as a game gives a good message, because it shows how Humans have to stick together because it ain't as pretty as we think out there.
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Actually, you just have to keep your own fly boys out of the skies or at least, bait them into range of EMP battery, if they're using remote control, a signal disruptor would do fine.
For AI, I'd say ... create a system disruption field, and activate it once the drones are in your target area, and make sure your fly boys have bugged out.
And make sure your ejection seats work, just in case.
Wait...how would any of these work differently on unmanned ships than on piloted ships? They're all totally dependent on electronics.
Also, EMP in space is overrated.
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*snip*
It's all fine and dandy up until a surgical strike takes down your control centre, or the enemy starts filling the sky with EMP blasts.
Do you know how far away the control centers actually can be? In arizona there's people piloting drones in iraq and afghanistan. Yes start filling the skys with emp blasts. Why don't we fill the skys with lots of missiles and bullets as well. Those take down fighters too. Emp blasts will also make a human piloted craft go crashing into the ground also. There's no point in mentioning emp blasts really.
Drones can control themselves, be controlled by humans via satellite/wireless..whatever. If anyone says that updating a drones software is a task so mighty to complete it wouldn't be worth having drones. How hard is it really to setup a server for drones to update from automatically? How hard is it to do that with computers?
Drones are great, their self contained, can be piloted by humans from a great distance away, and it takes actual humans away from the danger.
What should i care about saying any of this. Someone's just going to tear it apart anyway. Who really actually cares about thinking of the difficulties of actually hacking a drone in here besides the sheer possibility of it? Someone could hack it...lets not make drones. Someone could hack it...let's not use the internet.
The best one i thought was "emp's can take it down...lets not make drones". Followed by my "bullets and missiles can take down drones too". This thread has some funky logic. Just because you can perform a surgical strike at a control center, just the possibility of it doesn't mean it's easy **** to do stormkeeper...all for not making drones as well. You'd need lots and lots of intel, lots of fake passports, getting into another country, know the locations of stuff, how to get in, which people to talk to, which people to kill...etc. Go ahead and do a surgical strike at my control center, i've definitely got multiple redundant ones. Better just sticking with emp's. Even still, the army is working at shielding craft from the affects of emp's.
For every possibility there is a counter-possibility/solution/correction.
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Whatever the answer is, Drones weren't used in FreeSpace in any known combat situation, so there was probably a very important reason like, "they can be hacked"
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There were drones in training. But it appears they are inneffective.
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Yeah, another possible reason why they weren't used in combat.
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Pretty sure there were no drones used in training, they were just simulations.
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They were drones in FreeSpace 1.
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Maybe developers in the freespace universe didn't manage to get intelligent drones :lol:
that could be a reason. Imagine you're chasing a drone and then, the drone does something fancy cause he doesn't know what to do.
A good example IRL is freespace itself : just look at how the AI react even on maximum difficulty. We can't put that type of AI into a fighter, a human is far more intelligent.
But if we had correct AI and good implementation inside fighters, why couldn't we use them ?
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Because no AI can beat human creativity. And AI doesn't have a feel of survival. In other words- AI pilots would be kinda like FreeSpace. But people have emotions and etc. - they can come up with something an AI wouldn't.
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Like...blind rage?
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Or like that . . .
Your drone fighters might be better than piloted ones, but after all- it's not the equipment, it's how you use it. And pilots can use it better than AI, because they have emotions/feelings, unlike AI, that'd do everything according their calculations.
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AI and living humans both have advantages and disadvatages, so really, its quite balanced. Its easy for a human to shoot down a lot of drones because they're not creative. However, a human can be overwhelmed by stress or shocking experiences whereas AI is more or less stable.
But yeah, the most likely reason they don't send in waves of drones is because they can be hacked.
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Thank you all for your input of "they can be hacked" without any suggestion of how that might happen.
Also, the assumption that AI technology would be the same as it is in games today (or ten years ago) is pretty absurd.
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But but...those Amazons suck at dogfighting!
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They're training drones, just meant to give a rookie a feel for things. It's not like they're full combat AI. But I can give you another reason we don't use AI pilots. Mass. When you get right down to it, there's just nothing as efficient as a human brain for computational ability vs mass of the computer. And most of the computations are done without conscious thought. That's why an outfielder can do what they do to catch a high fly. They're doing trajectory calculations in their head without even knowing it to put them in the right place at the right time to catch a ball.
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Whatever the answer is, Drones weren't used in FreeSpace in any known combat situation, so there was probably a very important reason like, "they can be hacked"
I in no way implied there were drones in fs aside from the training POS's. The fact that they could be hacked is still pretty non-elborated upon. Is it easy to hack them? Or is it hard to hack them? I would imagine hard because drones are pretty complicated and advanced technology even so today. The other thing is in which situation would they be vulnerable to hacking? Can they only be hacked locally or over a great distance? Could you hack into a drone in midflight if you had the right technology as the enemy on the ground? Or is the only time a drone can be hacked when it's just on the ground put away until next sorty?
The thing that sucks about the fs universe is that we don't get to know too much about it because of where V left off with it and what else they didn't build upon the fs universe. Perhaps in really far away backwater systems where there's fighters and not enough pilots. That those people may use drones. But, i highly doubt it, it's in no way fs likeness or style.
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Mmph, as far as EMP blasts go, Faraday cages help... but not so much, because you have to have a point where EMP can get in because you have to have a point where electricity / data / communications can be exchanged, and that is the weak point in the Faraday cage. I'm sure there are ways to sort of "surge protect" that gateway, not sure. Try reading here (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/hpm.htm) (Global Security) or here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage) (Wikipedia).
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You'd have to make the AI harder or more expensive to hack than it would be to bribe or subvert a human pilot, when you consider how many rebels there were in the NTF, that wouldn't be so difficult.
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That may be another reason for not using drones. If you subvert a pilot, that pilot will defect. If you subvert an AI programmer, then any drone AI he designs will have some sort of back-door. Hacking on it's own in not a threat (no combat drone would execute remotely supplied code as that is far too much of a vulnerability), but if the programmer of the target-identification code was subverted, for instance, then a small peice of could could be inserted which would result in a particularly programmed IFF transmitter being identified as freindly, no matter what orders are given to the drone, or even worse a particular IFF coding would be identified as hostile no matter the orders received.
Giving orders is another reason for having a human pilot instead of a computer, as historically it has been known for an enemy to try to send military units false orders. The most extreme case of this in real life is during the second world war, when British bombers would transmit on German night-fighter frequencies, with false direction instructions, popular radio shows, and even bits of Hitlers speeches, and this often resulted in the night-fighter pilot losing the bombers. A human brain, being adaptable to a very wide variety of situations is actually quite capable of coping with this and similar tricks, but an AI, programmed specifically for a job wouldn't be able to cope unless it had near-human intelligence in all fields.
The ideal use of an AI is a simple mission in which all of the parameters are pre-defined before launch. Today it is a cruise missile which will follow the terrain to it's target and then explode. In the future it will be a bomber which will fly a complex route avoiding enemy fire (and even suppressing it), attack it's target, and then return to base where it will recieve new mission parameters in a controlled environment.
In Freespace AIs would be ideal for flying the Boarnerges or Ursa, and least suited to flexible, multirole fighters such as the Myrmidon.
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The heavy bombers are expensive ( the Ursa is at least ), so I doubt Command would make them AI piloted, as they wouldn't want to loose them.
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AI piloted things aren't less skilled than piloted ones. They have less creativity but higher precision, faster and all things that makes computers better than human in many domains. (NO I'm not heretic.....)
See the yukikaze anime for examples of what I mean.
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Or Animatrix. . .
But people piloted craft is still more effective.
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Again, please stop using fiction as your evidence of AI performance.
Also, please refer to cryptography/network security, specifically to the parts about ensuring you're whoever you say you are.
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AI piloted things aren't less skilled than piloted ones. They have less creativity but higher precision, faster and all things that makes computers better than human in many domains. (NO I'm not heretic.....)
See the yukikaze anime for examples of what I mean.
Yeah, I agree with spicious. Why are we all going on about 'AI is this way', 'AI performs according to these parameters'? How do we have any idea? No true AI has ever been developed.
I just want to point out, again, that drone aircraft are in common use today -- receiving signals from remote pilots as well as performing certain functions on their own. There does not seem to be a major problem with hacking, so far.
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Make this stuff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network) complex enough and the discussion about computer based AI might become totally pointless.
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I just want to point out, again, that drone aircraft are in common use today -- receiving signals from remote pilots as well as performing certain functions on their own. There does not seem to be a major problem with hacking, so far.
Maybe drones aren't interesting enough? That might change if you'd load them with nukes, or anything with substantial destructive capacity.
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Or it could be like how it was in the industrial age- people were against the mechanised industry cause it took away their jobs. So it could be like this for pilots. Though this sounds crazy enough for me to disregard it.
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Make this stuff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network) complex enough and the discussion about computer based AI might become totally pointless.
That is computer based AI. It's one of the most popular avenues of approach to the problem of strong AI.
They've been tried in military applications for several years now, with limited success.