Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: IronForge on January 10, 2010, 02:36:20 am
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Would someone care to enlighten me as to how long a superdestroyer like the sathanas can stay in space without docking or returning to base? After all, it IS the base. Same for orions, just why can't they put in a few farms, re-route some of the power to food growing operations, and stay independent basically for ever?
Then the subject of fuel, in space, things just kinda keep going in a straight line unless bumped. Which happens sometimes so best keep some fuel handy... but for propulsion, once cruise speed is achieved, thats basically it.
So, the million dollar question.
WHY CAN'T THE SATHS JUST SLOWBOAT OUT OF CAPELLA and nuke everyone else?
Also,
WHY CAN'T THE GTVA JUST SEND SOME FOOD-GROWING EQUIPPED SHIPS BACK TO SOL?
I mean jump nodes enable fast travel, but is by no means the only way to get from point A to point B...
So technically a fleet of orions designed to carry enough or grow enough food for the journey can evacuate SoL, reunite everyone with their families, and end of story.
And this makes a great campaign plotline...
FREESPACE 3: IN EXILE. OR something like that. Maybe everyone got nuked and the GTVA sends 5 ships full of people on the run, Battlestar Galactica style but without any destination or jump drives. Settling down again will just mean getting found again, and so best bet is actually to sit halfway between systems and deliberately drift offcourse. Without any coordinates to jump to, no one can find you...
TLDR: Get 10 or so huge ships (with cryogenic facilities even better if the technology exists outside of Blue Planet universe) and set course for SoL the manual method, no fancy jump node and all. Then get everyone out of there, same method. Sure it will take 50 years or so, but heck, who cares how long it takes? Those ships can last forever.
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in space, things just kinda keep going in a straight line unless bumped.
In space: perhaps. In FreeSpace: apparently not.
WHY CAN'T THE SATHS JUST SLOWBOAT OUT OF CAPELLA and nuke everyone else?
Personally I'm still assuming they jumped to a galaxy far, far away during the supernova.
WHY CAN'T THE GTVA JUST SEND SOME FOOD-GROWING EQUIPPED SHIPS BACK TO SOL?
They probably don't want to, since (according to Wikipedia), Delta Serpentis is roughly 210 lightyears away from Sol. And the question remains: why would they want to move the entire GTVA to Sol? Solely because of the families? That good ol' sun? Vodka?
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They probably don't want to, since (according to Wikipedia), Delta Serpentis is roughly 210 lightyears away from Sol. And the question remains: why would they want to move the entire GTVA to Sol? Solely because of the families? That good ol' sun? Vodka?
Alpha Centauri is a hell of a lot closer, though. :p
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They probably don't want to, since (according to Wikipedia), Delta Serpentis is roughly 210 lightyears away from Sol. And the question remains: why would they want to move the entire GTVA to Sol? Solely because of the families? That good ol' sun? Vodka?
Alpha Centauri is a hell of a lot closer, though. :p
Touché. I was going with the "the node was in D-S, ignore everything else" principal.
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With propulsion there's two options: high acceleration high fuel usage or low acceleration low fuel usage.
For the first option, you'll need a ship that is only rocket and fuel. Half the journey will be spent accelerating and the other half will be spent decelerating. But there's no room for anything else. It won't actually be that fast though. High acceleration means the fuel usage is so high that there's no possibility of reaching relativistic speeds. The more fuel you carry, the more mass needs to be accelerated. It's a losing battle.
For the latter option, you don't need much fuel so you have space for the other stuff. But the acceleration is infinitesimal (again, half the journey is acceleration and the other half is deceleration). Eventually you'll build up to an appreciable fraction of c but it'll take over half a century to cross 4 light-years. Now, if you're going a longer haul, say 100 light-years, since you can build up to a large fraction of c, the pace is quite good. But it'll still take over a hundred years to cross 100 light-years...
Neither solution is exactly useful.
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Or... FS doesn't make a whole lot of sense. :P
Personally I'm still assuming they jumped to a galaxy far, far away during the supernova.
The Jedi are going to get quite a shock from that.
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Or... FS doesn't make a whole lot of sense. :P
Personally I'm still assuming they jumped to a galaxy far, far away during the supernova.
The Jedi are going to get quite a shock from that.
Oh, I can already see a new series of books. "Luke Skywalker discovers an ancient enemy from a different galaxy that possesses a weapon unlike any other. Will the Skywalker family manage to find a way to defeat the seemingly invincible adversary before every star in the galaxy is destroyed ?"
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I think the primary reason is that FS ships aren't built for sublight travel and thus don't carry nearly enough fuel to make the transit in a reasonable time.
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TLDR: Get 10 or so huge ships (with cryogenic facilities even better if the technology exists outside of Blue Planet universe) and set course for SoL the manual method, no fancy jump node and all. Then get everyone out of there, same method. Sure it will take 50 years or so, but heck, who cares how long it takes? Those ships can last forever.
Wait, are you suggesting to travel 4 lightyears at a speed of 15mps? That should take some more than 50 years...
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set course for SoL
For Shadows of Lylat? :p
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Snipes- Onoz Shivans in SOL!
Petrarch- Do a barrel roll!
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Bosch - I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Snipes.
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I think the primary reason is that FS ships aren't built for sublight travel and thus don't carry nearly enough fuel to make the transit in a reasonable time.
I realize we've had numerous discussions on this matter before... However,
(a.) Again, I'll cite that I feel the FS-verse relies heavily on the "play with game mechanics, tell the story with elements of real mechanics." Any ship which must be capable of course correction in a vacuum full of gravity wells must be capable of operating without subspace. If your ship doesn't have the power to break orbit with its main engines or get SOMEWHERE on its own power, that vessel is doomed if your subspace drives fail. Capship speed in FS is a game mechanic if there ever was one. A game with a two- or three- kilometer long thunderstick moving at 9,000 m/s is not fun for a fighter pilot (AKA: you) to do strafing runs on. Slow speed relative to the player with subspace enables gameplay to feel challenging in a small region while the pace of the operation is enabled to feel alive and even frantic due to extreme mobility. The load that FS ships can't do long-term space flight is pretty stale, as although it's never seen in the main campaign, it's that way for a reason: the fighter pilot is not entertained by long-term fleet movements. That said, there's no reason to discourage an author from including something like that as long as the story and feel is believable.
(b.) This is another issue we've touched on in a different thread, Battuta. Subspace "flight" is only roughly defined in the main FS elements available in retail FS. We don't know how much energy it takes to do a jump, though you'd assume that the larger the ship, the more power it would need. Over a long-range intra-system jump, you'd probably use less resources than if you went out under sublight power. Over very short ranges, that might be careless use of the ship resources. This is further argument for why ships would need to be capable of operation without subspace. That said, we're given the idea that FS ships use fusion drives. Nuclear power FTW. An ideal nuclear-powered ship would hopefully be using an extremely dense fuel (good for space in the ship) which would be broken down with very high efficiency. The result of this is that you release a massive amount of energy when running the engines (thus producing a great deal of thrust) while not having a ludicrous fraction of the ship reserved for fuel storage. I'll counter your argument that "it's not canon"... which is a little true... by asking the question: how is it not?
(c.) That in mind, the reason you'd not devote your resources to long-range inter-system travel in the FS verse is that it doesn't seem to fit the times well. Just like our governments won't seem to invest the time and manpower/brainpower in sending real-world space expeditions out there (as the current means are not economically justifiable in the short term), the FS governments won't either. Ships can do intersystem jumps through stable nodes. It's a proven method and it meshes well with the intersystem economy. And when you're in a situation like Reconstruction, a civil war, possible dissidents to quell (apart from the NTF/HOL... you know, the possibility of pirates), a second Shivan incursion, and rebuilding after the loss of an entire system - not to mention all the possible new node routes from that system - the last thing on your mind, no matter how much you want to do it, is going to be an unconventionally conventional space flight op between two star systems. Specialized ships, crews, and technological development (though this would have probably been the first sort of thing you'd see in real life development) for crossing light years of space at a proverbial snail's pace IS NOT going to be on your government's mind. And lastly, if the Shivans really wanted to cruise on in the slow way, it would still potentially take decades - if not milennia - to do so due to some of the distances by sublight power alone.
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a.) You need to check your engineering. Whether or not the ships have power to break orbit and stuff like that is irrelevant. They can have the ability to move at realistic fusion drive speeds and it still won't matter to interstellar travel. They do not seem to carry enough fuel.
b.) Subspace is totally irrelevant to this discussion. The issue is whether intersystem transit is realistic using FS designs. The ships probably do not carry enough fuel to make the transit in a reasonable period (within their own operational longevity.) You do, indeed, need a ludicrous fraction of the ship for fuel storage, even with the high specific impulse of a fusion engine (the type of which is left to the imagination.)
c.) The fact that no STL transit to Sol was attempted during Reconstruction probably indicates it is not practical using existing FS ship designs. A specially designed vessel might be able to make the transit.
In the end your decision to ignore in-game speed measurements, while believable, simply opens the door to making up whatever we want. Canonical speed is all we have. Anything else is fanwank.
Go through your, post find every sentence with 'probably', 'ideally', 'hopefully', and remove them. See how the argument holds up.
FreeSpace is a setting defined by subspace travel. The ships do not appear to have the ability to move faster than a few meters per second at sublight speeds. Change that and you need to discard fighters and turn the entire thing into another iteration of Alastair Reynolds or Transhuman Space.
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c.) The fact that no STL transit to Sol was attempted during Reconstruction probably indicates it is not practical using existing FS ship designs. A specially designed vessel might be able to make the transit.
And, as I mentioned in the other thread, it's a great possibility for a custom campaign. So everyone should stop whining about the fact that the GTA/GTVA didn't try it and write a story about what happened when they did. :)
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I don't think moving away from the concept of the in-game displayed ship speeds as some sort of absolute value necessarily entails scrapping the entire FS combat model. Just the canon fact that capital ships are often in-orbit around a particular planet obviously implies that, at least in that planetary frame of reference, said ships are moving at orbital velocities. This doesn't necessarily mean that something like an Orion can break orbit under its own power, much less undertake some sort of interstellar journey at sublight speeds, but it at least has to be able to maintain said orbit. I've always been fairly comfortable with doing a bit of handwavium and treating the low in-game speeds as being relative to some external frame-of-reference, be it a planet or installation. That way, you get to keep the need for small, relatively-fast combat craft, but you're not stuck trying to rationalize why a two-kilometer-long starship would be moving as fast as a city bus.
(Granted, the whole discussion is rendered moot by the game's made-for-fun, non-Newtonian physics framework, but you get my point. :p)
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Precisely. The fact is, it's a WWII-in-space combat model, rather like Star Trek and Star Wars.
Unfortunately, Mongoose, if you move away from that model you also introduce concerns about fuel burn, endurance, specific impulse and delta-V. None of these are favorable to manned fighters.
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How is that? Star Trek and Star Wars are no more Newtonian than FreeSpace unless you're referring to something else.
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He meant that, like fighter actions in ST and SW, the action in FS2 is patterned after WW2 dogfights. That is, close-range, gun based dogfighting instead of BVR missile sniping.
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Unfortunately, Mongoose, if you move away from that model you also introduce concerns about fuel burn, endurance, specific impulse and delta-V. None of these are favorable to manned fighters.
Play The Minbari Project if you want realistic physics, FS2 physics are made just for fun.
Of course, fully Newtonian flight model can also be fun (as proven by TMP), but is much more difficult to master.
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And I-War, which is like 75% Newtonian.
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a.) You need to check your engineering. Whether or not the ships have power to break orbit and stuff like that is irrelevant. They can have the ability to move at realistic fusion drive speeds and it still won't matter to interstellar travel. They do not seem to carry enough fuel.
b.) Subspace is totally irrelevant to this discussion. The issue is whether intersystem transit is realistic using FS designs. The ships probably do not carry enough fuel to make the transit in a reasonable period (within their own operational longevity.) You do, indeed, need a ludicrous fraction of the ship for fuel storage, even with the high specific impulse of a fusion engine (the type of which is left to the imagination.)
c.) The fact that no STL transit to Sol was attempted during Reconstruction probably indicates it is not practical using existing FS ship designs. A specially designed vessel might be able to make the transit.
In the end your decision to ignore in-game speed measurements, while believable, simply opens the door to making up whatever we want. Canonical speed is all we have. Anything else is fanwank.
Go through your, post find every sentence with 'probably', 'ideally', 'hopefully', and remove them. See how the argument holds up.
FreeSpace is a setting defined by subspace travel. The ships do not appear to have the ability to move faster than a few meters per second at sublight speeds. Change that and you need to discard fighters and turn the entire thing into another iteration of Alastair Reynolds or Transhuman Space.
Although mostly intact, your arguments for your points are a little fractured due to the fact that that you've seemed to have changed your opinions slightly from previous discussions. That's fine, but please be sure not to be so seemingly condescending in your response or defense.
That said, there is some merit to your response to point (a.). Standard FS ships would probably never attempt... well, never attempt intersystem travel with fusion drives. If I stated they could, then I take that back. Though, for the record, I don't believe I ever have... A colony ship would be massive, to say the least, and wouldn't be going anywhere fast. If you could cover a light year in 10 years, you'd be doing a pretty good job. That's the only example of a reasonable intersystem-without-subspace travel vessel concievable in FS, and the only flavor of which I'd advocate if necessary.
Point (b.) was born of the fact that we're talking about fuel and power. The argument is primarily based upon the fact that the discussion covers the question of mobility technology in FS. It is a little off-topic in the sense that it's tied to the argument in point (a.), where movement is considered without the use of subspace drives. The only real value to the argument is to validate that, if absolutely necessary, FS ships could move of their own accord. In which, power/fuel usage would be comparably inefficient, but not unreasonalble. In terms of escaping a system to another without subspace, however, you are indeed correct. The fuel fraction aboard a FS ship would not be high enough to yield a reasonable transit velocity between systems.
I feel the economical/political reason for not transiting to Sol during Reconstruction in point (c.) was better laid out than yours, but I agree with your listed sentiments completely. You'd need specialized vessels for a trip like that, and a standard FS fleet (unless it's in "tow and stasis" or something like that) will not make such a journey in common reason.
Your statement about "ignoring in-game speed measurements" does not in fact open the door for making up anything we want... though as every campaign out there (apart from :v: 's campaigns) is fanon anyway, the respective authors would do anything they wanted anyway... :doubt: A standard FS mod uses standard FS data. That means an Oriion still paruses about at 15m/s, a Leviathan is a turtle, and all the other fun stuff you can recall. It's the mod author's duty to write a workable stroy which meshes with game mechanics - that's FreeSpace. It's no different from retail in that regard.
And now to the last: the first point is absolutely correct. FS wouldn't be FS without subspace. The second part is a grey area, though you could definatively say that the measured speed is a relatavistic value. That aside, it is again a game mechanic that makes the game fun and playable. That's why ships in FS move the way they do. I know you know this well.
The last part of the paragraph in question is your own fanon. The FS-verse is the same so long as it is recognizably so: as long as the fiction can be made to mesh with gameplay in some fashion, it's fine. Story-wise, canon FS only goes into using speeds with a light tread. "This ship is faster" or "this ship is more maneuverable" are about as in-depth as breifings and the like go. The numbers are only viable from the player standpoint: in-game mechanics. Stating that the ship is moving "from this planet to the other without subspace" doesn't break the story - there's no numbers involved as it's just a given. Giving the FS universe a more realistic feel is a help, not a hinderence, and it breaks emersion no less than considering the Orion you're escorting is moving at 15 m/s. The only thing the author needs to be wary of is the execution of the elements involved. Yes, it's fanon. But everything else on this entire board is.
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No. We have canonical, spoken verification of FreeSpace ship speeds. Mission 'Proving Grounds', if I recall correctly.
I don't mean to be condescending, but I've been debating these points for ten years now, and in the end it all simply comes back to the fact that in-game behavior is the only behavior we have. Postulating a separate fluff framework with greatly increased velocities has ripple effects which effectively change the setting into something else entirely.
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Hmph. So I missed one.
However, I'm still not mistaken on the story-telling aspect. As long as the elements are coherent, the story works. Relativistic velocities? Bah. There's enough inconsistencies within most sci-fi as it is. Look at trying to define "MGLT" in the Star Wars universe: it's so nebulous that, although a figure is out there to satisfy the nerds out there (myself included), there's no limiting factor present to prevent a SW ship from doing what it wants to do.
I for one like having a more reasonable or realistic environment. Most of the good campaigns do this by some means. BP focuses on the human factor. Derelict emphasizes the environment/setting. If a story focuses on gameplay mechanics that... could be simulated by actual vehicles... but would never be simulated because of raving impracticalites therein, then that story will be horrendous to anyone who looks into it. This isn't ignorance: it's acknowledging the nature of a sci-fi universe which isn't built on real life mechanics. Something real has to be there or the story will flop.
The example you give in the said mission isn't much of anything in that regard. Take it away from the mission and the mission doesn't change. It's merely a game mechanic that was brought into the main fiction. So. What. With all the other "handwavium" floating about FS, it basically does nothing to invalidate my point or prove yours. All it does is attempt to more closely relate the universe :v: created with the universe accessable to the player. In other instances where you have ships in orbit (as Mongoose pointed out), the speed consideration is made negligable again. It is truthful that I can't fully prove my point, but you can't prove yours, either.
*Edit:
I posted this before I saw your edited response. That's a good point you've added as well. I'll again state that the author is really the one in charge of making sure everything is in order. In that regard, I don't necessarily see how we're in such critical disagreement.
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I don't actually understand what point you're trying to make any more.
I feel that I've demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction that sublight travel between systems in FreeSpace is not trivially achievable and may not be within the abilities of existing, canonical FS designs. FS technology probably enables it (depending on how good their environment systems are and how long the ships hold up without maintenance), but it would likely require a significant effort.
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True. We've gone rather off-topic.
The last argument was covering how in-game speeds were rather arbitrary to the story/events from a global campaign perspective as well as how intrasystem travel via normal engines wasn't a rediculous impossibility. Somehow that originally related to traversing light years without subspace drives... :nervous:
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What I'm thinking is it sounds like in his opinion, the biggest step for a good campaign is to have a control which remains constant through the mod, whether it be technology, story, gameplay, etc, at least one point needs emphasis.
I think is what I'm seeing.
Very likely I read it wrong though.
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Nope, we've got it sorted out, it was more of a physics issue. But thanks. :)
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Dammit, I got here too late to expand on my earlier point without going off-topic and refuting my modliness. Rats. :p
But just to throw in one line of clarification, I could have phrased things better by saying that, with the aid of subspace travel, ships are apparently able to achieve orbit around planetary bodies, meaning that their relative speed to said planets is in fact in the realm of the orbital velocity. However, their engines are only able to maintain a very slow speed in addition to this through the apparent luminiferous aether that fills the FS universe.
(In other words, insert some handwavium and put on blinders to everything that doesn't fit. :p)
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Blame it on the aether, man. Blame it on the aether.
Actually, that kind of makes everything make sense. Maybe subspace is the aether.
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Allright I can't lurk anymore. Gotta say something :wtf:
The point is NOT to relocate GTVA to SoL. Its to get everyone from SoL OUT of SoL. It doesn't matter if it takes 50 years, a hundred, it doesn't matter at all. Pack a ship full of engines and cryogenic facilities just like the sleeper ship sanctuary in Blue Planet, and head back to earth, pick up everyone 'of value to the alliance', shoot the rest or just leave them to rot (hey there are so far no indications the GTVA was a democracy, seems rather pyramid to me) and get back to whatever system is closest to SoL. Assuming there is no resistance between systems, and the non-newtonian physics we have in fs1 and 2 is due to interferrence from dust.nebulae.planets.other celestials, ships will just keep moving in a straight line.
However if that is NOT the case and in FS world things are... different and we go by the canon, then I suppose you can ram a capship full of engines to go at say... whatever speed is good? Maybe a thousand years, but thats fine because you don't age in a cryogenic tube. Step aboard for the thousand year slumber!!! And hope the rest of the GTVA is still alive somewhere.
And what about in system warp. Is that allright for moving (though very slowly over many many warps) between systems without a node?
As for the saths in capella, I always wondered what happened to them after the supernova, did they survive? Or did the supernova create a jump node for them to exit? POSSIBLY TO SOL? Oh the horror the horror!!!
Also, I don't see why if the shivians should decide to invade again in some theoratical 3rd invasion, be it fs3 or whatever, at the point of defeat, one could just pack everyone (or those who are deemed 'useful to the alliance') into large ships battlestar galactica style and slowboat into nowhere.
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But why in god's name would you want to do any of that (except the last paragraph)? :confused:
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How would you like it if I told you you can never see your kids again.
Then I tell you there is one way. To hop into a cryogenic tube, wait a thousand years, and then see your kids who have also hopped into a tube waitin for you to pick em up, or at least I hope the GTVA has enough tubes for everyone who has relatives on earth?
I mean, how many can there be? The rest of everyone can just stay on earth and rot if they like. But those thousands hundreds of thousands who want to see their kids again?
Yeah after I learnt its LIGHTYEARS away and not LIGHTYEAR away, this argument seems rather stupid, I'll give you that. But as for me, I would be willing to go to sleep for a thousand years just for a chance to see my kids. Nothing is guranteed, I have no way to know if they had hopped into a cryo tube or not. But the hope would be enough to make me do it.
PS: IRL I'm too young to have kids.
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They couldn't see their kids, unless their kids also got into cryo on Earth (or vice versa.)
Transplanting large numbers of people from Earth to GTVA in cryo over centuries seems remarkably unproductive. What do you get out of it?
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Nothing, it is purely a humanitarian thing.
Quoting self since I edited while you were writing, sorry about that
Yeah after I learnt its LIGHTYEARS away and not LIGHTYEAR away, this argument seems rather stupid, I'll give you that. But as for me, I would be willing to go to sleep for a thousand years just for a chance to see my kids. Nothing is guranteed, I have no way to know if they had hopped into a cryo tube or not. But the hope would be enough to make me do it.
EDIT: OK So post lucifer, I assume the GTVA will have the common sense to OFFER to put those who have family on earth into cryo and send them to SoL, and the GTVA (or now United Earth Alliance or wadever) will offer to put those severed from their families into cryo tubes and wait.
Seems hopeless but some people right now are freezin up their brain when they die and all...
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Alright I'm going to say it again because it's irritating me.
SoL = Shadows of Lylat. Starfox conversion for FS2
Sol = Terran home system.
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Responding to the original question; aside from recovering Earth's industrial base and some resources (notably Argon gas... pre-nebula), the only good reason for slowboating back to Sol would be to simply check up on things. Even then, recovery of industrial power isn't really critical- the GTVA demonstrated that they could do fine without Earth, and I'm sure Earth would be ok in isolation.
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Or... FS doesn't make a whole lot of sense. :P
Personally I'm still assuming they jumped to a galaxy far, far away during the supernova.
The Jedi are going to get quite a shock from that.
Oh, I can already see a new series of books. "Luke Skywalker discovers an ancient enemy from a different galaxy that possesses a weapon unlike any other. Will the Skywalker family manage to find a way to defeat the seemingly invincible adversary before every star in the galaxy is destroyed ?"
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Recut Version
Scene 1: A Sathanas arrives above Naboo and nukes Jar Jar. The audience cries in joy.
Scene 2: Anakin Skywalker, who does not appear in this movie because he is a F-ing child, makes no appearance in this scene either.
Scene 3: This scene establishes that we have no stupid tax dispute but the Republic has to face the Shivans who are appearing out of nowhere.
Scene 4: The Jedi enter a captured Azrael. Windu is killed off instantly in a recreation of the Hallfight cutscene.
Scene 5: Epic space battle with noname fighters. First appearance of Arjuna 1, the legendary Shivan fighter.
Scene 6: The Lucifer bombards Mustafar, turning it into its present form.
Scene 7: OMG what is going to happen now?
THE END
And, as I mentioned in the other thread, it's a great possibility for a custom campaign.
The GTXCr Blablabla is sent to Sol. When they arrive, the GTVA has already built their portal and reunited with humanity's birthplace. The ship doesn't have the proper authorization codes so it gets blown to pieces.
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Wow. Non-serious FTW... :nervous:
"Slowboating" from Sol might be a decent campaign premice if you create a scenario similar to NGTM-1R's "Fishie" invasion. Of course, the outcome is that Sol gets laid to waste and the Human populace (as well as Vasudans, perhaps?) must escape into the void... [Insert dramatic music here.]
Because of the absence of available nodes, Humanity's remaining fleet must, with the asset of sleeper ships, continue to accelerate out of the system towards Alpha Centauri. The player must vanquish wave after wave of angsty extra-terrestrials... :nervous:... until the fleet has drifted far away enough from Sol that intrasystem jumps from hostile ships can lo longer pose a threat to the fleeing Alliance ships...
...Despite having the re-imagined BSG's "33" written all over this madness, it might make for an interesting co-op campaign...
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AoA would be somewhat close with the expeditionary fleet, do any campaigns here feature an exodus fleet?
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From what i could decipher from some of these posts, I don't think the following argument has been made yet.
REGARDLESS of fuel limitations, nothing larger than a sub-atomic particle can get anywhere close to a tiny fraction of the speed of light. Relativity is a *****.
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Wrong. Given enough fuel, you can accelerate any mass to fractions of c.
However, in the FS universe, there is no indication of ships carrying the required amounts of fuel, or even the required acceleration capabilities.
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given infinite time (or force, one), yes, but i thought we were working from a relatively practical standpoint here.
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You don't need infinite time or force at all.
It's only accelerating to C itself that requires infinite energy.
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With that said, the energy curve is exponential. Getting up to 0.5c needs somewhat more energy than expected. Getting up to 0.75c takes a large chunk more than expected. Getting to 0.9c is an epic effort.
Furthermore, you need to carry fuel to provide thrust. High thrust engines use up fuel inefficiently necessitating carrying a lot of heavy fuel which would require more thrust to overcome (vicious cycle). Low thrust engines are efficient but it would take a long time to build up appreciable speed.
So while unlimited thrust or unlimited time means almost any fraction of c could be achieved, practically it's very difficult.
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With that said, the energy curve is exponential. Getting up to 0.5c needs somewhat more energy than expected. Getting up to 0.75c takes a large chunk more than expected. Getting to 0.9c is an epic effort.
Furthermore, you need to carry fuel to provide thrust. High thrust engines use up fuel inefficiently necessitating carrying a lot of heavy fuel which would require more thrust to overcome (vicious cycle). Low thrust engines are efficient but it would take a long time to build up appreciable speed.
So while unlimited thrust or unlimited time means almost any fraction of c could be achieved, practically it's very difficult.
:yes: even if we are using fusion for the energy source, we're still talking incredible mass. look at how big the sun is.
back in one of my physics classes we crunched the numbers for getting something like a pencil up to some appreciable fraction of c. i don't remember the exact number, but it was some ungodly amount of energy. now increase that by 50 orders of magnitude for a massive spaceship that would pretty much need to be a floating planet.
ok seriously. why does the box bounce and hide what i'm typing like that, and how do i make it stop?
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Hmm actually maybe in FS physics (realistically it can be done) we can't bridge star systems, but theres no gurantee that in the middle of nowhere there will be a jumpnode.
Why do all jumpnodes lead to a SYSTEM and not to the middle of nowhere? Maybe a node to nowhere, and then a node back to known space (say beyond the nebula)? Keep sending probes, theres gotta be one :P
But anyway, what about lightspeed communication? If we did this eve online style or BSG cylon style its rather easy. Bring their memory to a new body.
But if we insist on keeping things 100% canon, I still don't see why they would be completely cut off.
As seen in several missions, notably escaping capella (where command tells you to get out, clearly from out system), apparently comms can bridge the gap.
Therefore, the families can opt to all enter cryogenic sleep and wake up when the portal is up. Or if that doesnt sound too appealing, at least chat. Sure, laggy and all but can be done.
Question about in system warp. You know, we press alt-j or whatever to end mission? can't that warp be used INTERSYSTEM? Or no?
Its slow, takes many many warps but gets the job done.
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No. Read the techroom. Intrasystem warp only works near stars.
Intersystem comms is probably node-dependent.
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Beaten by Battuta! Regardless:
Standard intersystem nodes seem to rely on gravity wells. Thus, logically, one would assume a node would lead you to a star system. However, perhaps some sort of deep-space interaction between distant celestial bodies could cause a node like annomaly to appear? As there's no definative evidence against it, there's no reason why it couldn't be used as a story element. Keep in mind that such an element will need a very good explanation, though, so be careful if you try to make that a case.
Intersystem jump drives for fighters were only available to the GTVA at the end of the First Shivan Incursion as far as we are told, so anything "post-Lucifer" of the fighter variety could make intersystem jumps without a destroyer. :p
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Intersystem jumps without a destroyer. Sweet. So what about warps? Why those long boring escort missions? Why not get the bastion to warp directly on top of the node?
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Because that's apparently what it takes. In some escort missions, you are escorting ships that do not have a intersystem drive, in the Bastion's case, it seems that exiting subspace directly on top of a node seems to be impossible (and yes, I know that that theory has holes. Sue me.).
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This is my standing theory on jump nodes and jumps, both inter- and intrasystem:
A jump node is formed in the presence of a gravity well with a unique alignment to another system, thus creating a stable (or reasonably stable) extra-dimensional portal through which a vessel may cross to a different system.
Intrasystem jumps also rely on gravity wells, namely upon the cental celestial bodies (or body) of the system. The gravitational force of the combined system is necessary for successful usage of the lighter drives, but there is also a tolerance by which these can operate: although gravity wells are required for subspace flight, navigating a region (entering or exiting subspace) where there is an intense local gravitational presence like that from a planet, dense asteroid field, or intersystem jump node is difficult, dangerous, and often impossible for certain craft. This would explain why most ships cannot simply jump into a node, have problems with asteroid fields (in terms of jumping), etc. It also validates larger craft having propulsion systems like they do, as you may have to achive high orbit, or even break orbit around certain planets (or even stars...) before entering subspace an the system-level.
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Think also of the accuracy of the jump. It's highly likely that, especially during the GW-era, intra-system jumps aren't accurate enough to exit subspace at the exact coordinates you aimed at - lets say a few klicks away from your destination. So if you're lucky, you are nearly inside the node and you just have to wait for the drive to recharge before jumping through. And if you're not, you must travel all the way to it.
Assumption here : maybe the accuracy decreases with the distance you try to jump. For example, the Bastion arrived more than 10 klicks away from the Sol node when tracking the Lucifer because they jumped all the way from the Beta Aquilae node, across the whole system, in a single jump.
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NITPICK: The fancy drives that enable fighters to jump from system to system are very expensive.
They aren0t equipped on fighter by default, but rather on a mission-specific basis for elite squadrons.
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Theory: Jump nodes have a subspace field around them where high-mass objects (ships) are unable to jump until they reach a certain point as biproduct of the subspace tunnel. much like the accretion disk around a black hole. lots of stuff around the outside, less stuff in the middle. this "stuff" disrupts subspace jumps and therefore ships must slowboat it to the nodes. however, i will admit this does not explain why you can jump away from close to a node...
next item: if you want to get from, lets say Alpha Centauri to Sol, why would you freeze yourself in cryostasis for 1000 years in the off chance someone else on the other side does the same, while scientists are studying the knossos portal and could possibly have one up and running within a few decades?
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next item: if you want to get from, lets say Alpha Centauri to Sol, why would you freeze yourself in cryostasis for 1000 years in the off chance someone else on the other side does the same, while scientists are studying the knossos portal and could possibly have one up and running within a few decades?
The topic was mainly about why they didn't slowboat before FS2, and so before knowing about knossoses
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next item: if you want to get from, lets say Alpha Centauri to Sol, why would you freeze yourself in cryostasis for 1000 years in the off chance someone else on the other side does the same, while scientists are studying the knossos portal and could possibly have one up and running within a few decades?
The topic was mainly about why they didn't slowboat before FS2, and so before knowing about knossoses
aside from all the political infighting, reconstruction efforts, and civil war you mean?
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Hey, I'm not the one arguing here, I'm just reminding everyone what the topic was :)