[Terrasoul]

I'm putting this here to air my ideas on subspace and hear all of the other ideas out there.
In my opinion subspace is a matter of 'planes'. Reality lets imagine is just a big sphere alrighty? We ordinarily live on the surface of the sphere. As if the planet was one big ocean our energy and mass prevents us from going too high or low.
Now in order to get to the other side of sphere which is shorter and more effective to 1 go all the way around the sphere staying entirely on one's own plane, or 2. to take some path dipping partway into the inside of the sphere. Remember this analogy is only 3D real Subspace is 4D.
What this means is everything gets smaller, time compresses, so it litterally seems like instants to you and realspace. Thus you've essentially compressed your travel time by several orders of magnitude.
What does this means to we normal people who just fly around in real/subspace? I'll add some more later.

In search of the ultimate Blonde Joke, Love

[Terrasoul]

Alrighty, just a few seconds after this first post I'm back for more and I wish I could bring viewgraphs.
Imagine if you will, the sphere I described before, now imagine that the sufaces of that sphere are irregular, energy is shifting, and transforming all the time.
The trick to harnessing subspace is to finding a place where it and realspace are incredibly close, almost (they can't actually) touching. Almost all of realspace is close enought to lower planes to allow extremely small subspace jumps, only large gravitational bodies interfere with in-system jumps.
This won't do you any good if you're trying to cross the gulf between stars.
Lower planes of subspace have a much greater compression effect than those above them. The lower you transition the farther and *faster* you'll go. This is where real life subspace nodes come in. These nodes are the only thing allowing ships to enter the lower planes of subspace. Of course the power neccisary to make this transition possible is still greater by far than in-system jumps but a truly great subspace node can make jumps for smaller craft possible.
Even so these are immensely rare, and for a long time I really don't see fighters being able to do inter-system.

The Knossos jump gate made its node the most powerful in existance, its twin lightyears, and lightyears away slowly tightened the perabola path between the two points, allowing the incredible distance to be traversed easily.

To assemble this theory I have studied all the subspace phenomina in the original FF2 Campeign. The three most inspiring incidents, where 1, the principle of the knossos portal, and the fact its gate remained stable after its desruction, 2, the Shivan dreadnaughts subspace bombardment which collapsed the Cappellan star. 3, the method of implementing meson bombs to destroy jump nodes. More later

In search of the perfect blonde Shivan joke, Love

[Grey Wolf]

Nice theory, but this belongs in the Hard Light forum.

[Terrasoul]

Thanks and I'd like to see your work too. I noticed that compressed fusion drive you guys where talking about and decided I'd add something of my own. The SFPDG (believe me you don't want to know what that stands for) essentially it takes advantage of the difference in subspace energy and by using small, pulsed subspace-level fluxes it slowly stabilizes an area of subspace. This produces a relatively high amount of feedback energy which can be transferred into the ships subsystems.It works pathetically slow on the scale neccisary to create a jump node so a different principle will be used in the Human Knossos project but it can produce a 15-40% power boost by putting a 10%+ mass mod on a small ships subspace drive.
Basically where I want to go with this is 1. A weapon technology which uses this principle to "detonate" a field of subspace around an enemy craft drawing a massive amount of energy at once creating a big blast of EM.
A weapon technology that perfects energy transmission through subspace making an intresting beam weapon which is 10% more powerful than it has a right to be (in terms of energy consumption) (and godamn fast).

And a new line of extremely small CB (combot bots) drones which are at their worst 1/4 the size of an old herc. I've already got the names, histories, and qualities of 3 fighters, 2 terran, 1 vasudan (the vasudan makes the 2 terrans look emberrassing). Also civillian craft are likely to get a lot smaller when super-small generator/SFPDG combinations make them monsterously cheap to produce. (at the moment all this tech is prototypical but is being revolutionized quickly by two fiercly competive GTVA Think-tanks one terran the other Vasudan

[Terrasoul]

Here's a little something I wrote about the CB's and some accompanying tech:

GTVA: Harpy/Hydra/Necros (Vasudan): The smallest combat vessels in or out of current combat service with the GTVN all three of the above are now classified as “CB’s” or “Combat Bots”. This is because the smallest among them, the harpy, measures about ¼ the size of a Hercules Heavy Assault fighter, outturns, and out-accelerates everything in the GTVN or SA (Shivan Armada) yet encountered.
While currently only battle capable under robot control, eventually CB’s will be able to carry a short-term cockpit containing its own life support and power supply in addition to all combat systems. Considering the armor level of the ship, it isn’t advised that anyone but expert pilots attempt to use this ship, possibly not even them. Shields alone, not even built into the harpy, will keep the pilot alive, critical systems will be so close to each other as to be difficult to isolate from damage.

Harpy: currently the only battleworthy vessel of the two-terran fighters is also the smallest of the three. Flying on three MAG/FUS semi-fixed thrusters the Harpy is fairly slow and armed with only two light Primaries and secondary hard-points. Boxy, its cockpit is an ovoid built into the middle of the chassis. Its three thrusters lie on either side of the frame and on the bottom, its primaries lie in two stub-turrets above and to either side of the cockpit. Its two rectangular Secondary bays are designed to use a drop system rather than the usual forward ejection. This was inspired during testing when the drop bays received indirect fire, causing them to repeatedly combust due to lack of armor between munitions storage and the open bays. Still in testing, the Harpy is not expected to actually see combat, but its cheapness (assuming the SCDH(sorry i used the wrong acronym) engine drops in price) along with its talents in defensive, short range, anti-fighter roles may win it a place among the ranks of Civilian/commercial defense craft. With the maintenance track record of CB’s so far, the harpy is by far the easiest to keep in fighting trim, probably because of its boxy, modulated design.

Hydra: The premier offering of Keleon(terran think tank) to the GTVN the hydra is a next generation prototype CB. Larger and more advanced than the Harpy, the hydra uses more heavily integrated, specialized equipment to greatly boost its performance. While a little on the heavy side, the Hydra’s four Primary hardpoints and agility make it a dangerous adversary. Using a compound SCDH/FUS (fusion)(your cores of course) core its power levels are much higher than the Hydra, powering the crafts heavier weapon’s systems as well as a strong afterburners.

The problem with the Hydra is 1, its price,which will drop with the SCDH generator, 2, its incredible maintenance requirements, and 3, its parts, almost all of the vessels main components where custom designed with one another. Although this makes for heightened performance, most have no resemblance to any standard parts on the market. The difficulty lies in providing enough spares to keep a significant group of these ships fully functional. The Hydra is Probably the only terran CB any sensible tactician would actually trust a pilot to.

Necros (Vasudan): The one and only Vasudan CB design currently under development. Right from the start of the CB project the Vasudan and Terran design groups have competed heavily. When the Harpy’s performance was cut by measures taken to repair flaws in its design, the Necros continued to steadily improve.
The Hydra was adopted late compared to the Necros and is currently inferior to it (though it pains us to admit it). Smaller and more compact than the Hydra, the Necros was definitely better thought out than the crude Harpy, and enjoys a fine balanced weapon package of three primary hardpoints and the usual two secondary. Its top speed is well above that of the Hydra, and it is compatible with a greater volume of existing Vasudan weaponry and secondary arms.
Tougher armor, and equal shield strength to the Hydra, the only real flaw in the Vasudan design is the power generation capability of the craft, making its weapon/shield banks slow to reload.

Here are some weapons I made

GTVM: Malice

Still just a dream so far as design is concerned the Malice is a dumb-fire built out of the Harpoon missile. An extravagant device based on the Gravity Reduction Technology (forgot to mention that) the Malice’s warhead; ‘phases’ to increase penetration then explodes. The phase technology makes the Malice far more detrimental to shields passing through whole layers before contact. It also makes a sizable increase to hull damage as well.

GTVM: Phantom

Another dream weapon built on the principles of GRT (gravity reduction technology) the Phantom launches ‘phased’ particles with a limited ‘suppression life’ at the target in one burst. Passing easily through shields, the particles regain their coherency well inside the targets defenses, providing an obvious bonus against shields. With higher power requirements, and slower ROF(rate of fire) the Phantom is in most respects a Subach/promithius style arm.

GTVA: Subach M

In all respects a miniature version of the Subach, designed with the CB in mind. The Subach M is the staple weapon for the Harpy and Hydra. With reduced power and increased ROF the Subach is designed to accommodate the extremely mobile nature of the CB.

GTVA: Jackhammer

A rapid fire, high payload dumbfire rocket designed for use on light capital ships. Useful mostly at close range when guidance-compensation is unnecessary. The Jackhammer is slower than any of the other dumbfires and is (as usual) generally ineffective against shields. A cheap, easy to build design, the Jackhammer is popular with light-bomber squadrons desperate for fast-firepower.

[Black Ace]

*cough* Wow... I''ll have to read all of this in a bit...

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[Terrasoul]

Thanks and there's plenty more where that came from.

Can I help you guy's at all? I'm not very good at programming I guess I could model, I'd be terrible at texturing, one thing I could definitely help out with is R&D or story-writing, mabey mission creation?

In search of the perfect Blonde Shivan Joke (seriously) know any?

[wEvil]

on the idea of a subspace based weapon-

such a device would leave unstable micro-nodes around everywhere.

I can see you've thought this through though, maybe take a peek at all the subspace tap/zero point field threads.

Shrike is fairly well-informed and i'm a hobby-quantum physicist

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Proud to be british.
*ahem*

[Grey Wolf]

How about this for a theory: Subspace is both the ultimate energy source and the ultimate energy sink. This can explain 3 things: Why shields don't function in subspace; How beam weapons pierce shields ; and subspace travel. The energy sink idea explains the shields not functioning and beam weapons. When a ship equipped with shields attempts to pass through subspace, it's shields would be drained of energy faster than they could be charged, leading to the illusion that shields do not function in subspace. Beam weapons could also be explained through this same idea. If the photons that composed the beam were both in normal space and subspace (see: warp fields) the energy sink effect would cause the beam to drain the shield only in the area it was passing through, making the shield drain appear to be almost nothing, while destroying the hull and subsystems. The energy source idea would explain subspace and warp travel. As you all know, extreme concentrations of energy warp time and space. By activating a subspace or warp engine, a hole could be pierced through the barrier between normal space and subspace. For the subspace engine you would go completely through to subspace, while the warp engine would only use subspace to go out of phase with normal space. In the first situation, the subspace energy currents would be constantly warping the surrounding space, causing the appearance of movement; and in the second situation the energy would cause the space surrounding the ship to become smaller (see: dimensional folding) allosing the same amount of thrust used in normal space to have an exponentially higher effect. Therefore, subspace is the ultimate paradox.

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[Shrike]

 

Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009:
Nice theory, but this belongs in the Hard Light forum.

Indeed.

[wEvil]

Subspace engines operate by altering the vibration frequency of a ship, allowing it to drop through.

Gravity fields allow small subspace portals to be created, giving any subspace equipped ship the ability to jump anywhere in a system.

However Inter-system jumps outside of a massive gravity well require subspace nodes, where the fabric of our "normal" universe it stretched.

Subspace is a term for the other dimensions, its not actually any one of them though.  Until terrans and vasudans dicovered ancients subspace tech, they couldnt even control what dimensions a ship appeared in while

If you do a search on askjeeves for the "inflationary theory" it should explain dimensional supercooling and other strange things besides.


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Proud to be british.
*ahem*

[Terrasoul]

Well thanks for moving this thing intact I was afraid I'd have to post all over again. Anyway, subspace (I'll say it again)is just a lower plane of reality, you are correct my "proud to be british" friend that it has a lot to do with the energy/mass/momentum of a vessel.
No offense but I think while gravitational fields deeply effect subspace, generally prohibiting it, the location and stability of a Subspace node has some traits which go beyond the "LaGrange" point, or the point in space where two gravitational fields cancel out, thus resulting in *micro* gravity. If nodes where simply LaGrange points than how the hell are you supposed to destroy or destabilize one, the only real way to do that would be to move the two masses whose fields cause the effect, or introduce a third mass, unless you put together an explosion which, for instance, turns one or both of the planets into another asteroid belt (a la death star) than you couldn't do a thing to it.

I do, however feel that LaGrange points are naturally the most hospitable location for Node formation, stil I maintain, when the lines touch, the gate opens, micro-gravity alows particles to have extremely low energy.

One hole I might point out in my theory is that Nodes do not (so far) appear in deep space, the gravity here is probably quite a bit weaker than anywhere bigger than a sub-atomic particle in a solar system. An explenation for this might be the high 'grade' from micro to major gravity that can only be found in LaGrange points.

[Terrasoul]

About shields and beam weapons, well the first thing we must ask ourselves is "what in the heck is a shield". There are a lot of "shields" out there in the SF world, everything from super-ultra huge "buckyballs" which link on demand, to primitive magnetic fields which polorize and repel conductive targets. A shield could be a point defense weapon in disguise which launches high-energy elementary, or subatomic particles to intercept the target (not likely).
More likely, what the shield is is a defractor, something which provides an infinitely uneven surface that deflects particles and heat in literally all directions except Pi - Indifinably small fraction. Notice when hit your shields will flash white, usually in a circular pattern, this might be the particles that once formed the beam (or the missle)scattering, or bouncing off of whatever part of the shield they struck, the cause for the white color is either 1, superheated particles emmitting light, or 2, heat energy/motion energy being converted directly into light at excessively varied frequencies (depending of course where and when that particular particle struck).
Hell only knows what's doing this, is it some kind of feedback system that works in tandem with the shield generator, is it some bizzare material of free-floating yet tightly compounded particles, how the hell to you set this thing up yet alone regenerate it?
I would lay bets that shield is actually a field of psudo-particles flickering from the level of reality above or below normal (I suspect above). Assuming your shield generator is attracting these particles from their native energy level, I don't see how you would do this properly when your entire vessel currently exists on a plane below reality. That still leaves a lot of actual mechanics hanging put its a theory.

As for beams, you mentioned they where photons, actually I remember one Vasudan gunner calling them "proton" beam cannons but nevermind your words give me an idea.

In the photon case, lets remember that shields are supposedly more effective against mass based (material)weaponry.

Thus a Mass-less particle such as a photon is virtually if not totally trancendent of shield dampening or deflecting, the only thing I can think of that might be better would be neutrinos but they'd be almost useless because both the hull and the shields would be more or less transparent to them.
There's also some parts of freespace which make no sense. Only "beam cannons" behave like actual lasers, wheras the original cannon in FS1 was supposedly a laser but fired a shot whose movement was visible to the naked eye, and didn't cross the field of battle in less than an instant. This says that Beam cannons depend on Photon's or some other mass-less particles, wheras the other, so called lasers do not.
You we're half right my friend even from where I'm standing.
And about the micro-nodes, not only are they unstable but they're only visible on the quantum level, not just because of their size but also their lifetime. Subspace and reality are full of distortion it would take a fraction of a millasecond (mabey a second tops in subspace) for them to collapse against all of the shifting energy around them. Plus if you really want to get rid of them you can use the same trick you use on the big nodes, I'm sure a microlazer consentrated on a single particle launched through one of these gates would be more than enough force to collapse it.

[Terrasoul]

Okay to everybody reading this please add the words forgive, or not-forgive to your message I'm getting scared I'm thrashing around too much out here and I'm hopin you people will tell me if I look to bad.

Far below subspace I'd agree that different dimentions lie. Perhaps the subspace we know is a halfway analogy between 11-10 or 4-3 dimentional reality. But I'd ask you to look at the way the game works in subspace. By all appearances it remains four, or perhaps 11D(string theory).

I also agree that subspace travel has been more or less brute strength for the GTVA until the arrival of ancient technology. Harmonics is the key to subspace, matter can obviously be dampened or accelerated below or above its native plane, but dimentional travel? I don't know if matter in the form we know it would stand the trip. Conversion into pure energy, or pure mass might be a requirement, and nobody wants that.

Also I'm perfectly willing to debate this some more but can anybody offer me a job?

[Grey Wolf]

 

Originally posted by Terrasoul:
As for beams, you mentioned they where photons, actually I remember one Vasudan gunner calling them "proton" beam cannons but nevermind your words give me an idea.

It was "photon", not "proton".

[Terrasoul]

Any other ideas for tech application?

[Terrasoul]

Wolf this is for you, what can I do for you, as you can see I've got plenty of ideas and with a little push I could produce the CB's models if not some of the textures and Table entries?
C'mon man you look like you've been around.

[Nico]

about shields... Am I the only one to wonder why they don't stop light?

[wEvil]

in the origional FS1 cutscene the shield had a lot of toruses and HT wires leading into it, so we can take for granted it needs of power to run.

Shields are very effective at deflecting kinetic impacts, and get drained by energy impacts.

Its safe to assume they could be a bit like a buzzard ramscoop and charge cosmic media into a shell around the object.

This shell would need and incredible amount of electrostrong cohesion to deflect something like a maxim slug though.



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Proud to be british.
*ahem*

[Terrasoul]

Well first thing I'd like to say is you might be right my friend. The second thing is I'd like to point out the Bustard Ramscoop works only at excessively high velocities. Even in a solar system where such stuff is common it would be nearly impossible to collect enough material to create a proper shield. Remember the ramscoop requires pre-ionized particles to function and the only way I can think of to make this into a shield would be to send them into an extremely high speed orbit which would put a hole in the fact shields degenerate as if they where static. The other idea would be using alternating or overlaid magnetic fields to hold them in place. This would take a hell of a lot of power and be a huge waste and if its so obvious I don't see why it tooks our Shivan buddies to show them how.
You might be on to something but there are still way too many holes.