[General Battuta]

Anything about the Great Attractor and absurdly large-scale cosmic engineering always gets me.

[Nyctaeus]

Hard scientific babble like this makes everything two times cooler. Awesome stuff, man

[Luis Dias]

Stargate Universe would eventually deal with it, I think.

I also think this kind of stuff threw me away from my preconceptions about this mod. Anyways, I enjoy this kind of speculation, and as always, well written.

[Rheyah]

I write stuff like this because I want people to keep in mind what's going on when all the little character dynamics are happening.  I'm being really careful about the details.  So on one side I'll do the cosmic scale scientific oh my god what the **** is going on stuff and on the other side, the little stories that make the other stuff worth writing.

Nothing's changed from my original design.  I'm just giving little glimpses into the world I'm building around the mod's story and alleviating some personal frustration relating to the complexity of some of the FREDing needed to pull this off

[Darius]

Enjoyable reads!

Getting a vibe from that last one similar to Fine Structure.

[Rheyah]

Thought I'd post some Tech Room/Journal stuff as an example of the kind of paraphernalia surrounding the world I'm building.

I'll be posting this in two segments because I am just that much of a *****.


_______________________________________

THIRD GENERATION SUBSPACE WARFARE:  A PRIMER
Cmdr. H. Williams. MSci Ph.D
GTVA Astrotactical Corps

INTRODUCTION

Military theorists differentate between the first and second generation of subspace warfare based on tactical decision making and risk-reward strategic management.  Both Terran and Vasudan subspace warfare has evolved since the early days of subspace warfare.  With little real scientific information to go on, the focus of first generation warfare was node control - positioning of vital capital ships in such a way that supply lines remained open at all costs.

Second generation warfare exploited advances in subspace drive technology to allow for hidden movement through solar systems, making node siege tactics an extraordinarily powerful of projecting power into enemy territory.  Thus, node control became a function not of supply lines but of traffic management.

The implementation of Historic Galactic Precursor (colloq:  Ancients, hereby referred to as HGP) derived subspace tracking system designs (subspace Gravitic Occlusion SystemS, ref:  GOSS) fundamentally outmoded this form of warfare entirely.  These tracking systems are implemented in every civilized system as well as on all capital vessels with varying degrees of efficacy.  It was initially thought that GOSS outmoded all forms of tactical warfare, allowing for theoretical perfect intelligence on enemy movements when properly positioned.  This is a fallacy which must not be laboured.  From this standpoint, third generation subspace warfare develops.



SUBSPACE DRIVE TECHNICAL LIMITATIONS

A common misconception of subspace travel is that it involves the generation of a worm hole or other “door” in space time.  Subspace travel does not involve any form of general relativistic spatial curvature at all.  Instead, the roots of subspace travel are in n-dimensional W theory. To simplify, the substrate we know as subspace represents the fundamental fine structure through which bosons tunnel and contains both the underlying gravitational distortions and quantum foam from which virtual particles appear.  Special relativity does not apply in subspace and thus it is possible to violate the light cone.

Subspace drives induce an n-dimensional W string resonance effect at a specific point in space time at a frequency of 1.74EHz .  Once this resonance effect builds to the appropriate intensity, it pools and begins to oscillate, generating light as superluminal bosons are decelerated to the speed of light.  Once a physical object passes into the event horizon, the string then “snaps”, propagating at superluminal speed until it degenerates, at which point another event horizon is generated.  The gravitational presence of the mass within the strings’ “wake” smooths out the real space within which they travel.  The direction, time and distance travelled of the string are not invariant and are dependent on local gravitational conditions.  Thus, velocity is not conserved - any vessel travelling through subspace assumes the rest frame of the largest local gravitational body.  Any energy gained or lost is conserved within tachyonic interactions in subspace.  Large vessels are capable of generating subspace wakes exceeding 10^19J, though only a fraction of that energy emerges from the vortex.

However, while subspace travel does not produce real space curvature (an impossible feat even with our level of technology), subspace travel itself requires a gravitational presence - W string generation is only possible given a certain degree of space time curvature.  While modern science has no real answer to the formation of nodes in the locations they appear, it is believed that they are semi-stable oscillating W-string standing waves.  The formation or collapse of a node is accompanied by intense gravitational waves - this is an ongoing field of research for GTVA TacOps, which monitors all node formation in every system.  To date, no pattern for node formation or destruction has been observed beyond the Knossos device (see Knossos Device:  Technical Specifications).

This has three main strategic consequences:

1.  Subspace travel is a line of sight method of travel which does not conserve initial velocity.  W-strings travel in arcs and thus this must be predicted by drive systems.
2.  Intense gravitational sources slow subspace drive travel.  Subspace mobility in low atmospheric orbit is extremely limited and W-strings are virtually impossible to stabilize inside a deep gravity well.
3.  Travel above and below the elliptic is possible.  Travel at extreme distance from local gravitational sources is energetically prohibitive.

[niffiwan]

Without understanding much of that, it sounds cool and I'm keen to read the 2nd part

One minor point, is there a word missing in this sentence?  Maybe "method" or "way"?

making node siege tactics an extraordinarily powerful of projecting power into enemy territory. 

[Rheyah]

Annual holiday time means lots of campaign progress.

See you in two weeks with a crapton of updates and a return to regular updates.  I have a ton of new stuff to show off already and will have even more when I get back including the world's first successful venture in making blob turrets into awesomeness.

[Lorric]

Define awesomeness. The kind of awesome where you get to laugh maniacally like an evil genius while you watch them tear our ships apart, that kind of awesomeness?

Looking forwad to seeing what you've got.

[Rheyah]

Hello!  I'm back from holiday and I've done a ton of stuff I will be uploading over the course of the next few days so people can see how things are progressing.  This includes some of the changes to ship weapons, mission screenshots and so on.  HOWEVER, three things:

FIRST:

I will be looking for playtesters for Ephesus soon.  Ephesus is a big mod (1.2-1.3 GB uncompressed without changes though unlikely to get bigger - it'll probably shrink by 300 meg or so I reckon) with 12 missions (final configuration) including 1 cutscene mission.  I wouldn't mind some feedback and a little expert examination on my FREDing.  That'll be in the next month or so.


SECOND:

I asked for a month or two ago with textures, nameplates and so on.  I had a lot of answers at the time, but I am asking again since I am making no assumptions for peoples availability.  The kind of work that needs doing are:

- nameplates
- warship damage/customisation
- a reskinning of two warships, mainly darkening metal colours and adding livery

As before, if you're interested and you have the time to help me out, please feel free to send me a PM or comment in this thread.  This is work that'll need doing fairly soon though so please get in touch.



THIRD:

My design for Shetland has changed a fair bit since starting Ephesus so a lot of my old intentions are a bit aged.  I'm replanning a bunch of assets and have realized that I am going to need actual modelling help.  There is nothing in the community as of yet I feel comfortable repurposing for what I want.  It's more or less as follows:

- nameplates
- reskinnings
- a handful of vessels based along a specific paradigm.  I have drawn bad concept art, but other than maintaining one or two design motifs for these vessels, you have complete freedom of movement.  I can't really offer anything other than a lot of thanks and a well written TBL entry

I've got no interest in keeping things specifically for these mods so release as soon as they're ready and you're happy with them.  The only thing I'd like is a veto on any substantial changes to the model structure (meaning if you give it a catamaran hull, I'd like to know in advance) and for you to leave a version of the model completely blank of turrets barring the basic ones so I can arm it myself in PCS2.  Anyone who knows me from IRC knows I am mostly just asking questions and am a really nice person so really, the only thing I wanna do is make sure I don't end up with a pirate ship when I want an artillery corvette.

In the above vessels, there is a design specification I'd like you to follow with weapons and structures but I'm also happy with the model being broad enough to be equipped as a standard beam armed GTVA vessel.  In terms of timing - we're talking far future (9-12 months).  If you're interested in the design schematics just for your own amusement, send me a message anyway.

If you'd rather wait for Ephesus to come out to see if it's worth your time, that's good too.


That's it.  I'll be updating soon.  I realize the third section is quite a big ask for an unproven FREDer.  I have no desire to turn this into something that will never get finished so I have backup options anyway in case my takeup is low.  I already have one person who wants to make me a destroyer and I have a design for that already put together.

Hope to hear from people

[Black Wolf]

A couple of thoughts. First, name played are super, super easy. Assuming that you mean adding specific nameplates to ships that already have spaces for them, like the Fenris, then if you can work out FRED, you can do nameplates.

I can't remember off the top of my head how to do it with free software, and I don't want to steer you the wrong way by trying, but I'll be back in front my computer tomorrow - I'd nobody has done so before then, I'll write you up a little tut. In my opinion, little basic skills like that are very valuable for FREDders to pick up for themselves - saves having to ask for help every time.

If you meant adding nameplates to existing ships that don't have a space for them, that's a little harder to do - though still not very much harder.

As for the new ships you mentioned, well, you've chosen a bit of a bad time I fear, a lot of people who might have been able to help are involved in BWOs latest drive. However, (and I'd say this to anyone looking for specific new ships)I still think you should post as many details as possible about exactly what you want publicly. I'd you've thought of a cool new ship idea that you can't find a released equivalent for, you might get people excited just by the novelty value. Alternately, you might find that someone suggests a model that already exists that you can use - the wiki is good, but not perfect - they're are lots of near finished out otherwise obscure models out there that you might be able to make use of. Finally, it's a good idea to let people know what they're getting into - if people are aware that you only want one or two ships, or that the ships to want match up with what they might want to build, they might be more keen.

Sorry I can't be more directly helpful right now - I will get onto that nameplate tut first chance I get though.

[niffiwan]

I noticed this nameplates tutorial on the wiki - is it still relevant/correct? (I note that it uses Photoshop rather than (e.g.) Gimp)

[Black Wolf]

The Orion uses a different sort of nameplate to other media VP ships, so while it's still more or less accurate for the Orion, it doesn't help for, say, the Fenris. And, as you point out, a tut for a non-free piece of software is sub-optimal.

[Rheyah]

That'd help a ton actually, Black Wolf.  I'd prefer to just get it done myself.  I mean some of this work can wait until after release as it does with a lot of campaigns, but it's still something I'd like to keep visible.

What I might do is upload some concept art.  I really want a reskinning for one ship in particular that's already available - if someone can advise me on how to make a decent colour change to already built textures then that'd be great.  So it's really down to 2 warships, to be honest - a corvette and a gunship.

[procdrone]

If the nameplates aren't something really complex (i mean, like the ones on Karunas in BP), i could assist with them.





It takes only a moment of work in GIMP to make it.

[Rheyah]

I've been able to produce basic nameplates, but my main issue is making them look like they've been painted on rather than just drawn in GIMP.  I'm a bit of a perfectionist for stuff like this, so I gave up until I had time to learn GIMP properly.

[procdrone]

Ah, so i wish you luck in that. I am not that skilled in Gimp to provide help.

[Black Wolf]

Try this, Rheyah.

[Rheyah]

Smallish update:



Opportunism




Blockade runner



Triton Dynamics developed the MT-71 Deluge to specification for the main batteries of the Orion class destroyer.  Until the deployment of the Deluge, the Orion had been substantially out-gunned by its Vasudan counterpart, the Typhon.  Utilizing semi-stable self reinforcing magnetic bottle projection units, the Deluge allowed the Orion a significant increase in battle-space capability and lead to the phasing out of fusion mortar weaponry on major capital ships.  They represented a substantial step forward in long range plasma artillery as they were reliant only on internal reactor systems for ammunition and were capable of high nuclear scale yields without risk of interception as existed for missile based systems.

Aaaand finally, courtesy of DahBlount:



The design will be slowly changing with time, but it's his model and his design.  The only thing I asked was for a design ethos and personally, I think he delivered in spades.  Look for this over the next few months.  It's got a wonderful set of lines

[procdrone]

That is supposed to be a destroyer? I get a Hercules feel from it, very strong Hercules feel.