Realism - Large & Small Ships

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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utilae
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Re: Size and structure

#31 Post by utilae »

Dreamer wrote:Wrong. Gravity is only a normal aceleration so any aceleration of equal or greater value can break the chair. Even more rotation since chairs (and probably ships) will be designed with a particular direction in mind. And a "fast moving ship" should handle much greater acelerations than 1G.

Anyway. If you rotate a dreaghnout too fast you can risk spilling the captain's coffee. And that is completely unacceptable! :D
I guess there is gravity from many sources. Gravity from passing ships, and yes the crew would spill their coffee without some kind of inertial dampner (normalises all forces against the crew so crew does not feel a thing even though they have ploughed into another ship).

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skdiw
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Re: Size and structure

#32 Post by skdiw »

utilae wrote:
skdiw wrote: Easy. 1. A nuclear sub versus one man canoe. 2. A rocket versus a paper airplane. 3. SR-71 versus Wright Brothers. Note that only one wrong instance is all that's needed for a law to be false.

Massive objects requires more force.
Those examples are dumb. The reason one goes faster than the other is because the faster objects (which are bigger) have more force pushing them. So yes, bigger objects require more force to push them but that does not prove that a large object and a small object being propelled by the same force would move at the same speed.
The examples aren't dumb because they support the real law. I didn't say they prove that they would move at the same speed.

Don't get acceleration and velocity confused.

My point is if you aren't sure what you are talking about, don't bother posting, because it just adds spam and confuses rest of community.
:mrgreen:

guiguibaah
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hmmm

#33 Post by guiguibaah »

I think in a way we are all right, but just how we are depends on the situation....

For example, I can build a small bridge out of popsicle sticks and glue. And I can put my toy cars on it and all will be good.

Now I decide to b creative and build for my city a new bridge to allow commuters to get to work. Naturally, I build it out of popscicle sticks and glue, because my smaller bridge worked fine. Well, lo and behold, the thing collapses faster than you can say "Penut butter jelly time!"

So that's why we use stronger building materials for larger projects, like steel, and reinforced concrete. But like the popscicle sticks, even steel and reinforced concrete have a limit to how big an object can be built out of them.


As for Utilae's point, yes, in space, where there is no force of acceleration you could theoretically build huge structures, such as starbases. The problem comes when you want to move this gigantic structure somewhere else. You will have to accelerate the object very very slowly - otherwise the skeleton between the force of acceleration (engines) and the rest of the structure will fall apart like a giant popscicle stick bridge.



Now if you want to bring this huge behemoth into battle, you need to worry about things like, oh, rotating the structure, or even more important, how do we STOP the structure.

Of course, this doesn't say that, in the future, we may develop structural integrity fields like in Star Trek that "hold" the ship together with energy fields, allowing it to accelerate and deccelerate faster. The thing is, as the ship gets smaller, you need less complex systems, less structural integrity, and in the end, higher efficiency when it comes to movement.



Of course, this is all a hideous realism argument, which makes me a witch - so please excuse me while I flee before the crew of Monty Python burn me with a duck!
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Re: hmmm

#34 Post by Dreamer »

utilae wrote:Gravity from passing ships, ...
... wich is absolutely negligible...
guiguibaah wrote:Of course, this is all a hideous realism argument, which makes me a witch - so please excuse me while I flee before the crew of Monty Python burn me with a duck!
It seems you got the entire picture of what we were all talking about. And I shouldn't worry about making a realism statement. I think that no one here is looking to make a plainly unrealistic game, it's only that realism is a second level motivation. Playability, simplicity and other factors come first, but of course realism can be a fine guide if it don't go against them. This is what I think IMHO, but I may be wrong...

discord
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#35 Post by discord »

okey...this is almost scary....i point out a well known fact of structural engineering, and people come and say that inertia/acceleration does not exist in space, because there is no 'weight'....which is true to a VERY small degree...there is mass, and if you move mass, there is inertia, end of story.

as example, as has been pointed out, and calculated by engineers at earlier times.

[url]http://stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Size.html[/url] <--- tells the story pretty well.

and dreamer, 'gravity is negligable'? say that again when galactus world ship buzzes earth at a significant portion of C, the gravitational effects would prolly rip the planet you are standing on apart....as it has about the gravitational effect of a small star....

just read that article on stardestroyer.net

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: hmmm

#36 Post by Geoff the Medio »

guiguibaah wrote:Of course, this doesn't say that, in the future, we may develop structural integrity fields like in Star Trek that "hold" the ship together with energy fields, allowing it to accelerate and deccelerate faster.
FYI, there is already a tech called "Structural Integrity Fields" in the Construction cagetory.

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#37 Post by Aquitaine »

Page 1 of this thread is very interesting. after reading pages 2 and 3, I want to regurgitate what daveybaby said about killing realism dead with guns/throwing corpse in bin, et cetera.

Who cares about inertia and mass and equations and all of that nonsense? It seems that the question you all startedt to ask was 'what flight model do we want?' And we could answer that in a few ways:

- World war II dogfighting (Star Wars)
- World War I naval fighting (Star Trek / FreeSpace)
- Medieval / Renaissance fighting (a closer approximation of Total War where you'd be emulating melee combat with close-range dogfights between groups of ships)
- Scientifically-correct real-world space dogfighting where no ship has a top speed short of c, and, while you're at it, cut the FX people since there's no sound either

There's several degrees between the first three options we could buy into, but I can't imagine we really want to deal with ships in terms of speeds approaching c and inertia and so on. Think about what a 'bigger ship' means in MOO or MOO2 or BOTF. It means 'more space for guns' and a slightly easier target. Think of the evolution of naval combat around the time of World War I. For twenty years, everybody had been operating on the assumption that a bigger ship was a better one, until they realized that a medium-size ship that was faster and had smarter gear could beat the pants off one of the old dreadnaughts. This doesn't mean we have to do things this way, but my point is that we should be thinking about this in terms of the effect we want to achieve, the type of strategy we want to be involved, and then invent the physics (or fysiscs) to explain it.
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Geoff the Medio
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#38 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Aquitaine wrote:...I can't imagine we really want to deal with ships in terms of speeds approaching c and inertia and so on.
IMO we should just assume that ships can move faster than light in-system during battles. This allows a battle on the scale of a whole system to take place in minutes contextually semi-plausibly, and eliminates any need to justify ignoring relativistic limits, which couldn't possibly be treated realistically anyway.

This is really an independent issue from whether combat is in the style of battleships, carriers & fighters, or melee units.

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#39 Post by Magus »

If ships are moving FTL in a battle, weaponry would also have to be moving FTL. Not saying that it couldn't be done, but you'd either have blatant breaches of physics (lasers going FTL) or a totally new system of armaments (FTL propelled projectile weapons, Tachyonic beam weapons, hyperspace missiles, etc.). Which would be very interesting...

Personally, I'd like a combination between WWI style combat and medieval style, depending on the weapons and tactics used.

Aquitaine
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#40 Post by Aquitaine »

Please see the the announcements board post on realism.

We don't need a plausible excuse for ships to move around a system very quickly. It doesn't matter. We decide what we want for gameplay and then invent the science. Words like 'FTL' have no place in a discussion of gameplay, which is where we are with the combat engine right now.

Is it going to be important later on to write up some sciencey-sounding reasons why things are the way they are? Sure. That's part of immersion and players at least like to see lip service paid to these things, but we aren't anywhere close to that yet.
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Geoff the Medio
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#41 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Aquitaine wrote:Words like 'FTL' have no place in a discussion of gameplay, which is where we are with the combat engine right now.
To be fair, you brought it up in your last post... sort of. I guess I took it in a way you didn't intend...

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#42 Post by Aquitaine »

In talking about the flight model, I don't mean 'how do our ships fly' -- I mean 'when you look at a giant space battle in FreeOrion, what should it remind you of?'

FreeSpace reminds me of WWI naval combat with some WWII air-superiority elements mixed in. Star Wars reminds me of WWII dogfighting. And so on.
Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

guiguibaah
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Freespace

#43 Post by guiguibaah »

Just out of curiosity, which freespace were you alluding to WWI Aquitaine?

Freespace 1 had some big behemoth battles of ships slowly picking themselves apart with turrets and missiles, with fighters and bombers having a larger effect on the battle... 19th century navy battles? While Freespace 2 introduced beam cannons and flak guns, which made, well, things a lot more interesting because as a fighter it was so much more easier to die :) - so perhaps more like the WWI aspect you alluded to.



There is another suggestion... perhaps as the game goes on, the style changes... Maybe when you begin, you start with old clunkers that pick each other apart slowly but surely... Enough time to order a retreat and still salvage much of your fleet - and slow enough to use things like capture and boarding.


Then, WWII comes along, and it's more about mobility than it is about slugging it out.


Near end-game you get doom stars, which move very slow but pack tremendous long-range punch, so you get... um... well something like WWIII I guess ?? :(
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skdiw
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#44 Post by skdiw »

Here is what I like: Small ships reinforces your some weakness in the battle and provides PD defense or mine cleaning. Medium ships are roles specific, so they might be equipment with flak cannon to kill fighters, or they can be hit-and-run missile cruisers. Large ships are equiped with special equipments like black hole generator that kills a bunch of ships or carry stellar converters . Then wonder ships provide fleet bonus with their large AoE and carry some minor weaponry.

I don't know what to group this kind of combat into since the tactical options are wide. You can use heavy cannons to bombard the opponent from afar using your slow capital ships. You can have fast small ships dog fight or to pluck out vulnerable ships.
:mrgreen:

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