Obscure Technology Ideas

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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#16 Post by utilae »

Yes, the subspace teleporter is superior, but higher in the tech tree.

What about my "Dimensional Locking Mines". Cool idea huh.

Dreamer
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#17 Post by Dreamer »

utilae wrote:It does not sound that bad. The AI Virus Cannon hacks the target in the following way. If the target has a computer system, a backdoor AI is dropped into the system.
It does! What kind of cannon are we talking about? An AI is by escence a pile of information. Comunication of information requires by definition a sender, a receiver and a comunication protocol. And those are completely generic and independent of tech. For example: a mouth, an ear and the english languaje. A mimic, an eye and a common cultural backgroud, etc. Fail in only one of those and no information can be transmitted. With the cannon you lack a receiver, what you are mentioning is akind to screaming to your feet and expect them to understand you.

As far as I see the only viable way to do this would be to send the robot I mentioned. A physical entity capable of searching for a (physical) open comunication channel in the enemy ship and tap it. (assumming, as marhawkman said, that we indeed DO understand their tech and it's flaws).
utilae wrote: The crew on your ship can then control the target as long as the backdoor AI is still communicating with your ship. The communication method could be anything of course. A way to transport information, eg radio waves, laser beam.
Then again. AI calls for artificial inteligence, so no, you don't need to communicate with your ship for it to do sensible stuff. Tho eventually the ship's crew will find out a way to disable your AI or at least disable the ship to avoid helping their enemies.

Dreamer
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#18 Post by Dreamer »

utilae wrote:What about my "Dimensional Locking Mines". Cool idea huh.
Those are indeed very nice. Whe should device in fact more ways to create somo kind of terrain on space. Some ideas:

- Gravity proyectors (to accelerate ships in the area in one direction, could work to make your ships faster and the enemies slower.
- Area shieldings equal to a ships shield but proyectd so ships can use the shield as cover.
- Black hole generators (wich I always thought should target a place and not move with a ship).
- A contermeasures cloud for missile avoidance. An obscuring fog to produce artificial fog of war. Etc.
- corrosive or radioactive clouds that make damage over time.
- EMP emmiter mines, or many other mines, deployables as a cloud that advance only by innertia, to break enemy formations.

This stuff greatly creates tactict for combar. Once the fleets emerge from hiperspace they would quickly populate the empty space with stuff to cover the flanks, prevent enemy movement and formations, provide for cover, confuse the enemy, etc...
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utilae
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#19 Post by utilae »

Dreamer wrote: It does! What kind of cannon are we talking about? An AI is by escence a pile of information. Comunication of information requires by definition a sender, a receiver and a comunication protocol. And those are completely generic and independent of tech. For example: a mouth, an ear and the english languaje. A mimic, an eye and a common cultural backgroud, etc. Fail in only one of those and no information can be transmitted. With the cannon you lack a receiver, what you are mentioning is akind to screaming to your feet and expect them to understand you.
Ok, this is scifi I can do what ever I want. Cannon is not a cannon, ie it does not really fire any thing. It's more like a device. Think of it as having a beam sweep across the enemy ship scanning for a means to communicate and drop that backdoor AI in their. "Ooh an infrared port on the side". The AI part only does the 'hacking' and 'communicating' part. It is not good enough to make decisions. Thats what generals, captains and crew are to do.

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utilae
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#20 Post by utilae »

More techs:

Interfleet Crew Transport
-Allows personal to be drawn from ships other than the boarding ship, raising the maxium amount of marines that can board up to an amount equal to what the entire fleet can supply. Marines killed, remain killed on any ships those marines come from.

Feedback Device
-Enemy communication devices are bombarded with information that is translated into deadly sound waves within enemy ships. Crew morale drops to 25% and crew takes damage (ie some killed). Enemy ships with high detection values are affected. Ships within a small radius of the transmitting ship are affected.

Tick Mines
-Upon close proximty to an enemy ship these mines thrust themselves torwards the ship, connecting to the ships hull. The mine exposes a turret that shoots at enemy ships, while being attached to an enemy ship. The result is that the enemy has to risk damaging its own ship in order to remove the mine. The Tick Mine also gives off a strong signature, as a result the ship the mine is attached to has its stealth rating reduced by 10.

marhawkman
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#21 Post by marhawkman »

utilae wrote:Yes, the subspace teleporter is superior, but higher in the tech tree.

What about my "Dimensional Locking Mines". Cool idea huh.
Hehe.. Dimensional mines sounds kinda like the black hole generators in MoO2. But inside out.... Instead of trapping things they keep them away.
Dreamer wrote:As far as I see the only viable way to do this would be to send the robot I mentioned. A physical entity capable of searching for a (physical) open comunication channel in the enemy ship and tap it. (assumming, as marhawkman said, that we indeed DO understand their tech and it's flaws).
Um helloo.... They gotta communicate with each other somehow. Unless they have completely turned of all ship to ship communications you would have something to tap into.
Computer programming is fun.

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#22 Post by Dreamer »

marhawkman wrote:Um helloo.... They gotta communicate with each other somehow. Unless they have completely turned of all ship to ship communications you would have something to tap into.
Indeed, but I assume comunications will be very tought to hack is possible, ever heard "military grade encription" or the like. That I can buy, yes. But the "hacking" beam cannon sounds like bullshit to me (no ofense meant utilae, my opinion goes to this particular idea, not the creator at all) or do you really belive in the "universal infrared port on every ship, batteries not included" schema? Hell, they could also turn their shields off, so your poor AI don't get interference poor soul. If you have that kind of sensors and that kind of accurasy with a beam you probably don't need an AI anyway.

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Skaro
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#23 Post by Skaro »

I've been thinking about the hacking/tapping into enemy systems part and here's my ideas for it:

1. A infiltrator could go to the computer core to infect it with a virus or AI. The infiltrator could be detected and shot if the ship in question has marines or something on board.

2. A captured enemy ship from a previous battle could have the access codes to other ships on board (this should only work if you captured a command vessel).

3. A special mine/drone/missile that attaches itself to the hull of a ship could start tapping into a number relays to download a virus/start hacking.

4. A specialised electronics ship could possibly disrupt remote controlled drones. Automated systems would be unaffected though.

5. Sabotage, one of your spies could have sabotaged a number of enemy ships. This should be a random event.
A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down. --Murphy's war laws

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utilae
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#24 Post by utilae »

Dreamer wrote: Indeed, but I assume comunications will be very tought to hack is possible, ever heard "military grade encription" or the like.
That's why its your computer vs theirs. It's just like the 'to hit' in Moo2. If they have better computers then you, your beams won't hit well. Well that's not exactly how it works in Moo2, but thats how it works here.

jmercer
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#25 Post by jmercer »

I think that ship to ship hacking isn't a great idea. We're going to have enough problems implementing a successful fleet combat system, we don't need the added complexity oh having some of our ships wink out of our control for 5 seconds, then some of the enemy ships coming under our control for a brief span. (this would be worst case, I know. When your computer beats the enemy computer only to be bested shortly after)

I don't mind the idea of infiltrating an enemy government and having a chance, based on that level of infiltration, to get more detailed info on a fleet. Having spy on the enemy flag ship and throwing some big dirty switch that makes it explode or hacking into it's computer to do the same detracts from how I envision the combat.

Most of the other ideas a quite interesting. The mines I especially like. They could be the terrain so many people have been talking about. You could set a mining ratio in your planetary defence section. The higher that ratio, the more mines will be placed around the planet. Freighter and transport corridors will be left open in the field and the higher the mine ratio, the fewer corridors there will be but the greater impact on the local economy. This can be explained as bottlenecks in moving goods, each freighter will have to be escorted through the a corridor.

When a battle begins, there can be non-player characters who control freighters and transports. They will most likely try to get out of the system when a fleet arrives, depending on local traffic there may be collisions with war ships or they may stumble into a mine. The number of civilian ships will be based on the ratio of the planet's economy to the bottlenecks created by a mine field. Most ships will be queued at ends of the corridors. They could present nice soft targets to an invading fleet.

marhawkman
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#26 Post by marhawkman »

Well hacking would be a very specialized way to win battles. Kinda Like the "Excalibur" design I used in MoO2. Take over all enemy ships, Battle ends, and you keep their ships. :p
Computer programming is fun.

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utilae
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#27 Post by utilae »

Overcharge Beam
-When the beam hits the enemy with shields, their shields start charging at a rate of 10 X Normal. When their shields get to 5 X Maximum, the shields are disabled and remain disabled until the ship stops at a spacestation. Note that this effect allows shields to charge beyond maximum.

N Dimensional Shield Capacitors
-Shields may charge beyond Maximum. If shields charge beyond Maximum they cannot be disabled until they are below Maximum.

FastFire Beam
-This beam does 1 damage always, but can fire 100 times a turn, each shot may hit varying targets.

Scan Beam
-This beam causes no physical damage, however it lowers the stealth rating of a target by 10% +1 for each hit.

Adaptive Stealth Computers
-Each time the stealth rating of the ship is reduced, the stealth rating is increased by 15% +1.

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#28 Post by Redaxe »

Some more techs!

IFF Missile Battery

These missile batteries aremounted on ship exterior and fire a volley of 4 FF (Friend or Foe) missiles per turn at nearby enemy fighters/bombers. FF missiles work by tracking a targets which do not emit a friendly signal. Missiles will chase another target if their first is destroyed util they run out of fuel.
These batteries provide a nice antifighter defense for capships but have little anti-capship capability. Missiles become 'smarter' and more powerful as tech increases but fighters equipped with defensive systems such as; shields, armor, afterburners, missile decoys, missile jammers and good Yaw/Pitch/Roll and velocity performance can help escape or survive missile.

Phase Transit Cannon

This Keel-mounted cannon is essentially a large phase plama gun which has enough firepower to destroy or cripple most ships with a single shot. This cannon has such huge energy (tonnage) consumption that it can only be mounted on a dreadnought sized ship and fired once per battle. The cannon itself takes 2 complete turns to charge before firing onto its target. The blast drains so much energy that the firing dreadnoughts shields are also neutralized.

Dreadnoughts are expensive to build and thus act as flag ships. Small craft such as corvettes and frigates can escape the phase transit cannon but medium ships such as destroyers and cruisers will go down in one shot. Larger ships such as battleships and dreadnoughts are sure to take serious damage. The blast shot is enough to penetrate shields and target the ships armor and hull directly.

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#29 Post by haravikk »

Offense Grid
This is an upgrade to particular types of missiles. Basically upon detecting counter-measures (e.g lightning fields) they will break apart and electrically charge their payload, so instead of exploding, the gasses and chemicals in them fire forward.
The effect is that these missiles, upon detecting an inbound counter-measure, will deal half their ordinary damage as beam damage instead, ie avoiding counter measures and causing damage anyway, though comparatively less (and perhaps more easily absorbed by shields).
The number of missiles which do the damage depends on how soon they detect the inbound counter-measure, due to the networked way in which these work then an early missile detecting counter-measures will alert all other inbound missiles, increasing their chance of evading or deploying as a beam weapon. If the enemy has jamming technologies then missiles may have to rely on their own sensors only for this.

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utilae
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#30 Post by utilae »

Gravity Anchor
-Once the Gravity Anchor is deployed, it sits in a stationary position and appears to do nothing. However when a beam, missile or some projectile passes through the area affected by the Gravity Anchor, the extreme gravity forces the beam/missile/projectile to alter it's direction, effectively being curved away to a different direction.

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