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i was thinking: what, during the dark ages, prevented ships from exploring anywhere they wanted? storms. yet in EV, there are no natural disasters, yet there are vast tracts of space unexplored... during the 1700's, traders would risk their lives getting spice from india, yet there were few pirates compared to the real danger: storms
in space, storms could be static (dust clouds), which would do lots of damage to shields and armour, there might be ion storms (which would have an ioniazation effect), and meteor showers (minor damage), plus maybe others.
inspired somewhat by the frozen heart natural disasters... but in frozen heart, getting through the asteroid belt around sol was near impossible. make them less dangerous, and make them appear as pers, rather than dudes, that way you can have them say something like 'warning: <stormtype> storm detected' and in the targeting screen, have a big warning... government type storm, no shields or armour (duh)
anyway, just a thought to add to a plug, but i won't be doing anything like it myself.
chill
(i hope that everything i said is comprehendable)
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that would be quite cool.
I hated that asteroid belt. I screamed the first time I went through it.
------------------ If winners never quit, and quitters never win, who came up with "Quit while you're ahead"? Also: Evil Penguin (not as much any more)
I don't know, I find that the difficulty of the Frozen Heart storms was appropriate -- it was no harder for us to get through that than it was for captains of the Middle Ages to get through their storms.
If you make a storm a pers, it would be practically a null factor in my opinion.
------------------ Mike Lee (Firebird)
well, for meteor showers, for example, you would have a very wide invisible ship that has 'meteor guns' all along it, so that you get a wide spread out barrage of fire that hits a lot of ships...
static storms would only be present in systems with dust and nebula debris, but they would be a bunch of ships probably that attack you and other ships...
you would probably have to use nova for static storms, as it supports the lightning effect...
another reason i thought of using a pers was that you could then not display the shields, because it's rather silly when a storm on your radar has a shield reading...
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Originally posted by Whurp: < cool ideas>
Quote says it all
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These are great ideas; the Frozen Heart asteroid storms were cool.
However, I think the meteor storm should do heavy damage, and the static doing minor. Why would static hurt you're ship at all, though? Heavy damage, especially?
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Originally posted by Ransom Arceihn: **These are great ideas; the Frozen Heart asteroid storms were cool.
**
Well, we aren't quite sure what "static" implies. My guess would be energetic particles, typical of solar flares. Not only can that ionize any available medium (causing EM transmissions to bounce), the particles themselves can penetrate hulls, electronics, human bodies...causing a variety of effects from genetic damage to computer failure, up to radiation burn and metal fatigue. There is a reason solar flares are a major concern for the International Space Station, and our sun is calm and well-behaved as such things go.
The scale of even interplanetary medium is such that asteroids, iceteroids, antimatter "drifts" (nee Jack Williamson's "Seetee" and "Seetee Shock") and primordial black holes (nee Larry Niven and John Varley) are an unlikely hazard. I'd venture that an accretion disk, with a much higher concentration of hydrogen, would be more of a hazard -- but it is a hazard easily observed, predictable, and not given to unusual fluctuations. It would be a "hazard" in the same way a large brick wall is; you know very well what would happen if you took your ship into it (and thus you refrain).
HOWEVER, all this speculation is based upon the scale and type of interaction of a Newtonian universe. Look to David Weber's "Honor Harrington" stories, for instance, for the gravitic technology that introduces new hazards (gravitic waves, et al) unknown to us. Or look to (shudder) Star Trek, where the ships seem to run into an exotic particle or super-string fragment or magnetic monopole every other week...
...
Now, if only we could create an interstellar hazard that DIDN'T show up on sensors as a hostile vessle! :{
------------------ You see a Grue.
Perhaps there simply isn't an equivalent in space. The problem with space exploration is that it takes a godawful long time and the vacuum is an inclement medium which places a great pressure on equipment. If your ship breaks or you run out of something it is more troubling becuase of the greater distances and becuase you can't breath vacuum. I don't think that it's about luck with natural phenomena (like storms at sea) but rather good planning (Hmm, 30 year voyage, what do I need to bring?), good equipment upkeep, as well as an ability and willingness to spend your entire life on a spaceship in the middle of nowhere.
The Frozen heart asteriods annoyed me really. First of all, they'd either all go chasing after you, or they'd all go chasing after a warship, ignoring any other ships in the area. What are these, seeking asteriods? Of course, an asteriod could easily be destroyed with a couple blaster shots (they were quite weak) but this would give you a dangerously inflated combat rating and people would start asking to you go on dangerous dangerous missions even though you were still in a shuttle. You could change the crew complement of an asteriod to zero which takes care of the combat rating, but killing the asteriods would still inflate your crime record with various governments-- they'd view you as some kind of messiah, even though all you'd done was shoot a few asteriods.
Originally posted by Whurp:
**i was thinking: what, during the dark ages, prevented ships from exploring anywhere they wanted? storms. yet in EV, there are no natural disasters, yet there are vast tracts of space unexplored... during the 1700's, traders would risk their lives getting spice from india, yet there were few pirates compared to the real danger: storms
Maybe you could get a bit lost in hyperspace and end up in the wrong place? Cröns can move you around (not sure if they can evaluate when you jump into a system, but a quick experiment would find out easily), and who knows what kind of storms there might be in hyperspace?
well, i believe that it's quite common for small bits of rock (roughly the size of ones head) to float about in a solar system, and constantly burn up in atmospheres or hit planets.
these are the kind's of meteor showers i was imagining... basically like being hit with a bunch of chaingun rounds for a few seconds.
maybe if you flew into an asteroid field, you would get more damage, but i think that the actual things hitting you would be best done as guided, low turning, long range 'missiles' fired from a 'ship', that way your PDS would target them... (think star wars, when the mellenium falcon was being chased by a star destroyer through an asteroid field...)
as far as static storms are concerned, they would rarely be present, unless you entered a nebula... think about lightning hitting the earth... 10000 degrees C, or hotter, maybe 35000 i've heard.
that would do some hefty damage to your ship.
and ion storms? i don't know much about them...
in the deepest space scientists estimate that the largest distance between atoms is about 7cm. So there is stuff out there.
The storms would probably weird ion storms and stuff.
Thought a bit more on this. I still feel that the interesting element of the terrestrial hazards was the fluctuation possible. Fluctuations beyond their ability to predict or the equipment to withstand. A ship could round the Horn three times then meet a heavier than usual seasonal blow and swamp on the fourth. Is still true today, only now requires the outer edges of the curve (A hurricane on top of El nino happening in the Bay of Fundy...)
Most of the hazards of interstellar flight are more predictable. There are enough physical and mathematical signs to detect a flare coming...and at the speed of our ships, they aren't likely to linger near one. Yet, I can still imagine solar events being reported on the "oops" broadcasts -- ignored only by the brave or foolhardy (or well armored) ship.
On the other hand, I like that point about breakdowns. Would be an interesting mechanic if there were a way of working it in. Perhaps using missions...you land, and the pop-reads "Sixteen feet from the pad your left retro blows. You hit hard, jarring your teeth. The yard man gently shakes his head as he looks over the damage. "I'm afraid your afterburner is a wreck," he says..." Obviously, a no-abort mission with penalities...
Another thought. I am reminded by a friend of the "point of no return" of the ancient sailing vessles; a place so far from land they dare not press on, lest they have insufficient fresh water and food to reach land again. An obvious candidate for long jumps with no fuel stations...
This is a really cool idea. It would bring a whole new level to asteroid mining in EVN. This would make it far harder to make so much money by mining. Its a nice idea. The asteroids in FH were good and damned annoying but who cares, i never needed to go to jupiter.
---Burning cow---
Originally posted by Burning cow: **This is a really cool idea. It would bring a whole new level to asteroid mining in EVN. This would make it far harder to make so much money by mining. Its a nice idea. The asteroids in FH were good and damned annoying but who cares, i never needed to go to jupiter.
You want a fun asteroid field? Here are two ideas from the world of SF;
Hole-hunters (Larry Niven, John Varley; esp "Ophiuchi Hotline," "Tar-Baby.") Primordial black holes; holes just over the Hawking limit (down to a few hundred kilograms) were formed in the first nano-seconds of the universe and now drift aimlessly through space. Hole-hunters are asteroid-miner types who seek out these dangerous near-invisible beasts, capture them with magnetic fields, and tow them back for use in power generators, starship drives, weapons, etc.
In EV terms, these would be invisible but very hostile objects that needed to be "neutralized" (disabled) before capture. Watch that Hawking limit, though; let the mass of the hole drop too low and it will explode quite messily in your face.
The Seetee Drift (Jack Williamson; "Seetee" and "Seetee Shock.") Instead of the weighted dice of our universe, in which most matter is "ordinary," this universe has a significant amount of antimatter (also known as contra-terrene, or CT, hence Williamson's nomenclature). The "Drift" is a dangerous mix of ordinary matter asteroids from which valuable resources are being mined, and "seetee," which looks just like ordinary matter but will vaporize you if you touch it (also releasing tremendous amounts of raw energy and hard radiation). The ordinary asteroid miner lives in fear of the day they snag the wrong rock. The truly daring miner goes after seetee by preference, even though the government has declared all seetee objects off-limits and experimentation with the deadly stuff is a treasonable offence.
In the simplest terms, one out of twenty asteroids would be a "killer asteroid," but more interesting to work out mechanics to make the things explode violently. I can see luring a hostile fleet into the drift, and perhaps shooting an iron pellet at a seetee rock yourself as the battleship cruises nearby...
In both cases, there are plausible mission strings in which the player, using experimental technology, brings back one of the interesting objects to a research group who then spawns powerful new drives and weapons...
Damage caused by exploding ships is dependant on mass (leviathons hurt, mantas don't). An antimatter rock could be imitated by using this principle. Make a rock-like ship with no real ability to effectively chase you (unless you take the FH approach), then give it a big mass and no real shields/armor. A stray shot could hit one and hurt you and nearby ships bad. Small explosion times would be best.
"Hole hunting" could possibly be done using deadly stellars and missions, like a "Proto-hole reported in such and such an area". Your mission: destroy it, land on it, finish mission, get new mission which returns you to space, return, get paid. You might need to include a "resist deadly stellars" outfit- haven't played much with them.
Now, if only Matt Burch had included a "don't show on radar" flag in the ships, everything would be good.
------------------ ~Charlie "Even the Buddha despaired of saving women" ~Takuan
Originally posted by Masamune: **
I think you could simulate this with some type of cloaking outfit, yes? . mcb
------------------ "If it's not on fire, it's a software problem."
Originally posted by mburch: **
I was wondering about this actually. There aren't any flags in the shďp resource to determine whether or not the ship is visible on the radar when cloaked, but there are such flags in the oütf version of the cloaking device to make the ship not appear on radar. I sort of assumed that the AI wouldn't pay attention to öutf stuff since they don't use them normally, but of course why would there be a "don't show on radar" flag in the outf if the player is the only one that can use it in a cloaking device? The player is the only one with radar anyway (The computer ships are algorithms, not people looking at a gray square with blips on it) so I can't imagine the flag would have been put in at all if the AI couldn't have a cloak outfit and use that flag. Haven't tested it myself though.