Engine/Propulsion

[Jeremy Buloch]

The people would have to be a type 1 civilization though. To harnest the entire energy output of a planet.
"A Type I civilization would be able to manipulate truly planetary energies. They might, for example, control or modify their weather. They would have the power to manipulate planetary phenomena, such as hurricanes, which can release the energy of hundreds of hydrogen bombs. Perhaps volcanoes or even earthquakes may be altered by such a civilization."
-J.B.-

[Jeremy Buloch]

I read on a website this:

"The fastest way to get from here to another star, Antares for example, is to accelerate at one G for half the trip, turn around, and then decelerate the rest of the way. With modern ramjet fusion engines you can do that. After about a year you're going close to light speed. At that point, you can't really speed up much more, but what happens is that time slows way down for you. It works out to be about two years of travel for you, including some time on Antares, but since Antares is about thirty light years away, by the time you get back more than eighty years have gone by for those who stayed behind. Can you imagine how it would be to come back after a trip, and find everybody you knew dead or ancient, and everything different? Your only friends would be your crewmembers and you would get pretty sick of them after two years." "http://www.4raccoons.com/~wayne/longway.html"

So would "Ramjet fusion engines" be the answer?
-J.B.-

[Jeremy Buloch]

So what type of Drive would accomadate such a speed?
I currently have no Idea. Also I currently have no time to look one up.
Wait could an Ion Drive be able to? Or EM propulsion?
-J.B.-

[Jeremy Buloch]

You know, it IS possible to travel to other planets at sublight speeds. It just takes a while.
If you had an engine capable of giving off a constant 1gee, I believe you would get to Alpha Centuria in about 5 years (that is earth time, not traveller time). You could get to AC in about 6 years just thrusting for half the time. I did the calculations once, but they are boring calculations and I'm really not inclined to do them again . Just do the simple calculation c / (10m/s * 86400) (speed of light divided by acceleration times seconds in 1 day) for the number of days to reach light speed, ignoring relativity. In this case it comes out to 347 days. Granted, you cant ignore relativity, but relativistic effects dont kick in until quite close to c so the spaceship will be going a good percentage of c, I would guestimate 70% of c.

The problem is you cant easily mantain 1gee of thrust for a year in deep space. The mathematics&physics behind this are obscure enough we can just ignore it.

I like the Idea of this 1gee of thrust thingy. We wont have to explain to the user how the math works so therefore it would work quite fine. Also I think it would be ok to have an amount of time that the vessel would arrive. Example: The vessel starts at point A going at a certain velocity say 1 gee and arrives at point B in 3 years which would be 3 turns and seem realistic to the user instead of arriving at point B in the same turn which would seem a bit weird.
-My thoughts on that subject.
-J.B.-

[Blake]

The Stars! way of scanning works very well. Scanners have a range (say 100ly), cloaked fleets have a cloak%, say 90%. That means, the fleet must stray within 10ly of the scanner to get detected. Assuming the enemy correctely guestimates your scanner range, they can safely skirt around all non-mobile scanners, meaning that randomly patroling scoutships would be the only way to have a chance of catching the cloaked fleets.

Okay, back to habitable. By that I mean, a planet where the colonists are realistically going to bother to set up a thriving civilisation complete with cities. Non-cities will be able to be built on many worlds, like colonies, military outposts, defense clusters, scanners, research stations. But generally, it will be up to the colonists to immigrate to a world and turn colonies into real cities.

[Kuciwalker]

You should be able to build small colonies, for mining or maybe for shipyards, in asteriod belts or on planets/moons (usually airless ones). You should be able to build Cloud City-esque things in gas giants. Orbital space stations around uninhabited planets. You can have habitation domes or whatever.

[Kuciwalker]

I think that you should have to rely on scouts to defeat the enemies stealth, not just passive sensors.

The way we should make stealth harder is make people able to see ships under construction (with their scouts). This way, you would see your enemy building a fleet, or you would see that there was a fleet buildup (different thing; a fleet buildup is sending ships to the point from which you are going to attack).

[targon]

Originally posted by Blake
Well, I meant habitable systems. The rest is mostly decorative, but uninhabitable systems WOULD give protection from scanners.

Yep. The same again. What does exactly your "habitable system" mean? System with the only habitable planet vs. system with the only unhabitable planet, aren't you? Did your forgot about all these stuff like gas giants, asteroid rings and whole bunch of interesting stuff? This unhabitable sites may be still of some impotance due to:
1) More scientific approach (how you imagine generation of _the only_ Earth-like planet?)
2) Nice graphics for player to stare
3) Strategic impotance (outposts, fuel, scanners etc)
4) Resources
5) Terraforiming possibilities for later game

[Blake]

Well, I meant habitable systems. The rest is mostly decorative, but uninhabitable systems WOULD give protection from scanners. I dont really object to the idea of having a lot of systems but only like 10% that can be (fully) colonised. Just know when I give planet numbers, I refer to habitable systems to give an idea of how many developed worlds a player might be managing.

I would still be inclined to keep hyperdrives, if only to speed up the pace later in the game. The first third, or so, of the game should be limited to c, with prehaps the flagship being equiped with a shiny hyperdrive so players that like to explore dont get bored with too many turns in deep space.

[targon]

Blake, I hope you mean "planets" as "habitable worlds in distinct starsystems". Single planet pined to the map is strange looking, highly unrealistical and simply boring.
OK, if we accept your idea (along with big game turns) we may trash all these unsci-fi "hyperdrives" and "wormholes", and respect principle of casuality, among other things. Let's our ships will travel near c speeds (nothing wrong with it, just let some time for technology to advance). It is't any wrong for the empire-building (it's very planned part anyway) and can't impair combat part (as victim will be warned in 3 turns anyway)

[Blake]

Originally posted by skywalker
Who wants to wait a few years for their invasion force to arrive?

The enemy?

One problem with war in civ games is it is too cheap, without excessive resources devoted to scouting the enemy can sneak up (thru the fog of war) and attack with no warning. In fact, sneak/suprise attack is pretty much the most effective strategy. (along with overwhelming force, which is ALWAYS the most effective strategy, but rarely a useful one)

I feel that is wrong, stealth and sneak attacks should be things you have to work for.

Ideally, players should get around 3 turns warning of an impending invasion so they can prepare:
1st turn: Yikes! Incoming bogeys. Build orders set at nearby locations to build defenders.
2nd turn: Newly built Defenders are ordered to the (expected) site of attack.
3rd turn: Battle.

3 turns of warning gives existing defenders 2 turns to arrive, allows for one turn of newly built defenders to reinforce the target (2 turns of defender construction at the target itself)

Do not worry that warning will limit your options, on the whole it makes the game a whole lot more strategic, you have to consider what your enemies response will be and more importantly what your enemy thinks you are doing.

Players will need the warning to prepare, because fighting will be fair. Unlike in Civ3 where defense is like 4 times as strong as offense (which relies on overwhelming), in StP there will be no "offense" and "defense" bonuses. This means defenders NEED to meet offenders head on with an equally powerfull force. Like in all RTS games, there will be static defense (towers, space stations, that sorta thing) which will give defenders a bonus, but at a cost - it cant be moved.

Early warning of intruders also allows for the wonders of stealth (it's like how you cant have good without evil ), your enemy will have a certain degree of confidence given by his scanner range. This can quickly be turned into paranoia by stealth. I remember one Stars! game, where I was driven quite paranoid by my super-stealth neighbour "ally", one turn I built about a hundred scouts with powerfull scanners and sent them off into deepspace to "flush out" his fleets "hiding" in my territory. My scouts didn't find a thing, I have to wonder what my "ally" thought of my antics.

Now, the reason for planets is it puts players a sensible distant apart, and we have more freedom to define game mechanics for good strategy and playability. Because players do not have a understanding or real-life exceptions of how space combat should work, it's a lot easier to rationalise things like stargates giving infinite movement.

It packages territory into neatly defended bundles and with the large empty voids of space between planets reduces the burden of defending large empires. It also allows for more fair defense/offense.
It seperates territory, when you capture a planet, you have a few turns to clear it of resistence and dig in, your enemy has a few turns to evaluate whether or not to try to take it back. When you see the enemy coming to reclaim what is theres, you can choose to retreat, reinforce etc.

And one of the best reasons for multiple worlds, it's very easy to scale the universe without running into problems. Want a short game for 3 players? Have a universe with 10 planets. A long game for 16 players? Have 200 planets.

While all those things are basically possible to an extent on a single planet, it's not possible to have them work in natural ways, movement rates have to be really really slow and it only gets worse as the world size (in tiles) increases.

[Gateway103]

Who wants to wait a few years for their invasion force to arrive?

Hmm... have you not played Civ and/or MOO series? You always have to move your produced units/ships to enemy cities/planets, taking a few turns usually. If one turn is one years, that translates to a few years minimum for your invasion force to arrive, especially in early/mid games

-Gateway103

[Kuciwalker]

Who wants to wait a few years for their invasion force to arrive?

[Blake]

You know, it IS possible to travel to other planets at sublight speeds. It just takes a while.
If you had an engine capable of giving off a constant 1gee, I believe you would get to Alpha Centuria in about 5 years (that is earth time, not traveller time). You could get to AC in about 6 years just thrusting for half the time. I did the calculations once, but they are boring calculations and I'm really not inclined to do them again . Just do the simple calculation c / (10m/s * 86400) (speed of light divided by acceleration times seconds in 1 day) for the number of days to reach light speed, ignoring relativity. In this case it comes out to 347 days. Granted, you cant ignore relativity, but relativistic effects dont kick in until quite close to c so the spaceship will be going a good percentage of c, I would guestimate 70% of c.

The problem is you cant easily mantain 1gee of thrust for a year in deep space. The mathematics&physics behind this are obscure enough we can just ignore it.

BTW - I'm still fond of simply moving the planets closer together. That would involve starting with the benevolent aliens saying "Right humans, we have found you a nice patch of space with a few dozen habitable systems very close together, like 1-2 lightyears apart. We know that isn't very likely, but you cannot comprehend just how much space we have explored. Now humans, hop thru this wormhole and say bye-bye to earth, forever"

Also, the flagship should be equiped with a hyperdrive, because the flagship will actually be constructed from the remains of the colony ships, the cores of which will be built with alien technology including that required to navigate the wormhole. That means early in the game the player can quickly explore and launch small colonisation/invasion forces (they have to fit in the flagship) but puts a clamp on any early large scale wars (unless willing to spend 10 years in transit, which is not much different to civ games, but the enemy will see this snail paced invasion force several years in advance)

[Jeremy Buloch]

Yes, but the original travel to the Planet would be through a wormhole. Now if we are going to use the traveling to other planet stuff then we would need a form of propulsion to do that such as "HyperDrives". So Therefore they might be needed. We however dont know. Since no story has been made officially the background story. So we should actually start discussing the story before we discuss this. Once we know what is in the story we can then discuss whats going to be in the story.
-Just my un~organized thoughts.
-J.B.-