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Lore tech limit

#1
I have a question. What is the tech level of limit theory? I mean the lore tech level, like how many tons can the basic shield take or how much power do the generators put out? I am just a little curious. :D.
If this is not supposed to be on the general form can someone please direct me to the appropriate forum.
Image The results of logic, of natural progression? Boring! An expected result? Dull! An obvious next step? Pfui! Where is the fun in that? A dream may soothe, but our nightmares make us run!
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Re: Lore tech limit

#4
Idunno wrote:I have a question. What is the tech level of limit theory? I mean the lore tech level, like how many tons can the basic shield take or how much power do the generators put out? I am just a little curious. :D.
If this is not supposed to be on the general form can someone please direct me to the appropriate forum.
I'm curious as well.
McDuff wrote:I'm not sure that question make sense. It's a little early in the game to be deciding fine tuning of starts like that, isn't it?
It's a perfectly valid question in my opinion. Josh probably had a rough idea of what kind of scale of technology LT would have before he started making it. Like, will stuff be more on the scale of Star Trek, or Star Wars?
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Re: Lore tech limit

#5
Idunno, we shared some ideas about tech levels previously. We never got down to the level of artifacts that you're describing, though.

That said, Josh (in a devlog) has sort of nixed the idea of artificial tech levels in favor of a progression through research:
Josh Parnell wrote:When you select a research node, you're not "leveling" that technology. Levels are both boring and problematic due to scaling. What you're doing is saying, "let's focus on creating new technology based around this idea."
I'm not sure where that leaves your ideas, but maybe you'll find some answers in the latest research concepts. I hope some of those might entice you out of lurk mode again. :)
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Re: Lore tech limit

#7
Flatfingers wrote:Idunno, we shared some ideas about tech levels previously. We never got down to the level of artifacts that you're describing, though.

That said, Josh (in a devlog) has sort of nixed the idea of artificial tech levels in favor of a progression through research:
Josh Parnell wrote:When you select a research node, you're not "leveling" that technology. Levels are both boring and problematic due to scaling. What you're doing is saying, "let's focus on creating new technology based around this idea."
I'm not sure where that leaves your ideas, but maybe you'll find some answers in the latest research concepts. I hope some of those might entice you out of lurk mode again. :)
I guess the question becomes "how many plausible ideas are pre-defined in this game?"

Because Josh's work is finite, and at some point the concepts he sets up for us will be exhausted. Unless there is some procedural generation of research ideas that creates new ones by mixing and matching.

But that might yield weird stuff like planetary descriptions in Oolite:
"This planet is most notable for Tibediedian Arma brandy but scourged by deadly edible grubs"
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Re: Lore tech limit

#8
TBH, I think the only person who can really answer this question atm is Josh, but we can be free to discuss where things stand.
"like how many tons can the basic shield take or how much power do the generators put out? I am just a little curious. :D.
If this is not supposed to be on the general form can someone please direct me to the appropriate forum."
It is a valid question, and I think McDuff didn't mean to play it off as not important...but my interpretation of it is like the statistics for ships in X3...the example below shows information such as how much strength a shield has, how fast lasers recharge, how much cargo capacity it has.
Example:
Spoiler:      SHOW
Argon Elite

Class
M4+ Heavy Interceptor

Buy:
Accepted Advisor @ 1,619,083 Cr

Speed (Min-Max)
64 - 160 m/s

Acceleration (Min-Max)
19.6 - 49 m/s2

Steering (Min-Max)
21.2 - 59.36 RPM

Hull Strength
6,500 / 13,000 (AP)

Max. Shield (Total)
2 x 25 MJ (50 MJ)

Shield Reactor
550 MW

Cargo Class (Min-Max)
50 - 120 @ L

Laser Capacitor
4,500 MJ

Laser Recharge
76 MW
Now, the first part of his post seemed to say one thing, and the other half seemed to say another. The first seemed to ask something like 'What kind of technology is this universe going to be dealing with? (as Thymine said: Star Wars? Star Trek? Warhammer? Return of the Space Ferrets?) and the second part seemed to ask for specific numbers ON implemented technology.

So, if it could be clarified, that would be great. If not...we can always discuss what we think the OP was talking about :P
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Re: Lore tech limit

#9
Yeah. It feels too early by far to be saying "generators will be producing exactly 4.5MW of power." Especially given that it doesn't really matter, and it's really all about the ratios of modules to each other rather than the specific numbers that get stuck on the outputs.
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Re: Lore tech limit

#10
Idunno wrote:I have a question. What is the tech level of limit theory? I mean the lore tech level, like how many tons can the basic shield take or how much power do the generators put out? I am just a little curious. :D.
If this is not supposed to be on the general form can someone please direct me to the appropriate forum.
I'd guess the answer could be "The values freelancer had" but since each universe is unique and technologies may vary from region to region any and all answers pertaining to sci-fi could be correct.
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Re: Lore tech limit

#11
McDuff wrote:Yeah. It feels too early by far to be saying "generators will be producing exactly 4.5MW of power." Especially given that it doesn't really matter, and it's really all about the ratios of modules to each other rather than the specific numbers that get stuck on the outputs.
They don't have to be that specific. What we're looking for is a minimum/maximum bound in terms of orders of magnitude. Will the most powerful ships be producing power on the scale of gigawatts, terawatts, petawatts of even exawatts? Beyond that? Likewise, how much energy can an average shield soak up before collapsing? How many floating-point operations per second can a decent computer in LT handle?

Or even more general: will the scale of these things be less than that of Star Trek, between Star Trek and Star Wars or greater than that of Star Wars?
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Re: Lore tech limit

#12
But... they won't be producing any watts. They'll be producing arbitrary numbers which don't matter, except as they relate to other arbitrary numbers. You could plug anything in there in the UI and all it would mean is "X shots from this laser knocks down Y amounts of shield" or "F quantity of fuel lets you perform G amount of travel."

The most powerful ships and stations will produce power that's greater on some ratio to the least powerful ones. Whether that's 1000W or a bajillion Uberwatts is really neither here nor there. What matters is the ratio, not the units.
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Re: Lore tech limit

#13
McDuff wrote:But... they won't be producing any watts. They'll be producing arbitrary numbers which don't matter, except as they relate to other arbitrary numbers. You could plug anything in there in the UI and all it would mean is "X shots from this laser knocks down Y amounts of shield" or "F quantity of fuel lets you perform G amount of travel."

The most powerful ships and stations will produce power that's greater on some ratio to the least powerful ones. Whether that's 1000W or a bajillion Uberwatts is really neither here nor there. What matters is the ratio, not the units.
Well said and endorsed.

What really matters is how things compare relative to each other. This is what I was talking about a week or two ago with the 'fundamental constants.' They ultimately control the answers to things like "how strong is a shield relative to a weapon," "how much energy does shielding cost compared to thrust," etc. Basically all the different forms of "energy" in the game (thrust, dps, production, research, shielding, etc.) have conversion factors that determine how they relate to other forms of energy.

This means that the properties of the universe can be easily modified by modifying the fundamental constants. You can very easily swing the balance of energy such that DPS is a very cheap form of energy, making it a much more 'aggressive' universe (because destruction is relatively easy). Likewise, you could swing the balance to integrity, resulting in a universe where destruction is a much more difficult means of action, because defense is relatively cheap.

Those are interesting questions to think about, but keep in mind that, ultimately, they are not hard-coded and can be changed as you like by tweaking just a handful of fundamental constants.

Other than that, the only real question is a question of relative magnitude. How powerful is the most powerful weapon compared to the least powerful? In a universe where research is not asymptotic (as the default universe will be), that question is ill-formed. The better question is 'how does energy scale with magnitude?' In a universe where a weapon of twice the strength only 'costs' twice as much energy, we would expect to see extreme teching-up and rampant tech races. At the other extreme, we could have a universe where a weapon of N times the strength costs infinitely much energy (e.g., there is an asymptotic hard-limit on the maximum attainable strength of a piece of equipment that can never actually be achieved (think: similar to the concept of asymptotic speed limit in our universe at speed of light)). In the defaults I will probably specify somewhere between 1.5 and 2.0 (quadratic) energy scaling.

As for what kind of technology is actually powering the equipment in the game, that will mostly be left to your imagination, although there will be 'hints' in the grammars that will be used to generate names for the equipment. Again this is something that you can change at your discretion (replacing all tech names with Heisenberg-related ideas, for example :D ).
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Lore tech limit

#14
Well said, but I think that at least the defaults should be superior to known real life systems. Otherwise, for people with relevant background knowledge it will seem funny that a spacefaring civilization hasn't more powerful toys than a non-spacefaring one (ours).

For instance, googling the muzzle enery of a 120mm tank gun gives me values around 12 MJ. Then a similar sized gun with similar rate of fire in the LT universe should probably have 20 MJ or more.

EDIT:
Except for flight speeds, in this case gameplay trumps realism. Realistic space flight speeds are not all that much fun in games ;)
Last edited by Rabiator on Fri Mar 28, 2014 6:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Lore tech limit

#15
Rabiator wrote: For instance, googling the muzzle enery of a 120mm tank gun gives me values around 12 MJ. Then a similar sized gun with similar rate of fire in the LT universe should probably have 20 MJ or more.
Except that there already guns in development that aim for 30 or more MJ.
And the railgun system developed by raytheon iirc which delivers 64MJ.

I guess 128MJ should be the lower bound for any gun that approximates 80mm cannons

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