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Re: Headlights / Searchlights

#31
F4wk35 wrote:I'd be fine with being able to illuminate dark asteroids in an even darker system just because I thought i saw something there *shrug*
Do we really have to weaponize the Headlights? :shock:
((Not that I'd say anything against it...makes for more creative approaches :ghost: ))
I'm imagining a Lost In Space-esque illuminating the unknown derelict ship hidden in darkness. Could be cool, I don't know.
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Re: Headlights / Searchlights

#32
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
Grumblesaur wrote:It might be interesting to allow pilots to overload their headlights briefly, to dazzle enemy pilots, though overloading them for too long might cause them to explode. Higher-intensity lights could be bought for this purpose with less (or no) risk of blowing the lights.
If the sensor/emission system is sophisticated enough that should come "naturally".

For example if sensors have a level where they get oversaturated and "blinded" by strong signals.

So the local sun becomes blinding just by being a strong signal source, big explosions and "searchlights" would also be blinding by being strong emitters.

for consistency "visually" blinding sources would have to have strong emissions in the visual frequency band which is contained in joshs frequency graph.
What's a window?
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Re: Headlights / Searchlights

#34
Cornflakes_91 wrote:Something thats getting you killed very fast when the enemy has visible wavelenght combat lasers.

And its also not helping you when
Cornflakes_91 wrote:"visually" blinding sources would have to have strong emissions in the visual frequency band which is contained in joshs frequency graph.
As if high powered lasers aren't going to damage your ship anyway. You know that this is a space game and there are shields, right?

Anyway, both the Rule of Cool and general practicality suggest windows are a good idea. There's redundancy (whoops my sensor box got fried now I can't see). That's not to say there wouldn't be targeting computers and navigation logic, but building a ship that's immediately unable to navigate or be navigated once somebody blows a fuse is utterly ridiculous.

Fighter planes have cockpits. The Space Shuttle has windows. The ISS has windows. Ships in Star Citizen have windows. Ships in Elite Dangerous have cockpits. Freelancer, Star Wars, Firefly, Hitchhiker's Guide, Star Trek, and loads and loads of other space IPs have windows in their ship designs. You are absolutely off your rocker if you think we're all going to be flying around in gray space minivans without so much as a peephole.

Sure it might be impractical to try and shine a floodlight across the battlefield into your opponent's eye (might as well be threading a needle with boxing gloves on), but windows (and lights, by extension) would be a lot more useful in non-ideal conditions than having what is essentially an array of cameras and sensors bolted onto the outside of every ship.
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Re: Headlights / Searchlights

#35
Grumblesaur wrote: As if high powered lasers aren't going to damage your ship anyway. You know that this is a space game and there are shields, right?
And the second the shields go down you die and your ship is mostly intact besides the fried cockpit interiors :P
Grumblesaur wrote: Anyway, both the Rule of Cool and general practicality suggest windows are a good idea.
practicalities say:
  • structural weakness.
    No window material is as tough as proper armor.
    And even if it is, theres an additional seam in the hull that reduces strenght.
  • By necessity of having to place the pilot on the surface, you cant encase him in an armored shell in the middle of the ship, so the pilot himself is another weak point
  • with the two above factors combined, a redundant system of cameras is orders of magnitude more reliable than those inferior wetware sensors in your head. As the pilot is a single, highly located, big (compared to short range cameras), badly armored system on the surface of your vessel and very likely gets hit long before the redundant cameras are down.
  • if all your cameras, radar systems, inertial guidance systems, etc all go down you are probably already screwed, as you have either catastrophic damage all over your ship, a fried computer system, no power or any combination of the above. Short, you probably already are dead.
  • 99.999(9)% of the time windows dont have any use, as you are somewhere between hundreds (oh crap, i hope we dont collide) to multiple AU away from anything else, so you see nothing, regardless of your view outside.
  • the remainder time you have a single additional layer of redundancy.
grumblesaur wrote: building a ship that's immediately unable to navigate or be navigated once somebody blows a fuse is utterly ridiculous.

so ridicolous that modern fighter jets would never be built in a way that they would be uncontrollable slabs of steel if the fly-by-wire system gives out? :roll:
The B2 is unflyable without the board computer, as its aerodynamically so extremely unstable that it would spin out of control the second you have an unaugmented human controlling it directly.
Same with the F16, F22, F35, eurofighter and every other 4th or 5th generation jet fighter.

Doesnt matter if the fuse is in the scanner or in the computer thats actually controlling your craft.

But thats why you have multiple instances of each, sensors and computers.
grumblesaur wrote: Fighter planes have cockpits. The Space Shuttle has windows.

Because those arent spaceships, they are atmospheric or orbital craft, the only places where windows have utility >0
grumblesaur wrote: You are absolutely off your rocker if you think we're all going to be flying around in gray space minivans without so much as a peephole.
I've seen nobody complain in LTP times about windows.
grumblesaur wrote: Sure it might be impractical to try and shine a floodlight across the battlefield into your opponent's eye (might as well be threading a needle with boxing gloves on), but windows (and lights, by extension) would be a lot more useful in non-ideal conditions than having what is essentially an array of cameras and sensors bolted onto the outside of every ship.
[Citation needed]
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Re: Headlights / Searchlights

#36
Cornflakes_91 wrote: And the second the shields go down you die and your ship is mostly intact besides the fried cockpit interiors :P
The cockpit is getting fried regardless of whether there's a window -- video game lasers aren't just a flashlight.
Cornflakes_91 wrote: practicalities say:
*snip*
There are still going to be windows for monitoring sensitive areas on the outside of the craft. The ISS has this. And before you go "eeeunh but that's not a SPACESHIP" see below:
Cornflakes_91 wrote: Because those arent spaceships, they are atmospheric or orbital craft, the only places where windows have utility >0
Not a good argument, there will be spaceships that will be capable of landing on planets.
Cornflakes_91 wrote: I've seen nobody complain in LTP times about windows.
Because it was a pre-alpha prototype, maybe?
Cornflakes_91 wrote: [Citation needed]
I don't see you citing any sources either, so don't get snippy, no matter how much you want to be like the stick figure in Wikipedian Protester.
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Re: Headlights / Searchlights

#37
Grumblesaur wrote:
Cornflakes_91 wrote: And the second the shields go down you die and your ship is mostly intact besides the fried cockpit interiors :P
The cockpit is getting fried regardless of whether there's a window -- video game lasers aren't just a flashlight.
if you mount it on the surface again, yes.

but thats why you mount it
Cornflakes_91 wrote:in an armored shell in the middle of the ship
so that by the time the cockpit is reachable by fire, the ship already has endured major structural damage
Grumblesaur wrote:
Cornflakes_91 wrote: practicalities say:
*snip*
There are still going to be windows for monitoring sensitive areas on the outside of the craft. The ISS has this. And before you go "eeeunh but that's not a SPACESHIP" see below:
why should there be?

why cant you do that with cameras or camera drones?

and the ISS is no result of 100+ years of computer and digital camera development
cameras today arent good or reliable enough to serve as window replacements, especially the radiation hardened ones they use in space.

the second it becomes economically feasible to dot the hull with cameras to synthesize any viewport from the hull, windows will get a lot less useful.
Grumblesaur wrote:
Cornflakes_91 wrote: Because those arent spaceships, they are atmospheric or orbital craft, the only places where windows have utility >0
Not a good argument, there will be spaceships that will be capable of landing on planets.
and how does that negate all the points i listed?

situations where you even can fly on sight are the only situations where windows have any utility at all, and flying in atmosphere is one of those situations.

but why should i mount windows with limited field of view and all the drawbacks of having holes in my hull if camera systems work as well and give me 360° vision and dont need holes in the hull?

Grumblesaur wrote:I don't see you citing any sources either, so don't get snippy, no matter how much you want to be like the stick figure in Wikipedian Protester.
this was ment as a shorthand for "you didnt bring any arguments for that", you made a "factual" statement i dont accept as such.




long story short: what can windows do that cameras dont?
and are that few situations where they are even usable worth the long list of drawbacks?

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