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Re: A Reinterpretation of Research

#31
eheheheee

idea how to implement armor in the concept :3

at first: small explanation

the hitpoints of your armor symbolise how much armor material is still there to protect you,
so the less hitpoints you have, the more material of your armor is already lost to damage.

"damage mitigation" is a flat amount of damage that gets subtraced from every hit on your hull.
so for example
your armor provides 5 mitigation
an attack with 5 or less damage rating does no damage, every other attack gets reduced by 5 points.

bigger ships have generally higher mitigation, to symbolise that the weapons are simply too insignificant to damage a metre of armor ;)


your base armor and hitpoints are determined at the point where you design the hull of your ship (like in the ship designer from back then)

you also determine the amount of "ports" in your armor, this ports serve as connectors for the various modificators i'll outline later.


from there we have 2 choices on how to proceed in the implementation
  1. armor is an un-themed, untyped blank slate that just provides plain hitpoints and receives the same damage from every type of weapon, providing some damage mitigation based on its material
  2. the material itself already has a type which is determined at the point where you research the material, hitpoints per mass, absorbtion stpectrum, reflection spectrum, damage type vulnerability etc
regardless of whether base armor is themed or not they get handled the same way after that

every armor has a "capillary system" for supplementary fluids which can have multiple effects.

shock absorbing insets to increase general hitpoints

coolants/absorbants to mitigate certain damage types (here a "fuel cell" concept could be used again, dont swap out the whole system, just swap out the fluid)

floods of nanobots providing some regenerating hitpoints (limited by a cell which holds additional bots/repair material)

radar absorbants to increase your "stealthiness"

etc.

this systems dont need any (noticeable) energy to run, so they maybe loose a bit of effectivity when the ship gets powered down/its generator being damaged/the ship becomes a derelict
but in general they continue working.
(besides the nanobot self repair, which needs energy for obvious reasons)


another hardware that can be connected to the "armor ports" are field generators, lets call them in star trek style "structural integrity fields".

those fields are doing similar things to the coolant/bot/material flows, but need much more energy, but are also more effective in doing their job.
so when your ship loses power, your integrity fields go down and stop working, leaving you with "stock" armor.

they can do everything that the material supplements can besides increasing hitpoints or repairing your armor (they may aid in repairing, but on their own they are not capable of doing so)

instead of giving your armor more hitpoints, structural integrity fields can increase your damage mitigation (flat amount, percentage wise, whatever)
(this should be a nonlinear process, low-to-medium energy input gives the most "bang for buck", and ships with very advanced generators or devoting all their power to structural integrity dont get invulnerable.)
this way structural integrity fields dont give you more hitpoints, they let you make better use of that hitpoints you already have, for an energy cost.

with structural integrity fields you may have better armor than one who uses only material flows, but you trade a ton of energy for that, thus making you less capable in other areas.


combinations of material flow and field tech could maybe even produce an "energy armor" effect when powered up
let some nanobots be hardened into armor when you need it
reference :3
(yeah, i like that effect :3 )


the ports in the armor are a combined piping/energy connector, and are limiting how much of either material flow or structural field power can pass.
again, to cap max capability to something balanceable.

you can design multiple armor ports into your ship, but each of those is a structural weakness where everything flows together, and thus need extra material to prevent them being a weakness
in short, the more ports you have, the more mass your armor takes.




so, this makes armor less of an "it is as it is" thing and more of a dynamic system you can affect with your equipment choices without it being literally swappable
because its strange to replace your whole hull at a moments notice when you discover some better armor.



also: maybe a "port" system could also be used for shields, (emitter grid or whatever)
that one can design hulls which are specialised on using shields or using armor.
Post

Re: A Reinterpretation of Research

#32
destruction of parts:

parts can be damaged individually, so you can for example shoot out the plasma source of an engine, and it stops working.

when a part fails it has 2 primary failure mores
  • short circuit
  • blocking
  • short circuit
    when a part short circuits it stops doing its function but doesnt block the flow through it.
    so an accelerator mounted in a weapon would stop accelerating the plasma, and the weapon does less damage / has lower projectile speed
    the accelerator still uses up energy and retains (some of) its eventual negative effects, but doesnt contribute anything useful to the process.
    eventually it could (for example in reactors) stop using up power flow (fusion plasma), and the parts which are mounted after that one could fail because of overstressing them.
    because the dampening effect of the previous part is missing now.

    the overpowering effect could (and maybe should) be limited to
    a pulse at the moment of destruction (if its a permanentely powered part, like a running reactor piece)
    or to the moment of activation, in case of weapons for example.
    (because the flows are all balanced for working parts, and rerouting such connections while under power should not be that easy to do it in combat)

    would have nice dramaturgic effects if your weapon got damaged, and blows up when you try to fire it :mrgreen:

    this could lead to chain reaction effects, where one failing component could destroy big parts of the equipment its mounted in
  • blocking failure

    as the lable says, this failure mode blocks the flow through this component.

    this failure mode doesnt waste any energy, but it also deactivates all functionality that was maintained by the flow through this component.

    depending on the circumstances this can be better or worse than shorting components

    for a weapon a blocked component doesnt do much, it just prevents you from firing it.

    but if that blocking component is the energy conduit to your reactor shielding....

    some components could also have a dislike of discharging into blocking components, so instead of damaging the component behind the failed one, the one before gets damaged
with different failure modes, it becomes also a design choice to integrate overrated or security components, to prevent a failing component from destroying your equipment.

or you can go all out, and design a ship thats minmaxed to the last point but breaks apart when you hit the right spot.

weakspots in designs: check :ghost:


different types of components should also have different likelyhoods of the failure modes.

conveyor belts would always be blocking

nozzles would often short out and less likely block

etc.




another small thing that would be nice to have in component based designs:

named nets.

you can attach "hooks" onto component inputs/outputs to connect them to named nets.

a standard net should for example be the "main power" net, every bought, assembled equipment hooks into the main power net at the points which are specified in the component

this is to reduce screen and design clutter, and you dont have to manually connect up all things when you change out hardpoints.
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Re: A Reinterpretation of Research

#33
These are great ideas Cornflakes, I hope you or Josh decide to implement these during beta or after launch.

One suggestion on shields: What do you think of the idea of shields providing the flat damage mitigation until they fail? A shield would fail after a certain amount of damage was dealt to the shield within a time period. So for example, a shield with a 10 damage mitigation might be able to remain active until 90 net damage is given to it within a 1 minute period. At this point the shield would fail and the 10 damage mitigation would no longer be in effect.


Disclaimer: Numbers and time period are for example only and do not reflect game balancing mechanics.
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Re: A Reinterpretation of Research

#34
BFett wrote:These are great ideas Cornflakes, I hope you or Josh decide to implement these during beta or after launch.

One suggestion on shields: What do you think of the idea of shields providing the flat damage mitigation until they fail? A shield would fail after a certain amount of damage was dealt to the shield within a time period. So for example, a shield with a 10 damage mitigation might be able to remain active until 90 net damage is given to it within a 1 minute period. At this point the shield would fail and the 10 damage mitigation would no longer be in effect.


Disclaimer: Numbers and time period are for example only and do not reflect game balancing mechanics.
Annoying as hell, as you would never have "watertight" shields.

when you encounter an enemy who makes more damage per shot than your shields damage mitigation you get hull damage with every hit
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Re: A Reinterpretation of Research

#35
Bfett has given me an idea on how shields could work:


a however constructed shield projector generates a certain amount of damage mitigation proportional to the energy input it gets

the projector itself doesnt produce anything like total shield hitpoints or anything.

it consumes an amount of energy to mitigate a certain amount of damage from every hit.

but the projector itself has practically unlimited energy input rates, so the more energy you put in there the more damage it mitigates

so for example a shield with 1 watt continous input can block 1 joule per second of damage.


so how do we get now to a hitpoint rating for shields?

capacitors.

a shield projector can request temporary energy bursts from connected capacitors to boost its mitigation rating temporarily.

so your shield hitpoints are the total amount of damage that can be blocked with the energy thats stored in connected capacitors.

so the shield from the above example gets connected a 10 joule capacitor and still gets fed its 1 watt directly.

so it can stop shots with 1 joule or less without resorting to the capacitor, and it has 10 joule hitpoints for shots which get over that damage mitigation treshold.

a shot which does 3 joule of damage would impact on the shield, and the generator would take the missing 2 joule it needs to stop it from the capacitor
reducing its charge to 8 joule.


shields could fail when they dont have enough power to stop the shot.
so the 1 watt shield without a capacitor would fail when a 2+ joule shot impacts on it.

failed shields should take some time to get back up
maybe some integral capacitor requires to get charged up again to bootstrap the shield back up
"insert 10 joule to reinstate your shield"


shield design/powering now gets a balancing act.

you can either feed all your energy straight into the generator, without a capacitor, and get a shield with high base mitigation, but which fails the second a too strong shot hits it.

or you maintain the shield at the minimum rate and feed all the remainder energy into a capacitor bank.
this shield would not absorb much damage without draining the capacitors, but would not fail when a shot get in that gets over its base mitigation.

when you expect many shots over a long time, you boost up your basic mitigation over the damage of those shots, so you can maintain the shield at this damage ratios indefinitely
but when someone gets in a bigger gun your shield may fails after its first shot.

or when you expect intermittent, heavy shots, you dump your energy into your capacitors that you can intercept those shots.
but your capacitors get drained a bit every time a small shot hits you.
Post

Re: A Reinterpretation of Research

#37
hm.. we could balance it in a way that for continous, smaller damage, "death by a tousand cuts" ramping up mitigation is more efficient
maybe by introducing some loss into the capacitors

and for bigger shots we could make the mitigation-to-energy function be nonlinear, for high energy bursts you get disproportionally more mitigation.

so for both scenarios you could get an optimum setting

:think:


edit: maybe the energy to mitigation function could have a part based on the first derivative of the energy

M(t)=E(t)+E'(t)²*k or something like that.

so for high damage impacts you want the caps to do their job

and for the remainder time you want to use your caps as least as possible, as they dont have 100% cycling efficiency
Last edited by Cornflakes_91 on Sat Jan 10, 2015 3:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: A Reinterpretation of Research

#38
Since there appears to be a little confusion about what I suggested here's what I meant:

Mitigate damage first, then weaken the shield after excessive damage, shields eventually fail if damage is prolonged.

So an example of this happening in game would look like this:

Ship HP: 100, shield HP: 100, mitigation: 10, You have damage of say.. 50 incoming. Mitigation kicks in, and damage is reduced to 40. The remaining 40 are deducted from your shield HP reducing it to 60. So the final situation is: ship HP: 100, shield HP: 60.
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Re: A Reinterpretation of Research

#39
Cornflakes_91 wrote: edit: maybe the energy to mitigation function could have a part based on the first derivative of the energy

M(t)=E(t)+E'(t)²*k or something like that.

so for high damage impacts you want the caps to do their job

and for the remainder time you want to use your caps as least as possible, as they dont have 100% cycling efficiency

after thinking a bit about this i think the derivative should be detrimental for the energy efficiency

so that when the shield gets strenghtened in pulses its less effective per power expended
but as capacitors can generate such big bursts they still push it to high effective levels.

so its more efficient overall to use continous energy, without resorting to capacitors, but you'd have to use all your ships energy (or more!) to match the pulse output of the shield capacitors.
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Re: A Reinterpretation of Research

#40
so, more thinking.

this
Spoiler:      SHOW
Cornflakes_91 wrote: Dynamic parametrisation

An interesting concept for missles would be dynamic parametrisation.
Or in star trek terms "warheads with variable yield".

Some extra component which could exectute some very simple conditionals and change the weights of connections.

For example there could be an "explosion focuser" component whichs effectivity is dependent on the energy input on its secondary side.
(Primary side: explosion to be shaped, secondary side: energy supply for the shaping)

The parametric coprocessor could then use some of the energy of the warhead to focus the explosion (or not)
And the ratio of how much energy used could depend on the conditionals.

Small ship -> focused blast to get as much energy as possible into the small target.

Big ship -> big blast as the target is so big that that focusing doesnt change the effect, and focusing itself costs damage.

this adaptability would come at generally lower damage, as you need space for the dynamic energy splitting equipment, and that equipment simply is not warhead.

Could create general "good at everything" weapons, but its just an idea
striked me as pretty unelegant... a special case component with a single purpose.

so've thought:
cant i generalise that component?

yes i can :mrgreen:


Flow Regulators

flow regulators limit/define the amount of energy thats flowing through them

a group of them can distribute energy between different endpoints precisely

they come in 2 variations
  1. Fixed
    this variation transfers a fixed amount of energy which can only be set during mounting
    you may change that setting later on, but also only using facilities where you can mount/unmount components
  2. dynamic
    this variation can change its allocation on the fly, but uses more space/is less efficient etc.
    trading adaptability vs efficiency
they can split energy either on a procentual base (regulator A 30%, B 70%)
or on an absolute basis (A gets 30kW, B 70kW)

all regulators which take from the same point are connected control wise.
this way they can share procentual parts of the energy available at the source
(that not 2 regulators set that they get 60% for example...)
if one flow regulator has a set absolute value and the others have relative values, the absolute one should be fulfilled first and the remainder split along the relative allocations

regulators can also be attached to control nodes, to define them as the input energy allocation for a piece of equipment.
to prevent masses of unnamed flow regulators in ships which would get messy very fast.

i'd almost say that every control node must have a regulator attached at the beginning of its subnetwork.
that there is guaranteed to be an energy control method in place for that piece of equipment.
but then, why enforce it?
let players do stupid things :mrgreen:
individually sold, assembled pieces of equipment, "hardpoint mountables", should be enforced to have regulators in them
because it would be annoying to permanentely have to do supplementary purchases to be able to control the newly installed equipments energy allocation.


regulators without control nodes attached should be nameable, to make it easier to manage.
regulators with control nodes should take on the name of their control node (which should already be named according to the equipment its controlling)


projectile weapons / drone launchers can also define settings for the ammunition they are using.
this settings are used for the launched device at launching time and cannot be changed after that.
the possibility of changing the settings should be provided for the player when he allocates the ammunition to the launcher and the settings are remembered for every launch action



the energy allocation interface (see LTP times and related devvideos) should show the allocation tree along the connections of flow regulators
with the respective generator at the root, and each sub-regulator attached to its respective parent

to get a nicely readable chart of all energy allocation possibilities.
eg: main reactor -> weapons(/shields/drives) -> laser 1 / laser 2 / laser 3





this whole system enables a multitude of possibilities:

first and foremost, it integrates the general energy management system into this sheme

it unifies "mode switching" into energy management.
for my shield sheme i outlined above one could balance the flow between charging capacitors or direct feeding the shield emitter.

"warheads with variable yield" are included in it.
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Re: A Reinterpretation of Research

#41
A small bit of a tangent here...

The game Factorio was built pretty much around the idea of the Buildcraft and IndustrialCraft mods in Minecraft.

Cornflakes, have you ever thought about designing this in a way that it could work as a stand-alone game? There would definitely be a crowd for something like this, even if it was basic. It's incredibly thought out enough that it should work. ;)
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: A Reinterpretation of Research

#42
DWMagus wrote: Cornflakes, have you ever thought about designing this in a way that it could work as a stand-alone game? There would definitely be a crowd for something like this, even if it was basic. It's incredibly thought out enough that it should work. ;)
honestly, i had a related pipedream a while ago :P

a spaceship design/engineering/combat game in the spirit of aurora, but with a more usable interface and actual graphics :P
even my project name was a hommage to aurora "Borealis" ^^

but that was before LT and waaaay before i started writing up this stuff here
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Re: A Reinterpretation of Research

#45
...Holy!

CornFlakes, You are a genius!

Please tell me that you are BUILDING real Craft of some kind; the whole world needs to benefit from a brain like yours!
I do not know about Austria, but There are places in Poland that are making Aerospace Tech that are 20 years WAY ahead of the USA!
I do not know if you have your mind set on another locale to continue your work - but based on your papers alone...

Man, you CAN change the world!

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