Flatfingers wrote:

CutterJohn wrote:Gameplay > Realism, but if realism presents a functional solution, why not use it?

Because functional doesn't imply appropriate. Just because something works well in one environment doesn't mean it's the best choice for all environments.

I was talking about using rockets instead of magnetism as propulsion for a space game. I may be biased, but I consider that the best choice.

This is exactly why I've strongly advocated for the inclusion of some kinds of "terrain" in space games such as Limit Theory. That's a requirement for tactical play.

By terrain I don't mean only physical things like asteroids and nebulae (although those are good to have). I'm talking about "stuff in space" generally that has a gameplay effect on tactical decision-making. So in addition to physical terrain, it includes natural phenomena such as particles (radiation) and waves (gravity) and energy (EM, heat, visual), as well as generated data (IFF signals, transponder IDs, jamming, spoofing, etc.).

A long time ago, for another game, I had the thought for a 'terrain' system to break up the simplistic environment of space. Essentially the idea was a physical manifestation of the battle between ECM/ECCM in the game space, and would look rather like we'd expect clouds to look on earth. Various regions would populate the immediate battle area, each producing different effects. Some clouds would be opaque and obscure vision, others would obscure sensor readings, cause deleterious effects to weapons, make missiles go haywire, some could perhaps cause shield fluctuations or other equipment failures, or create fake ships that you waste time targeting. Some you could hide in, others would be obstacles to avoid.

Now, to be navigable, these would be mostly static(presumably some sort of procedurally generated geometry). As far as ships equipment goes, greater ECM capacity in your ships would increase this effect for enemy ships, and greater ECCM capacity would reduce it for yours. So if you have strong ECM, and your enemy has weak ECCM, a sensor occlusion 'cloud' could be partially transparent for you, but totally opaque for the enemy.

First, sorry for being late to the party.

ThymineC wrote:

CutterJohn wrote:Traditional explosion mines don't particularly work in space. You need obscene numbers of them to cover an area(and if one were to judge them realistically, differing orbits would spread them all over the place unless they had active station keeping, but I doubt that would be a factor for this game).

They worked pretty well in Star Trek.

That's because Star Trek follows the Space Is An Ocean trope (except for the very few instances where it doesn't).

But then again, Limit Theory is going to follow the trope as well. Still, without some kind of (magnetic or other) attraction, CutterJohn is right. You'll need obscene numbers of them in order to cover any meaningful area of space. Which may be unfeasible, depending on the max number of entities which Limit Theory will allow per system.

ThymineC wrote:Therefore, in the centre of every minefield will be an anchor, which is just an object with relatively high mass that uses ordinary propulsion methods (reaction thrusters, or spin-2 field excitations) to maintain its position in space.

ThymineC wrote:Since gravity is only attractive, you may need 6 more anchors around the outside of the minefield.

So you end up with seven relatively big anchors forming a particular and easily recognizable pattern. That's basically the same as broadcasting "HEY EVERYBODY, THERE'S A MINE FIELD HERE!" over the whole sub-ether band. It totally defeats the purpose of the mine field (except the purpose would be to openly deter everyone from coming close to that region—which is a valid purpose of a mine field, but not the only one).

so you want the recon missiles to allow you to justify guaranteed missile hits
problem is youll just face an anti-recon missile counter measure, so where does it stop?
youll just have the same issues, deploy countermeasures as a counter measure to the conventional counter measures counter measure.
why not just have better missiles, the higher the scan fidelity over the counter measure "level" the greater the chance of it not being fooled.
might also be rather difficult to program a cluster of missiles some with different roles to all work as a team. would be easier to play and program missles that have different chances of beating counter measures. epscially in huge battles with lots of missiles youd want the code as simple as possible.
a possible simple solution would be follow the leader, the high level recon missile leads the way beating the tests vs the counter measures, the rest just follow. I believe that would give the same impression as what you are after

re: mines
why not just break the laws of known normal physics to get the desired effect
simplify, mines = the speed and vector they were dumped at, think of the possibilities

as for spreadsheet combat
the reason i suggested earlier for all ships in the tech tree to be derived from a single base ship instead of a list of pre-defined ship types was that every player ends up with different battleships, cruisers and destroyers

chrisb wrote:so you want the recon missiles to allow you to justify guaranteed missile hits

Nah. The way I read it his "recon" missiles are sensor/ECM packages that assist other missiles in either finding a target (at all) or not being spoofed by enemy ECM.

If you know that your enemy has great anti-missile tech, you add more recon missiles to your mix.
That lowers your firepower (no warheads on them...) but that's still better than all your missiles chasing ghosts.

Sensor missiles could also act as one-shot recon devices. Faster than scout fighters and you might find out that something is hiding behind that asteroid long before your convoy passes it.

Commander McLane wrote:First, sorry for being late to the party.

ThymineC wrote:

CutterJohn wrote:Traditional explosion mines don't particularly work in space. You need obscene numbers of them to cover an area(and if one were to judge them realistically, differing orbits would spread them all over the place unless they had active station keeping, but I doubt that would be a factor for this game).

They worked pretty well in Star Trek.

That's because Star Trek follows the Space Is An Ocean trope (except for the very few instances where it doesn't).

But then again, Limit Theory is going to follow the trope as well. Still, without some kind of (magnetic or other) attraction, CutterJohn is right. You'll need obscene numbers of them in order to cover any meaningful area of space. Which may be unfeasible, depending on the max number of entities which Limit Theory will allow per system.

In the list of examples on the TV Tropes page you linked, it doesn't say anywhere that the physics of space is different and more "ocean-like". Though you raise a valid point in that, if the writers of Star Trek are overly fond of that trope, they may underestimate the real-life difficulty of mining a region of space. That being said, from the TV Tropes page on space mines, it lists the example from Star Trek I was thinking of as: "In Star Trek: Enterprise, the Enterprise runs into a Romulan minefield surrounding a planet. The mines are cloaked and scattered everywhere, a rare example of such a field done right."

Commander McLane wrote:

ThymineC wrote:Therefore, in the centre of every minefield will be an anchor, which is just an object with relatively high mass that uses ordinary propulsion methods (reaction thrusters, or spin-2 field excitations) to maintain its position in space.

ThymineC wrote:Since gravity is only attractive, you may need 6 more anchors around the outside of the minefield.

So you end up with seven relatively big anchors forming a particular and easily recognizable pattern. That's basically the same as broadcasting "HEY EVERYBODY, THERE'S A MINE FIELD HERE!" over the whole sub-ether band. It totally defeats the purpose of the mine field (except the purpose would be to openly deter everyone from coming close to that region—which is a valid purpose of a mine field, but not the only one).

I should have clarified: the anchors will have high mass relative to mines, but not particularly substantial mass compared to things like space vessels. In addition, they (and the mines) would require only nominal power consumption and produce nominal emissions unless they or the mines needed to move, which most of the time they will not have to. In addition, you're assuming that the anchors will be easily detectable. Based on the discussions I've seen around here, it seems most people reckon that the main factors involved in the detectability of something in space should be its emissions e.g. thermal signature, and that if, for instance, a spacecraft "goes cold" by reducing its heat output, it should drastically reduce its chances of being detected by another ship. If this is the case, then the anchors I describe - which would be far less massive than even fighters, stationary and produce almost no emissions in ordinary operation - should be very difficult to detect by craft until they've wandered deep into the minefield itself.

However, you and CutterJohn have raised some excellent points and I've been devising a completely different system that I'll probably post as a separate suggestion once I've developed the mathematics and diagrams, since the discussion about minefields alone is getting quite involved.

Also, I really like the suggestions for mines that Flatfingers brought up (it's a pretty fun variety) and the idea of space "terrain" that CutterJohn raised earlier, which I think can be incorporated into a suggestion of a different propulsion mechanism for spaceships (among other things).

Commander McLane wrote:That's because Star Trek follows the Space Is An Ocean trope (except for the very few instances where it doesn't).

More simply, they worked in Star Trek because all Star Trek needed to do in order to make something work was to simply say it did indeed work.

A game is required to make something work. Now, obviously a game doesn't have to say why it works. A game needs neither rockets nor magnatism nor pixie dust to move an object. It can just say 'This thing accelerates at X!', and it will because that is how it is programmed.

Still, that is unsatisfying. Its nice to have reasons for the way things work, even if the reasons only exist in a text description and everything else is smoke and mirrors.

This is far better example of magnetic mines in action, actually. (1:30)

There's a lot of mines and it looks silly because it's just in the middle of nowhere and you can seemingly just fly around it.

I was just thinking what form a mine would take, then.. duh. An asteroid. It would just have a shell that looks like a space rock(inflatable? Holographic?), and burst apart and launch whatever it is its hiding if you venture too close. Works even better for the game considering the unrealistically dense concentrations of rocks.

CutterJohn wrote:I was just thinking what form a mine would take, then.. duh. An asteroid. It would just have a shell that looks like a space rock(inflatable? Holographic?), and burst apart and launch whatever it is its hiding if you venture too close. Works even better for the game considering the unrealistically dense concentrations of rocks.

Now that's just horrible...those poor, hardworking miners...

TanC wrote:

CutterJohn wrote:I was just thinking what form a mine would take, then.. duh. An asteroid. It would just have a shell that looks like a space rock(inflatable? Holographic?), and burst apart and launch whatever it is its hiding if you venture too close. Works even better for the game considering the unrealistically dense concentrations of rocks.

Now that's just horrible...those poor, hardworking miners...

Yo dawg, we heard you like mines, so we stuck mines in your belt so your miners mine mines while your miners mine.

Okay, I redeveloped the minefield concept in Positronium Minefield as promised. Electromagnets remain but are used only for generating very short-range fields.

Positronium payloads are one thing but I could totally see a greater variety implementing suggestions that Flatfingers had.

new weapon type...

space dragons

dragons are just damn cool and now, genuine for real bro scientists that have been to a tangible universe and actually passed have discovered actual dragons that fly and live in space, no joke
so now we need a dragon holding cell and launcher
fire these bad boys at the enemy ships and watch em munch down those succkers
total win factor ++