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Post by redparadize on Oct 19, 2016 20:09:21 GMT
There is no stealth in space, but... Visibility is still limited by sensor. Sorry for the catchy tread tittle.
This tread is dedicated to the Remote control unit and is a follow on of the discussion started in the capital ship armor tread. Here was my point:
A simple Iphone could do all the computing required to steer space missiles and drones. Probably would be overkill in fact. But the Iphone camera, even with its relatively good resolution, could not see dim and distant object. Its aperture is to small to collect enough light. FLIR, or IR camera, would still need to be quite large to see distant object. Specialty for completely autonomous drones and missiles, as they are often lunched at several thousand Kilometers. For partially autonomous units, like most of modern day missiles, rely on external guidance till their own sensor are in range. That require antenna and safe data-link. At space range, it would get the same problem as sensor: a large diameter antenna would be required to maintain link.
Point is, the 1kg remote control is fine for the 250km battle range. But doubtful for independent units, regardless their size.
What do you think?
(feel free to talk about remote controlled capital ship as well)
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Post by beta on Oct 19, 2016 20:17:59 GMT
childrenofadeadearth.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/sensors-and-countermeasures/Given a detector 10 cm in diameter (reasonable for a drone, missile, or capital ship) looking for visible (550 nm, green) wavelengths, what’s the visual resolution? At 1000 km away (orbital distance, close missile launching distance), each pixel is about 7 m in size. At 100 km away (very long range projectile combat), each pixel is about 70 cm in size. At 10 km away (close range projectile, drone, and laser combat), each pixel is about 7 cm in size. At 1 km away (only missiles about to hit and maybe close ranged drones would ever get this close), each pixel is about 7 mm in size. The concept was that along all armour of your ship, there is a sheet of these sensors. Would be awesome if they were modeled with more granularity so the size/mass/volume could be fiddled with and thus have costs and limitations associated.
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Post by redparadize on Oct 19, 2016 20:29:04 GMT
1000 km is almost combat range in this game. Being able to see does not translate into 3d vector calculation. A pixel that go brighter for a second won't tell you if the target did a burn toward or away from you. In space, a burn of few DV can have huge impact. Larger aperture will give you a much more accurate picture of the maneuver done.
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Post by beta on Oct 19, 2016 20:48:48 GMT
You can use various methods to sample the data over time to get a velocity vector. Yeah, larger apertures are more accurate.
The bigger issue would be of communication in my opinion. Using radio frequencies will quickly result in large antennas or high power requirements. Using lasers will result in limited bandwidth or lots of squishy transmitters on the sending craft. Another facet that would be great to have represented.
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Post by redparadize on Oct 19, 2016 21:28:33 GMT
Yeah, and I would be happy with a approximation, simple enough to be viable gameplay wise. It would be pretty cool to have Remote control separated into two or three kind.
One small for non-autonomous units, limited to fleet and combat scene.
One medium sized, for independent action of long range drone.
One large, that can control sub units and large vessel.
I still have a problem with having 10 capital sized drones with +100 missiles each being controlled by 5 crew. just because they are all launched by a single launcher.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 19, 2016 21:31:58 GMT
Another thing to bear in mind would be the case of an unmanned tanker. Turns out that if you can remove the crew from a tanker craft it works really really well. Mind you these are not really something you carry in a launched but you'd have used the whole way to combat. All they need is the ability to be told to perform x maneuver at y time and when to extend the refueling hose. Everything else doesn't matter as they just are flying gas tanks. I am personally quite a fan of them as I tend to just ditch my tanker craft when they run out of fuel and it would be really silly to man utterly expendable ships.
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Post by beta on Oct 19, 2016 21:33:26 GMT
Why not have the remote control supply a number of "virtual crew points". So, the 1kg remote control has 1.0 crew, the gun on a drone requires 0.3, the radiators 0.1 each, etc.
Larger control modules provide more virtual crew - like expanding the decks/radius of a crew module. Probably would also need to look into power/heat rejection requirements at some point.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 19, 2016 21:38:52 GMT
Why not have the remote control supply a number of "virtual crew points". So, the 1kg remote control has 1.0 crew, the gun on a drone requires 0.3, the radiators 0.1 each, etc. Larger control modules provide more virtual crew - like expanding the decks/radius of a crew module. Probably would also need to look into power/heat rejection requirements at some point. Yeah that would be a good idea. Maybe just take the normal crew requirement for the ship if it was manned and require that many crew on the control ship. You would also want to have some variants of that. Such as a modifier for civilian drones that carry no weapons would have a lower crew requirement and have a scaler that increases proportionally to the dry mass of the ship you are controlling. Such that light weight drones can all be controlled by a few people and same for missiles as they really just need navigation and are otherwise autonomous for combat engagements. And then as ships get bigger and you get to the point of drone cap ship you need more and more crew and beyond a certain point you just need more crew on the command ship than you would need if you just manned the drone to begin with. |
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Post by redparadize on Oct 19, 2016 21:45:05 GMT
beta:
That would be interesting. It would also allow crew substitution, automation if you prefer. The thing is, I don't see why we would bring anything but the minimum crew. Just like in reality.
captinjoehenry:
Yeah, I agree. That would be great.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 19, 2016 21:49:28 GMT
That would be interesting. It would also allow crew substitution, automation if you prefer. The thing is, I don't see why we would bring anything but the minimum crew. Just like in reality. Actually I was more talking about for drones. As it stands QSwitched has made very very good points about keeping star ships manned for a whole host of reasons and as it stands the crew count already is the minimum possible with all automation and everything else because as you said you don't want any more people than you actually need. In all honesty the only reason we can really talk about drone cap ships is that they are fighting very close to the command vessel. For longer range you need to become concerned with lightspeed delay and command and control when planets or space rocks are in the way as I really don't think you'll be able to set up a command and control net around a hostile planet or rock without them disrupting and destroying it. |
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Post by redparadize on Oct 19, 2016 22:02:12 GMT
That would be interesting. It would also allow crew substitution, automation if you prefer. The thing is, I don't see why we would bring anything but the minimum crew. Just like in reality. Actually I was more talking about for drones. As it stands QSwitched has made very very good points about keeping star ships manned for a whole host of reasons and as it stands the crew count already is the minimum possible with all automation and everything else because as you said you don't want any more people than you actually need. In all honesty the only reason we can really talk about drone cap ships is that they are fighting very close to the command vessel. For longer range you need to become concerned with lightspeed delay and command and control when planets or space rocks are in the way as I really don't think you'll be able to set up a command and control net around a hostile planet or rock without them disrupting and destroying it. Sorry, that line was more for Beta. I agree with what you said. About the crew size too. But I would like to have a something between drones and ships. Non independent but crewed ship would be nice. I doubt they would be efficient. Drones are already replacing fighter, but I am not 100% sure they will be completely replaced trough. It would be really nice to have crew/Remote control reworked to simulate the automation/crew dilemma. food for trough... |
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Post by beta on Oct 19, 2016 22:09:41 GMT
You will notice that a good portion of the crew of your spacecraft aren't people pressing buttons, they are maintenance. So, a remotely controlled ship can have significantly less "crew" as you generally aren't going to be performing remote maintenance, at least that appears to be how the game is intended to function.
With that in mind, having remote controls on a crewed ship wouldn't really help except for last ditch fighting effort after battle damage, the crew to run the turrets are dead, so they are automated for example. However, crew cross-training will likely already be a thing, so the radiator technician can monitor the turret algorithms, albeit at a lower efficiency.
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Post by redparadize on Oct 19, 2016 22:56:10 GMT
Yeah, a jack of all trade with a good manual would be able to perform maintenance and be trained for combat duty as well.
While coming back from work. I had a idea (probably have been considered already)
Sensor and antenna should exist separately of crew module/remote control. Sensor have to be external and cannot be heavily armored. I would be fun to be able to design them our self. They would strongly influence how missile, drone and capital ship would be designed. If a nuke destroy all your sensor you would be effectively blind or disabled.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 19, 2016 23:12:00 GMT
Ah about the sensor situation. QSwitched addressed it. Basicly a warships sensors are small enough to not even be noticeable on the surface of the ship and far and away cheap enough to mount a insane number of them for no real cost or mass penalty they can simply be assumed to be there with many of them behind armored shutters to protect them and more than enough replacement ones. And you need to bear in mind that if you have a huge number of small sensors across the whole of your ship then you in effect have an optical sensor as big as your ship. This is how more or less all radio telescopes work and there is no reason at all it can't be applied to all other frequency. In addition it is really easy to set up a whole network of stealthy recon satellites throughout the whole star system which are cheap and very hard to see which constantly provide info to your ships in battle. Here is the article about it from his blog: childrenofadeadearth.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/sensors-and-countermeasures/ |
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foof
New Member
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Post by foof on Oct 20, 2016 0:33:56 GMT
Developing electronic brains is my daily bread and butter  You can get a lot of computational power in 1Kg. Here is a good example: Robot Cups are also a great testing environment for electronic warfare  the auto-focus sensors are hell for everything that is susceptible to IR and the ether is also extremely crowded. This video is a good start to get into the topic of building satellites and controlling stuff in space: So you want to build a satellite? |
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the auto-focus sensors are hell for everything that is susceptible to IR and the ether is also extremely crowded.