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Post by EshaNas on Sept 25, 2021 18:05:24 GMT
How about "there aren't any"? Well, first of all, we aren't really looking for alien spacecraft, but we are looking for asteroids that could threaten Earth, and I suspect the equipment would've picked an alien spacecraft up. You can't find something that isn't there no matter how hard you look. That said, 30000km isn't that far in space, and a 3m aperture IR telescope would be quite hefty. In practice, stealth in space might be more feasible than we assume. In COADE, each faction has huge telescopes in solar orbit for tracking ship movement, but in case such infrastructure was absent, reflective heatshields and hiding behind celestial bodies could enable, at the very least, some degree of surprise for interplanetary approaches. If you really want aliens to be a thing, just tell yourself they're making an effort to hide from us. With the currently existing infrastructure, it's not hard as long as they're not orbiting Earth (and even then, the Moon provides a convenient hiding place on its far side). Of course, the aliens would have to come from somewhere, and that presents a problem. Interstellar objects are pretty conspicuous and generate a lot of interest from the scientific community. Interstellar drives are massive (what with basically being torchdrives) and rather hard to hide. The aliens would have had to arrive before we started to study the sky with anything more than an optical telescope, over 100 years ago. I really think the most reasonable answer is "there aren't any aliens in our solar system". But they won't be engaging their drives the whole way, most like. They'll get up to a high speed, then cut their engines and coast. I doubt we have telescopes pointed at every star nearby with enough detail to discern ships and their drives, because as well, an interstellar drive would logically also be as efficient as possible. Dirty, massive, but still much smaller than any moon or planet, and we're just barely scratching the ability to see those.
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Post by EshaNas on Oct 9, 2020 0:11:13 GMT
Yes, but the apparent allure of the use of magnets in this design means that unless the ship is accelerating in ludicrous amounts of G, most of the liquid will still be retained, no?
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Post by EshaNas on Oct 6, 2020 0:44:40 GMT
A Curie Point Liquid Droplet Radiator uses some form of liquid metal droplet and magnetism to radiate away heat. The droplets are collected from their pass along the system, ejected out into space, cool off, and come back to the collector due to magnetic attraction. It appears to work akin to a fountain. Are there any downsides to this thing? It looks like it could be placed on any face of a casing/hull. Maybe a magnetic bottle engine might interfere with it, or it has a rather low temperature max?
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Post by EshaNas on Jul 4, 2020 2:52:47 GMT
I noticed this, from Nov '19: toughsf.blogspot.com/2019/11/hypervelocity-macron-accelerators.html The main problem with ion cannons is that they bloom something fierce. True, but what are the alternatives? Laser Cannons are either going to huge mirrors with massive heat waste ontop of a gigantic power bill, relativistic weaponry may not fit on a ship worth being a ship/wear down too much in the case of railguns, missiles may be too slow, easy to shoot down, and massive to lug around, regular bullets may work early on in near earth space with 'slow' ships but not much else elsewhere with 'fast' ships over a hundred thousand KM, and what am I missing? Drones just take the problems onto themselves like a yoke. MASERs seem like a dead end. One needs a weapon for ships that is not massive, not too 'hot', not too powerhungry by itself, and reaches the enemy quickly and with destructive force. Admittedly, even particle accelerators may not impart much force on a target after their flight...what does that leave? Hypersonic kinetics?
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Post by EshaNas on Feb 16, 2020 18:48:01 GMT
Current scanning of the entire visible sphere of the universe around us takes ~4 hours with current observatories. If you had a network of space-based telescopes monitoring everything in multiple spectrums you'd be able to pick out the radiator heat signatures and drive plumes of any ships currently out in space and compare them to emission spectra for known ship classes and propellants. As for intercepting an incoming enemy fleet, the main risk you have striking inside the gulf between planets/asteroids/outposts is that if you lose enough fuel tanks or power, the ship and crew are as good as dead and both are expensive to replace. Drones and missiles are possible alternatives but fly-by-wire would be subject to time delay at extreme distances, you'd either need to give them computers with machine intelligence that could adapt to changes in enemy behavior or adjust trajectories automatically might be required. As for terrestrial defenses the RFP's case in the campaign, their goal is maximum war crimes so you have vehicles like the Siloship which is more built for irradiating ground targets. There's also the issue of time it takes to get to orbit if you're leaving an atmosphere and the threat of being taken out while you're launching. Vehicles like the Orbital Defense Craft and Orbital Attack Craft, or possibly craft like old pre-WWI Coastal Defense Battleships which had heavy armor and weapons but the limited range would be another option. Either way invading a planet or asteroid would be incredibly costly in terms of dV and you wouldn't be getting reinforcements or resupply anytime soon. "Interplanetary War" might just be gunboat diplomacy where you park a heavily armed ship or an equivalent to a WW1/WW2 armored cruiser around your colony or near a rock you want to annex to show that you mean business. You probably wouldn't wind up with Space Jutland or any real slugfests since a swarm of drones firing small arms caliber cartridges at a high enough intercept speed and rate of fire will kill even the heaviest craft created in the game through sheer volume of fire. Exactly, this is basically the conclusion I've come to. Just chuck sand and dust and metal ball bearings at ships you know are coming in a day/week/month, and the threat of them arriving approaches null. Ironically the faster the ship is going, as well, means that they take more damage from incoming particles, and have to waste time and d/v just jinking around - which can be negated by leading the target or just using a lot of scattershot. Interplanetary vessels going toe to toe require one or both sides to basically allow it to happen, and that brings up the question of 'why'. If you see the enemy coming with overwhelming force, just blast them while they're cruising. Of course they can shoot back, but then both sides can just 'stay home' and plink at each other.
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Post by EshaNas on Feb 3, 2020 4:58:33 GMT
Is it as simple as 'I have armed ships coming your way and you can't stop them'? I mean, any interplanetary capable body is also capable of having a full sensor net and computing power to note, log, and track every satellite, spaceship, base, launch, receipt, and even tonnage of everything floating and flying out in space. And attempting to mess with, or destroy, those nets would be an automatic declaration of war, yes?
And even then, any populated planet can just chuck missiles, railguns, coilguns, or lasers (on subs) against any orbiting fleet, there is a massive home advantage unless the attacker is focused on genocide or environmental destruction.
Would war be something much more...'coded'/'honorable'/'gentlemanly' then, sort of like the Flower Wars or the European Westphalian system? "Underhanded" tactics sometimes popped up but it was still more or less regulated.
And even then, there's still the issue of detection; would that just boil down to 'we can bring more mobile assets to bear'? - and then ultimately becomes an issue of production? Especially if reaction mass/fuel for speedy/convienent interplanetary travel is expensive. After all, there's little to nothing stopping one from just picking off a fleet as it cruises through space to your planet, even with antimatter beam cores, 1g acceleration and Brachistochrone trajectories, it's still a trip in the realm of days and weeks.
I don't know, I keep prodding my head about this, and I can't find a sufficient answer. Even chucking in some 'hyperspace/warp' mumble jumble doesn't work well.
Is it analogous to modern naval warfare in a way as well - I mean, every great power or even middling power has radar and sat nets tracking every mobile asset of their adversaries - the Russians and Chinese probably have a damn good inkling of where every American or Euro surface ship is, and vice versa, and modern naval combat among peers is...well, more exists in the realm of books than anything else.
What do ya think?
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Post by EshaNas on Jan 2, 2020 4:54:09 GMT
sigh
Shattered Horizon, too brief was your time with us Have anyone heard about another game based on the same principles of Shattered Horizon, in fact? I'm surprised no-one has touched the formula since. Whats shattered horizon ? A shooter? The moon exploded, I think, causing it to become a huge battlefield for earth.
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Post by EshaNas on Dec 31, 2019 20:24:02 GMT
How would Terra Invicta fare?
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Post by EshaNas on Oct 30, 2019 21:10:24 GMT
I don't know of one that allows me to make tower-spaceships with vertical stacked decks around a Structural Utility Core or uses radiators to any real extent. Space Engineers Well, You can build vertical (and BIG or small ) in Space Engineers just fine, but it is not realistic, nor it tries to be, and so - no radiators, yeah. Wait, really? Well shoot. Maybe my purchase could be dusted off after all.
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Post by EshaNas on Oct 27, 2019 3:58:37 GMT
All these Voxel games... I don't know of one that allows me to make tower-spaceships with vertical stacked decks around a Structural Utility Core or uses radiators to any real extent.
Space Engineers, Avorion, Empyrion - Galactic Survival, and now Starbase....hmm
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Post by EshaNas on Sept 19, 2019 23:32:46 GMT
Also the lack of parts/designability. ? Cosmetically, something more akin to KSP, which is what I sprang from right before COADE. It's a minor thing.
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Post by EshaNas on Sept 19, 2019 2:23:37 GMT
Least Favourite part: the story and human setting. How Earth got mangled felt really contrived and did Earth *need* to be mangled? Like in Orion's Arm or Eclipse Phase, I don't think it needed to be. Also the lack of parts/designability.
Things that urk me: modding was always a wrangle and I gave up a year ago.
Favorite part: BATTLING. ACROSS. SOLSYS. Sure you need a supercomputer to have the whole system at times (but do you really need it? Battles are small tactical things. Solsys is when you need a strategic view, even with torchships). The fact this section of hard scifi exists.
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Post by EshaNas on Sept 19, 2019 2:19:38 GMT
But what does this thermionic emission *do*? Turn the radiator into a spark plug? Is that really something that's a roadblock to radiating?
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KSP 2
Aug 27, 2019 1:11:16 GMT
Post by EshaNas on Aug 27, 2019 1:11:16 GMT
I'm not well versed in any behind-the-scene stuff or even limitations of the base game. I barely played it because my comps can't handle it. By the time of 2 though, I hope to have a better rig.
And I want to basically build ships in space, launch them from space, keep them in space. Interplanetary bases are also a neat addition. The main mods I used were RSS and the interstellar/future tech mods, and that seems to be folded into 2 in a way. So I'm content.
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Post by EshaNas on Aug 13, 2019 0:25:33 GMT
I propose a fleet of dozen-kiloton bucket wheel excavators. Powered via orbital laser beamed power into a target thermal mass attached to Stirling engines with hundred-ton flywheels instead of Seebeck generators and then mechanically or hydraulically driving almost everything instead of electrically. Then we have the control computer inside a meter or more of shielding operating the craft with linear actuators and push/pull rods through pencil sized tubes in the bottom of the shielding. We then have it receive commands from the orbital station via whatever would be the most hardened and least noisy method, the station could send radar topography data for navigation. We then have similarly hardened autonomous dump trucks transporting material from the excavators to subterranean refineries and factories and launch silos. We try to engineer the excavators to have an operational life of ten Earth years or more and when they reach that to return to the factories to be refurbished or if they fail before then you would send your refinery workers on a salvage mission with hardend recovery vehicles transporting them to and from and eva at the salvage site. If there's enough radiation that it physically breaks a hundred-ton flywheel on a simple Stirling engine then I vote we conceed defeat and file this under not possible instead of not a good idea. We come back later with the energy to break the entire moon and mine it as a ring. I mean, it's not like we'll be gunning to colonise the rad-moons anyway. Callisto is fine. Titan is apparently fine. MAUTO - of Uranus - are fine. Triton and Probeus and the like - fine. There's a lot of real estate going around for now out there.
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