Wyrdysm Games

Well, they're not clear and they're not simple. Most of the time, the reason they work is that the operator has some crazy trackball skills. Yes, trackball.

Trackballs make sense for a thing that might at some point in it's operation have to deal with nearby explosions.

Skrim wrote:No, you can modify your PD weapons to be more accurate if you want. And point beams are fail-proof dead-on accurate.

..............

You could make your plasma weapons, yes, but as I have already said, just about everything else would work better and do more damage for the amount of energy spent.

Oh, I understand that you can make everything super-accurate when you make custom stuff. I'm just referring to how the vanilla content works, since thats what I assume is the depiction the game is going for. Subsequently, ship designers will have to follow that depiction if they want to make balanced things. Personally, I'd set it up so ships fired a lot more shots, but also fired a lot more point defense. But I guess at that point we'd have to worry about lag with so many shots onscreen at once, as well as things just being confusing.

As for the plasma weapons, I acknowledged that there are probably simpler ways to do the same amount of damage. Plasma anything is just kinda odd, as far as weapons goes.

th15 wrote:I never actually fleshed it out, but the conceptualization for the graphical style of the game is that it's an enhanced image that is displayed on the tactical display in the CIC of your flagship. This accounts for beams and the glowy ships. Also it's plausible that the tactical display compresses distances into a useful representation, since Newtonian motion has very little meaning if not taken in relation to other moving objects.

Ah... okay, yeah, I can live with that.

Though I'm still bothered by the walls of asteroids we seem to encounter, even at supposedly reduced scales.

I've gotta hand it to you, the idea of having it represent the CiC of a ship is pretty good. I've been in an American frigates CiC and I have got to tell you. I was very disappointed. Their 200 million dollar systems run on windows 2000?!?

th15 wrote:crazy trackball skills. Yes, trackball.

What's wrong with trackballs? I use a trackball all the time, and it works fine for me. Even in FPSs I'm better with a (good) trackball than a mouse. Too bad they aren't sold anymore, at least not where I live. My old one is starting to get worn out.

Back-ish on topic: in my imagination there's a really simple explanation for the lasers:

Years of interstellar travel and war took their toll on the universe: space is no longer emty. Each interesting place is covered in exhaust gasses and dust. Just enough to make the hight powered lasers visible to the naked eye, but not enough to block them completely.

Though charged hermitian annihilation beams sound cool too.

interesting theory, but for it to even be faintly visible you would have to have an ungodly amount of debris. I find it more likely that the lasers spectrum interferes with the ever-present DARK MATTER. similar to what electricity does to neon. And since the laser is coherent, the light effect is confined to a relatively small area.

It doesn't work like that, sorry. You could take your biggest fleets of ships, grind the entirety of each ship into dust, and spread it across one 'interesting place', and it'd still be close enough to a vacuum to not make a difference.

duestchland1 wrote:interesting theory, but for it to even be faintly visible you would have to have an ungodly amount of debris. I find it more likely that the lasers spectrum interferes with the ever-present DARK MATTER. similar to what electricity does to neon. And since the laser is coherent, the light effect is confined to a relatively small area.

Well, we've already shot electromagnetic beams of various frequency through space. No such effect occurs. It's not like we've never tried lasers in outer space. Just not weapon-grade ones.

Also, on the topic of dark matter: dark matter isn't some singular thing or type of material. Terms in science like "dark matter" and "dark energy" are just another way of saying "shit we haven't seen yet." Once we actually see and study a new form of matter, it won't be called dark matter. It will be called whatever we decide to name it then. And that won't suddenly eliminate dark matter either. It will remain everything else we haven't discovered yet.

To put things into perspective: based on our current gravitational model of the universe, there is currently 97% of the energy and matter in the universe that is unobserved and unaccounted for. We have a LOT to learn.

That, or our model is wrong.

Darlos9D wrote:It's not like we've never tried lasers in outer space. Just not weapon-grade ones.

Weapon-grade lasers on earth didn't show much dark matter. I guess it won't be much different in space.

Darlos9D wrote:shit we haven't seen yet.

Well, that isn't really true. It's "shit we haven't really seen yet, but something must exist or our theory is bork". So in a way it has already been detected through it's gravitational field, and some of it's parameters are known. Other shit we haven't seen yet is called Higg's Boson or something.

Maybe you should abandon terrestrial knowledge and logic in space since said terrestrial knowledge and logic has yet to put humans beyond the moon?

Aaganrmu wrote:Well, that isn't really true. It's "shit we haven't really seen yet, but something must exist or our theory is bork".

I believe I made that clear myself:

Darlos9D wrote:To put things into perspective: based on our current gravitational model of the universe, there is currently 97% of the energy and matter in the universe that is unobserved and unaccounted for. We have a LOT to learn. That, or our model is wrong.

D00D! wrote:Maybe you should abandon terrestrial knowledge and logic in space since said terrestrial knowledge and logic has yet to put humans beyond the moon?

...... wat?

Darlos9D wrote: ...... wat?

Aka, you can't use modern science (or anything to come in the next few years) to explain space exploration since we haven't even develop the proper technolodgy to send humans past the moon yet. We either have to use vastly radical or hypotherical concepts (which would take decades to prove) to really be able to understand effective and pratical space travel.

Darlos9D wrote:Oh, I understand that you can make everything super-accurate when you make custom stuff. I'm just referring to how the vanilla content works, since thats what I assume is the depiction the game is going for. Subsequently, ship designers will have to follow that depiction if they want to make balanced things. Personally, I'd set it up so ships fired a lot more shots, but also fired a lot more point defense. But I guess at that point we'd have to worry about lag with so many shots onscreen at once, as well as things just being confusing.

Well, one way to think about point defense guns that are inaccurate is the way flares work for distracting heat-seeking missiles: lots of points to potentially lock onto that "Isn't Me."

D00D! wrote:

Darlos9D wrote: ...... wat?

Aka, you can't use modern science (or anything to come in the next few years) to explain space exploration since we haven't even develop the proper technolodgy to send humans past the moon yet. We either have to use vastly radical or hypotherical concepts (which would take decades to prove) to really be able to understand effective and pratical space travel.

Don't be a fucking idiot, D00D. For the most part our understanding of space is fucking sound. We do have the technology to send humans past the moon. We just haven't, 'cause it's motherfucking expensive. Don't say "science doesn't understand it". The truth is, scientists for the most part understand it plenty. YOU don't understand it.

Besides, the tech required to send people way past mars within reasonable time has existed since the 60s, Project Orion and whatnot.