Mechanics - addtheletters/space GitHub Wiki

-A big part is information. Tactical information, knowledge of the enemy's plans and comm protocols, how they're obtaining information, where the enemy is, what weaponary they have, are they really hostile, etc, etc. -As such, deception and stealth will play big parts.

Science, PseudoScience, and Space Magic

-I hope to make most of the technology realistic, but I may make some liberties with certain laws of physics that turn out to be too annoying to program right or that I don't know enough about.

-Newton's third law and kinetic weapons: Firing railguns in space makes you go the opposite direction. To compensate or lessen the effect, perhaps we can call on a bit of "space magic"

• or perhaps we make it a mechanic and allow the use of weaponry to help maneuver the craft in emergencies, also the ship is probably more massive than the gun. Perhaps some space magic with fancy recoil absorbing stuff.

-Gravity manipulation: FTL and certain other technologies, like no-kickback kinetic weapons, would be kinda hard without it. I may decide that we've unlocked the secrets to artifical gravity. I would consider this in the "space magic" category unless someone finds me a good explanation. (I'm extracting gravitons out of dark matter!)

-Shields: I hope to make sheilds as realistic as possible. Ideally, they would soak up or deflect a certain amount of fire before collapsing, overheating, or running out of power. Ultra-powered magnetic feilds maybe? See shields below.

• the really cheap captains could try just bolting on additional armor plating

Knowhow and Relations

-Another big mechanic for the eventual RPG element is know-how.

-Your character will develop, learning how to do new things. Don't expect to know how to adapt various technologies easily or use alien tech easily or be able to hack through the enemy's defenses without breaking a sweat (and/or breaking stuff itself), at least at the start.

-Various crew members and software you aquire could increase your "know-how" rating. But be warned of trojan horses and traitors.

-Befriending people! Convince traitors to come over to your side and give you information on your enemies.

-Reverse-engineer trojan horses to feed misinformation to your enemies.

-You may not even have "enemies." As intel and tactical information is so important, enemies are unwilling to enter fights they're sure they'll lose. Make them thing you outnumber them terribly and they might leave or surrender. Or make them think you're on their side by broadcasting friendly IFFs. Or conduct backdoor diplomacy and agree to certain terms. Just beware of backstabbing or gung-ho idiots who think they can beat a fleet 10 times the size of theirs.

Gravity, Misc

-Gravity. Planets, large objects, gravity manipulation devices.

-Preservation of momentum. It's space. Think about it.

-FTL travel. Combat jumping? The ability to use jumping as a way of accelerating objects to insane speeds. Speed counts. Things with lots of speed can do a lot. (slamming an FTL ship into a planet would cause... problems)

-Gravitational manipulation: cause gravitational disturbances. Alter the mass of your ship, or probes, or missiles, to take advantage of them. Cool stuff.

-Paying attention could be vital. Enemies could take out a drone of yours and replace it with one of theirs, feeding you misinformation. If you missed the lapse in signal being sent you could be unaware of this for a while. You could obtain monitoring programs or AIs that would assist you in detecting stuff like this.

-They could also hack into your drone if it is broadcasting unsecurely or they manage to come in contact with it physically and turn it against you. Prolly not good.

-Damage control? Various systems could become damaged by weapons, overheating, enemy cyberwarfare, sabotoge by traitors aboard you ship. You could repair them, or order your crew to, or have automated procedures take care of it. Damage could cause systems to become unusable. Not everything can be repaired if neither you nor any of your crew nor any of your repair protocols have the know-how to do so.

-Fuel/Drive cores: I prolly won't do much with fuel. I don't want fear of running out of fuel to be a really big concern. Drive cores I might do something with: I have to explain FTL jumps somehow. Not sure wether to do drive cores, or reactors that provide power for everything. Different weapons and propulsion systems may need different kinds of power or other vital cores.

-You could also prolly convert most large energy cores into Improvised Explosive Devices, if you have the know-how or someone on your crew does.

-You'd just need some kind of way to get to where you want after you do that... or be willing to sacrifice whatever that core was providing power for

-Antimatter? Matter-antimatter annihilation engines? Seems like a good idea. Maybe a space equivalent of nitro.

Heat

-Ship systems, drive core, reactors, and engines probably make a lot of heat. If you don't let it out, eventually you'll burn up.

-Heat sinks could let you travel without letting out heat for certain periods of time, but they'll eventually overload and blow up or stop working if you put too much pressure on them.

-Heat emissions will be one of the primary ways to track people. Hulls could be designed to let off lots of IR heat emissions if one doesn't care about detection and wants to be able to lose heat quickly in firefights, or designed to trap in as much heat as possible to reduce the ranges at which they can be accurately tracked.

-Certain systems or diving into planet atmospheres may allow you to dump or gather heat.

Missiles

-This means missiles will go faster if you are going faster when you launch them

-Missiles have acceleration. They don't just go at the same speed.

-Missiles are.. fast. Have you seen an RPG, IRL?

-Missiles need to know where their target is to track it. This means the missile needs either passive or active scanners and sensors, or will need to be in constant communication with something that does know the position of the target. (see comms webs)

-The enemy needs to detect the missiles to be able to shoot them down.

-Decoy missiles? Things that move really fast but don't cost as much XD

Shields

-Shielding will need a feasible explanation, not just "IT'S A SHEILD IT JUST BLOCKS ALL DAMAGE CAUSE I SAY SO"

-Gravitational barrier shielding

-Electromagnetic field shielding

-Shields should still be balanced, having either limited duration, only protecting against certain things, or breakable through constant pressure.

Weapons

-Mass accelerator cannons -Prolly the "bread and butter" of weapons. Can be stopped by gravitational shielding and maybe advanced electromagnetic shielding tho -Involves throwing objects at very high speeds. May have something to do with gravitational manipulation or maybe just magnets. -Would prolly be more affective against ablative armor than, say, lasers

-Lasers. Less effective at long ranges, due to not 100% focused rays and standard dispersion factors. -Lasers would prolly be best for close combat knife-fighting or taking down missiles and fighters. -Then again, I plan on making missiles pretty fast. AI targeting would prolly be worth investing in ;)

-Ablative armor: works well against lasers. Maybe not so much vs cannons.

-DEWs: Particle beams? Shielding might work with them differently to lasers.

-Plasma weapons? Prolly would work kinda like mass accelerators, or maybe be more heat-based for damage.

-EMPs? Perhaps for area-denial purposes, can affect some unprotected ship-board electronics? -Bombs? Ah the good ol' bombs, maybe those can be brought aboard by boarding parties. Various kinds, the conventional stuff a la TNT? the expensive nuclear variety, and makeshift bombs like a reactor or ftl drive (a la Halo 1 and Reach)

-"C-fractional bombardment" with gravity manipulation >:)

-Different missile payloads -Different missile thrusters (and ship thrusters? Maybe if you have the know-how you can repurpose thrusters for different things)

-Different weapon mounts -"Spinal" weapons: Built into the ship, can only fire in certain direction(s) -Turret weapons

Scanners, information, comms, cyberwarfare

-Active scanners: Send out signals in some way to hope for returns, can cause you to be detected by passive receivers

-Passive sensors: Attempts to formulate picture of surroundings using incoming data like ambient light, heat, gravitational signatures

-Comms: Broadcasts. Can reveal position, perhaps to passive sensors, can be coded to certain frequencies. Location of receiver/sender not required to establish contact

-Comms: Tightbeam. Very unlikely to reveal position, can also have coding. Location of at least receiver needed to establish contact

-Comms can transmit data, like sensor and scanner information and coding/encryption protocols. Can also be used for cyberwarfare. -You could uncover certain factions' comms protocols through information brokers and such. -However they prolly also have some other kind of encryption which you may need computing power to break through.

-Jamming. Interferes with active scans or passive sensors, can help mitigate targeting of missiles or other weapons systems, can interfere with comms

-Comms tapping: If you have someone's encryption protocols and they are broadcasting you can tap into their comms for their sensor data and other information -If they are using tightbeam comms, you'd have to get a receiver INSIDE the beam, or have some advanced sensor array

-Comms Webs. Due to various weapons systems needing enemy positions and scanning having a high chance of revealing your position, you may have a complicated web of comm signals to wade through with scanner drones sending info via tightbeam to missiles and decoy drones pretending to be missiles and yeah.

-Hacking / Cyberwarfare: Direct physical connection or comms / network protocols of targets required. If they are passively accepting broadcasts it might be possible to exploit them.

-Stealth systems could hide emissions, ambient reflections, or even grav signatures with highly advanced ones -Active scanners could prolly root out lower teir stealth systems but maybe not higher teir ones

Sensor types?

-LADAR active scans

-IR heat emissions sensors

-Ambient EM reflection sensors

-Occlusion / Light blockage sensors

-raaaaaaadio?

Probes, drones, decoys

-Probes and drones. You could send them out with different goals: armed with weaponary, jamming, sensors, act as decoys, comm bouys, or to latch on to enemies and attempt cyberwarfare to aquire their comms protocols, general data, or attempt to shut down various systems.

-Certain drones would require a comms connection to function, and you would certainly need a comms conection to command them to do stuff. If you know how you could program them to do stuff automatically, and then a comms system may or may not be needed. They could feasibly transmit data to your ship via tightbeam without the ship needing to send data to them

-If an enemy captures one of your drones and it does not have proper self-destruct protocols they could learn your comms protocols or even develop countermeasures to your cyberwarfare systems.

-Send out decoys with emissions matching those of other ships, or broadcasting on certain comms frequencies. Fake out opponents into thinking people are there who really aren't.

-Because scanning is likely to reveal your position, you could send out a drone equipped with a scanner, data-linked to your ship via tightbeam comms. Use the drone to scan, revealing the drone's position, but not yours.