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Original post by Talroth Second, stealth is going to be king in space

Stealth in space? I don't quite understand how that would work.

Maybe with metamaterials :
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections≻=telecom&id=18292&a=

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Original post by Shakedown Quote: Original post by Talroth Second, stealth is going to be king in space Stealth in space? I don't quite understand how that would work.

the same way it works in aircraft,

coat the ship with a material that absorbs radar and inferred, for more fun release tons of decoys into space like a pod that would spam fake radar signatures or a cloud of iron filing,

now all of a sudden shooting a laser from 100,000 KM doesn't seem very practical

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Original post by Shakedown Quote: Original post by Talroth Second, stealth is going to be king in space Stealth in space? I don't quite understand how that would work.

How does stealth in the Air work? By making it hard to detect you by active means. Same thing still applies in Space. You take a B2 and put it out by Mars, and it still is going to be hard to pick up on radar.

Now, since it is so far away, it is also going to be even harder to detect.

Remember, space is BIG. Like, REALLY big. Now, we all know that things that get far away look really small, so, put a very small object very far away, and good luck finding it.

Ever seen Mimas? A moon in our solar system. Its kind of big, a 400km or so wide ball of highly reflective material. Now, try to find a 500m long thing that doesn't want to be found.

As for the sound in space, I always figured you could get something similar to Star Trek sounds from mapping light to sound. Have cameras watching around your ship and when they see light of a certain modulation, they trigger sound in your cockpit of a certain modulation. Big dull ships make big dull sounds, bright lasers make 'bright' sounds.

As for the fun combat gameplay, how about making defense complex and effective? The only reason real combat gets real deadly real quick is because we suck at defense. One torpedo and our ships are out of the game. Get creative with your defenses. Anti-laser mirror drones orbiting your ship? Sure! Missle countering missles? Why not! Plasma shields? A must! Decoys, flares, hollow asteroids, jamming, dust clouds, etc. And this is all off the top of my head; if you really thought about it for a while, you could come up with pages I'm sure.

Good luck with the game and keep us informed. I've always loved space combat games.

-Koobs

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As for the sound in space, I always figured you could get something similar to Star Trek sounds from mapping light to sound. Have cameras watching around your ship and when they see light of a certain modulation, they trigger sound in your cockpit of a certain modulation. Big dull ships make big dull sounds, bright lasers make 'bright' sounds.

Using sound this way is realistic. They are experimenting with audio interfaces to computers. The computer issues particular sounds (and with positional speakers they can issue the sounds from specific directions too) for certain events. It is not a big step to used this same kind of system to indicate where an obejct is and what it is. In a way they do this aready with the "pings" of target lock and collision alarms in planes.

So, why not have the ship board computer use sounds to indicate certain events going on around the ship. If the sensors pick up a high energy burst (and explosion) then it wil play and explosion sound coming form that direction to inform the pilot that an explosion occurred.

All you need is a throw away line like: "Sounds are simulated to aid the pilot (player) in assesing the battle space."

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Stealth in space? I don't quite understand how that would work.

It would be all about response times. If you could get an attack off before the enemy could respond to it, then the attack will likely be successful. IF they detect you first, then you will be the one being attacked.

Space is big, and it is hard to spot something small, black and sensor (radar) absorbing. Coupled with Decoys (small, disposable, autonomous probes) you could aproach a target and attack with little time for response on their part.

THere are many asteroids that pass by Earth. We have radar and telescopes searching for them all the time. However, even though ewe do detect some of them, a lot go undetected and many that are detected have actually past us by before we even know they are there. In the last decade there have been several (3 or 4 IIRC) large asteroids that have passt between the Earth and the Moon and we didn't even know that they were there until they had long since past us by.

This is with teams of astronomers, hundreds of hobbiest asteroid hunters and billions of dollars worth of sensing equipment all over the world activly looking for such objects!

This question got me to pull out one of Steve Gallacci's "Albedo" comics. In that setting, ships seem to operate in something like a naval combat style, putting a screen of small vehicles and warheads between them and the enemy. From Issue 2 (2005 Mar):

"Autonomous Combat Vehicle. Taking the roles of the individual fighter craft, attack or reconnaissance drone, or bombardment weapon, these fusion-powered-craft... are usually fitted with either a warhead, beam weapon, or smaller missiles... With on board AI, it can manage its own tactics..."

For a realistic sim then, I'd expect slower-than-light flight with heavy reliance on scouts that reach the enemy before your actual ship. If fuel is limited, then ships should rely on "gravity slingshot" techniques within star systems and have poor ability to maneuver in open space. Vernor Vinge's novel "Singularity Sky" points out that if a civilization with this strategy has nanotechnology, they're likely to eat enemy ships. The level of available AI also determines whether you can have a sentient autonomous vehicle the size of a soda can, which makes lumbering battleships less useful.

For gameplay purposes, you could have the player control that swarm of ACVs ahead of the crewed ship. Doing that would let the player control stuff with high speeds and lots of explosions (picture a swarm of bullets whipping around a planet and using the last of their fuel to aim at the enemy), which would be more fun than playing a captain twiddling his thumbs aboard the main ship.

But if you're doing a game that involves FTL travel, then the feel of combat is going to depend on how you're justifying the FTL. Some technologies like stargates or fixed "jump routes" would encourage ships to travel along predictable paths, making encounters more likely. Hyperspace could have its own physics that just happen to resemble close-in 2D combat with limited speeds. One approach is to figure out what you want the combat to be like, then make up the technology to fit.

If you haven't played "Star Control 2" (now freely released as "The Ur-Quan Masters"), then you should definitely do so. Not realistic at all, but very fun.