Alien Technology and their Effects

Discuss the developement of the story and the universe of Orxonox.

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nicolasc
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Alien Technology and their Effects

Post by nicolasc » Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:48 pm

The more I start thinking about the story, the less I can fit the ASSF as human-alien-hybrid into it.

- If the alien technology appeared in a later stage of the history, why do the other fraction not have access to it.
- If we use the "Roswell Incident" as an excuse, it the ship then advanced enough to still relevant in the game - or do we turn it into a mostly alien ship?
- Or a program was started (to incorporate some alien technology found somewhere), a few prototypes we build, but they were so powerful that it was an unanimous decision to stop it. By doing so, all evidence, records, notes and whatever else was related to it, should be destroyed, that nobody could every build anything that alike...

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Post by beni » Mon Jan 14, 2008 4:21 pm

Why not base it on alien artifacts with unknown origin, found by one of the government? We could even tell the story of people who find other artifacts but disappeared shortly after they went public with it.
Of course those artifacts are put into existence by the Asheroc intensionally and the governments found out about the strong power, keeps it secret and tries to build secret ships used for special applications. The government is also interested in nobody else finding out about the mighty artifacts and therefore obtain any artifact found anywhere. Of course they cannot leave evidence or witnesses and therefore have to make the original finders disappear.
This would come closest to your third point.
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Post by nicolasc » Mon Jan 14, 2008 4:36 pm

I know, why I did not come up with that idea...
The other day, we were talking about using artefact/alien-tech to upgrade ships. What stops any fraction (esp the government for that matter) from stripping your ship for possession of "illegal" hardware.
Or did the military try to control/contain those artifacts, but failed after spacetravel became day to day business...

I just try to keep the story as water tight as possible... I don't want to be force to abandon half of it, because it is not logical...
And I don't want the military to become to powerful, otherwise the universe would become a little one-sided.

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Post by beni » Mon Jan 14, 2008 5:00 pm

Alright, then let's say, that the Asheroc didn't want to let any random factor destroy their plan and they gave it to a certain government, wrongly over estimating the weakness of the government. So some technology leaked out to members of other factions.
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Post by beni » Thu Jan 31, 2008 12:48 pm

I'd like to discuss about some human technology as well. Especially what the humans researched themselves and what they copied or added from alien technology.
Here a few technologies I'd like to discuss

Artificial Gravity
Do humans have the means to generate a gravitational field?
More mature universes from novels and movies use rotating ships to generate gravity from centripetal force.
Which one should we use for the humans/aliens and where did they gain the knowledge from?

Lasers
A laser is pure light with a certain frequency and intensity, measured as waves or photons. Laser shots won't look like what we know from all the games and movies in reality, because they should move with the speed of light which is instantaneous for our eyes.
This means, that if we take reality serious, all the shots in the games must have a mass and the energy weapons are all kinds of particle accelerators.

Hyperspace
What about hyperspace? Where did the humans got the technology from and how does hyperspace work in our universe? Do we even have something like hyperspace?
My explanation for the Asheroc jump-gate was a bending in 3D-space so that two points in 3D could be closer in a higher dimension. This is used by the Asheroc to bring those two points together. There must be one device in 3D space which connects to a arbitrary point in 3D space through a higher dimension to open a gate, which has to be stabilized. Traveling through this gate results in instantaneous travel between two 3D points which are very far apart.
A plot point in the early story of Orxonox was, that the Asheroc device, which helps the humans to escape from the Noxons, is damaged and that the connection loses its 4D consistency (meaning that the time and space shifts). The human ships traveling through the gate appear in another time and place than intended.

I'm sure there are more things to discuss, but these are the things which came to my mind the last few days.
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Post by nicolasc » Thu Jan 31, 2008 2:41 pm

I like your tesseact-generator idea... But it also remind me of a stargate.
Meanwhile it also leaves the option open to use timetravel in the story, which is quite interesting, but it causes some serious headache to avoid or cleanly resolve paradoxes.

@Lasers: well, that is the normal solution to that problem. And I think we should follow that.
BTW: I prefer to have pulse based weapons over beam weapons - at least on smaller craft, like the average player ship.

AG has to be discussed... Another possibility would that the more advanced (military) installations are already equipped with AG-generators, while older ones or ones with little money/profit are still rely on rotation.

Fuel Types and Engines
I mention that there will be multiple engine types available. I was wondering if we should couple those engines to a specific type of fuel - i.e afterburner fuel, jump fuel et all - or just keep it simple, and those engines get powered by the main reactor of the ship.

Power Generators
It goes more or less hand in had with the above subject. What kind or reactors are available, and with what will they be fueled. and in second stage, is this fuel limited and how pricey is a refill...
Personally I would used fusion reactors as main powersource, and some solar panels as auxiliary of backup source for larger (or older) stations. And to simplify the life of the Player, there will be always enough deuterium in his tank, so he has not to worry about it. - We could use this as an excuse why no more powerful reactor can be installed/upgraded in a ship - that it simply uses to much fuel.

Environmental System and Recycling
Mainly thing about larger stations - maybe ships - and how their ecosystem works. Do they have some sort of water and air recycling? or do they get a refill every month/year?
Assume they operate autonomous, what happens if those system fail? How long does they air support last...

Modular station design
though it does not really belong here, I think this is simple way to create a large variety of station without the need of modeling every one of them. and thinking of that, it might be easier to just assume that AG-generators have already been developed.


These are just some undeveloped ideas.... I'd like to hear your input.

cheers
nico
Last edited by nicolasc on Thu Jan 31, 2008 2:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by x3n » Thu Jan 31, 2008 2:49 pm

beni wrote: Artificial Gravity
Do humans have the means to generate a gravitational field?
More mature universes from novels and movies use rotating ships to generate gravity from centripetal force.
Which one should we use for the humans/aliens and where did they gain the knowledge from?
I just want to pick out that point: I really liked the gravity in Prey (FPS), maybe some of you played it too (I think patrick did). Some sort of gravity pads whereon the player could stay without falling down or flying away, all around the floor, the walls, the ceiling (well, it's all relative). There was no logic explanation for it, but it didn't looked misplaced. We could implement something similar in orxonox.

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Post by beni » Thu Jan 31, 2008 3:16 pm

nicolasc wrote:I like your tesseact-generator idea... But it also remind me of a stargate.
Meanwhile it also leaves the option open to use timetravel in the story, which is quite interesting, but it causes some serious headache to avoid or cleanly resolve paradoxes.
Well, we could of course also rely on a complete new idea of FTL travel, like Hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy.
The time travel is of course not a must, and I also think that we should not focus on it. Paradoxes may be solved by easily not letting anything else happen than what the player experienced in an earlier mission.
Future changing a la "Back to the Future" is not a cool idea in my opinion. Also possible would be the occurrence of paradoxes without anybody noticing. This means that if you kill a enemy which would later kill somebody which came with you to the past, this somebody would appear and everybody would act as if he was there all the time. But this may be a bit confusing for the player :D.
nicolasc wrote:@Lasers: well, that is the normal solution to that problem. And I think we should follow that.
BTW: I prefer to have pulse based weapons over beam weapons - at least on smaller craft, like the average player ship.
I agree with this and it would have been my suggestion for a solution to that problem.
nicolasc wrote: AG has to be discussed... Another possibility would that the more advanced (military) installations are already equipped with AG-generators, while older ones or ones with little money/profit are still rely on rotation.
AG gives the designers of space stations more freedom.
I could live with your suggestion. Like this we wouldn't have to throw away older models without rotation and make them newer stations with AG. Still, we will have to discuss where the technology came from.
x3n wrote:I just want to pick out that point: I really liked the gravity in Prey (FPS), maybe some of you played it too (I think patrick did). Some sort of gravity pads whereon the player could stay without falling down or flying away, all around the floor, the walls, the ceiling (well, it's all relative). There was no logic explanation for it, but it didn't looked misplaced. We could implement something similar in orxonox.
Yeah I know what you mean. Haven't played it yet, but I really liked the idea of the portals and gravity pads. With artificial gravitation fields this would be possible. So.. why not?

@Engines: I would be happy with a central power source. Delays in the jump drive could always be explained with reloading and buffering of energy. Also using this to limit reactor sizes and stuff are good ideas.
nicolasc wrote:Environmental System and Recycling
Mainly thing about larger stations - maybe ships - and how their ecosystem works. Do they have some sort of water and air recycling? or do they get a refill every month/year?
Assume they operate autonomous, what happens if those system fail? How long does they air support last...
Haven't thought about this yet. I think a self-contained station would be quite cool, but it would have to be quite a big one. I've seen quite a lot of ideas about air recycling, but I'm not really satisfied with any of them.

What about life preserving mechanisms? If the humans travel really far, do they sleep all frozen or do they have to live through it and may even get children which later have to control the ship?
nicolasc wrote:Modular station design
though it does not really belong here, I think this is simple way to create a large variety of station without the need of modeling every one of them. and thinking of that, it might be easier to just assume that AG-generators have already been developed.
Good idea, but I don't know how we could achieve it. Python scripts in Blender or random combination of parts mounted by mountpoints?[/quote]
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Post by nicolasc » Thu Jan 31, 2008 3:36 pm

Good idea, but I don't know how we could achieve it. Python scripts in Blender or random combination of parts mounted by mountpoints?
I am open to any suggestion... The idea comes once more form Freelancer, but there you could see how the stations were patched together. We need to do this better!

What about life preserving mechanisms? If the humans travel really far, do they sleep all frozen or do they have to live through it and may even get children which later have to control the ship?
I haven't thought that far, but I would make it dependent on the kind of propulsion is available.
I could live with your suggestion. Like this we wouldn't have to throw away older models without rotation and make them newer stations with AG. Still, we will have to discuss where the technology came from.
I would suggest that the humans themselves started to experiment in that direction as the started to colonize the moon. The idea of the project was to create a gravity enhancer to allow earth gravity on the moon. the same technology was refines and later on used in the mars mission. Due to some breakthrough they discovered a possibility to create AG. (or it was some byproduct of the aegis array on moon - reminder: the aegis array was created to divert asteroid, that they do not crash with earth)
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Post by beni » Wed Mar 26, 2008 12:11 pm

I thought about general story development and figured that we could introduce hyperspace technology when the Asheroc are becoming interesting.

Our ship would not be able to leave the region around a planet all alone but would need a fairy. This fairy would transport ships and goods from one planet to another. With this we can control the players area of action to a small one and force the player to stay where we would like him to.
Only later in the game hyperspace gates and/or drives are introduced by the Asheroc when it becomes important to travel longer distance (probably outside of Sol). It would solve problems with the question where the Humans got the technology from and even brings in new features later in the game which even help the game mechanism.
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Post by nicolasc » Wed Mar 26, 2008 4:18 pm

hmm... but this would make it harder to introduce pirates in some uninhabited areas, such as the asteroid belt.

about fairy: are you really thinking of elves (or other magical creatures)? I think the word you were looking for is ferry.
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Post by beni » Wed Mar 26, 2008 4:44 pm

nicolasc wrote:hmm... but this would make it harder to introduce pirates in some uninhabited areas, such as the asteroid belt.

about fairy: are you really thinking of elves (or other magical creatures)? I think the word you were looking for is ferry.
Damn, once I don't look up a word and then it's totally wrong written :D. Of course I meant ferry. Stupid homophones.

Those ferries can be just bigger ships, which can be obtained or at least rented in a later state. Those pirates in the outer rim of civilization will depend on their own ferries and bigger ships or on traders with bigger ones.

How would you restrict the player? Technology-wise?
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Post by nicolasc » Wed Mar 26, 2008 5:15 pm

Monetary restrictions: the player does not have enough money to buy a engine that is capable of traveling that fast, and a fuel cell to travel that far on his own...

Or that hyperspace works on some navigation-buoys, and the player gets access to them one by one, through some missions, or by buying them, or by traveling the on his own - takes long, and is more or less the d2 way....

But to be honest, I do not have a good idea.

cheers
nico
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