Blockade Runner ship class

[geoschmo]

How does this sound for an idea. From what little I know about hull types I think it would be doable.

Leave the escort class that you start out with alone, then as you advance in ship construction tech, say level 3, along with the destroyer hull you discover an "enhanced escort" class hull. This would be the same size as a normal escort hull, but with the added abilities.

You could even advance it gradually. At level 3 say the enhanced escort gets +1 speed and some supply capacity, at level 4 a new escort class with +2 speed and more supply cap.

Explain it as better shipbuilding techniques allowing stronger structures with less mass in materials giving them more acceleration from the same engine power.

(Someone with more physics knowledge than me will have to tell me if thrust to weight ratio is applicable to to ships operating in a vacuum. )

Geo

[DirectorTsaarx]

quote:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:
(Someone with more physics knowledge than me will have to tell me if thrust to weight ratio is applicable to to ships operating in a vacuum. )
Geo

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Well, technically it's a thrust to _mass_ ratio, since weight is mass * gravity (well, technically it's acceleration due to gravitational attraction, not "gravity", but why nitpick that much?) & there's not much gravitational attraction going on in deep space.

Anyway, the point is, thrust to mass ratio definitely has an effect, no matter how much or how little gravitational attraction is being exerted on the mass. After all, momentum and energy are functions of mass. To go a step further, the idea of thrust is that it expends energy to create an acceleration (i.e., change in velocity, which applies to changes in speed, direction, or both); that acceleration, when acting upon a mass, causes the mass to change velocity.

All right, now I'M confused. What the heck was I talking about?

[Nitram Draw]

That's definately do-able Geo and sounds like a great idea.
I used to build only 2 escorts each game, my first two scouts. After I got Destroyers I never built a smaller ship. Since I added speed and combat move to the smaller hulls I use them a lot more, as capture ships, sensor ships, fast supply ship etc. They still tend to lose some of their usefulness after everyone has DN's but in my current game, turn 300 or so, I still have them in action.
It's also a pretty easy mod and I think the AI would use them even if the increases were gradual. I modded all mine from the start so the AI doesn't have many problems using them, although they could vary their designs a little more. I wish I knew more about modding the AI ship building, I botch it every time

[Happy_Dau]

I recently had the idea for the following:

How about making all Ship Classes (the standard ones) available from the start. Escort would stay normal but all other ships would take HUGE amouts of resources to build. I mean really huge. So you COULD build a Battlecruiser but it would take several years to be completed.
Advanced levels in Ship Construction would make either the next ship (lvl 2: frigate, lvl 3: destroyer, ect.) cheaper (normal cost) or make all hulls a little bit cheaper.

This would have worked extremly well for SE3 since ships were build OUTSIDE the ship yard. This could prove interesting:
Empire A begins construction of a really HUGE Ship that would surely devastate EMPIRE B. Now Empire B could break the defense lines and directly head for the space yard the colosss is built and destroy it before it's done. Well, in SE4 the ships are contructed INSIDE the Space yard, making it necessary to destroy the space yard. Could prove difficult if it's built on the homeworld.

That was just an idea and I will test it out as soon as I got some time again...

MfG Happy_Dau

[murx]

What was the discussion with mass, acceleration, gravity ?
To give you a clue, The Enterprise class ships from Star Trek would probably depart in three different directions when going warp, both gondles accelerate to warpspeed and the main body would just stay where it was cause the mere force of accelerating just at the outer edge of the structure would rip the lightweight gondles from their 'thin' attaching structures. Either you have the main body of the mass directly in front of the drive (but then you should try to accelerate relative slow else the front part of the ship would look like you drove it against a wall) or you have a superstructure that can withstand the acceleration. But putting the mass in front of the drive gives less trouble and need for high grade materials.
But there is also another thing to obey even without acceleration the mass of the ship itself will form a gravitational force on itself. So if you have a metal staff 1cm thick and more then a kilometer long the staff will twist and turn and break due to its own gravitational force. To counter this you need to shape a form that is balanced - easiest way is a spherical ship. But again this is gets only really important within a gravitational field or at a considerable size and mass of the ship.

murx

[rdouglass]

quote:

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Originally posted by murx:
...The Enterprise class ships from Star Trek would probably depart in three different directions when going warp, both gondles accelerate to warpspeed and the main body would just stay where it was cause the mere force of accelerating just at the outer edge of the structure would rip the lightweight gondles from their 'thin' attaching structures...

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Not to get too picky, but what about their "Integrity Field" and "Inertial Dampeners"???

[nerfman]

Gravitational forces would not have much of an effect on a ship unless it was really huge, and even then the forces would be static and not actually change during acceleration (at least if you only consider the problem in non-relativistic terms). The bottom line is that unless everybody wants to play a game where each turn represents hundreds of years and all commands are executed with a delay/lag, then some laws of physics are just going to be broken, no way around it.