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directional thrusters


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So i was watching some of the NQ youtube videos from the alpha( i dont have access). and i noticed that the smoke plume from the direction thrusters are huge. so i thought that considering  all the futuristic tech the can make the directional thrusters less mono propellant/NASA like. more like star wars repulsors.... if that makes sense.... sorry if i broke NDA in any way.

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On 15/12/2017 at 2:20 AM, Grizzord said:

So i was watching some of the NQ youtube videos from the alpha( i dont have access). and i noticed that the smoke plume from the direction thrusters are huge. so i thought that considering  all the futuristic tech the can make the directional thrusters less mono propellant/NASA like. more like star wars repulsors.... if that makes sense.... sorry if i broke NDA in any way.

Cant break NDA if its on a NQ video ;)

 

I dont mind the big plumes as Im assuming that the ships will grow in size and so the apparent bigness will reduce. After all the pre-alpha guys n gals only had several hours to make ships - cant make huge ships in that time ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/29/2017 at 5:12 AM, 0something0 said:

Well, thermodynamics is a thing unlike reactionless drives.(the EMDrive probably doesn't work)

Don't write off Repulsors/cavity drives etc too early; EMDrive may be relying on currently unknown physics. There's enough interest that NASA and China have both built testbeds for it at no small expense.
As for realism in game; trying to suck hundreds of tonnes of ore into your wrist doesn't work in real life either, and that's going to be in...

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4 minutes ago, Razorwire said:

Don't write off Repulsors/cavity drives etc too early; EMDrive may be relying on currently unknown physics. There's enough interest that NASA and China have both built testbeds for it at no small expense.
As for realism in game; trying to suck hundreds of tonnes of ore into your wrist doesn't work in real life either, and that's going to be in...

Both NASA and China have found mN (that's micronewtons,  more or less, a fart) of push on EM Drives - which was also a fluke, caused by the very energy going into the object to produce the Newtons of push. EM Drive is not based really on physics we don't know, it's developed and tested based of physics we do know, and in physics we do know, it doesn't really work. NASA does test all possible scientific methods of procurring more push out of engines and so they did with the EM-Drive (Elon Musk doesn't test his rockets on his own after all, his company researches and developes, not tests, NASA does the test cause ICBMs are a scary thing). Saying "EM Drive has something going for it cause NASA done tests on it" is like saying "I was mugged, called the police, thus the criminals are caught already" :P 

Funny enough though, Planck-Length is a thing in real life, and planck-length machines (shrinking machines for ease of understanding) are not an "unknown physics", but a very known physics. All we need is a way to engineer such things. It's the same thing with time-travel and teleportation ala star trek, we know how they work, the mathematics behind it are solid, but we do lack the engineering or power source to fuel them. Same goes for the Warp-Drive, the math is solid, all we need is fuel for it.

 

And even if the EM-Drive (somehow) worked as intended and procurred more than a fart's worth of newtons, the fact you need an equal or more perpendicular force to steer a ship or "strafe" it in space, means the EM-Drive suffers from the same issues for "dodging" in Space that normal thrusters do. So, even with EM-Drives, you would still be an easy target if you were to "barrel roll" agaisnta  long-range ship.


Just wanted to clarify :P

P.S. : Planck Length (named after Max Planck) is the shortest possible distance between two atoms. This is why the nanopacks also have a limit, there is a limit on how much you can compress an object, it's called a Schwartzschild (Austrian names ~_~ ) radius, aka, the point of which an object becomes so compact, it turns into a black hole. So... yeah, in DU we carry possible black holes in the form of nanopacks :|

 

Let's hope future tech doesn't run on Windows. 

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39 minutes ago, CaptainTwerkmotor said:

It's the same thing with time-travel and teleportation ala star trek, we know how they work, the mathematics behind it are solid, but we do lack the engineering or power source to fuel them. Same goes for the Warp-Drive, the math is solid, all we need is fuel for it.

Just to add on that:

We already "observe" FTL travel atm: distant galaxies move FTL (even though in their reference system they don't) and spacetime cascades FTL into the event horizon of a black hole.

Problem with warp drives (as you said engineering wise):

- Hawking radiation

- the negative energy bubble needs to extend outside of the warpfield so some of it will be left behind while you travel thus you need to produce it on the fly

- the need for negative energy is bigger than there is positive mass energy in the whole observable universe (but there are some solutions to this one with oscillations or something IIRC)

 

EM drives (i read the paper from 2016 a while ago so bear with me....)

eagleworks labs tested it and observed a thrust to input power was somewhere around 1milli Newton / kW. So you need some gigawatts to even get a human from earth but for interstellar travel? maybe.

 

BUT:

- electrostatic interaction

- thermal effects may cause the thrust

- in the paper R² is only 0,7 and sigma is huge

- RF interaction with the environment

- some others I can't remember

 

You can't exchange momentum (read: generate thrust) with a virtual particle above the planck lenght - you need real particles for that (so the virtual ones generate particle - anti particle pairs). They don't claim that (as this would obviously be a normal particle drive) - but they propose a changeable quantum vacuum. But this "contradicts" somewhat the accepted quantum field theory (which is the "standard" model) - so until they prove QFT wrong, they don't even have a basis for their EM drive

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2 hours ago, CaptainTwerkmotor said:

... Saying "EM Drive has something going for it cause NASA done tests on it" is like saying "I was mugged, called the police, thus the criminals are caught already" :P ...

I was more saying "NASA wouldn't spend huge money testing something that has zero chances of working", which is more like "I was mugged, called the police, thus the criminals have a non-zero chance of getting caught". I'll try and be clearer :D 

 

As I understand it (I have an engineering background rather than a scientific one, forgive me) the EMdrive engine appears to work but produces only µN thrusts for kW inputs, it has a large uncertainty about it's test results and may not work after all, and it has operating principles based on physics that are not perfectly understood.
I'll happily scratch the last if I'm wrong, but if this thing does work, it appears to violate Conservation of Momentum (and probably one or two other Laws), which would argue strongly that there is some improperly understood physics in there somewhere.

 

My point was really that we're poking around with this stuff currently, therefore we could conceivably have useful reaction-less drives existing in a fictional technological epoch that includes wrist-mounted blackhole storage, nano-assemblers and resurrection machines.

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48 minutes ago, Razorwire said:

I was more saying "NASA wouldn't spend huge money testing something that has zero chances of working", which is more like "I was mugged, called the police, thus the criminals have a non-zero chance of getting caught". I'll try and be clearer :D 

 

As I understand it (I have an engineering background rather than a scientific one, forgive me) the EMdrive engine appears to work but produces only µN thrusts for kW inputs, it has a large uncertainty about it's test results and may not work after all, and it has operating principles based on physics that are not perfectly understood.
I'll happily scratch the last if I'm wrong, but if this thing does work, it appears to violate Conservation of Momentum (and probably one or two other Laws), which would argue strongly that there is some improperly understood physics in there somewhere.

 

My point was really that we're poking around with this stuff currently, therefore we could conceivably have useful reaction-less drives existing in a fictional technological epoch that includes wrist-mounted blackhole storage, nano-assemblers and resurrection machines.

Sure, if they find a way to make the ratio of Power to Newtons ratio work better, the EM-Drive could have a place in DU as a "very high tech, very costly" engine that makes for excellent stealth ships (as you don't show up like a lighbulb when you fire up your thrusters). But I think DU goes for a more grounded "future but relevant" approach, most of their tech is grounded on what we got today, just "sorta better". Remember, Humanity left Earth on the year 2500 CE, it only took 10000 of cryosleep FTL travel to another region of space. It's not 10000 years of technological advancement, more like 500. And last I've checked, crossbows were the first version of the rifle, so, for all inteents and purposes, the only thing that changed from the middle ages till today, is we managed to make crossbows better. Even the railguns the US Navy tests, are nothing but really sophisticated catapults - and rockets have existed since ancient China, so did landmines, grenades and "gatling crossbows" :P It's about tech being more optiised, so unless they can optimise the EM Drive by optimising metallurgy and metamaterials that can procure more Power-to-Thrust ratio that makes it a more affordable thruster, sure, the EM-Drive might be worth it one day.

imho, if NQ wants to make it "out of this world" as a technology for EM Drives, they should make them  have a 0.3 or 0.5 or even 0.7 efficiency instead of 0.01, they can tie it to some alien ruins and alien technology, who knows.

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500 years is huge at this point in time. You can't look back for pointers either, since technological progress is not linear, it's exponential. Citing the crossbow is a bit disingenuous, as it's pretty good at doing what it does. Better to think about something we can only just do, and see how that worked 500 years ago, like getting me to listen to your favourite band/composer's latest piece in seconds from my car compared to going out and finding a performance and waiting weeks or months to both physically attend it. On top of that, we've not got a huge drive for survival and space technologies right now, not like a "cataclysm threatening the entire Earth" kind of drive anyway. It is most likely that thrusters, ship systems and life support all got a huge boost in both scientific interest and funding in the run up to the evacuation.

 

I disagree that the DU tech is grounded; millennia-long cryo-sleep, ships that fly sub-sonic and hover in atmosphere and gravity using only thrusters with (relatively) tiny fuel tanks, nano-tech, ultra-miniaturization and re-expansion, plus we've got FTL and jump-gates on the horizon... At the same time, you've got little automation, manually controlled turrets, restricted telepresence etc. In short, we have a whole bunch of stuff we can't see a way to get to from here, and a lack of a bunch of stuff we can do right now.

Not my definition of grounded, but, and this is the important bit, it doesn't have to be in order to be fun.

As for EM drives in DU, yeah, they could work as expensive stealth engines, or as alternatives to other types to keep your fuel requirements down at the cost of seriously reduced thrust, or low thrust for low weight, or... Balance it how you like, plenty of niches it could fill.
 

Writing this I realise that I actually only care that we have a choice between variants of parts, and reasons to make those choices. Do I want to keep the fuel cost down, or keep high acceleration? Frankly it doesn't matter to me at that point whether I'm choosing between conventional or EM drives, or whether the choice is between H2O2 or Hydrazine propellants, or even between Variant-A and Variant-B. As long as the choice is there and I'm not just stuck with Small, Medium and Large versions of the same engine.

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@Razorwire

 

Yes, but all those technologies DU has are grounded on aspects of physics we already know. Fuel compression is not something crazy. Flying is supersonic (you can check the tutorials about this, you do get more speed with higher altitudes, it's 200 m/s cap on SEA level only and I can't say more cause NDA on Pre-Alpha tests). As for the automation, that's just the lore, with the humans inventing AI which almost took over every aspect of their lives but - lucky for humanity - the AI didn't go Skynet and humans imposed a "no AI" on anything. Although, there needs to be a disambiguation, there's no autonomous constructs (which is a Robot), but there is automation, it's what Lua was and is still used primarily for (even if you can define objects in its programming, but that's a very unrelated topic for this discussion ). So, scripting autopilot to fly the ship while you walk around the ship, yes, but scripting guns that fire whem you are not online, no :P

Also, yes, they have spoken of Tiers and the such on the GDC2017 AMA event JC given. There is a thread where people provided a tanscript of the interview, if I can find it, I will post it here. And by Tiers, I mean "tier-1 small fuel tank" and "tier-2 small fuel tank" (possibly, better compresssion rate on fuel ,who knows).

Cheers.

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@Razorwire

 

https://dualuniverse.gamepedia.com/index.php?title=Dual_Universe_Wiki:Archive/Q%26A_-_February_28th_2017&A_-_February_28th_2017=


The Transcript from the GDC 2017. Although, the actual part where he speaks of the tiered system is on the interview part as I was informed, which is not included on the wiki entry.

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18 hours ago, CaptainTwerkmotor said:

...Yes, but all those technologies DU has are grounded on aspects of physics we already know. Fuel compression is not something crazy. Flying is supersonic (you can check the tutorials about this, you do get more speed with higher altitudes, it's 200 m/s cap on SEA level only and I can't say more cause NDA on Pre-Alpha tests). As for the automation, that's just the lore, with the humans inventing AI which almost took over every aspect of their lives but - lucky for humanity - the AI didn't go Skynet and humans imposed a "no AI" on anything. Although, there needs to be a disambiguation, there's no autonomous constructs (which is a Robot), but there is automation, it's what Lua was and is still used primarily for (even if you can define objects in its programming, but that's a very unrelated topic for this discussion ). So, scripting autopilot to fly the ship while you walk around the ship, yes, but scripting guns that fire when you are not online, no :P...

But fuel compression *is* crazy unless you invoke superscience. Technically you *can* compress liquids, but in practice you need huge pressures for very little compression. It's the basis of hydraulic systems that liquids are incompressible for practical purposes, after all.


Are you saying the ships *can't* fly sub-sonic..? :D Hovering, and flying slowly, on thrusters/jets uses insane amounts of fuel as you can't leverage aerodynamic lift, is all I meant.


I read the AI ban, but there's a big range between manual, through automated and autonomous, on up to AI. I'm not in game, so I don't know exactly what's script-able, but from what I've read, I'm not getting decent auto turrets on an avatar-following drone, for example, even if I'm aiming the hand-held targeting laser personally.

18 hours ago, CaptainTwerkmotor said:

...Also, yes, they have spoken of Tiers and the such on the GDC2017 AMA event JC given. There is a thread where people provided a transcript of the interview, if I can find it, I will post it here. And by Tiers, I mean "tier-1 small fuel tank" and "tier-2 small fuel tank" (possibly, better compression rate on fuel ,who knows)...

Really? That's a shame. I was hoping for actual variety in parts and being forced to make design choices rather than just always fitting best-in-slot. I'd much rather have to chose between A is lighter but weaker, B is extra strong but really heavy, C is a middle ground, D has extra thrust but is less fuel efficient, etc. Much better than "always fit T3 because it outperforms T2 and T1 in every way".

18 hours ago, CaptainTwerkmotor said:

@Razorwire

 

https://dualuniverse.gamepedia.com/index.php?title=Dual_Universe_Wiki:Archive/Q%26A_-_February_28th_2017&A_-_February_28th_2017=


The Transcript from the GDC 2017. Although, the actual part where he speaks of the tiered system is on the interview part as I was informed, which is not included on the wiki entry.

Cheers for that, I'll have a read over lunch.

 

.

Edited by Razorwire
edit for clarity
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@Razorwire

Well, the thrusters in DU are just higher yield technology than the ones used now. Currently, jet engines convert fuel to kinetic energy at what rate? 10% to 30%? As I said earlier, it's just optimisation of technmology over a span of time if you look at it that way. Likewise, same can go for vertical boosters for harrier-like behavior. Sadly, can't go into details as of VTOLs, but let's just say, NQ got you covered on VTOLs if you are into those, their mechanics are solid.

As for the multipartial elements idea, that's not currently planned - aside from some modular elements they showcased, like a landing pad, which is split to 3 "tiles", of a corner, filler and outline element. The issue with multipartial or modular elements, is the fact they have to be loaded seperately, calculated seperately and then their LOD would need to be seperate. Given the amount of Elements a construct / city may contain, I can see why they may want to stay clear of that kind of design. I mean, nobody wants to play the game at 15 fps after all.

I'd say for "customisability" purposes, they should just allow people who train up engineering skills, to be able to overclock or jurry rig an elemehnt to gain more power out of it at the cost of, let's say, heat, or less energy consumption at the cost of lower high-end output. You can have such mechanisms of customisability AND a stable framerate. This is an MMORPG after all, in sword and magic they call it "enchantment", in sci-fi we call it jury rigging :P 

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Fair enough.

 

I'd still like to see some baked-in variety of elements though.

If a T2 small thruster is a straight upgrade over the T1, you'd pretty much always choose the T2, right? The only reason not to would be if you were building a power-constrained construct or had material/skill/blueprint shortages preventing you from building the T2.
 

If you have multiple standard variants of the T1 instead, at the design stage you'd get to choose between lightweight-but-fragile, economic-but-low-output, heavy-but-high-output, etc. You're not increasing the number of elements in a construct, and you're not having to store a whole bunch of customisation numbers from jury-rigging, but you are making the design process more fun, the construct market more diverse, and the game richer as a result. Downside is of course more artwork and bigger game files.

 

As an added benefit, though, it would make it easier to tweak my own copy of the Twerkmotorworks (TM) Super-Death-Interceptor Mkii (c) by swapping out the ridiculously thirsty T1D Performance thruster elements for some T1B Lightweight thrusters :D

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Exactly.

I'd say, NQ should add more stats on each element ad a bezier like system of jury rigging (gain some lose some), so jury rigging can create far wider range of possibilities. More or less, like CPUs, with "tiers" acting more like a "base clock boost" or "better TDP".

I.e. there's the Ryzen 7 1700, 1700X and 1800X. All three can (technically) reach the same upper most clockspeeds, but the heat efficiency of each one varies  as well as voltage associated. An experienced PCMR enthusiast can fine tune the PC to not throttle much, but the 1800X has a far better base clock, thus can be optimised even more. Ofc, better CPU doesn't make you a better gamer, thus a better thruster in DU's case, would not make you better at PvP. God knows we all have seen the "top gear" PvPers in other games who lose in 1vs1 duels from less geared players of the same class cause the "top gear" doesn't know how buttons work.

That in my opinion is what customisability sohuld be like - if your engineers are skilled, they can optimise a ship to fly better, using the same parts anyone else ha access to. I mean.  As you said, it doesn't tax the engine, and since it's math based on stats o neach element, it also can be easily inputed into the calculations the server doies in case of combat.

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We can hope for both.

Variants of baseline elements with the mods baked into the blueprint, all of which can be further 'rigged by those with the skills on an individual construct basis.

 

My favourite kind of PVP is where I know what I'm doing but am undergeared vs a clueless but gucci snob :D

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19 hours ago, Razorwire said:

We can hope for both.

Variants of baseline elements with the mods baked into the blueprint, all of which can be further 'rigged by those with the skills on an individual construct basis.

 

My favourite kind of PVP is where I know what I'm doing but am undergeared vs a clueless but gucci snob :D

Those people are called Loot Pinyatas :P 

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