Future Tech Advice and Assistance Thread [O.O.C.]

[Jovian Lunar Empire]

CaSM: in your diagram you are still in orbit: if not around the indicated planet then likely atound its star.

Orbital mechanics are not proximity based, but speed based. The tragectory of your shell will not magically change to an arc when it reaches a certain altitude around the planet, unless the shell exerts sufficient delta-v to put itself on a given trajectory, be that orbital or ballistic. If your round has that kind of delta-v on board, it is now a missile, subject to the same navigational calculus as any ship. If it does not, you would have to fire this railgun shell at precisely the right angle and speed to allow it to enter the orbit you want and track around the planet to the target. The target would have to not change its own velocity by more than a few tens of meters per second, and your gunners would have to account for thr fact that the shell would accellerate as it got closer to the barycenter of its orbit, which is to say the planet.

Its a cool idea, but much like Revolver Ocelot's famed ability to precisely riccochet and shoot around corners, this one has too many variables to be practical.

Edit adds: in the given diagram the round indicated would strike the planet at fairly considerable velocity.

[SquareDisc City]

While technically you are always in orbit, the relevance of orbital mechanics as such vs just flying around in space depends mainly on the performance of spacecraft engines and the celestial bodies involved. With relatively near-future engines like nuclear thermal rockets, orbital mechanics only really matters round good-sized planets, Mars and bigger more or less. Round a dwarf planet or small asteroid such as Ceres spacecraft can pretty much zoom around in straight lines and a closed orbit is just a way to park. Now with higher performance engines such as nuclear pulse propulsion, then even round Mars and Earth spacecraft will be packing enough delta-V to pretty much ignore orbital mechanics (though there'll be some deflection of trajectories) and it's only low over a gas giant or star that it would matter.

For those who don't want to worry about the technical details, a simple rule of thumb: If your nation's spacecraft can make an interplanetary trip in a few weeks or quicker without using their FTL drive, then they can pretty much ignore orbital mechanics except close to stellar-mass objects.

Similarly for Kessler syndrome concerns: if the flak fragments or railgun rounds exceed the local body's escape velocity then it's pretty much a non-issue. (Alternatively, the military involved might not care. Are you really bothered about Kesslering the enemy's world?)

[Cyborgs and Sentient Machines]

CaSM: in your diagram you are still in orbit: if not around the indicated planet then likely atound its star.

Orbital mechanics are not proximity based, but speed based. The tragectory of your shell will not magically change to an arc when it reaches a certain altitude around the planet, unless the shell exerts sufficient delta-v to put itself on a given trajectory, be that orbital or ballistic. If your round has that kind of delta-v on board, it is now a missile, subject to the same navigational calculus as any ship. If it does not, you would have to fire this railgun shell at precisely the right angle and speed to allow it to enter the orbit you want and track around the planet to the target. The target would have to not change its own velocity by more than a few tens of meters per second, and your gunners would have to account for thr fact that the shell would accellerate as it got closer to the barycenter of its orbit, which is to say the planet.

Its a cool idea, but much like Revolver Ocelot's famed ability to precisely riccochet and shoot around corners, this one has too many variables to be practical.

Edit adds: in the given diagram the round indicated would strike the planet at fairly considerable velocity.

Of course it doesn't magically turn into an arc, I merely used a straight line tool so my terrible free hand zig zag writing doesn't emerge, it isn't meant to be a painstaking made map that is completely accurate, there could be smaller bodies not included and it doesn't have to be scale either.
When I made the illustration I was trying to show that I wasn't talking about shooting at something that is on the other side of the same planet I am at, but rather my ship could be in the asteroid belt and the target could be on the other side of Saturn.

The whole process would be done by targeting computers, not people trying to eyeball it, and the whole point of my torpedo analogy is that a spread of railguns are fired, so instead of trying to shoot round a corner with a revolver, it is much more like shooting round a corner with an automatic shotgun.

[Senkaku]

I think probably lower-level AIs or expert systems would be put in each missile to oversee some of its maneuvering and targeting, while some would be handled by the ship it was launched from via some Advanced Technology Faster-Than-Light Comms thingo (since the missile's mass and volume would be mainly devoted to fuel and payload). In turn, the ship launching would probably be in constant contact with some sort of sensor vessel or mother ship, since it would probably be just a big weapons carrier deployed from a tender.

I don't think missiles require AI... like, at all. I know it sounds cool but AI simulates sapient intelligence and is good at that. It would be less ideal for a single task, which a missile has. A properly coded guidance system will be far more efficient at being a guidance system than an AI.

And that's to say little of doing the equivalent of birthing a child and then attaching a bomb vest to it and saying "look, go over there" with your finger on the detonator - that's pretty f'd up.

At the very least, I'm going to RP as though that's happening.

You monster.

"or expert systems"

[Greater Soviet Ukraine]

*snip*

Alright, let's clear one thing: is the trajectory made through gravity or another force?

[Kassaran]

I don't know why you'd need to make an individual AI for each missile with that system, for one it wouldn't require an AI and for two, an AI could potentially just separate with a chunk of it's total data to autonomously guide the missile, selecting what functions it knows to go into the missile brain before terminal guidance takes over.

[Kassaran]

Been looking to start actively switching my nation into FT, figured that since I'm going to be an extensively space-bound merchant civilization, I should use some of the more appropriate tags when addressing my FT version.

Power Balance: Confederation
Power Source: Oligarchy
System Size: ~6-7 Billion Citizens; ~3 Billion Immigrant Non-Citizen Residents; ~1.5-2 Billion Undocumented/80 Star Systems, 34 Habitable Systems; 19 Settled or Colonized Systems; 5 Primary Stars
Religious Stance: Hybrid
Military Formation:
-Professional Volunteers form the backbone of the Confederation's Primary Star Guards. These guards belong to the fleets responsible for protecting the major (or 'Primary') star systems and their massive populations;
-Mercenaries can be regularly found patrolling the space lanes, many acting on their own accord to assist against pirates or actively hunt them down in search of receiving the bounties for successfully engaging and delivering to justice the pillagers of vital Kassaran trade routes throughout the Confederation's systems. Mercenaries can also be actively found guarding many of the major star ports on backwater worlds and in space near the major star ports in colonized systems;
-Drone Operators are the primary star jockey of the Confederation and are usually the one's responsible for the day-to-day check up of primary star-ships within interdiction distance that aren't controlled by specialty-designed AI Security distros packets from the Primary Stars. Usually a small 'hive' of five to seven Drone Operators is more than enough to control anywhere in the range of thirty drones apiece making their usage in deep-space widely accepted as basic law-enforcement.
Founding Date: Founded sometime in the early 2100's as the Kassaran made their way into space, the Confederation as it is now known came to fruition after the Twelfth Year of Wandering. Settling down upon what would become the Primary Terrestrial Origin for the Kassaran, they quickly managed to secure the resources to rapidly mobilize an entirely automated space-program for mineral and resource prospecting, mining, and refining. With primary means of resource extraction automated by the end of 58CAS (Cycles After Settlement ~ 2400 Ano Domini), the Kassaran declared themselves an officially autonomous star state and established the Confederacy alongside their fellow neighboring settlers in the nearby fertile star systems of the Valhalla Star Cluster.
History:WIP

[Sunset]

Looks good; Factbook it. If I were to make a suggestion that will lead further places it would be to take each of those sections and create a character/characters as well as a brief bio for each.

Power Balance: President of the Confederacy
Power Source: Chief Executive Mr. Example
System Size: Noted Explorer
Religious Stance: Primarch Ms. Example
Military Formation: High Marshal Scrambled Eggs
Professional Volunteers: Guard General Titular Notion
Mercenaries: Major Hackneyed Moniker
Drone Operators: Philip Familyman
Founding Date: Notable Dead Guy

A name, a title, age, brief physical description or picture, and a 4-6 sentence mini-biography will not only give you something to start most any inter-nation RP with but also additional areas to expand your factbooks; The High Marshal suggests a certain rank - what are the other ranks? From there you can spider-web all over the place until you hit the character limit!

[Kassaran]

Well, I figure something along the lines of having to develop the five Primary Worlds is in order with the Triumvirate of the Kassaran being the foremost ones to develop. They're the threefold mercantile systems under Kassaran control...

I have further questions, more to learn about others in this thread than to get any real notions myself, but what are the varying star types and colonies you've all created? do you utilize planetary constructs as well as orbitals? Do you prefer to orbit stars or planets or moons? Do you have asteroid fields for farming the massive amounts of resources required to fuel your nation's expansive trade lines? What are your primary sources of entertainment and how do you spread such entertainment? Is there a unified sub-light link that regularly updates thanks to courier drones using FTL so cross-system and inter-system communication can occur, or do you have other means of explaining your communications capabilities?

I'm mostly wanting to see how overtly developed the various infrastructural assets of the FT universe are.

[Vocenae]

That is such a question that you're going to get bombarded to the point where you'll collapse from post overload. The best way, outside of this thread, would be to hang out in the Local Cluster, Future Tech's largest region and getting to know the players there. Alternatively, you can join us on IRC by following the link in The Local Cluster's regional factbook entry and just come hang out with the majority of Future Tech's players. Remember, getting to know your players from a OOC standpoint is extremely vital to forming positive connections from which new RP opportunities can arise.

Plus, you can get your infodumps in real time and in smaller bites than what you'll get here.

[SquareDisc City]

Agreed. Kassaran, it's probably better if you click through the regulars here and in the Milky Way Galaxy group and check out people's factbooks. (My own Factbook sucks, but other people have done much better.)

[Vocenae]

So I re-watched Minority Report today, and it's just amazing how accurately that film predicted the technology of the present. Sure, there are a few exceptions (no ugly as sin cars sliding up and down buildings that have highways on them), but for the most part that world is not dissimilar to our own. I guess hiring a team of Futurists to sit in a room together pays off. But anyway, while I was watching and being amazing by it all, I decided to go and do a search for how many technologies the film actually got right and I found an article on i09 that I felt really touched upon everything I just said above. It was pretty good, but while reading it I came across something that I felt applies directly to Future Tech.

In the midst of all this, Minority Report never loses sight of the central part of the story: This isn't about the technology itself, but about what happens to people when they're caught in the midst of all the technology.

This is exactly what we mean by using your technology as 'window dressing'. Technology should never be the direct focus of the story you're trying to tell, it should always be the characters and their story.

[The Fedral Union]

Agreed. Kassaran, it's probably better if you click through the regulars here and in the Milky Way Galaxy group and check out people's factbooks. (My own Factbook sucks, but other people have done much better.)

There are factbooks of many nations that are good, it depends on the style you like. There are more than one or two regions that make up FT and certainly none make up the majoirty of FT.. there is no such thing.. the FT community is vast you can get ideas from all over NS and all types of regions, no one player or region might be the best but if you take ideas and inspiration from several sources (as is standard) you might come up with a unique format yourself

[Estainia]

So I re-watched Minority Report today, and it's just amazing how accurately that film predicted the technology of the present. Sure, there are a few exceptions (no ugly as sin cars sliding up and down buildings that have highways on them), but for the most part that world is not dissimilar to our own. I guess hiring a team of Futurists to sit in a room together pays off. But anyway, while I was watching and being amazing by it all, I decided to go and do a search for how many technologies the film actually got right and I found an article on i09 that I felt really touched upon everything I just said above. It was pretty good, but while reading it I came across something that I felt applies directly to Future Tech.

In the midst of all this, Minority Report never loses sight of the central part of the story: This isn't about the technology itself, but about what happens to people when they're caught in the midst of all the technology.

This is exactly what we mean by using your technology as 'window dressing'. Technology should never be the direct focus of the story you're trying to tell, it should always be the characters and their story.

If you're emulating the Golden Age of Science-Fiction there is nothing wrong with outright doting on your technology, as in that epoch of sci-fi, the gadget was the focus.

[Hittanryan]

So I re-watched Minority Report today, and it's just amazing how accurately that film predicted the technology of the present. Sure, there are a few exceptions (no ugly as sin cars sliding up and down buildings that have highways on them), but for the most part that world is not dissimilar to our own. I guess hiring a team of Futurists to sit in a room together pays off. But anyway, while I was watching and being amazing by it all, I decided to go and do a search for how many technologies the film actually got right and I found an article on i09 that I felt really touched upon everything I just said above. It was pretty good, but while reading it I came across something that I felt applies directly to Future Tech.



This is exactly what we mean by using your technology as 'window dressing'. Technology should never be the direct focus of the story you're trying to tell, it should always be the characters and their story.

If you're emulating the Golden Age of Science-Fiction there is nothing wrong with outright doting on your technology, as in that epoch of sci-fi, the gadget was the focus.

Eh...there's a limit to how long an infodump I'll read before my eyes start to glaze over. If I want to read a textbook, then I will. Furthermore, I frequently find that the longer the infodump goes on, the less relevant it becomes to the plot. It doesn't really matter how an author with no scientific or engineering background thinks it would be possible for a plasma rifle to extend its magnetic containment field to their targets to avoid thermal blooming. Even if it somehow becomes relevant to the plot, by having a weapon break for instance, a character probably wouldn't take the time to explain all of that in-character. Someone like an armorer or tech would just say "Your gun's borked again? Gonna take me at least two days to fix this...(grumbles)"

I do believe that in fiction you need to establish the key rules of your setting for consistency's sake. That way the reader has an idea of what is possible and what isn't. Wherever possible, however, I think exposition should be weaved into the narrative instead of beating the reader over the head with a glossary.

[Sunset]

If you're emulating the Golden Age of Science-Fiction there is nothing wrong with outright doting on your technology, as in that epoch of sci-fi, the gadget was the focus.

Eh...there's a limit to how long an infodump I'll read before my eyes start to glaze over. If I want to read a textbook, then I will. Furthermore, I frequently find that the longer the infodump goes on, the less relevant it becomes to the plot. It doesn't really matter how an author with no scientific or engineering background thinks it would be possible for a plasma rifle to extend its magnetic containment field to their targets to avoid thermal blooming. Even if it somehow becomes relevant to the plot, by having a weapon break for instance, a character probably wouldn't take the time to explain all of that in-character. Someone like an armorer or tech would just say "Your gun's borked again? Gonna take me at least two days to fix this...(grumbles)"

I do believe that in fiction you need to establish the key rules of your setting for consistency's sake. That way the reader has an idea of what is possible and what isn't. Wherever possible, however, I think exposition should be weaved into the narrative instead of beating the reader over the head with a glossary.

I think both Vocenae's and Estainia's point - or at least my own - would be that part of classic (and indeed modern) sci-fi is that the technology might provide the 'twist' that turns the classic three act play from introduction/complication/resolution into something new but that it doesn't need to be (or shouldn't be, depending on the skill of the writer) the absolute point. A ray guy that teleports someone or something from one point to another - but what are the responses of the characters to it and how does it change the morals and culture of that particular civilization? Many times, especially here, that technology is something we are used to. FTL travel, communications, cybernetics, AI... All common depending on which place one visits. Then it becomes incumbent on us to write characters used to that technology as well. How it works isn't really important as long as the effects are consistent.

Part of the conundrum for us as FT roleplayers comes when applying that one particular technology that is, essentially, magic. Voc's example holds true here with the decidedly magical idea of future crime. From my own nation's perspective, if we came across another nation utilising psychics for pre-crime detection, we'd scoff. Ridiculous. But it is then a test of my skill as a writer to come up with a reasonable way to handle that for my characters since it clearly does work - at least for your nation.

...ridiculous. Maybe you should invest in a higher standard of education and some less-dippy leadership.

But doting on that particular technology and its effects on society is a perfectly reasonable idea for a roleplay because it is such a twist. It is not simply a better way to kill people or shift cruft onto an unsuspecting public but something so bizarre that an outsider has to react to it. Do they really need to know why it works? Well - maybe. The example would be Futurama's riff on Minority Report where the 'psychic' became import of themselves.

[Jullin]

So I re-watched Minority Report today, and it's just amazing how accurately that film predicted the technology of the present. Sure, there are a few exceptions (no ugly as sin cars sliding up and down buildings that have highways on them), but for the most part that world is not dissimilar to our own. I guess hiring a team of Futurists to sit in a room together pays off. But anyway, while I was watching and being amazing by it all, I decided to go and do a search for how many technologies the film actually got right and I found an article on i09 that I felt really touched upon everything I just said above. It was pretty good, but while reading it I came across something that I felt applies directly to Future Tech.



This is exactly what we mean by using your technology as 'window dressing'. Technology should never be the direct focus of the story you're trying to tell, it should always be the characters and their story.

If you're emulating the Golden Age of Science-Fiction there is nothing wrong with outright doting on your technology, as in that epoch of sci-fi, the gadget was the focus.

'Hard' sci-fi can almost get away with explaining how certain technologies work, because more often than not they are within the realms of plausibility. But even then, you should remember that you are writing a story, first and foremost, not a physics textbook. As others have said, the effect that technology has on the characters/society around it is far more important than how it works, both to the story and to the reader.

I have always argued that if your technology is complete and utter nonsense so far as modern science goes (energy shields, superluminal drives, etc), or you're not sure how to reconcile your technology with science, then you have no business explaining how it works, only what it does and, again, why that matters. Delve into further details if there's a Chekov's gun involved (e.g. "phasers work fine unless a bloke called Dave is ominously lingering around"... followed by introducing a bloke called Dave who interferes with the operation of said phasers by virtue of his mere presence), but again, don't explain why Dave interferes with the operation of said technology, just that he does. Because phasers aren't a real thing, and any explanation of the fictional science behind them will be both senseless and dull.

After all, nobody remembers a word about rapid nadion pulses phasing matter into subspace unless a Dave field is present to de-polarise the containment field, when thinking about Star Trek. They only remember the interesting moral and philosophical tales the series tried to tell about people called Dave hanging around in war zones when somebody was about to fire a phaser at an unidentified target, and whether Dave should get a medal for lurking around there. Or something. This analogy ran away from me.

This becomes even more important in a setting such as NSFT, where numerous disparate technologies are in operation all at the same time. Attempting to explain how your particular flavour of unobtainium works just risks wanky comparisons with other forms of unobtainium.

[SquareDisc City]

In the midst of all this, Minority Report never loses sight of the central part of the story: This isn't about the technology itself, but about what happens to people when they're caught in the midst of all the technology.

This is exactly what we mean by using your technology as 'window dressing'. Technology should never be the direct focus of the story you're trying to tell, it should always be the characters and their story.

As I understand it, that's not what the expression 'window dressing' normally means in English.

something that is intended to make a person or thing seem better or more attractive but that does not have any real importance or effect
the act or an instance of making something appear deceptively attractive or favorable
something used to create a deceptively favorable or attractive impression

Now sometimes in sci-fi that is the case. Sometimes the futuristic technology is just there to look flashy and the story would work just the same in a realistic modern or historical setting. But in a lot of good sci-fi that's not the case at all. Minority Report would be nothing without the precogs. Parts of Interstellar wouldn't work without the relativistic time dilation. I Robot is all about the consequences of its 3 laws. And so on. In those stories the science and technology may not be the direct focus but it is crucial to the setting. If you want a building analogy, technology isn't the window dressing, it's the foundation. You might not see it much but it determines what kind of stories you can (and can't) build.

[Vocenae]

It means it dresses it up, it is decoration not the primary thing. From the OP of this thread...

Window Dressing (#WD): An idea, concept, or thing in Future Tech, science-fiction, literature, art, film, television, etc. which serves primarily to add "character" or "flair" in order to demonstrate a given aesthetic, genre, idea, etc.; an idea, concept, or thing which is not the primary focus of an endeavor, but merely there to act as "curtains" or "decoration" for the primary focus; "decorations" or "curtains" meant to frame a given idea or concept and add to it, but not to detract focus from the primary idea or concept.

[Gig em Aggies]

I issued this query in your nations warships batch 3: what's the feasibility of a navy ship driven by an engine powered by either anti-matter or a singularity? And would that power source be enough to propel the ship and also accommodate the energy needed for a cloak like the Klingons/romulans, rail guns and various other systems such as radar, sonar, navigation, other weapons, etc?

[Olimpiada]

I issued this query in your nations warships batch 3: what's the feasibility of a navy ship driven by an engine powered by either anti-matter or a singularity? And would that power source be enough to propel the ship and also accommodate the energy needed for a cloak like the Klingons/romulans, rail guns and various other systems such as radar, sonar, navigation, other weapons, etc?

Plot wise, your ships generate as much power as the plot demands. Technology wise, antimatter generates enough energy to do all of that with pretty much any ship (barring death star-esque monstrosities, you might need two then)

[Interstellar Planets]

I issued this query in your nations warships batch 3: what's the feasibility of a navy ship driven by an engine powered by either anti-matter or a singularity? And would that power source be enough to propel the ship and also accommodate the energy needed for a cloak like the Klingons/romulans, rail guns and various other systems such as radar, sonar, navigation, other weapons, etc?

Both are staples of science fiction - Mass Effect uses antimatter rockets, in a similar vein to the way fusion engines are purported to function, I believe. And Star Trek, of course, uses matter/antimatter reactors to provide power for warp travel, as well as munitions, although they supplement their power reserves with fusion reactors too. Singularity power sources have also been posited too, both in scifi and real life: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_starship

There are inherent difficulties with each, of course. Antimatter is inherently dangerous to store and must be manufactured at great cost elsewhere (it is an energy storage medium, essentially like a battery, as it doesn't occur naturally in any meaningful quantities). And the issues with taming and using a black hole are even more obvious. That could offer some entertaining RP opportunities; I remember one RPer whose ships essentially destroyed everything in the vicinity if they were ever destroyed.

As for whether they would provide enough power or not is entirely up to the power of plot, as Olimpiada mentioned.

[Lubyak]

I issued this query in your nations warships batch 3: what's the feasibility of a navy ship driven by an engine powered by either anti-matter or a singularity? And would that power source be enough to propel the ship and also accommodate the energy needed for a cloak like the Klingons/romulans, rail guns and various other systems such as radar, sonar, navigation, other weapons, etc?

If you want a hard sci-fi calculation you're not going to get it.

We don't have an anti-matter or singularity based power generation system, so we can't tell you how much power it'll put out. We don't know how a cloak would work, so we can't tell you how much energy it would take to make it work, if such a thing would even be possible in a hard sci-fi environment.

However, within NSFT the answer is 'sure, go ahead'. As noted, your ships generate the amount of power required by the plot. If the ship is noted to have a lot of surplus energy, great. if the ship is noted to be a class with a design flaw that means its power plant is straining to keep up with the demands placed on it, then also great. Just do something cool and interesting.

[SquareDisc City]

For energy per unit mass, antimatter and black hole radiation are joint best there is. They're also both highly volatile, antimatter you probably know explodes on contact with normal matter, while a black hole emitting significant Hawking radiation will have that emission increase to the point of explosion unless energy/mass is continuously fed into it. So if you want a hard-ish sci-fi ship that pretty much doesn't have to worry about running out of fuel or propellant, but on the other hand when something goes wrong it goes very wrong, either antimatter or black holes are a good choice. If by contrast you want ships that don't explode if someone looks at them funny, but on the other hand might not have near-bottomless fuel supplies, consider fusion or fission power. Of course your nation needn't be restricted to only one type of space propulsion, after all real world vehicles of all types have a variety of engine choices with pros and cons.

"Rule of cool" and the interests of a good story mean that we're generally going to write comparable starships as being on a fairly equal footing regardless of whether their backstory has them powered by fission reactors, black holes, zero point exfabulators, or space coal.

PS: And yes, systems - be they technology, political structures, whatever - are more interesting if they have flaws and trade-offs, rather than trying to be perfect.

[Kassaran]

So, what sorts of integrated battlespace technology do you have implemented in your traditional infantry fighting gear and/or equipment? What do you use for infantry HUD layouts? In short, how do you, decide what's important for your soldiers to know what's happening around them and how does it work?