Means of propulsion (<c)

[joykler]

did you mean my electromagnet thingy ?

[fr0stbyte124]

Sort of.
I drew a diagram to illustrate what I mean.

Spoiler:

Note that the speed lines are simply an indication of velocity. As there is no atmosphere in space, this phenomenon would not actually be present.

[Prototype]

So basically this thread is debating what we shall call each stage of propulsion, code wise they would work the same, but with different acceleration and top speed numbers.

[fr0stbyte124]

Code-wise, propulsion is an abstraction anyway, since we're not trying to do Newtonian physics here. But I don't think the technology can simply be an afterthought. It will have far flung impact on most of the ship mechanics, depending on what we go with.

[joykler]

yhea my way is more like this
the ship sends electro magnetic waves to around him
these waves hit other electric waves or iron/iron dust if there is enough around him the ship would have a hold on the universe and pull themselves forward or push themselves off

Spoiler:

and i still think my planet hopping system would be a nice idea

Spoiler:

[hyperlite]

Just, what are you talking about?

[joykler]

pulling yourselve thru space

or falling thru space

[Prototype]

The physics of how it works doesn't matter, what does is how fast it goes, how much fuel it uses, whether it requires other block to function and what these blocks are called.

Also the electromagnet thing would only work if there was a significant amount of iron, you would have to be flying through a cloud of iron with more mass than your ship within a range that your magnet can influence it, which is very impractical.
Also electromagnetic waves is just light, I think you mean a magnetic field, which could have the desired effect.

Also we want to make it fairly easy to get around once you have the ship, the planet hopping is a nice idea, but would be a bit too hard to do in game, and would be rather boring to do, people just want to make an engine, hit GO, and fly about like whatever.

[joykler]

none of these ideas are hit and go

i think it doesn matter you just give some fancy names a hard recepy and alot of speed

and with a big enough electro field [thank you] you can hold on to enough things to push or pull yourselve thru space

[Keon]

I love how frost posted a picture of the classic example of troll physics meme adapted to space and people took him seriously.

[Professor Fenway]

Brilliant fr0st. Brilliant.


Also, A BETTER idea for propulsion. Super-heat the hydrogen, ionize it, add some magnetic stuff, make it radioactive just in case, then use dynamic flux oscillators and throw the weapon-grade plasma flame-thrower to move you around from the back of your ship.

[joykler]

say ay if you think that sentence would be more clear in chineze

[Dr. Mackeroth]

say ay if you think that sentence would be more clear in chineze

Nope, it makes perfect sense to me. He's just being silly, saying we should make the engines as wasteful as possible.

I have no strong feelings about the kinds of engines. I think that we just need some basic rockets to start off with, then standard gravity drives or antimatter propulsion. We could call it something generic and nondescript like impulse engines from Star Trek (of course, different).

[Error]

Brilliant fr0st. Brilliant.


Also, A BETTER idea for propulsion. Super-heat the hydrogen, ionize it, add some magnetic stuff, make it radioactive just in case, then use dynamic flux oscillators and throw the weapon-grade plasma flame-thrower to move you around from the back of your ship.

YES! Absolutely, though it should also burn out your engines slowly! Wasteful, remember!

[SubjectToChange]

Prehaps we could use the NERVA engines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA so we could use nuclear power to move star ships before the tech for fission engines would be cheap enough.