Messages

1

Linux / UFOAI window size

« on: July 03, 2011, 03:30:02 am »

I'm running UFOAI in a netbook and literally half the game window is invisible to me as it's been cropped by the small size of my screen, is there a way to shrink the UFOAI window?

2

Discussion / Re: 50 Hours of Game Design Notes

« on: April 24, 2011, 01:36:13 am »

My impression is that devs believe that there are already plenty and possibly too many human weapons available already.

Frequently requested, always rejected (see 'save-reload fest' plus another area of compatibility/maintenance headaches).

There are more human than alien weapons, the problem is that I've found most of them are useless (Only the grenade launcher stays competitive, the flamethrower gets replaced by a plasma blade in a grenade slot).
I think the first order of buisness would be to increase the accruacy af all direct fire weapons, from assault rifles to plasma rifles.

And I just want to say that all the alien weapons don't have to be totally new and original and work on some fancy mechanisms. An alien grenade launcher for example, would be great and allow  the aliens more tactical flexibility, or bloodspiders armed with ranged weapons, maybe they can climb walls?

In terms of intermediate techs, I think it's a great idea, some examples might be:
Electrochemical propellant: reverse engineering of alien batteries has allowed Phalanx engineers to design new firearms capable of much higher muzzle velocities.
Alien Alloy Weapons: Phalanx engineers have re purposed these miracle materials into the next generation of armor piercing rounds and allow for the creation of multi-use railgun rails, eliminating the cumbersome barrel replacement process of the bolter.
New Power Packs: The study of alien batteries has led to the development of longer lasting power packs for Phalanx electromagnetic weaponry.

3

Design / Re: Brainstorm session: *ALTERNATE* Storylines (framework/synopsis)

« on: March 12, 2011, 04:28:09 pm »

A huge part of this game that interested me was the accurate science, so I'd like to better integrate that with the storyline. After all, most of the storyline stuff is presented as text documents, so an alternate campaign won't need any fancy new code.

My points so far are:
1. The thousands and thousands of years for XVI to develop are way over the top, even if we dumb them down a lot, their science should still be more advanced that what we see in game (most of which is a century or two ahead at best).
2. Replacing Psionics with real EM radiation, have XVI communicate via chemicals(biochem markers made in the body that contain a lot of information in chemical or DNA form and can be deposited on a surface or exchanged directly), weak electric fields (skin to skin contact), radio waves (brain computer interface)
3. FTL... I'd like not to break the laws of physics, and modern physics have left the door barely open on it. Basically, any non-wormhole form of FTL involves time travel, it still takes you a few decades to travel from Sol to say... Sirius, but in a fit of synchronized hand waving, your FTL drive turns back time so you arrive there instantaneously. A drive like this would be limited to "jump nodes" however, whose connections  are all hard coded and immobile in order to avoid accidental time machines that can get you home before you started off (which kind of makes sense, any possible combination of jump points that would have resulted in a closed time like curve would have been destroyed at the moment of their inception as cauchy horizons enveloped them, but that's bot  speculation and digression.).
Basically, 2 forms of FTL:
Wormholes: Require exotic matter, must lie well outside any gravitational field, requires stupendous amounts of matter and energy to create, must be transported to their final destination by STL, will be destroyed if anything over 1% of their total mass attempts to cross. Exotic matter also allows for STL warp drives, exotic matter and wormholes lie well outside XVI's currently demonstrated technological abilities, must be obtained from other source unless currently observed technology is deliberately obsolescent.
Jump Drive: The softer science alternative, instantaneous travel between star systems depending on the mechanics we decide on, but it feels like a cheat, not having any more details on this.
4. Possible victory conditions I think should be realistic:
-Reverse engineering of XVI leads to brain computer interfaces that Phalanx uses to usher in the singularity, merging the sentience of a Human mind with the computing power of the Internet in order to create a entity that can think and process at the same level as the XVI hive mind. New world Order, world peace, cool stuff we can do with this one.
-Humanity develops a relativistic starship and uses it to bring XVI to the negotiating table by threatening the wormhole (which would severe the local chapter from the rest of it's empire), XVI not really interested in Earth except as a valuable injection of new cultural ideas that the homogeneous hive mind can use. Some sort of cease fire is worked out.
-Humanity does destroy the wormhole, XVI largest concentration of industry near Sol is destroyed but there are still multiple instantiation in the Oort cloud and asteroid belt, XVI insurgents on Earth are mounting increasingly complex subversive campaigns, but Humanity  is safe for the moment and can take prepare for the next fight, applying all the technologies it's found.

Comments? Questions?

4

Design / Re: CURRENT STORYLINE -- SPOILERS!

« on: February 10, 2011, 04:25:13 am »

Correction: That particular issue with the currently sanctioned storyline has been pointed out (quite a few times, actually -- and by several members), but it was never addressed. Hence, it is *still* an issue... One which I'm firmly convinced by now it will never be addressed by the authors.

Point taken.

<1> Hmm... Sorry, I'm not convinced; "We'll assimilate you in order to learn about you (and bring us closer to perfection)" sounds too Borg-ish to me. It has (obviously) been done before...

Everything has been done before, there are only two or three types of narrative out there. The key is to make something old appear new, this is where details matter.

I'll just take a moment to clarify what I meant in terms of background:
1. I'm ignoring the whole galactic dominance thing, and if I'm honest, most of the rest of the current storyline idea for several reasons, which have already been pointed out. In my book, XVI is still a fairly small in terms of it's empire, the size being mostly constrained by...
2. XVI has a tech level only a century to two ahead of Humanity, with a certain percent going either way from area to area (say, only a century ahead of our electronics, but one and a half in nano-tech, as an example). This is a requirement if we want Phalanx to have any chance against them. for obvious reasons.
3. XVI is wholly restrained by the laws of physics, as such it's FTL capability is based on STL scouts with deflated wormholes, which are then expanded to traversable size at the destination. (more o this later) I assume that XVI does not posses the capabilities to actually manufacture the exotic matter required, but obtained it from some other source, likely left over from a previous civilization, but it's unimportant to us as this doesn't affect the Phalanx plot.

As to

<2> I'm not sure I follow you through; nobody said anything about colonising Earth. XVI's intent is, as far as the current story goes, to acquire more hosts and possibly 'strip-mine' the planet -- with the former being clearly the primary objective: More hosts. That's why I'm uncertain what you meant: Are you criticising this position? Offering an 'alternate story', perhaps? ...

Well, more hosts seemed to imply that it wanted to colonize... But yeah, I'm proposing a different storyline. When you think about it, if XVI wants more hosts, then it can simply build up up a population artificially, with just DNA samples. If it wants a stream of new ideas, then it would make more sense to maintain whatever species it comes across as strictly monitored but independent, where it could cull the populations periodically to get a constant stream of new perspectives.

I won't be quoting the rest of your post. Whilst I'm still a bit confused about what you're trying to do here, I'll assume you are in fact proposing an alternate storyline (seems like a sensible assumption); unfortunately, I can already see some major issues developing in here as well -- mind you, their 'extent and severity' depend largely of how much of the current story you're keeping in the background. Short list of them below:

• Two things: First, no species gets to be dominant without first overcoming its competitors. Natural selection is a very natural, very real mechanism. In other words, XVI would not have gotten a (strong) hold on the entire Galaxy if it wouldn't have succeeded against the opposition (starting with its own creators). Hence, you cannot imply that XVI, being a 'cooperation-oriented' entity, has a poor grasp on the concept of competition; such claim would be invalid. -- assuming XVI's background story still stands (i.e. the 'hive-mind' is already number-one in the whole of Milky Way, when the game commences);

Point, however I was addressing it more from an matter of emphasis. XVI has done all this, it is capable of it, but such would be brief interludes in the otherwise long history of internal cooperation between parts of itself.
I know you make the point below that one does reconnaissance before one attacks one's enemy/competitor directly, but XVI had plenty of time to reccon Earth's capabilities, it would have quickly found out we were less advanced, at which point it could have easily wiped us out after acquiring a genetically and culturally diverse sample. Even if the main invasion force is en route during the game, it still leaves us with no victory option in the end, which is why I assume it's not a wholly berserker type entity.

• How would you justify a (rather sudden) interest in diplomacy, on behalf of XVI?

If we go with the above assumptions, XVI would still be powerful enough for us to be no threat long term (in the case of any sort of protracted conflict between itself and Earth's military), but given that we have only one thing it wants: genetic and cultural diversity (since all it's material needs are far more economically harvested from deep space bodies). At this point, it can still simply come and take what it wants, this is where the Phalanx victory condition comes in:
The reverse engineering of alien Alcubiere drives (and the re-purposing of the exotic matter within), gives Earth the ability to strike at the brand new wormhole node that's been towed into our stellar neighborhood (located well and far away from any system, wormholes require a lot of space free of any serious curves in space time, otherwise they explode quite dramatical according to what I've read). This places a very expensive investment in materiel on XVIs part in jeopardy. In the end, it would be a case of peace being mutually beneficent: if XVI keeps attacking, there's a serious rock that it's very expensive traversable wormhole will be atomized, but if that's done, then it still has sufficient in system presence to bomb Earth into prehistory.
I guess I'm making the argument that it's not worth XVI's time to squash us primitive apes right then. After all, it can keep tabs on us and in the meantime it keeps expanding, so by the time we're any real threat, it would have surpassed us anyways.

• 'Good old-fashioned radio waves' have a major disadvantage, story-wise. They can be easily detected, even with today's technology; radio waves are something *we* have a pretty good understanding of. It'll make identifying any XVI hosts dead-easy: if a person has the same electromagnetic profile as a mobile network relay, then he/she is surely infected !

Indeed. But it needn't be limited to radio-waves: human hosts, in the interests of Stealth could be designed to share information on contact, through short ranged electromagnetic and chemical means. It would make the nascent hive mind here slow in it's thoughts, but it would keep it hidden.

• NO!! One cannot ignore or downrate the necessity of having (*some* form of) FTL propulsion capability, in a story that involves Galactic exploration/conquest. There *must* be a very good reason why FTL drives seem to appear so often in works of science-fiction, regardless of media. Think about this very carefully: our Galaxy is huge, of almost incomprehensible size; the distances any space faring race would have to travel between neighboring stars are incredible; several generations could easily succeed aboard such a spacecraft -- from a human perspective. In order to be able to negotiate such distances within a more palatable, human-like timeframe, one is forced to resort to a plot device such as an FTL drive... Not to mention that, should XVI be lacking such means of locomotion, then the whole Galaxy-wide dominance would be out the door as well.

Granted, but I think between the STL warp drive, we've still cut down travel time to several months to the wormhole, and the womrholes can explain XVI's interstellar empire, which strikes me as a very good compromise between realism and the need to move the plot along.

That's about it for now, with more to come... Meanwhile , please continue to expand and refine your 'alternate story'.
I apologise. It seems I'm not wearing my good manners tonight: WELCOME to the UFO:AI Forums ! 

Thank you.

5

Discussion / Re: Feedback on Mechanics and Little Things

« on: February 06, 2011, 03:02:50 am »

One more thing: I have more harvesters than I know what to deal with, even if I sell most of them, disassembly still takes a crapload of time. Shouldn't think kind fo work get subcontracted to somebody so it goes faster?

In fact, shouldn't anything you manufacture eventually start showing up in the buy inventory? Including more esoteric equipment like plasma rifles and alien launchers? I can see why nobody would bother making UFO propulsion, or anything anti-mater powered, but aside from that?
Mostly I hate the disassembly times. We already sell off UFOs, so having somebody disassemble them for me while I focus on more immediate issues (like making enough PB grenades) shouldn't be a problem.

6

Design / Re: Slight Changes to Existing UFOpedia Files for Realism

« on: February 05, 2011, 10:36:46 pm »

TO:    Base Commander, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
FROM:   Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE:   %02i %s %i
SUB:   Proposal: Man-Portable Particle Beams

I got nothing for this one folks. You just can't build a synchotron that small and still have it generate relativistic beams. The magnets would have to literally break the laws of physics to be strong enough to accelerate the particles that fast. I recommend you replace these with bigger torsion batteries, or structure batteries (magnetic bottle ala the plasma grenade). I already used a different particle accelerator, which while still pushing the limits of miniaturization, is sort of plausible, in my previous posts on the particle beam pistol.

7

Design / Re: Slight Changes to Existing UFOpedia Files for Realism

« on: February 05, 2011, 10:32:12 pm »

FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Plasma And The Grenade Launcher

Commander, we've finished the testing and prototype phase of our new 25mm plasma grenades. We're ready to move it to mass-production and full field deployment.
For this project, we already had ready access to all the required technology. We've made very few changes to the general design of the grenade. The only real challenge was to shrink the complex machinery enough to fit inside a standard 25mm shell. We've had to scale back the power of the plasma grenade somewhat in order to do that – the magnetic structure battery of our new 25mm shell is a fair bit smaller, emitting less energy and thus plasma than the alien hand grenade. However, this is offset by the fact that it can be fired en masse from our HPGL Grenade Launcher over relatively long distances.
We've dubbed our creation the 25mm PB ('Plasma Burst') Grenade. We can manufacture them by the box or by the speedloader, both of which will be extremely expensive to produce. One full load of 25mm PB is essentially an entire magazine of miniature plasma grenades, miniatures which are even more difficult to create than the original.
The amount of firepower we've added to our team grenadier(s) is frightening to behold. Launch a cylinder of these grenades into a crowded street, and the only thing left will be ash. They'll become a highly valuable addition to our arsenal.
--Cdr. Navarre

Just altered to use the superconducting solenoid rather than the hydrogen core.

8

Design / Re: Slight Changes to Existing UFOpedia Files for Realism

« on: February 05, 2011, 10:18:54 pm »

TO: Base Commander, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Alien Detection

The project on alien detection is complete, Commander. We now have a full understanding of the machinery, its controls, and the modifications needed for human use.
Our initial assessment looks to have been correct. The detection suite makes use mostly of standard, reliable detection methods that humanity either uses or knows about. The equipment is more advanced than ours and will be useful, but by and large the aliens apply the same concepts and use the same physics as we do. As I mentioned in my proposal, radar, lidar and other such old reliables are all well-represented in the suite.
And then there's the mystery sensor.
It had us confounded for a long time, because now that it's here on the Earth's surface, it spits out mostly overpowering background noise. Up in the air, however, the picture is quite different. We think we've now identified the detector and have figured out how it works.
It's a superconducting quantum interference device, or SQUID. It seems designed to detect magnetic and to a lesser degree, gravitic anomalies by scanning for minute changes in a background magnetic and gravitational field. Everything traveling through a magnetic field disturbs the field to some degree based on its size, mass and composition. The sensor can identify these changes as natural or artificial objects based on course, speed and acceleration with 95% accuracy. If there is any doubt about a contact, the system will report it anyway. It seems to be more effective in stronger magnetic fields like the one around Earth, but we surmise that it will work to some extent anywhere.
The gravity based aspect seems far less sensitive, as small masses like those of aircraft produce almost undetectable perturbations, so we summarize that it is mainly used for navigation in space, where the ship must plot a course between massive objects like asteroids, moons and planets.
All of this detection power is linked into an advanced computer system which automatically puts all results through a series of filters, which can be adjusted at any time to suit the needs of the pilot and crew. This helps alternately sifting out targets from a mess of background noise or increasing sensitivity to search for something stealthy.
Interestingly, the detection computer seems to have a direct link to fire control, assisting in anticipating target manoeuvres and point defence control if the craft has that capability.
Parts of this technology can be adapted to our existing ground-based installations and aircraft radar. It should extend their detection range and increase resolution across the board, making it a good deal harder for UFOs to hide. However, the biggest practical gains will come from using this tech in creating new aircraft instrumentation to increase the combat survivability of our interceptors.
Of course, it's not the immediate uses that are the most important. These detectors are vital for any future PHALANX spacecraft. In space, without the support of ground radar, we're going to need the extra power very badly.
--Cdr. Navarre

Anyone who knows about gravitational interforometers and gravitational astronomy will tell you that what makes it so great is the fact that gravity waves are perturbed only a tiny amount as they move propagate through space, so accurate data based on that wasn't going to happen. I've replaced it with a SQUID that whiel still having a bit of gravitic detectiona capability, replies mainly on magnetic fields.

9

Design / Re: Slight Changes to Existing UFOpedia Files for Realism

« on: February 05, 2011, 09:53:47 pm »

TO: Base Commander, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Alien Propulsion

Commander, I'm happy to report the success of our alien propulsion program. We've cracked the mysteries of the alien engine set-up and we finally understand the path of the antimatter from fuel tank to reaction chamber.
Quoting from my previous report:
(UFO Theory) "The alien propulsion system is a type of rocket engine unlike any ever built on Earth. It uses direct matter-antimatter annihilation to trigger the nuclear fusion of small pellets of deuterium. The resulting energy flashes water vapor into high temperature plasma which explodes out the back of the engine, requiring heavy reaction cambers made of alien materials and powerful electromagnetic based thrust vectoring. This gives a UFO extreme power and needs no air or other external fuel, allowing it to burn in hard vacuum. There is a highly-advanced ablative cooling system continuously pumping water through the engine housing before injecting it into the reaction chamber in order to keep it cool and reduce the infrared signature. Engine heat is also used to supply the craft's electricity."
With this project we've learned a lot about how these engines are constructed, how to control them, and how we might retrofit them to our current airfleet. We should now be able to replicate these engines and use them for any applications we might come up with. I have to warn you, though; they will be extremely expensive to produce. Between the complex use of alien materials, the sensitive electromagnetics and the liquid nitrogen cooling system, this really stretches the limits of our production capacity.
Some more research may be required to figure out antimatter storage and control, but the engine upgrades are self-contained units -- basically just an alien engine with adapters on it for human tech. We should be able to start retrofitting as soon as we acquire enough fuel to keep our airfleet in the sky.
I've mentioned before, the power disparity between our liquid fuel and these antimatter catalyzed (through technically a misnomer, since the antimatter is used up in the reaction) fusion engines is nothing short of astonishing. When we start using these engines on our planes, our pilots are going to need some serious re-education about the capabilities of their craft. Let me explain.
In a regular military jet, giving her a little too much throttle around a tight corner can result in impaired judgment and unconsciousness from the force of acceleration. Pilots have died from over-acceleration.
In an antimatter jet, however, these problems are amplified hundred-fold. The engines are so powerful that over-acceleration can easily turn a human body to bloody pulp in its flight chair. Even the craft itself may have trouble coping with the acceleration, and our flight engineers will have to be extremely careful in checking for metal fatigue, hairline fractures and other wear and tear on the airframe. A tiny crack in the structure may result in one of our planes breaking up in mid-flight. Mechanical thrust limiters can only do so much -- most of the G-stresses are incurred during turns.
Still, it shouldn't become a problem as long as everyone -- pilots and mechanics alike -- is extremely careful in their assigned tasks. We've done some serious tightening-up of our safety and inspection protocol just for antimatter planes. The retraining of our pilots is the only remaining obstacle to our use of these alien engines.
The same accelerations will only make our UCAV more effective at dog-fighting with UFOs however, unrestrained by human tolerances as they are, through structural stresses will have to be carefully watched.
--Cdr. Navarre

Given the expense of producing anti-matter, direct annihilation is really unwarranted. Having spent a lot of time reading about interstellar propulsion, let me tell you that anti-matter annihilation of the pure variety is reserved only for high relativistic speeds, where high exhaust velocities are required. For atmospheric flight, antimatter catalyzed fusion is far more economical on your supplies of fuel while providing the same thrust. And using water as the main propellant makes sense due to it's availability, ease of storage, and high heat capacity. Because there was no way any cooling system that's not ablative could have dealt with the temperatures generated by such an engine, the friction on the hull from the speeds the UFOs fly at would have prevented effective heat exchange.
Also, that quote from the previous report on UFO theory should be parsed into the UFO theory text.

10

Design / Re: Slight Changes to Existing UFOpedia Files for Realism

« on: February 05, 2011, 09:25:00 pm »

TO: Base Commander, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Alien Artifact -- Plasma Grenade

Commander, our assessment of the alien plasma grenade is complete. Like all the alien weapons, it's very nasty and very dangerous.
The device is essentially made up of five components: a casing, a trigger, a battery, a timer and an explosive charge. The casing is specially shaped to create a toroidal blast zone around the grenade, concentrating power into a smaller area. The battery is highly powerful and barely within our power to duplicate, in fact, it's a thin layer of superconducting solenoid storing it's energy by “inflating” a supercurrent driven magnetic field that causes the superconductor to come under tremendous tensile stress. A carbon nonotube backing is used to to keep the battery from exploding outward under the power of the magnetic field. The trigger is of particular interest, because it contains a tiny thumbprint scanner which verifies that the grenade is not being accidentally activated. A legitimate (i.e. non-accidental) activation starts the timer countdown. The length of the countdown is variable depending on the number of seconds that the trigger is held down, but it has a built-in safe minimum of three seconds.
Once the timer reaches zero, the explosive charge sends the grenade tumbling into the air, and once the grenade achieves vertical orientation and ideal height, simultaneously, the charge has cut through part of the nanotubes holding the solenoid from flying apart under magnetic pressure, and the strength of the magnetic field quickly breaks the rest of them. The EMF snaps the loop at a specifically weakened point and the strength of the field causes electricity to arc across the air gap, eroding the material it comes in contact with and releasing even more energy as the gap is widened. In milliseconds, the superconducting ring is turned into plasma hotter than the surface of the sun, causing the container to crack and release more cracks plasma arcs. The combined plasma and magnetic pressure drives the final explosion which is seven times as powerfull as an equivalent mass of TNT.  
The radius of the explosion is approximately half again as large as that of a standard human frag grenade, anything caught within the area of effect will be either severely injured or dead.
We've drawn up a set of blueprints that will allow our Workshops to begin immediate construction, and a manual to train our soldiers in its use. They will now be able to use the plasma grenade as any other grenade in our arsenal.
--Cdr. Navarre

The battery used to heat the hydrogen in the initial design struck me as a roundabout way of doing it, and given the alien's fondness for high energy density storage systems and expertise with magnetic fields, I felt this was more appropriate and realistic method of detonation.

edit: I thought of using anti-protons trapped in buckyballs, but it would have required a uranium coating, to absorb the x-rays and turn their energy into heat, altogether too much trouble.

11

Design / Re: Slight Changes to Existing UFOpedia Files for Realism

« on: February 05, 2011, 09:06:12 pm »

FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Alien Launcher

Commander, we've finished work on the alien missile launcher. It's a fairly simple affair. Firing is computer-driven, fed directly from the UFO's targeting computer. Powerful electromagnetic rails made of specialized highly conductive alien alloys in the launch tube accelerate the missile to extreme speeds, reaching up to Mach 4 at the point where the missile leaves the tube. Only once the missile is fully free of the tube do its on-board rockets kick in. This isn't even any attempt to give the missile a boost commander, the anti-matte fueled missiles the aliens use have to be a minimum safe distance away from the craft before they fire their annihilation powered engines or the plume and radiation could damage it's mother ship.
The good news is that we've managed to successfully adapt fittings, controls and power feeds to allow the Alien Launcher to be safely mounted to our aircraft. The bad news is that we've had to drastically reduce its magazine size in order to meet weight and size restrictions on our aircraft.
Our aircraft are too small and light to be able to carry so many, and most of our craft aren't laid out with internal missile magazines. We've had to custom-build an aerodynamic external magazine mounted with the launcher, the capacity of which falls behind the stores found on UFOs.
It's not all doom and gloom, though. We believe that we can modify the launch tube to be able to fire human missiles as well as the alien type. We'd have to develop the missile ourselves, of course -- no current human missile is capable of withstanding the stress of being fired from this launcher. However, we're confident we can design a missile that will survive launch and incorporates new UFO-tracking technologies to improve homing and ECM capability.
I'll send you a design proposal as soon as I can, Commander.
--Cdr. Navarre

Just a few details added, I biggest suggestion however is that this is used as a steeping stone to Base Defense Railgun, Rail Canon and Qudrail Rifle, using alien materials to design powerful kinetic based weapons. And torsion batteries to make man portable rifles more powerful, acurate and faster to reload than the Bolter.

12

Design / Re: Slight Changes to Existing UFOpedia Files for Realism

« on: February 05, 2011, 08:51:23 pm »

TO: Base Commander, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Particle Beam Weapon

Our report on the alien PBW (Particle Beam Weapon) is ready for your review, Commander.
The general idea of particle-beam weaponry is to hit a target object with a stream of accelerated particles moving at near-light velocities, therefore carrying tremendous kinetic energy. Such a beam has excellent cutting capabilities, being able to slice and bore through armor. The PBW is a robust and elegantly 4ngineered piece of tech Commander, and it shows how much further ahead of us the aliens are in material science.
The accelerator is little more than a high-energy synchrotron, speeding particles round and round in a circle until they've achieved sufficient velocity, albeit with room temperature superconducting magnets that cold make us a fortune on the open market. The synchotron is fed by a series of six wake-field particle accelerators, chambers filled with lithium plasma, where a small laser is used to induce charge separation in it, causing a negative and positive regions to form. A packet of charged particles is injected on top of this “wave” of high density charge, and the laser is used to keep the plasma in a state of high charge separation until the particle packet has entered the next stage of the synchotron where the particle bursts are stretched into one continuous beam and given a final burst of acceleration.  The particles are then diverted via a magnetic field into the focusing array, where they are magnetically constricted -- 'pinched' -- into a coherent beam. The level of magnetic control the aliens achieve here is far greater than anything we've managed before. The pinch system is intelligently controlled by the UFO's targeting computer, directing the beam to its target with dead-on accuracy.
When active, the weapon is powered directly from the UFO's electrical system, constantly tracking one target of choice. Once the target has been destroyed, the computer will immediately lock on to the next hostile contact in the chain, if any.
Defending against this weapon is going to be a challenge, Commander. There is very little that can be done against a particle beam traveling at near the speed of light, carrying enough energy to knock anything we can field right out of the sky, especially if the beam happens to pass over something like a fuel line or engine blade. Additional armor for our aircraft will protect against glancing blows, but in the case of a direct hit, it may as well not be there. It seems the only realistic defense against this weapon is to cause it to miss. We should recover and investigate an intact alien ECM unit as soon as we can.
It will be a similar challenge for us to fit the PBW to our own craft. We've rigged up brackets that we can mount to any medium-sized hardpoint, but we can't generate enough power to suit this weapon just from in-flight electricity. If we want to use the PBW in combat, we're going to have to run it off its own antimatter-powered electrical system. This will require more research into antimatter storage and control, and it means that ammunition will certainly be limited.
On a brighter note, we've confirmed that all the weapon's components are within our ability to replicate, and their specs have been loaded into our Workshop machinery. We should be able to begin production straight away.
--Cdr. Navarre

Mostly just added a few details here.

Thanksp0ss.

13

Design / Re: CURRENT STORYLINE -- SPOILERS!

« on: February 05, 2011, 05:48:11 pm »

I'd just like to throw my support behind Lancaster and TrashMan. They may not have all the details right, but they're heading in the right direction.

The ridiculousness of the alien mothership and galactic conquest and exploitation has been addressed, so I won't touch it. I will say that it's incredibly at odds with the highly realistic detailed description in the UFOpedia, as well as the discrepancy in genres (horror in an RTS setting).

The fundamental difference in viewpoint can be used to explain the 'invasion'. The 'hive mind' sees Humanity as a new kid on the block and wants to get to know us better, just so happens that that means assimilation. Second, there's no reason the Aliens would want to colonize earth: they are space faring, with the resources of the Asteroid belt, you could build a ring of space habitats that have literally hundreds of thousands of times the surface area of the Earth, all of which it totally usable (unlike the Earth's which has a lot of extremes). In this scenario, the alien's invasion of Earth is just a sideshow, while they colonize the system bu building space habitats.

The aliens arrive, start doing their thing, but soon find that the locals are in fact capable of resisting them and that they are far better at war then they (as the hive mind is mainly a cooperative entity). With only the resources of the colony ship, and the industrial capability of the humans (who are capable of building ships that can kill Alien ones), and the strange data that a recently returned micro-hive mind that had been kept prisoner provided (that humans are not appreciating the hive's 'hello fellow entity, join us!'), it decides to enter into negotiations (possibly after a demonstrative strike by an Phalanx craft). The Hive had already attained sufficient genetic material to clone any human hosts it may wish for diversity, and the existing hive minds on Earth that have been formed as a result of it's meddling will be expatriated by the Humans (providing it with a wealth of new ideas), so it decides to leave a diplomatic outpost here while the main colony ship moves on to greener (and less troublesome) pastures, so to speak.

For realism, let them use STL colony ships, and instead of psionics, direct neural interface technology, based on bio-nano, and old fashioned radio waves, you get the same result. Their 'FTL' drive can be an exotic matter based Alcubierre warp drive. Of note is the fact that it can't go FTL(dynamic instabilities increase exponentially the closer to light speed the bubble gets, until the engines can no longer compensate, the bubble collapses, and the ship is destroyed in the resulting event, according to the latest models), it is merely a reaction-less drive that allows the ships to accelerate to near light speed very quickly, however it does mean that their ships seem to pop out of nowhere (early on, studies found that it was possible to bring the amount of energy required to create such a bubble to manageable proportions by making it bigger on the inside while only a nanometre or so on the outside).

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Discussion / Re: Feedback on Mechanics and Little Things

« on: February 03, 2011, 11:12:05 pm »

It depends on which version of Windows you're using.
In Windows 7 for example, you want:
Users -> username -> AppData -> Roaming -> UFOAI

AppData is a hidden folder though so make sure that hidden files and folders are shown (from Fodler and Search options in Explorer)

Ah, that explains it, thanks.

15

Discussion / Re: Feedback on Mechanics and Little Things

« on: February 03, 2011, 09:00:47 pm »

I tried doing what the FAQ said: documents and settings --> username --> but then there's nothing called Application Data