Talk:Research

Writers/Credits:

• hoehrer
• ProtoArmor
• Virtul
• Tom "thomash833152" Hudson
• wikiworms

Some of the sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_%28physics%29
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_High_Energy_Laser
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_laser
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_matter
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGV

Expounding on the tech tree

A problem I've noticed with this tech tree is how short it is. We have such a nice tech tree system that allows you to "reverse engineer" that which you recover, but we're barely using it. I would like to propose expanding this tech tree.

Examples:

The problem with making a real plasma weapon doesn't involve not understanding "Advanced Plasma Control". Plasma is actually quite simple to understand and control -- it obeys Lorentz force quite nicely. We have two primary things holding us back in making plasma weapons: the strength of the axial magnetic field we can create and the amount of power we can get from a small power source. Well, that's two source techs:

Supermagnets: These Antareans have some impressive, and by impressive I mean 'previously unfathomable' magnets in use. A household magnet is around 100 gauss, and we've worked with magnets over 150,000 gauss, but they're somehow pulling off small Halbach Arrays that are over 50 trillon gauss -- almost as strong as your average neutron star. If we could figure this one out, it would have profound implications in our ability to control and utilize plasma.

Isomer Emission Power: We have long known the potential for great amounts of power potential to be stored in small amounts of matter via nuclear isomers, particularly hafnium 178m2. The problem was always getting it out -- and even if you could, it's in gamma rays, so you need a way to harness them. The lack of military demand in recent years sidelined much of our research onto the topic. Figuring this one out will have great implications for providing great amounts of power to small devices.

So, lets say that you find a plasma atomizer. Great, you can research "plasma atomizer" and be able to produce it. However, you don't know how to build a plasma rifle, because you haven't found one and don't understand what's going on If you found one, you could research it right away -- but, as stated, you haven't, so you can't.

However, you also can research the parent techs of the plasma atomizer -- Supermagnets and Isomer Emission Power.

So, lets say that you research Supermagnets. Well, that's still not enough to research plasma rifles, but it uncovers new technologies. With such powerful magnet arrays, you can research the Phoenix, since magnets that strong could provide propulsion against Earth's magnetic field or through induced paramagnetism. Perhaps you can research advanced radar, or other such inventions as well. The parent tech provides immediate new things that you can branch off to.

Lets say that you then research Isomer Emission Power. Now you get the things that you could build using isomer emission power sources -- lets say, advanced armor requires energy, so if you have nanotech, you can now research the advanced armor. Perhaps the bolter rifle is a coilgun and needs a major energy source, so it's a requirement. Etc. But now you have both supermagnets, isomer emisison power, *and* understand the plasma atomizer. Well, now you can scale it up -- you can research a plasma rifle without ever finding one!

The general layout would be that if you're willing to research a lot, you can come up with every weapon in a "category" on research, but the big leaps and bounds require a representative piece of alien technology. So, if you get a piece of plasma weaponry, you can eventually learn to make all of the plasma gun-type weapons without capturing one, but if you want a tachyon weapon, you better capture at least one type.

Does this sort of thing sound like a reasonable thing to you? We have it structured so that we can "reverse-engineer" technologies down the chain. Why not take advantage of it? :)

Proposed research topics:

Tech: Advanced Lasers

Desc: The usual

Uses: Laser pistol, and indirectly the other lasers, plus any vehicles that need lasers.

Tech: Isomer Emission Power

Desc: See above

Uses: All alien handheld and thrown weapons (except kerrblade), bolter rifle, advanced armor, etc.

Tech: Supermagnets

Desc: See above

Uses: All alien handheld and thrown weapons (except kerrblade), phoenix, advanced radar, etc.

Tech: Plasma Explosives

Desc: In general, plasma dissipates relatively quickly in all directions, making it ineffective as an explosive. However, the plasma from these alien explosives seems to be confined to bands, based on the same vortex principles that we see in focus fusion reactors. As a consequence, it remains devastating as it spreads outwards. We wish to learn the confinement scheme that they're using to cause such behavior.

Uses: All plasma-explosive weapons; also one enabling tech for plasma supermagnets

Tech: Tachyon Device

Desc: We don't even know exactly where these particles are coming from, but their very presence is proof of the Antarean control of particles that, while unable to convey information faster than the speed of light, form a closed temporal loop that can transfer energy devastatingly well. At this point, simply being able to recreate the effect would be an amazing feat that would open up the door to a whole new branch of weaponry, armor, other technologies.

Uses: All alien tachyon weaponry.

Tech: Tachyon Physics

Desc: The tachyons seem to be generated from imploding boson condensates; we know that much. However, we have yet to determine how to factor their behavior into our present models or determine any equations of state for them. We hope that with an understanding of the physics behind tachyon generation and control, we can fundamentally alter how we approach defense and movement.

Uses: The techs behind advanced armor, shields, alcubierre drive, and cloaking (i.e., an enabling tech)

Tech: Tachyon Explosives

Desc: The Antarians have managed to discover how to generate coherent, high intensity beams of tachyons within a plasma explosive. At first glance, it would almost appear as though they have the plasma performing calculations and controlling its direction, all through reversals of supermagnet-strength magnetic fields -- but that can't be the case, could it?

Uses: All alien tachyon explosive weaponry

Tech: Nanotech Mass Production

Desc: While nanotechnology forms the core of much of our modern technology, we feel that it may be possible to develop a generalized system for rapid assembly of nearly any kind of stable nanostructures using a combination of gas deposition and large-scale laser cooling. If this pans out, materials science will take off.

Uses: The root tech for all armors, and several other techs (i.e., an enabling tech)

Tech: Degenerate Composites

Desc: In the quest to develop better armors, an interesting concept was uncovered. If we kept bosons densely packed within a supermagnet's field, we could essentially create a thin plane of degenerate matter. The Pauli Exclusion Principle would cause it to be virtually incompressible and require that any new particles trying to move through it fit into precise locations.

Uses: Provides the best armor and also enables shield research. Of course, we could add another level of armor after that if we so wanted, one that provides better shielding against tachyons. Since our "tachyons" are how we're explaining the loss of matter in Bose-Einstein condensate explosions (a real-world unknown in physics), we could create subcritical condensates for which the addition of any energy would trigger the implosion, and in our invented tachyon physics, scatter the energy as non-coherent tachyons in the same direction that the particles arrived from. Since a tachyon travelling back through time is the same as its antiparticle moving forward through time, it would be subject to this.

Tech: UFO Design Principles

Desc: Having captured a UFO, if we wish to be able to produce their more advanced designs without capturing them, we're going to have to understand not only how to reproduce the parts, but how they work together. The most challenging part will be understanding how to adjust the flight control software to deal with different flight components.

Uses: Allows construction of other UFOs, although more advanced UFOs may also require other techs, such as the Alcubierre Wave Generator

Tech: Alcubierre Wave Generator

Desc: The Alcubierre Drive -- commonly known as the warp drive, it is the panacea of space exploration. To be able to create one requires a complete theory of quantum gravity. Apparently the Antareans discovered the existence of fundamentally bizarre negative-mass particles and a method to create them, thus enabling an Alcubierre drive at the same time as a fuelless diametric drive. Attractive as this concept is, we must first determine how they generate particles with negative mass.

Uses: As both an Alcubierre (warp) drive and a Diametric (fuelless) drive both require particles of a negative mass, you get two birds with one stone: better engines and the ability to build more advanced alien craft.

Tech: General Alien Anatomy

Desc: The Antareans, as well as the other species that they travel with, have evolved down completely different evolutionary paths than our own, all the way from their first self-sustaining hypercycle. While we can roughly determine what their organs do from a dissection, understanding how they function requires a more detailed study at the molecular level.

Uses: Can be learned from any alien autopsy. More advanced autopsies require it, as well as does psionics. An enabling tech for any biological technologies.

Tech: Alien Psionics

Desc: (Not sure -- are we going to have psionics in this game? It'll be a trick to come up with a plausible scientific explanation, but I can manage)

Uses: (Anything involving psionics)

Naturally, as this is my proposal, I'd be willing to write the first-draft info files for everything described, plus implement the .ufo files to hook in the changes.

-- 129.255.93.180 01:32, 11 August 2006 (CEST)

Great! Be sure to mention this page at IRC and the forum. Also, first drafts may well go onto the main page, as subpages of "Proposed". Also, please, be aware this is most probably after-2.0 stuff, so people may not have time even to look at this, currently. Even if you script and code everything... There is just so much to fix...

--Bandobras 03:17, 11 August 2006 (CEST)

No doubt about that. :) -- Rei 19:19, 11 August 2006 (CEST)

Early research

At the start of the game, one available research area could be to analyse alien behaviour using the available data from the first attacks. It could be a prerequisite for later research or simply make make some kind of equipment available for purchase or production. This could be something like the grenade launcher or ammunition better suited for hunting aliens, something already existing but previously overlooked. It would also be a way to introduce more background information and atmosphere into the game. --Grumpy 02:05, 20 October 2006 (CEST)

That's a great idea, which is why I was already working on it. ;)

--Winter 08:05, 20 October 2006 (CEST)

I'm not worthy... {repeat n times}

However if all-knowing and in all ways excellent guru Winter should wish for some assistance

in this task I would be happy to provide. In the meantime I will direct my unworthy efforts

to tasks more fitting to my station. ;) Hmm, the technology descriptions seem to need a bit of help

anyone working on those?

--Grumpy 20:39, 20 October 2006 (CEST)

If you want more to research, you could research more Earth weapons, rather than sticking to the alien arsenal. The humans are quite lucky because the alien weapons are so ergonomic and confortable. Do all aliens have 5 fingers with an opposing thumb? And besides, the PHALANX could try researching and improving/adapting alien weapons to Earth weapons. I'm proposing that some alien weapons can't be used by human soldiers (while others can be used), so the player has to research and build Earth variants (maybe with researchable improvements) of the plasma/tachyon guns. Some less powerful but more accurate, or less power and longer range, etc. And why not... make some tech, like tachyon, impossible to research..(the research won't get to anything fruitfull) E.g the tachyon physics is to advanced for our current level of technology, so human scientists have to find a way of protection against tachyon.. you won't have a tachyon weapon, but can research some tachyon shield/armor/countermeasure (I'm proposing this if Winter doesn't have anything already set in the story concerning this..) It could be more interesting if there will be more technologies, the humans developing their own powerful weapons, until the end of the game, based on several techs got from the aliens. Humans were always good at weapons and destroying each other.. It's in their nature, to quote the Terminator ;) --Sirg 11:13, 21 October 2006 (CEST)

It is reasonable that earth forces would have to spend quite some time fighting the aliens with mostly earth technology, even if the whole research community was available to draw upon. I like the idea that some tech can be used but not understood and some can't be either used or understood. All that research would be able to give you on these techs would be general capabilities from observations of how the aliens used them and the little which could be tested in the lab. Weapons tech that can be used might have to be modified to fit or fire, so you wouldn't just be able to pick up a new weapon on the battlefield. Imagine a plasma knife for an alien might be the size of a two-handed longsword for a human soldier, or the other way around. Something that would make sense would be to connect research on aliens to what happens on the battlefield (and the information you get before embarking or maybe a short briefing before entering battle). One way to connect these could be through the "critical hit" discussed in the forum. You are much more likely to get a good hit if you know someones vital spots and the weaknesses of their armor. Here it is possible to use a recurring research topic, for example that you can research the first when you have brought back the first corpse, the second when you have brought back ten corpses and so on. Each will give you more information and higher hit/damage/kill probabilities. However to really make use of these connections, the skills would have to be extended.

--Grumpy 21:51, 23 October 2006 (CEST)

I don't find "Alien Origins" in this page!!!

What's category that should contain it? --Pmanop 06:47, 13 July 2010 (UTC)