Pie in the sky starfield mod ideas

[Miauzi]

Vor 2 Stunden sagte belegost:

Echtes Newtonsches Flugmodell für alle Schiffe. Inklusive Schwerkraftunterstützung und Schleudern.

 

Go play "Kerbal" - it has all this already

[ss4142]

High heels, proper dresses, better haircuts, body shapes. Could be good for a start. For advance i would love to see a speeder bike like in Star Wars.

 

[Veniat]

1 hour ago, Miauzi said:

 

Go play "Kerbal" - it has all this already

God, I can't play KSP without MechJeb.  It's a lifesaver; KSP somehow likes to pretend that pilots don't have something probably a lot better than MJ already

[Miauzi]

Vor 33 Minuten sagte Veniat:

Gott, ich kann KSP nicht ohne MechJeb spielen. Es ist ein Lebensretter; KSP tut irgendwie gerne so, als hätten Piloten nicht schon etwas viel Besseres als MJ

 

Of course you ALWAYS play Kerbal with MechJep ... anything else would be complete bullshit

In fact, no spaceship was controlled by the "pilot" himself during orbital manoeuvres - that was only intended for absolute emergencies and the data for that usually came from the ground station.

There are beautiful scenes in the various documentaries on the beginnings of manned spaceflight ... when the future Soviet cosmonauts ask the chief designer - when he will show them the controls of the spaceship. His answer was "You don't have to do anything - we do it all from the ground".

"But then why do you need pilots?" he was then asked.

NASA's "Mercury" capsule was not even supposed to get a window - for the designers the pilots/astronauts were just -> "living useful mass".

 ---

The necessary calculations are very time-consuming WITHOUT a computer - i.e. by pencil+paper+calculator.

When I watched the film "Apollo-13" with my father 20 years ago - there were two young women sitting next to us.

When the space engineers unpacked their slide rule for the calculation of the return flight corridor from the moon ... one said to the other, "Why don't they have a calculator with them?"

My answer to my father was "Because the ancestor of the calculator is on board the lander".

 

When I was studying to become an engineer (in the 1980s), I calculated the descent of the "eagle" from lunar orbit to the landing point on my programmable calculator - I had the data for the velocities, amount of fuel, etc. from my father's textbooks on space travel (he was an astronomy teacher).

 

[WandererZero]

48 minutes ago, Miauzi said:

There are beautiful scenes in the various documentaries on the beginnings of manned spaceflight ... when the future Soviet cosmonauts ask the chief designer - when he will show them the controls of the spaceship. His answer was "You don't have to do anything - we do it all from the ground".

"But then why do you need pilots?" he was then asked.

NASA's "Mercury" capsule was not even supposed to get a window - for the designers the pilots/astronauts were just -> "living useful mass".

 

A good retelling of the early United States space program, specifically the Mercury program (including the Window/Hatch argument between the Mercury 7 astronauts and the German engineers) can be had by watching "The Right Stuff", based on the book by Tom Wolfe.

 

If you want even more of this type of Docudrama, From the Earth to the Moon is another good series, which chronicles the Apollo program.

[Miauzi]

Vor 5 Minuten sagte WandererZero:

 

“ ansehen, das auf dem Buch von Tom Eine gute Nacherzählung des frühen US-Raumfahrtprogramms, insbesondere des Mercury-Programms (einschließlich des Window/Hatch-Streits zwischen den Mercury-7-Astronauten und den deutschen Ingenieuren), kann man sich „ The Right Stuff Wolfe basiert .

 

Wenn Sie noch mehr von dieser Art von Dokudrama wollen, ist „From the Earth to the Moon“ eine weitere gute Serie, die das Apollo-Programm aufzeichnet.

 

That's exactly what I mean - they run every few months in D-Land on channels such as N24 or NTV.

(as well as 3Sat or ARTE)

 

---

that is already a "simulation" of real space physics and for 99% of all people interested in space opera games much too much reality.

[belegost]

4 hours ago, Miauzi said:

 

Go play "Kerbal" - it has all this already

No, it doesn't. There is no n-body simulation, just "spheres of influence" and KSP is not a real flight sim. Closest thing that has what I'm asking for is Elite series and even this one doesn't have gravity assist.

Edited August 19, 2023 by belegost

[DocClox]

23 hours ago, belegost said:

True Newtonian flight model for all ships. Including gravity assist and slingshots.

 

That would be nice!

 

Not sure how it would work with combat though.  I get the impression that a lot of systems assume that we're going to be doing close range dog-fighting.  Newtonian physics would tend to put most fights at long range.

[ungodlytomato]

i am kinda afraid starfield might not be going to be very compatible with sex mods gameplay wise. like if the gameplay loop is that you land on a planet, clear a space bandit outpost and take off, then the window for defeat sex will only appear during the fighting in the outpost, right? so unless you are feeling like having sexy time in the vacuum of space, sex content will be limited to cities, bases (some of which interiors only i guess), your ship and finally planets with breathable atmosphere.

compare that to skyrim or fallout 4: you leave your home/base/city//whatever and you are off in the open world. you can go to some bandit camp, you can get defeated on your way there, you can get devious device'd, have your companion want to bang in the middle of a forest etc. - basically have sexy times everywhere. in starfield however it seems to me that there will be a lot fewer places and opportunities to insert sex content. i hope i am just being pessimistic though. ty for reading my rant.

[WandererZero]

2 hours ago, DocClox said:

On 8/19/2023 at 2:24 AM, belegost said:

True Newtonian flight model for all ships. Including gravity assist and slingshots.

 

That would be nice!

 

Not sure how it would work with combat though.

 

JMS made it work just fine in Babylon 5. In fact, he insisted on it. Everything from Star Furies to Shadow vessels operated with Newtonian physics, and some of the battles there were quite amazing.

[DocClox]

1 hour ago, WandererZero said:

JMS made it work just fine in Babylon 5. In fact, he insisted on it. Everything from Star Furies to Shadow vessels operated with Newtonian physics, and some of the battles there were quite amazing.

 

Not what I'm saying. Suppose  you end up engaging at around 2 light-seconds distance, only to find that the engine is hard-coded to only lock-on at maximum range of 100 meters? Suppose that missiles have a maximum range traveled before the engine reclaims them?

[Miauzi]

Vor 3 Stunden sagte DocClox:

 

Nicht das, was ich sage. Angenommen, Sie greifen am Ende auf eine Entfernung von etwa 2 Lichtsekunden an und stellen dann fest, dass der Motor so programmiert ist, dass er sich nur auf eine maximale Reichweite von 100 Metern einschaltet? Angenommen, Raketen haben eine maximale Reichweite, bevor das Triebwerk sie zurückerobert?

 

Missiles and spaceship battles at great distances?

I recommend the cycle of "Honor Harrington" - their missiles are not atmosphere-flying rubbish like in "Wing Commander" & Co.

 

[belegost]

The Expanse had quite decent zero-g ship-to-ship combat.

[Veniat]

11 hours ago, belegost said:

The Expanse had quite decent zero-g ship-to-ship combat.

I absolutely love the expanse, but the expanse is a terrible example to use for a world like Starfield.  The Expanse is near-future technology, stuff we could reasonably expect to have within the next century or two with the right breakthroughs. 

A civilization that travels between planets in other solar systems needs some form of FTL if they're doing it without generation or sleeper ships, and solving FTL means you'd need some way to manipulate gravity.  Newtonian physics and expanse-style combat go out the window if you can manipulate gravity even slightly, even if it has massive energy costs, it would be a game-changer for our entire civilization. 

You just can't equate what might be realistic to us now, to what would be realistic to us in a world with FTL tech. 

Edited August 21, 2023 by Veniat

[Miauzi]

Vor 2 Stunden sagte Veniat:

Ich liebe die Weite absolut, aber sie ist ein schreckliches Beispiel für eine Welt wie Starfield. The Expanse ist eine Technologie der nahen Zukunft, Dinge, die wir mit den richtigen Durchbrüchen innerhalb der nächsten ein oder zwei Jahrhunderte erwarten können.

Eine Zivilisation, die zwischen Planeten in anderen Sonnensystemen reist, benötigt irgendeine Form von FTL, wenn sie dies ohne Erzeugungs- oder Schlafschiffe tut, und die Lösung von FTL bedeutet, dass Sie eine Möglichkeit benötigen, die Schwerkraft zu manipulieren. Newtonsche Physik und raumgreifende Kämpfe gehen verloren, wenn man die Schwerkraft auch nur geringfügig manipulieren kann, selbst wenn dies enorme Energiekosten verursacht, würde es für unsere gesamte Zivilisation eine Wende bedeuten.

Man kann das, was für uns jetzt realistisch sein könnte, einfach nicht mit dem vergleichen, was für uns in einer Welt mit FTL-Technologie realistisch wäre. 

 

What space battles might look like in a world with FTL drives - is shown by the following SF cycle

"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night's_Dawn_Trilogy

 

This has absolutely nothing to do with "Wing Commander" or "Star Wars" ... because you're not sitting in a P51 or F15.

[DocClox]

16 hours ago, belegost said:

The Expanse had quite decent zero-g ship-to-ship combat.

 

I'm not saying it can;t be done, or that it couldn't work. I';m just saying that some assumptions about the range and relative velocities of the ships involved are probably hard coded into the engine. That could make any attempt at a full Newtonian overhaul rather more complex that you might expect.

[belegost]

5 hours ago, DocClox said:

That could make any attempt at a full Newtonian overhaul rather more complex that you might expect.

When in 2011 Skyrim was released nobody expected the kind of stuff you can do with it today. Yet here we are, 12 years later and there's some amazing, shit out there nobody even dreamed possible at the time.

 

Never say never.

Edited August 21, 2023 by belegost

[Veniat]

35 minutes ago, belegost said:

When in 2011 Skyrim was released nobody expected the kind of stuff you can do with it today. Yet here we are, 12 years later and there's some amazing, shit out there nobody even dreamed possible at the time.

 

Never say never.

Every engine has some hardcoded limitations, and Newtonian physics requires some shockingly complicated maths with a backend that can keep up. 

Some things really do have to be never.  No one can tell until the games out though. 

[belegost]

1 hour ago, Veniat said:

Newtonian physics requires some shockingly complicated maths with a backend that can keep up. 

An Atari ST could run Elite 2 which had both Newtonian physics and accurate model of Milky Way to boot way back in 1993. Not to mention modern Elite:Dangerous which can still run on a low-spec 2013 hardware, no problem. A shockingly complicated maths that need a backend to keep up. Certainly.

Edited August 21, 2023 by belegost

[Miauzi]

Vor 30 Minuten sagte belegost:

Auf einem Atari ST konnte Elite 2 ausgeführt werden, das bereits 1993 sowohl über Newtonsche Physik als auch ein genaues Modell der Milchstraße verfügte. Ganz zu schweigen vom modernen Elite:Dangerous, das immer noch problemlos auf Hardware mit niedriger Ausstattung aus dem Jahr 2013 laufen kann. Eine erschreckend komplizierte Mathematik, die ein Backend braucht, um Schritt zu halten. Sicherlich.

 

However, a purely "static" model is used - i.e. no change in the position of the large bodies (such as planets or moons) ... I only mention the 3-body problem.

this is also not necessary - because the visible and effective differences between the two models are only noticeable on a scale of millions of years for 99.99% of all actions ... the 0.01% concern, for example, pairs of neutron stars or black holes rotating around each other.

[Veniat]

2 hours ago, belegost said:

An Atari ST could run Elite 2 which had both Newtonian physics and accurate model of Milky Way to boot way back in 1993. Not to mention modern Elite:Dangerous which can still run on a low-spec 2013 hardware, no problem. A shockingly complicated maths that need a backend to keep up. Certainly.

It's not the hardware, it's the way the engine itself functions.  It depends on how objects are stored and translated.  

Also, a lot of games, especially older games, use tricks that make it seem like it's moving everything correctly; but it might be using tricks with perspective.  It all depends on how the engines structured. 

[ThyraUnn]

16 minutes ago, Veniat said:

Also, a lot of games, especially older games, use tricks that make it seem like it's moving everything correctly; but it might be using tricks with perspective.  It all depends on how the engines structured. 

This just reminded me of the Train Helmet from Fallout 3, Inb4 all the ships have an NPC tied to them so they can move and Interact with meshes and objects.

 

[Reigor]

Also consider the "fun" factor. It's very possible that BGS originally had a newtonian model but it was considered to hard and/or not fun during internal testing and switched to more classic arcade model. 

[Miauzi]

Vor 37 Minuten sagte Reigor:

Berücksichtigen Sie auch den „Spaß“-Faktor. Es ist durchaus möglich, dass BGS ursprünglich ein Newton-Modell hatte, dieses jedoch bei internen Tests als zu schwierig und/oder nicht unterhaltsam erachtet wurde und auf ein klassischeres Arcade-Modell umgestiegen ist. 

 

Since "WingCommander" (or comparable games from the "StarWars" universe), it has become engrained in the minds of gamers - that the battle between spaceships takes place like in classic air combat from WW1 or WW2 or from films like "TopGun".

 

 

[Reigor]

Personally, I was hoping for turrets. Starfield spaceships are big enough they are more like the Millenium Falcon than an X-Wing. Why can't there be some rear or side facing turrets? Again, might have been considered, tested, and removed because it wasn't "fun". I'm hoping that is the case, because like fuel usage and rescue beacons, I'm hoping there is code built for turrets in the game files, and thus can be more easily be implemented by a modder.