Time, Again (November 12, 2010)
- Thread starter Bandit LOAF
- Start date
Dundradal
Frog Blast the Vent Core!
Oddly, long range communication in the Wing Commander universe something Chris Roberts in particular seems to have thought a lot about. There was a big concern that Wing Commander IV start building some of the less interesting 'backbone' of the Wing Commander world in order to flesh it out and this was one of the first things chosen. There was a whole concept built around how information would go through jump buoys and particular types of stations and all this would make it travel at a particular speed... and they started adding those things to the game itself (there's that mission early on in WC4 where you stop to visit a relay station under construction--now that the war is over, Confed is building a communications infrastructure). The WCIV novel also mentions how Nephele is off the beaten path and so that news comes on tape via courier instead of via burst signal.
I like the idea of a distant frontier that's weeks or months from the heart of the Confederation and I think there was a lot of that in Gemini's DNA... but in an amalgamated Wing Commander universe where the great frontier ends up directly adjacent to Sol it's a tough story to maintain.
FTL communication does exist in the Wing Commander universe and we see it a bunch in the novels... but it is not some universal device. It requires sophisticated hardware that seems to limit its existence to warships and facilities on planets that are so rare as to be one per important world (McAuliffe, home to a major Confederation shipyard, had *one* burst facility). It also seems to send very short... bursts... of information--a set of words rather than an encoded hologram (and, it's not a person-to-person call--anyone anywhere seems to be able to pick them up).
... but that all comes after Privateer, darn it.
One question related to this. Did Chris Roberts pick up the trend from the novels and then insert it during the development of WC4?
I *think* the first mention of burst signals in the canon is End Run in the Milk Run section when Ramona Chekhova mentions it on her orbit of Vukar Tag.
End Run said:
As for burst signal technology here's what I was able to put together quickly...
There are two forms of burst communication: intrasystem ship-to-ship and interstellar. Burst communication is FTL and seems like it is both a technology and format. In the novels it comes off at times like a means of compressing a lot of data into a short communication to get it there fast and avoid detection as longer transmissions would be much easier to detect. Data, whether it be text, audio, video, holo, all can be encoded and compressed to be sent via burst signal.
Ship-to-ship transmission is our first encounter with the technology. Chekhova sends a data packet of images of Vukar Tag to the Johnny Greene in a half-second burst. It seems most burst messages are less than a few seconds long but usually around one second.
Fighters have burst capability in some cases. Bondarevsky's Rapier in ER has the ability...
End Run said:
Thrakhath provides a wealth of information.
End Run said:
Interstellar messages can be sent in two ways: Direct and Relayed. Direct burst transmissions over large interstellar distances require the power of large installations or capships to do. Smaller installations and ships require relay stations which I recall that some jump buoys also serve as. In WC4 we see a dedicated relay station used to facilitate communications between different locations. There we see communications of large ships being relayed as well which presents some conflicting data. We see lots of direct bursts being sent (thinking of the scene in FA when they are staring at all the messages moving about Kilrah) but maybe a handful of relayed messages.
We've got a whole bunch of references for burst signals being like sending a flare up in the middle of the night. Detection is an evolving technology. FA has a lot in that regard.
End Run said:
End Run said:
Still need to go through FA, FC and AS for more specifics...
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
After yelling at the Helen/Vicky/Andrea/Kendra entity I sat down to go through Action Stations to reply to this thread... and then, of course, I immediately got stuck re-reading the book from each point where I came across a burst reference. So, my apologize for making it seem like this thread got second place to that other whacko scenario.
There's a lot more to Action Stations than we usually credit it with--the scene where Banbridge and Speedwell talk about Penney's decoding the Kilrathi has a *lot* to it. I had always written it off as being sort of shoehorned in to fit with Claw Marks, but it actually sets a really interesting tone, creating a Confederation that has actually been studying the Kilrathi to an extent and knows who their top commanders are, what their fleet organization is like and so on.
The conversation between Banbridge and the President is also chilling--I wish the entire book were that aspect instead of the covert ops adventure.
In all honesty, probably not. Chris is somewhat notorious for getting sudden inspiration from outside sources and then being adamant about including it in his current project. Sometimes that really comes together amazingly well (Wing Commander IV is made up of a dozen such instances)... and sometimes that leads to all the Das Boot in the film.
I leafed through Johnny's bible and I can't find background for the burst stuff (it *may* still be in there; damn my lack of OCR)... but I'm willing to bet it's something that was in the initial bible sent to the novelists. It's something that's so universal in the novels and also touched on in the games that I have a hard time believing there's not a common anscestor somewhere (it also feels like the sort of thing someone at Origin would have written up in detail in the early 90s, either for an early version of the movie or the Privateer TV show...).
As promised, here's a rogues gallery of burst mentions in Action Stations...
* When the Lazarus first jumps to Black Hole System 299 they do a translight radar sweep that identifies a massive field of wrecked ships. Kruger sends out a burst that is a "coded recognition signal". The station responds, which allows Lazarus to locate it and plot a course.
* Speedwell tells Banbridge that counter intelligence had acquired the burst signal of a Kilrathi listening post near the Nanking Sector and traced it back, which prompted it to self destruct.
* Banridge's internal monologue notes that one of his pet projects was finding R&D money to reduce the size of listening posts for grabbing translight burst signals. He notes that current antenna arrays are the size of battleships and that the best can only proble a few dozen light-years.
* Turner and friends are pursued by a Kilrathi counterintelligence team as they escape from Gar's. Richards tries to jam their signal, but they manage to get out part of a burst transmission.
* Gilkarg recieves a dispatch about the counterintelligence failure via burst transmission just after his flagship jumps from Kilrah.
* Lazarus jumps out of Black Hole System 299 and is spotted by a Kilrathi picket. Since they no longer need to hide, Turner orders a "high-intensity translight burst scan of the system" that identifies Kilrathi warships (and reveals his location). He then asks for a second burst scan with more specificity: "focus the beam down on that cluster of blips. I want a good read on them." (Lazarus' reaction to performing this scan is interesting, too: "Geoff punched the data into the computer and hit the transmit button. Power in the ship dimmed from the massive energy required to transmit a translight radar sweep.")
* Banbridge's oficial memo warning McAuliffe of an attack states that it "cannot be sent by burst transmission due to security concerns". He then monologues that "McAuliffe's translight burst signal station was again on the blink, probably due to the damned solar storms rippling between its two suns. Even if the line was open, he still preferred to send a message of this nature by hardcopy. There was no telling if the Cats had broken their latest coding."
* Translight tech at The Pit: "Geoff started to switch through frequencies on the screen and finally locked in on The Pit's translight search pulse... The Pit's translight scanner suddenly shut down as the cylinders single stern-mounted engine pulsed to life, driving it towards the edge of the black hole's event horizon."
* Turner gets back to the Landreich and wants to signal Earth about the attack. Bulcher says he can't because the planet's burst signal facility has been down for three weeks. Because of a Confederation embargo the replacement part needs to be smuggled in, which may be a month or more out. They can receive but not send.
* Turner then says that they should go to McAuliffe because it's the "nearest burst signal station that can relay back to Earth on a secured line". Bulcher tells him it's also down, probably because of solar storm activity.
* Ches Penney at Listening Post Epsilon on the frontier makes a partial decode of a Kilrathi burst signal that reveals they are mounting an attack on McAuliffe. Speedwell shows Banbridge the 'original' signal, which is a very interesting interaction for our purposes:
* They go on to mention, again, that the "translight burst transmitter" at McAuliffe is down (and this has been reported via the Carlin system). McAuliffe is the only Confederation base offline at that moment and that's how they know the Kilrathi are targetting it.
* Because the signal facility is down at McAuliffe, the ship on picket duty is "reduced to hovering near the jump point and sending a transponder back through the jump point to indicate everything was all right."
* Long monologues: "Concordia had translight burst capability, he really should run it out of the system to get a clear signal. It had been almost two weeks now since they'd heard anything from outside the system." -- that's an interesting thing because it indicates that a) only the newest ship in the fleet actually has burst capability, b) that that capacity is lessened in the system (that's probably because of the solar flare) and c) that Long is a really really really bad Admiral.
* The picket outside McAuliffe gets off a partial burst signal before it is destroyed, which worries the Kilrathi. They also note that their Sixth Fleet had just sent its final burst transmission before jumping in and attacking the Landreich, which is a tactical note at least.
* The 'burst signal station' on McAuliffe comes back online as the Lazarus arrives on the planet. They believe they are able to transmit but are not recieving anything yet.
* Interesting description as Banbridge is reading Turner's burst from McAuliffe: "A wavery image appeared on the screen, typical of a burst signal on its first read, before the encrypting computers had made a second run-through to clean the picture up."
* Turner's message says he has something he can't trust to a burst signal. Banbridge explains to the President that "Whatever it is he has, it must be so damn important he can't trust it even to encoded burst. It must be a document, a report, an intercepted transmit, something from the other side that we can't let the Cats know we have. That alone tells me this information is solid."
* Banbridge sends an emergency burst back to McAuliffe: "Admiral Banbridge switched stations on his screen and activated the emergency burst signal transmit and quickly dictated the order. Dayan's last report indicated she was approaching final jump into McAuliffe. At least she could be alerted that she was most likely jumping into a hot situation, but would McAuliffe's station be able to receive? He routed the signal through to the orbital transmit station, and prayed that there was still time." (Interesting because we see it goes through an orbital transmit station.)
* The partial burst from the picket did get out! Here it is described: "A very young and obviously frightened lieutenant appeared. 'This is picketship Java . Repeat, picketship Java . A Kilrathi battleship has just come through jump point Alpha. Christ! It's opening up on us. It's..."
* In response, Sgt. Williams sends out "a high-density burst scan" which provided a rough image of a Zulu-class battleship. Interesting to note that there's almost a five minute delay for that (between the burst being sent out and coming back) and that the image was rough due to the solar activity.
* McAuliffe gets a burst signal from 'the CIC', which is Banbridge's message. The Concordia also intercepted this message (so it wasn't a point-to-point thing). They also recieved "an encrypt from Rear Admiral Dayan's task
force", ten hours away.
* Kilrathi strike craft specifically do not have burst signal capability.
* "Sir, it's Ark Royal! On translight burst. The signal's close by."
* As Concordia is getting out and the attack is beginning:
(Which is interesting because of the clear/encoded idea, because of the amount of data being transmitted and because it tells us the Concordia has a communications desk.)
* As it becomes clear what's happening on Earth, Banbridge starts getting burst signal updates "from comm central".
* 24 hours after the battle opens Earth/Banbridge know only that burst signal capability to McAuliffe is offline.
* "The projected damage control board and continual translight radar bursts showed a fusillade of fire and missiles tracing back and forth. Yorkshire's first and third main turrets were gone, and multiple hull breaches flashed red on the diagram of the ship" - interesting because of 'translight radar' in the name.
* And, finally, a burst signal recalls the Kilrathi fleet. Gilkarg regrets the fact that the message had already been acknowledged, otherwise he would have continued his assault to the next system.
I'll look at Fleet Action next and then put together some conclusions.
There's a lot more to Action Stations than we usually credit it with--the scene where Banbridge and Speedwell talk about Penney's decoding the Kilrathi has a *lot* to it. I had always written it off as being sort of shoehorned in to fit with Claw Marks, but it actually sets a really interesting tone, creating a Confederation that has actually been studying the Kilrathi to an extent and knows who their top commanders are, what their fleet organization is like and so on.
The conversation between Banbridge and the President is also chilling--I wish the entire book were that aspect instead of the covert ops adventure.
In all honesty, probably not. Chris is somewhat notorious for getting sudden inspiration from outside sources and then being adamant about including it in his current project. Sometimes that really comes together amazingly well (Wing Commander IV is made up of a dozen such instances)... and sometimes that leads to all the Das Boot in the film.
I leafed through Johnny's bible and I can't find background for the burst stuff (it *may* still be in there; damn my lack of OCR)... but I'm willing to bet it's something that was in the initial bible sent to the novelists. It's something that's so universal in the novels and also touched on in the games that I have a hard time believing there's not a common anscestor somewhere (it also feels like the sort of thing someone at Origin would have written up in detail in the early 90s, either for an early version of the movie or the Privateer TV show...).
As promised, here's a rogues gallery of burst mentions in Action Stations...
* When the Lazarus first jumps to Black Hole System 299 they do a translight radar sweep that identifies a massive field of wrecked ships. Kruger sends out a burst that is a "coded recognition signal". The station responds, which allows Lazarus to locate it and plot a course.
* Speedwell tells Banbridge that counter intelligence had acquired the burst signal of a Kilrathi listening post near the Nanking Sector and traced it back, which prompted it to self destruct.
* Banridge's internal monologue notes that one of his pet projects was finding R&D money to reduce the size of listening posts for grabbing translight burst signals. He notes that current antenna arrays are the size of battleships and that the best can only proble a few dozen light-years.
* Turner and friends are pursued by a Kilrathi counterintelligence team as they escape from Gar's. Richards tries to jam their signal, but they manage to get out part of a burst transmission.
* Gilkarg recieves a dispatch about the counterintelligence failure via burst transmission just after his flagship jumps from Kilrah.
* Lazarus jumps out of Black Hole System 299 and is spotted by a Kilrathi picket. Since they no longer need to hide, Turner orders a "high-intensity translight burst scan of the system" that identifies Kilrathi warships (and reveals his location). He then asks for a second burst scan with more specificity: "focus the beam down on that cluster of blips. I want a good read on them." (Lazarus' reaction to performing this scan is interesting, too: "Geoff punched the data into the computer and hit the transmit button. Power in the ship dimmed from the massive energy required to transmit a translight radar sweep.")
* Banbridge's oficial memo warning McAuliffe of an attack states that it "cannot be sent by burst transmission due to security concerns". He then monologues that "McAuliffe's translight burst signal station was again on the blink, probably due to the damned solar storms rippling between its two suns. Even if the line was open, he still preferred to send a message of this nature by hardcopy. There was no telling if the Cats had broken their latest coding."
* Translight tech at The Pit: "Geoff started to switch through frequencies on the screen and finally locked in on The Pit's translight search pulse... The Pit's translight scanner suddenly shut down as the cylinders single stern-mounted engine pulsed to life, driving it towards the edge of the black hole's event horizon."
* Turner gets back to the Landreich and wants to signal Earth about the attack. Bulcher says he can't because the planet's burst signal facility has been down for three weeks. Because of a Confederation embargo the replacement part needs to be smuggled in, which may be a month or more out. They can receive but not send.
* Turner then says that they should go to McAuliffe because it's the "nearest burst signal station that can relay back to Earth on a secured line". Bulcher tells him it's also down, probably because of solar storm activity.
* Ches Penney at Listening Post Epsilon on the frontier makes a partial decode of a Kilrathi burst signal that reveals they are mounting an attack on McAuliffe. Speedwell shows Banbridge the 'original' signal, which is a very interesting interaction for our purposes:
* They go on to mention, again, that the "translight burst transmitter" at McAuliffe is down (and this has been reported via the Carlin system). McAuliffe is the only Confederation base offline at that moment and that's how they know the Kilrathi are targetting it.
* Because the signal facility is down at McAuliffe, the ship on picket duty is "reduced to hovering near the jump point and sending a transponder back through the jump point to indicate everything was all right."
* Long monologues: "Concordia had translight burst capability, he really should run it out of the system to get a clear signal. It had been almost two weeks now since they'd heard anything from outside the system." -- that's an interesting thing because it indicates that a) only the newest ship in the fleet actually has burst capability, b) that that capacity is lessened in the system (that's probably because of the solar flare) and c) that Long is a really really really bad Admiral.
* The picket outside McAuliffe gets off a partial burst signal before it is destroyed, which worries the Kilrathi. They also note that their Sixth Fleet had just sent its final burst transmission before jumping in and attacking the Landreich, which is a tactical note at least.
* The 'burst signal station' on McAuliffe comes back online as the Lazarus arrives on the planet. They believe they are able to transmit but are not recieving anything yet.
* Interesting description as Banbridge is reading Turner's burst from McAuliffe: "A wavery image appeared on the screen, typical of a burst signal on its first read, before the encrypting computers had made a second run-through to clean the picture up."
* Turner's message says he has something he can't trust to a burst signal. Banbridge explains to the President that "Whatever it is he has, it must be so damn important he can't trust it even to encoded burst. It must be a document, a report, an intercepted transmit, something from the other side that we can't let the Cats know we have. That alone tells me this information is solid."
* Banbridge sends an emergency burst back to McAuliffe: "Admiral Banbridge switched stations on his screen and activated the emergency burst signal transmit and quickly dictated the order. Dayan's last report indicated she was approaching final jump into McAuliffe. At least she could be alerted that she was most likely jumping into a hot situation, but would McAuliffe's station be able to receive? He routed the signal through to the orbital transmit station, and prayed that there was still time." (Interesting because we see it goes through an orbital transmit station.)
* The partial burst from the picket did get out! Here it is described: "A very young and obviously frightened lieutenant appeared. 'This is picketship Java . Repeat, picketship Java . A Kilrathi battleship has just come through jump point Alpha. Christ! It's opening up on us. It's..."
* In response, Sgt. Williams sends out "a high-density burst scan" which provided a rough image of a Zulu-class battleship. Interesting to note that there's almost a five minute delay for that (between the burst being sent out and coming back) and that the image was rough due to the solar activity.
* McAuliffe gets a burst signal from 'the CIC', which is Banbridge's message. The Concordia also intercepted this message (so it wasn't a point-to-point thing). They also recieved "an encrypt from Rear Admiral Dayan's task
force", ten hours away.
* Kilrathi strike craft specifically do not have burst signal capability.
* "Sir, it's Ark Royal! On translight burst. The signal's close by."
* As Concordia is getting out and the attack is beginning:
(Which is interesting because of the clear/encoded idea, because of the amount of data being transmitted and because it tells us the Concordia has a communications desk.)
* As it becomes clear what's happening on Earth, Banbridge starts getting burst signal updates "from comm central".
* 24 hours after the battle opens Earth/Banbridge know only that burst signal capability to McAuliffe is offline.
* "The projected damage control board and continual translight radar bursts showed a fusillade of fire and missiles tracing back and forth. Yorkshire's first and third main turrets were gone, and multiple hull breaches flashed red on the diagram of the ship" - interesting because of 'translight radar' in the name.
* And, finally, a burst signal recalls the Kilrathi fleet. Gilkarg regrets the fact that the message had already been acknowledged, otherwise he would have continued his assault to the next system.
I'll look at Fleet Action next and then put together some conclusions.