Aerodynamic sleekness

[Haesslich]

Perhaps people here should try Dan Simmons Hyperion series, he has quite interesting idears of future space combat. And i still stick to my people suck for future air and space combat, already pilots have verry big problems with keeping up with their machine in dog fights. And believe me when you have weapons like (my favorite) tachyon cannons you really want an computer to lineup and kill the target on the other end of the weapon. And about the engines up front that would be silly indeed i was just trying to ilustrate that dogfighting in space would be verry frustrating .

I've seen inertial flight models - and we don't have them in WC. The reason g-forces aren't a factor in the games is because humans have mastered gravitic technology - they can produce artificial gravity AND antigravity, which means that the problem with inertia's already taken care of. WC1's fighter blueprints and the game itself shows that there are 'acceleration compensators', which means that g-forces due to inertia area already removed or no longer a factor, at least not once a ship is out of a larger gravity field like that of a carrier or a planet. This removes one factor that make AI pilots better than human pilots; the whole 'they can survive maneuvers that would kill a person' schtick is gone.

Second: we've seen autoaim in the WC universe - it's the type of thing you see on the Bearcat and the Excalibur, and it's awful. Later fighters seem to get by without this feature, and at most we have ITTS systems. They're either horribly complex to maintain, incredibly expensive to deploy, or else humans just aim better than most AIs do. Otherwise, we'd be seeing the same auto-aiming guns on every ship in WCP and SO.

Third: one more reason to use AI in combat is to avoid human casualties on your side. However, these don't seem to be as much a factor in the Confederation where there are trillions of people... and being blunt, you need people to crew carriers even if the fighters are AI. Since the technology is either not up to the task of combat (AIs being too easily spoofed, perhaps) or else the technology is far too expensive for combat (being able to deploy a hundred fairly good human pilots is still better than deploying ten okay AI pilots), we're still stuck with people in Confederation fighters.

There's also the 'people can do things that no AI can' argument - at least when it comes to programming and figuring out solutions. Example: In the WC4 novel, Blair uses a sonic boom to try and knock out a missile battery, by disabling the crew. An AI pilot would simply have gone down and tried to kill the battery, which would have accomplished the mission but shed more blood than was necessary.

 

[Dishwasher]

I've seen inertial flight models - and we don't have them in WC. The reason g-forces aren't a factor in the games is because humans have mastered gravitic technology - they can produce artificial gravity AND antigravity, which means that the problem with inertia's already taken care of. WC1's fighter blueprints and the game itself shows that there are 'acceleration compensators', which means that g-forces due to inertia area already removed or no longer a factor, at least not once a ship is out of a larger gravity field like that of a carrier or a planet. This removes one factor that make AI pilots better than human pilots; the whole 'they can survive maneuvers that would kill a person' schtick is gone.

Second: we've seen autoaim in the WC universe - it's the type of thing you see on the Bearcat and the Excalibur, and it's awful. Later fighters seem to get by without this feature, and at most we have ITTS systems. They're either horribly complex to maintain, incredibly expensive to deploy, or else humans just aim better than most AIs do. Otherwise, we'd be seeing the same auto-aiming guns on every ship in WCP and SO.

Third: one more reason to use AI in combat is to avoid human casualties on your
side. However, these don't seem to be as much a factor in the Confederation where there are trillions of people... and being blunt, you need people to crew carriers even if the fighters are AI. Since the technology is either not up to the task of combat (AIs being too easily spoofed, perhaps) or else the technology is far too expensive for combat (being able to deploy a hundred fairly good human pilots is still better than deploying ten okay AI pilots), we're still stuck with people in Confederation fighters.

There's also the 'people can do things that no AI can' argument - at least when it comes to programming and figuring out solutions. Example: In the WC4 novel, Blair uses a sonic boom to try and knock out a missile battery, by disabling the crew. An AI pilot would simply have gone down and tried to kill the battery, which would have accomplished the mission but shed more blood than was necessary.

This is quite contradicitve I mean why develop all this physics law breaking technology to sustain human live in a fighter instead off developing a decent AI?
Just claiming that there is something as ridiculous as a G-force neglition technology (some material that stops gravimetric particles?!) is strange because this technology looks like much more of a longshot to me than a decent AI does. Even now the US claims that they have a computer controlled anti nuclear missile shield that can shoot down a balistic missile that hits the ground at mach 11!!!!!! no human can do that (at 300 meters/second the human nerv system would simply be to slow to react on a target homing in at that speed). And please, all the life support needed to protect a human pilot would be way more exspensive then a AI computer. I'll bet that humans as pilots in fightercraft will be completely obsolete before this century is over. And why in the world could an AI not make the same decision as blair did when he stunned that turret?!

 

[Dishwasher]

QUOTE]a ship not under constant thrust, when scoops are deployed, will eventually come to a stop due to the 'friction' of the scoops and the fact that each collision with hydrogen or other particles in space will cut its velocity down just a bit.[/QUOTE]

With one H2 particle every cubic cm it would only take a few million years to come to a complete stop, thank you verry much .

 

[Haesslich]

This is quite contradicitve I mean why develop all this physics law breaking technology to sustain human live in a fighter instead off developing a decent AI?
Just claiming that there is something as ridiculous as a G-force neglition technology (some material that stops gravimetric particles?!) is strange because this technology looks like much more of a longshot to me than a decent AI does. Even now the US claims that they have a computer controlled anti nuclear missile shield that can shoot down a balistic missile that hits the ground at mach 11!!!!!! no human can do that (at 300 meters/second the human nerv system would simply be to slow to react on a target homing in at that speed). And please, all the life support needed to protect a human pilot would be way more exspensive then a AI computer. I'll bet that humans as pilots in fightercraft will be completely obsolete before this century is over. And why in the world could an AI not make the same decision as blair did when he stunned that turret?!

Well, there's two reasons: humans tend to be cheaper than advanced technology most of the time and are far more versatile. Reason #2 is because it's easier to play a space-fighter-sim game when you're actually piloting the ship rather than telling the AI fighter to go on a mission.

And as far as g-force negation goes, notice that artificial gravity that's keeping Blair's feet on the floor of the hangar, or which keeps everyone on the Vesuvius in WC4 from getting splattered against the side of the bulkhead when the ship maneuvers as it goes after the Intrepid in WC4? It's Inertial Compensation - detecting the vectors and compensating for them before the bag of meat and water inside the ship gets splattered all over the walls. In other words, the technology's already there - we had to have it to develop true Akwende-type jump drives (the gravitic control stuff), and using it for space travel in larger ships means that you can do it for smaller ones too.

As far as the anti-missile system you're discussing is concerned, the last time I heard of any tests on it, they indicated that the system failed about 50% of the time. I'm also having problems figuring out how you calculated the costs for an AI system versus fighter life support - where'd you get those figures anyways? And where in WC do you see signs that they've got any AI worth discussing, outside of the movie? At least, pilot-level AIs which can fly space-weapons platforms and aim weapons? Even the NAVCOM system of the movie didn't seem to actually fly the ship - it just figured out courses to use for jump points.

Human-type decisions aren't exactly the simplest things in the world, especially given that even the most advanced AIs that people are theorizing about now still don't have the ability to make the sorts of decisions we do every day, and programming in all the scenarios or rules they'd need would be a nightmare. We've seen no hint that they're doing AIs that have the capabilities required to do more than fly in a straight line; the USAF is looking at remote-controlled vehicles for use in the near future, rather than completely autonomous units.

 

[Haesslich]

a ship not under constant thrust, when scoops are deployed, will eventually come to a stop due to the 'friction' of the scoops and the fact that each collision with hydrogen or other particles in space will cut its velocity down just a bit.

With one H2 particle every cubic cm it would only take a few million years to come to a complete stop, thank you verry much .

Given that Wing Commander ships seem to find enough fuel to keep going with scoops, I suspect the densities in some systems are higher, or else they're using more than just H2 to power themselves. Those 'fuel bars' we see are mostly afterburner fuel and onboard storage for afterburner use, IIRC, and then they run either on batteries (like the Dralthi) or else basic fusion engines.

Don't make the mistake of mixing reality as you know it with game-reality.

 

[El_Destructo]

I think people should stop trying to explain the physics in a game like wing commander, because they just make no sense. Take the engines for an example, they are all placed in a cluster on the rear (atleast the big ones are) this really sucks because if you accelerate forward for 10 minutes you would have to turn your ship around 180 degrees and need 10 minutes just to come to a halt, and flying backwards for 10 minutes with all your guns mounted forward is just plain unhandy.

Ha ha... for a good example of a game like that you should try Gravity Well...

After spending 10 minutes flying from one solar system to the next you forget to do a 180 and slow for 10 minutes and run into a planet or star. Space sucks.

 

[Edfilho]

Congratulations, you just proved that WC is impossible. Great work. Now let me ask you: So what? You know, Spiderman is quite impossible too. And so is 99% of all Sci Fi and Fantasy books, movies, games and related works. You get the ANAL of THE YEAR award for being annoying.

 

[Shipgate]

Someone mentioned (was just too big to quote I guess) that the U.S. claims it has a missile that can hit a target at mach 11 or something? They just tell you that probably so you feel safer. It's all about feeling safer these days. Didn't they also claim they have missiles that hit targets with surgical precision? Those didn't turn out to be that surgical I don't think.

AI seems like a waste of time anyway. We haven't even figured out if intelligence has much of a long-term survival rate for humans. It seems intelligence may not work out for us in the long run. No, we need to pilot those little ships on our own.

 

[El_Destructo]

In the future high class A.I. (anything that even THINKS it can pilot a war machine) will be outlawed after the inevitable human vs. A.I. wars.

 

[I'm thinkin...]

AI isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Humans still controll these systems. AI's aren't totally independant. For example the Patriot missile system relies heavily on computers but humans ultimately are the ones responsible for hitting the fire button. The computer tells the human operator what targets are threats and tracks these targets for the operator. AT this point AI's are around to assist humans not take over for them.

 

[Death]

t's easier to play a space-fighter-sim game when you're actually piloting the ship rather than telling the AI fighter to go on a mission.

Not to mention that if you go the "orders to AI" route you get E&B.

Oh, wait, they're shutting down Sept 22. Nevermind.

 

[Shipgate]

In the future high class A.I. (anything that even THINKS it can pilot a war machine) will be outlawed after the inevitable human vs. A.I. wars.

I believe you're referring the Butlerian Jihad.

 

[BlackJack2064]

someone mentioned that cube or spherical ships would be ideal for space. In practice yes since a sphere is what the stongest shape in geometry. But possess no displacement value for an impact. Any weapon that works by punching into a ships hull would find it easier to blast through a straight surface (as a cube) or a spherical one.

As I said before having fighters narrow allows for more reflection from offensive weapons. In the future energy detection will probably be far more imporant to locating enemy ships than mass and shape. (Except for close range of course).

It also has the human factor, I am sure there is a human pyschological predilection towards sleek aerodynamic fighters, due to a "image" for lack of a better word.

Though for realness sake it is a video game lol, and they did need to make the fighters interesting and dangerous looking for us the player to fly.

 

[Dishwasher]

Congratulations, you just proved that WC is impossible. Great work. Now let me ask you: So what? You know, Spiderman is quite impossible too. And so is 99% of all Sci Fi and Fantasy books, movies, games and related works. You get the ANAL of THE YEAR award for being annoying.

My original post in this thread was that People should stop explaining the physics of the game and start enjoying the game because the physics don't make sense. And then I gave some examples of the things that don't make sense. After wich this thread kinduv got a life of it's own. Obviously some people think they do make sense or something

 

[Dishwasher]

I believe you're referring the Butlerian Jihad.

Yep tha't either Dune or the Wachowski bros.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

One man saw it coming.

 

[Dyret]

Congratulations, you just proved that WC is impossible. Great work. Now let me ask you: So what? You know, Spiderman is quite impossible too. And so is 99% of all Sci Fi and Fantasy books, movies, games and related works. You get the ANAL of THE YEAR award for being annoying.

I totally agree with you. I really hate when people do this. Wing Commander is the best space sim out there, but it was not made for astronaut training. If Origin made it ultra realistic, it would kill the game and there would never be a WC 2, WC 3, WC 4, WCP, WCA, WCA, WCPV, or PV 2. And the CIC wouldnt be here today. This threads gone to hell, thanks to Dishwasher.

 

[Dishwasher]

I totally agree with you. I really hate when people do this. Wing Commander is the best space sim out there, but it was not made for astronaut training. If Origin made it ultra realistic, it would kill the game and there would never be a WC 2, WC 3, WC 4, WCP, WCA, WCA, WCPV, or PV 2. And the CIC wouldnt be here today. This threads gone to hell, thanks to Dishwasher.

Ow if people would just read instead of jump to conclusions

 

[Death]

Jumping to conclusions is the only exercise some people get.

And I mean the online world in general, not this board.

 

[Dishwasher]

Jumping to conclusions is the only exercise some people get.

And I mean the online world in general, not this board.

Jeah I was just thinking that I got a bit of a harsh reaction, cuz first I state that Wing Commander I a great arcade style space sim and that it should be respected as is. And that people should not try to make sense out of the physics because they make no decent sense (wich is why the ships look cool) . And before you know it people start turning the world around saying hey wingcommander physics make no sense but they don't need to because it's a great game so stop whyning about those physics... aaaargh . Well anyway i guess I got the message passed over but had to pay the price of being the bad guy.

As of the aerodynamic sleekness those ships? They have it to look cool! And the rock ships? I always used to think of it as camo. because the meters of rock around the vessel tend to mask their em signature making them look electronically and visually like just another asteroid. Personally I think their big square behind's just made great target practice.