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DoctorOfSpace
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The mothership design concept

01 Feb 2017 12:21

ettore_bilbo,I found my post

http://en.spaceengine.org/forum/17-1292 ... 1407761864

Hopefully that can help you
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ettore_bilbo
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The mothership design concept

02 Feb 2017 12:50

perfect... thanks :-D
 
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hoposhowgo
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The mothership design concept

26 Jun 2017 14:48

That'll be amazing. Also, The colonization of planets would be cool. I wish for the colonization of planets/galaxies. From the games size, it'll be cool if you added head on head PVP for civilizations. A stupid idea? Yeah. But intriguing. And if you do add a mother ship, add the ability to walk around in it.
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Marko S.
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The mothership design concept

07 Jul 2017 14:24

This idea will be hard to complete alone. I know that you insist of coding Space Engine alone, but I hope that somehow, we, from the forum, can help you. Thanks :) :) :D
P.S: When I was reading the description of the Mothership, I thought that it would be much different. In my head, I imagined something similar to Space Rangers mothership. That is old Russian space game. But still, an amazing idea. :D
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The mothership design concept

29 Nov 2017 15:47

Impressive
 
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The mothership design concept

02 Dec 2017 13:35

Sounds cool.
 
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Speedademon
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The mothership design concept

23 Aug 2018 14:54

Several kilometers in length could be too much in my opinion. Imagine rotating that thing just for a single maneuver. Less than a kilometer would suit.
for the facing direction, I still think what you mentioned 'submarine design' would work better. However for some bowl shaped ships, vertical main engine could be a thing and still look cool.
And I was wondering about rotation control. We need RCS thrusters(which may use same or different fuel from main engine) for rotation and we might even have gyro for long term ship stabilizing.
For anti-meteorite shields, energy shield makes more sense since it can cover 360 degree angle and doesn't have to be replaced frequently. Moreover, It's hard to always rotate massive ship to face it's front only shield against asteroids.
And I also think buying resources and things like modules, shuttles etc from human colonies should be a thing. We can let players pick those up from massive orbital stations around colonized planets.
I was also wondering if there will be a crew life support system. Oxygen, food, water resupply should be a thing.
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The mothership design concept

23 Aug 2018 15:33

Several kilometers in length could be too much in my opinion. Imagine rotating that thing just for a single maneuver. Less than a kilometer would suit.
I disagree. The fact is with 'motherships', bigger is always better. The bigger they are, the bigger power plants and propulsion units they can carry - adding to their overall longevity in space. Also, real space maneuvers in space using Newtonian physics is a slow process, typically lasting hours (for the ISS as an example). Scale that up many orders of magnitude and even the modest ships of Space Engine would require some hours to perform basic balanced maneuvering in zero-g with the mass equivalent of a small asteroid (have you ever tried pulling off a neat-and-tidy 180 degree turn with the Explorer-1 at 70000 km an hour and 8gs?).

This is a gross simplification however, because we are not considering the advanced materials and propellant methods used 'in the future' by Space Engine. A Shkadov-thruster sun pulling a Dyson swarm, complete with O'Neill cylinders and a orbiting Topopolis plus the modified planets would be 'excessive' by futurist standards (and none of those designs violate known physics in any way). A few kilometers-long so-called mothership is not. Even for a emerging Type II civilization mining only their equivalent asteroid belt, a kilometer long ship as described would be a 'scout'-class vessel.
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Speedademon
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The mothership design concept

25 Aug 2018 09:27

Several kilometers in length could be too much in my opinion. Imagine rotating that thing just for a single maneuver. Less than a kilometer would suit.
I disagree. The fact is with 'motherships', bigger is always better. The bigger they are, the bigger power plants and propulsion units they can carry - adding to their overall longevity in space. Also, real space maneuvers in space using Newtonian physics is a slow process, typically lasting hours (for the ISS as an example). Scale that up many orders of magnitude and even the modest ships of Space Engine would require some hours to perform basic balanced maneuvering in zero-g with the mass equivalent of a small asteroid (have you ever tried pulling off a neat-and-tidy 180 degree turn with the Explorer-1 at 70000 km an hour and 8gs?).

This is a gross simplification however, because we are not considering the advanced materials and propellant methods used 'in the future' by Space Engine. A Shkadov-thruster sun pulling a Dyson swarm, complete with O'Neill cylinders and a orbiting Topopolis plus the modified planets would be 'excessive' by futurist standards (and none of those designs violate known physics in any way). A few kilometers-long so-called mothership is not. Even for a emerging Type II civilization mining only their equivalent asteroid belt, a kilometer long ship as described would be a 'scout'-class vessel.
ISS don't do maneuvers(except some anti-orbital decaying burns). Motherships do. 
Motherships are supposed to head it's nose to 'burn vector' in order to do orbital maneuvers. In certain cases, you have to do multiple maneuvers with short few minute gaps between maneuvers.
In order to achieve these kinds of rotations with Few-kilometer long ships in a short time, 1. The ship should be equipped with super strong RCS thrusters 2. The ship structure and everything inside the ship (including crew members) would need to sustain unimaginable G factor.
Let's do some math. The equation says 5km radius ship rotating in 1rpm has more than 5G acceleration. In reality, players would want faster rotation speed. so let's say we are doing it in 5rpm. The equation says it's 139.78 G. 
We are not talking about small fighter jet here. We are talking about massive interstellar ship and such G-force is critical for that big ship's structure.
Moreover, you mentioned that bigger propulsion units would be better, which isn't a fact. What matters is the thrust-mass ratio, not the thrust itself. Bigger ship in general means higher mass which leads to lower thrust to mass ratio which leads to inefficiency.

However, I do still think multiple kilometer long stations should be a thing. It makes sense when the ship itself is hundreds of meters long and stations don't have to rotate.

Edit: Also, If you check default SE ships(that aren't shuttles), the stat says they have few hundreds of meters in length. I thought that is reasonable number and should be kept for general motherships in future game. 
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The mothership design concept

25 Aug 2018 14:59

The ISS does do maneuvers, usually to avoid incoming orbital debris, which as you can guess at those speeds are quite deadly. This maneuver is called a DAM (Debris Avoidance Maneuver) and is usually performed often 30 hours or more before TCA (Time of Closest Approach) with about two hours of actual moving. Yes the ISS is in orbit, so there are different conditions, but the premise is the same. Its is a rare event however.  A mothership in our sense would not need to avoid such debris obviously, since its shields can handle even large asteroids with ease (depending what they are made out of and at what velocity the object has relative to the vessel).

The key here is detection. USSTRATCOM tracks orbital debris pretty carefully alongside other such organizations for dangerous particulates and trash here on Earth. Onboard a mothership, sensors would probably sweep the space in front of and around the ship for incoming dangers. Depending on the speed of the mothership and the sensitivity of the instruments, the ship could have days or even weeks to prepare for precautions, whether it be to veer away from the incoming object or blast it with a laser (for example) to deflect it enough for the ship to slip by or break up into smaller, more convenient pieces.

I imagine that strategically, we would send our motherships in fleets, as the old exploratory sea expeditions went, at least initially. That would mean plenty of support for the larger, less maneuverable motherships if a variety of ships serve as an entourage - as you said, with non-rotational stations, maybe housing shuttles and similar craft.

That brings us to the main point; actual moving.  The fact is - motherships don't have to move around much! Their primary purpose would be to support a large population of crew (whether artificial or organic), scientific instruments, hangers for smaller craft, and a more or less a specialized HQ for a fleet. The least they would need to do is slow down, then gravity assist into an orbit around a star or planet at their destination. Leave it to the other, smaller ships in their entourage or docked in their hangers aboard the main mothership, to move around the solar-system, or go down to the planets, mine asteroids, collect fuel etc.

Speaking of fuel, you alluded to the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation (or "Tyranny of the Rocket Equation"). I am well aware of the equation and its consequences. Inefficiency is the foe here, but there are ways to balance thrust and mass to a happy medium. We must not forget that the space craft in SE operate at interstellar distances via the Alcubierre drive (or warp drive). Lets not get into the description of this hypothetical, but scientifically feasible (maybe), technology and instead roll with it. Its methods and the nature of FTL are tricky to quantify, but at the basic level they would disregard our fears for maneuvering and slowing down, simply due to the fact that the warp bubble is not moving through space, but rather space is moving with it.  As I said, lets not get into that too  much (at least not now ;)).

Once at the destination, something else can be used for movement. Since in the universe of SE Alcubierre drives are possible, that means negative matter is available for use. The level of technology required to generate such matter (if it even exists) is stupendous. At these levels, an understanding of physics far surpassing our own is evident, thus the creation of ANTI-matter, via particle colliders, should be viable. Antimatter is an extremely useful (but dangerous) material, especially in propulsion.  It has an efficiency of 40% relative to mass of fuel, compared to fusion propulsion (the next most efficient) that has an efficiency of only 1%. Antimatter is the most efficient fuel we can quantify with known physics, and obviously something we want for our ships. I believe the SpaceEngineer mentioned fusion rockets being used for propulsion, but I would use antimatter instead, despite being somewhat dangerous to store.

EDIT: The 'motherships' as presented are large for the reason that they are supposed to be, well, motherships. As in they are bigger then the ships of SE by many orders of magnitude for utility reasons. 
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Mr. Abner
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The mothership design concept

26 Aug 2018 00:40

I like to fly around in the Executor class ships. Over 17km in length. One of the first things I did was move the decimal point in the "TurnEngines" parameter. :) Still probably turns too fast. (I would not want a room in the bow when it starts turning.) One needs to think well ahead of the ship maneuvering one of these around.

Sorry, nothing to really add to this discussion, other than I like the large ships, and I'm okay with them being slow and ponderous when it comes to maneuvering.
 
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The mothership design concept

26 Aug 2018 04:43

The ISS does do maneuvers, usually to avoid incoming orbital debris, which as you can guess at those speeds are quite deadly. This maneuver is called a DAM (Debris Avoidance Maneuver) and is usually performed often 30 hours or more before TCA (Time of Closest Approach) with about two hours of actual moving. Yes the ISS is in orbit, so there are different conditions, but the premise is the same. Its is a rare event however.  A mothership in our sense would not need to avoid such debris obviously, since its shields can handle even large asteroids with ease (depending what they are made out of and at what velocity the object has relative to the vessel).

The key here is detection. USSTRATCOM tracks orbital debris pretty carefully alongside other such organizations for dangerous particulates and trash here on Earth. Onboard a mothership, sensors would probably sweep the space in front of and around the ship for incoming dangers. Depending on the speed of the mothership and the sensitivity of the instruments, the ship could have days or even weeks to prepare for precautions, whether it be to veer away from the incoming object or blast it with a laser (for example) to deflect it enough for the ship to slip by or break up into smaller, more convenient pieces.

I imagine that strategically, we would send our motherships in fleets, as the old exploratory sea expeditions went, at least initially. That would mean plenty of support for the larger, less maneuverable motherships if a variety of ships serve as an entourage - as you said, with non-rotational stations, maybe housing shuttles and similar craft.

That brings us to the main point; actual moving.  The fact is - motherships don't have to move around much! Their primary purpose would be to support a large population of crew (whether artificial or organic), scientific instruments, hangers for smaller craft, and a more or less a specialized HQ for a fleet. The least they would need to do is slow down, then gravity assist into an orbit around a star or planet at their destination. Leave it to the other, smaller ships in their entourage or docked in their hangers aboard the main mothership, to move around the solar-system, or go down to the planets, mine asteroids, collect fuel etc.

Speaking of fuel, you alluded to the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation (or "Tyranny of the Rocket Equation"). I am well aware of the equation and its consequences. Inefficiency is the foe here, but there are ways to balance thrust and mass to a happy medium. We must not forget that the space craft in SE operate at interstellar distances via the Alcubierre drive (or warp drive). Lets not get into the description of this hypothetical, but scientifically feasible (maybe), technology and instead roll with it. Its methods and the nature of FTL are tricky to quantify, but at the basic level they would disregard our fears for maneuvering and slowing down, simply due to the fact that the warp bubble is not moving through space, but rather space is moving with it.  As I said, lets not get into that too  much (at least not now ;)).

Once at the destination, something else can be used for movement. Since in the universe of SE Alcubierre drives are possible, that means negative matter is available for use. The level of technology required to generate such matter (if it even exists) is stupendous. At these levels, an understanding of physics far surpassing our own is evident, thus the creation of ANTI-matter, via particle colliders, should be viable. Antimatter is an extremely useful (but dangerous) material, especially in propulsion.  It has an efficiency of 40% relative to mass of fuel, compared to fusion propulsion (the next most efficient) that has an efficiency of only 1%. Antimatter is the most efficient fuel we can quantify with known physics, and obviously something we want for our ships. I believe the SpaceEngineer mentioned fusion rockets being used for propulsion, but I would use antimatter instead, despite being somewhat dangerous to store.

EDIT: The 'motherships' as presented are large for the reason that they are supposed to be, well, motherships. As in they are bigger then the ships of SE by many orders of magnitude for utility reasons. 
First, thanks for that ISS info. Never knew that.
What I still think is though, that mother ships would still have to get close to destination planet and have to get into orbit in order to let shuttles to land on there.
Or, we could have 'grandmother ships', which works as an orbital colony in a newly discovered system. Those kilometers long grandmother ships would take a few players hundreds meter long motherships to the destination system and would work as a large space station that is built around Earth and permanently deployed at the destination system(by alcubierre drive).
After 'squad of players' reach new system, they would do science exploration for celestial bodies in the system and the system would be labeled as a 'colonized system''
Players can still have long interplanetary flight using alcubierre drive independently from grandmother ship(would need some minings for resupply), and every player(even the one who didn't came to the system along with station) should be able to do a transportation missions between stations and get resupplied at the massive orbital colony.
For the fuel and alcubierre things, we'd better not care too much for that since there's not much point in it.
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The mothership design concept

26 Aug 2018 13:55

The idea of a 'mothership' I found was always rather arbitrary. I think within the context of the game, it is just a cool, big ship that can handle anything and go anywhere on its own. Instead of making a 'mothership', the SpaceEngineer could have just called it "big-ass ship for anything". It really didn't matter. It is up to the player to decide what particular ship he or she wants to captain exclusively and make his or her 'mothership'.  I always liked the look and size of the Wayfarer 2 in SE 0.9.8.0. I would love to make the one presented here my mothership, but I could just as easily make Skylone a space HQ as well.

BTW Speedademon, I like that game concept of yours (though we should make Dyson swarms and star-lifters around the solar-system star for maximum energy efficiency!). You are right about the 'grandmother' ship, that was sort of what I was talking about in my previous post. And yeah, I doubt that players will care much for what fuel and stuff they use in-game (except if they have a thing for physics like me).  
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DoctorOfSpace
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The mothership design concept

29 Aug 2018 13:33

but I could just as easily make Skylone a space HQ as well.
Sure if you like being stuck with sublight
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The mothership design concept

30 Aug 2018 09:25

but I could just as easily make Skylone a space HQ as well.
Sure if you like being stuck with sublight
Not if my Skylone is the tardis. :shock:
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