RELEASED Avali Race Mod, The second thread!

Considering that sync crystals have been a feature in Avali lore since Whom Gods Destroy... (4 or 5 years?)

 

I'm also pointing out the high interest in the Avali race by both Tiy(unconfirmed) and Ashton Raze.
(conspiracy theories go!)

 

On another topic:

Uhhh, is this the real reason why avali don't swim in water?

 

Yes, I've read that site. If you looked at my laser post (which you seem to have not; it brought up the same issues you mentioned again here) you'd see that I included a link to the same site. I personally do not much care for lasers in space, but they are inarguably the most accurate weapon available. All other space weapons have the same problems as laser weapons, but additionally have travel time to deal with; time that the enemy can spend on evasive maneuvers. And actually, bomb-pumped lasers might be an interesting explanation for why Ryuujin stated that Avali capital ships use massive spinal lasers instead of just large projectors with bulky lenses...

I'd just like to clarify some things though, because you seem to be understanding what I mean entirely incorrectly. I specifically mentioned that space mines would not be "naval mines." You are completely correct that space is far too large to rely on proximity-detonated devices that just sit in place. This is why you either use them as slow, cheap missiles without engines by using your inertia, or you actually make your mines be missiles, only designed to drift well inside an enemy's sphere of point defense before locking on and engaging their thrusters. I also agree that using them as inertial weapons isn't a particularly effective maneuver in heated combat, but as a surprise attack or for guerilla warfare, it is completely viable. Changing vectors in space is very, very, very hard. While hitting an enemy with a single round may be an incredible fleet, guessing where he will be well enough to place a cloud of debris along that path is significantly simplified by the fact that he cannot just go burning fuel willy-nilly all the time, only in immediate combat.

On railgun shells, you are significantly underestimating the velocities at which they are effective. According to the same site you linked, an object moving at three kilometers per second has, kilogram for kilogram, equivalent energy to the same amount of TNT. You don't need to get anywhere close to light speed for that kind of power to be effective. In fact, at speeds approaching 15%-25% the speed of light (!) you're approaching top-of-the-line siege weapons, stuff designed to sterilize areas of a planet-based country with a handful of shots. Ships are small game for that kind of weaponry, even if the Avali could build it, which I seriously doubt. And let's not even forget what those speeds would do to the inside of a railgun, given how they already suffer from wear issues. As far as changing vectors being impossible? Well, at those speeds yeah, but at more reasonable speeds no. You're either going to be close enough that your round doesn't have time to make course corrections (in which case missing won't be nearly as much of an issue) or you'll be at extreme range in which case the round will have plenty of time to make course corrections. Keep in mind that small projectiles like missiles or guided rounds have significantly better delta-vees than larger craft (you can't outrun most missiles with most fighter aircraft, as an example).

As far as armor goes, I didn't give the subject very close of a look. But none of the suggestions you've listed here sound like they'd do all that much after being modified to fit Avali design. Let me clarify my original statement: armor doesn't work in space with the Avali design philosophy as currently stated. I could take an asteroid, hollow out a habitat in the center, and use that as a dreadnought. It'd be impervious to small cannon fire, and it would certainly work as armor; but that's not how the Avali build their ships. They build light, fast, and sleek, with plenty of pivot points and flexibility for their variable geometry. With that sort of design, there's no room to fit exotic or bulky armors. And given that the Avali prioritize speed and are already confirmed to be sneaky bastards in combat, giving themselves heavy armor would only reduce their effectiveness.

Anyway, I'm not a scientist by training or anything, not even much of a physics aficionado, so all of this is just information I've gleaned from other sources or has come from my own (admittedly of limited accuracy) thought experiments. The biggest problem I think that site has, and one that I think is important to keep in mind, is that it's designed for a purely hard-science discussion of space combat. Tiny little technologies change everything; FTL drives complicate defensive formations significantly. Cheap, easy power generation makes higher-bore weapons that they don't think much about practical. And ultimately, even the Avali draw the line at hardness at some point. Nanites, for instance, aren't really micro-machines, they're molecules that have been "programmed" because of how they're made. But that's boring, and the micro-machines make for a better story. Railguns might be deadlier and simpler in ship-to-ship combat than a bomb-pumped x-ray laser. But you can't tell me the idea of an x-ray laser powered by detonating nuclear weapons isn't a cool idea.

In the end, it's all just speculation. Whatever Ryuujin says is what happens, even if it doesn't necessarily agree with physics 100%. What makes this mod great is that so often it does match physics pretty well.

 

Oh? - What's tiy been saying

The thing with railguns, isn't their power or effective range. It's the range at which they can reliably connect.

If we have two ships in opposite orbits, they'll have a closing velocity of around 10-15km/s, their railguns can probably add another 10-15km/s to that. So if we call it 30km/s muzzle velocity, it would still take 3-4 minutes for the projectile to hit a target on the edge of the planetary horizon. In fact, given avali variable geometry/acceleration/computer assisted evasion, in the case of a dumb warhead, the effective range of a railgun could be under a thousand kilometers (Beehive munitions and guided warheads become less effective the closer and faster you get as it gives the projectiles less time to scatter or make corrective burns).

By contrast some of the theorycraft on bomb-pumped laser weapons, or conventional near-x-ray lasers may have an effective range approaching relativistic distances (fractions of a light second range)

 

Crap, I wish I remembered my source so I could make this more than just a rumor, if I remember where I heard it from I'll let you know!

 

Probably Reddit or Twitter.

 

I like how this thread is almost perfectly 100x less then the other.

 

I just thought of something for Avali Space Combat; it'd depend on how compact and how precise FTL drives are, and whether or not you retain the same velocity upon engaging the FTL drive when you emerge.

Instead of using swarms of frigate sized ships firing missiles and small caliber railguns, simply fit a FTL drive into the smallest sized hull possible,make it automated as well as have it linked to a control system (a Nexus node would work, but you'd only use them as a "Command" unit, not a "Attacker" one) and depending on if you retain velocity, have the Drone either kamikaze into a target, or, if not, have it jump to "knife fighting" ranges of only a few thousand kilometers from a target, and make it a bomb pumped X-ray laser.

After all, the Avali use Drones extensively, this would only be a logical up-sizing, no?

 

Excellent mod, beautiful builds and all. Just a small bug report, everytime i remove an avali chest and place it back, a data chit appears in it.

 

Devs like playing mods too. (essentially the outcome of the conversation I had with him on IRC)

 

That's a bug with vanilla storage items too (at least the ones that spawn with loot in structures), not exclusively a problem with the Avali mod. I currently have experienced that same issue with metal crates: I have two stacks of them. One stack's crates are worth 700 pixels, the other stack's are worth 2200 pixels. If I place the 700 pixel versions, nothing odd happens. If I place the 2200 pixel value crates, it spawns a random loot item inside.

Avali chests can suffer the same issue, only they spawn Avali loot: tiny amounts of pixels and data chits instead of whiskey and coils of rope. So since it's a problem in the game proper and not just the mod, I don't know if Ryuujin can or will fix the issue. To work around the bug, just place the chest where you want it, take anything that spawns out of it (keep it if you want, nobody's keeping score; or just delete it) and continue on your way.

 

Yea, it wasn't a big issue really, but for multiplayer server it may be considered an exploitable cheat. Other than that I'll just leave it there sitting pretty.

 

Wow, this thread stopped giving me notifications. SO

Before I'd asked about sound frequencies shattering aerogel at high enough pitches, kinda like glass. How is this relevant?

Well, it made me ponder something. Avali are built around their hearing, since it's their primary source for gathering information for their brains. So, contrary to what humans like to believe for hearing-based organisms, loud noises likely won't hurt them as badly because they'd probably have internal protection from that.

Now, the true question is this: What is their pain threshold? The human threshold is about 130 dBs, varying per individual, so basing off of that, how many hertz can an Avali hear, and how much sound can they withstand before it becomes painful?

Source I used was this: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/sound/intens.html

 

as we have been given the size and look of the up-gradable ships in the main part of the game that should show up in a later update I sat down and decided to see if someone could make a ship that looks kind of like an avali ship at the Tier 8 level (keep in mind that this is a rough representation of what it could look like). its not that good quality as there is no detail and teh design was rushed but i thought i could just give my idea and give a bit of feedback on how it could be done...

the shape of the ship was taken when looking at some of the earlier designs for the racial ship (found on the official wiki)

now i'm no artist but if someone really put their mind to it they could make something like this happen.

p.s Ryuujin i love the way that you have made the mod so far and i love all the lore and im great full that something like this mod exists.

 

I dunno, it looks blockier than I'd prefer. That's something I've always appreciated about the Avali ships; they look sleek and no-nonsense.

Some things to consider, I suppose. If all the mods changing hull designs are any indication, it's not too hard to make a ship with a different floorplan than standard. If the high-tier vessels keep a similar design to the current model, it'll probably make more sense for them to be built long and thin (not with these huge vaulted ceilings) rather than thick like the current in-progress screenshots Chucklefish is giving us.

Virtual reality gives us a sneaky way out if it comes to it. I know Ryuujin's mentioned wanting to make the use of virtual reality a little more apparent in Avali building techniques before. One way to do this would be to have large portions of the "ship" be hand-waved as really just being a virtual reality construct. I can't think of any way to make the transition intriguing yet subtle though, so that's probably not a very useful idea.

Anyway, I'll contribute by pouring my collection of spacecraft reference art into this spoiler here.

As you can see, I subscribe to long and thin quite heavily when I consider a spacecraft.

 

A point in the lore I havn't put much emphasis on is the idea of colony vessels. Obviously if you have a race with nomadic tendencies that is not tolerant of terrestrial planets - or, any race really. It makes sense to keep much of your operations space-side, so while their combat ships are designed to be small, fast and no-nonsense, it's logical they also have large colony type vessels with modular internals that can be refitted to serve any number of roles. (Such ships would have pre-loaded jump co-ordinates resolved and engines kept in a warmed up state so they can rabbit the moment trouble appears, they'd be useless in a battle)

For gameplay purposes in starbound, such a ship could be stacked vertically in a sort've vertical wing configuration, rather than long nose-to-tail, (Obviously a ship that is implied to have significant horizontal depth is rather wasted in starbound).

It'd make sense if the player ship was replaced by a colony-type vessel

 

Oh yes, the Mass Effect: Human Revolution spaceship. Sexy.

It would actually be interesting for ships to verge off into different branches either for different races or as a choice: for example, one race would have a colony ship as their main vessel while another would have a freighter, while another has a frigate, etc.

 

Well, you also have to remember that humans, as eyesight based organisms, suffer damage from looking into bright lights such as the sun. Other creatures, like sight-based nocturnal creatures, are even more damaged by it. The avali probably do have some form of protection from it, but to use sound as an analogue for sight would require EXTREMELY sensitive hearing, of the kind able to pick up the tiniest sound and still be able to judge the direction it came from and about how far away it happened. Something with hearing that acute would unquestionably be vulnerable to loud noises dulling their senses more or less at the least.

 

This makes me think... could other races deploy sound-based weaponry specifically for targeting Avali? They could even set up a 'boombox' that hurts Avali sensitive ears but doesn't affect humans at all, for example.