I don't know much about video cards, but the rest looks fine, and there are some official min specs for the beta on the unofficial FAQ

You just made me feel a lot better about my graphics card
(64mb Mobility Radeon 9600)

this is gonna bite. my best possible time for getting all of the computer parts comes next week.

At 5 fps? just kidding.

As I read through this post, I fear that I have to disagree with certain posters that state that formations are going to be useless.

I understand the argument they are making but they are forgeting a few very important concenpts.

Formations are used for

A) Defense
a) overlapping fields of fire.
screenining larger ships

Offense
a) with small fleets a single formation depending on how it is deployed in relation to the enemy will allow either a to maximize all firepower on a single point, or it can allow a very quick strike at a small portion of the enemy formation while presenting a limited front for the enemy to attack.
With a larger fleet formations become even more important, if it is possible to create a fleet large enough that the shorter range higher damage weapons are unable to concentrate firepower you then must create sub formations of the main fleet and time the attacks so that they come off as one concerted attack, an envelopment in 3 dimensions or a striking blow at the limits of a smaller fleet that can concentrate firepower at one point forcing them to not do so to defend themselves.

I can come up with plenty of more reasons for Formations, but formations are dictated by the weapons used.

Say you have your three typical weapons types.

a) dumb unguided munitions
guided munitions (missles, fighters, bombers sorry but they are in essence the ultimate guided munition when you are talking about fleet level battles)
c) energy weapons.

Pros and cons
For unguided munitions, they have a long range becuase they rely on kinetic energy, con they are relatively easy to dodge at any distance unless a large mass of them is used.

For guided munitions, pro they have the ability to keep on target, con they are slower and can be shot down by point defense,

Energy weapons. *chuckles* everyone assumes that energy weapons in space are going to have a long range, this is not true. Sorry its not. The range of a weapon is dependent on the ability to keep it coherent and even in space there is enough junk floating around particularly in a star system that a beam will become attenuated and well is worthless.


so are formations worthless, no never, but there use is dependent on many factors, the weapons and thier limitations, shielding and its limitation, point defense and its limitations. The ability to communicate between ships in a net that allows the formation to adjust its tactics as a whole, and the speed at which this can be done. So what I would suggest is some generic formations, wall, sphere, line, etc, and then the ability to create your own formations, based on situations and the ability to take multiple formations and put them into a plan and then being able to update that plan so that the formations act as one.

*shrugs* I know way realistic, but that is the ultimate form of space battles for me. Those that take into account all the variables, and until I have some hard numbers I have no idea how I am going to play a military empire.

Luke

Actually you did not disagree with me at all, you simply found a way to get around the distance limitation of dealing with any type of directed energy weapon. I did not say they would be useless just that there range would be extremely limited. Even an X ray laser in space would have a small range in relation to how large space is and how far apart ships could potentially be.

As far as unguided munitions being useless, thats a yes no issue. If you use a very dense material, you could use thousands of them say ball bearing size and use them in a blast much like a shotgun. Why would you want to do this, well you said shields gain strength if firepower is directed at one point, the only way to get around that is to cause multiple strikes, even a single bearing made of say depleted uranium traveling at C fractional velocity which it should be moving at is going to empart alot of energy, now imagine a coupel thousand of these strike a shield and you begin to understand why they have a use.

The issue with unguided munitions isn't really the mass as it is how the drives in the game work, if the drives are based on mass yes then mass becomes an issue but if the drive works on a volume that size is determined by the amount of power that can be used for the field and speed is reduced the alrger that volume becomes then mass is not an issue on a capital ship. Which would also allow the use of these unguided munitions to create ways through missle strikes and mine fields.

Missles may or may not be the end all be all, as I said its the tech limitations that dictate tactics.

And as for concentration of firepower.. I think you are taking what I mean and applying it to a single ship. Let me explain, if you go back to where I said a large fleet would need sub fleets to attack a smaller fleet to be able to concentrate its firepower is not so much that they are aiming at a single target as they want to be able to use all thier firepower within a very short time span on the enemy all at once. If you are spread out in a single large formation, the flanks may not be able to do this and thus because you are not concentration your firepower for maximum effect you will take more damage than you otherwise would. The issue that could come up though is defeat in detail if you time it wrong, and one of your sub fleets get taken out. Its a trade off, hammer vs finesse. I prefer precision and finesse.

Of course all this could be moot. It depends entirely on how the games combat systems are set up.

Luke

Hmm sentientschematicsofNinjas I am an engineering major so let me just state that up front.

It is possible for an abrams tank to fire a round while on the move and that is using a system that creates a rather large recoil and *cough* I was in the military, infantry by chance before I went back to school.

Now take a shell fill it with ball bearings, fire it through a rail gun, ie accelerate it using a recoiless system. The speed of the shell is going to be that of the ships acceleration which in system is going to be a C fractional velocity, for the sake of argument say .1 C now you will add a small amount to that velocity when it is accelerated through the recoiless system. Enough that it is moving ahead of the ship at a velocity faster than the ship itself.

Now, a ship has shields, and one of those jobs is to keep all the debree that is in space micrometorites dust etc from punching a hole from bow to stern. Now those shield are also strong enough to shrug off direct hits from say close range X-Ray Lasers which are probably the only truely good laser to use as a weapon for various reasons but lets not go into the physics of it because the math gives me a headache. They are also strong enough to shrug off say perhaps an explosion in the lower megaton range if you hit them with a contact nuke. Now saying all that, there is alot of energy being poured into those shields, are those bearing going to pierce the shielding not with shields at full strength, what they are going to do is create a drain on the energy of the ship. But you are correct a single one of those ball bearing if it managed to get through the ship at those speeds would rip a hole right through it and wreak a path of destruction I do not want to think about.

You have to look at the entire picture is the issue and alot of its being based off of assumptions that such tech would have to be made for intersystem and interstellar travel to be possible. IE shielding from space debris, shielding from Cosmic radiation, the ability to accelerate to C fraction velocities to make in system travel times decent, etc etc anon. I am looking at big picture here and working downward in steps, thats why I say most of this is moot. I am basing this on my understanding of what is possible. If you have the energy to drive lasers that are useful you are going to have the energy to create rail guns with the power to throw objects at useful speeds. If you have ships moving at decent insystem speeds you are going to have shields that do this this and this etc.

if you want to discuss it I am more than willing to because this is the king of thing that just makes my day.

Luke

my suggestion is change its name to "Sins of a Stellar Empire", that would be more amusing IMHO

"solar" is huh?! it can only refer to Sol our one and only sun and is too solarcentric. Makes it sound like a novel or RPG. As far as I can tell this game isnt about Sol its about 3 equally playable empires, each with many suns, clashing.

Stellar has that expansive and inclusive meaning, Solar is diminutive and exclusive because only one faction could own Sol (& therfore be a Solar empire) at a given time, which leaves the other two races hanging as it means the game identifies with one of the races more strongly than the others. To me as a multiplay RTS & 4X fan that doesnt make sense so it just sounds like someone chose the wrong word. It sounds like they meant stellar but didnt realise there is a difference between solar and stellar and chose solar mistakenly. The only way that makes sense is if there is a single player storyline woven around Sol & that being the main feature of the game so to speak.

Emperor, I like discussing things and while its not the real world, anything we dicuss could give the creators of the game an idea and that is generally a good thing. And if you do nto wish to read the long posts don't *smiles*

Luke

I will give you a very short answer, it will allow far more flexibile and interesting combat operations. It will also allow them to balance the various factions easier. Hmm ohh yes it will be *gasp* more realisitic but in this case, realism could be alot more fun than fantasy because *gasp* you actually have to make tactical and strategic decisions that have empire wide effects.

*shrugs* perhaps its just me and my engineering and military mind set, but I find anything that makes battle more realistic particularl in 3-d far more fun. While lasers and Particle Cannons may look good, they take away a huge element of fun.

Luke

Umm there is already a large measure of it in any scifi game. My issue with the laser's and cannons is that it make its to easy. Far to easy, it basically forces you into head to head battles, which is not the way you would fight given the chance, and it just about rules out any smaller fleet beating a larger fleet by using better manuevers. The only way a smaller fleet will win in such a battle is if the player screws the pooch

I like game principles that are based on logics.
That means basic laws, like newton, permanence of energy, etc. cause a game to feel sensful, which improves the immersion.

On the other hand we can't conclusively argue with logics, because if we had knowledge about those techs we could just start building our interstellar warship right now.
So my personal approach is to build game-logics that don't immediately break basic physical laws.
It could, theoretically, be assumed that someone manages to construct a changing magnetic field that nullifies itself with an incoming electro-magnetic wave. How that is exactly possible since information can't travel quicker than light is unknown, but if you can travel with speeds greater than light-speed we can assume that someone found a way around that problem.
Similarly, if you base plasma-weapons on the idea of the magnetic bottle, this magnetic field would be able to protect against such projectiles.
The nice thing about this approach is that you can take a pen and write down what the energy consumed by such a shielding-device is, or rather to what variables it is proportional to. Build derivate over time and multiply by a game-balancing value and you have the wattage the shield consumes in battle. Together with the permanence of energy this allows game mechanics of: *dramatically* "All power to the shields!!"
And the best of it: It's sensful. No one will think "Wait, that is absolutely impossible!" - and that's good because that thought is a real immersion-killer.

Well, that's the approach I take when I develop game-mechanics. We could discuss the complete battle-system now, but actually it's not important. Either Ironclad picks the concept up or they come up with game-mechanics with the "But it's Sci-Fi!"-approach.