A guide to Energy

[the1sean]

ORIGINAL: Sylian

I already love this discussion! [:D] Keep it up guys!

ORIGINAL: Nedrear

1 + 2:

As a elementary particle, together with the funny names of "Gluon" "strange" "charm" or "Myon" the "Photon" is very well influenced by the same phenomenon we call mass. Yes it is constructed in a way that it does not activly interact and if in a small area with the matter effect we call gravity. That does not mean it has absolutely no interaction with the other parts, as all of them are currently funding - theory - on the Higgs particle in the universal Higgs-field. This particle generating it's field slows down the elementary particles and thereby gives them a rest mass. The light itself only got the energetic mass and a very small rest mass, because the influence is not enough to support a constant rest mass.
Now we have a big bad black hole surrounded by rotating mass if not alone and dying which radiates quite good. Because that way we SEE them. In this hole particles "fall" - metaphorical speaking for the picture of the rolling coin in a spiral way into the abyss - into a three dimensional hole as people call it. This gravity well applies from all sides in theory, but since the black whole radiates a force from within like a magnetic field the matter is bound to fall into it from the side axes.
Since we are talking about a huge clutch of mass which are all enstranged matter, composed of Higgs and other shit creating mass at such it is likely that the Higgs-field there is so high light gets a constant resting mass and thereby is forced to rest in the hole forever, beeing transferred into heat energy to propulse hot matter out of the hole through Hawking radiation.

3:

They are not. The outer layer is composed of cosmical phenomenons with the in between of the magnetic field hardly and the inner results like hawking radiation of quantum theory. Now since we didn't get the quantum gravity theory working as of yet, in your stead I would not claim to have solved the mystery of the millenia. Otherwise I hereby nominate your for the noble prize. Please insert your solution to the swedish commitee.

4:

The world compromised of a volume we live in is a three dimensional place, composed of the length, the width and the hight. Yes we can have other parameters, making it a higheer dimension. Please talk to me again if you can walk through space - today here, tomorrow on the other side of the univers - and time for our fifth dimension. As one mass place is drawing them to it, it can be considered a "hole" in a metaphor. Of course all mass draws every other, making the difference by the bigger gravity "well". A black "hole" is pretty superior in this regard... especially a big galactic one routetating our star system.

1+2. For all i know photons have no rest mass. But i am no expert in particle physicss, so you maybe you can point out a reference?

3. The effect of a black holes gravity on its surrounding is well described by general relativity. (gravity, gravitational lensing etc.) The event horizon can be described by the Schwarzschild radius. You are of course right saying that the inner mechanics of a BH can not be captured by todays theories. On the other hand, due to time dilatation, from an external observers point of view nothing with a mass can ever cross the event horizon, so why bother? (except out of curiosity how our world works ofc)

4. [:D] i'd love to do that, unfortunatly i'm just a human bound to the laws of this universe

ORIGINAL: lycortas

Unfortunately we have no evidence a black hole exists, and the equations to support them are built with the answer in mind. An hypothesis that has never been observed and requires us to divide by zero does not get my support.

Also, sub atomic particles have never been shown to be affected by gravity, magnetic forces yes, gravity no.

Division by zero is not needed. The existence of black holes is deemed to be empirically proven. At least their existence is far more certain, than the earth like planet they found the other day...

Egads, this is unintelligible to me, I'm still trying to finish reading "A Briefer History of Time" [;)]

On the whole though, I haven't seen a space 4x game as detailed as DW is. The fact that it's rules led to this conversation is example enough. Well done, Elliot, but you may want to ask Steven Hawking to go over your math before you release DW 2...

[Gelatinous Cube]

If you really want to get into things that are incorrect, one of the very first should be the behaviour of Stars and Black Holes--both of which are much more violent and active than portrayed in the game, and have a full range of destructive activities they can randomly undertake. This would be evident for any space-faring civilization that had worlds orbiting hundreds of stars, as opposed to just our one, relatively stable star.

That said, DW does better than most. I can very easily suspend my disbelief in this game, which isn't something I can do for many other 4x games that I love.

[Nedrear]

Something rare with us but common in the universe? A supernove X-axis gamma ray... hit earth once, killed everything on land and in the upper sea... bad stuff. More planets and systems... more supernovae... more bad gamma sunburn.
 
Get your suncream today and see others get roasted as you cloat. Only today for only 500000000 credits. Yes you heard right! Naxxilian gamma ray suncream only 500720330 Credits... the longer you wait, the more the cosmic inflation will make it cost! Buy TODAY!

[Gelatinous Cube]

ORIGINAL: Nedrear

Something rare with us but common in the universe? A supernove X-axis gamma ray... hit earth once, killed everything on land and in the upper sea... bad stuff. More planets and systems... more supernovae... more bad gamma sunburn.

Get your suncream today and see others get roasted as you cloat. Only today for only 500000000 credits. Yes you heard right! Naxxilian gamma ray suncream only 500720330 Credits... the longer you wait, the more the cosmic inflation will make it cost! Buy TODAY!

A lot of people don't understand just how mean and harsh the universe is. In addition to your Gamma Ray Bursts, which are pretty rough, you have many more common phenomena that are much more dangerous. Violent solar flares, asteroids, comets, nomadic black holes that are only 2 miles accross but weigh as much as our sun, ect.

For life to evolve on Earth as WE know it, we had to not only be formed at the right distance, with the right mixture of particles to get the right starting point. Fast forward to the early Solar system when about 100 Planetoids were crashing about in the inner solar system alone, and we had to get hit JUST right by not too many other planetoids, but not too few either, so that we got the right kind of solid iron core surrounded by molten iron, to get our fantastic Magnetic Field--which deflects the solar wind and keeps our Atmosphere alive.

But not just that--if it wasn't for Saturn and Jupiter--whose magnetic fields are closer to the size of the Suns than they are to the size of Earths, and the fact that they have incredibly convenient and consistent circular orbits, the inner solar system would be getting hit by many, many more Asteroids. They act as shields.

In fact, it's far more likely that we'd find life on a Gas Giant Moon than on an Alien Planet, considering how hard it is to get the right mixture of luck and positioning with a rocky planet. Gas Giants have incredible Magnetic Fields that kind of protect their moons, although the intense gravity and magnetism has unpleasant effects on the moons as well, creating lots of volcanic activity and all sorts of wierdness. It's more plausible, in my mind, that life would commonly evolve on the moons of Gas Giants than on so-called Goldylocks planets like Earth. Gas Giants are much more common than ideally positioned Rocky Planets, and most Gas Giants carry a large assortment of incredibly diverse moons.

What was I talking about again?

Oh yeah, I was saying that the Universe is a rough place. Why we haven't, as a species, decided that our #1 priority should be finding a way off of this rock before something bad happens is beyond me. The universe destroyes planets and solar systems at a random whim. We should be finding a way to spread out, and not keep all our eggs in one Earthy basket.

[feelotraveller]

ORIGINAL: Gelatinous Cube

If you really want to get into things that are incorrect, one of the very first should be the behaviour of Stars and Black Holes--both of which are much more violent and active than portrayed in the game, and have a full range of destructive activities they can randomly undertake. This would be evident for any space-faring civilization that had worlds orbiting hundreds of stars, as opposed to just our one, relatively stable star.

That said, DW does better than most. I can very easily suspend my disbelief in this game, which isn't something I can do for many other 4x games that I love.

Perhaps.

However the first thing that triggers my incredulity is that spaceships come to a rest soon after you finish firing their engines. Someone had better remind Elliot of Newton's third law... [:D] Really I understand from a game mechanic point of view why this is so but the lack of realism bugs me every time I play the game. Those spaceships should keep moving until firing engines to decelarate (and be able to slingshot around celestial bodies). Really they behave as if immersed in water, or molasses or something...

[Gelatinous Cube]

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller

ORIGINAL: Gelatinous Cube

If you really want to get into things that are incorrect, one of the very first should be the behaviour of Stars and Black Holes--both of which are much more violent and active than portrayed in the game, and have a full range of destructive activities they can randomly undertake. This would be evident for any space-faring civilization that had worlds orbiting hundreds of stars, as opposed to just our one, relatively stable star.

That said, DW does better than most. I can very easily suspend my disbelief in this game, which isn't something I can do for many other 4x games that I love.

Perhaps.

However the first thing that triggers my incredulity is that spaceships come to a rest soon after you finish firing their engines. Someone had better remind Elliot of Newton's third law... [:D] Really I understand from a game mechanic point of view why this is so but the lack of realism bugs me every time I play the game. Those spaceships should keep moving until firing engines to decelarate (and be able to slingshot around celestial bodies). Really they behave as if immersed in water, or molasses or something...

Actually, they behave like ocean-going vessels. Either way, its' innacurate. That said, its' easy to imagine a civilization that was advanced enough to use its' thrusters with incredible precision, which would be separate from its' Hyperdrive (which wouldn't obey the laws of physics anyway).

Star Ruler had proper-ish spaceship Physics, and while accurate it was pretty un-fun.

[sbach2o]

ORIGINAL: Sylian

A ran another test with my "Test Starbase". Here is the Design.
It has a lot of reactors to create a huge capacitor. But all reactor energy is consumed by static energy use. Thus the capacitor is only charged by the energy collector. (can be easily confirmed by removing the energy collector -> no energy build up in the capacitor)
Now i place the test base at two different points in the system. (main sequence star)
1.) Directly on top of the sun:
In this case the capacitor is fully charged in 7 seconds. Thus 1050/7 = 150 energy delivered by the energy collector module.

2.) System outskirts, where the game shows the bounday when selecting a system.
capacitor needs 85 seconds to charge up, so 1050/85 = 12.3 energy delivered by the energy collector

I didnt check different star types yet. But i guess they will also have an influence.

regards Sylian

Applause, applause, applause!!!

Ingenious test setting, beautifully executed! I wanted to know this for a very long time.

ORIGINAL: Nedrear

Seriously just giving black holes and gas clouds a energy collectors for "games sake" sucks. I don't know one way to collect Hawking radiation on the top of a black hole storming out and I would not stand in it's way

You don't collect Hawking radiation but that which comes off the feeding process of gases and dust tumbling in, ignoring the fact that this should be somewhat irregular and pose a bit of a problem (the energy spectrum should be decidedly unhealthy, requireing precautions for shielding against and so on). But then, interstellar travel should be much more of a problem (i.e. being impossible at super-lightspeeds).

The one gripe I am having with black holes in the game is the big extent of the danger zones around them, the zone where they start to suck in ships. Assuming that is on the order of the extent of the event horizon, all those black holes must be super-massive. A black hole of a few solar masses would have a relatively small event horizon, much less than the size of a neutron star.

Of course, your "seriously" probably doesn't need to be taken seriously?

Now I demand the event horizons on black holes be scaled down to match black holes less than the mass of an entire galaxy. Er, ultimatively, that is. Uh... (not seriously).

Edit: sorry for jumping on that so lately... The 'physics' discussion goes on endlessly after that point. It is entertaining, though.

[jpinard]

I have a simple question. If I add 3 maxis blasters and 1 shield to the starting Destroyer, do I need to add a fuel storage or fission reactor to keep it firing and recharging at the same rate pre-edit?

[Bingeling]

What you need extra depends on what you got, which I don't know. I steal some image links from the first post to have something to show...

Top right you find excess energy, it is an important number.


For this particular ship it is 54.

This is the movement info from the right side of the screen.


Take note of the hyper space number. It uses all 54, a good hint that this ship lacks energy to travel at full speed.

A bit below we see info for the hyper drive used:

It would need 78 excess energy to travel at its maximum speed of 12500.

Notice the cruise expenditure from the movement shot. It is 8 energy.

We need the weapon expenditure:



The number at the top says 4 maxos blaster need 39 energy.

Cruise + shooting = 8 + 39 = 47 energy. This is less than the 54 excess energy so this should work.



This is the defenses. The relevant number is shield recharge rate of 0.9. It is rather insignificant, which is typically the case in energy calculations. Just make sure there is a few spare energies for shields when you check cruise+shooting vs excess energy.

Whether you need another reactor depends on what you got. Check the energies against each other. Fuel cells is mostly for range, and this is not influenced much by a few extra blasters, even if shooting will use some more energy than without the extra blasters. Just keep in mind that a ship that travels to the extreme of it range, won't have fuel to both fight and move back at normal speed. With more guns, it will be able to fight for a shorter amount of time, but it will also kill faster, so it hardly matters.

[jpinard]

Fantastic! I can't believe I actually understand this now, thought that would never happen. Thanks so much (and Sylian for the initial post)!

[joeyeti]

An article for the wiki by itself

[ehsumrell1]

Great job Bingeling, well diagrammed and explained! [:)]

[Bingeling]

I was thinking maybe write some stuff for the wiki initiative, energy being one of them.

In that case it is a good idea to know what energy is about...

If you got enough energy collection on a base, the only need for a reactor is to be allowed to save the design, right? I tested in my game by removing long range scanners from all but large space ports. Then retrofit them (the 3 not overlapping ones) to the single weakest reactor available. Which gives some -120 excess energy.

I then proceeded to order 20 cruisers on my capital one, they were built swiftly, and the long range scanner did not flicker (by long range scanner overlay).

I am not sure how one can easily get the full force of the defenses tested.

[feelotraveller]

The reactor(s) also function as an energy store.
 
Placing pirates within weapons range of the spaceport with the game editor should get the juice going.

[Bingeling]

Good point. I can of course edit in a lot of pirate ships.

I spawn a tiny pirate base, and 8-10 pirate cruisers of 283 strength around it (by looks maybe the latest legendary cruiser).

My LSP has 84 reactor energy, -142 excess energy, and spends in excess of 500 energy when firing weapons.

It won with half shields left.

768 energy collected...

[feelotraveller]

That surprises me.  So it used more than 84 energy for weapons at once?  My understanding was that that was the limitation for weapons.  Energy for the shields can go straight to them but I thought that weapons had to draw from the reactor and hence that you would only get a maximum of 84 energy per second for use by weapons. 

[Bingeling]

It is not that easy to tell. I tested a bit more.

I failed at finding any conclusion with normal weapons. I equipped 4 death rays, which should use 400 each. I had 800 in reactor output, and 1800 energy collection.

It seemed it only fired two at a time.

I guess you are correct, but I am not sure. Those zenox shields can take a punch...

[feelotraveller]

Yes I remember from teesting the collectors that things can get quite finicky.

I first thought about using Death Rays too.

Another way to to test it which might show it one way or the other is by a comparison-

Design a custom base with huge amounts of armour but no shields so they don't confuse things.
Give it weapons with a high accuracy (to minimise the inteference from misses) and Raptor targeting.  Enough weapons of one type to use the excess energy from 10 reactors.
Have two versions of the base one with a single reactor and one with 10.
Set up a target which will take a long time to destroy but which has minimal attack.  You can custom design this yourself and then change its ownership in the editor once placed.
See if the 10 reactor version destroys the target more quickly than the single reactor version.
Time it with a stopwatch, or whatever, and try it a few times.
Optional: if the times differ make sense of by how much they differ if it is not obvious.

[Edit: obviously you also give the base sufficient energy collectors that they can power all the weapons and static needs]

[Bingeling]

OK, new test, same game. AI designed defensive bases have 20 phaser cannon, 2 ion cannon, 12 shockwave torpedo, 1 intimidator sourgewave, 10 point-defense, 2 fighter bays. Weapons use 610 energy to give 585 firepower.

I upgrade them manually, and create DFB-10 in two versions.

Reactors: Have a bunch of fusion reactors outputing 572 power. In addition 832 collection put by me.

No-Reactors: Is the same, but have only one reactor outputting 84.

I clone 8 of my own destroyers as pirates around them. Done from far out, so not exactly the same setup. The only difference I can see is that the no-reactor maybe did a fraction better.

If reactors are required, the performance difference should be huge. It would be the offense of a frigate vs 8 destroyers, or a mighty defensive base vs 8 destroyers.

Btw, as long as you got some half decent tech, this is easy to replicate with the editor.

[feelotraveller]

Seems like I was wrong, yet again. 

Good work Bingeling. 

[Edit: Not that I doubted you but because I am like that I made my own test(s) this morning. I used starting level technology and preposterous bases and targets. BTW 60 maxos take over a month to get through 100 corividian at point blank range, just had to share that [:)]. You are correct, it makes absolutely no difference. I'm curious to see what happens when there is no reactor but could not think of a good way to test this...]