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[Urist McScoopbeard]

We can only assume my dear Sowelu, we can only assume, but he has stated that while he is not being asinine about scientific realism, it won't be arcade or starwars science; we can hypothesize that invisible laser beams aren't particularly game-breaking, that being said, light moving is in-fact travelling at the speed of light.

[Sowelu]

Well, "not star wars" does sound like it specifically means "obeys newton's laws of motion" at least.  The primary rule of Star Wars physics is "constant thrust = constant velocity".

Personally, I think that invisible laser beams is being pretty asinine about science.  Instant laser beams, totally fine, awesome, nice...but if you can't see any beam, that really wrecks playability IMO.

Of course you could always say "There's a little dust everywhere, and it's refracting off of that".

[Sting_Auer]

wait...

So this is going to have a free version and a pay version that gives you extra power plants?

Sounds good to me, as long as adding more power plants doesn't make it too OP.

[Rose]

Far as I can tell, multiplayer will be subscription based, and you pay for each power plant you have, with a minimum of one.

[jocan2003]

So basicly if you want a viable BSG like ship mega massive you better pay the shit out of your wallet to have enough power plant? wtf is that shit?

[Sowelu]

So basicly if you want a viable BSG like ship mega massive you better pay the shit out of your wallet to have enough power plant? wtf is that shit?

Power plants = specifically, they make the computers go.  Your computer will keep running while you're not connected.  If you want a ton of massive computers, it's going to chew up their server resources, so you get to pay for it.

Ironically this means that your Galactica is going to be nearly free, in terms of computing cost, compared to other large ships of its kind.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

@Sowelu: visible beams not too big a deal really, it's fine either way.

@Sting + Japa: You still have to pay for the game, base. The title screen has shown some intereting features (multiplayer, hyperplayer) their will indeed be a subscrib for the mmo part.

[Girlinhat]

Cloaking itself is scientifically inaccurate.  Google "stealth in space" and learn that there is no such thing.  For all intents, everything in space is always visible, and if you're hunting an enemy ship the only way they'll hide from you is to be physically behind a planet - and that only works for so long, planets move.  The main issue is heat.  A thermal camera will find you because you're a flare in the void of space.  You can reduce your heat, but doing so will reduce your functionality.  Zero heat means zero active engines or weapons.

If Notch has declared that noise in space is too inaccurate, and yet allows cloaking devices, then there seem to be some mixed priorities...

[alway]

Not entirely true. In a large majority of cases, cloaking doesn't need to be a perfect 360 degree illusion. If you knew roughly where the other ship was, you could simply redirect the radiating energy in a different direction. Weapons and engines, though, would probably need to be disabled simply because both give off an unavoidable dispersal of radiation or radiant particles which would render such a system worthless.

[LoSboccacc]

Not entirely true. In a large majority of cases, cloaking doesn't need to be a perfect 360 degree illusion. If you knew roughly where the other ship was, you could simply redirect the radiating energy in a different direction. Weapons and engines, though, would probably need to be disabled simply because both give off an unavoidable dispersal of radiation or radiant particles which would render such a system worthless.

Besides, redirecting the emissions merely relocates the problem. The energy's got to go somewhere, and for a fairly modest investment in picket ships or sensor drones, the enemy can pretty much block you from safely radiating to any significant portion of the sky.

And if you try to focus the emissions into some very narrow cone you know to be safe, you run into the problem that the radiator area for a given power is inversely proportional to the fraction of the sky illuminated. With proportionate increase in both the heat leakage through the back surfaces, and the signature to active or semi-active (reflected sunlight) sensors.

Plus, there's the problem of how you know what a safe direction to radiate is in the first place. You seem to be simultaneously arguing for stealthy spaceships and complete knowledge of the position of enemy sensor platforms. If stealth works, you can't expect to know where the enemy has all of his sensors, so you can't know what is a safe direction to radiate. Which means you can't expect to achieve practical stealth using that mechanism in the first place.

Sixty degrees has been suggested here as a reasonably "narrow" cone to hide one's emissions in. As a sixty-degree cone is roughly one-tenth of a full sphere, a couple dozen pickets or drones are enough to cover the full sky so that there is no safe direction to radiate even if you know where they all are. The possiblility of hidden sensor platforms, and especially hidden, moving sensor platforms, is just icing on the cake.

Note, in particular, that a moving sensor platform doesn't have to be within your emission cone at any specific time to detect you, it just has to pass through that cone at some time during the course of the pre-battle maneuvering. Which rather substantially increases the probability of detection even for very narrow emission cones.

(Somebody suggested using a continuous blinding barrage of nearby nuclear detonations in order to hide thrusting.)

The timescale of the radiant emission from a nuclear detonation in vacuum is measured in milliseconds. The recovery time of a good CCD array is measured in microseconds. You'll need to detonate nuclear explosives at a hundred hertz, minimum, to cover an accelerating ship. That's going to get expensive.

It also rather clearly indicates where the enemy should start looking...

It's too boring to debunk cloaking in person, so let me drop this quote quietly

[MrWiggles]

Yea... you cant cloak in space...

There nothing to hide against, or to mask against. Your ship will always be a sore, extremely bright, red hot thing on the back drop of outspace.

[Sirian]

Untrue ! As a matter of fact, if you follow the tech news, we are already discovering ways to make invisibility cloaks for about everything with metamaterials. One can imagine a system that's able to redirect all kinds of thermal losses and recycle it as a source of energy for propulsion, life support or what have you. Similar technology can be used to hide the presence of the ship against the background (making the light flow around it undisturbed).

[MrWiggles]

Metamateriel can't make an invisibility cloak. They can only catch and redirect, you're still struck with the radiation detection. You cant make something perfectly insulated and perfectly energy efficient. You're going to bleed heat eventually. 

[LoSboccacc]

for reference, the rcs thrusters from the shuttle can be seen as far as the asteroid belt, the engine plume can be detected from pluto with passive sensors.

it just won't work. follow the quote, there are many more of that kind of suggestion (up to but not limited by directional radiators, thermal shields and stuff), debunked.

[Sirus]

Metamateriel can't make an invisibility cloak. They can only catch and redirect, you're still struck with the radiation detection. You cant make something perfectly insulated and perfectly energy efficient. You're going to bleed heat eventually.

"Eventually" being the key word here. What if stealth systems could only operate for short periods of time before the entire ship risked over-heating?

Scenario: One player is being chased by another. The chasee maneuvers around a planet or into some sort of debris field, and activates the stealth system while shutting everything else down. The chaser has a few options:
A: He continues hunting for the chasee, potentially finding the person but risking the chasee slipping away.
B: He stops and waits for the chasee to deactivate stealth and continue running. The chasee could potentially get away if the chaser stops paying attention, is caught by surprise, or
C: The chaser decides "hell with this" and goes away.