Bluespace Drive Project

[Fluffy]

Thank you everyone who participated in the first field test of the bluespace drive!

Now that the veil has been lifted so I won't have spoiled the surprise by doing this, I am opening a project thread for suggestions and discussion of the suggestions about our new bluespace drive

 

To highlight some points:

• It needs a name, "HAMMER" is already used by another drive
• It needs a co-inventor, "Tigard-<someone>"
• It possibly can get some flavoring of the jump announcement

 

Additionally:

• The one you saw worked by using any gasses, which is soulful for the atmos techs, however it needs to remain clear that its main fuel source is Phoron and it needs it to run (that's quite literally one of the pillars of the setting); we have some ideas on how to tackle this without necessarily stripping the atmos techs job too much (IRT this engine) but I'm open to consider more suggestions
• It can enjoy more mechanical soul, eg. at the moment on the table there's the change of the background image in space, possibly having orbs appear around the ship, maybe some bluespace anomaly chance, and other things up in the air, but as above I'm open to consider more suggestions and ideas on this

(I'm probably forgetting something already, and if so I'll post it somewhere by editing this or placing another post)

[ASmallCuteCat]

I don't know if it's possible, given how cramped maintenance is, but it's a little hard to navigate the bluespace room - when everything is active, the walkway is only 1 tile wide. Lots of pushing and shoving ensues, I think as soon as there are more than two people in the room it would start to get difficult to move around.

 

My only request is that someone please put a guide to how to work this thing on the wiki so that my lone brain cell can have a step-by-step guide on how to use it without exploding the ship T_T

[hazelmouse]

Could a brief description of how it works be provided, or linked if it already exists? I wasn't an engineer or an observer during the test round, so I'm not certain of how the mechanics work right now. 

A few things:

• How hard would it be to implement the same bluespace effect as is used in round-ending bluespace jumps, like before we had transfers, into the drive? The effect in the mini-event was a lot more rudimentary, I'd love to see the same effect as the old jumps implemented if it's not impractical.
• I absolutely love that atmos techs have a part to play with the drive, it's a wonderful bone to throw to an otherwise very limited role and it creates a nice trifecta of engineers, bridge crew, and atmos tech collaboration that I expect to find very enjoyable.
• For placement, I personally think that the gap on deck two between the supermatter and fusion reactors is the best place. It's in engineering, and it's in a strongly central point aligned to the spine of the ship. Failing that, either wing has a lot of spare space which I think could be made to work, especially if there's any appetite to add another drive to the other wing.

A few ideas for mechanics:

• We need phoron to be obligatory to run the drive, but we also want complex atmospherics mechanics. You could design the machine to have two atmos inputs, one of which is obligatory phoron, and the other of which is a gas from atmospherics to act as some kind of supplement?
• Maybe the supplement could prompt the drive to engage a different kind of jump - so, chlorine causes one kind of jump, nitrous oxide another, etc, or each gas otherwise influences the final jump in a particular way? Maybe one gas makes it more accurate, another makes it drastically more accurate at the cost of distance, another makes it go drastically further at the cost of accuracy, so engineers can cook up their own mixes for different situations. If a dynamic system could be innovated that gives you a little more to do with managing the drive than simply finding the gasses with the best modifiers and sticking them in, that would be very inspired.

Edited August 22 by hazelmouse

[Dreamix]

As a solution to the "it should only run on phoron" issue:

I'd keep the gasses as is, say they're for cooling or as a moderator or something, and also make the drive use phoron sheets to run.

 

[Mr.Popper]

I like everything suggested above. Also:

• The field containment is a really cool idea, but kinda janky in its current form. AFAIK you can't even turn the main field off unless it runs out of power, making full shutoff unfeasible. Either A. Remove the inner field generators and make the outer shield generators do all the work (assuming they can even contain a singulo) or B. Alter the field generators so they can be turned off. In either case, I think the drive should be contained by only one energy field. Two containment fields is redundant and leaves less room for funny OSHA violation RP— also engineers can build another anyway if they feel inclined.
• Two PSUs are similarly unnecessary; each one can hold 6 coils, so having two with one each is a waste of space. Maybe, to make the drive look cooler and reuse some assets, it could get the cryogenic capacitor from the Leviathan? The power draw would just have to be much higher to justify the insane throughput.
• I love the idea of weird unexpected outcomes like malfunctions and anomalies. As Hazel touched on, maybe each gas could have its own stats, including reliability. E.g. you use phoron and it's perfectly safe, but you put in something like CO2 and there's a high probability of failure. Failure could vary in severity from an electrical overload to the ship going drastically off course. Anomalies could be more passive, randomly occurring while the ship is in bluespace transit. Some fun ones would be doppelgangers, phantom mobs, lights going out, teleporting objects, etc.
• Name ideas: Bam Slam Blam Drive, Doppler, Lorentz Drive, GAMMA or GAMA, Tigard-Demopoulos Drive, Homeros' Drive or Homer's Drive.

[Fluffy]

17 hours ago, ASmallCuteCat said:

I don't know if it's possible, given how cramped maintenance is, but it's a little hard to navigate the bluespace room - when everything is active, the walkway is only 1 tile wide. Lots of pushing and shoving ensues, I think as soon as there are more than two people in the room it would start to get difficult to move around.

4 hours ago, Mr.Popper said:

The field containment is a really cool idea, but kinda janky in its current form. AFAIK you can't even turn the main field off unless it runs out of power, making full shutoff unfeasible. Either A. Remove the inner field generators and make the outer shield generators do all the work (assuming they can even contain a singulo) or B. Alter the field generators so they can be turned off. In either case, I think the drive should be contained by only one energy field. Two containment fields is redundant and leaves less room for funny OSHA violation RP— also engineers can build another anyway if they feel inclined.

4 hours ago, Mr.Popper said:

Two PSUs are similarly unnecessary; each one can hold 6 coils, so having two with one each is a waste of space. Maybe, to make the drive look cooler and reuse some assets, it could get the cryogenic capacitor from the Leviathan? The power draw would just have to be much higher to justify the insane throughput.

My idea here was that you would have two safety, the two ring of shields are connected to two PSUs so in the event one fails, you aren't in the SINGULOOSE scenario (assuming you enabled both), and to avoid people from smashing around the room too much by mistake

I think both can contain the singulo, the inner ones can be disabled by turning off the bottom PSU which feeds the emitters that feeds them (in the configuration that you saw in the event)

I'm not sure on the room design, I thought it would have been fun to have the double blue ring and possibly a "CHIEF ENGINEER GET DOWN!" moment as someone turns off the inner shields from the bottom PSU and launches to the upper PSU to turn it off and release the singulo, but we went with a low intensity event so that never happened

 

17 hours ago, hazelmouse said:

How hard would it be to implement the same bluespace effect as is used in round-ending bluespace jumps, like before we had transfers, into the drive? The effect in the mini-event was a lot more rudimentary, I'd love to see the same effect as the old jumps implemented if it's not impractical.

It's the same effect, with the difference that it now works, the previous one was broken, I updated it to the updated Bay version (basically set the rendering plane, an opacity and the addition method iirc), possibly the opacity is set too high and that's why it seems more rudimentary? Not sure.

 

17 hours ago, hazelmouse said:

• We need phoron to be obligatory to run the drive, but we also want complex atmospherics mechanics. You could design the machine to have two atmos inputs, one of which is obligatory phoron, and the other of which is a gas from atmospherics to act as some kind of supplement?
• Maybe the supplement could prompt the drive to engage a different kind of jump - so, chlorine causes one kind of jump, nitrous oxide another, etc, or each gas otherwise influences the final jump in a particular way? Maybe one gas makes it more accurate, another makes it drastically more accurate at the cost of distance, another makes it go drastically further at the cost of accuracy, so engineers can cook up their own mixes for different situations. If a dynamic system could be innovated that gives you a little more to do with managing the drive than simply finding the gasses with the best modifiers and sticking them in, that would be very inspired.

13 hours ago, Dreamix said:

I'd keep the gasses as is, say they're for cooling or as a moderator or something, and also make the drive use phoron sheets to run.

Both of these idea (or at least, iteration of) are in our project RFC document at the moment

 

4 hours ago, Mr.Popper said:

I love the idea of weird unexpected outcomes like malfunctions and anomalies. As Hazel touched on, maybe each gas could have its own stats, including reliability. E.g. you use phoron and it's perfectly safe, but you put in something like CO2 and there's a high probability of failure. Failure could vary in severity from an electrical overload to the ship going drastically off course. Anomalies could be more passive, randomly occurring while the ship is in bluespace transit. Some fun ones would be doppelgangers, phantom mobs, lights going out, teleporting objects, etc.

Reliability is an idea in the RFC document too, anomalies at the moment not really sure what to put there, I liked the phantom mobs (and we had it already in previous bluespace jump iterations) but it got removed because it makes no sense and it's not a warp-drive bringing us in the immaterium refueled by assistants that will die in the process like WH40K demands

[Noble Row]

Now, I'm no expert in atmospherics and am only passable in the knowledge of Engineering, but I've been told by Fluffy to use this thread as a feedback thread for the current test merge. So from my time spectating it, these are my observations so far:

• Fluffy stated that the current setup for the Bluespace Drive is inefficient on purpose to encourage upgrades to the room. If this is the case, the room needs to be larger, as the room is much too small as it stands for any sort of safe upgrades to take place. In the round I watched there was a one tile space between the field generators and walking space, if any upgrade was put there it would block that walking space entirely and cause injury to the engineer trying to maneuver around it.
• If tests are going to continue utilizing the Bluespace Drive, the crew DESPERATELY need a tutorial in its use or a guide somewhere for it. Whether that be a wiki guide, or a written book, it needs one. Especially with the potential that the singularity it spawns can grow and end the entire round.
• The current setup needs a better method to powering down the emitters other than turning off the entire SMES. Linking them to a button perhaps like the Supermatter room?
• The doors should not be made of phoron, even the description for phoron doors implies it's a horrible idea to make doors out of phoron. I don't see any architect or structural code committee approving of that. It should just be standard engineering doors.

UPDATE:

The Phoron doors can cause mass phoron fires and gas leaks.

[Sneakyranger]

20 minutes ago, Noble Row said:

Fluffy stated that the current setup for the Bluespace Drive is inefficient on purpose to encourage upgrades to the room. If this is the case, the room needs to be larger, as the room is much too small as it stands for any sort of safe upgrades to take place. In the round I watched there was a one tile space between the field generators and walking space, if any upgrade was put there it would block that walking space entirely and cause injury to the engineer trying to maneuver around it.

 

20 minutes ago, Noble Row said:

The doors should not be made of phoron, even the description for phoron doors implies it's a horrible idea to make doors out of phoron. I don't see any architect or structural code committee approving of that. It should just be standard engineering doors.

I echo these from my limited observations.

 

20 minutes ago, Noble Row said:

If tests are going to continue utilizing the Bluespace Drive, the crew DESPERATELY need a tutorial in its use or a guide somewhere for it. Whether that be a wiki guide, or a written book, it needs one. Especially with the potential that the singularity it spawns can grow and end the entire round.

I think a Leviathan-esque general overview and what-not-to-do sealed envelope in the bluespace drive would be sufficient for launch. A comprehensive guide on launch for a new feature is unnecessary and, in my opinion, unwelcome as it would drastically shorten the time before the device becomes as routine and "solved" as the supermatter. On a more practical note, the odds that the wiki maintainer team - eternally swamped and slow as it is (I say this with no malice having been a longtime member of it) - will be able to get a quality guide out in any reasonable timeframe for launch is not impossible but generally unlikely. I'd really rather not either hold up the bluespace drive's full implementation unnecessarily or force the developer to write a guide for it just to add a new engineering feature when engineering is in such an apocalyptic feature drought as it is. On the other hand, I think a general bullet point overview envelope for a "new model bluespace drive" is a very reasonable ask especially for a device with such a large catastrophe if it fails too hard.
To prevent any misunderstandings - I certainly believe that a full guide will come at some point and would be useful. I simply do not think it should be comprehensive at all within the first week or so of launch to allow a fair shot for all players to get to toy with it without their more wired-in peers having a chance to spoil the surprise, as it were.

Edited 21 hours ago by Sneakyranger

[Fluffy]

9 minutes ago, Noble Row said:

Fluffy stated that the current setup for the Bluespace Drive is inefficient on purpose to encourage upgrades to the room. If this is the case, the room needs to be larger, as the room is much too small as it stands for any sort of safe upgrades to take place. In the round I watched there was a one tile space between the field generators and walking space, if any upgrade was put there it would block that walking space entirely and cause injury to the engineer trying to maneuver around it.

The idea isn't to put it there, it's that you pull two pipelines to atmosia and do that there, if you want to make it efficient; you have the mix tank to connect to, where you prepare your mix, then send it out to the BSD for consumption

 

12 minutes ago, Noble Row said:

If tests are going to continue utilizing the Bluespace Drive, the crew DESPERATELY need a tutorial in its use or a guide somewhere for it. Whether that be a wiki guide, or a written book, it needs one.

11 minutes ago, Sneakyranger said:

I think a Leviathan-esque general overview and what-not-to-do sealed envelope in the bluespace drive would be sufficient for launch.

I will consider this

 

13 minutes ago, Noble Row said:

Especially with the potential that the singularity it spawns can grow and end the entire round.

It essentially cannot do that, shutting down the reactor or after at a jump completion deletes the singularity, and aside from purposefully feeding it, it's not at a stage where it would eat anything but a turf and maybe someone standing on it, and would extinguish itself afterwards autonomously

 

18 minutes ago, Noble Row said:

The current setup needs a better method to powering down the emitters other than turning off the entire SMES.

I will not consider this, as it would make it trivial to have it running with a line of canisters at a hat's drop to dodge ship to ship combat without any pre planning, which would be quite a pain in the ass for third party ships and arcs alike

 

22 minutes ago, Noble Row said:

The doors should not be made of phoron, even the description for phoron doors implies it's a horrible idea to make doors out of phoron. I don't see any architect or structural code committee approving of that. It should just be standard engineering doors.

I was about to say it was a funny emergency source of Phoron to fuel it, but apparently it gets deconstructed to gas form instead of sheets, so they are getting replaced already