I've come up with an idea bringing several different concepts discussed on the Infinity forums and suggested an idea on how stealth can lead to a fully integrated stealth system based on astrophysics, ECCM/ECM, and the use/disuse of AI's.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Are you talking literally about stealth technologies in aircraft and naval vessels (and even ground vessels), or are you talking about video games?
I'm trying to decide if I want to participate in this thread or not.
Posted by ricree101 (Member # 7749) on :
Looks like video games. Beyond that, I have no idea whatsoever. Seriously, Blayne, you can't just randomly drop this sort of thing without context. At least tell us what game this is about, or some other context that would tell us what is going on.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Woops my bad, I am explaining my ideas for the development of "Infinity: Quest for Earth" a scifi space based MMO being released within a year or two. Think of it as being similar to Eve but being alot bigger in scope, a combination of X3 and Final Frontier come closer to resembling the overal concept of the game.
The Lead Developer of the game summarized this:
quote: 1. Twitch based gameplay, meaning that you fully control your ship in real-time in all the directions of space. Except for larger ships, who will have controls closer to those in Eve.
2. Collisions on everything.
3. Immersion; meaning real scales, dimensions and velocities. Planets are truely as large as real ones, and ships extremely small compared to them.
4. Planetary landing with seamless transitions. If you can see something in the sky like a moon, you can get there in real time without seeing a single loading screen.
5. Solar system dynamics. Bodies orbitting around each other, being able to watch a sunset or an eclipse. Planets are not just a fancy background ala X3.
6. Travelling to another system doesn't necessarily involve jump gates. Actually, jump gates are rare and only serve as a way to link distant clusters.
7. A procedural universe - billions of star systems and planets, all unique.
8. No skills, experience or levels.
9. Less waiting time, when you want to mine, or go to a distant system.
10. A living world, with NPCs flying around and living their own life.
11. Being able to affect missions to other players or NPCs.
12. Dynamic storyline. What i mean with "dynamic" is this: in most MMOs, you have a storyline ( sometimes very complex like in Eve ) written by the developers, and missions / quests related to it. However, none of those quests affect or make the storyline progress. Infinity's storyline will be, by many aspects, closer to the one of a single-player game, with some specific player actions "triggering" a progress of the storyline.
13. Owning an empire: multiple spaceships, stations, planets. Setting your own tax/rules for those. Enabling other players or even NPCs to fly your ships. Constructing buildings/factories in cities. Forming corporations, or owning actions into other player's corporations.
14. Multiple players flying in the same ship.
15. Knowledge exchange. Prizes for being the first player to discover some special places / events ( like, analyzing a black hole, or discovering an unknown metal, or a new form of life ).
16. Newtonian physics ( with computer assistance for eacy controlling ).
17. Technology discovery plus patent system ( players have to hire scientists to make new technologies available in game, like a RTS's tech-tree ). I know that Eve has blueprints, but as far as i understand, those are "static".
To be completed.
Basically since its still largely in development with only a pretty fun Combat Prototype availiable the player community following the progress can give suggestions and input.
Basically I am suggesting a comprensive and hopefully fairly realistic and complex system of utilizing stealth based off of the astrophysics the game is going to emulate and trying to tie it in with a few other features of the game to increase the interconnectivity of the whole thing.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
And to think I got all excited for a minute.
Posted by ricree101 (Member # 7749) on :
Well, being that this is a forum and all, if you want to have a discussion about real life stealth technology, you could always start a topic on it.
Seriously, though, I'm half tempted to start one myself now, I just don't have anything particularly new to say to kick start the discussion.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
There's plenty of new stuff being bandied about. The next gen of aircraft, the F-22 and F-35 (which are really the current gen I guess) will have the radar profile of a hummingbird. In a test against F-15 Stike Eagles, easily the most powerful of the last round of fighters, the Eagles, I think a dozen of them, were destroyed by two Raptors. And they never even saw it coming.
The next generation of APCs and tanks will have even more angled edges than before to cut down radar profiles, and efforts will be made to cut down on their heat signatures.
The next generation of naval craft will be radically different. After the CVX era, engineers are looking at smaller, almost pocket carriers that use magnetic launch systems (stolen from the CVX line), massively reduced conn towers, radar absorbing materials, and smooth lines to redirect radar waves. Trimaran warships will also cut the radar profile of ships while increasing their speed. New LCVs are also working in a modular design, so whole sections of the ship can be swapped out on demand.
Helicopters would be much stealthier now, but the last round of next gen Sikorskys were scrapped due to budget shortfalls.
UAVs are going to be our anti-stealth weapons though. Those and Aegis. To say nothing of the fact that the rest of the world is 20-30 years behind us in stealth tech, we're also 20 years ahead in detection tech. You can thank the Russians for that.
There's been reports lately of greatly increased efforts from foreign nations trying to acquire US tech defense secrets through espionage, and they are focusing on stealth.
Posted by Phanto (Member # 5897) on :
I am quite the layperson on this subject, but if radar is being antiquated, perhaps a new method of detection based on lasers might be workable?
Posted by Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged (Member # 7476) on :
It's almost a shame how far ahead the F-22 is from the F-15. Not a fair fight to say the least. It's more then just Stealth in this case. It's super cruise and thrust vectoring as well. The thing that really impresses me is the Avionics package that thing sports (I'm an old avionics tech on the F-15...it's hard to ignore). How it worked on the F-15C was three distinct avionics systems, lets call them offensive weapons systems, defensive, and flight controls. Tese systems communicated but not much. The F-15E intergrated alot more of the functions but they were still seperate. On the F-22 they've managed to merge the offensive and defensive systems into one sensor package, and boy how sweet it is.
Think of it this way. A enemy has his radar on looking for a target. The F-22 keeps his RADAR off. Using the enemies own radar (with a Radar warning Receiver)he locks on with the AIM 120. The AIM-120 is a radar guided missle but it doesn't turn it's radar on to about halfway into his flight. By the time the enemy pilot gets any sort of warning it is far to late. The worst part is he would never know what hit him. The 20+ year reign of the F-15 is over Posted by Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged (Member # 7476) on :
The problem with lasers is interference from things like dust, smog, and much worse clouds. But on a perfectly cloudless day...yeah.
Posted by Phanto (Member # 5897) on :
Ah, but naturally, one would not commit military action on a day when the weather wasn't perfect. Posted by Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged (Member # 7476) on :
Oh yeah, I forgot about that F15-E that dropped a laser guided bomb on a airborne helicopter in Desert Storm.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
The problem with lasers that Wowbagger describes is "blooming," which is the dissipation of the energy in the laser beam, which causes it to lose intensity and fade away the further it gets from the point of creation.
Lasers these days come in all shapes, sizes and levels of intensity. It won't be long before small lasers are implanted on fighter craft. They've made a few breakthroughs recently. They'll allow a fighter to perform point defense on missiles, and maybe a few other applications as well. (probably/possible not fighter to fighter attacks just yet). The ABL system on the Boeing 767s we have is nice too, if they can get the heat problem fixed. A few of those patrolling a war zone, or a mini version attached to an AWACS or similar carrier based ship could patrol a carrier group and shoot down anything that comes near the group.
Lasers have their limitations, especially in atmosphere, but we've made incredible progress, and continually miniaturize it and reduce the heat they produce, all of which are essential for practical applications.
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