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[Sirus]

While an Imperial Star Destroyer is a good deal bigger than most Aurora craft (they have something like 40,000 people onboard, crew and Marine (Stormtrooper) complement combined), that's a pretty damn good example of the engine problem right there.

[Lord Shonus]

If anything, refits should be much harder or more expensive (the old Soviet Union had to keep a bewildering number of missiles in service because they couldn't refit the ships to handle newer kinds), but more variations on the same hull should be possible without refitting the shipyard.

[Flying Dice]

Eh, you can already iterate to some degree without retooling. But if you're talking about replacing two dozen railguns, their reactors, and their controls systems with twenty missile launchers, their control systems, magazines, and such, I don't really agree. Stripping out a spinal laser and adding a half-dozen plasma carronades, probably not. Pretty sure that most small stuff already works, especially considering that cross-fits of freighters and colony ships do. Not sure how far you can take it with something like variants of the same hull (i.e. a flag version, a PD-heavy version, &c.). Would be nice to have a way to specifically split off variants and have the cross-tooling work like that (with a certain degree of limitation remaining) in addition to the current "close enough" method.

While an Imperial Star Destroyer is a good deal bigger than most Aurora craft (they have something like 40,000 people onboard, crew and Marine (Stormtrooper) complement combined), that's a pretty damn good example of the engine problem right there.

True, estimates for ISD tonnage I've seen typically fall in the 30-70 million ton range, so they're orders of magnitude larger than Aurora ships. Aurora ships also tend to be massively overcrewed (see "fighters" with double digit crew); an Aurora cap ship in that tonnage range (though note that IIRC Aurora tonnage is some weird amalgamation rather than straight metric tons, but don't ask me to find where that was stated) would carry more than a million crew.

[Madman198237]

An Imperial Star Destroyer holds roughly 30000 beings for an average combat deployment.

[Lord Shonus]

Eh, you can already iterate to some degree without retooling. But if you're talking about replacing two dozen railguns, their reactors, and their controls systems with twenty missile launchers, their control systems, magazines, and such, I don't really agree. Stripping out a spinal laser and adding a half-dozen plasma carronades, probably not. Pretty sure that most small stuff already works, especially considering that cross-fits of freighters and colony ships do. Not sure how far you can take it with something like variants of the same hull (i.e. a flag version, a PD-heavy version, &c.). Would be nice to have a way to specifically split off variants and have the cross-tooling work like that (with a certain degree of limitation remaining) in addition to the current "close enough" method.

Specifically, I'm referring to things like removing missile tubes or magazines to house other equipment. For any given class, I usually run with three main variants - the "Standard" class, a "Leader" that sacrifices some secondary armament for a flag bridge and extra sensors, and a "Jump" version that has the armament heavily reduced to mount a jump drive (These operate in squadrons of one Leader, one Jumpship, and enough Standard ships to fill out my max squadron jump size). For RP purposes, I can easily envision how this makes sense on the same basic hull, but to build those all from the same shipyard usually requires me to design a Frankenship that sits in the middle and tool for that, which really hurts my immersion.

[RAM]

The star destroyer is a pretty bad example. Replacing the engines on that would be so much easier than what would be needed for an aurora ship. But still, aurora vessels ought to be able to have their engines replaced without too much difficulty. And "getting rid of the old parts" is not something that I always want automated nor reliably an added cost. The part on the Star Destroyer tht is difficult to replace is the reactor, which is a very different case for vessels in Aurora. I mean, we have just gotten through talking about how most Vessels will have hordes of tiny reactors rather than one big one. The engines are, in all likelihood, going to be tubes. It just makes a lot of sense that way. Put in big bulges and you start losing space-efficiency and you start getting massive flaring and engine-wings and skirts and such to offset all your engine bulges. Make them flat and you have difficulty accelerating things and you need endless fields of surface-area. Make them boxy and they start having structural woes and efficiency flaws. Some bulbousness is to be expected, but really, it ought to be pretty easy to design them so that they can, with an admittedly large amount of effort, be yanked out the back with little harm to the vessel required. There really ought to be a recognition of just how different the components are. Replacing engines for engines should be relatively easy if they are the same size, and very difficult if they are of different sizes. Different technologies could conceivably require different linkages, but they all burn the same fuel and produce the same simple "thrust comes out here" effect, so that doesn't really seem like a thing. Replacing an independent turret with one that has the same weight should be easy, just pluck the bit off and put in another. One with less weight would be inefficient and one with more would require structural additions. You don't want to replace internal laser with railguns, lasers tend to produce more heat and railguns tend to produce more recoil, but replacing a laser of the same dimensions but with a different wavelength is probably more-or-less not so big of a deal.

Yes, in those instances where you have a massive internal unit, you will need to cut a hole out to replace them. Having the option to have prepared hull segments to ease this, at some cost to hull integrity but greatly reduced refit costs, i would like that option. In my experience it is often the case that the bulk of a vessel's mass is used in extremely numerous components. It is common for a vessel to have numerous, well, everything. The "replace the ships main powerplant" often just isn't a thing because there is no "main" powerplant and rather than a massive engine block sealed in a hull with a little shaft leading to a propeller, it is a massive great exhaust vent(Okay, admittedly it is probably a tiny exhaust vent with a particle accelerator behind it, but still, it is probably all a single panel that can be removed with less than usual fuss.)(Then again, the tiny vent is me being rational, the massive great exhaust vent on the other hand is what you will see in all the media...) that has a hole just the right size ready for it to be pulled out of.

[forsaken1111]

The engines in Aurora are inertialess drives that obey no known laws of physics. Why exactly would they be tubes or have anything at all to do with rocket design in general? They are literally trans-newtonian engines.

[Lord Shonus]

The engines in Aurora are inertialess drives that obey no known laws of physics. Why exactly would they be tubes or have anything at all to do with rocket design in general? They are literally trans-newtonian engines.

Nope. The engines in Aurora are primarily real and theorized propulsion methods. Being made out of TN materials gives them different properties, but a Nuclear Pulse engine is nothing more than a Sorium fueled version of ORION, and the others are grounded in current theory as well.


Conventional - Standard rocket engine

Nuclear Thermal    - Nuclear Thermal engine (Fully tested, not used due to radiation fears)

Nuclear Pulse - ORION (not used because it involves a ton of nukes going off)

Ion - Ion Thruster (in use, but low in thrust)

Magneto-Plasma Magnetoplasmadynamic thruster (Works in the lab, too power hungry for current spacecraft)

Internal Confinement Fusion    \
Magnetic Confinement Fusion > Variants of the theoretical Fusion Rockets   (not real yet because we can't generate fusion at a practical energy cost)
Inertial Confinement Fusion    /

Solid-core Anti-matter \
Gas-core Anti-matter   \
Plasma-core Anti-matter > Variants of the theoretical Antimatter rocket    (not real yet because antimatter)
Beam Core Anti-matter    /

Photonic - Photonic laser thruster (promising, but the necessary laser power and optics is beyond current tech)

[RAM]

The engines in Aurora are inertialess drives that obey no known laws of physics. Why exactly would they be tubes or have anything at all to do with rocket design in general? They are literally trans-newtonian engines.

Most extraplanetary propulsion theory suggests that mass is more of a constraint than energy. Thus, the exhaust will steadily become lesser and the energy-imbuement apparatus will become greater. This would naturally tend to lead to balls, disks, or cylinders, with tiny tubes sticking out the back. And yet, every single spacecraft in the history of fiction forever* has always had engines that were shaped like rockets. Just big cylinders with open backs. In theory, T.N. drives could easily be completely internal, but this is science fiction, therefore all drives are big honkin' cylinders with open backs.

*Well, okay, I am sure we can come up with 'some' exceptions... Arilou? Spathi? There must have been some since then...

[Flying Dice]

The engines in Aurora are inertialess drives that obey no known laws of physics. Why exactly would they be tubes or have anything at all to do with rocket design in general? They are literally trans-newtonian engines.

Nope. The engines in Aurora are primarily real and theorized propulsion methods. Being made out of TN materials gives them different properties, but a Nuclear Pulse engine is nothing more than a Sorium fueled version of ORION, and the others are grounded in current theory as well.


Conventional - Standard rocket engine

Nuclear Thermal    - Nuclear Thermal engine (Fully tested, not used due to radiation fears)

Nuclear Pulse - ORION (not used because it involves a ton of nukes going off)

Ion - Ion Thruster (in use, but low in thrust)

Magneto-Plasma Magnetoplasmadynamic thruster (Works in the lab, too power hungry for current spacecraft)

Internal Confinement Fusion    \
Magnetic Confinement Fusion > Variants of the theoretical Fusion Rockets   (not real yet because we can't generate fusion at a practical energy cost)
Inertial Confinement Fusion    /

Solid-core Anti-matter \
Gas-core Anti-matter   \
Plasma-core Anti-matter > Variants of the theoretical Antimatter rocket    (not real yet because antimatter)
Beam Core Anti-matter    /

Photonic - Photonic laser thruster (promising, but the necessary laser power and optics is beyond current tech)

Got to it before I did. But yeah, pretty much everything in Aurora's tech base has some basis in real science or speculation derived from the same, it's just all been passed through the filter of space magic that is TN materials to perform beyond what's theoretically possible.

There is a certain degree of SoD required, given that Aurora ships don't mechanically require any time to reorient on a new vector (which should theoretically be the case-even with instantaneous acceleration and deceleration they should still have to pitch and yaw to the new heading), but the nomenclature makes it pretty clear that they're meant to be thrusters rather than UFO swoopy devices.

Same deal with sensors. They're still functionally the same technology we're using now, but the TN element makes them deliver instantaneous FTL feedback; the "ping" from actives propagates and is picked up effectively in the same instant throughout the entire volume of the sensor's range. Thermal and EM passives instantly receive data from their entire coverage volume. This is blatantly nutty and impossible in a couple of detail points, but the basic idea is rooted in real science: thermal, EM, and radar tracking are all things that exist.

Again, it applies to missile warheads. They're real, theoretically possible, and hypothetically possible tech magnified by TN space magic. They're not mysterious black hole warheads from Dimension X, they're nukes (and later on AM charges) enhanced by TN tech. Laser warheads are a packet of bomb-pumped X-ray lasers strapped to a warhead.

We also sorta have to assume the existence of some sort of ansible tech in the background, given the ability to instantly and perfectly coordinate industry, logistics, and strategy across worlds which could very well be tens of thousands of lightyears apart in realspace, and which are effectively hundreds of billions of kilometers apart even if you assume the existence of Starfire-style JP comm relay stations.

The reason Newtonian Aurora was a feasible project in the first place is because Aurora is basically that with a few physically impossible changes to how certain mechanics function. TN materials alter extant operating parameters, they don't create new systems from whole cloth. It's the difference between changing from D&D 3.xe to 5e, not from 3.xe to Exalted.

[Detros]

Drives are pretty much always the most costly part of a ship.

With beam fire controls being one the few other components that can beat engines in this.
BFCs are going to be bit cheaper in next version, though (changelist).

[PTTG??]

Only the names are realistic. Many of these engines are just nonsense when you try to say they're sorium-fueled.

Take the Nuclear Pulse engines. The reaction mass in those is the bomb itself! There's no place to put liquid sorium in the whole process, and there's no sign in game that they drives even use bomb pulse units or pusher plates.

[Lord Shonus]

Obviously Sorium is explosive under certain scenarios, and the nuclear pulse drive repeatedly detonates small quantities of Sorium.

[Flying Dice]

TBH my mental justification has always been that Sorium is fuel for the anomalous TN components which allow the various drive types to perform well in excess of what they should normally be capable of. The drive tech sans TN elements is a baseline which is magnified by them. Conventional drives are so incredibly shitty because they're not being enhanced by TN processes more than because there's that much of a gap between contemporary rocket boosters vs. ion or ORION drives.

[90908]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xhUGGEnJcU

So, this is a review of Aurora by one MandaloreGaming. He's pretty consistent in his quality and this is no exception.