Elminster (El) 20.10.2009 - Hardpoint System taster

[Jon]

Hi, my name is Jon (some of you may know me as El or Elminster from the Bridge Commander community)
       
My primary focus is designing the Excalibur hardpoint system, will be to develop something more complex than that seen in Bridge Commander, while keeping it simple to use and design.
       
This blog is just to show what I have in mind for the HP system in Excalibur, bear in mind it isn't done yet, so the majority of this is subject to change!
       
One thing many people are probably wondering is how it will be different....
       
Essentially, the HP system will be very similar to that seen in BC, but will make much more use of hierarchies.
       
Take for example the Power Systems, which in BC were somewhat basic, we can add property inheritance and do some very interesting things;

(See attachment)
       
Looks complicated doesn't it? Well actually its fairly basic for a starship power set-up.
       
In the above picture, take the Warp Core for example, which generates power; 

• The attached conduit(s) inherits the power output from the core.
• The conduit is split into segments, each inheriting power from its predecessor (bi-directional).
• These go to the destination system (e.g. A Warp Nacelle or Phaser array).

This means we can control how and where the grid is routed through a ship (via the MPE), have multiple grids and multiple routes (redundancy). Power can travel in both directions as needed.
 
We can also implement control nodes (EPS Relays) to distribute power to ancillary systems.
We can even allocate a dedicated power supply to individual elements in a Phaser Array!
 
I hope you've found this a useful insight into how I'm anticipating the hardpoint system will work, its only a taster, there's much more to come!
 
Thanks
 
Jon 

[zzz]

Fantastic. This is exactly the kind of layout I was hoping for.

[Aresius]

Nice, there are of course more things that would be added into a fully labelled layout.

Speaking of such a power-distribution layout, it'll be quite a micromanagement thing, I believe. While it's a great thing because that way we can really do the fun of cutting a ships hull on certain areas to hamper the energy flow.
But on the down side, someone people may have problems tackling with so many things in the heat of battle so I recommend that the power distribution can be switched between manually and maintained by computer.
That's all I can think of in this regards.

[MajorD]

Once I understood the diagram my first thought was that it is better than all else but isn't comprehensive enough, but what you wrote completely relieved that concern.

You specifically said your system can handle secondary power conduits, in DS9 it was mentioned that the Federation added quadruple redundancy to the power network of DS9, while the Cardassians thought that was overblown and only used double redundancy. You have a redundant power system for the array, which is excellent and just what I wanted to see. What went without mentioning is that with this system not only could you carve an array to bits and still fire the individual remaining sections as long as the power feeds weren't cut to those particular surviving sections, you can also cut the ship up and fire from the separated sections. Huzzah! The system is also flexible enough for battery backup, secondary generators, and I'm guessing remote power dump and absorption.

Question:

• Are the physical termination points and paths of conduits describable, or are only the termination points describable in this system?
  
• Two conduits are attached to one power source, do both conduits rate as having total power minus the draw of the other system, or do they each have half the power since there are two conduits? This is regardless of power regulators which would be capable of this regardless of system draw.
• I like your diagram, will we have a 3D model Master System Display with a power grid overlay, with filter options for grid, generators, batteries, and distribution control nodes?
• How will non-combat critical systems systems work into the power grid? For instance, power to replicators, lights, gravity plaiting, life support, and holodecks. Well, holodecks are supposed to have a dedicated power supply, which I find weird.
• How will fuel load work into this? Fuel is very weird in Trek, for one thing the ships produce more power than their fuel accounts for, second they never run out of antimatter although Worf mentions that the E-D had an anti-matter generator, it also takes years to run out of deuterium. My point is, if it is included, it will never run down in the time you play the game, but I think it would be a fun value to have. I imagine the anti-matter generator as a specialized replicator with vacuum and magnetic confinement systems.

[fracsid]

This would work perfectly for the dynamic ship damage I suggested a while back!

Will there be (Or will it be possible to mod in, which from the looks of it it probably will be!) some way to dismember ships and have more than one functional part left over?  So for your Galaxy example, could you cut the saucer in two down the middle and, because each section has it's own fusion generator, still fire phasers from each section?

And the redundancy is a good point!  I would love to see more difference between ships than just hp and weapons, especially in the form of redundant systems versus general hull sturdiness.

[furswift]

All I ask is for redundancy for the sensor array. It is knocked out way too easily in Bridge Commander and that is always annoying. Also, ships should be able to maneuver with thrusters even though the impulse drive is disabled. This was another flaw in BC. The diagram and ideas are great; keep it up!

[MajorD]

That's definitely one thing I would not miss. Those black bands around the periphery of the hull should be the sensor arrays, so destroying them should be really hard to take out in one hit. What would be really interesting is to have directional malfunctioning of sensors. Also, destroying the main deflector shouldn't destroy the ability to go to warp, it should make going to warp allow the ship to be damaged by interstellar particles and lose the long range sensing.

[Jon]

• Are the physical termination points and paths of conduits describable, or are only the termination points describable in this system?

Assuming by terminiation points you mean connections to systems?
Each destination system (phaser for example) can have up to two independant supplies, such as a distributed power grid (EPS) or a direct connection (e.g. the Impulse engine connected to the fusion reactor)
The EPS grids (and other distributed systems such as the ODN) will, ideally, be routable within a ship

• Two conduits are attached to one power source, do both conduits rate as having total power minus the draw of the other system, or do they each have half the power since there are two conduits? This is regardless of power regulators which would be capable of this regardless of system draw.

Conduits can be given a pre-defined capacity in the MPE, or be assigned a capacity automatically based on the maximum power draw of end systems. This still needs to be developed, not 100% yet on if this can be done.

• I like your diagram, will we have a 3D model Master System Display with a power grid overlay, with filter options for grid, generators, batteries, and distribution control nodes?

This could be done, whether it will be or not isn't something I can answer at this point.

• How will non-combat critical systems systems work into the power grid? For instance, power to replicators, lights, gravity plaiting, life support, and holodecks. Well, holodecks are supposed to have a dedicated power supply, which I find weird.

These will work the same as any other system, you don't have to have them (with the exception of life support), its all down to how detailed the HPer wants to be with the ship.

• How will fuel load work into this? Fuel is very weird in Trek, for one thing the ships produce more power than their fuel accounts for, second they never run out of antimatter although Worf mentions that the E-D had an anti-matter generator, it also takes years to run out of deuterium. My point is, if it is included, it will never run down in the time you play the game, but I think it would be a fun value to have. I imagine the anti-matter generator as a specialized replicator with vacuum and magnetic confinement systems.

Can't really answer that at this stage, the system would allow for it, however it may be something to mod in later.

Will there be (Or will it be possible to mod in, which from the looks of it it probably will be!) some way to dismember ships and have more than one functional part left over?  So for your Galaxy example, could you cut the saucer in two down the middle and, because each section has it's own fusion generator, still fire phasers from each section?

This is one thing I considered myself, its fairly rare for a ship to be completely destroyed, even after the borg have done with it. As to whether or not we will impliment it, I can't say at this point.

[zzz]

I think fuel sources should be static. It doesn't decrease with use but it can be vented or destroyed. If you wanted to limit ship movement the engines suffer damage from prolonged use at high speeds.

[MajorD]

Assuming by terminiation points you mean connections to systems?
Each destination system (phaser for example) can have up to two independant supplies, such as a distributed power grid (EPS) or a direct connection (e.g. the Impulse engine connected to the fusion reactor)

The EPS grids (and other distributed systems such as the ODN) will, ideally, be routable within a ship

Sorry about that, I should have asked if the EPS network would have a physical shape and location in ships that would allow it to be cut up by weapon fire (which seems to be what you're saying), or if the network is only a non-physical abstraction of the connections of different devices.

Why only two connections max? What if I also want a dedicated backup battery for my impulse engines, which have EPS and their own reactor? Or, I may want to make the impulse reactors four separate reactors, it would be easier to make one reactor with the energy of four but I might be going for extreme detail.

The optical data network is interesting, and weird. It has home runs (a direct line from engineering computer to the bridge) and presumably networked runs. It has something called an ODN relay which as best as I can are routers or network hubs. Then there are the phase inducers, those are really weird and best as I can figure they're the thing that puts the data into the network (network card?). There is also the ODN matrix, that's really hard to say what it is but my guess it is the software structure of the network, because the ODN matrix and phase inducers have to be aligned to work. That makes it sound like physical things, but a software alignment makes more sense to me.

Conduits can be given a pre-defined capacity in the MPE, or be assigned a capacity automatically based on the maximum power draw of end systems. This still needs to be developed, not 100% yet on if this can be done.
This could be done, whether it will be or not isn't something I can answer at this point.
These will work the same as any other system, you don't have to have them (with the exception of life support), its all down to how detailed the HPer wants to be with the ship.

I think it would be best to stick closer to how actual power distribution works. That would mean controlling only the supply and demand. Actually, there should be switches too, so you can cut a line if its been broken, in order to stop it spewing plasma and wasting energy. They might even need transformers but I really don't know much about electricity.

[Jon]

Sorry about that, I should have asked if the EPS network would have a physical shape and location in ships that would allow it to be cut up by weapon fire (which seems to be what you're saying), or if the network is only a non-physical abstraction of the connections of different devices.

Essentially yes, you could potentially disable/destroy individual element of an EPS grid.

Why only two connections max? What if I also want a dedicated backup battery for my impulse engines, which have EPS and their own reactor? Or, I may want to make the impulse reactors four separate reactors, it would be easier to make one reactor with the energy of four but I might be going for extreme detail.

Logistics, any more and it starts to get really complicated, 2 seems like a reasonable manageable number.

You could actually do this off the eps grid, just set the battery very close to the engine on the grid.

The optical data network is interesting, and weird. It has home runs (a direct line from engineering computer to the bridge) and presumably networked runs. It has something called an ODN relay which as best as I can are routers or network hubs. Then there are the phase inducers, those are really weird and best as I can figure they're the thing that puts the data into the network (network card?). There is also the ODN matrix, that's really hard to say what it is but my guess it is the software structure of the network, because the ODN matrix and phase inducers have to be aligned to work. That makes it sound like physical things, but a software alignment makes more sense to me.

We don't need to go to that level to have an effective power network, too complex.
We need it to be flexible but not a management overhead for the player.

The ODN relay would be the functional data equivalent of the EPS relay in the power diagram.

I think it would be best to stick closer to how actual power distribution works. That would mean controlling only the supply and demand. Actually, there should be switches too, so you can cut a line if its been broken, in order to stop it spewing plasma and wasting energy. They might even need transformers but I really don't know much about electricity.

I envisioned this being done automatically by the computer, of course if the computer were damaged or inoperable.....

[MajorD]

Logistics, any more and it starts to get really complicated, 2 seems like a reasonable manageable number.

If it takes more programming than having a fixed two then I understand, but if a fully flexible system that lets any number of dedicated power units can be made that sounds far superior. What's that called, the user defining what the system does, instead of the system defining what the user does? That way, it doesn't even need to be hard coded, it's just a generator priority that can be changed during the game. Generators and batteries (which are very close to the same thing) could either give power to the whole system or just one element of the system, regardless of proximity. Then again, that isn't any different than having a locked value of power available for a system, however, when the system is using less than its allotted total, the remaining energy should automatically distribute to the grid, unless there are systems set with a priority. Phasers won't always be charging, and impulse engines won't always be at maximum.

In that case, will we be able to set the priority of which systems get extra power regardless of what has the highest percentage?

I envisioned this being done automatically by the computer, of course if the computer were damaged or inoperable.....

Or, if the ODN line is cut or other ODN device is damaged. Yeah, that makes sense for that sort of thing to be automatic, just as shields should be automatic if air pressure drops too fast and too low through a particular opening.

[joe5]

You could actually do this off the eps grid, just set the battery very close to the engine on the grid.

Dose this mean that ships will carry a predetermined number of battery’s that can be positioned around the ship

[Jon]

There would be nothing to stop you setting up as many power sources as you want, bearing in mind the balance of the HP of course.

[Jon]

If it takes more programming than having a fixed two then I understand, but if a fully flexible system that lets any number of dedicated power units can be made that sounds far superior. What's that called, the user defining what the system does, instead of the system defining what the user does? That way, it doesn't even need to be hard coded, it's just a generator priority that can be changed during the game. Generators and batteries (which are very close to the same thing) could either give power to the whole system or just one element of the system, regardless of proximity. Then again, that isn't any different than having a locked value of power available for a system, however, when the system is using less than its allotted total, the remaining energy should automatically distribute to the grid, unless there are systems set with a priority. Phasers won't always be charging, and impulse engines won't always be at maximum.

In that case, will we be able to set the priority of which systems get extra power regardless of what has the highest percentage?

I'm not talking about programming specifically, but logistics of the power delivery systems.
The more complexity you introduce, the greater the overhead on the player to manage it, the game to support it and ultimatly the machine it runs on.
It's important to maintain a balance (even an adjustable one), while I'm all for having the user control the system (rather than vice versa), you still need to introduce sensible limits.

Power management (which is I think the other element of what your talking about here), is somewhat different.
I would expect this to be intelligently managed by the Computer (to a large degree), whith player overrides being optional (or required should the ODN/Computer be damaged)

[MajorD]

Okay, that sounds good. Keeping the distribution macros open so they can be programmed and saved in the game would be cool.

[Nicholas Miller]

will you be incorporating main power couplings as mentioned so many times before in TNG, Generations and also have backups in case the main couplings fail?

[Jon]

If they have no practical application from a gaming perspective, then probably not.

[MajorD]

I found some interesting tidbits last night while watching, TNG: "Chain of Command, Part 1". In it, Captain Jellico orders significant changes to the Enterprise-D's power distribution in order to optimize it for combat. He also orders the flexible stations in the back of the bridge to be dedicated to particular tasks and manned at all time. Over all, it gives us a good idea of what to expect with a wartime Galaxy-class ship, or any wartime ship of Starfleet in some ways. My annotations are in red italics.

16   INT. MAIN BRIDGE

   Jellico is standing at the Tactical station with Riker
   and Data. There is one N.D. CREWMEMBER at an aft
   station and another CREWMEMBER standing by to take over
   Tactical.

               JELLICO
            (to Riker)
         I want you to install a bypass
         between the main phaser array and
         the secondary generators.

Specific mention of secondary generators.
Normally no direct connection from secondary generators to phasers.

            (taps something on
             panel)
         I also want to run the main
         deflector pathway through the warp
         power grid and the auxiliary
         conduits through the lateral
         relays. You may have to
         reconfigure the transfer
         interface.

Main deflector not normally connected directly to warp power. (Main Deflector as apposed to navigational deflector.)

               DATA
         The transfer interface is not
         designed for that configuration.
         It will take seven hours to make
         the changes.

The interface couldn't automatically handle physical power grid changes.

               RIKER
         Sir... you may not be aware that
         our normal interface already
         routes auxiliary power through
         three separate relays.

Lateral relays sound like branches of the power network and Auxillery Conduits were ordered to pass through the lateral relays. Since Riker mentions they already had auxillery power going through three seperate relays, so Jellico wanted more direct connections to more relays as extra redundancy.

               JELLICO
            (blunt)
         I'm aware of your current systems
         design. It's not good enough. If
         these negotiations fail, we could
         find ourselves in a war zone. If
         that happens I want to be loaded
         for bear.

Jellico's goal for the changes are to make the Enterprise-D more effective in combat.

               RIKER
         I'll get right on it, sir.

               JELLICO
            (smiles)
         Good.

   Jellico briskly moves to another science station with
   Riker.

               JELLICO
         These stations should be devoted
         to damage-control and weapons
         status from now on. See that
         they're manned on every shift.

Jellico devoting the bridge's rear flexible stations.

               RIKER
         Aye, sir.

               JELLICO
         Mister Data, how long until we
         reach the rendezvous point?

               DATA
         We will arrive in fifty-two hours,
         thirty-one minutes, sir.

   Jellico starts heading for the Turbolift.

               JELLICO
            (to Riker)
         Schedule four battle drills, one
         for each shift. Run a series of
         simulated attacks from a
         Cardassian squadron. I want you
         to conduct the exercises
         personally, Wil. Get it done.

   Jellico suddenly stops before entering the Turbolift.

               JELLICO
            (remembering)
         And... get that fish out of the
         Ready Room.
            (to Data)
         Data, you're with me.

   Jellico and Data EXIT to the Turbolift, leaving a
   frustrated Riker on the Bridge.

                                             CUT TO:

16A  INT. JEFFRIES TUBE


               JELLICO
            (off panel)
         I want you to increase the flow to
         the deuterium fuel loader by a
         third... we may need the extra
         capacity.

JELLICO
         The power transfer levels will
         need to be upgraded by twenty
         percent. The efficiency of your
         warp coils is also unsatisfactory.

Power related to how fast fuel can get into the system.
The power system has definite maximum capacity, which helps explain needing to physically rework the EPS grid to enhance defensive and offensive ability. Otherwise, they would be able to just direct more power through the current conduits by way of programming.

               GEORDI
         The coil efficiency is well within
         specifications, Captain.

   Jellico moves to the pool table and begins looking at
   the monitors.

               JELLICO
         I'm not interested in the specs,
         Geordi. The efficiency needs to
         be at least fifteen percent
         higher.

               GEORDI
            (shocked)
         Fifteen percent?

 STAR TREK: "Chain of Command, Pt. I" - 10/06/92 - ACT TWO 17.

17   CONTINUED:

               DATA
         That is an attainable goal. But
         it will require realigning the
         warp coil and taking the secondary
         distribution grid off-line.

They talk about the warp coil in the singular, although Jellico did say coils, but then said is right after, instead of are. And, only need to turn off secondary power grid to work on the coil.

               JELLICO
         Very good, Data.
            (to Geordi)
         That's exactly what I want you to
         do.

               GEORDI
         Taking that grid off-line will
         shut down the astrophysics lab,
         exobiology, geological research --

Secondary systems work off the secondary grid, which is not the auxiliary grid. Otherwise, those labs would have been mentioned sooner.

               JELLICO
         We're not on a research mission.
         Get it done in two days.

   Geordi is too shocked to say anything at the moment.
   Data offers what he thinks is helpful advice.

               DATA
         I believe that is also an
         attainable goal. If we utilize
         the entire Engineering department,
         there should be sufficient
         manpower available to complete the
         task.

               GEORDI
         Sure, if they work around the
         clock for the next two days.

               JELLICO
         Then you better get to it, Geordi.
         It looks like you have some work
         ahead of you.

               GEORDI
            (tight)
         Yes, sir.

               JELLICO
         Data.

[furswift]

It may be asking too much to have access to all these systems in the game, but I like the idea of it taking time (perhaps less if you're in a starbase) to reconfigure your ship for specific missions.

Although you better not move that fish! 

Chain of Command: my second all time favorite Star Trek episode!