G-force Meter

[baobobafet]

Dealing with G-forces:

This may also be a helpful thread related to thrust rebalancing.


All Pioneer spacecraft might be designed to automatically adjust engine power outputs to never
exceed the 7g acceleration limit for pilot and crew even though the engine output is fully capable
of exceeding those maximums.

The idea behind this is that regardless off extra cargo or equipment weight (or lack there of)
the ship will always try to adjust to never exceed the max 7g limit.

Essentially an A.I controlled engine power management system responding to a G force meter on board
ship. (this would be transparent to most users functioning similarly to an automatic transmission in a car)



Next, add a new difficulty setting for the game options menu: "Pilot can Override G Limit - ON/OFF"
When this option is on a G force meter read-out should be displayed prominantly on the HUD.

Such an override option should come with risk of unconsciousness and a possible loss of pilot and crew.
Since high G forces can be tolerated by some more than others (depending on G force severity and human limits)
some crew may die before others under such strain.


If the override option is toggled on, the first sign of excessive G's might be a tunnel vision effect
(AFAIK this is what real pilots experience under High G's)
If the G's are not reduced the pilot blacks out. This could be represented in game by such an effect
and possibly even temporarily locking the player out of being able to control the ship for X period of
seconds.

Should this occur at a bad time (i.e.: combat or proximity to ground or object)
- or if the G's continue to increase, the pilot and any crew are likely to die from excessive G's or a
resulting collision.


Special G-suits could be made available in the shipyard as an item/ship upgrade to enable higher G limits
for pilot and crew.

[baobobafet]

That's the basic gist of the idea.
A sort of down shifting of thruster power as you approach 7G's.
This could also be accompanied by audio cues flashing G force indicator etc.

Of course if a ship does 7G's with a full cargo load & max equipment - an empty ship will far exceed the 7G limit.
As an example: I adjusted a version of the Wave-e to max of 7g acceleration carrying a full load,
minus the full load it was able to accelerate to 13.4G's

Assuming ships are tuned to create a max of 7G's fully loaded.
(G-meter levering the thrust limiter code) The auto engine power Mgmt system system kicks in as the ship
reduces weight.
Resulting in the thrust maximum power being reduced accordingly to not allow more than a 7G acceleration
even with an empty ship.

[bszlrd]

I like this course of thinking.
7G limit might be a bit high if you are performing brachistochrone transit and thrusting for days. At least if you want to move around inside the ship.
Passengers and some types of cargo might even impose lower acceleration limits to make missions a bit harder in an indirect way. For passengers it could be selected according to the gravity of the planet they are departing from or destination, and if you go above it, they might cut some of the pay or even refuse to pay if there was for too long or too high G forces. For cargo, with increasing G, there could be a chance of the cargo gradually destroying and turning into rubbish or fertilizer for living cargo.

This might make travel times quite long in some cases though. But this is another thing that would be in favor of some kind of in-sys hyperdrive we were discussing a few months before (somewhere here).

[baobobafet]

Good point about sustained 7G accelerations. An added option might be the addition of a slider allowing the pilot to manually set the maximum G acceleration for the power management system to adhere too, optionally sounding an alarm or visual cue when that particular G was attained.

Update:

Game options menu: "Pilot can Override G Limit - ON/OFF"
If set to "OFF" player will have option to set G limit for the pwr mgmt sys from the default 7G to a lesser amount.
If set to "ON" player can at least set at what G of acceleration the alarm cues will sound.

As you correctly point out, low G settings could make some trips exceedingly long, but may still be desirable for some passengers or cargo.
In-sys hyperdrives would certainly solve a few problems relating to travel times as well as the G issues.

The cargo and people potentially being reduced to mush via sustaining too many G's for too long a period should ideally be addressed in some way.

Cargo and passengers/crew would probably need to be G rated in such cases, dealing with high G's briefly - but if sustained beyond X grace period, would convert them to fertilizer or trash.

[baobobafet]

A small addendum:
Default 7G is more of a placeholder for whatever turns out to be the best setting for most cargo or human transport circumstances.

Also I think the G alarm setting option should be available, whether you choose yes or no to using the power management system.

[Tichy]

I think it's a good idea, as long as it doesn't level too much the ship's bevahiour.

[baobobafet]

Packaging could be made a factor.

Some fudging could probably be done by paying extra for Higher G rated shipping containers in the shipyard.
Their effect would be to insulate certain types of cargo against damages from any brief or sustained high G's during transit.

A few interesting links on human G tolerances:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 659AAfhucC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_force#Hu ... of_g-force

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/gravity-forces.html

[baobobafet]

Some more things to touch upon in mitigating G forces - and perhaps a means to reasonably enable ships to maintain some of those high G accelerations and allow a higher survival rate of pilot & crew.

Ideas on G-Suits
Pilots and crew/passengers would have to wear a G rated suit or for extreme G forces, enter a cryo capsule at least during the acceleration and deceleration phases of a trip. During such boost phases an autopilot would need to control the ship since the crew may well be - or become incapacitated/unconscious.

Once a ship had reach it's cruising speed, and is either accelerating at a comfortable 1G or is able to generate 1G gravity by rotation, all passengers and crew could exit their capsules or G-suits to walk freely around the ship until such time as the deceleration phase required that they return back to them.

This seems to fit into the present game framework most easily.

An alternative,
There 'is' another option that might also be employed in dealing with high G-forces to move cargo great distances at high speeds. Allow pilots at spacestations to remotely control ship's from the safety of a local station.(shipyard upgrade)
Ships could be fighters, probes or cargo carriers that could handle a variety of especially hazardous missions. Cargo runs could be delivered at maximum speeds, providing the cargo was hardened to a high enough G rating.
The remote pilot function could have a range requiring the pilot to be within a a certain AU distance of any ship they wished to safely control.

[baobobafet]

One more thingy ;)

Whenever possible ships should also have auto defense capability durring such vulnerable boost periods. (especially a rear gun or turret)
If the ship recieves a set percent of damage due to an attack or engine failure, alarms go off and the ship drops out of acceleration/deceleration mode and down to a more tolerable crew friendly G level.

The crew is then revived until the problem is corrected or the attacker either destroyed or incapacitated. After such an event, and if there are no further interuptions or approaching threats, the crew is again free to re-enter their G suits/cryo capsules to resume acceleration/deceleration to their respective destinations.

Knowing that such interuptions will affect the autopilot's ETA to a destination, requires that the autopilot must recalculate the trip's acceleration/deceleration boost phases.

[bszlrd]

I think, entering and getting out from a cryo capsule shouldn't be that simple, as like lying on a bed going to sleep, even in 3200. If it's that easy, then it's just robs it's mass and makes it some kind of magic. Think how groggy one can already be right after waking up from good old conventional sleep. I imagine that waking up from cryo would be even worse. And let's not forget about those pesky collateral effects and implications, like people hiding from their everyday problems with it for example. Also I can't really see, how putting somebody in cryo sleep would increase their G tolerances.

And if the autopilot can do all the flying, why there's a human pilot there in the first place? Humans are a hussle, stink after a few days and turn into meat soup too easily after all. But we want people to be there, since we as players can identify with them more easily. Why would I want to be demoted to simple cargo of a ship flown by autopilot?
We shouldn't really aim to predict every nuance of the future in my opinion. Our most important goal is to make an interesting and fun game for our players, not to simulate and recreate every little bit of problem that could come from space travel. Then we would have very small, low thrust ships with relatively low deltaVs and very huge heat sinks, very long stretches of boredom and seconds of excitement of space combat.

High G accelerations bother me too, but it might be better to sidestep the issue in a way like we sidestep those very efficient and high thrust engines. Those should be practically weapons of mass destruction if we would bother to check their energy output. I'm all in for decreasing ship accelerations to more humanistic levels, and I think toggle-able G limitations would be very nice, and cargo/passenger G tolerances would add a nice way of increasing difficulty without too much arbitrary-ness.
But instead of inventing some technology to increase tolerances, so travel times stay in a reasonable scale, we should think about inventing some kind of interplanetary hyperdrive system or something with some kind of choke points/routes and reduce travel times by reducing distances with in-sys hyperspace travel.
I say choke points, because that would provide us a way to herd traffic closer, which would provide a more lively atmosphere to the game. Also in unexplored systems, it could give the player mapping missions and specialized equipment to explore these choke points, so they can be used for travel in the future. And could introduce another commodity of data about these choke points, which data would enable the player to use them. Conventional space navigation wouldn't be obsolete in all situations, since you would need proper data to be able to use these choke points/routes.
There was some discussion about this in a thread here, and I think some kind of Lagrangian point based in-sys hyperspace travel for example would solve this high G problem in a more useful way, then inventing a cryostasis&autopilot combo. Which would be just a background info for the player mostly and some arbitrary limitation on ship performance. Hyperspace is already a heavy handwavium, why would we add another one if we can tweak the one already present?

Or if we don't want in-sys hyperspace travel, then we should just sidestep the G issue without much explanation, and maybe give only a nod for it, like how I do it with those small radiators on the ships to the heat management problem in space, or those super engines.