Guess the Aegis ship going to be announced in Frankfurt Aug 24th

[Vavrik]

9x9 updated to indent the middle top and bottom mines to close up that hole in the sides of the cube that are missing the middle mine that 26 would cover but 24 don't:

View attachment 13521

If you want that in a spherical shape, look up truncated octahedron...(a 24gon) it's too complex to draw in here. Basically it's a shape with hexagon and squares bent to approximate a circle. You are also forgetting that the mines don't need to be 10km apart. They can be twice the maximum detection distance. [edited...]

And mines are still incredibly inefficient.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

Or, you could space them out as the central areas of what would be the shape of a 24 sided 3D polygon. It would be almost spherical in nature at that point.

I would hope there would be some kind of Mine laying autopilot with this ship to make that doable, however if thats not a thing doing it manual might end up living with the easiest, fastest way and living with a hole at the top and bottom :)

EDIT - hang about these mines are self-propelled? They can just orientate themselves, and rearrange as mines are lost to action!

 

[Talonsbane]

In defending jump points, I would go as far as spacing these far enough around the jump point that it would allow smaller craft to pass through without activating to then instead take out the capital ships that would be coordinating the assaulting fleet. Especially if the mines have some form of stealth tech that would allow them to passively detect the ships passing by. That would both take out their largest advantages as well as cause the smaller craft to be potentially stranded where they would be out gunned.

 

[Thalstan]

From the pictures shown, I am not sure those mines are going to be able to do anything at 10 km....it almost seemed like you would put them around a tempting target, or lead them through the field. to try and get to you.

Look at the "Trap Sprung" picture in spectrum to see what I mean.

That said, it's one of those systems that's almost guaranteed to get you crime-statted, especially if someone wanders through them accidentally. Mine's don't discriminate. What happens when a Test member flys through the field on accident and is not yet a member of the group...is there some sort of IFF?

It's a really dumb mechanic that I hope they put a lot of thought into to try and mitigate the issues...

 

[Hybus]

Yeah, I really think this was an unnecessary mechanic. Do mines decay if inactive? How long till the sky around popular areas fill up with them and what will that do to server side performance? How do you prevent that? Make mines super expensive? Then what's the point? Even in the scaled down version of our verse, we have an unholy amount of space, near unlimited directions to fly in. This isn't like some space games where the major areas are on rails.

 

[Mushin]

There are always going to be choke points, man made or natural. Who knows how effective this ship is going to be but it was inevitable that a minelayer would be added.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Looks like a Hero Class Far Trader, which would make both an excellent freighter and a mine layer.

 

[Richard Bong]

Oooh that's actually very interesting come to think about it... With two orbital points in constant movement if you get your maths on, you should be able to find one predictable point to place your trap. This image should be able to explain what i'm thinking:

P1 green and blue on the inner ring is the same planet, green today in its orbital path, blue is tomorrow in its orbital path. Likewise for P2. The green line if the route you would take if you were going from the inner planet to the outer planet today, the blue the same but for tomorrow.

As you can see from the two lines, there is a point of convergence which at this point victims will cross regardless on if they travel today or tomorrow or even if the planets move while they are traveling. Do your pirate sums, place your trap, and catch victims.Pilots wanting less risk of being caught can QD to a point of less interest (like a comms tower) and then go from there.

View attachment 13517

A good portion of the year that point is in the star.

Also both planets have moons and lagrange points, full of crap, which will interpose more often.

And that presumes you are only going one orbit, Earth to Venus or Earth to Mars. Venus to Jupiter or Saturn gets really messy.

In general, in space, the shortest uninterrupted distance between two points is a curve.

And that does not take into account using gravity for more efficient trips.

 

[Vavrik]

If you make a third point, with the same planet and vector image, you'll see that it does not intersect where P1 and P2 intersect. It describes another circle around the star. But this point is not gravitationally bound to the planet. For this to work, you would need to calculate the mass at the intersection point required for a stable orbit, with the same period as the planet. You would literally require a planetary mass to do that.
To do what you want to do, use a geostationary orbit around the planet instead.

But in SC none of this makes any difference. Moons and planets spin on a simple axis, and do not orbit, nor can you orbit them. So just park your mines around whatever area you want to protect, and hope nobody figures out they're there before they get into range. Enemies can almost always find an undesirable route to take if they know about the mines. One way is to map and destroy the mines, since nothing stops them from using their own Nautilus. That's part of the reason why I suggested using ships with a lot of missiles instead of mines. For the price of 1 Nautilus, you can buy a lot of Cutlass Black's. You can also move them around to different configurations depending on circumstance.

And quite honestly, it's not going to be a capital ship attacking a protected area. They're going to sit out of range, and provide support for the fleet they launch at you to take you out. And ok if they lose a fighter or two, no biggie. Hopefully the pilot had his insurance paid up.

 

[Talonsbane]

And ok if they lose a fighter or two, no biggie. Hopefully the pilot had his insurance paid up.

This is why, I prefer LTI. :) LTI is effectively idiot proof for the times that a player (like myself) gets too busy to remember to keep up with the insurance payments & then goes & gets their ship destroyed. Oops

 

[Zookajoe]

This is why, I prefer LTI. :) LTI is effectively idiot proof for the times that a player (like myself) gets too busy to remember to keep up with the insurance payments & then goes & gets their ship destroyed. Oops

I prefer LTI because I tend to crash into a lot of things, never intentionally mind you. But mysterious things happen to me all the time.

I mean take the last occurence for example:

I was trying to open an old can of beer that I had found in the back of the fridge (so old the lettering on the can was blurry, or my eyes were blurry, or it could have been because there were two back there, but I could only reach one, or possibly I was drunk to near blindness...but I digress).
So anyway, I found this large can of beer. Sort of a Foster's Lager size can of beer, and I was starting to land while I was trying to open this can of beer, only to discover that it did not have a pull tab on it. I mean, how crazy is that?

Well, not to be deterred, I went in search of a "church key" to open the beer can with, leaving my ship in the dreaded "Hover mode" over the landing pad.
Upon returning to controls, I set the beer can down and began to open it. It proved to be a very viscous and dark beer, which upon a taste test was truly horrid and I immediately spit it out onto my controls, and while trying to daub it up with a handy seat cushion, I slide my flight stick forward and crashed in a spectacular fashion.

Upon further reflection I realized that it was more along the lines of an actual old can of oil, than "Oil Can" beer. The only conclusion that I can come to is that my wife, in error, placed some old oil cans in the fridge and forgot to tell me. It was at this moment that I realized that not only did I not have a wife, but that someone had the swapped the fridge with the pantry on the other side of the kitchen!

How mysterious...

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

A good portion of the year that point is in the star.

Also both planets have moons and lagrange points, full of crap, which will interpose more often.

And that presumes you are only going one orbit, Earth to Venus or Earth to Mars. Venus to Jupiter or Saturn gets really messy.

In general, in space, the shortest uninterrupted distance between two points is a curve.

And that does not take into account using gravity for more efficient trips.

Fair enough, guess i'll just have to wait and see how they eventually implement it in the finished game.

 

[maynard]

Fair enough, guess i'll just have to wait and see how they eventually implement it in the finished game.

the last word in any theorycrafting thread

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

the last word in any theorycrafting thread

Sometimes it's the only way. I could continue discussion such as:

"A good portion of the year that point is in the star."

Depending on orbital quirks and now close you plan to get to a star while passing. I've been very close going to Hurston and I have an Endeavor to go Corona Diving.

"Also both planets have moons and lagrange points, full of crap, which will interpose more often."

Like the places the R&R pointes are? A destination in themselves.

"And that presumes you are only going one orbit, Earth to Venus or Earth to Mars. Venus to Jupiter or Saturn gets really messy."

Well one can presume in a system like Stanton there will be regular direct traffic between large destinations like Hurston, ArcCorp and Microtech. There are three major routes right there. As you say sometimes space junk, planets and stars will get in the way so the villains will just target the easiest route.

"In general, in space, the shortest uninterrupted distance between two points is a curve."

Yep, as mentioned in the earlier post even if the two points move while in transit (meaning a curve) the route one day to the next will still have at least one point where they will cross to best intercept.

"And that does not take into account using gravity for more efficient trips."

With the galactic speed limit meaning the fastest ships don't go more than 1345 meters a second and Quantum drives not requiring gravity to factor into their propultion, the only place you'll be needing to book up on that will be the Tamsa system to avoid falling into that black hole.

But really it's all theorycraft right now and as much as I love to discuss, there comes a certain point where you have to sit back and say to yourself "Well they obviously know better than me and so Interdiction won't be in the game" despite several interdiction ships existing long before the even the PU came along and it being in the alpha release of the game right now... It's going to be in the game, I don't really have to justify that. It's not going to be in the game, my discussion partner doesn't really have to justify that.

It may not be implemented, just because it is in the PU it doesn't mean it's going to make it to the final game....

Right now I'm going for spai satilites in orbit around/spais on the ground of busy planets feeding info of who is leaving going where to criminal factions who can then go lay in wait along the route.

 

[Vavrik]

But really it's all theorycraft right now and as much as I love to discuss, there comes a certain point where you have to sit back and say to yourself "Well they obviously know better than me and so Interdiction won't be in the game" despite several interdiction ships existing long before the even the PU came along and it being in the alpha release of the game right now... It's going to be in the game, I don't really have to justify that. It's not going to be in the game, my discussion partner doesn't really have to justify that.

It may not be implemented, just because it is in the PU it doesn't mean it's going to make it to the final game....

Right now I'm going for spai satilites in orbit around/spais on the ground of busy planets feeding info of who is leaving going where to criminal factions who can then go lay in wait along the route.

This sounds oddly defeatist. Interdiction is in the game now, this universe we play in is not comparable to the real universe. So. Theorycrafting is still speculative, but SOMEONE should be thinking about these things. Or Drinking more.

 

[marcsand2]

Or Drinking more.

I tried my best

 

[Vavrik]

I tried my best

Yanno, I still can't drink anything with alcohol properly since last summer, so you can probably have my share.

 

[Zookajoe]

Yanno, I still can't drink anything with alcohol properly since last summer, so you can probably have my share.

 

[August]

I’m going to go completely left field on this one but I bet it some kind of mine layer

 

[Vavrik]

hah! That was one of my favorite comedies.