RSI Mantis reveal

Tealwraith

Heresy detector
Donor
May 31, 2017
1,056
4,822
2,650
RSI Handle
Tealwraith
A little theorycrafting and some questions. The interdiction field works by shutting down your QT drive's ability to take you or keep you in QT. It's not an EMP that disables all your systems and leaves you floating dead in space, from what I guess. With CI talking about harvesting/mining materials with transions or transyions or transeons or whatever, I assume the field stops the QT particles from working as intended and doesn't shut down your QT drive like an EMP.

Q: Will the interdiction field affect a jump drive? A jump drive is just a modified or "nicked" (after Nick Croshaw) QT drive.

Q: Will the interdiction field affect something like the Argo SRV's tractor beams? I doubt it, but I have to ask your opinion.

If the Mantis can stop jump drives, that adds a new factor in the game. Imagine a jump point with ships trying to go outsystem and being stuck there...
 

Sirus7264

Space Marshal
Donor
Apr 5, 2017
3,364
11,195
2,800
RSI Handle
Sirus7264
Pulling people out of QT for the purposes of what exactly? To conduct piracy that isn't really in the game yet? Stealing cargo would take impossibly long time to load up, sell and distribute the profits (and let's face it, something will probably glitch out before all of that is finished). Or to chase PvP bounties that aren't in the game yet?

There is literally no use for this ship until more gameplay mechanics are added. It will be glorious when they do, but until then I contend the mantis is nothing more than a grief machine.
there are always missions to do and it could easily have missions added for the ship in particular. Pirates need to practice their gameplay also this is their first major step overall also people need to learn different ways to deal with pirates such as taking different flight paths etc. It gives more reason not to just afk during quantum travel and to pay attention to how you get somewhere.
 

Vavrik

Space Marshal
Donor
Sep 19, 2017
5,453
21,836
3,025
RSI Handle
Vavrik
Q: Will the interdiction field affect a jump drive? A jump drive is just a modified or "nicked" (after Nick Croshaw) QT drive.

Q: Will the interdiction field affect something like the Argo SRV's tractor beams? I doubt it, but I have to ask your opinion.

If the Mantis can stop jump drives, that adds a new factor in the game. Imagine a jump point with ships trying to go outsystem and being stuck there...
I'm going off pure memory here.
A) The interdiction field should affect any QT drive, but there may be workarounds. There's a hole in the lore here, because Nick Croshaw invented QT, but travel through a wormhole should really require simply transit into the wormhole. Also, if it's a wormhole, the size of the ship entering shouldn't matter. There have been a number of sci fi books and series that dealt with the real world physics of wormholes, and even blocking transit with a force field.

QT is like an Alcubierre drive according to CR... but that doesn't really work for slower than light travel. You also, according to the best theoretical physics, need an energy source that can generate an artificial, but jupiter size mass (just the energy equivalent) to initiate. That isn't something that you would really want to suddenly appear near a planet, though it makes an incredibly effective weapon system.

The real science for wormholes is called a Einstein-Rosen bridge if you want to look it up at some point.

B) To me, and this is pure conjecture on my part. The force field used for QT can't be the same kind of force field used for towing. It's properties are more like the properties of a Prospector's mining laser, whatever that is. "Suck it to here." It might be I'm missing a property of QT though, but it makes sense that to toe something and keep it intact, isn't really the same as accelerate it to 20% C. or keep it from entering QT. Holy cow, this game is consuming a hella lot of physics no matter which universe you use as the model.
 

Tealwraith

Heresy detector
Donor
May 31, 2017
1,056
4,822
2,650
RSI Handle
Tealwraith
I'm going off pure memory here.
A) The interdiction field should affect any QT drive, but there may be workarounds. There's a hole in the lore here, because Nick Croshaw invented QT, but travel through a wormhole should really require simply transit into the wormhole. Also, if it's a wormhole, the size of the ship entering shouldn't matter. There have been a number of sci fi books and series that dealt with the real world physics of wormholes, and even blocking transit with a force field.

QT is like an Alcubierre drive according to CR... but that doesn't really work for slower than light travel. You also, according to the best theoretical physics, need an energy source that can generate an artificial, but jupiter size mass (just the energy equivalent) to initiate. That isn't something that you would really want to suddenly appear near a planet, though it makes an incredibly effective weapon system.

The real science for wormholes is called a Einstein-Rosen bridge if you want to look it up at some point.

B) To me, and this is pure conjecture on my part. The force field used for QT can't be the same kind of force field used for towing. It's properties are more like the properties of a Prospector's mining laser, whatever that is. "Suck it to here." It might be I'm missing a property of QT though, but it makes sense that to toe something and keep it intact, isn't really the same as accelerate it to 20% C. or keep it from entering QT. Holy cow, this game is consuming a hella lot of physics no matter which universe you use as the model.
There was some lore which stated that the creators of Tarsus examined RSI jump drives and found that they were modified QT drives, that Nick Croshaw had modified an RSI QT drive and used that to make the first jump that took him to Croshaw from Sol. The founders of Tarsus spent years studying the nicked drives until they were able to create their own version and that's where Tarsus came from. Under this lore, I'm guessing that jump drives function in a very similar way to QT drives, thus my question on whether the interdiction field would stop a jump drive just like a QT drive.

 

Vavrik

Space Marshal
Donor
Sep 19, 2017
5,453
21,836
3,025
RSI Handle
Vavrik
There was some lore which stated that the creators of Tarsus examined RSI jump drives and found that they were modified QT drives, that Nick Croshaw had modified an RSI QT drive and used that to make the first jump that took him to Croshaw from Sol. The founders of Tarsus spent years studying the nicked drives until they were able to create their own version and that's where Tarsus came from. Under this lore, I'm guessing that jump drives function in a very similar way to QT drives, thus my question on whether the interdiction field would stop a jump drive just like a QT drive.
Long response... That was a good read! Thank you!
TL; DR: This answers a good chunk of the questions, and I can now kind of draw a line between QT and wormhole travel. Don't read if you don't like real world theory. I promise, no math, for reasons that I have no idea how to do math of what happens in a singularity.

There is something we can do in real life today, used for the electronic industry, it's not perfect but it actually is related to this. If you have two conductive surfaces, and you don't want them to touch, but you want them closer than a hydrogen molecule, the interspace is the space between the parts. We can't quite get the conductors that close to begin with, but we can get it so that only a few hydrogen molecules are in the space.
Now, move the plates apart. The problems doing this is one of the reasons why the electronics industry is interested in building factories in orbit. You start with a better vacuum, and can make our current tech better. (by "plate" we currently mean say 7 nm, or 5 nm. 3 nm and 1.5 nm is on the table for research. where have you seen that before?)

So if you had a wormhole, which theoretically exist in nature according to the theory behind the Einstein-Rosen bridge, that is just such a vacuum, stretched to light years apart. I can't do the math inside of the wormhole, because it means that even though in our universe they are light years apart, inside the wormhole it's a singularity. So far, the only thing we've ever seen exit a singularity is the Hawking radiation... some photons in a deadly bem you don't want to be in the path of if you're too close. Over enormous amounts of time (multiple 10's or even 100's of billions of years), that radiation will evaporate the singularity, to nothing.

If you are on a spaceship that entered the wormhole without protection of somewhat would have to be currently handwavium, you will eventually be ejected as Hawking radiation, only you and the ship be just a bunch of quantum particles. The handwavium turns out to be theoretically possible, but it was just kind of thought of in the last few years. I totally can't do any math around this theory, it turns even weirder than the definition of what's in a singularity. They also don't know if it would be possible to actually do. So why not? SC is a game, not real world so stories about how they did it are even potentially good storyline. And who knows, they might even nail it. That's happened before. The name Nautilus doesn't come to mind for no reason as an example.

Definition of interspace that a lot of sci-fi authors use, including authors with physics degrees... they exist.
 

Tealwraith

Heresy detector
Donor
May 31, 2017
1,056
4,822
2,650
RSI Handle
Tealwraith
Long response... That was a good read! Thank you!
TL; DR: This answers a good chunk of the questions, and I can now kind of draw a line between QT and wormhole travel. Don't read if you don't like real world theory. I promise, no math, for reasons that I have no idea how to do math of what happens in a singularity.

There is something we can do in real life today, used for the electronic industry, it's not perfect but it actually is related to this. If you have two conductive surfaces, and you don't want them to touch, but you want them closer than a hydrogen molecule, the interspace is the space between the parts. We can't quite get the conductors that close to begin with, but we can get it so that only a few hydrogen molecules are in the space.
Now, move the plates apart. The problems doing this is one of the reasons why the electronics industry is interested in building factories in orbit. You start with a better vacuum, and can make our current tech better. (by "plate" we currently mean say 7 nm, or 5 nm. 3 nm and 1.5 nm is on the table for research. where have you seen that before?)

So if you had a wormhole, which theoretically exist in nature according to the theory behind the Einstein-Rosen bridge, that is just such a vacuum, stretched to light years apart. I can't do the math inside of the wormhole, because it means that even though in our universe they are light years apart, inside the wormhole it's a singularity. So far, the only thing we've ever seen exit a singularity is the Hawking radiation... some photons in a deadly bem you don't want to be in the path of if you're too close. Over enormous amounts of time (multiple 10's or even 100's of billions of years), that radiation will evaporate the singularity, to nothing.

If you are on a spaceship that entered the wormhole without protection of somewhat would have to be currently handwavium, you will eventually be ejected as Hawking radiation, only you and the ship be just a bunch of quantum particles. The handwavium turns out to be theoretically possible, but it was just kind of thought of in the last few years. I totally can't do any math around this theory, it turns even weirder than the definition of what's in a singularity. They also don't know if it would be possible to actually do. So why not? SC is a game, not real world so stories about how they did it are even potentially good storyline. And who knows, they might even nail it. That's happened before. The name Nautilus doesn't come to mind for no reason as an example.

Definition of interspace that a lot of sci-fi authors use, including authors with physics degrees... they exist.
That's excellent science, sir, now to the engineering. Do you think the interdiction field that stops QT will prevent a ship from making a jump and will it interfere with something like an Argo SRV towing field?

It's all just theorycrafting at this point as CI can say anything they want, like, the interdiction field will not interact with a jump as it uses a modified transeon (however they spell) emission.

Thank you for following this and putting you time, energy and expertise into it, Vavrik.
 

Vavrik

Space Marshal
Donor
Sep 19, 2017
5,453
21,836
3,025
RSI Handle
Vavrik
That's excellent science, sir, now to the engineering. Do you think the interdiction field that stops QT will prevent a ship from making a jump and will it interfere with something like an Argo SRV towing field?

It's all just theorycrafting at this point as CI can say anything they want, like, the interdiction field will not interact with a jump as it uses a modified transeon (however they spell) emission.

Thank you for following this and putting you time, energy and expertise into it, Vavrik.
TL-DR: question A) Yes, and B) Maybe but not necessarily.

This is like part of my life, so no problem. I design the software chemists and physicists use to figure out how to do things like make a new drug, or read the spectrum of DNA or the light coming from a star, or whether that natural gas is viable or is going to blow up the plant in 28 seconds because that technician is welding right there. And I have a hard time separating my job from my hobby, which is more agricultural (gardening) but the same type of software can be used for quality control. My whole life is interconnected like that. That kind of thing sucks to a lot of people, but I love it. It was accidental too, I found the career by accident, before it was an actual career, and had the opportunity to teach what I know to ... young people smarter than me.

A negative field (relative to what you're transmitting to make the singularity) would neutralize the effects of the singularity, so yes the interdiction is possible in theory. It's a 1/1 relationship, so it's also possible to defeat the negative field with more energy, but the same can happen to the interdiction field, and you just go nowhere with it - a shit ton of energy being used though. CIG has that energy consumption. My only remaining problem with the game magic is CR shouldn't quote the wrong theories when he's trying to explain this with a summary of Wikipedia.

For the towing magic, we (they... quantum physics scientists. The collective human "we") can kind of do that now in fact. The frequency is vastly different. right now we can use electromagnets, but in theory you can alter that frequency to something non magnetic and get the same kind of effect. You can see part of that in a non-magnetic field, like those toys you can use to scan for buried treasure. LOL... I know what I'm thinking about but can't think of the name at the moment. Anything "metallic" has a frequency like that. btw. "metals" is used in the same sense that they use to generate the periodic table, not what we usually think of as metals. (like not OH A SHINEY!) Right now it's just a curiosity kind of toy.

I don't have the link, but there's a video of a drone being lifted, and moved around under the control of such a field. That its electromagnetism is just really because it's way cheaper to do, and you can buy all the parts at Home Depot.

How's that?
 

Shadow Reaper

Space Marshal
Jun 3, 2016
4,804
13,969
2,850
RSI Handle
Shadow Reaper
. . .inside the wormhole it's a singularity.
You're thinking of a black hole. A stargate, traversable wormhole or as physcists call it, an "Absurdly Benign Wormhole" doesn't include a singularity. It uses a Jupiter mass of negative matter to hold the throat open.

 

Bambooza

Space Marshal
Donor
Sep 25, 2017
5,687
17,904
2,875
RSI Handle
MrBambooza
And now back to @Tealwraith questions
Q: Will the interdiction field affect a jump drive? A jump drive is just a modified or "nicked" (after Nick Croshaw) QT drive.

QT is how you travel in a system. JumpDrive is how you travel between systems. It is unknown yet if you only need JumpDrives for Wormhole travel or if it will also be required for Jumpgate travel on known safe paths. (Jumpgate size will dictate which ships can fly that route and this information is available on the space map.) Chris has said that there might be tow ships or other ways for ships that don't have a jump drive to rent or be carried across a jump point. At this point, Interdiction does not affect Jumpdrives and using Jumpgates should be relatively safe.

Q: Will the interdiction field affect something like the Argo SRV's tractor beams? I doubt it, but I have to ask your opinion.

As far as the game has shown Interdiction only affects your ability to QT in so much that you cannot QT in an interdiction bubble. Either traveling to the outside of the bubble or destroying the ship making the bubble frees you to qt again. Your drive is not disabled and you can still power it up and do the calculations, you just can't initiate QT. Being pulled out of QT currently acts just like when your drive overheats or you finished your qt jump. Given that they said the SRV is able to pull ships into QT I can't imagine interdiction will break the tractor beam and would be shocked if it does in the future. They seem to be different gameplay mechanics and follow different rule sets.
 

Tealwraith

Heresy detector
Donor
May 31, 2017
1,056
4,822
2,650
RSI Handle
Tealwraith
TL-DR: question A) Yes, and B) Maybe but not necessarily.

This is like part of my life, so no problem. I design the software chemists and physicists use to figure out how to do things like make a new drug, or read the spectrum of DNA or the light coming from a star, or whether that natural gas is viable or is going to blow up the plant in 28 seconds because that technician is welding right there. And I have a hard time separating my job from my hobby, which is more agricultural (gardening) but the same type of software can be used for quality control. My whole life is interconnected like that. That kind of thing sucks to a lot of people, but I love it. It was accidental too, I found the career by accident, before it was an actual career, and had the opportunity to teach what I know to ... young people smarter than me.

A negative field (relative to what you're transmitting to make the singularity) would neutralize the effects of the singularity, so yes the interdiction is possible in theory. It's a 1/1 relationship, so it's also possible to defeat the negative field with more energy, but the same can happen to the interdiction field, and you just go nowhere with it - a shit ton of energy being used though. CIG has that energy consumption. My only remaining problem with the game magic is CR shouldn't quote the wrong theories when he's trying to explain this with a summary of Wikipedia.

For the towing magic, we (they... quantum physics scientists. The collective human "we") can kind of do that now in fact. The frequency is vastly different. right now we can use electromagnets, but in theory you can alter that frequency to something non magnetic and get the same kind of effect. You can see part of that in a non-magnetic field, like those toys you can use to scan for buried treasure. LOL... I know what I'm thinking about but can't think of the name at the moment. Anything "metallic" has a frequency like that. btw. "metals" is used in the same sense that they use to generate the periodic table, not what we usually think of as metals. (like not OH A SHINEY!) Right now it's just a curiosity kind of toy.

I don't have the link, but there's a video of a drone being lifted, and moved around under the control of such a field. That its electromagnetism is just really because it's way cheaper to do, and you can buy all the parts at Home Depot.

How's that?
How's that? Excellent!

And now back to @Tealwraith questions
Q: Will the interdiction field affect a jump drive? A jump drive is just a modified or "nicked" (after Nick Croshaw) QT drive.

QT is how you travel in a system. JumpDrive is how you travel between systems. It is unknown yet if you only need JumpDrives for Wormhole travel or if it will also be required for Jumpgate travel on known safe paths. (Jumpgate size will dictate which ships can fly that route and this information is available on the space map.) Chris has said that there might be tow ships or other ways for ships that don't have a jump drive to rent or be carried across a jump point. At this point, Interdiction does not affect Jumpdrives and using Jumpgates should be relatively safe.

Q: Will the interdiction field affect something like the Argo SRV's tractor beams? I doubt it, but I have to ask your opinion.

As far as the game has shown Interdiction only affects your ability to QT in so much that you cannot QT in an interdiction bubble. Either traveling to the outside of the bubble or destroying the ship making the bubble frees you to qt again. Your drive is not disabled and you can still power it up and do the calculations, you just can't initiate QT. Being pulled out of QT currently acts just like when your drive overheats or you finished your qt jump. Given that they said the SRV is able to pull ships into QT I can't imagine interdiction will break the tractor beam and would be shocked if it does in the future. They seem to be different gameplay mechanics and follow different rule sets.
Thank you, sir.
 

Vavrik

Space Marshal
Donor
Sep 19, 2017
5,453
21,836
3,025
RSI Handle
Vavrik
You're thinking of a black hole. A stargate, traversable wormhole or as physcists call it, an "Absurdly Benign Wormhole" doesn't include a singularity. It uses a Jupiter mass of negative matter to hold the throat open.
I am not going to read a 300+ page book today, since it requires talk-back for me due to a visual impairment, and both the Google app and Windows app for that are somewhat broken. I own the book though, but it's been a while since I read it. I don't recall anything I said that contradicts it, the theory has advanced a little but the basic premise is sound.

However, I mentioned that earlier in the thread. There was some missing information in my knowledge of the game lore when I wrote this in the original:
You also, according to the best theoretical physics, need an energy source that can generate an artificial, but jupiter size mass (just the energy equivalent) to initiate. That isn't something that you would really want to suddenly appear near a planet, though it makes an incredibly effective weapon system.
But @Tealwraith provided the link to the lore, and @Bambooza has described the game lore answer well.
 

Tealwraith

Heresy detector
Donor
May 31, 2017
1,056
4,822
2,650
RSI Handle
Tealwraith
I just want to buy and fly this ship already. I really like the way it looks.
Honestly? This is a beautiful design and I really, really hope that CI will make it with a swappable EMP module, maybe down the road. I'm not going to hold my breath, though. This looks as configurable as an Eclipse, which is to say, not.
 

littlej0e

Grand Admiral
Donor
May 3, 2019
223
798
1,200
RSI Handle
littlej0e
PVP bounties have been in for a few patches. The mantis' ability to suppress the bounties ability to engage their QT drive would be really useful. A few bounties know what they are doing and just jump away. Would have to do it with a team mate because of how weak the mantis is otherwise.



There 100% is "legit" piracy now. And it might be better than whatever they come up with later.

I don't want cargo, I want money.

Find trader that just loaded up their ship. Tell them in chat to put out an escort beacon for XXXX amount of credits or get exploded. Accept beacon. Get money.

Can pirate in a couple sabres this way. Extortion is a lot easier than needing a cargo ship.


And for the 2nd point, why not both? :)
How is this 100% legit piracy? At best, it is inconsequential alpha-style role playing. Who in their right mind would pay another player shakedown money when all they have to do is spend an extra 5-15 min respawning, largely without consequence? If I have to pay "alpha-funny-money" for something, I'd rather pay to expedite my ship and be back on my merry way in a few minutes versus giving it to some random role playing nerd:-) Maybe if someone had a ton of high-value cargo I could see it, but even then it's quite a stretch. It's far more likely Mr. Mantis & Crew will get board waiting for something valuable to fly into their web and just fly to port O and start griefing the shit out of people.

As for BH, pulling people out of QT will absolutely be useful for bounty hunting...in the future. For now, it won't really matter seeing as you won't be able to selectively track and pull bounties out of QT. It will be a game of Russian roulette and "rippers" will have to get extremely lucky. So much so, that it will be far more likely they'll end up with a bounty on their own head from ripping randoms out of QT before they ever pull another player with a bounty.

These mechanics are an extremely welcome edition to SC and I have no doubt they will be amazing in the future (at least in my opinion). But until we get more systems and functionality in place, i don't see how anyone can reasonably expect the Mantis to do anything more than annoy people.
 
Last edited:

littlej0e

Grand Admiral
Donor
May 3, 2019
223
798
1,200
RSI Handle
littlej0e
there are always missions to do and it could easily have missions added for the ship in particular. Pirates need to practice their gameplay also this is their first major step overall also people need to learn different ways to deal with pirates such as taking different flight paths etc. It gives more reason not to just afk during quantum travel and to pay attention to how you get somewhere.
I agree 100%. Especially this bit; "It gives more reason not to just afk during quantum travel and to pay attention to how you get somewhere."

That's some genius insight. I always assumed CIG would put in some sort of marginally annoying mini-game to pass the time in QT. I never thought about the crippling power of paranoia...
 
Last edited:

sovapid

Space Marshal
Jan 27, 2018
126
414
1,700
RSI Handle
sovapid
How is this 100% legit piracy? At best, it is inconsequential alpha-style role playing. Who in their right mind would pay another player shakedown money when all they have to do is spend an extra 5-15 min respawning, largely without consequence? If I have to pay "alpha-funny-money" for something, I'd rather pay to expedite my ship and be back on my merry way in a few minutes versus giving it to some random role playing nerd:-) Maybe if someone had a ton of high-value cargo I could see it, but even then it's quite a stretch.
Yeah, it only works if the ship is full of cargo. You have a million aUEC tied up in a Cat's cargo you are much more likely go cough up 30k to live. I usually don't bother and just take the kill.
 
Forgot your password?