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Help >> Technology
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| Engines |
Engines in AOA are based on the principal of subspace physics. Subspace is a three dimensional layer of space, wherein the laws of physics still apply, but are slightly different. Distances are the same, but the mass of an object is much less, and the actual speed of light in subspace is much greater. 10 times greater, to be exact. The term "hyperspace travel" has to do with the physics of subspace, because an envelope of distorted subspace encapsulates a ship while in travel. This is accomplished through fluctuating extremely powerful magnets. The magnets will go between 1,000MW and 40,000 MW. These "row" the boat along, using the compression wave created by the magnets as a "wave" which the ship "surfs" on. Picture subspace warping as a large wave, and a surfer as the ship. Except in this case, the surfer generates the wave. So far, generators have not allowed ships to excel 40,000MW of electricity. This limits engines to SG4.
Special gates can be constructed at various points to create a subspace rift, allowing ships with much less powerful engines, from the interplanetary class to class 8, to enter subspace and create waves without having to use enormous power reserves to open a rift. These "stargates" are good for basic interstellar travel, but can only be in one fixed position, usually one per solar system. Sol and Alpha Centauri both have one stargate available for use by anyone with a ship capable of Impulse power.
Engines get their power from large Polychromatic Silica lined nuclear reactors. These reactors vary in size and number of PS "cells", which burn out over a long period of time. PS collects electronic energy directly from the splitting of atoms, instead of the more conventional method of using a reactor to heat water or liquid metal (on submarines and ships) to then power generators. The restriction of these generators is that the more cells you place in a reactor, the more radioactive material you eat up. So a balance has to be attained between the number of cells in an engine and the size of the reactor and its control rods. This limits ships in their installation of engines. An SG4 engine is many times larger than an Interplanetary engine, because there is more radioactive material for the cells to feed off of. This requires a different ship to carry the engine.
Non-SG engines, which rely on impulse power, use a liquid hydrogen isotope called Deuterium to move. The nuclear fusion which takes place in a fusion reactor creates enormous amounts of energy, which again are picked up by PS cells. The advantage of Impulse reactors is that they do not require large amounts of radioactive material to be placed on a ship, and are therefore much safer. Propulsion is still through powerful electromagnets, but at much lower voltages, and therefore sizes. An Interplanetary engine takes up much less space than a class 4 or class 8.
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| Scanners |
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Scanners in AOA use a similar technology as engines. Low frequency radio waves and high frequency radiation produced by engines can be picked up with carefully calibrated and positioned PS cells. These cells, placed on pallets on the outside of a ship, can pick up radio waves and radiation from passing ships, planetary magnetic forces, and solar flare radiation. They also pick up proton and photon energy, meaning that they can "see" things like light, electromagnetic devices, and just about anything that radiates something. All of these scanners are carefully calibrated. A level1 scanner has about 90 pallets with 300 crystals each. An advanced Geiger counter is placed under these crystals, which refract the various radiations they receive into different signals. This is where the complex part is. These Geiger emissions, which come to our ears as dots and blips, can be tightly calibrated into a computer program to "average" out the frequency electronic messages from the cells. Space is filled with background noise from solar flares, magnetic fields, and the like. While the angle of crystal and the placement of pallets filters out some of the "noise", it requires sophisticated programming to get a clear image of what is out there. This is the "electromagnetic matrix". It separates ships from planets, stargates from anomalies, etc. There is no known way of jamming these sensors, since they can be calibrated either through the matrix or by the actual angle of cells to pick up any frequency of any radiated signal.
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| Weapons |
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Weapons in AOA are a fairly simple concept, right? Wrong! Lasers use a medium, like inert gas or other neutral material to push photons together in a tight beam, producing a straight line of photonic energy. This is accomplished by pulsing a high frequency current around the medium. The lasers do not require nearly as much power as engines, but are still a drain on systems. 20MW is quite a bit, when thinking about it.
Ion cannons are a different story. Ions, are forced through a magnetic restriction tube which super-accelerates them and tightly packs them into an almost solid form, which acts like a capacitor. When these are discharged, they stay tightly packed. When they hit a shield, they disperse and disrupt the molecular structures of atoms in the hull, causing damage. Much simpler to build than lasers, Ion cannons are common on smaller ships.
Both weapon systems are mounted on rotating and elevating heads, which are often recessed into a ship's hull and are only deployed while firing.
Mining lasers are slightly different than Weapon lasers in that they are calibrated to slice instead of disrupt a large area. This can be compared with a dagger and a sledgehammer. While a human might use a sledgehammer to mine and a dagger to kill, with ships in space it is a different story. A "dagger" would only put minimal damage in one small area, while a "sledgehammer" would cause wide system damage all over a ship.
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| Scoops |
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Scoops are essential for picking lost cargo, for whatever reason. Scoops are not actually much more than loosely focused ion nets, which bring cargo closer to a body in space by bombarding it with ions. This is safe for most cargo to endure. Ions can only be controlled in full X,Y,Z axis in close proximity to their emitters through magnetic fluctuations from the emitters, which cause the ions to turn, twist, or otherwise move. Think of them as invisible water jets which you can control with a magnet.
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| Hulls |
Hulls may seem like a rather unimportant part of AOA, but they are crucial to having a successful account.
Hulls are little more than large plates of armor welded to an inner, leakproof hull. The outer hull is what protects the ship from small impacts from things like comet debris, space junk, and of course weapons fire. The more armour you have on your ship, the more time and power it takes a laser to penetrate. This is also why a "sledgehammer" is better than the "dagger" to destroy a ship. If a player can shake up the connections between a ship, the weaker it is. The "dagger" would only penetrate a small way into the hull, and it would take a long time to cut all of the outer hull away from a ship.
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| Computers |
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Computers are a necessary part of any spacecraft, especially one that goes faster than light. Computers in AOA are based on the same binary system of using sets of binary code to operate, but the environment in which these computers operate is very different. The actual processors, memory cores, BIOS (basic input output system) systems, and command/control circuits are not much more advanced than today's computers, but are MANY times faster. This is due to subspace fields. An entire computer will be built inside gigantic magnetic rooms, which will distort subspace. As mentioned before, objects travel many times faster in subspace than in normal space. So do electronic signals. Optical Data Lines, using fiber optic relays, are situated in such a way that their actual speed of transmission is increased. Think of it like this: a computer binary code today, in normal space, is like a submarine underwater. Now, envision that same submarine, with a jet engine and wings in normal air. Much faster. The only limit to processor speed and data transmission speed is the amount of field flux that can be applied to a component.
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| Special thanks to deaths_helper for writing this technology guide |
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