The Hangar

[Darth Fury]

Mandalore Warrior

What is it powered by, exactly?

Copied from wiki:

Ion thrusters utilize beams of ions (electrically charged atoms or molecules) to create thrust in accordance with Newton's third law. The method of accelerating the ions varies, but all designs take advantage of the charge/mass ratio of the ions. This ratio means that relatively small potential differences can create very high exhaust velocities. This reduces the amount of reaction mass or fuel required, but increases the amount of specific power required compared to chemical rockets. Ion thrusters are therefore able to achieve extremely high specific impulses. The drawback of the low thrust is low spacecraft acceleration because the mass of current electric power units is directly correlated with the amount of power given. This low thrust makes ion thrusters unsuited for launching spacecraft into orbit, but they are ideal for in-space propulsion applications.

Various ion thrusters have been designed and they all generally fit under two categories. The thrusters are categorized as either electrostatic or electromagnetic. The main difference is how the ions are accelerated.

Mercury is typically used as fuel, btw.  

[Valkore Fraust]

Sweet. I always wondered what kinds of things fueled ships.  

[Sayla-girl]

Meh. Starships use starship fuel.
For smaller ships it can be synthesized, for larger ones they have to generate their own.
Thats all that I really care to know.  

[Valkore Fraust]

Is fuel expensive? razz  

[Sayla-girl]

Depends on the ship. Your average light freighter and smaller grade ship usually downs a kilo of fuel a day when traveling, which is about 50 credits worth.  

[stellarmagic]

PaulTheWolf5575

@Stellar: Agreed on all counts. #3 should really be #1 since its already been done. Bioware is doing The Old Republic, for which I do not possess words to describe my excitement.

Vulture Fighters don't have Shields. Them being droids, its not really a requirement, but still. And I don't think the weapons on the hull are lasers. The Trade Federation variant had two Energy Torpedo launchers. The CIS variant has no hull mounted weapons other than the four laser cannons. Then it has the four hardpoints which carry Buzzdroid Missiles.

@Nelo: Lucas should be a ******** consultant. Genndy ftw.

Actually after reading up on the new MMO... I'm seriously disappointed. It sounds like a Star Wars clone of Guild Wars. No real PvP, everything is instanced, and it revolves around a storyline. Damn, give me a star wars clone of EVE Online! I want a PvP centric game that emphasizes the Star part of Star Wars.

Bah...

Anyway. If I remember right Trade Federation droid Starfighters are shield equipped in Star Wars: Starfighter, albeit very poorly shielded. In the Clone Wars cartoon the energy torpedo ports fire laser blasts, more to the point we have never visually seen energy torpedoes fired from those ports leading me to take that route that annoys many people by placing observed armament in films above that of stated armament from books.

As for the Proton Torpedo, some of the early images I've seen of the Droid Starfighter depicted a torpedo tube on the underside of the main hull, however that feature seems to have disappeared in the actual films and I guess if I follow taking canon above all else I'd be forced to drop the tube from the armament list.

Still that leaves a total observed armament of:
4 Wing mounted Laser Cannons or blasters
2 Hull mounted Laser Cannons or blasters
4 Wing mounted Missile Hardpoints

I read somewhere that the TIE Fighter used a micro-fusion reactor to power the engine systems and that the "Solar Panels" are actually radiation panels to provide cooling.  

[Sayla-girl]

I believe the radiation panel thing.
Solar panels would be pretty useless in deep space.  

[Valkore Fraust]

Stellar Magic

Damn, give me a star wars clone of EVE Online! I want a PvP centric game that emphasizes the Star part of Star Wars.

Star Wars Galaxies. You can pilot, fight, dock and walk around in your vessel. Space action in SWG is pretty neat. Never really got into that, though. After hitting 90, I just kinda moped around the galaxy lol.  

[stellarmagic]

Sorry SWG is to small scale. I regularly fly Battlecruisers in EVE Online. You can't even fly a frigate in SWG. Or control a star system... Or fly in fleets of 100+ Player controlled capital ships... Or launch and direct starfighters...

SWG is oriented to small scale engagements and a different set of team players. It's space combat is designed more in league with the star wars x-wing simulations instead of MMORPG setups, weapons miss due to player error and lag, not due too a complex set of calculations involving relative velocity, velocity, transverse speed, range, signature radius etc...

Now... because EVE online lacks a ballistics simulation and uses traditional calculation mechanics from MMO's it doesn't lag that bad when 200 capital ships are shooting at each because it doesn't have to calculate ballistic trajectories and hits for every single shot. This means that the sight of your guns firing and hitting the target also uses less CPU resources because their not physics objects.

There are problems with this methodology in a Star Wars setting, most obvious of which being that starfighters don't really conform that well to those mechanics. Still if a way to really use starfighters that conformed to those mechanics was developed the results could be quite stunning.  

[Sayla-girl]

*Sigh*
Its a game, Stellar.  

[Cale Darksun]

Lookiee what I found!
http://deckplans.00sf.com/Subpro/Z-95_Headhunter/z95tease.jpg  

[PaulTheWolf5575]

@Stellar: Canonically mate. Canonically. The Torpedo Tube was for marketing purposes. The Fighter Droid Toys for Ep. I had body mounted springloaded launchers. From wookiepedia "During the Clone Wars movie Vulture droids are seen firing their laser cannons from their energy torpedo ports rather than from in between their wings. This is possibly due to artistic license, however it's established that Vulture droids can fire laser blasts from their torpedo emitters but primarily only when they are in walker mode. This may have also been done to make animating and tracking the shots easier for the animators." And they do launch Torpedoes in media. In Battlefront II they launch torpedoes from their torpedo launchers.

And IIRC there were upgraded Droids with Shields, but they were laughably week.

And a Star Wars clone of EVE online is not what the majority of people want. As cool as it would be, it would never happen. Not only that, it is very much outside of Bioware's sphere of expertise. I'm happy that arguably the best RPG Development studio in existence is developing the next Star Wars MMO. I trust them to do a good job.

And yes, you remembered correctly about TIEs.

@Cale: ********. YES.

@Cale: ******** awesome.  

[Valkore Fraust]

stellarmagic

Sorry SWG is to small scale. I regularly fly Battlecruisers in EVE Online. You can't even fly a frigate in SWG. Or control a star system... Or fly in fleets of 100+ Player controlled capital ships... Or launch and direct starfighters...

It's too small scale? First of all, that's what she said.

Controlling a Star System? You're one person, of course you can't control a star system. It's either Imperial, Alliance or Pirate controlled. You can fly with 100 people, destroy capital ships and even go in instances in space. I don't know about you, but, I think that's enough. I'm not too into space, at all, so no debating with me on that.

And I agree with Sayla, it's just a game.  

[Skyeborne]

Just a game? JUST A GAME???



I'm just kidding, I've never actually played either...

If they have ship battles in Battlefront 3, (or even make BF3), I'd like to actually do obvious damage to the ships. In 2, when you blew up the engines the ship kept on chugging along. When you killed the life support, everyone walked about inside like nothing of consequence had happened. I just want to see the effects of my handiwork, rather than just getting points for it...

Oh, and larger battles are always a win.  

[Jaden_Ordo]

There is a new StarTrek MMO that is coming out, Stellar. It may just fulfill that lust for starship workings that you have.