Sci-fi technologies

What would be really cool is different FTL methods for you to discover, and the ability to use them all for different things (like a warp drive which would be versatile but slow, good for low-mass things like warships, wormholes which would be fast but require lots of warmup for high-mass things like cargo ships, and hyperdrives, which would need warmup and cooldown but would have lots of range, for exploration and stuff).

Yup.
What would be even cooler is if you could have all of these methods at the same time!

So, back to the original topic?

Whoops, sorry.

I think that function parts will generally be defined at a level of detail that fits what you're suggesting -- I don't think we would have "antimatter bomb" as a function part, for example, but we might have a generic "explosive charge" function part, and a series of technologies like "antimatter manipulation 1/2/3" that would unlock increasing caps on feasible explosive energy density or explosion shape (as in, it would take a lot more skill with designing antimatter warheads to produce one which will focus its explosive energy towards the target). The function part would then have various properties like "type of explosive" and "charge shape" and "trigger" which would be unlocked by various researches.

Maybe we would have some setting that allows an object you create to automatically upgrade function parts when you research upgrades; in which case you could arm your first space station with, say, nuclear missiles, and not worry about it because it will upgrade to better nukes, then antimatter, then, say, contained black holes, as you research better stuff.

As for allowing the player to, say, input a number for how strong the explosion is, to define their own function part, I don't think that would work out too well. The various properties of new or upgraded function parts depend intimately on the state of your research/technology. I simply can't see any way you'd be able to define all the properties of a new function part without getting into the code (which you could totally do). If you want to take a nuclear explosive function part, make a bigger one, and call it an antimatter bomb, you could do so as long as your technology is capable of building a nuclear explosive that powerful; but it won't be an antimatter bomb.

Edit: some sci-fi tech ideas:

- ISRU: general term for any sort of system that can exist in space, and process a resource found in space, to produce a resource which is useful in space. Much of this is very near-term future tech, for example, mining lunar regolith for oxygen to send to an EML2 propellant depot.
- caged black-hole missiles: a missile containing a small black hole, which the missile will feed itself into just before contact with the target, so the black hole hits the target and devours a chunk of it before evaporating in a destructive explosion. The localized warping of spacetime could also be used to damage futuristic structures constructed through spacetime warping (eg, wormholes, krasnikov tubes, FTL drives).

I don't think there's any way we could make a game of this scope that also allows you to break causality, so no.

In terms of the causality-breaking aspects of FTL travel, we'll most likely have to do the handwaving that most settings with FTL do, and assume that an inertial frame exists, even while doing our best to use the rest of general relativity where it makes for interesting gameplay.

There are different kinds of cloaking tech, and I'd say some are more possible (i.e., requiring less handwaving) than others. Minimizing radar reflection off a vehicle -- definitely possible (as it exists). Cloaking tech for visual camouflage -- also definitely possible, you could simply be a flounder. Cloaking a spaceship against all forms of detection from afar -- should be possible with some kinds of exotic matter (the same kinds that you would need for FTL travel) to put you in a space-time bubble where all light (and by extension, anything else) follows a path around you.

Plasma and energy weapons are also possible (and reasonable) in certain respects: spaceship laser cannons, sure. Particle beam weapons, sure. Fallout-style plasma throwers, probably not (at first glance, anyway).

Masks with different modes of vision are already possible -- NVGs are a thing, for example. And since we are very interested in replicating the mechanics of real-life vision in Thrive, I'd say that we'd probably eventually be able to implement NVGs or other masks that have different modes of vision too. Admittedly, they might just end up being purely visual effects since we might not want to bother modelling heat signatures (for example) in enough detail for you to see a good picture, or even at all.

Would any of these things act just like how they do in the Predator universe? Probably not, we generally like to go our own way design-wise.

That's where the more fictional sci-fi technologies kick in I guess. You could go the Xenonauts/XCOM route and build plasma weapons based around graviton emitter tech. Basically: a plasma gun fires plasma and a bundle of gravitons which holds the plasma "bolt" together. Thus pretty much working like a traditional "plasma gun".

This kind of thinking could probably be applied to other kinds of tech as well.


(But since gravitons are only theorethical, they probably wont be in the game.)

How about

***Hard light***

How did this thread get so huge?

Here's an idea for you: QGP gun. So hot the massive energy dissipation doesn't matter. Would probably create a fairly large explosion whenever it was fired.

And Atrox, soft light works much better.