thoughts of the day

[Ezekel]

2 thoughts:

1: as op3 ain't on newterra, then the MHD generator wouldn't necessarily function...

2: will the VTOL units by ground-bombers? (the non-transport ones that is), cos air-to-air combat, thought it looks pretty good, is not something that can be easily done on a RTS game (mainly cos you gotta click on a fast moving aircraft, to select, and then another one to attack it... and must be careful you don't miss the enemy, and cause a move command instead)

[Punboy]

The MHD generator should work on any planet with a changing magnetic field (which is any planet with a magnetic field subjected to solar radiation). The only difference would be the power output, I would think.

Ya, the air2air combat would be hard, but something that could cure the move vs. attack issue would be left click to move and right or middle click to fire.

 

[ZeusBD]

I like the idea of air-to-ground attack, and air2air only if it were made easy to attack another in flight vech.

[xfir]

Just was reminded of this:

In Homeworld, to attack you can drag a box around units.. maybe this would be a good method for attacking moving air units in a air vs air attack..

[ZeusBD]

I actually thought of that, but what if you wanted to attack one unit but not another for some reason?

[CK9]

you also have to think about this: the technology of the Herrior jet could be improved to make the engines be able to handle longer periods of time hovering in place.

[ZeusBD]

Or allow ships to carry a bigger payload, go faster, or even a technology that lets you be there instantly...so you zap in, attack and zap out....or you could set it so there is a certain time before you can zap back out again.

[Ezekel]

back to the MHD... i made my point about it, cos i read ... perhaps in the MHD teaser, or somewhere (perhaps the help files), that the reason MHD wasn't used on earth was cos New Terra has a special magnetic field, and Earth lacks this field... therefore the MHD wouldn't work on Earth...

personally i think that it means that New Terra had no fixed north pole (i.e. the north and south are/were in a state of flux, allowing a small AC current to be produced per unit area ... which would explain the extreme lengths of the "bucky tubes")

[knux]

back to the MHD... i made my point about it, cos i read ... perhaps in the MHD teaser, or somewhere (perhaps the help files), that the reason MHD wasn't used on earth was cos New Terra has a special magnetic field, and Earth lacks this field... therefore the MHD wouldn't work on Earth...

personally i think that it means that New Terra had no fixed north pole (i.e. the north and south are/were in a state of flux, allowing a small AC current to be produced per unit area ... which would explain the extreme lengths of the "bucky tubes")

That was a power generator which worked on induction caused by new terra's magnetic field.
MHD propulsion is a completely different concept that involves charged particles to aid movement through air.
One makes energy, one makes things fly.  

[Ezekel]

um... if you read the 1st post of this thread knux, you'll see that i was reffering to the MHD generator

[<NH> Cameron1032]

Maybe you should just put in a guard mode. That way you wont need to target aircraft. And if the aircraft moves out of range, have an automatic pursuit mode or whatever.

[ZeusBD]

Or you could have aircraft that just attack ground and aircraft that just attack air. Then have them move at a little more than the ground vech's speed and it would be just like trying to target a moving vech on the ground. If it is the air-to-air type than only aircraft could be targeted, ground units would be just like terrain since they can't be attacked.

Doesn't sound as good I know, but at least you could get it working.

[knux]

um... if you read the 1st post of this thread knux, you'll see that i was reffering to the MHD generator

Well I don't know how it got onto the MHD generator considering we were talking about the VTOL propulsion system.

[Betaray]

just simpley, if the planet knux chooses has a unstable magnetic field, than the MHD genarator would work, if it dosnt have one, than it wouldnt work and thus you could not build it

btw, I have been thinking, I think the MHD genarator and the Geoplant clash with there respective coloney mind sets

the MHD genarator seems like it should belong to eden since it has to do with hightech buckey tubes and magnatisism and plasma

the geo plant should go to plymouth because it goes with their live off the land approach, plus with the geocon being eden, it makes it so only eden can use the magma vents and the fumeroles, the only reasorces on the map other than mining becons

so I think plymouth should have gotten the geocon, it would go better with the mind set and it would balance out better, eden could use the magma wells, and plymouth could use the geo plants

I dont know if people would like that for op3 but it was just a thought

[Ezekel]

actually the MHD belongs to Plymouth quite well seeing as it is the pinnacle of adapting to new terra, whereas teh geocon is more forceful, more a taming and using/enslaving of the forces of the planet.

furthermore, you gotta consider the Tales from New Terra about the MHD generator.
it was devised by a major genius, but a strange one nonetheless.

eden scientists are more nitty-gritty realists, i don't think that the MHD creator wouldhave been accepted into the scientific community had he been born in eden


[edit]
furthermore, as eden is the more "realist" type science community, who want to bend the planet to their will, it makes more sense for eden to have advanced tool for manipulating new terra's um... resources (magma well and geocon)

[Ezekel]

um... if you read the 1st post of this thread knux, you'll see that i was reffering to the MHD generator

Well I don't know how it got onto the MHD generator considering we were talking about the VTOL propulsion system.

well i had two thoughts of the day in the original post of this thread knux

[Betaray]

ok that makes since, I was just putting in my thought of the day lol

[zeritou]

The MHD generator should work on any planet with a changing magnetic field (which is any planet with a magnetic field subjected to solar radiation). The only difference would be the power output, I would think.

sorry to bring back the 2nd post but ive been on vacation

our magnetic field is subject to solar radiation and it doesnt fluctuate enough for an mhd generator

i believe (from my reading and endless persuit of pointless information) that an mhd generator would function by the magnetic poles "flip-floping." (for lack of a better word)

i could draw a picture if you need it

[Betaray]

yes, and from the information we've gathered, that happonds primarly to young planets, wich means that New Terra was probly less than a billion years old, wich would help explain why it is so active volcanicly (becides the blight)

for old planets like earth, the core has stableized, thus the magnetic field dosnt go though the flip flopping

btw, when the flip occures, wouldnt that allow enormous amounts of radiation to rain down on the coloney? due to the magnosphere being weakend?

[Ezekel]

not really... cos all thats happening is the polarity is changing

and earth's magnetic  field changes every couple of 100 million years or something



and i thought that new terra wasn't really a young planet... cos it had become geo-somethingly stable. the plates had fused together... thats why the volcanic activity and the quakes were supposed to be impossible

[knux]

Well the sun's magnetic field inverts every 11 years. They know this as it's been observed.

In the 1980's a power station in Canada went down because when the sun's field inverted, it sent a massive blast of magnetic energy and charged particles (solar wind, I believe), out into space. Since the magnetic fields of the earth are pretty close to the surface at the poles. There is more chance they some energy will leak past the field, the closer you are to the poles. (The Northen Lights and the Aurora Australis (sp?) are results of that energy colliding with the earth's magnetic fields).
 
To cut a long story short, the magnetic blast hit the power grid and the whole thing went haywire. The SOHO observer sattelite, sits between the sun and us to watch for such energy.

If the earth's magnetic field started inverting now, it is believed it could collapse momentarily (for a few months at the most) leaving the earth completely unprotected. This would be very bad for us!

[ZeusBD]

Like in the move "The Core"

Though I'm not a weather person, I work with weather people and they are watching the crap sent off the sun all the time and freak out when there a lot of it.

[Ezekel]

Well the sun's magnetic field inverts every 11 years. They know this as it's been observed.

In the 1980's a power station in Canada went down because when the sun's field inverted, it sent a massive blast of magnetic energy and charged particles (solar wind, I believe), out into space. Since the magnetic fields of the earth are pretty close to the surface at the poles. There is more chance they some energy will leak past the field, the closer you are to the poles. (The Northen Lights and the Aurora Australis (sp?) are results of that energy colliding with the earth's magnetic fields).
 
To cut a long story short, the magnetic blast hit the power grid and the whole thing went haywire. The SOHO observer sattelite, sits between the sun and us to watch for such energy.

If the earth's magnetic field started inverting now, it is believed it could collapse momentarily (for a few months at the most) leaving the earth completely unprotected. This would be very bad for us!

thats EMP in practise folks


now where are the spiders to reprog the powerplant? my colony needs more power.
bwa ha ha

[Zircon]

Solar wind to shield Earth during pole flip
 
Hollywood now has one less disaster scenario to worry about. The Earth, it seems, will be safe when its magnetic field falters during the next reversal of its magnetic poles.

A new model of the way the Earth interacts with the solar wind indicates that a replacement field will form in the upper atmosphere during the switch.

Scientists had previously thought that the planet would be left without a protective shield to stop lethal radiation from space reaching the surface.

The strength of the Earth's magnetic field is known to drop during "magnetic reversals", when the north and south poles swap places. Records of the field direction, frozen into sediments laid down on the seabed, show that the magnetic field has reversed hundreds of times in the past 400 million years.

In normal circumstances, the magnetic field protects the Earth's surface from dangerous high-energy particles, including particles from the sun and cosmic rays from deep space.

But as the field switches polarity, it can drop to below 10 per cent of its normal strength for thousands of years. Such a weakened field would allow lethal radiation to reach the Earth's surface, with potentially disastrous consequences for the atmosphere, the climate and particularly for life.

Opportune moment

In a paper to be published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, Guido Birk and Harald Lesch of the University of Munich, Germany, and Christian Konz of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching report an investigation of exactly what happens when the field is drastically reduced or vanishes altogether.
 
Their simulations show that the solar wind - the million-kilometre-an-hour stream of hydrogen and helium nuclei from the sun - wraps itself around the Earth in a way that induces a magnetic field in the ionosphere as strong as the original field.

"We were quite surprised about its effectiveness," Lesch says.

The news comes at an opportune moment. The Earth's magnetic field is showing worrying signs that it is about to reverse again. Not only has the magnetic north pole wandered by 1100 kilometres in the past 200 years, but its strength is dropping at a rate of 5 per cent a century.

"This is the fastest decrease since the last reversal 730,000 years ago," Lesch says.

[Axen]

Well, I was going to say that happens in fairly young planets whose insides are still eddying about, but it looks like Betaray beat me to it  
     Good question, betaray.  Actually, the Earth's magnetosphere just gets very complicated during the flip, instead of opening up or disappearing--this makes sense, since the conductive liquid (molten iron) in the Earth's mantle is still there, producing various electro- and magnetodynamical effects.  This page explains it pretty well: Magntetic Pole Reversal.  Just read the part below the supercomputer models.
   
Regards,
Axen

**** AI CARAMBA! *****
I just made a big fool  :unsure: of myself... :blush:  I finished page 1, deciding to make a post and answer the (albeit already answered) question, and did not realize that there was another page!  Have fun laughing this down!!!   :heh:
     Good quote, Zircon.  Found a rich vein of info.

Axen