Ship Systems

[alexanderson1993]

We need to decide how ship systems behave. These are the devices and infrastructure on the ship which give it the ability to do things. Ship systems mostly affect what's going on outside of the ship, but some are used inside the ship as well. From an implementation perspective, ship systems are broadly defined as the data structures, logic, and simulated behaviors that give the crew the ability to make the ship behave in certain ways.

First, here's a list of all of the ship systems that were implemented for Thorium Classic

Internal Systems

• Computer Core
• Coolant
• Internal Communications (Making phone calls from the bridge to various rooms on the ship) #242
• Reactor (Power generation) #229
• Batteries #229
• Internal Sensors
• Sickbay

Movement Systems

• Warp Engines (FTL) #230
• Impulse Engines (Sub-light) #228
• Jump Drive (wormhole travel)
• Navigation (Setting course)
• Thrusters (Small, precise movement)
• Transwarp (Really really fast engines)
• Subspace Field (Yeah, this was just filler busywork)

Defensive/Non-offensive Systems

• Countermeasures (Small packages that have autonomous behavior)
• Shields
• Signal Jammer (Block communications, weapons, navigation, or sensors signals)
• Stealth Field/Cloaking Device
• Tractor Beam
• Transporters
• Chaff Launchers #234
• ECM (Electronic Counter Measures) #233

Weapons Systems

• CRM-114 (Autonomous or manually-controlled fighters)
• Phasers (Beam weapons)
• Railgun (Point-defense)
• Targeting (Acquiring a target lock for weapons)
• Torpedo (Projectile weapons)
• THX-1138 (Power-hungry planet-busting weapon)

Science/Observational Systems

• Probes (Configurable, programmable ships with specialized behavior)
• External Sensors #235

Communications Systems

• Long Range Communications (Email messages) #242
• Short Range Communications (Voice/Video chat with other ships) #242

There are also other systems which didn't get included in the simulation (the crew couldn't really do anything with them except repair them and assign power to them), but existed as generic systems:

• Co2 Scrubbers #231
• Oxygen Generators #231
• Life Support #231
• Artificial Gravity #231
• Turbolift #231
• Temperature #231
• Holodeck #231
• Brig Force Field #231
• Particle Detector #231
• Water Pipes #231
• Food Replicators #231

And I'm sure there are other ship systems as well that could be interesting to model as part of our simulation - feel free to suggest them below.

We need to imagine how all of these things work. We can start by basing them off of how they behaved in Thorium Classic, but the Ship Map and Star Map add new dimensions to how they can operate which would be great to plan out.

This will be a more general-purpose discussion for deciding which ship systems we want to plan out. Then, we can have separate discussions for each system describing how they work in detail. These discussions should include things like:

• What it does broadly
• How it affects different parts of the simulation, like the ship itself, other ships, crew members on the ship, and other ship systems
• How the crew will interact with it
• How the flight director will interact with it
• What automations or simulations it will include
• How much power it uses
• Whether it can be upgraded to change its behavior

Anyone is welcome to start discussions about any of these systems, but we should focus on the ones that will get us closer to being able to run a minimum-viable flight. To me, that means engines and movement, but you can pick whatever systems you want.

[alexanderson1993]

I want to clarify - if someone has already written a proposal about a system that you wanted to write about, don't let that stop you. You have two options:

• Write an entirely new, separate proposal
• Add comments or suggestions to the existing proposal to bring it in-line with the ideas you have.

I want to make sure everyone has a voice in this process, especially now when we are just starting to implement these things. Once they are in code, it will be a bit harder to adjust their behavior.