As an update to what I was saying the other day. This is in the concept stages, but would have the capability to reach 12% light speed in 4, if implemented and it functions properly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfsKxnPK6ls&feature=player_embedded
http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/index.php
http://dvice.com/archives/2011/01/project-daedalu.php
27 January 2011
25 January 2011
Faster than Light
At our current level of technology nothing that we know exists travels faster of than the speed of light. For those that don't know the speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second in a vacuum or about 186,282.4 miles per second. Now we specify a vacuum because the speed of light is not constant it can be altered both my diffusion through material or gravity. Still no matter how you slice it, light is fast. At the moment a value of c, or the speed of light in a vacuum, acts as a cosmic speed limit sign.
Now going faster than the speed of light isn't the immediate next step to travel, its actually several steps down the list as far as speed. Right now we don't have the technology to come any where close to 1/10 the speed of light, which just obtaining that would make space travel viable in our solar system. But looking beyond Sol colonization, it would still take decades at 1/10 the speed of light to reach the nearest stars. So to get there we need to talk FTL, Faster-than-Light.
Now to jump from my topic a bit, let us talk about colonizing Sol. It's not that far off at this point it is more cost then anything else holding us off. Colonization in our own system can be done locally on Luna (aka the Moon) or in a bit further direct Mars and Ceres. Now there are a lot of arguments about colonizing the moon. Temperature being a big one as difference between sunlight and nighttime is a few hundred degrees. But we can counter that with a couple different things, colonizing near the poles and/or colonizing underground. Same is true for Mars. We can colonize at least in part underground. More people argue against Mars with time it takes to get there. Such arguments usually include exaggerated facts about solar radiation, food shortage, and mental instability. I would say give humans a bit of credit, we can counter radiation. Food, even if we can't preserve it, we can grow it. And humans have survived much longer journey's at sea. There are obstacles, but I believe even with the technology we have now, not to mention what we will have in 10 years, we can counter these issues. Ceres, however, is the most logical choice for colonization. It is much smaller then even our moon, but it is mostly water, frozen water. Also transport to Ceres would be easier to Mars because of Ceres' orbital path. Not to mention it would open up the ability to mine the asteroid belt for materials.
In any case, the main issue is speed. Speed will increase if we have a valid reason (say a colony) to increase the speed. But let's step back from the real and focus on the SciFi of this. There are many different methods in science fiction for traveling faster than light. I am going to talk about a few of the most popular ones.
Warp Drive
Warp technology is most famous because of Star Trek. Miguel Alcubierre was the one to actually come up with a valid of way of how it could work. The idea here is based Einstein's theories of space time. In that many people (misinterpret) believe that if one travels faster then the speed of light forward and then back they will actually travel back in time. This is not what Einstein meant, but Warp technology in theory would use some of the actual science behind that belief to make warp possible. See warp technology does not actually cause the vessel or ship to travel faster then the speed of light. Instead the ship creates a warp bubble, this bubble compresses space time in front of the ship and expands it behind it. Essentially is rides a wave of space time that is traveling faster than light. So while the vessel itself (and anything else inside the warp bubble) is traveling at normal speeds, the bubble pushes them forward at incredible velocities that would cause it to arrive somewhere faster than normal light would. Not a bad idea, but as Alcubierre himself calculated it would take an insane amount of energy and create such exotic amount of radiation that it would be more practical to try other methods of FTL travel first.
Hyperspace, subspace, slip-space, and all space in between
The next idea exists in a myriad of different specs. Star Wars and StarGate used hyper drives to move faster than light. Andromeda used slip-space. Still other series use subspace or some exotic other space. In all the cases the concept remains the same. Create some way of accessing another dimension or layer of space where the laws of physics don't as strongly apply. In examples of subspace, the spacial area is actually smaller than in normal space, so travel from point A to point B takes less time and energy. In Hyperspace the concept tends to lend itself to gravitational pockets casting shadows leading to hyper-spatial currents that allow a vessel to reach much higher speeds than in normal space. Still slip-space is a dimension of intertwining space time that relies on a biological lifeforms concepts of intuition to navigate. While different serials may present these slightly different, access another dimension, or even remove part of our own, could reduce travel time between stellar bodies over long distances. Some suggest it will take time to travel through these dimensions, while other series like BattleStar Galactica or Asimov's Empire series seem to suggest it would be near instantaneous. Like being drunk "What's so bad about that?" "Ask a glass of water." The issue here is that there is no proof that such dimension exist, or if they do that they act in such a way that would allow us to use them like this. It's strongly theorized that they do, but no one has ever been able to prove it. Furthermore accessing these dimension is another challenge in and of itself after discovering them. So these remain plausible until proven otherwise.
Wormholes
Wormholes are our best bet. Although they have never been discovered naturally, nor do we know if we can create them artificially... or show they would really act. Current science seems to lend itself to the fact that the universe has its own way of allowing for faster than light travel. By the creation of two interconnecting point through folded space. The paper analogy is often used, where the scietist says you are on this side of the paper and you need to get to the other side, what's the quickest way, he then folds the paper until the two sides are touching. Unfortunately if such things do occur they would create lots of exotic matter, and as such shows as StarGate and FarScape have pointed out, might not even be able to be used by biological life without destroying it. In FarScape entering a wormhole without calculating for phase variation meant that your body ripped out of phase into a bloody mess. To compensate a phase generator was installed on the ship. In StarGate they never discussed what would happen if you stepped into a raw wormhole, but to compensate you were de-molecularized and sent through. In StarGate this also meant that you could only travel in one direction through a wormhole (from start to finish) entering a wormhole backwards would lead to certain death. Other SciFi series and scientists have speculated on the probability that wormholes could also connect different time periods. Entering on one end could mean traveling back in time and creating a paradox, or worse traveling to the future ... in which case you could have taken just as much time traveling across space normally. Although many scientists think wormholes exist or can exist, none know how to make, find, or utilize one. So unless by some freak accident we do discover one, this isn't a valid form of FTL either.
What else is their?
Well there are no shortage of bad ideas, but think on this. Nothing that we know of has gone faster than light. So how do we know nothing can? Einstein stated that anytime you increase velocity (add velocity to an existing velocity) there is a small amount of diminishing returns. As speeds we can currently access this amount is negligible. However, as we approach the speed of light the amount that is diminished is increased until the addition is zero. This would be the maximum obtainable velocity, and it would be just under the speed of light (like 99,999999999999999999999999% the speed of light). But honestly we haven't even come close to that to know if he is right. Further more if light can be altered by gravity, it may also be able to be altered by other forces such as Electro-magnetic, Strong Nuclear, or Weak Nuclear forces. Maybe even some force we haven't discovered yet. Also we don't know that light is the actual boundary, some scientists believe light speed is just a symptom of spatial boundary. Once again we don't really know.
I would like to open the conspiracy nut bag. The Philadelphia Experiment has always been one of my favorites. The idea here was actually for a cloak. Create enough radiation around an object, in this case the USS Eldridge in Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, the radiation would bend light and render the ship invisible to any radars and to the naked eye. The supposed results of this experiment by the US government in 1943 were that the ship disappeared and was spotted off of several harbors around the world with in a few minutes. When it returned to shipyard crew men were fused into bulk heads and many of them had a strange type of radiation sickness.
How about this for an explanation, the ship created an FTL drive out of the cloak, it was bound to earth gravitation and EM fields, where it bounced around before returning to where it started. The fusing of crew members to bulkheads is similar to rapid acceleration. Now to be honest noone knows if this story is true. US government obviously denies it, but imagine if it were. FTL technology currently exists. Just isn't safe, however if we study it we could get there.
Where we stand.
Currently, there is not proof that FTL could exist. We are limited to that awesome speed of 299,792,458 meters per second. That is if we could reach it, even a tenth of the way would be huge. But in a single galaxy that spans 100,000 light years, and is 1,000 light years thick; a tenth would mean it would take us over a 1,000,000 years to travel from end to end. Not to mention accessing the rest of the universe would take even longer. This is unacceptable. We must colonize into space. It is the only way to preserve our species, our home planets, our need to understand the greater mystery of our universe. Although I don't believe in it, I regard this as our destiny; or as close to destiny as can possibly be defined. It must happen, or we will perish by our own hand. So why wait? Why not start now, the technology will follow. Delaying the inevitable is foolish and dangerous. If financial cost stand in our way, then let us overcome it. We must for our children.
Now going faster than the speed of light isn't the immediate next step to travel, its actually several steps down the list as far as speed. Right now we don't have the technology to come any where close to 1/10 the speed of light, which just obtaining that would make space travel viable in our solar system. But looking beyond Sol colonization, it would still take decades at 1/10 the speed of light to reach the nearest stars. So to get there we need to talk FTL, Faster-than-Light.
Now to jump from my topic a bit, let us talk about colonizing Sol. It's not that far off at this point it is more cost then anything else holding us off. Colonization in our own system can be done locally on Luna (aka the Moon) or in a bit further direct Mars and Ceres. Now there are a lot of arguments about colonizing the moon. Temperature being a big one as difference between sunlight and nighttime is a few hundred degrees. But we can counter that with a couple different things, colonizing near the poles and/or colonizing underground. Same is true for Mars. We can colonize at least in part underground. More people argue against Mars with time it takes to get there. Such arguments usually include exaggerated facts about solar radiation, food shortage, and mental instability. I would say give humans a bit of credit, we can counter radiation. Food, even if we can't preserve it, we can grow it. And humans have survived much longer journey's at sea. There are obstacles, but I believe even with the technology we have now, not to mention what we will have in 10 years, we can counter these issues. Ceres, however, is the most logical choice for colonization. It is much smaller then even our moon, but it is mostly water, frozen water. Also transport to Ceres would be easier to Mars because of Ceres' orbital path. Not to mention it would open up the ability to mine the asteroid belt for materials.
In any case, the main issue is speed. Speed will increase if we have a valid reason (say a colony) to increase the speed. But let's step back from the real and focus on the SciFi of this. There are many different methods in science fiction for traveling faster than light. I am going to talk about a few of the most popular ones.
Warp Drive
Warp technology is most famous because of Star Trek. Miguel Alcubierre was the one to actually come up with a valid of way of how it could work. The idea here is based Einstein's theories of space time. In that many people (misinterpret) believe that if one travels faster then the speed of light forward and then back they will actually travel back in time. This is not what Einstein meant, but Warp technology in theory would use some of the actual science behind that belief to make warp possible. See warp technology does not actually cause the vessel or ship to travel faster then the speed of light. Instead the ship creates a warp bubble, this bubble compresses space time in front of the ship and expands it behind it. Essentially is rides a wave of space time that is traveling faster than light. So while the vessel itself (and anything else inside the warp bubble) is traveling at normal speeds, the bubble pushes them forward at incredible velocities that would cause it to arrive somewhere faster than normal light would. Not a bad idea, but as Alcubierre himself calculated it would take an insane amount of energy and create such exotic amount of radiation that it would be more practical to try other methods of FTL travel first.
Hyperspace, subspace, slip-space, and all space in between
The next idea exists in a myriad of different specs. Star Wars and StarGate used hyper drives to move faster than light. Andromeda used slip-space. Still other series use subspace or some exotic other space. In all the cases the concept remains the same. Create some way of accessing another dimension or layer of space where the laws of physics don't as strongly apply. In examples of subspace, the spacial area is actually smaller than in normal space, so travel from point A to point B takes less time and energy. In Hyperspace the concept tends to lend itself to gravitational pockets casting shadows leading to hyper-spatial currents that allow a vessel to reach much higher speeds than in normal space. Still slip-space is a dimension of intertwining space time that relies on a biological lifeforms concepts of intuition to navigate. While different serials may present these slightly different, access another dimension, or even remove part of our own, could reduce travel time between stellar bodies over long distances. Some suggest it will take time to travel through these dimensions, while other series like BattleStar Galactica or Asimov's Empire series seem to suggest it would be near instantaneous. Like being drunk "What's so bad about that?" "Ask a glass of water." The issue here is that there is no proof that such dimension exist, or if they do that they act in such a way that would allow us to use them like this. It's strongly theorized that they do, but no one has ever been able to prove it. Furthermore accessing these dimension is another challenge in and of itself after discovering them. So these remain plausible until proven otherwise.
Wormholes
Wormholes are our best bet. Although they have never been discovered naturally, nor do we know if we can create them artificially... or show they would really act. Current science seems to lend itself to the fact that the universe has its own way of allowing for faster than light travel. By the creation of two interconnecting point through folded space. The paper analogy is often used, where the scietist says you are on this side of the paper and you need to get to the other side, what's the quickest way, he then folds the paper until the two sides are touching. Unfortunately if such things do occur they would create lots of exotic matter, and as such shows as StarGate and FarScape have pointed out, might not even be able to be used by biological life without destroying it. In FarScape entering a wormhole without calculating for phase variation meant that your body ripped out of phase into a bloody mess. To compensate a phase generator was installed on the ship. In StarGate they never discussed what would happen if you stepped into a raw wormhole, but to compensate you were de-molecularized and sent through. In StarGate this also meant that you could only travel in one direction through a wormhole (from start to finish) entering a wormhole backwards would lead to certain death. Other SciFi series and scientists have speculated on the probability that wormholes could also connect different time periods. Entering on one end could mean traveling back in time and creating a paradox, or worse traveling to the future ... in which case you could have taken just as much time traveling across space normally. Although many scientists think wormholes exist or can exist, none know how to make, find, or utilize one. So unless by some freak accident we do discover one, this isn't a valid form of FTL either.
What else is their?
Well there are no shortage of bad ideas, but think on this. Nothing that we know of has gone faster than light. So how do we know nothing can? Einstein stated that anytime you increase velocity (add velocity to an existing velocity) there is a small amount of diminishing returns. As speeds we can currently access this amount is negligible. However, as we approach the speed of light the amount that is diminished is increased until the addition is zero. This would be the maximum obtainable velocity, and it would be just under the speed of light (like 99,999999999999999999999999% the speed of light). But honestly we haven't even come close to that to know if he is right. Further more if light can be altered by gravity, it may also be able to be altered by other forces such as Electro-magnetic, Strong Nuclear, or Weak Nuclear forces. Maybe even some force we haven't discovered yet. Also we don't know that light is the actual boundary, some scientists believe light speed is just a symptom of spatial boundary. Once again we don't really know.
I would like to open the conspiracy nut bag. The Philadelphia Experiment has always been one of my favorites. The idea here was actually for a cloak. Create enough radiation around an object, in this case the USS Eldridge in Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, the radiation would bend light and render the ship invisible to any radars and to the naked eye. The supposed results of this experiment by the US government in 1943 were that the ship disappeared and was spotted off of several harbors around the world with in a few minutes. When it returned to shipyard crew men were fused into bulk heads and many of them had a strange type of radiation sickness.
How about this for an explanation, the ship created an FTL drive out of the cloak, it was bound to earth gravitation and EM fields, where it bounced around before returning to where it started. The fusing of crew members to bulkheads is similar to rapid acceleration. Now to be honest noone knows if this story is true. US government obviously denies it, but imagine if it were. FTL technology currently exists. Just isn't safe, however if we study it we could get there.
Where we stand.
Currently, there is not proof that FTL could exist. We are limited to that awesome speed of 299,792,458 meters per second. That is if we could reach it, even a tenth of the way would be huge. But in a single galaxy that spans 100,000 light years, and is 1,000 light years thick; a tenth would mean it would take us over a 1,000,000 years to travel from end to end. Not to mention accessing the rest of the universe would take even longer. This is unacceptable. We must colonize into space. It is the only way to preserve our species, our home planets, our need to understand the greater mystery of our universe. Although I don't believe in it, I regard this as our destiny; or as close to destiny as can possibly be defined. It must happen, or we will perish by our own hand. So why wait? Why not start now, the technology will follow. Delaying the inevitable is foolish and dangerous. If financial cost stand in our way, then let us overcome it. We must for our children.
24 January 2011
4G, 3G and everything in between
We have heard a lot about 4G... and 3G and fastest, widest, smelliest, coolest etc in the cell phone industry. What does it mean? 3G is simply Third Generation Digital Cell Phone Technology. The third evolution in cell phones. Introduced around 2002 and implemented most everywhere by 2004. Now we hear about 4G, that is Fourth Generation Cellular Technology. The next in a natural progression from 3G. So who has 4G? well according to the commercials... everyone! And suddenly too: Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T. So what's the difference? Well to start with lets bust open a little secret. None of them are 4G, at least not true 4G.
4G requirements as created by the International Telecommunication Union states that 4G communication must have at least 100 Mbits/s at its minimum and up to 1 Gbit/s! Well there is a lot more to it then that, but that is the main statement being made here. The rest of the requirements are easily obtainable if those requirements can be met. 3G technology is usually around 1 Mbit/s so we are looking at about 100x increase from 3G to 4G. That's a big increase. Also, not one easily obtainable. Verizon Wireless currently has the fast in the claimed 4G speed with about 5 - 12 Mbits/s which is about 10x faster then 3G, but not fast enough to be declared 4G. Speaking of which what is the difference between companies 3G capabilities?
Well not getting into the technical stuff of frequencies, signal degradation, and so on. There are two types of 3G service in mass use. CDMA and GSM. GSM is the global signal, it is a CHEAP signal. Both in price and in quality. Primarily used by lower developed countries GSM is the most widely used 3G coverage on the planet and requires the infamous SIM card. Usually GSM has decent (at best) calling coverage in most areas, but lacks the development of its counterpart. As such in higher technological countries like the US, China, Japan, etc CDMA is more widely used. GSM companies in the US are mainly T-Mobile and AT&T. Now, CDMA is a Qualcomm technology, licensed to the companies that use it. A better signal, but you will be paying for it. CDMA is not as wide of coverage, but as mentioned is more widely used in technologically advanced countries. CDMA in the US is used by Verizon, Sprint, and Alltel (Alltel one is complicated, but yes it is used by them...). A built in UTC chip is used in combination with a single ESN in CDMA to ID the phones, rather then a removable SIM card. These two technologies don't cross over onto each other, so if you have a CDMA device it can only be used on a CDMA network, and since CDMA networks are license specific UTS chips you usually can't exchange them between carriers either. GSM though since it uses a removable SIM and usually migrate back and forth across GSM networks by just swapping out the SIM for each network... fun right? Well if someone steals your SIM or duplicates it, they have all your info and access to your network and billing. So more fun, but less secure.
Now to 4G, or should I say the claimed "4G". There are three "4G" technologies. WiMax, LTE, and HSPA+. One of these is not like the other, one of these doesn't belong, but first. Why can they get away with calling it 4G? Well ITU was little late to the game. Companies like Sprint and Verizon hard already started licensing the info and various areas (and in some cases countries) as 4G. It wasn't till after this that ITU made up its mind about what 4G was... but to late. Its definition had already been decided upon by the cellular industry, so ITU would just have to suck it. Next time maybe they will come up with the definitions a little faster. So with WiMax and LTE registered as 4G technologies, but with them not being ITU 4G technologies this left the door in on some word play. Since they were, but weren't 4G companies like T-Mobile decided to start calling HSPA+ 4G. The door was open, so why not.
HSPA+ or Evolved High-Speed Packet Access can access insane speeds using already using already built technologies, but it is not sustainable nor is it able to be evolved beyond what it is. Another requirement of 4G is that is independent of 3G and able to be evolved as time goes on. Essentially 3G didn't start off as fast as it did, but over time it evolved to be that fast. 4G should do the same. HSPA+ is not even close, it is 3G technology only enhanced to its full potential. There are currently two companies claiming this as 4G. T-Mobile and AT&T. Here is the best part. They aren't going to keep it. HSPA+ is a stepping stone system for GSM companies to move into LTE. So neither of these networks are looking at long term support of their current "4G" system; and both are already looking at rolling out a closer to truth 4G system in the next few years. So why claim it as 4G now? Well that is mainly because Sprint and Verizon are ahead of the game, and they will have a 4G system rolled out before AT&T and T-Mobile are close to being ready. So this mainly to save face. If you want 4G technology, avoid HSPA+ at all costs.
WiMAX or Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access is essentially glorified WiFi. I know it is a lot more complicated then that, but that is how it acts. It acts like WiFi using cellular technology. Not a bad concept, there are some complications. This technology is much like CDMA. It uses a similar chip set format (UTC) and connects in much the same manner. When looking at HSPA+, WiMAX has the potential to do 1 Gbit/s ... someday. It is independent, so unlike HSPA+ it can be claimed to be a 4G technology. While it may not be there yet, according to the ITU, it will be there. It will probably be there with in 5 years. So WiMAX is a nice stepping stone to getting on the 4G bandwagon. BUT, deployment is less then spectacular. Currently in the US, Sprint is the only 4G carrier. It also is looking like it will be the only WiMAX carrier in the US, and globally less then 15% of the world is expected to use WiMAX. So coverage will become as issue as Sprint has always had a hard time with coverage in the past on CDMA. And without anyone to share towers with it will be very expensive and difficult to have good coverage on WiMAX. Sprint has already looked at this is while not stating that they will, is already thinking about switching to an LTE deployment. This does not bode well for WiMAX.
Finally we have LTE, Long Term Evolution. Verizon Wireless (parented by Verizon and Vodafone) is the first national US carrier to push LTE deployment. Being a CDMA company it is a straight transition to LTE. LTE works much the same fashion as GSM, this will introduce Verizon people to SIM cards. That is about it though as far as similarities. LTE will have a lower frequency (that means further transmission range) and will not run copper wiring. No copper at all. Instead Verizon Wireless will be banking on its parent company Verizon who recently sold off its landlines to Frontier (Verizon also bought most of Alltel, but that isn't relevant to this). Instead Verizon is focusing on FiOS, or fiber optics. This what will be running to towers instead of copper wiring. This is hard deployment as it fiber optics tend to run in straight line and don't bend easily if at all. While flexible FiOS has been developed most of this will be run the old fashioned way, straight lines with buildings to reprocess info. This may sound hard to use, but it will mean a massively quicker connection from tower to internet then copper has. Combine that with LTE's speed and you have a nice combination. LTE is an independent of 3G service, so like WiMAX it can evolve and get faster. The initial LTE deployment won't be near the speeds required for a true 4G stamp of approval from the ITU. However, LTE-Advanced more then meets the requirements and, much like WiMAX, can probably be integrated about 5 years after initial LTE deployment. Not only that, about 80% of the world is looking to go LTE eventually with some European countries having it already rolled out. So while the official MAX speed may be about 20 Mbits/s from any carrier, LTE on Verizon has seen spikes of 54 Mbits/s. That is already half way to the ITU speed requirements.
Now why is this important? Not to get all political or economical on you, but jobs in the US are going bye bye. Now capitalism is a good thing, and right now American labor is at such an expensive point that it is cheaper to ship it around the world first. This has ALWAYS happened. The issue now is that the jobs that should be replacing it are such very different jobs from what we had before that people aren't acclimating to it well. These are tech jobs. Tech jobs will have a better quality of life associated to the people that do them and won't be as labor intensive as manufacturing and construction jobs. BUT, and this a big but. We need the infrastructure to to support these jobs and, more importantly, educate (or reeducate) people on how to do these jobs. That is going to go to the country with the highest data speed (not just on cell phones, but in general). Currently that is South Korea, the country that is ahead of us that they have TV channels dedicated to computer game play. S. Korea has an average internet speed of 20 Mbits/s. Faster then any other country. As such the FCC is implementing a plan to get the US on top.
In the US the FCC wants every household to have internet speed of 100 Mbits/s or faster by 2020. That means that 100 Mbits/s will be the low end net speeds in the US. With some areas like Chattanooga deploying FiOS that grants up to 1 Gbit/s already this isn't a hard goal for us to hit. We will have to revamp our current lined telecommunication (landlines/DSL). Like wise our cellular speeds will need to make this portable. Thus our cell phones will need to have net access equal to our tethered internet connections. And to get this all up and running we need to start getting this technology into people's hands NOW. It's for the country, for the future, not just because this stuff is awesome.
So, if you are a betting person here are the odds. HSPA+ bad investment, million to one shot of being a 4G winner. WiMax is a decent bet, but not a great one, 10:1 odds. LTE is gold, long term platform its the best. Verizon wants their LTE platform nation wide by the beginning of 2013. AT&T will be next to deploy LTE Starting in 2012 and ending sometime in late 2015. MetroPCS for being prepaid is also betting LTE and has already started its deployment as well. I also wouldn't be surprised to see it tagging onto Verizon's system to pull its sell ahead of all other prepaid only companies. We should be more then able to surpass that FCC goal in cellular tech by 2020.
Now one last note, 3G coverage isn't going away. It will work alongside 4G to support it, as 2G does now. So don't worry if you are a bit behind the bandwagon, but at the same time be prepared for what's next.
4G requirements as created by the International Telecommunication Union states that 4G communication must have at least 100 Mbits/s at its minimum and up to 1 Gbit/s! Well there is a lot more to it then that, but that is the main statement being made here. The rest of the requirements are easily obtainable if those requirements can be met. 3G technology is usually around 1 Mbit/s so we are looking at about 100x increase from 3G to 4G. That's a big increase. Also, not one easily obtainable. Verizon Wireless currently has the fast in the claimed 4G speed with about 5 - 12 Mbits/s which is about 10x faster then 3G, but not fast enough to be declared 4G. Speaking of which what is the difference between companies 3G capabilities?
Well not getting into the technical stuff of frequencies, signal degradation, and so on. There are two types of 3G service in mass use. CDMA and GSM. GSM is the global signal, it is a CHEAP signal. Both in price and in quality. Primarily used by lower developed countries GSM is the most widely used 3G coverage on the planet and requires the infamous SIM card. Usually GSM has decent (at best) calling coverage in most areas, but lacks the development of its counterpart. As such in higher technological countries like the US, China, Japan, etc CDMA is more widely used. GSM companies in the US are mainly T-Mobile and AT&T. Now, CDMA is a Qualcomm technology, licensed to the companies that use it. A better signal, but you will be paying for it. CDMA is not as wide of coverage, but as mentioned is more widely used in technologically advanced countries. CDMA in the US is used by Verizon, Sprint, and Alltel (Alltel one is complicated, but yes it is used by them...). A built in UTC chip is used in combination with a single ESN in CDMA to ID the phones, rather then a removable SIM card. These two technologies don't cross over onto each other, so if you have a CDMA device it can only be used on a CDMA network, and since CDMA networks are license specific UTS chips you usually can't exchange them between carriers either. GSM though since it uses a removable SIM and usually migrate back and forth across GSM networks by just swapping out the SIM for each network... fun right? Well if someone steals your SIM or duplicates it, they have all your info and access to your network and billing. So more fun, but less secure.
Now to 4G, or should I say the claimed "4G". There are three "4G" technologies. WiMax, LTE, and HSPA+. One of these is not like the other, one of these doesn't belong, but first. Why can they get away with calling it 4G? Well ITU was little late to the game. Companies like Sprint and Verizon hard already started licensing the info and various areas (and in some cases countries) as 4G. It wasn't till after this that ITU made up its mind about what 4G was... but to late. Its definition had already been decided upon by the cellular industry, so ITU would just have to suck it. Next time maybe they will come up with the definitions a little faster. So with WiMax and LTE registered as 4G technologies, but with them not being ITU 4G technologies this left the door in on some word play. Since they were, but weren't 4G companies like T-Mobile decided to start calling HSPA+ 4G. The door was open, so why not.
HSPA+ or Evolved High-Speed Packet Access can access insane speeds using already using already built technologies, but it is not sustainable nor is it able to be evolved beyond what it is. Another requirement of 4G is that is independent of 3G and able to be evolved as time goes on. Essentially 3G didn't start off as fast as it did, but over time it evolved to be that fast. 4G should do the same. HSPA+ is not even close, it is 3G technology only enhanced to its full potential. There are currently two companies claiming this as 4G. T-Mobile and AT&T. Here is the best part. They aren't going to keep it. HSPA+ is a stepping stone system for GSM companies to move into LTE. So neither of these networks are looking at long term support of their current "4G" system; and both are already looking at rolling out a closer to truth 4G system in the next few years. So why claim it as 4G now? Well that is mainly because Sprint and Verizon are ahead of the game, and they will have a 4G system rolled out before AT&T and T-Mobile are close to being ready. So this mainly to save face. If you want 4G technology, avoid HSPA+ at all costs.
WiMAX or Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access is essentially glorified WiFi. I know it is a lot more complicated then that, but that is how it acts. It acts like WiFi using cellular technology. Not a bad concept, there are some complications. This technology is much like CDMA. It uses a similar chip set format (UTC) and connects in much the same manner. When looking at HSPA+, WiMAX has the potential to do 1 Gbit/s ... someday. It is independent, so unlike HSPA+ it can be claimed to be a 4G technology. While it may not be there yet, according to the ITU, it will be there. It will probably be there with in 5 years. So WiMAX is a nice stepping stone to getting on the 4G bandwagon. BUT, deployment is less then spectacular. Currently in the US, Sprint is the only 4G carrier. It also is looking like it will be the only WiMAX carrier in the US, and globally less then 15% of the world is expected to use WiMAX. So coverage will become as issue as Sprint has always had a hard time with coverage in the past on CDMA. And without anyone to share towers with it will be very expensive and difficult to have good coverage on WiMAX. Sprint has already looked at this is while not stating that they will, is already thinking about switching to an LTE deployment. This does not bode well for WiMAX.
Finally we have LTE, Long Term Evolution. Verizon Wireless (parented by Verizon and Vodafone) is the first national US carrier to push LTE deployment. Being a CDMA company it is a straight transition to LTE. LTE works much the same fashion as GSM, this will introduce Verizon people to SIM cards. That is about it though as far as similarities. LTE will have a lower frequency (that means further transmission range) and will not run copper wiring. No copper at all. Instead Verizon Wireless will be banking on its parent company Verizon who recently sold off its landlines to Frontier (Verizon also bought most of Alltel, but that isn't relevant to this). Instead Verizon is focusing on FiOS, or fiber optics. This what will be running to towers instead of copper wiring. This is hard deployment as it fiber optics tend to run in straight line and don't bend easily if at all. While flexible FiOS has been developed most of this will be run the old fashioned way, straight lines with buildings to reprocess info. This may sound hard to use, but it will mean a massively quicker connection from tower to internet then copper has. Combine that with LTE's speed and you have a nice combination. LTE is an independent of 3G service, so like WiMAX it can evolve and get faster. The initial LTE deployment won't be near the speeds required for a true 4G stamp of approval from the ITU. However, LTE-Advanced more then meets the requirements and, much like WiMAX, can probably be integrated about 5 years after initial LTE deployment. Not only that, about 80% of the world is looking to go LTE eventually with some European countries having it already rolled out. So while the official MAX speed may be about 20 Mbits/s from any carrier, LTE on Verizon has seen spikes of 54 Mbits/s. That is already half way to the ITU speed requirements.
Now why is this important? Not to get all political or economical on you, but jobs in the US are going bye bye. Now capitalism is a good thing, and right now American labor is at such an expensive point that it is cheaper to ship it around the world first. This has ALWAYS happened. The issue now is that the jobs that should be replacing it are such very different jobs from what we had before that people aren't acclimating to it well. These are tech jobs. Tech jobs will have a better quality of life associated to the people that do them and won't be as labor intensive as manufacturing and construction jobs. BUT, and this a big but. We need the infrastructure to to support these jobs and, more importantly, educate (or reeducate) people on how to do these jobs. That is going to go to the country with the highest data speed (not just on cell phones, but in general). Currently that is South Korea, the country that is ahead of us that they have TV channels dedicated to computer game play. S. Korea has an average internet speed of 20 Mbits/s. Faster then any other country. As such the FCC is implementing a plan to get the US on top.
In the US the FCC wants every household to have internet speed of 100 Mbits/s or faster by 2020. That means that 100 Mbits/s will be the low end net speeds in the US. With some areas like Chattanooga deploying FiOS that grants up to 1 Gbit/s already this isn't a hard goal for us to hit. We will have to revamp our current lined telecommunication (landlines/DSL). Like wise our cellular speeds will need to make this portable. Thus our cell phones will need to have net access equal to our tethered internet connections. And to get this all up and running we need to start getting this technology into people's hands NOW. It's for the country, for the future, not just because this stuff is awesome.
So, if you are a betting person here are the odds. HSPA+ bad investment, million to one shot of being a 4G winner. WiMax is a decent bet, but not a great one, 10:1 odds. LTE is gold, long term platform its the best. Verizon wants their LTE platform nation wide by the beginning of 2013. AT&T will be next to deploy LTE Starting in 2012 and ending sometime in late 2015. MetroPCS for being prepaid is also betting LTE and has already started its deployment as well. I also wouldn't be surprised to see it tagging onto Verizon's system to pull its sell ahead of all other prepaid only companies. We should be more then able to surpass that FCC goal in cellular tech by 2020.
Now one last note, 3G coverage isn't going away. It will work alongside 4G to support it, as 2G does now. So don't worry if you are a bit behind the bandwagon, but at the same time be prepared for what's next.
22 January 2011
What I Would Like to See in STO
Wow, where do I start. I can tell you now that this won't be the full extent my ideas, as stuff will continue to peck on me. We will call this Part 1.
First is the crew system. This is currently being developed for Season 4, and they are going to do it completely different then any of my ideas. But how about this...
We create a tree structure, this crew tree can only be changed at the cost of Merits (or Honor). It will be set to be rather immutable, but not completely like Captain's Skills. At the top of the tree is your First Officer. You must assign a first officer before you can assign anyone else, first officer must be of higher or equal rank to everyone else too. The First Officer will get six unique skill for them, these skill will be similar, but different then Captains Skills (referring to active ones here). Three will be for Space and three will be for Ground. These come from a special First Officer pool of skills and are not restricted based on career.
Once the first officer is set up that will open up six branches. These branches lead to department heads, or Chiefs. There will be two department heads for each Career and will break down like this. Chief of Science (Sci), Chief of Medicine (Sci), Chief of Engineering (Eng), Chief of Operations (Eng), Chief of Tactical (Tac), and Chief of Security (Tac). Some people will argue with that last one saying that Security is under Operations, to which I will argue they have restructured that in the 25th Century and suck it cause it works better this way. Once the department heads are in place you can assign skills to them as well. Chiefs will get one passive Space skill, and three active ground skills. These skills are restricted based on their department, so Medical have access to special medical only skills, Science has access to science only skills, etc.
These skill pools will reflect what they do. Medical skills will be more healing oriented and removing debuffs. Science skills will be debuff oriented and buff oriented. Engineering will be more buff (protection) oriented and device oriented (proxy weapons). Operations will be more effiency buff oriented (skill recharges) and debuff oriented (traps/CC). Tactical will be damage oriented and debuff oriented. Security will be more buff and CC oriented.
Once the department heads are in place that opens up additional branches. You can place as many bofs as you want into each department, they need to match the career requirements though. (same as their department heads) also they cannot be of higher rank then their department heads. Now each department will get up to three special (for their department) passive group ground buffs. Officers in that department can have anywhere from none to all three of these buffs for their department based on rank. For instance an En will have all three group ground buffs, a Lt will have two, a LC will have one, and a Cm will have none. While most people will use Cm bofs for away missions, this would encourage the use at least one none Cm bof to provide a unique group effect.
Along with this set up add the following. The anomalies that Captain's scan have them not only give crafting materials, but instead sometimes give an collectible item. These items could be added to various labs on your ship for study. A captain could then assign an officer that is not on the bridge and not on the away team to study these collectibles. Collect an entire series of them (a set) and study them and then turn them in at a starbase for a reward. The rewards can range from equipment, weapons, consumables, bofs, to rare missions starters. Some would be common, some would be rare. The reward would tie into the collection series. You could assign multiple series to a single bof, but that would slow down the study time of all the series. Also time to study would range based on rarity of collection being studied.
This way your crew is not siting in space twiddling their thumbs, but instead are working for you even while you are off playing and exploring. You could also have other officers not doing stuff to run training exercises while not at their post, these would provide small temporary buffs from spending time out of combat. These buffs would only last a little while when you first go into combat, but would make the crew seem like they are doing stuff aboard your ship.
Captain's Skills
Talking about passives. I like the way they are done, but I noticed that PVPers will focus all their SPs on either space or ground and then rock at it. While most people will tend to diversify to accommodate all play. This puts the PVE player at a disadvantage in PVP. I think this can be easily fixed and a bit more flavor to ground combat.
Separate Ground Skills and Space Skills into two categories. With their own pool of points for both. You can probably keep the point numbers the same as they are now, just create two of them. One for space skills and one for ground. This would give the following:
In Space you would have your Captain/Leadership skills, Energy Weapon skills, Kinetic Weapon skills, Engineering skills, Operation skills, etc.
In Ground create a Leadership section to effect how good of team leader you are on ground. Tier 1 can be the same as space, tier 2 can refer to general training and commands, tier 3, 4, and 5 refer to departmental specific skills.
You then also create a section for Energy Weapons (this refers mainly to your character as training for bofs is mainly done through leadership). Once again tier 1 is general training. tier 2 is pistols, rifles, or assualt, tiers 3, 4, 5 refer to energy types (like in space) some of this will effect bofs, but not much... mainly this refers to your characters training, and we assume bofs adapt to fit the captain's example.
Under that is a section for physical weapons. Tier 1 refers to Melee versus Mortars. Tier 2 would go into Grenades, Mines, Martial Arts, Martial Weapons. Tier 3, 4, 5 would would go into specific training for those weapon types (bat'leth, mek'leth, sword, pike, photon, plasma, etc)
From there we would have career specific paths, much as they are now only moved into this category. Separate from space skills. under these would have additional areas of study for your character ranging from basic medical training (like Thom Paris), to anthropology (Jean-luc Picard), to linguistics, to quantum mechanics, etc. These would provide small buffs and some additional ground skills, but would mainly represent the background of your character.
Like wise maxing some of the ground skills passives would give you an active skill. Like Phaser training you would give you a group buff "Set Phasers to Stun" that would cause all bofs next primary shot to act as a stun shot, regardless of their weapons specialty. Or under rifle training the ability to increase your next shots distance by double. These could also apply to stuff like anthropology providing a skill to do an area effect debuff (like a trap or a ward). The leadership one would allow for attack pattern commands with bofs (that could also serve as buff with other players) like telling your bofs to do a flanking attack instead of charging in with you. Or for them establish a perimeter around an area for good hold positions. Or to attack and retreat in order to lead the enemy into an area. Or even to lay down cover fire across an area. But mainly this is to equal out tactics on the ground versus space.
Travelling
I love the changes to Sector Space, but I would like to see them go further. First take away the boarder between most of the sector block. Nebula exploration areas you can just open up at large clouds, that you can enter like on the KDF side, or otherwise fly through. Also spread out the planets a bit more, I know a lot of people would hate this idea, but it is for scale reasons. Right not everything is scaled awkwardly and things look close even though they are supposed to be light years away. While in sector space make the minimal speed warp 1 (so no complete stops in sector space) (if you hit the bounder of the game world you drop to warp 1 and fly in small circles). You can drop out of warp, but that drops you into an empty star map area unless you are entering a system (if you approach a system you again slow to warp 1 and then begin to circle it until you enter or change course/or players can set it to auto drop out of warp). When you warp out you can either select a destination before warping out (which can be changed in flight) or you can just warp out and start heading somewhere at warp 1 until you change course and speed. With the boarders between sector blocks gone, allow people to fly until they hit either a faction boarder, or the game world edge. With the game world edge, make it far outside where current mission or located, even if there isn't content their it will make space fill vast. Also your bridge officers can let you know, hey we are approaching the boundary of where we are allowed to go for the Federation.
Right now exploration areas, like nebulas, are the only place to get random interactions or adventures. These should also be available, but in less a number in all sectors. So that way I can get a mandate to scan/explore anomalous reading in sector I have already been through. This will make each sector feel unique each time you travel through it. This would be great for distressed ships, or near conflict areas the secure system missions. Among many others. Also replace the DSEs as they are now with a more of a Final Fantasy type system, where as you are traveling you can get ambushed by various encounters. Either roaming enemy ships, curiosities, ship invasions (something invades your ship and you need to fight it on you ship) etc.
Not with these two paragraphs of changes plus the next one. It would open up the ability to do open PVP in the game world. As players could flag for PVP and then attack others flagged for PVP in sector space. When this occurs they would both drop out of warp into their own little instance to battle it out.
Create a separate hotbar system for traveling in sector space, different from normal space hotbars that are currently in game. The sector space bars would be switched to automatically in sector space and would have Transwarp Skills, Quantum Slip Stream skills, Maximum Warp skills (which would act like a lesser QSS), Scan Sector (which would result in various info: nearest systems, nearest encounters, nearest signal contact, anomalous reading, friendlies in the area, and enemies that are PVP capable in the area), an Attack Skill for PVP engagements, Diplomatic Immunity, and so on.
In friendly space areas (Vulcan, Earth, etc) make the areas larger. Like the entire system to explore. Also include various space stations and items for each system as well.
Expand the Federation areas to traverse around Sol, and further into the Alpha Quadrant (it is mapped, just not explorable atm).
Faction
I know this is stereotypical of most MMOs. But create a faction standing for each faction and subfactions. Like Federation and sub-factioned your standing with Starfleet, Sol, Vulcan, Andoria, etc. Klingon Empire sub factioned KDF, Orion Syndicate, etc. Romulan Star Empire sub factioned various Romulan groups. Cardassian Empire sub factioned Cardassia Prime, Obsidian Order, etc. Dominion sub factioned Jem'Hadar, Vorta, Founders, True Way. Also Deferi, Breen, Ferengi, etc as well. And for the Klingon Empire once you have reached diplomatic rank of Ambassador and have a Good or greater standing with the Klingon Empire you can play with any Klingon player who has the same for the Federation, including participation in Klingon cross-over missions (AKA this would allow Klingons who have reached this to do Fed missions and Feds to do KDF missions... not PVP though). This would also need some form of daily system to give factional missions (to either help or hurt your faction) ideally it should take several months to reach a Friendly status with a faction.
On a quick note... at the moment your space ship only exists in space while you are in command of it. If you beam to ESD or go to your bridge your ship stops existing in space. This is why atm you can only invite players to your bridge through the current system in place, and from on the other side of the galaxy. Why not, in certain situations, make it so the ship and player are separate. Example, if a player beams to ESD their ship instead of vanishing pull inside the space station (this would require a space station redesign with working doors) and when they beam out they exit (almost on autopilot) those doors and drift to a safe spot away from the space station. Areas like Vulcan would need to be redesigned to accommodate such ideas though. Deep Space 9 would be show the ship dock before vanishing (or maybe warping away) and undocking when the player leaves). Likewise, players (if they have set a course) should be able to visit their bridge while the ship is still traveling towards its destination. And when said destination is reached the player should be notified, and can jump back into space mode on a warp in. Ultimately this would need to be heavily worked on, but I think should be implemented for flavor.
Death and Death Penalty
Death system in STO currently makes no sense. Your ship explodes and you magically reappear with another one and the same crew... this has never felt right to me. Instead how about this. When your ship is taken down to 0% Structural Integrity (0 HP) you become Disabled. Disabled means your ship is set adrift (drifting away from the enemies area towards a respawn point), but not destroyed. You are presented with two options (not exclusive, as in if you take one you can resort to take the other). The first option being wait X amount of seconds and escape on emergency power. Essentially after a given time you respawn at a respawn point (much the same as it is now). Second option is to repair your ship, this would present you with a mini-game that would allow you to restore your ship and bring it online. This would cause you to respawn to wherever you have drifted to. You would come back with less then max health, but you would pop back to life near where you had been disabled. This option should take (if the player is good at the minigame) less time then it would for the player to wait out the clock escape and then return. This is what always happened in the shows, rarely did you see YOUR ship explode (not that that effect should be nixed, leave it in for storytelling). Furthermore at what percent of hull and shields and warp core power you are restored to should very based on how good you are at the game.
Now to ground death. This is done fairly well, player/NPCs become incapacitated. They can either wait for someone to rez them or re-spawn. My one complaint here is call it an emergency beam out (or site to site transfer) instead of respawn, and do a beam of the bodies to the respawn area.
Death penalty, currently you only get wounds or damage in Advanced or Elite mode. But why not add back in the original idea or crew death. When in a player is disabled in space in any mode of play they will loose a small (very small) percentage of their overall crew. This amount will be replaced with a photonic crew that are less effective to the ships overall performance. The percentage should be equal to the fact that a players can die dozens of times before any significant number of crew are lost. Also when they return to space dock (any of them) crew will start being replaced automatically, it just takes time for them to get replaced. This would force players who 'die' a lot to take a bit more downtime from their 'deaths' to recover and reflect. This would also mean player who regularly stop at starbases shouldn't worry regardless of how many deaths they have taken.
...
This is the end of part 1. These are just ideas I think should be looked at for STO. They would add to the feeling of the game and help make it into a better MMO. Other ideas are currently being worked on and look great. I love the game, and hope to see it continue.
First is the crew system. This is currently being developed for Season 4, and they are going to do it completely different then any of my ideas. But how about this...
We create a tree structure, this crew tree can only be changed at the cost of Merits (or Honor). It will be set to be rather immutable, but not completely like Captain's Skills. At the top of the tree is your First Officer. You must assign a first officer before you can assign anyone else, first officer must be of higher or equal rank to everyone else too. The First Officer will get six unique skill for them, these skill will be similar, but different then Captains Skills (referring to active ones here). Three will be for Space and three will be for Ground. These come from a special First Officer pool of skills and are not restricted based on career.
Once the first officer is set up that will open up six branches. These branches lead to department heads, or Chiefs. There will be two department heads for each Career and will break down like this. Chief of Science (Sci), Chief of Medicine (Sci), Chief of Engineering (Eng), Chief of Operations (Eng), Chief of Tactical (Tac), and Chief of Security (Tac). Some people will argue with that last one saying that Security is under Operations, to which I will argue they have restructured that in the 25th Century and suck it cause it works better this way. Once the department heads are in place you can assign skills to them as well. Chiefs will get one passive Space skill, and three active ground skills. These skills are restricted based on their department, so Medical have access to special medical only skills, Science has access to science only skills, etc.
These skill pools will reflect what they do. Medical skills will be more healing oriented and removing debuffs. Science skills will be debuff oriented and buff oriented. Engineering will be more buff (protection) oriented and device oriented (proxy weapons). Operations will be more effiency buff oriented (skill recharges) and debuff oriented (traps/CC). Tactical will be damage oriented and debuff oriented. Security will be more buff and CC oriented.
Once the department heads are in place that opens up additional branches. You can place as many bofs as you want into each department, they need to match the career requirements though. (same as their department heads) also they cannot be of higher rank then their department heads. Now each department will get up to three special (for their department) passive group ground buffs. Officers in that department can have anywhere from none to all three of these buffs for their department based on rank. For instance an En will have all three group ground buffs, a Lt will have two, a LC will have one, and a Cm will have none. While most people will use Cm bofs for away missions, this would encourage the use at least one none Cm bof to provide a unique group effect.
Along with this set up add the following. The anomalies that Captain's scan have them not only give crafting materials, but instead sometimes give an collectible item. These items could be added to various labs on your ship for study. A captain could then assign an officer that is not on the bridge and not on the away team to study these collectibles. Collect an entire series of them (a set) and study them and then turn them in at a starbase for a reward. The rewards can range from equipment, weapons, consumables, bofs, to rare missions starters. Some would be common, some would be rare. The reward would tie into the collection series. You could assign multiple series to a single bof, but that would slow down the study time of all the series. Also time to study would range based on rarity of collection being studied.
This way your crew is not siting in space twiddling their thumbs, but instead are working for you even while you are off playing and exploring. You could also have other officers not doing stuff to run training exercises while not at their post, these would provide small temporary buffs from spending time out of combat. These buffs would only last a little while when you first go into combat, but would make the crew seem like they are doing stuff aboard your ship.
Captain's Skills
Talking about passives. I like the way they are done, but I noticed that PVPers will focus all their SPs on either space or ground and then rock at it. While most people will tend to diversify to accommodate all play. This puts the PVE player at a disadvantage in PVP. I think this can be easily fixed and a bit more flavor to ground combat.
Separate Ground Skills and Space Skills into two categories. With their own pool of points for both. You can probably keep the point numbers the same as they are now, just create two of them. One for space skills and one for ground. This would give the following:
In Space you would have your Captain/Leadership skills, Energy Weapon skills, Kinetic Weapon skills, Engineering skills, Operation skills, etc.
In Ground create a Leadership section to effect how good of team leader you are on ground. Tier 1 can be the same as space, tier 2 can refer to general training and commands, tier 3, 4, and 5 refer to departmental specific skills.
You then also create a section for Energy Weapons (this refers mainly to your character as training for bofs is mainly done through leadership). Once again tier 1 is general training. tier 2 is pistols, rifles, or assualt, tiers 3, 4, 5 refer to energy types (like in space) some of this will effect bofs, but not much... mainly this refers to your characters training, and we assume bofs adapt to fit the captain's example.
Under that is a section for physical weapons. Tier 1 refers to Melee versus Mortars. Tier 2 would go into Grenades, Mines, Martial Arts, Martial Weapons. Tier 3, 4, 5 would would go into specific training for those weapon types (bat'leth, mek'leth, sword, pike, photon, plasma, etc)
From there we would have career specific paths, much as they are now only moved into this category. Separate from space skills. under these would have additional areas of study for your character ranging from basic medical training (like Thom Paris), to anthropology (Jean-luc Picard), to linguistics, to quantum mechanics, etc. These would provide small buffs and some additional ground skills, but would mainly represent the background of your character.
Like wise maxing some of the ground skills passives would give you an active skill. Like Phaser training you would give you a group buff "Set Phasers to Stun" that would cause all bofs next primary shot to act as a stun shot, regardless of their weapons specialty. Or under rifle training the ability to increase your next shots distance by double. These could also apply to stuff like anthropology providing a skill to do an area effect debuff (like a trap or a ward). The leadership one would allow for attack pattern commands with bofs (that could also serve as buff with other players) like telling your bofs to do a flanking attack instead of charging in with you. Or for them establish a perimeter around an area for good hold positions. Or to attack and retreat in order to lead the enemy into an area. Or even to lay down cover fire across an area. But mainly this is to equal out tactics on the ground versus space.
Travelling
I love the changes to Sector Space, but I would like to see them go further. First take away the boarder between most of the sector block. Nebula exploration areas you can just open up at large clouds, that you can enter like on the KDF side, or otherwise fly through. Also spread out the planets a bit more, I know a lot of people would hate this idea, but it is for scale reasons. Right not everything is scaled awkwardly and things look close even though they are supposed to be light years away. While in sector space make the minimal speed warp 1 (so no complete stops in sector space) (if you hit the bounder of the game world you drop to warp 1 and fly in small circles). You can drop out of warp, but that drops you into an empty star map area unless you are entering a system (if you approach a system you again slow to warp 1 and then begin to circle it until you enter or change course/or players can set it to auto drop out of warp). When you warp out you can either select a destination before warping out (which can be changed in flight) or you can just warp out and start heading somewhere at warp 1 until you change course and speed. With the boarders between sector blocks gone, allow people to fly until they hit either a faction boarder, or the game world edge. With the game world edge, make it far outside where current mission or located, even if there isn't content their it will make space fill vast. Also your bridge officers can let you know, hey we are approaching the boundary of where we are allowed to go for the Federation.
Right now exploration areas, like nebulas, are the only place to get random interactions or adventures. These should also be available, but in less a number in all sectors. So that way I can get a mandate to scan/explore anomalous reading in sector I have already been through. This will make each sector feel unique each time you travel through it. This would be great for distressed ships, or near conflict areas the secure system missions. Among many others. Also replace the DSEs as they are now with a more of a Final Fantasy type system, where as you are traveling you can get ambushed by various encounters. Either roaming enemy ships, curiosities, ship invasions (something invades your ship and you need to fight it on you ship) etc.
Not with these two paragraphs of changes plus the next one. It would open up the ability to do open PVP in the game world. As players could flag for PVP and then attack others flagged for PVP in sector space. When this occurs they would both drop out of warp into their own little instance to battle it out.
Create a separate hotbar system for traveling in sector space, different from normal space hotbars that are currently in game. The sector space bars would be switched to automatically in sector space and would have Transwarp Skills, Quantum Slip Stream skills, Maximum Warp skills (which would act like a lesser QSS), Scan Sector (which would result in various info: nearest systems, nearest encounters, nearest signal contact, anomalous reading, friendlies in the area, and enemies that are PVP capable in the area), an Attack Skill for PVP engagements, Diplomatic Immunity, and so on.
In friendly space areas (Vulcan, Earth, etc) make the areas larger. Like the entire system to explore. Also include various space stations and items for each system as well.
Expand the Federation areas to traverse around Sol, and further into the Alpha Quadrant (it is mapped, just not explorable atm).
Faction
I know this is stereotypical of most MMOs. But create a faction standing for each faction and subfactions. Like Federation and sub-factioned your standing with Starfleet, Sol, Vulcan, Andoria, etc. Klingon Empire sub factioned KDF, Orion Syndicate, etc. Romulan Star Empire sub factioned various Romulan groups. Cardassian Empire sub factioned Cardassia Prime, Obsidian Order, etc. Dominion sub factioned Jem'Hadar, Vorta, Founders, True Way. Also Deferi, Breen, Ferengi, etc as well. And for the Klingon Empire once you have reached diplomatic rank of Ambassador and have a Good or greater standing with the Klingon Empire you can play with any Klingon player who has the same for the Federation, including participation in Klingon cross-over missions (AKA this would allow Klingons who have reached this to do Fed missions and Feds to do KDF missions... not PVP though). This would also need some form of daily system to give factional missions (to either help or hurt your faction) ideally it should take several months to reach a Friendly status with a faction.
On a quick note... at the moment your space ship only exists in space while you are in command of it. If you beam to ESD or go to your bridge your ship stops existing in space. This is why atm you can only invite players to your bridge through the current system in place, and from on the other side of the galaxy. Why not, in certain situations, make it so the ship and player are separate. Example, if a player beams to ESD their ship instead of vanishing pull inside the space station (this would require a space station redesign with working doors) and when they beam out they exit (almost on autopilot) those doors and drift to a safe spot away from the space station. Areas like Vulcan would need to be redesigned to accommodate such ideas though. Deep Space 9 would be show the ship dock before vanishing (or maybe warping away) and undocking when the player leaves). Likewise, players (if they have set a course) should be able to visit their bridge while the ship is still traveling towards its destination. And when said destination is reached the player should be notified, and can jump back into space mode on a warp in. Ultimately this would need to be heavily worked on, but I think should be implemented for flavor.
Death and Death Penalty
Death system in STO currently makes no sense. Your ship explodes and you magically reappear with another one and the same crew... this has never felt right to me. Instead how about this. When your ship is taken down to 0% Structural Integrity (0 HP) you become Disabled. Disabled means your ship is set adrift (drifting away from the enemies area towards a respawn point), but not destroyed. You are presented with two options (not exclusive, as in if you take one you can resort to take the other). The first option being wait X amount of seconds and escape on emergency power. Essentially after a given time you respawn at a respawn point (much the same as it is now). Second option is to repair your ship, this would present you with a mini-game that would allow you to restore your ship and bring it online. This would cause you to respawn to wherever you have drifted to. You would come back with less then max health, but you would pop back to life near where you had been disabled. This option should take (if the player is good at the minigame) less time then it would for the player to wait out the clock escape and then return. This is what always happened in the shows, rarely did you see YOUR ship explode (not that that effect should be nixed, leave it in for storytelling). Furthermore at what percent of hull and shields and warp core power you are restored to should very based on how good you are at the game.
Now to ground death. This is done fairly well, player/NPCs become incapacitated. They can either wait for someone to rez them or re-spawn. My one complaint here is call it an emergency beam out (or site to site transfer) instead of respawn, and do a beam of the bodies to the respawn area.
Death penalty, currently you only get wounds or damage in Advanced or Elite mode. But why not add back in the original idea or crew death. When in a player is disabled in space in any mode of play they will loose a small (very small) percentage of their overall crew. This amount will be replaced with a photonic crew that are less effective to the ships overall performance. The percentage should be equal to the fact that a players can die dozens of times before any significant number of crew are lost. Also when they return to space dock (any of them) crew will start being replaced automatically, it just takes time for them to get replaced. This would force players who 'die' a lot to take a bit more downtime from their 'deaths' to recover and reflect. This would also mean player who regularly stop at starbases shouldn't worry regardless of how many deaths they have taken.
...
This is the end of part 1. These are just ideas I think should be looked at for STO. They would add to the feeling of the game and help make it into a better MMO. Other ideas are currently being worked on and look great. I love the game, and hope to see it continue.
Random thought, Google should buy Gamer DNA. Use it as an easy access variation of Steam or xFire. Instead of selling stuff through it use it track game info. Make it a free, fun social network for gaming. Light weight, and encourage games (MMOs) to build plugins for it. Track feats, and what players are working on and doing in game. They can share this info with their friends really quickly or have discussions on the site. Then sell the data of what players think and what they are working on a consulting process back to the game companies.
Star Trek Online's Foundry System
I play STO, I love STO. It has its flaws, but it reminds me of early EQ, not that I really ever palyed early EQ, but more that it seems like how early EQ would act based on what EQ is like now. Although new EQ servers are opening up showing off classic EQ. My point is that is a new system of MMO gaming and it feels new, unexplored, and adaptable to what players want. Essentially its like having a car that runs on urine rather then a car that runs on gasoline.
One thing that STO has lacked (and trust me there area few) is content. One can easily hit level cap with in 2 weeks, and anyone can hit it in a month. This creates issues, and these are issues that any MMO faces. How do you combat the fact that it will always take you (as the designer) longer to create content then it will for people to play through the content?
There are many issues to this. The easiest, but most costly is to hire more people. More people means more content being built, thus it will slow down how quickly players go through it. This is a stop gap as it only creates shorter period of play down time between each update. It doesn't fix the issue. A hardcore player will always rush through the content in the bare minimum amount of time. A second option, often used in conjunction with the first is to make an engine that is easier to build stuff in. While this is ideal this is incredibly rare, as the engine also needs to handle graphics updates, play style updates, nerfings, etc. Not impossible, but it still is a stop gap. STO has chosen to go with User Generated Content, UGC for short. They are calling this the Foundry system. Not bad, but it has to be limited. Although they are updating it in February to accommodate player demands. Essentially it works by allowing you to create single TV episodes of story. That's the best way to think of it, as once you do you find it easier to come up with and write ideas. If you think of it as your own dungeon creator you will be upset. So TV episodic content for STO it is. And the RP that it could crate is limitless. One major concern I have is filtering through everything and make sure it is all Trek and fits into what is trying to be built. I imagine Cryptic already their sights set on how to do this, and a review system has already been added.
I need ideas though. I have a few, but I need to brain storm about what I want in story for episodes. I may break out Google Wave and start a collaborative project on it. If Google Wave is still running, I hope it is.
...
It is, so I posted a wave to several fleet members with ideas and asked what they thought.
Maybe I should outline what I would like to see in Star Trek Online...
One thing that STO has lacked (and trust me there area few) is content. One can easily hit level cap with in 2 weeks, and anyone can hit it in a month. This creates issues, and these are issues that any MMO faces. How do you combat the fact that it will always take you (as the designer) longer to create content then it will for people to play through the content?
There are many issues to this. The easiest, but most costly is to hire more people. More people means more content being built, thus it will slow down how quickly players go through it. This is a stop gap as it only creates shorter period of play down time between each update. It doesn't fix the issue. A hardcore player will always rush through the content in the bare minimum amount of time. A second option, often used in conjunction with the first is to make an engine that is easier to build stuff in. While this is ideal this is incredibly rare, as the engine also needs to handle graphics updates, play style updates, nerfings, etc. Not impossible, but it still is a stop gap. STO has chosen to go with User Generated Content, UGC for short. They are calling this the Foundry system. Not bad, but it has to be limited. Although they are updating it in February to accommodate player demands. Essentially it works by allowing you to create single TV episodes of story. That's the best way to think of it, as once you do you find it easier to come up with and write ideas. If you think of it as your own dungeon creator you will be upset. So TV episodic content for STO it is. And the RP that it could crate is limitless. One major concern I have is filtering through everything and make sure it is all Trek and fits into what is trying to be built. I imagine Cryptic already their sights set on how to do this, and a review system has already been added.
I need ideas though. I have a few, but I need to brain storm about what I want in story for episodes. I may break out Google Wave and start a collaborative project on it. If Google Wave is still running, I hope it is.
...
It is, so I posted a wave to several fleet members with ideas and asked what they thought.
Maybe I should outline what I would like to see in Star Trek Online...
Dell Again
If everything I went through in November wasn't bad enough. About a month after they fixed my computer I got a call from them telling me that I owed them and/or to send back my computer because they had sent me a replacement. I didn't know about the replacement and investigated. Found out that it was an AlienWare, not an XPS was sent AFTER they fixed my system, which made no sense, and finally they had sent it to another city. So this can end one of two ways. Either they realize their mistake and stop bugging me or the drag me to court for a computer I never wanted, never ordered, and never got. So this is bad, this cosmically bad on Dell's part. Fearing the worst I talk to the Attorney General. Fill out some paper work with them about the situation, just in case Dell decides they want to exact a pound of flesh. That way I have something to point to and say "I brought this issue up before." I also did so in case it turns about to be a trend. My guess is if Dell has done this to one person they have done it to at least a dozen. This way the AG can mount a case against Dell if needed. Unfortunately this has lead to Dell calling and emailing me to the point of harassment. Which is pissing me off and may be something I sue over if it continues. Honestly I don't want any dealing with Dell. They fucked up, they fucked up bad. My sisters husband has always bought Dell's in the past, but after what happened to me he switched to another company (not sure what company), and says he is happier with their service then Dell's. Another friend of mine in California has said the same.
I used to respect Dell, admire them. But they have become a slowly falling giant. I don't want to be crushed so I am leaving now. I have paid down a lot of debt recently, and I am looking to invest in a $5000 machine once the warranty on this Dell is up. Looking to by from Origins at this point. This is for a couple reasons. First is the origin of Origins, they started off as part of AlienWare, but when Dell bought the AlienWare name they either were fired or quite because they didn't like the way Dell was handling the product (the first sign). They also boost lifetime free calling support, custom built systems to an extreme, and their support is all built and based out of the US. No more calling to India trying to convince them that I need help in between each mumbled word, also hopefully no more lost warranty requests and constant call backs.
I am looking for my next system to be a liquid cooled system. I haven't had a liquid cooled system before, but the noise of fans is driving me nuts, as is some heat issues I have had on my other systems in the past. My XPS is fine on heat, but makes a ton of noise. So much it wakes me in the middle of the night. So liquid cooled it is. Next I am looking at a i7 970 processor, of course who knows what will be out in 6 months to a year. the i980 is a better processor, and an overclocked 980 runs 33% faster then a regular one, shows how much Intel is holding them back. Also makes me wonder about motives for that, is it so they can charge more for overclocked chipset or is there a legitimate concern that causes them to limit processor speed? Anyways, the 980 and OC 980 aren't worth my money at this point. Any hex core will be faster then my current set up. All with that for both speed and safety looking to have a Primary and a raided slave as SSDs rather then HDD. More expensive and less space but I want to have them for speed. I also plan on having another 1TB or higher HDD for storage, I have an external now that I use a lot via USB. Next thing is GPU, I want SLIed cards, looking at two as there is a diminishing returns after two and thus having four is pointless. Three would be nice but not really worth the money.. not yet. I am not an ATI fan for two reasons. First I have noticed ATI cards cut out some pressure effects created in games. While this is not big, it is annoying and things tend to look cooler with them. I like running on max graphics and seeing everything. Also the nVidia chip sets have built in physics processing which will be big in next gen games. I am still debating a blu-ray burner over just a player. Physical media is disappearing and I haven't used my blu-ray burner in my current system yet. I do want HDMI out and multiple monitors. I need the HDMI to run to my TV, and at least two monitors. The issue with the monitors is from my deck having more then one will make it hard to see the TV... oh well this may jut be a simple rearrangement issue. I have a Razer mouse that I love atm, so no need for hardware there. But my keyboard is a G15 and I am not happy with it, honestly I have never been happy with anything Logitech I have bought, outside of the occasional headset. And even then happy would be a stretch. Someone recommended the Merc Stealth and I may invest in one on a new system. What Ireally want is a keyboard with the Ctrl 1 to = keys and Alt 1 to = keys as an extra row of keys by them self above the the normal number keys but below the f keys. Although ultimately I would like to see the keyboard go bye bye and replace with a touchscreen UI that customizes keys to program you are in. Then the hotkeys would be equal to what I see on the screen in a game anyways, infinite customization, and each game could have its own motif.
I am wandering off topic.
Anyhow my next system needs to be great, and Dell is longer great. So I am looking for someone else. Any ideas internet?
I used to respect Dell, admire them. But they have become a slowly falling giant. I don't want to be crushed so I am leaving now. I have paid down a lot of debt recently, and I am looking to invest in a $5000 machine once the warranty on this Dell is up. Looking to by from Origins at this point. This is for a couple reasons. First is the origin of Origins, they started off as part of AlienWare, but when Dell bought the AlienWare name they either were fired or quite because they didn't like the way Dell was handling the product (the first sign). They also boost lifetime free calling support, custom built systems to an extreme, and their support is all built and based out of the US. No more calling to India trying to convince them that I need help in between each mumbled word, also hopefully no more lost warranty requests and constant call backs.
I am looking for my next system to be a liquid cooled system. I haven't had a liquid cooled system before, but the noise of fans is driving me nuts, as is some heat issues I have had on my other systems in the past. My XPS is fine on heat, but makes a ton of noise. So much it wakes me in the middle of the night. So liquid cooled it is. Next I am looking at a i7 970 processor, of course who knows what will be out in 6 months to a year. the i980 is a better processor, and an overclocked 980 runs 33% faster then a regular one, shows how much Intel is holding them back. Also makes me wonder about motives for that, is it so they can charge more for overclocked chipset or is there a legitimate concern that causes them to limit processor speed? Anyways, the 980 and OC 980 aren't worth my money at this point. Any hex core will be faster then my current set up. All with that for both speed and safety looking to have a Primary and a raided slave as SSDs rather then HDD. More expensive and less space but I want to have them for speed. I also plan on having another 1TB or higher HDD for storage, I have an external now that I use a lot via USB. Next thing is GPU, I want SLIed cards, looking at two as there is a diminishing returns after two and thus having four is pointless. Three would be nice but not really worth the money.. not yet. I am not an ATI fan for two reasons. First I have noticed ATI cards cut out some pressure effects created in games. While this is not big, it is annoying and things tend to look cooler with them. I like running on max graphics and seeing everything. Also the nVidia chip sets have built in physics processing which will be big in next gen games. I am still debating a blu-ray burner over just a player. Physical media is disappearing and I haven't used my blu-ray burner in my current system yet. I do want HDMI out and multiple monitors. I need the HDMI to run to my TV, and at least two monitors. The issue with the monitors is from my deck having more then one will make it hard to see the TV... oh well this may jut be a simple rearrangement issue. I have a Razer mouse that I love atm, so no need for hardware there. But my keyboard is a G15 and I am not happy with it, honestly I have never been happy with anything Logitech I have bought, outside of the occasional headset. And even then happy would be a stretch. Someone recommended the Merc Stealth and I may invest in one on a new system. What Ireally want is a keyboard with the Ctrl 1 to = keys and Alt 1 to = keys as an extra row of keys by them self above the the normal number keys but below the f keys. Although ultimately I would like to see the keyboard go bye bye and replace with a touchscreen UI that customizes keys to program you are in. Then the hotkeys would be equal to what I see on the screen in a game anyways, infinite customization, and each game could have its own motif.
I am wandering off topic.
Anyhow my next system needs to be great, and Dell is longer great. So I am looking for someone else. Any ideas internet?
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