Mass Effect Spaceships

[fdsa1234567890]

How would you model mass effect technology(as in the titular game) for spaceships? It would obviously allow contragravity, artificial gravity, and force screens as well as FTL, but I think the most interesting element is how this can modify space travel and cheat the rocket equation. Unless I'm missing something, ships can have higher than normal thrust and delta-v because their inertial mass is decreased. How can this be modeled effectively?

I'm thinking that you get an effective SM reduction for calculating acceleration and delta-v, though I'm not really sure how this should work.

Spaceships also has rules for a Negative Mass Propulsion drive, but this is not how it is done in ME.

[Varyon]

If something has a lower inertia but the same thrust, it's going to experience increased acceleration and you're going to see a boost in delta-v. Unless I'm mistaken, if something is functionally half its normal inertia due to whatever magic/superscience you're applying, it should get twice the acceleration and twice the delta-v. Basically, divide acceleration and delta-v by the ratio of effective vs true inertia. Of course, this relies on your voodoo inertia reduction not applying to the reaction mass you throw out behind you, as you throw it out behind you - if it does apply, you'll see no change in performance.

[warellis]

Originally Posted by fdsa1234567890

How would you model mass effect technology(as in the titular game) for spaceships? It would obviously allow contragravity, artificial gravity, and force screens as well as FTL, but I think the most interesting element is how this can modify space travel and cheat the rocket equation. Unless I'm missing something, ships can have higher than normal thrust and delta-v because their inertial mass is decreased. How can this be modeled effectively?

I'm thinking that you get an effective SM reduction for calculating acceleration and delta-v, though I'm not really sure how this should work.

Spaceships also has rules for a Negative Mass Propulsion drive, but this is not how it is done in ME.

It also depends on the thrusters being used:

A mass effect drive core decreases the mass of a bubble of space-time around a ship. This gives the ship the potential to move quickly, but does not apply any motive power. Ships use their sublight thrusters for motive power in FTL. There are several varieties of thruster, varying in performance versus economy. All ships are equipped with arrays of hydrogen-oxygen reaction control thrusters for maneuvering.

Ion drives electrically accelerate charged particles as a reaction mass. They are extremely efficient, but produce negligible thrust. They are mainly used for automated cargo barges.

The primary commercial engine is a "fusion torch", which vents the plasma of a ship's power plant. Fusion torches offer powerful acceleration at the cost of difficult heat management. Torch fuel is fairly cheap: helium-3 skimmed from gas giants and deuterium extracted from seawater or cometary bodies. Propellant is hydrogen, likewise skimmed from gas giants.

In combat, military vessels require accelerations beyond the capability of fusion torches. Warship thrusters inject antiprotons into a reaction chamber filled with hydrogen. The matter-antimatter annihilation provides unmatched motive power. The drawback is fuel production; antiprotons must be manufactured one particle at a time. Most antimatter production is done at massive solar arrays orbiting energetic stars, making them high-value targets in wartime.

The exhaust of fusion and antiproton drives is measured in millions of degrees Celsius. Any vessel caught behind them will melt like wax in a blowtorch.

Any long-duration interstellar flight consists of two phases: acceleration and deceleration. Starships accelerate to the half-way point of their journey, then flip 180 degrees and apply thrust on the opposite vector, decelerating as they finish the trip. The engines are always operating, and peak speed is attained at the middle of the flight.

And of course there is also heat management you have to dea with:

Dispersal of heat generated by onboard systems is a critical issue for a ship. If it cannot deal with heat, the crew may be cooked within the hull.

Radiation is the only way to shed heat in a vacuum. Civilian vessels utilize large, fragile radiator panels that are impossible to armor. Warships use Diffuse Radiator Arrays (DRA), ceramic strips along the exterior of the armored hull. These make the ship appear striped to thermographic sensors. Since the arrangement of the strips depends on the internal configuration of the ship, the patterns for each vessel are unique and striking. On older ships, the DRA strips could become red- or white-hot. Dubbed "tiger stripes" or "war paint" by humans, the glowing DRA had a psychological impact on pirates and irregular forces.

Strip radiators are not as efficient as panels, but if damaged by enemy fire, the ship only loses a small portion of its total radiation capacity. In most cases, a vessel's DRA alone allows it to cruise with no difficulties. Operations deep within solar systems can cause problems.

A ship engaged in combat can produce titanic amounts of heat from maneuvering burns and weapons fire. When fighting in a high heat environment, warships employ high-efficiency "droplet" heat sinks.

In a droplet system, tanks of liquid sodium or lithium absorb heat within the ship. The liquid is vented from spray nozzles near the bow as a thin sheet of millions of micrometer-scale droplets. The droplets are caught at the stern and recycled into the system. A droplet system can sink 10-100 times as much heat as DRA strips.

Droplet sheets resemble a surface ship's wake through water. The wake peels out in sharp turns, spreading a fan of droplets as the ship changes vectors and leaves the coolant behind.

[weby]

Originally Posted by fdsa1234567890

How would you model mass effect technology(as in the titular game) for spaceships? It would obviously allow contragravity, artificial gravity, and force screens as well as FTL, but I think the most interesting element is how this can modify space travel and cheat the rocket equation. Unless I'm missing something, ships can have higher than normal thrust and delta-v because their inertial mass is decreased. How can this be modeled effectively?

I'm thinking that you get an effective SM reduction for calculating acceleration and delta-v, though I'm not really sure how this should work.

Spaceships also has rules for a Negative Mass Propulsion drive, but this is not how it is done in ME.

Notes on building:

1) The ships should use the "airplanes in space" rules, as the ships in the cutscenes of the game seem to do airplane style turns, thrust always forward towards where they are going(no reverse thrust to slow down) and so on.

2) The beam weapons in the setting seem to be super accurate, like there is a tech information note on the missile/fighter defense system that says that it will never miss to start with, and only as it overheats does it start to miss.

3) The beam weapons seem way less powerful than the kinetic energy weapons in the setting so some switches are likely needed for that. Also the more advanced beam types do not seem to be in use. I can only remember lasers being mentioned.

4) Ships move very fast though things like star systems and yet when they crash into things they do not cause much damage, so the propulsion should likely have a pseudo velocity switch.

5) The ship force screens exist and are important, but not specified all that much, but it would likely be logical that they are similar to the personal screens that are effective against kinetic things mostly and seem fully ablative.

6) In some parts the FTL distance seems limited by fuel, but the narrative implies that it is very fast within those limits.

7) Contra gravity and artificial gravity exist but seem limited in the base applications. That is there does not seem to be any things like boarding countermeasures that switch rapidly between 0g and 3g gravity in an area. Also it does not apparently get used to help large ships land and the one gravitic vehicle we have in the games seems very limited in usability.

8) Heat management is stated as being a fairly large problem, so there should likely be a design switch for the overheating/using systems for coolants and so on.

9) FTL communication seems to exist and is instantaneous and high bandwidth. But it apparently needs infrastructure or point to point causality com that is said to be very expensive.

10) Larger ships are stated to not be able to land on planets.

11) FTL drives seem to go down to shuttle size and be simple, small and cheap enough that normal shuttles have them.

As to your question: The ships as displayed in the games do not follow the rocket equation in any way as they do not actually accelerate in a newtonian way, instead have a intrinsic deceleration if not actively thrusting. Thus they are best modeled with pseudo velocity drives.

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by weby

1) The ships should use the "airplanes in space" rules, as the ships in the cutscenes of the game seem to do airplane style turns, thrust always forward towards where they are going(no reverse thrust to slow down) and so on.

This is a cutscene/story segregation issue. It's mentioned several times in dialogue (and the codex, maybe, haven't played in a while) that they do need to reverse thrust to stop.

[weby]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

This is a cutscene/story segregation issue. It's mentioned several times in dialogue (and the codex, maybe, haven't played in a while) that they do need to reverse thrust to stop.

Could be, but also the ships do not seem to be weapons of mass destruction, so they do not seem to have the kinetic energy they should have.

Only things that I can remember as reverse thrust was a few seconds at one docking maneuvers as in "firing reverse thrusters" or similar a few seconds before docking, so it seemed more like a correction in the maneuver instead of a long deceleration from high velocity. But I could definitely have forgotten mentions of long deceleration burns from some point as the visuals are constantly reinforcing the airplane feel.