Why cap-drives use the L1

Thanks Hot4. I might indeed ask Dread if he has a copy of that.

But, honestly... if you and GrandpaTrout don't know of any hard-n-fast rules for capsule jumping then I'm pretty safe in my minor techie stuff. The two of you are way more steeped in I-War lore (I-Lore ) than I.

Suppose an lpoint has the longest link when you jump in the direction of the "pole" of the rotation. So the earth - sun forms a disk with a pole down the middle. And the longest jumps would be staight up or down along that pole. And stars are tipped all crazy ways, so this forms a bunch of paths of links.

That's kinda what I'd arrived at. Due to the alignment of the 'plane' the jump can only be performed in one or maybe two directions.

What I'm looking for is an explaination of why a jump point would only operate 2 hours, and then be unstable for 22 hours (or 17 or 30 hours or any length of time in that area).

I've got the game feature planned out for that effect, and ways to make it tolerable for the player... I just haven't come up with the science to support it yet.

I'd wondered about a planet with an off-center core. A distinct wobble which would shift the L1 point... and do it in the appropriate time frame. But this is something I feel the technology level of EoC would be able to handle. It wouldn't shut down the 'gate'... it'd just move it over a little.

But no matter how the planet tilts or wobbles, the gravitic forces are the same; the L1 stays in the same location.

I'm chasing my tail. Does anything more reasonable come to mind?

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

Do you want one "odd" lpoint to exhibit this effect? Or a whole bunch of lpoints? I guess I am asking if this needs to be a very special case (more oddness tolorated) or a general rule, in which case more care is needed to avoid self contradiction.

If only a special case - then you could put two moons around that planet. And the gravity interaction messes up the "cancel" effect of the L1 point, rendering it useless. Except for a few hours when the moons align, and then create a super lpoint. Essentially acting as one huge moon. Because moons don't really orbit in EoC, you could set the time however you wanted.

You have a cool idea going. Just the existance of the thing makes you want to know what you will find on the other side!

-Gtrout

Thanks GrandpaTrout! That will work perfectly.

It is just one L-point which does this, and of course a critical one for my new cluster (I so love making things difficult ). The cluster resides on one side while the richest mining is on the other.

I hope to force a situation where traffic lines up to get materials and people back and forth across the link. A bottleneck and weakness... and something for factions to fight over.

Currently under heavy military control. "Busting" the L (my pet term for avoiding the lengthy queue lines) will get a pilot in trouble.

<Edited to correct my pathetic spelling.>

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

It sounds like you're on the right track with this thinking. But why worry so much about getting the science and tech right? I think your bottle neck jump point is a great idea and will be a cool game feature.

The climax to The Meeting took place at the remote SRF situated near the strangely wandering asteroid pair beyond the edge of the Momar system. The idea was to create a similar 'bottle neck' to yours; one that would make this a hard place to sneak up on and a tough place to find unless you had all the particulars about the unstable periodic L-point that these two asteroids would create from time to time on their way around the star. I didn't have much more than that...really. No worked-out formulae, no orbital mechanics, no clear scientific rationale as to why this should or could work this way for capsule space. Maybe I should have worked it out more, but I felt like I just needed enough to make use of that device for the purpose of the story. It may be that the story suffered because I did something patently stupid, but no one's said so yet. At least not to me. Anyway, sometimes it's OK to set it up a certain way for the purposes of what you want to do, and then let the uber fanboys sit around and argue the science of it later on. I seriously doubt that the creators of I-War had all the ins and outs of the physics of capsule space worked out before proceeding. I'm pretty sure all the volumes that have been written on the science of star wars and star trek are all post hoc, not premeditated.

Having said that, I enjoy these discussions, I'd just hate to see it become a blocking point for you.

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Hot4Darmat

Oh man... []

Hot4, I did not realize I was ripping off your idea! I must have picked it up unconsciously, because I 'came up' with the idea for the stuttering L-point about a month ago... after I'd read The Meeting.

I just reread the section leading up to the secret base and sure enough, you did the unstable L-point first. Even the time limit is very similar. Before I'd gone over it again I just had the vision of the mining rig guarding the jump point, and the marines high-tailing it back to the Redoubt under fire. The L-point feature kinda got lost in the action.

Sorry for that... I would not ever intentionally grab someone's idea and run with it without their permission.


<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

Hey Shane, don't misunderstand me. Don't fret one more second about whose idea it may or may not have been. I probably unconsciously ripped it off of somebody else anyway. I don't care if you came up with it before during or after reading The Meeting. I think it's a cool idea and you should use it in the mod, for sure. My point was just go ahead and set it up as an unstable periodic L-point for your mod because it serves the gameplay purpose you require, and worry about the scientific details later, in much the same way as others paste the cotton candy techie stuff on after the game's been built. It may be personally unsatisfactory to you, but at least the mod'll get closer to being done if you're working on it rather than thinking about it.

Trust in the great wisdom of the creators of the original Independence War to have an answer.

Also, talk to Cormorant about coding this kind of sporadically available L-point. He may have some pointers, as the Quarrelling Lovers and the SRF at the edge of the AC-24 system are featured in the first mission of his Liberation campaign mod.



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Hot4Darmat