Sci-Fi?

Egofreaky · Post by **Egofreaky** » 04 Jul 2007 07:03

I've been playing TT on and off since the 90s, and I've been going through all the extra GRF packages people have made (you guys are awesome! I love this stuff so much), but I've noticed that all of it seems to be pretty much based on what's extant.

I'm wondering, other than the Mars conversion for Toyland, are there and Sci-Fi packages? Buildings, vehicles, etc?

It makes me kind of sad that the vehicles all seem to peter out around 2005, and here we are in 2007!

XeryusTC · Post by **XeryusTC** » 04 Jul 2007 09:53

There was a future set in the making, I don't know what is currently going on with it though. Maybe you can find it in the TTDP graphics section.

Red*Star · Post by **Red*Star** » 04 Jul 2007 12:23

There was also a moon set planned. But unfortunately it never got further that the outline state.

Zephyris · Post by **Zephyris** » 04 Jul 2007 12:31

Are you interested in entire sci-fi themed climates, or simply more futuristic vehicles?

DeletedUser21 · Post by **DeletedUser21** » 04 Jul 2007 12:56

There is always the Mars Conversion .grf.

Egofreaky · Post by **Egofreaky** » 05 Jul 2007 12:18

Zephyris: A little of both really. Total conversions are always cool, and a joy to play, although I know it'd be a pain in the butt making all the graphics and everything from scratch.

Newer vehicles that happen after 2020 would be good though. Surely there'd be more developments with the MagLevs.
Honestly, I can think of one a couple now:

Vaccuum Tube Trains - Without wind resistance, and no friction because there's no contact, those babies could easily get up to about 1,500kmh.
Orbital drops - Take it up on a launch tower, park it in orbit, and wait for the Earth to spin into the right position. When that happens, let the orbit decay and have it drop down to where it needs to go, or meet up with the next launch tower and transport by vehicle from there. After you built the tower, transport costs drop to pretty much just an asbestos parachute.

doghousedean · Post by **doghousedean** » 05 Jul 2007 14:27

I swear i've seen on google news' sci/tech page a while back a technology that could transport things through air, of course it was a complex object (single selc organism that sort of thing) and it only went a small distance.

this could be done and the farther the 2 transporters the longer it takes to charge up or summat!

Vacume trains could work tho, all you need is to make a "track" out of the tubular tunnel graphics.

nezzybaby · Post by **nezzybaby** » 05 Jul 2007 15:19

ARGH just made a massive post with loads of suggestions and got told it was automatically generated so lost it grrrrrr

Right lets try to remember what the hell i was saying.

Basically orbital drop would be difficult to integrate in any coherent way in the game. However Rocket sleds Vacuum tube trains and scramjet aircraft would all be quite feasible.

My suggestion would be to have two new Maglevs up to 1000km/h
Replace monorail track with vacuum tubes and have maybe 4 vacuum trains at speeds from 500km/h to 1500km/h. Have rocket sleds which can run on regular tracks with speeds up to 2000km/h. And have scramjet aircraft ranging from mach 3 to mach 10 (3600 - 12000km/h). With the last scramjet arriving in 2100 or later.

The new vehicles would be extremely expensive, and only work effectively when running at maximum capacity on a very large track. Rocket sleds would have massive deccelerations through corners, and would only work for freight. Also rocket sleds would require the engine at the back of the train rather than start.

Im saying this with no ability to actually create them myself. Whilst i could probably handle the programming, my art skills are appaling.

For those interested in designing these vehicles, the following pictures may help

X43 the unmanned vehicle which achieved mach 10:

Vacuum trains:

Rocket sled at 1200Km/h:

Oh yeah one final thing capacities for scramjets would be very low, maybe as small as 15 passengers for first models and maybe 100 for most modern one.

Quinnyowns · Post by **Quinnyowns** » 05 Jul 2007 16:31

doghousedean wrote:I swear i've seen on google news' sci/tech page a while back a technology that could transport things through air, of course it was a complex object (single selc organism that sort of thing) and it only went a small distance.

this could be done and the farther the 2 transporters the longer it takes to charge up or summat!

A while back scientists managed to teleport a calcium atom < 2mm IRL, but that's about as far as the technology is at the moment

Killer 11 · Post by **Killer 11** » 05 Jul 2007 19:03

I can render sci-fi stuff and I know kinda know how to make the stuff 32bpp compatible BUT I specialise on warships so i don't know how would I do with civilian craft.
Also there is a Terran Battlescruiser grf with company colours and the right stats somewhere in the forum(use search function) it goes into action in late years and is a high capacity air vehicle.

There is another Starcraft shipset but it doesn't even come close to the quality of the battlecruiser grf as they are made from screenshots and the battlecruiser is made from exported sprites.

I hope i was of any help here

RainierWatcher · Post by **RainierWatcher** » 05 Jul 2007 19:54

Killer 11 wrote:I can render sci-fi stuff and I know kinda know how to make the stuff 32bpp compatible BUT I specialise on warships so i don't know how would I do with civilian craft.

I wonder how hard it would be to make a TARDIS grf? high capacity, near instant travel, might not end up in the right era though.

Bilbo · Post by **Bilbo** » 05 Jul 2007 22:15

nezzybaby wrote: My suggestion would be to have two new Maglevs up to 1000km/h

Air drag will make so fast maglevs quite inefficient ... aircrafts achieve these speeds too, but at higher altitude with much lower air density. 1000 km/h at surface level is quite impractical.

However the vacuum tube would be good idea, I suggested that too ... theoretically, if the tube would be really vacuum, the speed could be quite unlimited (no drag, so you can accelerate as you wish), so only technological limit will be by track curvature and safety ... so 500-1500km/h will do fine I think .... The proposal for transatlantic tunnel mentioned speeds 6000-8000km/h (1 hour between New York and London. Train beat aircraft again

Rocket sleds are IMHO way too impractical for normal travel. Very high noise, large fuel consumption, risk of igniting anything near the track ... Nope. Bad idea to have them. These are used mainly for various experiments where you have to hurl something at high speed somewhere...

nezzybaby wrote: Replace monorail track with vacuum tubes and have maybe 4 vacuum trains at speeds from 500km/h to 1500km/h. Have rocket sleds which can run on regular tracks with speeds up to 2000km/h. And have scramjet aircraft ranging from mach 3 to mach 10 (3600 - 12000km/h). With the last scramjet arriving in 2100 or later.

Scramjet aircrafts will be nice complement on large maps, alhough "effective distance" (the distance for the plane to be most profitable according to cargo payment rates) for concorde (about 2300 km/h) is 10000 square, so scramjets would be good once even larger maps will be made possible (now the limit is 2048x2048)

nezzybaby wrote: Oh yeah one final thing capacities for scramjets would be very low, maybe as small as 15 passengers for first models and maybe 100 for most modern one.

Hmmm ... so they should have at least decent acceleration to be able to perform somewhat comparatively to ordinary aircrafts ...

RainierWatcher · Post by **RainierWatcher** » 06 Jul 2007 06:59

Rocket sleds are IMHO way too impractical for normal travel. Very high noise, large fuel consumption, risk of igniting anything near the track ... Nope. Bad idea to have them. These are used mainly for various experiments where you have to hurl something at high speed somewhere...

I think there was an idea once to build a huge railgun type thing to launch cargo into sub orbital or even orbital flight. Now that would be fun. Mainly cargo due to the massive acceleration needed.

Egofreaky · Post by **Egofreaky** » 06 Jul 2007 08:20

heheh Railgun to orbital to drop point... that'd be cool.

But yeah, I think the most easily implemented of all of these would be the VacTubeTrains and scram jets. Most of it already exists, so you'd just have to make a faster plane and train set, right?
I don't see the worry with map sizes, I mean, as it is, 2048x2048 is HUGE!
It still took my Yate about 2 minutes to go from one end to the other, so even double it's speed (it's like 2,300 kmh, right?) and you'd have a trip that takes a while.

To really make something like this work nicely though, you;d have to tamper with the subsidies programing, so second or third tier industry (goods, etc) would enable subsidies to towns MUCH further away than the local one.

On a realistic note, a MagLev was proposed for Melbourne, to go from the city to the airport (23km)... It was scrapped as being too expensive and stupid (it'd save 4 minutes on trip times, as they intended to have stops on the way... WTF?!). Because it was scrapped, no other public transport to the airport has been brought up since.
The same consortium then proposed a MagLev track from Melbourne to Perth (about 3,400km). It was objected to by our local air carrier (Qantas) and the plan was never heard of again...

nezzybaby · Post by **nezzybaby** » 06 Jul 2007 10:55

Bilbo wrote: Hmmm ... so they should have at least decent acceleration to be able to perform somewhat comparatively to ordinary aircrafts ...

I've been trying to do a few calculations on acceleration. The X-43 was launched from a pegasus rocket which achieved mach 3 in about 8 seconds, then the scramjet kicked in and flew for a total of 10 seconds up to a speed of mach 10, assuming it only achieved its top speed at the very end of the flight (i can't confirm this), then the acceleration can be aproximated to 0.5 machs a second, or 600km/h/s. In other words the acceleration is ludicrously fast and should be useful against regular aircraft.

I realise rocket sleds are incredibly unrealistic, but who knows by 2100 they may be economically viable. Im just trying to suggest things that would be faster than maglevs and still be tracked. They are of course primarily used to test warheads, but they are the fastest tracked vehicles ever made which is why i suggest it.

nezzybaby · Post by **nezzybaby** » 06 Jul 2007 11:30

The world record for a rocket sled is mach 8.5 btw !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so i dont think a maglev running at less than a mach is actually that unrealistic, the air resistance can probably be easily overcome

Killer 11 · Post by **Killer 11** » 06 Jul 2007 11:55

Egofreaky wrote:heheh Railgun to orbital to drop point... that'd be cool.

That would be so uncool if terrorists would hijack it and turn it into a massdriver... seriously do you realise just how much damage it could cause?

RainierWatcher · Post by **RainierWatcher** » 06 Jul 2007 12:41

Killer 11 wrote:
Egofreaky wrote:heheh Railgun to orbital to drop point... that'd be cool.
That would be so uncool if terrorists would hijack it and turn it into a massdriver... seriously do you realise just how much damage it could cause?

It'd be damn difficult to adjust the trajectory, as it would be huge. Plus I think the ideal location was in Antarctica, but it has been ages since I saw the idea. Drop pods though, would be neat.

Killer 11 · Post by **Killer 11** » 06 Jul 2007 16:01

RainierWatcher wrote:
Killer 11 wrote:
Egofreaky wrote:heheh Railgun to orbital to drop point... that'd be cool.
That would be so uncool if terrorists would hijack it and turn it into a massdriver... seriously do you realise just how much damage it could cause?
It'd be damn difficult to adjust the trajectory, as it would be huge. Plus I think the ideal location was in Antarctica, but it has been ages since I saw the idea. Drop pods though, would be neat.

Just make sure you hit an ocean with something big, the cunami would do the rest

RainierWatcher · Post by **RainierWatcher** » 06 Jul 2007 18:18

Killer 11 wrote: Just make sure you hit an ocean with something big, the cunami would do the rest

Going further off topic but, you need something really big to make a tsunami. However, I'd consider aiming it at that island near Tenerife that might then fall into the sea, drowning all of the east Coast of america, prompting Bush to declare a "war on nature".

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