MDk

Yes, it is a form of energy transformation. Microwaves is a high energie radiation. The microwave engine would be a little bit compareable with a solar sail, where the microwave gun would replace the solar radiation. The problems of energy efficience and constant velocity would need some work to be solved. Especially energy efficence would be a problem because of a tripple energy transformation: nuclear fission into electrical energy, electrical energy into microwaves, microwaves into heat energy. Each one would cause a energy loss. But I can't remember very much details of the article, it is quite a while now, when I read this.

Ah, I see! When you are in Reshack open the Picture, then go into the taskbar under "action" and choose "Save [bitmap:...:...]". This way you can export the picture with the orginal color palette. But you can try decreasing the color depth in PSP first. You just have to see how it does look ingame.

The question about the solar sails is easy to answer: Yes, it is even possible to travel towards to sun arcording to this articel: http://www.planetary.org/solarsail/whatis.html A link for the microwaving engine I do not have unfortunally. I read about it several years ago in a journal in an articel about future technologies. But the concept of the microwave engine was quite faszination. For the engine you would install strong microwave guns against the direction you want to fly to. The emited microwaves itself won't have any repulsion strength. In front of the microwave guns you would install something like solar sails. Where the microwaves hits on the sail, they would create a plasma field which radiates so much heat, that a propulsion will be achieved. I think too, that this technology is quite futuristic. While it won't be a problem to create enough energy with a nuclear power core the costs of such a shipwould be this high, that a single country won't build something like this.

I feel relieved now, Admiral Fishface, that you understand what I meant to say. I was fearing, that my english isn't good enough to describe what I wanted to say. Well, now I am just imagining a SD using gravity slingshots... That will surely be funny. Stellar Magic: You are right, both speed limits does exist, but a SD is making less than 1% of lightspeed (EvilleJedi was talking about 2000 km/s). With this speed both effects won't be relevant. Eko: You are right, for deep space missions this won't be a too bigh disadvantage. If the probe is flying long enough the higher endspeed will be of more importance. But for example for a spaceship to the moon the ion engine would be nearly useless. As for myself I am waiting for the microwave engine to be realized, which would have a predicted top speed of up to 20% of lightspeed.

Well, I don't really understand, why (or how) you did copy and paste the original picture from Rebellion. Normally you should allready have the picture as a bmp which you normally should be able to load in PSP. Every new layer you import in this bmp should be adopted in the existing color palette. I might get you wrong, but what you discribe sounds like you did a screenshot or something and imported this into PSP. Of course the screenshot would be in a jpg or psp file format. Decreasing the color depth will surely work, but I am not so sure, if the bmp would be saved in a different colour palette than the game uses. (But I actually never tried this out.)

There you go, ONE spacecraft . How many "chemical" rockets/satellites have there been? Many more. Currently, the best effective method of speeding a deep space satellite along its way is with gravity assist. Ion engines show great promise, just like the first computer. But until you can mass produce them (to get the costs down) and get them in use, upgrades will be few and far between. Yes, I know that we don't massproduce them, but at least, we do have the technology to produce them. Allthough the ion drive has to major advantages, 1) Higher endspeed 2) Longer fuel reserve and allthough the production is not much more expensiv like a conventional engine, it still has two major disadvantages: 1) Slower acceleration 2) It needs nuclear power core. While Deep Space One was launched there were quite many discussions and protests against the start, because if the carrier rocket would explode a large area of Earth would be conterminated. I think that is the bigger problem than the costs.

Of course not all ships buildable from the beginning! But for example you can give the Corellian Corvette both sides on startup without a problem. As long you don't make to many ships builable by both side, it wouldn't unbalance the game, I think. I also found out by accident a while ago, that you can have more than 1 ship with a research requirement of 3 for example. This ships will be researched at the same time. Unfortunally, the game will only report one new invention, if I am not wrong. Anyway, it would be interesting to know, how many reaserch advances you can maximal set.

But we do allready have ion engines. Have a look here, please: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/exploration/futurespaceflight/ionengines.shtml

You are part right, Admiral Fishface. What I wanted to say is, that there actually is a speed limit. Of course you are right, that a rocket won't reach the speed of the propulsion gases. I was assuming a rocket with unlimited fuel as an idealization. In that chase a rocket would theoretical reach the speed of the gases (not practical). To come to your excample: If you are want to solve it about pulses, lets take mv=MV as you said. So, the maximum speed of the rocket would be V=v*(m/M). Because of m/M allways being smaller than 1, the rocket will never reach the speed of the gases, so the speed limit still exists. But pulses will only work, if the rocket will pump out all fuel instantaneous. Normally you must calculate the endspeed with an integral, because the the fuel is emitted gradually. I assume that the endspeed V will be somewhere between v*(m/M) and v.

Cool. It seems so, that I must download the model replace tutorial too now.

What happend to the colours? A sreen shot problem or did it happen because of the rebel ship you tried to build. Wow, this could open many new possibilities. I allways wanted the empire to be also able to build Nebulons and Corvettes. Then the Carrack an one of the Dreadnaughts could be replaced by something more usefull.

Well, I am a physics, but I am not good in english. But most things Admiral Fishface wrote was correct and is explaining everything, with one exception: There actually is a speed limit for ships: It is the speed of the particels emited by the engine. For example a nowadays rocket: The gases expelled from the engines have a fixed speed, so a rocket can never fly faster than this speed. A modern ion engine is emitting faster particels than a rocket, but the overall mass of the emitted particles is lower, so the acceleration of an ion engine is lower than the one of a rocket. So it is possible, that a Star Destroyer is as quick as a TIE if the SD engines does emit particels as quick as a TIE engine. But normaly a fighter does repulse more mass per second with regard to his total mass than the SD does, so that is short range. So the fighter has a much better acceleration and agility. For the sounds in space: You will never hear a explosion or engine in space, if you are not hit by the engines radiancy or the blast of the explosion, because sounds needs a fluid or gas to be transported. But soundless explosions an engines would be boring in a movie.

I actually never thought for a minute that this could be possible, but you inplyed something like this, Eko: Is it possible to make a ship buildable by both sides? I thought this would only work with planetary buildings.

You can cover your agents with another character or a special force. (I don't know if "cover" is the right english word.) Most usefull is the cover an able character with a cheap special force as a decoy, because decoyes are more often injured or killed in this missions than the covered character or special force. A decoy (no matter how good I think) does increase the success chance of an agent very much. Even if the decoy is killed, the agent has a chance of success. Of course the decoy must be able to be send to this mission, so you can't send a bothan spy on an sabotage mission. Did you try covered missions? If you want to incite uprising it is very usefull to sabotage all troops first, then characters, fighters and ships on that planet. Each one of this has an own mission detection rating, the more of them are there, the higher is the chance to have your mission foiled. If there are to many troop to send a sabotage mission, you can bombard the troops, perhaps blockarde the planet too, if possible. Next is to gain more planets, ships, troops while weakening the empire, until you are strong enough too capture Coruscant. Whithout Coruscant the morale of the empire will drop rapidly. Last thing would be to hunt down the emperor and Vader.

Of course it was bizzare. That is the reason why it was so funny. By the way, I don't think that was a science fiction film but a parody.

Well, the clone wars started with the upcoming of the clone-troops and the battle of Geonosis in Episode 2 and endet with the strike against the Jedis and Palpatines declaring the empire in Episode 3. After the battle of Geonosis several Jedis allready were dead, Grivous should have appeared short after this. I think it is the more practicabel way to change the Empire into the Old Republic with Palpatine and Yoda or Skywalker, the Rebelion into the Seperatists (they moved their Headquarter several times, as you can see in Episode 3). Sidious shouldn't be a character of the Confederation, because he ruled through dummies. Or as an alternative you could place Sidious into the Confederation and remove Palpatine from the Republic. This way the game would be about whether Palpatine is successfull to become regent of Galaxy aggainst the resistance of the Jedis. Or the third posibility: Remove Plapatine/Sidious completely, so it would be a complete war Jedis/Clones against Confedation troops.

Filmed in the UK... All right, I could have known this: The cars drove on the wrong side of the street.

I allways thought, it would be impossible to make a good film adopting this book; I was wrong. The humor did chance a little bit into slapstick, I think a little bit like Monty Pythons Flying Circus. But of course it is more suitable for a film this way. In my oppinion it is quite a very good film, perhaps not an oscar candidate but very good. By the way: This new film is it an UK- or US-production?

Pardon me, why do you consider Portman as one of the worst actors? All right, in Episode 3 she has a very poor part and very few scenes, so she could not impress very much, but in Episode 1 and 2 she did really a convincing performance, I think.

The Edar Spire looks very much like a frigate or corvette to me. It remebers me to the Tantive of Episode 4, a ship transporting important persons through the galaxy. I think the Ebon Hawk in an ancestor of the Corellian YT series. The design look very much like it, even the interior rooms. So I would say it is a small armed frighter. In the end movie I can remember three capital ships: The sith Interdictor class, and two republic ship, one called "the carriers" by Admiral Dodonna I think, the other one would be an escort ship, I am not shure if it is the same model as the Endar Spire and the Harbinger. Whether the sith escort ships are shown, I can't remember. Talking about it, I think it would be fun, to work on a KotOR TC, but I am not enough into modding to do very much on my own. Is there anybody out there, who would also like to work on something like this?

Well, to say the truth, I am not sure anymore, which of both will cause the right thing... You made me woundering. Perhaps someone is reading this threat, who can help out a little bit.

No problem, I did not take this wrong. I've been just joking.

Bah, Griffin! Don't make jokes about my english, or... Yes, uhm, well... Perhaps I will throw with little cotton-wool balls then. All right, in my oppinion to fire twice often you have to half the weapon firepower only. At least I think so, I did not try it because I have no executeable version of Rebellion installed at the moment.

I am not so sure about that, Griffin. An example: A ship with firepower 600 and a recharge rate of 100, will probably create each time unit 100 energy. So the ship will fire one blast creating 600 damage every 6 time units. If you half the firepower without changing the recharge rate, you will still creat 100 energy per time unit. So the ship will fire a blast of 300 damage every 3 time units, which would be still 600 damage in 6 time units. If you would half the firepower and double at the same time, the ship would fire a blast of 300 damage every 1.5 time units, which would mean the double amount of damage in 6 time units. Or is there an error in my logic?

Who do want to rule the world? This only brings much more throuble than it is worth. But an nice island where nobody gives you a strange look, if you are spending your time with cards.