Romulan Ship Destruction

posted on August 18th, 2009, 2:00 pm

Okay, I was thinking about how Romulan ships use controlled artifical quantum singularities, and an idea hit me. First of all, wouldn't they lose containment when the ship was destroyed? So why not make the starship destruction for them some sort of crumpling effect, and leave behind a temporary hole in subspace that would disable the engines of nearby vessels, and the range would depend on the vessels size combined with how fast it could go. Is that good?

posted on August 18th, 2009, 2:09 pm

As a gameplay idea I think this is quite interesting. I think, to make it manageable though, you'd have to restrict it to warbrids really. Having small effect radius for smaller ships is fine, but it would make the holes far too commonplace and they'd soon get out of hand.

Also, you'd have to be careful about how debilitating the singularity is, otherwise you'll get a "C&C style" Scrin harvester problem, whereby players will actually tend to avoid going after the ships as targets for want of avoiding the negative after effect of doing so.

It's quite interesting as far as universe canon goes. Seeing as the quantum singularity can never be deactivated, it makes you wonder how Romulans decommission their ships, and also why, when they explode, they do so like any other ship.

posted on August 18th, 2009, 2:11 pm

Well i believe the idea surely need some of refinement especially concerning the realism of the effect, but oerall i really like it.  :thumbsup:

[mimesot]

posted on August 18th, 2009, 2:21 pm

Last edited by mimesot on August 18th, 2009, 2:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Syphadeus, your points are good, and I think that there are ways of avoiding the C&C effect. If i look at the last statement:

It's quite interesting as far as universe canon goes. Seeing as the quantum singularity can never be deactivated, it makes you wonder how Romulans decommission their ships, and also why, when they explode, they do so like any other ship.

You cant decomission a QS but it dissolves. It can be calculated that an adaequate blackhole of 4850 tons would approximalty last for only 1 hour. The QS woud have a diameter of 7*10^-12 nanometer. A small glowing dot in space.

posted on August 18th, 2009, 5:47 pm

Even if it has no effect on actual gameplay, maybe the explosion graphics could be changed to accomodate the way in which Romulan ships are constructed--and die. I think that would be quite neat in fact.. as right now, every ship blows up in the same manner, with bigger ships having bigger explosions... rather than different types of explosions (well, not withstanding the color).

posted on August 18th, 2009, 7:26 pm

For D'deridex-class warbirds, this would be really cool, whether or not it had a gameplay effect (which would have to be very carefully balanced).

posted on August 18th, 2009, 10:02 pm

yes, it's an interesting thought. i assume from the d'deridex we have seen blowing up during the dominion war that these dont leave a singularity behind. maybe the romulans have developed some kind of security mechanism when a ship is damaged or using some kind of security chamber that withstands the ships destruction so the singularity doesn't get out of control. i like the idea. a limitation to the d'deridex sounds also good - and even then that doesn't mean every destroyed d'deridex results in an out of control singularity.. i'll put up an entry on our internal 'ideas' list. i really like such details

posted on August 18th, 2009, 10:11 pm

And what about the Tavara with it's *cough* special energy source? Maybe explosion damage would be brought back?

posted on August 18th, 2009, 10:13 pm

yea i have some ideas for that. even Federation vessels were seen in the show to have more spectacular explosions once their warp core goes boom

posted on August 18th, 2009, 10:38 pm

Ah, most excellent

I can see it now, you put saucer separation in for the Galaxy... so just when the Galaxy is about to explode, the saucer "ejects" and then the stardrive section blows up and cripples the saucer 

posted on August 18th, 2009, 11:37 pm

Have I mentioned lately that I love this mod? 

[snu]

posted on August 19th, 2009, 1:14 am

Last edited by snu on August 19th, 2009, 1:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

maybe the romulans have developed some kind of security mechanism when a ship is damaged or using some kind of security chamber that withstands the ships destruction so the singularity doesn't get out of control.

just a thought... what if when a romulan ship is destroyed, the ship would implode but no singularity would be left behind because of those safeguards... but if you engaged the self-destruct, an overload could be created, bypassing the safeguards and a temporary singularity is left behind.
that way only larger ships could have the self-destruct and it could be an interesting strategy as well.

edit: woop, got a little comma-happy.

posted on August 19th, 2009, 1:19 am

Id like to see large vessel destruction have some kind of area damage....I love the idea of rumulan ships having adverse effect on space when the core breaches....what I would really really love to see is when an installation such as a starbase explodes that the resulting explosion has some sort of shockwave asociated with it that has an effect on vessels near it.

posted on August 20th, 2009, 7:02 pm

yes, it's an interesting thought. i assume from the d'deridex we have seen blowing up during the dominion war that these dont leave a singularity behind. maybe the romulans have developed some kind of security mechanism when a ship is damaged or using some kind of security chamber that withstands the ships destruction so the singularity doesn't get out of control. i like the idea. a limitation to the d'deridex sounds also good - and even then that doesn't mean every destroyed d'deridex results in an out of control singularity.. i'll put up an entry on our internal 'ideas' list. i really like such details

Well, i rather belive that the lifetime of the free singularity is even smaller hat that of an mass-equivalent Black hole. Lets assume this, and give the QS a small mass and it will dissolve shotly after feeding has stopped.

As canon sajs just it cannot be deactivated this is no contradiction, but much more realistic than an encapsulement that withstands the nearby explosion of TW to PW energies.

I would thus suggest that the QS stay at the place where the ship exploded for a size-dependent duration. E.g. 12 secs for battleships, 4 secs for cruisers and 1,5 seconds for destroyers. IMO the effect should not affet the engines, as the Impulse engines have nothing to do with subspace. Warp is the only thing prohibited by subspace distortion. The singularity should rather stay there and burn out, and damage nearby ships, brobably hiding them for being targetted as the radioation will surly overwhelm any sensors in range.