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[Big Bee]

Hey, I was talking about the game with a friend and I was thinking how it was cool that the flux mechanic balanced out attacking and defending instead of just powering the shield and weapons like most other games I've seen, when it occured to me that flux is basically the same thing. So I was wondering why flux build-up and dissipation was used instead of energy that gets consumed and recharged.

I guess it is easier to keep track of a bar that goes up above a bar that goes down instead of just 2 of the latter? Or it's easier to explain soft/hard flux?

Sorry if this has already been answered, I tried to check if someone asked this before, but since flux is such a major mechanic I couldn't really find anything cause there are so many mentions of it.

[Grievous69]

From a gameplay standpoint, it's more interesting when there's a possibility of overheating (overfluxing) to make for risky plays, rather than a system that functions like a battery, and is merely depleted upon usage, which then recharges.

This is literally the same as in Mechwarrior, and I loved the system there as well. You have the option of unloading everything at once quickly, but you risk shutting down.

[Big Bee]

From a gameplay standpoint, it's more interesting when there's a possibility of overheating (overfluxing) to make for risky plays, rather than a system that functions like a battery, and is merely depleted upon usage, which then recharges.

This is literally the same as in Mechwarrior, and I loved the system there as well. You have the option of unloading everything at once quickly, but you risk shutting down.

Functionally, couldn't it be the same on that front though? Like, you can unload everything and use up all your energy so you shut down for a while to recharge, like when you overflux?

[Grievous69]

From a gameplay standpoint, it's more interesting when there's a possibility of overheating (overfluxing) to make for risky plays, rather than a system that functions like a battery, and is merely depleted upon usage, which then recharges.

This is literally the same as in Mechwarrior, and I loved the system there as well. You have the option of unloading everything at once quickly, but you risk shutting down.

Functionally, couldn't it be the same on that front though? Like, you can unload everything and use up all your energy so you shut down for a while to recharge, like when you overflux?

I guess, this way just feels more natural I suppose. Usually in real life situations, when something completely runs out of power that it shuts down, it cannot get power back without some help. Of course when we're talking about spaceships, you can make up any sane response to such situations (ship used emergency generator to power up, etc.).

Now for the specific reason why Alex went with the heat mechanic, instead of the reverse, battery, that can only be answered by him. Or maybe someone digs up a thread from 2013 who knows.

[Histidine]

Among other things the whole hard/soft flux thing wouldn't work with energy or heat, yeah. Not sure what the concept of active venting would translate to with energy either.

[CapnHector]

Obviously you could just have energy = 1 - flux but you would need a lot more hand waving for the immediate quick recharge than for venting something.

Flux is very puzzling as it has these attributes:
1. It is increased by firing all kinds of weapons including seemingly chemically powered ones like Hellbore
2. It is also increased by using shields
3. It is not increased by the ship hull temperature changing (impacts, [SUPER REDACTED])
4. When there's too much of it it causes visible lightning arcs and temporarily disables ship systems
5. It can be vented and appears gaseous

Any physics, chemistry person or engineer have ideas about what it might be? My guess would be some kind of advanced coolant used to handle heat and electricity buildup in combat, which has some undesirable properties (takes on states that require special procedures to get rid of ie. hard flux under certain conditions, can cause powerful electric discharges when absorbing too much temperature/ electricity)

But if you want a real head scratcher, how about why do some carriers seemingly have flight decks with runways IN SPACE

(I am not actually opposed to this practice as I think Starsector carriers look exceptionally awesome, I wish they were better so I would have a reason to use them)

[smithney]

Any physics, chemistry person or engineer have ideas about what it might be? My guess would be some kind of advanced coolant used to handle heat and electricity buildup in combat, which has some undesirable properties (takes on states that require special procedures to get rid of ie. hard flux under certain conditions, can cause powerful electric discharges when absorbing too much temperature/ electricity)

But if you want a real head scratcher, how about why do some carriers seemingly have flight decks with runways IN SPACE

(I am not actually opposed to this practice as I think Starsector carriers look exceptionally awesome, I wish they were better so I would have a reason to use them)

Would somebody do me a favor and edit the following picture into an image of provost Baird with the caption "IT'S SPACE MAGIC, IT AIN'T GONNA EXPLAIN ***"?

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Hiruma Kai]

To understand flux, you need to understand the difference between hard flux and soft flux, and how shields and phase coils work, since while shields and phase coils are in operation, hard flux cannot be dissipated, while soft flux can.  Given no real world physics is going to let you describe a phase coil or shield operation, trying to describe flux in real world physics/chemistry concepts is going to fail.

It's a game concept that let's you have the same energy bar handle incoming damage and outgoing damage, while not having a straight up dissipation vs incoming damage comparison making some ships immortal.

[Killian]

I think a passable analogy would be to say that it's probably something akin to a static electrical charge, but even that is putting it in very crude layman's terms that would probably give an in-universe physicist a headache.

[Brainwright]

My head canon is that flux is the gap between power generation and power distribution.  Supposedly, these ships use antimatter for fuel, and that means they have near infinite energy, right?  Technically, but that energy needs to be transmitted to the rest of the ship without turning the whole thing to molten slag, so you have limitations in energy storage (cap) and energy transmission (vents).

Using equipment depletes cap until it can't provide the voltage necessary to run systems, which is an overload state.  Systems must shutdown or suffer a brownout.  Engines still work because they're probably directly connected to the main reactor.  They're a capacitor unto themselves.

Hard flux is from effects that must draw on more power in addition to normal running to be dispelled.  It's basically an external capacitor sucking energy from the system.  You need to drawn down power consumption on the equipment to dispel this additional effect without frying the equipment.

It's distributed power storage system that isn't really in use in contemporary systems that have dedicated storage for each device.  Technically, much more useful.

Or at least it could be that.

[CapnHector]

The most puzzling thing to me is why firing plain old antiquated guns using what appear to be chemical propellants would increase flux, since the firing does not consume electricity or require energy transfer (probably, since several gun descriptions describe shells used and clouds of fire are ejected which seems to imply they work like guns in our universe). This would work if flux is heat but that is not consistent with other observations.

But here's another theory: flux is a byproduct of the new physics that produce shields. And shields are used not only to protect against external threats, but also within guns. E.g. a local force field is used to direct the explosion of the propellant entirely away from the ship somehow within the Hellbore cannon, so that heat does not build up within the gun barrel.

I mean if we could produce force fields and had practically unlimited energy they would probably be ubiquitous. Like you would sit on them, sleep on them and eat off them instead of bringing furniture on a spacecraft.

Of course this raises the question of why the gun would need a barrel in the first place at all, instead of just the barrel shaped force field. Or propellant, since if the force field can produce the opposite force of the explosion then why not use the force field itself to accelerate the shell instead of bringing chemicals on a spacecraft. Yeah, maybe it's not this.

[Mazrim]

Eh, I treat Flux as 'Heat by another name.'


This _might_ surprise you but them chemical reaction guns do generate immense amounts of heat.

[CapnHector]

Eh, I treat Flux as 'Heat by another name.'


This _might_ surprise you but them chemical reaction guns do generate immense amounts of heat.

Yes heat would be consistent with chemical propellants increasing flux but the problems with heat are
- hull impacts do not increase flux
- engines do not increase flux
- what is a heat overload and why does it produce lightning and disable said guns
- what is hard heat?

[SCC]

In the grim darkness of the cycle 0,206k, space ships run on marketing buzzwords.

[CapnHector]

Alright try this on for size

- At some point in human history, a physics breakthrough made anti -gravity relatively trivial (maybe the same one that lead to hyperspace, gravitons are somehow swapped with their inverse hyperspace companion or something)
- However, the anti-gravity field can only be manipulated relatively crudely, so people sleep on beds in ships and not on gravity fields, as indicated by the hull mod art, despite ships not being rotating, as they have a local artificial gravity that is relatively crude. This is also how wormholes and gates to hyperspace came about. Also carriers have runways because fighters actually land on them due to artificial gravity that affects the whole ship and can't be turned off for just the hangar.
- shields are a combination of anti-gravity to block projectiles and a superhot plasma contained in a magnetic field to block light and radiation
 - flux is spacer shorthand to describe the state of the flux medium, a coolant used by ships to dump heat and static electricity
- soft flux is heat and hard flux is static electricity
- venting flux means dumping the flux medium into space and opening a new can of it
- the flux medium dissipates static electricity by a radiation mechanism, so it can't be dissipated when shields are up due to the plasma preventing the radiation from leaving
- when the flux medium accumulates too much heat or charge it loses its capacity to contain a static electrical charge, leading to discharges that disable the ship temporarily
- the hull and engines are essentially vacuum gapped from the inner hull containing the systems so hull and engine heat is not transferred to the inner hull in the space of normal combat, which is why impacts and engines do not affect flux
- the external hull and engines are made of a material that is extremely heat resistant and the external hull is critical to the structure of the ship, so in practice only external hull structural integrity is a concern in combat

Note: author only knows the M of STEM so have mercy if he can't tell physics from fantasy