ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY

Wow. We are impressed! It looks like the topic of gravity really drew all the backers together.

A lot of the responses were very interesting and detailed. We definitely had some fun diving into a deep wikipedia-hole following up on the research and principles mentioned. For example, did you know ‘physics’ is the study of ‘matter’ and its motion through space and time?

We culled through the list, highlighting some of the concepts that we thought worked best, and then sat down with Lead Technical Designer Dan Tracy to come up with a working unified Artificial Gravity theory.

Before we get into the specifics of that, though all of the submissions were invaluable to the process, we wanted to highlight some of the contributions we found particularly useful and enjoyable, but seriously,

There were some definite trends we noticed running through the submissions. A lot of you suggested incorporating gravitons (like the submissions from Erarem, Retro_Goon, DoctorD, and mampfer), utilizing Higgs-Bosons (like the submissions from Bartolome, Helmholtz, mux951, and Tel-kar) and integrating plating (like the submissions from Matt_Racer, Broon_Khavar, and SolegotSolus). Revive did a nice job of working the recent FPS demo into their response. Juicy had some interesting thoughts on piping. Kotrin did a wonderful job of outlining some core principles including why AG should be inexpensive and how latency might come into play. Mokuto had a fun name suggestion for the system. Geraintosaurus, RolandDeschaingun, KillEmAll, MarcusVaveleon, CageStorm, SteelTalon and Dragonish were all quite enjoyable reads. It’s been wonderful how many people have been submitting in-lore answers.

So, without further ado -

LOCALIZED ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY ( LAG )

PARTICLE GENERATOR – As featured in the FPS demo, the heart of any LAG system will be the core generator. This device converts energy from a power plant into gravitons(?). These particles don’t create gravity on their own, but instead are the fuel that allow the gravplates to do so. The size of the area that needs artificial gravity dictates the size and/or number of generators. A station could have a single large generator like Gold Horizon has, or could have multiple redundant generators. PIPING – The gravitational elements created by the generator are transported throughout the ship / station by a piping system. If the piping gets destroyed or cut off, the areas it is sending gravitons to would lose LAG . Also, if the generator stops producing gravitons, gravity wouldn’t necessarily shut off immediately. Instead, LAG would continue to be produced for a few seconds until the gravitons in the piping were consumed. GRAVPLATING – The gravitons are fed by the piping system into the gravplating that lines the floor of the ship or station. Constructed of a special material, the gravplating, when exposed to the gravitons, emits an Artificial Gravitional field (needs a name) that acts similarly to a natural gravitational field, but differs in a few key ways. One way is that the the thick hulls of ships and stations, designed to block cosmic radiation, also are able to prevent the AG field from escaping into space. In most instances, these gravplates are installed under the floor, but perhaps more industrial areas would use the gravplates as the floor itself.

As you can see, this is still a pretty rough outline, so the next step is probably one of the most important in writing:

Revisions!

What we would love is for all of you to take this week to suggest refinements, further ‘scientific’ details, and even background history and lore. Who invented this system? What does the generator actually generate? Does the piping have to be made out of special materials? Is there a different name you think we should use? Let us know what you think!

That will do it for this week’s Lore Builder. Please submit your ideas in the comments below. Next week, we’ll review your submissions and present a brand new topic for discussion.

Until next time …