Spaceship Commander News

I haven't been heard from for a long time. It's because I was working on redesigning the equipment system for the crew members. The old system when all the equipment was "glued into the character" is a thing of the past, and now we can separately buy weapons and armor/armoured suits for each crew member.

However, there is a point - in order for a crew member to be able to put on an item, he must have the abilities (skills) to own this equipment. The maximum level for a abilities is 10.

At the moment, the following types of equipment and skills of possession have appeared:
- Standard armor (requires the skill "Possession of standard armor")
This includes usual body armor and some types of armored suits.

- Heavy armor (requires the skill "Heavy Armor Mastery")
This includes powerful and cool armor and exosuits.

- Standard weapons (requires the skill "Possession of standard weapons")
This includes light types of small arms, rifles, shotguns and submachine guns.

- Heavy weapons (requires the skill "Possession of heavy weapons")
This includes powerful and mighty guns such as plasma cannons, assault rifles or machine guns.



You can buy new equipment from the Earth Trade Fleet (i.e. at the player's station).
As for the crew members, they can also be hired at the player's station. Crew members now have a "specialization", which determines which skills a character have and how his skills will be pumped when level up (however, level up will be added in future updates).
Now you can hire several "pre-trained" crew members (so-called presets) - from an ordinary soldier with an usual rifle to a cool space marine with a plasma gun. It is important to remember that by buying a simple soldier, you will not (most likely) be able to put cool armor on him, you need to look at what skills he has for owning a certain type of equipment.

By the way, now each armored suit has its own resistance to various environmental conditions.
At the moment, there are already the following environmental conditions: heat, cold, lack of oxygen, toxicity. Each of the above effects has its own level (for example, the heat of the 1st level corresponding to 100 degrees Celsius or the heat of the 5th level corresponding to 500 degrees Celsius).
To fully comfortably and safely enjoy the views and beauties on the surface of Venus, whose temperature is around 450 degrees Celsius, which corresponds to the 5th level of effect "heat", you need a spacesuit with at least 5 level of resistance to heat. If the level is lower, for example 4, then the character will receive damage, although reduced. But a character without a spacesuit at all, who decides to walk around Venus, will instantly receive a lot of damage.


The following minor edits and improvements were also made in this update:
- The start of a new game has been fixed. How it works always and under any case. Previously, there were problems of which you had to restart the application to start a new game.
- A player database patching system has been created. So this made for the data structure on the current player database matches the one that was changed in the updates. Well, in case the patching of the player's database with his current progress does not go according to plan and a bug occurs - you can always start a new game, since this function now works flawlessly :)
- An ugly bug has been fixed when enemy characters "blinked" after being detected.
- The new player's crew members now have a normal, human name and not the name of his preset.
- Fixed the short description window of the item (popup) in the store. Now it stands in the right place and does not fall over the edge of the screen.
- The ship's power system is finally working correctly. If there is no energy, then the modules will be switched off alternately until the energy balance is ok. Also, now disconnecting a module that consumes a lot of energy will release free energy and possibly reconnect another de-energized module. By the way, it began to work well and correctly just thanks to the new equipment system.
- Fixed a possible bug when you can put a module that is installed on the ship in the shopping cart for sale. Now you need to uninstall it before selling.
- Fixed a strange and unpleasant effect when pop-ups near the cursor "lagged" behind it.
- Fixed a bug with incorrect image movement in the mini-windows of the unit preview (these are the windows that you see in the store when you selected an item or when the unit inventory is open). Now the picture moves smoothly, so now you can view the goods/units without suffering.
- Now, when a player destroys enemy units (characters, ships), he is given a reward - credits. Also, the amount of the reward is now displayed near the icon with credits.
- Added new hints when using some perks. For example, if you use the "heal" perk on a target that has a maximum hp.


I just keep working according to the plan :)

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The solar system and neighboring stars (radius 10 light years). Projection from above.


The number of stars filling the galaxy is just enormous. At night, we can see a maximum 2 thousand stars, although there are 400 billion of them in the galaxy! Consider the nearest celestial bodies within a radius of 16 light years. There are 57 star systems in this zone. Some of them are not single stars, but double and triple stars, so the total number of celestial bodies reaches 64. Also included are 13 brown dwarfs.

The closest neighbors


he closest star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri. The distance to it is 4.2 light years. This is a red dwarf, its mass and diameter does not exceed 10% of the solar. Proxima is a very "cold" star, the temperature is only 2700°C (the Sun has 5500°C), it emits little light and therefore it is not visible to the naked eye (0.0005 of the Sun's luminosity). It was opened in 1915. Despite the seemingly a "weak" of this star, it sometimes behaves like a real monster - the fact is that, like many other red dwarfs, Proxima Centauri is a flaring variable star. During flares, its luminosity can increase many times over and exceed the energy of solar flares by 10 times! The radiation from such a flare, which will irrigate the planets of this star, will be lethal.
Proxima Centauri belongs to the Alpha Centauri triple system, which also has the stars Centauri A and Centauri B. Are you already sick of these tautologies and oddities of astronomical names? :)
To put it simply, stars Centauri A and Centauri B are two cool and interesting stars that are very similar to our sun, they orbit very close to each other, at a distance of 29 AU. It is as if in our Solar System instead of the Sun there would be Centauri A and instead of Neptune there would be Centauri B. Proxima, is included in this star system, although it is distant from Centaurus A, B by 13000 AU. !
So, first fly to Proxima and from there already to Centauri A, B. Although in the game Spaceship Commander humanity first visited Centauri A, B (due to their potentially favorable conditions) and only then to Proxima (well, what to do near it ?) Although it has one confirmed planet (and 2 unconfirmed), its name is Proxima Centauri b. But I thought that this is not a very cool name and in the game Spaceship Commander it is called Rilotetu.
An interesting fact: a modern Earth spacecraft that go to a journey to our nearest neighbor Proxima Centauri will need 70 thousand years to get to it. This is if you use modern chemical engines. About engines, by the way, there was already an article.
The next closest star is Barnard's Star. Its distance is 5.9 light years. It is a single star, it is also a red dwarf star, but brighter and more massive than Proxima. The mass and diameter is estimated at 20% of the Sun. Barnard's Star is often named to as "flying" because it has the highest rate of angular movement across the celestial sphere of any known star. For 174 years, the star moves along the celestial sphere by 0.5°. It approaches the Solar System at a speed of 100 km/s. The star has one confirmed planet.
The last nearest neighbor is the double substellar system Luhman 16. The distance to it is 6.58 light years. Why is it a substellar system? Because instead of normal stars, two brown dwarfs live here.
Brown dwarfs are substellar objects becouse they are somewhere between a planet (like Jupiter) and a star. Their masses in the range of approximately 0.01 to 0.07 solar masses. In the depths of these "planet stars" thermonuclear reactions can be launched as in ordinary stars, but the power of these reactions is insufficient and they cannot reach a constant luminosity.
Despite their small mass (by the standards of stars), thermonuclear reactions can still occur in brown dwarfs, although this is achieved not due to the burning of hydrogen as in normal stars, but due to the burning of deuterium, which is quite small, and because of this brown dwarfs start to cool down quickly.
Due to the fact that brown dwarfs are difficult to detect, the first detections were as recently as 1995, although the theoretical justification for the existence of brown dwarfs appeared as early as 1963. Luhman 16 was opened only in 2013, due to its dullness. Brown dwarfs is detecing in the infrared spectrum, due to the large amount of heat released.
So, there are interesting neighbors around the Sun that are definitely must a visit. Both in real life and in the game Spaceship Commander :)

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This update added a apparat for gas collecting (gas harvesting drone). It is capable of extracting gas from cosmic gas clouds (gas concentrates), which can be found in space locations - gas and dust accumulations, which were also added in this update. For example, one of these locations is a huge gas and dust accumulation, which was formed from the powerful impact of the stellar wind on the planet Vreada, as a result of which part of its atmosphere was blown away.

To get the Gas harvester you need a special module - Gas Harvester Launcher, from which the drone is already launched, this can be purchased from the Merchant Fleet (i.e. at the home station). Such a module is installed on a ship in a genera slot.


By the way, you can buy 2-3 drone at once and then harvesting will be more fun!

Also in this update:
- Added a new product - nitrogen gas. Which you can just “dig” in a new cosmolocation.
- Prices for all gases have been changed - argon, hydrogen, oxygen and helium-3 are now cheaper.
- Fixed a bug when it was possible to enter a cosmolocation while already being in it.
- Fixed a bug when, while in a cosmolocation, a player gave an order to move to the same location and it turned out that he “left this cosmolocation” even though he shouldn’t have. Now there will only be a message “you are already in this location.”
- Minor corrections regarding the body filling visual of the Mining Drone mk1. Now the contents of the body disappear gradually when unloading onto a ship

Try gas harvesting as soon as possible, Commander!

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In the game Spaceship Commander ships have 2 types of engines: a warp engine, through which the ship moves through Star Systems and deep space at faster than light (FTL) speeds, as well as a standard propulsion engine, through which the ship moves after exiting warp mode, for example, at orbit planets or during a space battle. You can read about propulsion engines here

The warp drive on the ship is warping space


Warp drive, no matter how fantastic it looks, in my opinion, is currently the most "realistic" of all FTL propulsion concepts. Because the idea behind it seems to be the closest to realization at this science level of humanity and in general does not contradict the laws of physics.

The principle of work of warp engines (distortion engines) is to deform the space in front of and behind the ship. Space “compresses” in front of the ship and “inflates” behind it, while the ship itself is in a kind of warp bubble. Inside the bubble, the space will remain normal and the ship in it will actually remain motionless. The distorted space around the ship itself moves. And this “space movement” can be faster than the speed of light.

This may seem outlandish and far-fetched, but the fact is that it does not violate the laws of physics (although any such theory has its problems). If an object with mass cannot move at the speed of light (According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity), then there is no such restriction on the movement of space itself at FTL speed. Moreover, right now, in our Universe there are galaxies (very distant from us) that are moving away from us...faster than the speed of light! This happens due to the expansion of the Universe.

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Now about the problems of the warp drive theory.

Problem 1: to create a deformation of space that seems to “inflate” we need...exotic matter. What it is? Well, this is almost the same matter as ordinary matter, only it has a negative mass, something like -10 kg. If you push a ball made of exotic matter, instead of rolling away from you it will roll towards you. LoL. The problem with exotic matter is that no one has observed it in our time, but there are no fundamental prohibitions on its existence, and quantum field theory allows its existence under certain conditions. That's why I decided to allow exotic matter in the Spaceship Commander universe :)

Ordinary and exotic matter distorts space differently


By the way, there were studies that seemed to make it possible to form a warp bubble using only ordinary matter, where this was achieved by changing the geometry of the bubble itself and some other tricks, although the speeds obtained were sub-light.

Problem 2: It takes a LOT of mass to create the desired distortion in space. How much? Well, for a small ship, several solar masses would be needed from ordinary matter and the same amount from exotic matter... Although there were also calculations that reduce the mass by orders of magnitude. But still, to create a distortion of space, a huge mass is needed.

And here, in the universe of the game Spaceship Commander, a technology appears that is called a “warp catalyst”, this is a device that reduces the above problem with a huge mass to acceptable values. And now for an ordinary ship we need not a mass of 2-3 Suns, but, say, energy of several megawatts. Here we count not by mass but by energy, because roughly speaking, energy is mass, and vice versa. E=mc^2 and all that. But a few megawatts is certainly not a firecracker either, but the ships in Spaceship Commander have fusion reactors that are capable of generating that much energy.



The warp catalyst in Spaceship Commander allows humanity to travel at FTL speeds, which opens the way to other stars (and in a very short period of time). At the same time, the technological level of humanity remains at the “level applicable to current understanding,” i.e. There are no super-duper technologies here like teleporters, replicators and other hard equipment, and if there is, it’s a secret :)

Generally speaking, if you use technologies that are shown in many sci-fi films or games, it is very difficult to imagine how this should appear on the balance of the game. In essence, we would have to rethink all the sci-fi concepts that we have become accustomed to over the past decades. For example, in many games, ships can reach some unimaginable speeds, and in fact, if a ship can reach almost the speed of light, why all these lasers and other things? Just accelerate the ship to the speed of light (or so) and ram the giant station where the main rascal sits, that’s the end of the film... Therefore, the technologies in the game Spaceship Commander is which familiar to us. But with some modifications.

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What about the speeds reaches by the ship? Excuse me, the speeds of the space around the ship? Well, in the star system the ship flies at speeds of the order of 100 speeds of light. By the way, according to the game’s lore, we cannot fly at full warp into any planet or asteroid, because... they have their own gravitational field (and therefore themselves distort space). Work of a warp engine near objects with mass is not possible, therefore it is impossible to ram someone else’s ship or even a microwave at warp speed; your ship will simply be thrown out of warp mode.

As for flight to other star systems, warp gates are used here. Yeah, the gates also use warp technology. Gates do not teleport a ship or open a portal to another dimension; they give acceleration to a ship that has passed through it. In more detail, they charge the ship’s warp engine with a huge amount of energy that is generated in these gates (using the same thermonuclear fusion) and redirect it to the ship’s warp engine, after which it can “rush at maximum speed” no longer at a 100 FTL speed, but at 10,000 FTL speed or more. However, this does not happen in any direction you want, but only to other gates. This is due to the imperfection of navigation equipment. The gates are strictly tied to other gates (aligned along the axes, the distance between the gates is known up to 1 meter of error), the slightest incorrect orientation of the gates in space and the ship will be thrown out God knows where. They say sometimes the gates malfunctioned and some ships were thrown somewhere in an unknown direction at distances of light years.

Warp gate. Although they are more often called Hypergates, God knows why.


Many may have a question: can a ship perform a “dashing maneuver” in a space battle, warping directly behind the enemy ship? The answer is no, since there is a minimum distance traveled per unit of time in warp mode, so there is no such “cheating method”. Your ship will simply fly by, and for a couple of tens or even hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Again, in addition to the minimum speed, there is also an error in the navigation equipment - even an error of 0.0001 seconds when exiting warp - and you have already flown past your desired destination by many hundreds or thousands of kilometers.

So, warp drive technology is the best choice for sci-fi games about the future and space flights at FTL speeds!

The “Milky Way” Galaxy – is our home galaxy


The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy that contains the solar system and the Earth. Most of the stars in the Galaxy are concentrated in the galactic disk with spiral arms. There are two main spiral arms in the galaxy - the Centaurus arm and the Perseus arm, and two secondary ones - the Norma arm and the Sagittarius arm. Their angle of twist is about 12°. In addition to large arms, there are also smaller arms, such as the Orion arm. At the center of the Galaxy is a supermassive black hole - Sagittarius A*, whose mass is 4.3 million solar masses! Compared to other spiral galaxies, our Galaxy has a quite large mass and high luminosity. Also she's beautiful.
The diameter of the Milky Way is 105700 light years. The thickness of the Bulge is 3000 light years. The bulge is such a spheroidal densification of stars in the center of the galaxy, which has great brightness. The thickness of the disk of the galaxy is 1000 light years. The number of stars in the Milky Way is estimated at 200-400 billion pieces (and every star most likely has planets).

Structure of the galaxy. Side view to disc.


Our solar system placed in a small arm of the Milky Way called the Orion Arm. This is an area whose width is approximately 3500 light years and the length is 11000 light years. The Orion Arm crosses the Perseus Arm and then extends to the Outer Arm via the Perseus Transit. In fact, the Orion Arm here is a kind of bridge between several arms.

The Orion arm that contains the solar system


The solar system and neighboring stars (radius 10 light years). projection from above.


Perseus Transit


The Milky Way is in the Local Group of Galaxies, a gravitationally bound group of galaxies that contains the Milky Way and several other large galaxies such as the Andromeda Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy, as well as over 100 less massive galaxies.
The Milky Way is the second in the group in terms of size and number of stars after the Andromeda galaxy (the diameter of Andromeda is 153000 light years), but the masses of the two galaxies are comparable.
The Milky Way has more than two dozen satellite galaxies, of which the largest are the Large Magellanic Cloud (14,000 light years in diameter) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (7,000 light years in diameter).

Local Group of Galaxies


Andromeda is 2.7 million light years away from us, by the way, it also has its own "bros", it has about 20 satellite galaxies. After 4 billion years, the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy will collide and merge, resulting in the formation of an elliptical galaxy.

Some of the Milky Way satellite galaxies (Subgroup of the Milky Way)


The age of the Milky Way is estimated at 13.6 billion years. The Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago, that is, the galaxy began to form approximately 200 million years after the appearance of the Universe. It is believed that in the early Universe small dark matter halos formed from the primary density fluctuations. These objects collected the gas that filled the Universe and colliding with each other formed protogalaxies. 13 billion years ago, stars began to form in our Galaxy - until that moment it consisted entirely of gas and dark matter. The various components of the Galaxy - the bulge, halo, thin and thick disc - formed at different times in different ways.
During the formation of our Galaxy, the Universe consisted of elements that arose during the Big Bang - hydrogen, helium, their isotopes - deuterium and helium-3, and lithium-7. More heavier elements were mainly formed later in stars. Less than 4 billion years after the Big Bang the bulge was formed - star formation in it went very quickly and was completed in less than 0.5 billion years, which is why bulge stars have an excess of alpha elements compared to iron. At the same time, but over a longer period of about 1–2 billion years, a small number of stars formed in the halo. The disc formed later, by 4-5 billion years after the Big Bang, after which stars were formed mostly only in the disc, and a minority in the bulge. It is believed that the disc formed from the inner parts to the outer parts: in the inner parts, the characteristic duration of star formation was 2 billion years, and in the outer parts it was 10 billion years or more, which explains the gradient of metallicity of stars in the disc. The thick disc formed before the thin disc, and after the formation of the first, 8 billion years ago, star formation practically stopped for a billion years. 7 billion years ago, star formation resumed and continues at an almost unchanged pace, and stars form only in a thin disc.
The evolution of our Galaxy is influenced by the accretion of gas from outside, which compensates costs of star formation. Over the past 12 billion years, our Galaxy has not experienced mergers with other large galaxies - such a history of collisions is atypical and distinguishes the Milky Way from other galaxies. So, 11 billion years ago, the Milky Way merged with the Kraken galaxy, the mass of which was about 3% of the Milky Way mass. According to various estimates, this could be the largest merger apart from those that could have taken place in the early universe. There is also an estimate that the merger with the Gaia-Enceladus galaxy was larger and the mass of the latter was 6% of the mass of the Milky Way. It is believed that in the Milky Way there are, respectively, at least 20 globular star clusters, originally formed in these galaxies.
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In general, the Milky Way is our home, or rather it is a big house where our smaller house lives - the Solar System. And if someday we populate it completely, then we have "nearby" almost the same galaxy - Andromeda :)