The Magnetic Field Device - Your Solution to Asteroid Manipulation

[Landar]

(Cross-posted from reddit)

Here's an idea for a very simple yet powerful device: The Magnetic Field Device.

Basically, the Magnetic Field Device is the ore collector's bigger and more powerful brother. It would have the ability to attract or repel asteroids en masse within its range, and the device's power consumption would scale with both range and attraction/repulsion strength. Repulsion and attraction can be switched via a simple boolean in the device fields. Cargo-locked asteroids as well as those caught within tractor beams would be unaffected by the field to prevent any clang shenanigans.

• Asteroid repulsion fields will allow for more elegant anti-collision systems than the current method of sticking on a wall of rangefinders (which I find really ugly imo). Why dodge out of the way like a coward when you can take things by the reins and just shove the asteroids away? Due to the device's high power consumption, large ships will still have to compensate for their prodigious girth with equally high power generation, but since the range and power of the device can be adjusted freely at the cost of power consumption, this also scales nicely with smaller ships.
• Asteroid attraction makes for a much more powerful, but less dexterous form of asteroid manipulation than tractor beams. This makes it useful in combination with them for quickly and efficiently moving asteroids where you want them. Use the attraction field to get an asteroid within proper range, then use tractor beams for more fine manipulation.
• Creative enough endos might even be able to find even more usages for asteroid manipulation than the ones I've been able to come up with here. I'd imagine that coordinating enough repulsion fields to effectively create an asteroid railgun would be equally hilarious as it would be destructive. On the other hand, with the ability to attract and repulse, something as absurd as asteroid Rocket League might even be a possibility.
• Such as device would be incredibly simple to implement, as it would only involve the application of force vectors; the physics engine can handle the rest. Other than the creation of a 3d model for it and maybe some fine-tuning on the specific numbers, there isn't really much else overly complicated going on here.

Something, something, thanks for reading and all that.

Cheers,
-Lan

 

[MCwrath]

Absolutely like this idea! This would create so much options for mining ships or even ships that 'pave a way through an asteroid field' for a convoy.

 

[anton_stezhkin]

We have tractor beams. They can move asteroids around.

 

[Landar]

We have tractor beams. They can move asteroids around.

The use cases for the tractor beam and the device I've proposed are very different, though. From what I've seen, the tractor beam is meant more for grabbing asteroids and pulling them closer to either cargo lock or use a mining laser on them. The magnetic field device would be able to both repel and attract asteroids, which makes it useful for things like collision avoidance and pulling in asteroids in an omnidirectional manner, among the other uses I've described in the original post.

Either way, however, the device is meant to be more of an upgrade to both the ore collector and the tractor beam, and the high power consumption of the device reflects that.

 

[anton_stezhkin]

The magnetic field device would be able to both repel and attract asteroids.

Oh! I see. that makes sense. Still, there is no need for separate device (design, artwork, testing... ). Moving in any direction can be achieved with a minor code modification of the existing tractor beam.
Now the ":tractorBeamForce" field varies from 0 to 50 000. The devs could change the limit to min -50 000, max 50 000. The negative beam force will repell the grabbed object. The power consumption of the device should be evaluated by absolute value of the force ofcource, otherwisre it will produce power.
This will make everyone happy. The ones who alredy have tractor beams get more freedom, the devs make a quick and player-appreciated update, and the ship-designers will not have to worry where to put an extra device and controls for it.

 

[Throdnk]

Such as device would be incredibly simple to implement.

As a software dev: Even if things sound easy to implement, they often are surprisingly hard. And the posted suggestion doesn't even sound that easy to me.

 

[anton_stezhkin]

As a software dev: Even if things sound easy to implement, they often are surprisingly hard. And the posted suggestion doesn't even sound that easy to me.

The good thing is that they already have a very similar device implemented i mean the tractor beam (it rotates and moves asteroids). The only difference that it can only pull the roids to the ship and can not push them. So maybe adding the ablitity to push asteroids will not require major changes in the code.

 

[CalenLoki]

That device would either generate insane amount of force per mass, or be too large to be any competition to RF arrays.

Asteroids are heavy, so by approaching them you'd need to speed them up to your ship speed within a split of second.
Assuming reasonable range (up to 50m) you have roughly half a second to speed up 5000 tons to 100m/s.

To be somehow consistent with thrusters for force/mass ratio, it would need to be size of plasma thruster