Dr Forbidden : The next break throughs

Dr Forbidden, head of DDS Research

Today the DDS is on the cusp of a whole new generation of genuinely game-changing technology. Over the last few years we have been working on rebooting the powertrain at the heart of all DDS spaceships. Now the powertrain is the power system that provides energy to all ship systems and is the most vital of all systems of course. Four years ago i started a series of projects aimed at redefining powertrains for the next generation of DDS vessels and now we are starting to see these projects come to fruition. I will address all 4 in turn.

Micro-Cell

Traditionally DDS (and other) space ships are powered by an array or battery of nuclear fusion reactors. This has worked well for the last few decades but the technology is starting to show its age. Ever greater power demands plus the need for greater damage management in conflict means that the monolithic approach to power generation no longer works as perfectly as it needs to.

Thats why we have developed Micro-Cell technology. Put simply this will replace a large array of reactors (which can be damaged by one shot by an enemy crippling a ship) with a distributed network of smaller reactors. We hope to field test Micro-Cell on the forthcoming Infinity trials ship. Instead of the array as used in other Type 35s it will have 8 smaller reactors spread throughout the ship. It is hoped this will make the ship more resistant to battle damage and will also be more efficient as power will be generated closer to where it is needed in many cases.

Recycling Scoop

We have tried ion scoops before, on the Rome and Pentekonters more notably. These inject the free ionised hydrogen that exists abundantly in space, is then processed by a condenser aboard the ship for feeding into the reactor. The technology works but the density of ionised hydrogen is just too low to have any meaningful benefit and we will be discontinuing use of the ion scoop over the next few years.

The Recycling Scoop works in a similar way but is fitted at the rear of the ship and injects expelled energy from the ship's engines. The gases are then recycled and processed. We hope we can reduce fuel consumption by around 8%, which of course will have a number of strategic benefits. Field trials have already begun on a Provider transport and the results are promising. Unlike the ion scoop the Recycling Scoop is fairly small and can be hidden away by the engine outlets.

Liquid Metal Power Grid

Wires have been used to transfer energy for centuries, they work well but we think we have found a way that works just that much better. The Liquid Metal Power Grid uses a plasmic state metal for power distribution to key nodes. This will be up to 35% more efficient and can also be smaller than existing main grid wiring. We hope to begin field tests next year.

Wireless Power

Many systems on the ship are wireless, and with Open Architecture 3.0 systems auto-configure when activated, communicating with other systems wirelessly. However power is still given to these systems by wire on the most part.

Some lower power systems have used wireless power for some time but now we have perfected improved technology and protocols to allow even ultra-high power levels to be safely provided by wireless power links. This will make ships more battle damage resistant and will be the final piece in the distributed system model. We will be field testing some of these new wireless modules soon.

I'm really excited about these new technologies, each on their own will have a noticeable effect on DDS ship performance but together they could revolutionize DDS ship operation and design in the next decade and beyond.

Dr Forbidden : Formalising TPM development

Dr Forbidden, head of DDS Research

Over the last 6 months i have tried to reorganise many of the projects ongoing by DDS Research and DDS Engineering, bring things back under control after the (necessary) developmental chaos of the war. One has been the TPM development project.

The TPM project is now run along 3 branches, a current branch for bugfixes and improvements to the current in production model (the B family) - production branch, a branch for the next model (the C) - development branch and the model after that (currently known as the D) - research branch.

This allows us to better organise effort and information sharing by the various teams involved. For example the development branch team recently developed a new data filtration algorithm which we found could be easily included in the production missile's software. Real world experience of the production missile is also fed into both of the other teams.

All branches are underpinned by the Transphasic Unified Platform (TUP) which the TPM has now moved to (and MRM and LRM will also join). This is the core foundation of many of the technologies used by our transphasic projectile weapons, you can imagine TUP as the root of the transphasic tree perhaps? A unified database of transphasic technology and research is now in the process of being finished.

When development of the B family ends then the C family will become the production branch and the B will be hived off to a separate maintenance team for a period. The D will become the development branch and a new branch will be made for research. It is hoped this new formalised way of working can lead to greater efficiency, faster development and enhanced progress.

Dr Forbidden : Where we are with worm drives

Dr Forbidden, head of DDS Research

I thought it would be beneficial to state where we are right now with respect to the (still new) worm drive technology and how we are integrating it into our systems.

First of all some brief introductory notes on how worm drives work. Unlike traditional hyperspace drives which drive a ship faster than the speed of light through the subspace barrier of space-time, worm drives literally generate a tunnel straight through space-time allow near instantaneous transportation between 2 points in space (which are currently about 5 light years apart). The tunnel or worm hole is generated by the worm drive and requires precise geometry and calculations for the ship in transit. This is a very involved process as we have to be exact with the geometry, even being off by a nanometre can cause severe health problems for the crew, and any more can result in the destruction of the crew due to having to precisely navigate through the various radiation layers and levels of space time. Therefore we can't just fit a worm drive to any old ship, it has to be to a ship form that we have calculated geometry for.

(By the way external damage to a ship can cause changes to the geometry needed and preclude a safe worm jump even if the drive is working however when we calculate geometry we build in enough tolerance so minor external damage can still be accommodated.)

So far the following ship types have been cleared for worm drive use:

• Type 35 (both Panther and Indy)
• Type 41 (Isometric and Freedom), Type 43s still require some changes due to differences in the ship dimensions.
• Type 46 (though not with a ground attack module)
• Type 95X research ship

Examples of all these classes have either got or have had work drive fitted at some time. We are aiming to clear the Type 43 MCS, the Type 37 HCS and the Type 15 bomber by the end of 2112. As the Dinos have already calculated the geometry for their own Dinomark XTs we have geometry for the Type 47 already (the Dinos supplied it with the drives they supplied) though have no plans yet to fit drives to them.

At the time of writing there are 12 ships in the fleet fitted with a worm drive, mostly Dino supplied W1As though our production line is now established and we aim to build 9-10 of our own drives this year. They are complicated things to build unfortunately and, as they are Dino technology, there is a lot of learning and engineering integration that we need to do. By 2113 i am confident we can get production well into the "teens" and beyond. This does mean though of course the retrofitting older ships will not take place on a large scale for some years yet though we have enough for new ships coming online this year (though at the moment just Type 35Bs will be getting the drives).

I hope these notes have helped illuminate where the DDS is with respect to worm drives at the moment.

Dr Forbidden : My vision of the future of warships

Dr Forbidden, head of DDS Research

There are a lot of technology projects currently in development or in early implementation such as worm drives, EA-X, Zip and FIDO-VR which may seem unrelated but in fact i believe they are the jigsaw pieces of the future of space warfare in the late 2120s and beyond.

I firmly believe that the likes of Corkscrew and Coral, great as they are, do not signify the future of space warfare but the Dinomark XA does. If you are not familiar it then the XA is a very small ship that can be crewed by 1-3 crewmen but is a fully capable superluminal warship with offensive firepower, sensors and equipment to do many tasks that currently a larger ship with a crew of over 30 crewmen might be needed to do.

So lets look at this future DDS ship, lets call it Warship 2130, perhaps the Isometric replacement. I think it will be slightly bigger than XA, maybe Coril shuttle sized with a crew of up of 7 though able to be piloted by a sole crewmen (or remotely). The small crew will be augmented by FIDO-VR meaning that personnel located elsewhere can work on the ship virtually. This means that specialised skills can be bought in when and where needed, for example you won't need to carry your own exo-geologist around if you come up to some interesting rocks... you can just get one added to your crew virtually! FIDO-VR means of course that "real" and virtual crew can interact seamlessly, remote crew will use VR immersion to make it feel they are on the Warship 2130, real crew will see a holographic representation of their virtual crewman.

Warship 2130 will be very capable, the Zip cannon will hopefully alleviate the need to carry dozens of TPMs around and coupled with EA-X 2.0 with energy recycling the Zip cannon could be a very powerful weapon indeed. Obviously smaller ships have smaller powerplants though we are working on a new generation of powerplants that can deliver the power of a larger ship now but in a much smaller package. Warship 2130 will also use UCVs, whether its own or from other ships to extend it's abilities and reach.

There will still be a role for larger ships in future but for more specialised roles such as bombing (at least until MRMs and the like can be replaced by beam weapons... or maybe built on the fly), general purpose ships in the fleet will be smaller. We will also make much greater use of static sensor posts and unmanned superluminal assets to perform everyday patrols (something i will touch on again in a future blog post). Wormdrive will make the galaxy "smaller" and thus we will not need to maintain ships everywhere but will be able to scramble them to where they are needed much faster. This again is a reason why larger ships for general purpose tasks will no longer be necessary.

So as you can see Warship 2130 will bring together a number of ongoing projects to create a new class of much smaller yet much more capable spacecraft. I do say 2130 but we will see something a little sooner... i can exclusively reveal DDS Research has received initial gate funding for its equivalent of the Dinomark XA, a small ship which will be equipped with worm drive, Zip and other goodies to help us develop the next generation of DDS warships. Stay tuned.

Dr Forbidden : Some notes on DDS worm drive production

Dr Forbidden, head of DDS Research

I am so often asked "Whats happening with DDS worm drive production?" Its a question that crops up all the time, well we are getting there but it is taking time.

We currently have 5 ships in the fleet with worm drive*, all but one of these powered by worm drives bought or supplied from the Dinos. One ship has a DDS built pre-production drive, though this was virtually hand-built by my team. Our production line is now in place and there are 4 new drives in various stages of construction. Much of this first batch remains hand-built as we are still learning how to work with Dino technology which is often radically different to our own.

I am confident that all 4 drives plus at least 2 more will be completed and will be in service with DDS warships (or at least ready for fitting) by the end of the year. True serial production is expected early next year and we are geared up to build 8-10 worm drives a year.

At the moment the priority is to fit them to the new build Indy 35B ships though we are also aiming to equip as many Panther 35As as we can too. Work is currently on-going on drawing up the field geometry for the Quasar 15A and Type 37 (you can't just fit a worm drive to a ship, it has to have its field correctly set otherwise attempting a worm jump would be suicidal). Currently we have geometries set up for the Type 35, Isometric and Isometric Prototype.

Its going to be a long process, new ships like the Indy and the forthcoming Corkscrew and Carbon will have worm drives from new and we'll fit them to existing ships as they come up for major updates. By 2120 we will likely have a majority of the combat fleet equipped, thats our aim. By 2130 we want all ships in the fleet equipped including transports. Now that is a long time but there is a huge amount of work to do as well...

* The 6th D101 Panther is currently in testing and will rejoin the fleet in a few weeks.

Dr Forbidden : Announcing Project Trapezium

Dr Forbidden, head of DDS Research

I am very pleased to be able to announce Project Trapezium, the latest major project begun by DDS Research, which aims to completely revolutionize the way ships protect themselves from enemy fire.

Project Trapezium's genesis was in the technology debriefings we held during and after the ABBO War. During major incidents such as a ship being lost we would examine the available telemetry from the ship and other sources to see how the technology performed and if we could learn anything from it. It was during one of these debriefings when we examined how a ship's shields failed during an ABBO onslaught, its 360 CIWS continued to operate but eventually was overwhelmed and the ship was lost. A junior member of our party asked why couldn't the CIWS adapt to become a secondary set of shields or even the remaining shield power become a secondary CIWS. None of us could answer but all of us agreed it should happen!

So that is what Project Trapezium is, we are starting again with the idea of ship self-defence and looking how shields, CIWS and armour can work together instead of separately. EA-X 2.0 which aims to recycle absorbed enemy energy discharges for offensive or defensive purposes will also come under this project.

We have no time frame for Trapezium yet but i expect that it will begin to influence ship design in the latter part of this decade. We will look at new shield methods which can direct the bulk of defensive power where needed instead of uniformly around the ship (and hence most of the power is wasted). Maybe shields and CIWS will merge into a new technology, supported by EA-X and other armour systems. Its still early days of course but i expect Trapezium will change how the DDS defends itself quite radically in years to come.

Dr Forbidden : Some notes on the worm drive

Dr Forbidden, head of DDS Research

Recently i have seen some misconceptions about the worm drive printed in the popular DDS media and social media channels and so i have decided to write some notes to help raise the general understanding of this new propulsion technology.

What is worm drive?

Traditional superluminal propulsion involves breaking into subspace (hyperspace as it is known) and using sheer brute force to travel faster than light. One drawback of this method is the amount of energy required simply becomes too great once you reach 1000c. Some of our ships can reach that speed for short periods but it is thought 1200c is the maximum speed possible using this method.

Worm drive is totally different. It involves tunelling an artificial worm hole deep in subspace and travelling instantaneously between two points.

So how fast is this?

In essence a journey of several lightyears can be carried out in seconds however the massive amount of power required means that it takes several hours to recharge the worm hole generator before the next jump. What we and the Dinos use is an equivalent speed scale using the c scale (speed of light) for hyperspace travel. Taking the jump and then the rest period into account then ships with the worm drive can currently travel at an equivalent speed to around 5000c if they were using hyperspace (if that were possible!)

So we don't need hyperspace drive anymore right?

Well we do. One drawback of worm drive using its current (and so far only known implementation) is that the length of worm hole generated is fixed. What does this mean well lets take an example of a journey to a star that is 12 light years away. If a generated worm hole is 5 light years long then two jumps will take the ship 10 light years but obviously a third jump would take it way beyond its destination. The rest of the journey is thus carried out using hyperspace.

Worm drives also need time to cool down after use and to recharge. Therefore in an emergency you may not be able to use your worm drive to get out of trouble and instead need to jump to hyperspace instead. Until these problems are sorted out hyperspace drive will remain necessary.

How will worm drive develop in future?

The time taken to recharge is likely to reduce over time thus increasing the equivalent speed. the Dinos are already testing a "6000c" drive which they'll deploy in a few years. At the moment we are just concentrating on getting our own production line into operation and understanding the technology but rest assured improvements are in the pipeline.

Dr Forbidden : EA-X

Dr Forbidden, head of DDS Research

Yesterday we cleared EA-X, the energy absorbant layer which will be applied to all DDS warships, for full deployment. All new ships from now on will be covered in a layer of the material (it is a thin layer by the way so will not change the appearance of ships!) Existing warships will begin to have a layer retro-fitted to them from later in the year. At the moment supplies of EA-X are a bit limited as we only have our development facility online but a dedicated factory for EA-X will enter operation later in the year.

So what is EA-X? Well it can absorb vast amounts of energy, even if concentrated in a laser or energy beam. In tests it has absorbed 70% of the energy from a typical energy cannon hit (we used the Pulsar 12A's secondary cannons in tests). Obviously the less energy that gets through the less damage! EA-X will provide for a valuable back-up for shields.

However this is only the start. We are already well advanced on EA-X 2.0 which has the added ability to store absorbed energy which can then be recycled in the ship's own power systems. Yes that means a DDS warship will be able to absorb the energy blast from an enemy ship and then redirect that energy back at them through its own weapons! We hope to have this second version of EA-X available by 2114.

Dr Forbidden : Integrating the worm drive

Dr Forbidden, the head of DDS Research.

Finally we have managed to man-rate the Dino worm drives we received last year and my teams are working hard on reverse engineering the device so we can begin construction of our own worm drives hopefully by the end of this year. It has not been an easy road as the technology used in the worm drive is totally unlike anything we have handled before.

A major problem is integrating this technology into our ships, its not as simple a case of plugging in something like this and it works! What we have had to do is produce a "wrapper" around the wormdrive to turn it into an Open Architecture device. We had to develop special protocols and standards to integrate the Dino technology into our own what we have termed the Worm Drive Gateway, the wrapper handles all of this so the wormdrive can then be treated as a normal piece of DDS technology.

There are still problems though as the wormdrive requires a lot of power thus ships fitted with it need modifications to their power grids, this can cause problems with feedback as occured we believe on SS Carboniferous recently when a power junction blew out.

Once it is working we then have to make sure it can be maintained. Unfortunately at the moment wormdrive is treated a bit like a "black box" so if it breaks in service it has to be returned to us for us to (hopefully) repair. It will likely take us years to gradually turn worm drive into a normal piece of DDS technology...