Starship Simulator Drops Its Second Dev Diary Check It Out Here

Back on the 17th February, we shared a sneak-peak at an upcoming game in which a team of players are challenged with maintaining a ship whilst travelling through space and tackling the hardships that come with it (Pun Intended). Well the devlopers have dropped another developer update in which Lead Game Developer Dan Govier talks us through the methodology behind building such a complex and robust ship, using real world methodologies! Check it out in the Developer update linked above. 

Here is a quote from Dan, talking about the mechanics behind building up a ship that needs to be maintained and feels alive and real: 

Something we've stated emphatically from day one is that we want to build a real simulated starship. Nothing you encounter should be mere surface detail, it should all be active and serving some kind of practical purpose.  Additionally, while we are of course dealing with advanced technology on the ship, it should still remain grounded in practical real world science, and to that end I've spent the past week brushing up on electrical engineering so that I can better understand how the electrical systems on the ship should operate.

At the heart of the ship is a 11.5m (38') tall fusion reactor in field-reversed configuration. This achieves clean 18.3 MeV Aneutronic Fusion by fusing together Deuterium and Helium 3, the byproduct of which is directly harvested as high voltage DC current by rectifying antennae. It won't be necessary to know all of this to enjoy the game, but we want the lore and technical manuals to go that deep for the hardcore nerds (like us) who value such things. Plus, if you're going to simulate a starship you may as well do it properly 

The DC current harvested by the fusion reactor is fed directly into a 16-way Busbar Manifold, which directs the current towards various systems all over the ship. One such system as detailed below is the domestic electricity grid used by the lights, doors, toasters, etc.

The raw DC current from the fusion reactor is transported via shielded busbar trunk to arrays of 48v Solid State Batteries in parallel configuration. The reactor feed terminates on each array's Charge Controller, which in turn connects the array to the mains ring of that quadrant (the saucer is split into four entirely isolated quadrants for redundancy - Fore, Aft, Port and Starboard). The DC mains ring routes back to the central core of the saucer, where it is fed into per-deck Inverters in order to provide domestic AC electric.