Wow, the attention of 01micko!
*bows* Ave, Caesar!
Eccentric, yes, comes with the territory I'm afraid.
I'm not familiar with nc. Looked it up, don't see the use (yet?). Enlighten me, please!
As for the conditions bit, I hadn't actually thought of that. That's an interesting idea, I could incorporate that, perhaps. It would be a little hard for me, I think -- I would have to assign a 'terrain type' (for lack of proper term) sort of attribute to each possible coordinate, is the only way I can imagine it. That gets tedious fast, as you might imagine!
Asteroids at FTL speeds would be taken care of by a navigational deflector sort of device. While this isn't Star Trek (I'm much too fat and not blonde enough to be Kirk, for one), the 'navigational deflector' term is convenient and accurate, and I'm sure Paramount/CBS/Viacom/corporate-overlord-of-the-week won't care if I borrow it.
Digging into this perhaps a little more than would be wise --
I can actually tell you how the FarDrive in this simulation would work if it were real. My imagined design for it is based on an unfortunately discredited scientific experiment (
read here) wherein a scientist claimed that, basically, bouncing a magnetic field off a rotating superconductor created a mild antigravity-like effect (shielding the mass somewhat from gravity's effects -- remember that 'weight' is in fact the effect of gravity and therefore a force!). I have my doubts about how well the FarDrive would work in real life -- but it's certainly convincing enough to work for a vaguely realistic simulation, unless the players/users are real scientists
Warp Drive, on the other hand, relies on the gravitic effects of an imaginary substance called 'verterium cordtenide' (boy, say that one five times fast!). 'Warp coils' are made of that stuff, and when high-energy plasma gets near it, spacetime bends. The more energetic the plasma, the more bendy spacetime gets -- hence the need for a matter/antimatter reaction for any real speed. When hydrogen and anti-hydrogen collide, they annihilate into nearly pure energy -- but the particles and antiparticles they throw off
will cause a chain reaction if you're not extraordinarily careful (the second and more well-known imaginary substance, dilithium, supposedly moderates this out so that it's not an issue). The 'core breach' in Star Trek: Generations was at least partially realistic in that sense -- but antimatter is
so amazingly ill-tempered that not only should the ship have gone out in a bang, it should've taken the separated saucer and a considerable portion of the nearby planet with it! (That stuff is nasty.) But of course then there would be no survivors, which would really stink when it comes time to make yet another sequel...
*ahem*
The image color changing would be sufficient, yes -- and I could definitely go for a 'slider' or 'progress bar' for the load gauges.
The monitors are 480x234 resolution, I fully anticipate having to muck around like heck with xorg.conf to beat everything into submission there.
Hardware is a sextet of HP t5630W thin clients. Specs
here, although I'll probably upgrade the RAM to 2gb. I have to say, you've got me quite worried about how slow GTKDialog potentially will be -- VIA's CPUs are always incredibly pathetic in terms of their processing power, and these clients use the 'Eden' sub-series where they make 'em even
lower power to avoid having to put up with a little fan noise (not worth it if you ask me, but not too many people pay me any attention, so here we are).