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High speed travel

#1
I was just thinking. We are in space. There is no resistance. The only characteristic that should vary between ships speed wise is their acceleration.
Why shouldn't ships go real fast?
(I would guess gameplay has priority over realism)
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Re: High speed travel

#3
Gameplay has priority over realism. Remember that the faster you go, the harder it should be to slow down... unless you don't mind braking with asteroids (splat).

Plus, gameplay.

Take a look at Freelancer, you'll have an idea of what we're dealing with.


ninja'd by ThymineC, for the second time in a row.
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Re: High speed travel

#6
CodeDecoded wrote:From a technical standpoint, can't we just have a fixed top speed for all the ships, with the only thing changing is how fast you reach it? Just to make sure the player doesn't speed up till infinity, or break the game way before then.
Why not just have top speed vary from ship to ship, as I assume it currently stands and how pretty much every other space game does it?
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Re: High speed travel

#8
ThymineC wrote:
CodeDecoded wrote:From a technical standpoint, can't we just have a fixed top speed for all the ships, with the only thing changing is how fast you reach it? Just to make sure the player doesn't speed up till infinity, or break the game way before then.
Why not just have top speed vary from ship to ship, as I assume it currently stands?
Not sure. Having a consistent top speed and varying accelerations would be more realistic, while having varying top speeds is more gamey. I guess it depends whether the player wants the game more realistic or more gamey. In all honesty, I'm fine - and used to - having different speeds all together. Its just preference, I guess.
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Re: High speed travel

#9
CodeDecoded wrote:
ThymineC wrote:
CodeDecoded wrote:From a technical standpoint, can't we just have a fixed top speed for all the ships, with the only thing changing is how fast you reach it? Just to make sure the player doesn't speed up till infinity, or break the game way before then.
Why not just have top speed vary from ship to ship, as I assume it currently stands?
Not sure. Having a consistent top speed and varying accelerations would be more realistic, while having varying top speeds is more gamey. I guess it depends whether the player wants the game more realistic or more gamey. In all honesty, I'm fine - and used to - having different speeds all together. Its just preference, I guess.
I disagree. Having a consistent top speed sounds less fun and less plausible. The way I believe most people are imagining it right now is that space produces drag against vessels, and so behaves like a fluidic medium that we'd be used to on Earth. And if we imagine space in this way, then the most plausible and intuitive thing would be that fitting bigger engines allows for greater acceleration and greater maximum velocity, just like you'd expect if you fitted a car or boat or plane with a bigger engine on this planet.
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Re: High speed travel

#10
ThymineC wrote: I disagree. Having a consistent top speed sounds less fun and less plausible. The way I believe most people are imagining it right now is that space produces drag against vessels, and so behaves like a fluidic medium that we'd be used to on Earth. And if we imagine space in this way, then the most plausible and intuitive thing would be that fitting bigger engines allows for greater acceleration and greater maximum velocity, just like you'd expect if you fitted a car or boat or plane with a bigger engine on this planet.
While it may be less fun in the game, the same top speed is actually more plausible in space as we know it...
I am reading some space warfare novels right now, and the writers feel the need to introduce microjumps (hyperspace jumps inside the same planetary system) for battle purposes, because going at the speed of light makes battles too slow for a fast paced narrative (in a realistically sized planetary system). Just imagine that your enemy is one light-minute away (1/3 the Earth-Mars distance) or one light-second away (Earth-Moon distance). No one would be able to hit anyone else with anything, unless the targets were unaware they were being targeted...

So, in conclusion, I guess I agree that we have to break the realism somehow to make the game interesting.
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Re: High speed travel

#11
drakkenson wrote:No one would be able to hit anyone else with anything, unless the targets were unaware they were being targeted...
That is only true if their reaction times were FTL
A weapon capable of firing something at/near the speed of light would travel as fast or faster than the information that it had been fired.
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Re: High speed travel

#12
There wouldn't really be anything wrong with an 'unlimited' speed concept based solely on acceleration IF there were other factors involved to balance out the behavior as well as to make it more fun. Such as fuel to limit your 'overuse' of these. Thymine's 'drive' concept is quite good. But Space battles with those physics aren't particularly fun whenever distance is concerned. A good RTS to reference is Star Ruler, and I'm not putting this game down at all because I actually really love the game BUT its realistic physics make for space battles that really aren't fun. In Star Ruler ships essentially fly past each other trying to fire. It is realistic, but it isn't fun. You don't generally notice it though because you simply don't see it. You will often never zoom into battles and you certainly aren't an active part of it. It's a very macro game. Also some thing it does that is funny yet realistic is the fact that ships will accelerate towards their 'target' and at half way they will turn themselves around and 'counter-thrust' to reduce speed. Which

The point I'm making is that it is a very less than fun way of playing. Not to say that turning off 'inertial dampeners' (or whatever you want to call them to give you your airplane like friction based travel) on a temporary basis isn't fun, in fact it is very fun. It was in freelancer as well, though freelancer still maintained the speed limit.

it would be really cool if speed could be implemented in game play like how in EVE speed can be used to tank. Though it may not be a good idea to mimic eves role structure, but just to have it as part of the game play would be sweet.
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Re: High speed travel

#13
I have to disagree with you here ThymineC. It does not really matter what engine and what size your engine is, there will always be the same top speed for any space ship, that is to say just below the speed of light. And I say just below, because if your ship has any mass whatsoever then you would need infinit energy to reach the speed of light. That is why in nature; only massless particles reach the speed of light (electrons, photons etc)

Thus a top speed or a maximum speed for all ships would make perfect sense and would be in line with the laws of physics.

Personally I find these sort of realistic details to be fun, and would prefer for more of them to be implemented, but I do understand why some may find them frustrating.
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Re: High speed travel

#14
Hadrianus wrote:Thus a top speed or a maximum speed for all ships would make perfect sense and would be in line with the laws of physics.
Would it? The force required to push a ship with a small mass is a lot less to push a larger ship. And then the higher speed you obtain, then that increases the mass of your ship, which in turn would affect the amount of force required to push it. So speed would vary by the ship: size of ship, and how powerful the engine is.

I could be wrong, though.

In all honesty, I think having a varying top speed would make gameplay that much more fun. I imagine fast ships intercepting larger trade vessels, etc.
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Re: High speed travel

#15
Daniel wrote:
Hadrianus wrote:Thus a top speed or a maximum speed for all ships would make perfect sense and would be in line with the laws of physics.
Would it? The force required to push a ship with a small mass is a lot less to push a larger ship. And then the higher speed you obtain, then that increases the mass of your ship, which in turn would affect the amount of force required to push it. So speed would vary by the ship: size of ship, and how powerful the engine is.

I could be wrong, though.

In all honesty, I think having a varying top speed would make gameplay that much more fun. I imagine fast ships intercepting larger trade vessels, etc.
Right now, I think we have a varying top speed. In the last dev update Josh tried to follow a NPC ship but was left in the dust as the NPC's ship was faster than his.

But we don't have all the details yet, and they may still be in flow. It is not that long since Josh announced a shift from a linear relation between speed and drag to a quadratic one, like in real life aerodynamics. That the mass of the ship has some influence seems confirmed, as Josh's ship became slower in one of the dev updates after he filled the cargo hold with ore. But it hasn't been announced what else goes into the calculation.

Front surface maybe? That would push things closer to traditional aerodynamics.

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