Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Mustang19 on November 14, 2006, 10:01:38 am
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I saw someone talking about how you can't hear ships in space, don't see motion debris, etc. So I decided to think a little into it and post my "excuses".
Why is my Valkyrie going at 85 meters/second? In the game, all of this stuff is refered to as "units". There is one part in FS2, however, that ruins it- in the first combat mission briefing, you're told that "the convoy is 900 clicks, or kilometers, away". But let's just ignore that.
Assume that each "unit" is, say, a thousand miles. The reason that you can see enemy ships even at that distance is because your HUD artificially enlarges them. If you aim at these ship shapes and your fire lands in the general vicinity, your weapons will "detonate" and cause damage even if you don't get a direct hit.
Maybe these units are on a curved scale, so things near you are at real size while more distant things are smaller than they appear. Or maybe it's because space-time is curved or something...
Why can I hear sound in space? Your onboard computers generate artifical sound to give you situational awareness. Duh!
Why haven't robots taken over the world yet and why are humans taking a break while the bots do all the work? Good question. Maybe society never made the changeover to robot labor because it didn't want workers to loose their jobs in the short-term. Or maybe only military functions are handled by humans to prevent robots from taking over the universe.
What are those 80s-era grayish sprites doing on my beautiful monitor? Those are called "motion debris". I can't think of any reason why there would be so much junk floating around in space with none of it hitting you, but let's assume this is another arifical HUD situational-awareness thing.
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Like zoinks, :v: gods said "let it be" and it was made incarnate....
Thats my true belief.
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Why is my Valkyrie going at 85 meters/second? In the game, all of this stuff is refered to as "units". There is one part in FS2, however, that ruins it- in the first combat mission briefing, you're told that "the convoy is 900 clicks, or kilometers, away". But let's just ignore that.
I don't buy that excuse for a moment. If you want to say one unit is not equal to 1m you have to drastically scale up the sizes of the ship from their canon lengths. Cause if you travel at 100units/s it takes you 3 seconds to travel the entire length of a 300m long ship.
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Basically, it's because the butlerian jihad prevented smart computers, and humans can't fly ships faster then 300 M/sec.
Butlerian jihad affects robots, and the sprites are deflected by a "navigation shield" which takes most of the ships energy (another reson why they move slowly)
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You're really going much faster than 85 m/s, it's just that everything else is moving similarly fast in the same direction. Look at a Soyuz craft docking at the ISS - It seems to inch closer to the station at just a few centimetres per second, but in fact they're all whizzing about at incredible speeds nonetheless. So the velocity displayed is just the relative velocity.
The reason it's capped is simply a convenience, as that's the maximum level at which the ship's maneouvering thrusters are capable of simulating the atmospheric flight characteristics that human minds are best at coping with. If you were good enough at newtonian flight, they'd let you fly without the velocity cap. But you're not :p
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Pffftt... there are no priveliged frames of reference. Really, you are moving at 1/2 the speed of light away from the center of the universe. (83.4% of all statistics are made up on the spot)
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To be honest, they probably just made the ships first and then tweaked the tables for playability until they had the balance they wanted ;)
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Like I said in another thread, who needs to be able to fly at .01c when you can simply flip on your subspace drive and move halfway across a solar system in a few seconds? :p
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Why is my Valkyrie going at 85 meters/second?
I would assume for 2 reasons:
1. Dogfighting at greater speeds is nigh-impossible and hte game has troubles with it (I tried)
2. The ships in Freespace don't need to go faster when they have subspace drives.
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Engine Limitations, (not exe's etc, FS1 GTA technology, if every ship was fsat, what would be the point :rolleyes:)
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Why is my Valkyrie going at 85 meters/second? In the game, all of this stuff is refered to as "units". There is one part in FS2, however, that ruins it- in the first combat mission briefing, you're told that "the convoy is 900 clicks, or kilometers, away". But let's just ignore that.
Whats wrong with the speed of the ships? The ships don't need to go fast. Thats what they have subspace drives for. Having ships go 30000 million miles an hour while still having a subspace drive is like using a nuke for a persicion strike. You just don't need all that extra crap.
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Isn't not being able to hear sound in space alluded to in JAD?
the speeds: i think that the speeds given are perfectly reasonable...dogfighting at higher speeds would make it really hard to see what you were doing. since humans have apparently not been enhanced a whole lot, the ships dont fly super fast.
also...what kind of warheads do the missiles use? could they detonate in space? and would they have that same effect?
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Isn't not being able to hear sound in space alluded to in JAD?
JAD is no more canon than any other fan made campaign.
The speed in FS is just fine and reasonable. Go ahead and bump up the speeds and see how well you can fight.
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I meant alluded to humorously. of course JAD isnt canon :lol:
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Well, sometimes it must be said. There's a lot of people out there who think Derelict, Inferno, or any of Blaise Russel's campaign must be taken as official.
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Yes. And they need slapping.
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No argument there. :p
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Think back to Wing Commander. Although your target readout told you that the enemy was 500 km away, they appeared to be pretty close. The whole HUD-makes-an-artificial-image thing must have been going on.
The other alternative is that everyone is genetically modified to have super-fast reaction times, so things appear to be going slowly while your ship is really going at 1% the speed of light.
It just doesn't make sense that GTA designers would WANT an Ursa to go at 45 m/s. Do you realize how weak those thrusters must be? I know this all sounds stupid but it bothers me when people suspend-believe about this stuff when it would be so easy to come up with an explanation.
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Think back to Wing Commander. Although your target readout told you that the enemy was 500 km away, they appeared to be pretty close. The whole HUD-makes-an-artificial-image thing must have been going on.
The other alternative is that everyone is genetically modified to have super-fast reaction times, so things appear to be going slowly while your ship is really going at 1% the speed of light.
It just doesn't make sense that GTA designers would WANT an Ursa to go at 45 m/s. Do you realize how weak those thrusters must be? I know this all sounds stupid but it bothers me when people suspend-believe about this stuff when it would be so easy to come up with an explanation.
Then why does your ship not explode when you collide with another one? Again, whats wrong with the speed of FS ships? They don't need to go fast! they have subspace drives for petes sake!!
Why would the GTVA want craft that went 500m/s? So none of the pilots could be shot, and so they can't shoot the enemy either? To get from point A to point B slower than a subspace drive? To make fighters even bigger and bulkier?
I could see a recon fighter going that fast, but not anything else. It would be a waste of time and recources.
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Because with the clumsy AI, alpha 2 going 500m/s could inflict much more damage on an orion's hull than at the 85 m/s he normally travels at.
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Why would the GTVA want craft that went 500m/s? So none of the pilots could be shot, and so they can't shoot the enemy either? To get from point A to point B slower than a subspace drive? To make fighters even bigger and bulkier?
The problem with that kind of argument is the simple, "But what about the Vasudans/Shivans?" Too easy to poke holes in.
Because with the clumsy AI, alpha 2 going 500m/s could inflict much more damage on an orion's hull than at the 85 m/s he normally travels at.
And the problem with that kind of argument is that we're not talking about the bloody engine itself!
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"And the problem with that kind of argument is that we're not talking about the bloody engine itself!"
Humor, my dear man.
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I only quoted your post because it was the most recent one (I'd guessed you were joking). There were at least two others before it, though, with similar arguments.
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The reason for the speed is one word: Efficiency. You don't put jet engines on a passenger train, and why? You don't need to, because you've got a more efficient way of traveling faster (by plane). It's the same with FreeSpace. You don't need your fighters to go above 200m/s (and even that is pushing it) because you've got a more efficient way of transversing the larger distances quickly: Subspace.
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The reason for the speed is one word: Efficiency. You don't put jet engines on a passenger train, and why? You don't need to, because you've got a more efficient way of traveling faster (by plane). It's the same with FreeSpace. You don't need your fighters to go above 200m/s (and even that is pushing it) because you've got a more efficient way of transversing the larger distances quickly: Subspace.
That is exactly my argument. I don't know what Adm. Ralwood means by "what about vasudans/shivans" because those same rules apply to them. Not only is subspace drive more reasonable method of travel because of it's size, but it's faster than going at say, a quarter of the speed of light. And it would be quite impossible to get ships that small to go so fast. And don't give me any of that "what if the ships are actually several hundred meters long" crap. They use meters in the game. And since when did "meter" mean "1/100 of a meter"? It never meant that. I win. :drevil:
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That is exactly my argument. I don't know what Adm. Ralwood means by "what about vasudans/shivans" because those same rules apply to them.
The point was that deciding Subspace makes fast engines unnecessary is largely an ideological choice, not a universal constant. Three sapient races making the same decision independantly sounds like an unlikely coincidence.
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Trouble with that is that it still doesn't explain how these ships orbit.
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That is exactly my argument. I don't know what Adm. Ralwood means by "what about vasudans/shivans" because those same rules apply to them.
The point was that deciding Subspace makes fast engines unnecessary is largely an ideological choice, not a universal constant. Three sapient races making the same decision independantly sounds like an unlikely coincidence.
They stumbled upon subspace in their research, and seeing how it is more cost-effective, faster, and easier to use subspace rather than creating big-ass engines that on top of all the weapon systems and on board computers would be impossible to run with their current power technology. And anyway, you're argument about the Shivans using it is nil, because they are a subspace species (You know what I mean, with all of their highly advanced subspace stuff ,etc). Having a species discover and not use subspace is like you getting some amazing job offer, but turning it down to work at McDonald's. Or winning a top of the line computer in a raffle, but giving to someone else because you have a DOS computer. Or asking your teacher to give you an E on a paper when you got an A on it. Or getting a lifetime supply of your favorite food, but you still only eat your least favorite food.
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They stumbled upon subspace in their research, and seeing how it is more cost-effective, faster, and easier to use subspace rather than creating big-ass engines that on top of all the weapon systems and on board computers would be impossible to run with their current power technology. And anyway, you're argument about the Shivans using it is nil, because they are a subspace species (You know what I mean, with all of their highly advanced subspace stuff ,etc). Having a species discover and not use subspace is like you getting some amazing job offer, but turning it down to work at McDonald's. Or winning a top of the line computer in a raffle, but giving to someone else because you have a DOS computer. Or asking your teacher to give you an E on a paper when you got an A on it. Or getting a lifetime supply of your favorite food, but you still only eat your least favorite food.
What if Shivan engine technology was more effecient than our own, so that they wouldn't need huge engines for a lot of thrust? Or the Vasudans? And I hope you're not referencing the Shivan Manifesto with that middle bit.
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What if Shivan engine technology was more effecient than our own, so that they wouldn't need huge engines for a lot of thrust? Or the Vasudans? And I hope you're not referencing the Shivan Manifesto with that middle bit.
Let me put it in simple terms for you.
Subspace Speed > Lightspeed
Lightspeed > Any Normal Thruster Speed
(By Normal I mean any thruster that obeys Newtonian physics. This includes FreeSpace engines. There's a reason why they're called "Sublight Engines.")
so naturally,
Subspace Speed > Any Normal Thruster Speed
Subspace wins, every time. End of story.
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What if Shivan engine technology was more effecient than our own, so that they wouldn't need huge engines for a lot of thrust? Or the Vasudans? And I hope you're not referencing the Shivan Manifesto with that middle bit.
Let me put it in simple terms for you.
Subspace Speed > Lightspeed
Lightspeed > Any Normal Thruster Speed
(By Normal I mean any thruster that obeys Newtonian physics. This includes FreeSpace engines. There's a reason why they're called "Sublight Engines.")
so naturally,
Subspace Speed > Any Normal Thruster Speed
Subspace wins, every time. End of story.
Need I once again remind you that such a conclusion is the result of a human train of thought? How do you know how an entirely alien species will decide how to build their ships? And even if they did decide to build their ships the same way as the Terrans, and even if the Vasudans decided to build in that same way, does that somehow eliminate the possibility that their ships might just, due to superior engineering techniques or whatnot, move at speeds ten times that of Terran ships? They're both tiny, compared to even lightspeed, after all.
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How do you know how an entirely alien species will decide how to build their ships?
I don't know how they'll build their ships. However, let's look at it again.
Fact: The distance a ship can travel from any inhabited planet can be expressed as follows:
Distance = Speed of ship * time until a non-replaceable part breaks on said ship.
Yes, with superior engineering techniques, these can be increased. However, the limit of these is as follows:
Max Distance = Almost Speed of Light * Lifespan of crew (with the exception of colony ships or cryogenic ships)
So, without Faster Than Light travel, you hit a limit:
And we traveled faster and further spreading in our galaxy and before long we could see the day when our reachable systems would have been exploited. And then there would be nowhere else to go.
However, if you do use FTL travel, you have a much higher limit on your speed variable:
And we discovered subspace. It gave us our galaxy and it gave us the universe. And we saw other advanced life. And we subdued it or we crushed it. In months the extermination of billions of years of evolution on a similar but slower path. With subspace our empire would surely know no boundaries.
Any species intelligent enough to discover Subspace will realize that any equation that uses the speed of the ship as a variable is actually dependent on the MAX speed of the ship. So any species that is intelligent enough to discover subspace is intelligent enough to realize that this is a very important addition to every ship.
THE REST OF THIS POST ASSUMES THAT THE SPECIES IN QUESTION HAS OVERWHELMINGLY DECIDED TO ADOPT SUBSPACE TRAVEL.
Now that you've got a subspace engine on your ship, you have to decide where the power is going to come from. a subspace drive requires a certain amount of power, depending on how you built it. That power comes from somewhere. You put a larger engine on there. This means more energy. So you can now travel subspace, fly at 1200 m/s, and still power your shields and weapons.
Ignoring the size of the power generator, there is still a problem with it. If you have enough energy to power all of that, you're flying a bomb.
Energy needed = x + y * z * (a / b)
x = (min energy for shields, guns, subspace drive, etc.)
y = (distance ship can fly before a refill)
z = (mass of ship)
a = (velocity of ship)
b = (time it takes to accelerate to that velocity)
let's assume that x and z have been perfectly optimized. You can't get them to be any smaller, no matter what you do.
y can be changed around, but remember that you'll still need it at a fairly high amount to do any real traveling (or dogfighting)
so the important variables are a and b. Yes, you can easily get a ship to use very little energy and still travel very fast. It just has to take forever to get to that speed.
Assuming you want acceleration high enough that you can do a dogfight, your equation has been simplified to:
Energy needed is proportional to max sublight velocity
if you're going at 85 m/s, great. You don't need much energy. However, if you want to go at 850 m/s, you need ten times the energy. and there's where we hit our problem:
Any energy that can be released in a controlled manner can be released in an uncontrolled manner.
I'm assuming everyone remembers the Shivan Comm Nodes? Imagine if every ship in a dogfight behaved like that when it died.
That is why they don't go faster.
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The reason that Terrans and Vasudans use subspace instead of light speed is simple. They acquired subspace technology first. The scientists would have said something like this:
Oh look! a means of traveling huge stellar distances within seconds! I feel that since we already have this technology down, we should just build upon it. Screw light speed travel, because it would take centuries to develop an engine and even longer to develop a power source for it.
What if Shivan engine technology was more effecient than our own, so that they wouldn't need huge engines for a lot of thrust? Or the Vasudans? And I hope you're not referencing the Shivan Manifesto with that middle bit.
Shivan technology is more efficient than ours. They can travel through very unstable nodes. And if you are talking about their standard drives, they are not really all that much better than ours. You are just playing the what-if game there. And there is canonicle proof that their drives are not faster than ours enough to merit them not using subspace.
Need I once again remind you that such a conclusion is the result of a human train of thought? How do you know how an entirely alien species will decide how to build their ships? And even if they did decide to build their ships the same way as the Terrans, and even if the Vasudans decided to build in that same way, does that somehow eliminate the possibility that their ships might just, due to superior engineering techniques or whatnot, move at speeds ten times that of Terran ships? They're both tiny, compared to even lightspeed, after all.
Except you see, we do know how an entirely alien race builds their ships. Or at least all of the ones that are canon. Vasudans use subspace drives. Shivans use subspace drives Terrans use subspace drives. Even we know that Ancients use subspace drives. Any other species is not Freespace. Even if it is from a mod, it is non-canon and is not official freespace and dosen't count.
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It just doesn't make sense that GTA designers would WANT an Ursa to go at 45 m/s. Do you realize how weak those thrusters must be? I know this all sounds stupid but it bothers me when people suspend-believe about this stuff when it would be so easy to come up with an explanation.
It is worthwhile to remember the Ursa is as large or larger than a 747 AND able to withstand multi-kiloton blasts with ease. Do you know how heavy that is?
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You people are all silly. The moon is in the vicinity of 400 000 kms from earth, and orbiting at just over 1000 m/s. Any kind of practical orbit, say, geostationary orbit at 35786kms is over 3000, and low earth orbits like the ones we use for Space Shuttles, ISS etc. is over 7000. Of course, in the real world, FS ships would be capable of going much, much faster - subspace has nothing to do with it, the realities of space travel and newtonian physics make it neccesary. Engine limitations are the only reason that they don't do it in the game.
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You people are all silly. The moon is in the vicinity of 400 000 kms from earth, and orbiting at just over 1000 m/s. Any kind of practical orbit, say, geostationary orbit at 35786kms is over 3000, and low earth orbits like the ones we use for Space Shuttles, ISS etc. is over 7000. Of course, in the real world, FS ships would be capable of going much, much faster - subspace has nothing to do with it, the realities of space travel and newtonian physics make it neccesary. Engine limitations are the only reason that they don't do it in the game.
Orbiting is easy. All speeds and movement (in both real life and FreeSpace) are measured from a reference frame. If you're on the equator, and you're driving at 10m/s, your car's speedometer doesn't read "475.11m/s", because your perception of motion isn't affected by the motion of the earth (or the solar system, or the galaxy, etc.).
I would assume that the ships in FreeSpace also ignore movement that can't be perceived. If you go 5000m in one direction, your view of the planet won't change perceptibly. However, you will move relative to other stationary objects around you (a space station, a cruiser, etc.).
So it'll still take you 10s to go from one end of a 300m long cruiser to the other, because you're moving at (orbital speed constant + 30m/s), and they're moving at (orbital speed constant).
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You people are all silly. The moon is in the vicinity of 400 000 kms from earth, and orbiting at just over 1000 m/s. Any kind of practical orbit, say, geostationary orbit at 35786kms is over 3000, and low earth orbits like the ones we use for Space Shuttles, ISS etc. is over 7000. Of course, in the real world, FS ships would be capable of going much, much faster - subspace has nothing to do with it, the realities of space travel and newtonian physics make it neccesary. Engine limitations are the only reason that they don't do it in the game.
Orbiting is easy. All speeds and movement (in both real life and FreeSpace) are measured from a reference frame. If you're on the equator, and you're driving at 10m/s, your car's speedometer doesn't read "475.11m/s", because your perception of motion isn't affected by the motion of the earth (or the solar system, or the galaxy, etc.).
I would assume that the ships in FreeSpace also ignore movement that can't be perceived. If you go 5000m in one direction, your view of the planet won't change perceptibly. However, you will move relative to other stationary objects around you (a space station, a cruiser, etc.).
So it'll still take you 10s to go from one end of a 300m long cruiser to the other, because you're moving at (orbital speed constant + 30m/s), and they're moving at (orbital speed constant).
What are you even talking about? There's no "Orbital Speed constant", not in terms of an absolute value in m/sec. It varies with distance from the planet.
We have to assume that there is an absolute frame of reference for FS, otherwise every speed meaning would be meaningless and incomparable, but since any given orbital speed varies so massively depending on how far out you want to orbit (even if you limit it to the scale between low earth to Geosyncronous, the two most useful orbits), it becomes clear that these numbers given ingame have to be chucked out the window if you want to even pretend to take FS in any way seriously (from a space travel point of view). After all, Just getting any ship into either of these two orbits implies a change in speed (relatve to Freespace's absolute reference) of 4000m/sec. Since no ship in FS can move at 4000m/sec, let alone 7000 m/sec, that all falls apart. But, as explained above, we know they'd need to go that fast for any kind of practical space travel, which leaves us with a paradox. Fortunately, unlike most paradoxes, is solved in a very simple way - not the threat of immense explosions, or some kind of weird HUD technique of adjusting distances, or some arbitrary, huge number replacing the metre - it's engine limitations.
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Well, no matter what anyone says, Freespace has less of a problem than Freelancer. :eek:
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What are you even talking about? There's no "Orbital Speed constant", not in terms of an absolute value in m/sec. It varies with distance from the planet.
no, but for a specific height above a specific planet, there is a constant speed required for orbit.
We have to assume that there is an absolute frame of reference for FS, otherwise every speed meaning would be meaningless and incomparable
No, There doesn't need to be an absolute frame of reference for FreeSpace. The only speed that matters is your speed compared to everything else.
You're on a spaceship above earth. Barring any funny maneuvers by the pilot, it really doesn't feel like you're moving. If you try to float past another person, you do. You don't complain that you can't float at 4000m/s, you just float at 1m/s relative to the others, and don't worry about the other movement.
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Isn't not being able to hear sound in space alluded to in JAD?
JAD is no more canon than any other fan made campaign.
The speed in FS is just fine and reasonable. Go ahead and bump up the speeds and see how well you can fight.
Starforce ships travel considerably faster than stock FreeSpace ships (top speed for a medium fighter is 100 m/s, 180 with afterburners) and I never had problems dogfighting. It's not as easy to hit your opponent, but that just adds some challenge.
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It's a game, if you changed it it wouldn't be fun anymore.
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It is worthwhile to remember the Ursa is as large or larger than a 747 AND able to withstand multi-kiloton blasts with ease. Do you know how heavy that is?
Uh, wha?
Ursa is 41m long according to the freespace wiki, and the 747 is either 70.6 m long or 76.4m long (depending on which version you use).
Multi-kiloton blast, I won't argue.
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No, There doesn't need to be an absolute frame of reference for FreeSpace. The only speed that matters is your speed compared to everything else.
Alright, fine. You're still left with the neccessity of changing between speeds of at least 4000m/sec apart, bare minimum. You can't explain that away except by saying engine limitations (*Or, I suppose, Game limitations imposed to make the game fun and playable.
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Game limitations imposed to make the game fun and playable.
I'm fine with that. Glad we could come to an agreement that FreeSpace 2 is a fun game. :)
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Which was the whole point I was trying to make earlier, really. The entire idea behind this thread is silly. There's no need to explain anything away, it wasn't meant to be realistic from the beginning.
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Like I said, guys, the humans, Vasudans and Shivans that fly spaceships are probably genetically modified to have very fast reflexes. You'd pretty much have to be genetically modified to withstand the crazy G-loads you might face from going very fast.
Another thing about the multi-kiliton blasts. If you got caught in the shockwave of one of those in space, where there's no friction, wouldn't your craft be sent flying at several thousand meters per second? What about when you were hit by a laser or missile?
I think that this thread has come to the conclusion that FS is, from a scientific point of view, bull, and no "hard SciFi" can explain it. Doesn't make it a bad game, but someday maybe I'll mess around with the game files and see what it's really like to go that fast and be bounced around by every explosion. A few times I've turned up time compression and traveled at must've been the equivalent of 400 m/s. It's strange to think that the average combat speed for combat aircraft today is about 200 m/s.
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Shockwaves are transmitted through? Dust...?
No no no, FS is fine, scientifically... all we need is a different universe.
Nothing wrong with anything.... it's the world at fault :lol:
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It's strange to think that the average combat speed for combat aircraft today is about 200 m/s.
Out of curiosity, when was the last fighter plane vs. fighter plane dogfight?
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Depends on what you call a dogfight. There were planes getting shot down in Iraq 91, Bosnia and Yugoslavia, but that was more of a beatdown than a fair competition. More recently, around 1999 or 1997 there was a combat between an Ethiopian Su-27 and a Eritrean MiG-29 (the Su-27 won). But yeah, there's been very little jet-to-jet combat.
Got your point about shockwaves. But they show up in the game as big energy rings, and you would still get a big blast (enough to send you flying at way more than 45 m/s) every time you were hit by a laser or missile.
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Another thing about the multi-kiliton blasts. If you got caught in the shockwave of one of those in space, where there's no friction, wouldn't your craft be sent flying at several thousand meters per second? What about when you were hit by a laser or missile?
There is friction in space, it is [large quantities of] physical matter that is missing. The warheads probably consume what little amount of dust there is in space.
You need to look at how heavy the ships are. Each ship you figure is at least several tons. And we do not know excactly how these futuristic bombs work, but what we can tell from canon FS, is that the explode in a way that does not throw ships as far as antiqued warheads do. And anyway, Fighters and bombers have shields , which likely do something to reduce the blast effects. And larger ships usually are heavy enough not to be moved by those warheads.