[Jopi]

Modetn fighters rarely dog-fight and are more likely to be firing missiles with ranges of up to 100 miles. I'd imagine "real" space combat to be much the same.

If there ever will be space combat the ships will probably be very lightly armored, because the weapons will be so powerful that any amount of armor would just be extra weight. Maybe they are equipped with lasers or something to intercept all missiles. Probably there won't be even crewed combat vessels to allow extreme acceleration.

[Eishtmo]

Short answer:  No, there isn't.

Long answer:  Freespace isn't the kind of game to explain all the little, insignificant details, it's a game that's meant to be played and enjoyed.  Thus, to increase enjoyment, they toned down the speed signifcantly.  I honestly wouldn't be surprised if most space sims actually run at relativily the same speed (just changing the units tags to make things seem faster than they really are), so it's probably not out of the ordinary except that you actually notice it.

If you want an in universe answer, I guess it might have something to do with A) ECM and B) subspace.  Wouldn't want to try to figure out the details beyond that as it would require math.

[Mongoose]

Actually the FS fighters top out at around 120 MPH with afterburners, IIRC.  I'm not doing the unit conversion tonight.  The point is that if you go too fast, things are harder to hit, harder to see, and harder to appreciate.  Freespace has the WWII fighter sim in space thing going for it, so the fighters have to be relatively slow to stay true to that feel.

Actually, the Valkyrie's top afterburner speed, 165 m/s, converts over to about 371 mi/hr, around the speed of a WWII fighter (which further solidifies the comparisons).  Whenever I've stopped to think about it, which wasn't often, I've always thought that there's no reason to make a ship in the FS universe travel at 23,000 mi/hr or beyond when a simple subspace jump can take you clear across the solar system in a matter of seconds.  I think the relative speed argument makes a lot of sense, too, especially in terms of ships orbiting planets.  Whatever the reason, I'd infinitely rather have it this way than a more realistic but massively less fun portrayal.

[Jopi]

A better question would be why does your speed go down after you disengage your burners...

[Kosh]

Non-newtonian physics made this game fun to play. I once tried a freeware B5 space sim that had newtonian physics. While it was interesting, it was a super ***** to control it properly. I prefer the FS physics engine any day to newtonian physics. Trying to make games totally misses the point to gaming; to escape reality.

[karajorma]

I wouldn't judge newtonian space sims by B5 : I've Found Her. The way that game works is quite different to I-War or other games of its ilk.

[Jopi]

I wouldn't judge newtonian space sims by B5 : I've Found Her. The way that game works is quite different to I-War or other games of its ilk.

I can enjoy both physics models. It justs takes some time to get used to newtonian mechanics, to learn to control your speed. It's funny how the same strafing motion familiar from FPS games becomes very natural in those games.

[karajorma]

I love them both too. I'm just saying that dismissing the entire genre because of B5:IFH would be like dismissing the entire arcade space shooter genre because you didn't like Freelancer.

[Sesquipedalian]

Never say 'big-important-sounding words'. Always say 'Seqsuipedalian' *coughs in the general direction of sesquipedalian*, since it is itself a big-important-sounding word aka a sesquipedalian word.

Aceofspaces, you may be interested to know the etymology of the word.  The Roman poet Horace in his book Ars Poetica, which is essentially a reflection on how to be a good poet, somewhat ironically advises his reader to avoid sesquipedalia verba, "words a foot and a half long."  Centuries later, some well-educated English poets enjoyed this bit of humour from the old man so much that they had no choice but to coin sesquipedalian (meaning "having many syllables") to carry on the joke.

[aceofspades]

Yes, I spotted the 'pedalia' part there. Thank god for the Romans, for giving us poetic humour and city planning. But mostly the latter.

[Andreas]

I think they got around the problem with the ships moving too slowly quite nicely in Starlancer. The ships' speeds are measured in kilometers per SECOND in that game. So a Tempest fighters' maximum non-afterburner speed is 300 kps, which if I'm not wrong, translates into 1.080.000 km/h. 

[StratComm]

I don't like doing it that way, personally, as you wind up with easy tests that break the scaled speeds.  At least Freespace is honest about it.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Yeah. That always troubled me about Starlancer, as it'd mean that all the ships were thousands of miles long, if you really were moving at that speed. It's a bit silly.

[Andreas]

Obviously it's a little bit silly, but hey, at least you can't complain about those things being slow. 

[karajorma]

So you close one silly problem and open several idiotic ones. How is that better?

[Andreas]

It isn't. And for the record I do prefer the m/s measurement found in Freespace; if those fighters in Starlancer would really be going at those speeds, it would be like playing the game with a 64x time compression on all the time.