[Mustang19]

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.

[Colonol Dekker]

Like zoinks, gods said "let it be" and it was made incarnate....


Thats my true belief.

[karajorma]

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.

[Mathwiz6]

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)

[Shade]

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

[Mathwiz6]

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)

[Flipside]

To be honest, they probably just made the ships first and then tweaked the tables for playability until they had the balance they wanted

[Mongoose]

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?

[TrashMan]

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.

[Colonol Dekker]

Engine Limitations, (not exe's etc, FS1 GTA technology, if every ship was fsat, what would be the point  )

[Polpolion]

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.

[wtf_cl0vvn]

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?

[Taristin]

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.

[wtf_cl0vvn]

I meant alluded to humorously. of course JAD isnt canon 

[Taristin]

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.

[karajorma]

Yes. And they need slapping.

[Taristin]

No argument there.

[Mustang19]

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.

[Polpolion]

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.

[Taristin]

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.