[AdmiralRalwood]

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!

[Taristin]

"And the problem with that kind of argument is that we're not talking about the bloody engine itself!"

Humor, my dear man.

[AdmiralRalwood]

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.

[Turey]

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.

[Polpolion]

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.

[AdmiralRalwood]

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.

[Mars]

Trouble with that is that it still doesn't explain how these ships orbit.

[Polpolion]

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.

[AdmiralRalwood]

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.

[Turey]

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.

[AdmiralRalwood]

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.

[Turey]

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.

[Polpolion]

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.

[NGTM-1R]

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?

[Black Wolf]

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.

[Turey]

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).

[Black Wolf]

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.

[Polpolion]

Well, no matter what anyone says, Freespace has less of a problem than Freelancer.

[Turey]

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.

[Woolie Wool]

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.