Star Trek, Boldy going ....

OillyRag

OillyRag
I am quite intrigued to learn that our own galaxy the milky way will be realistically mapped for us to explore in Elite D.
I am definitely going to our own solar system, alpha centauri (our closest star) should be worth a look too. i quite fancy orions belt (yes i watched bladerunner :D)
Also i wonder if there's a black hole at the galactic centre or perhaps a nice cafe ?
 

Yaffle

Volunteer Moderator
Yaffle
I too like the idea of space tourism from my own study.

Orion's belt is a bit tricksy, as the three stars are nowhere near each other. Alnitak and Mintaka are about 700(ish) light years from us, and Alnilam a whopping 1,300 lightyears. The "belt" won't be there unless you are here.

If Roy Batty was on about Betelgeuse (he says "shoulder of Orion", so it could be there or Bellatrix) then it would be worth a trip, just to look for a small planet somewhere in its vicinity.
 

michaelfife

M
The galactic centre is 30000 LY away as the space crow flies. Since you'll be using stars as skipping stones, more like 32-33K LY.
At about 7LY per jump it would take you about 4715 jumps. After each jump you'd have to find a star or gas giant to skim fuel from, which would take some time (30mins say?). That's 2357.14 game hours.
Let's say you play every day 6hrs. That's 392 days. So it would take you a year and a month, of doing nothing else except jump/scoop fuel, jump/scoop fuel, to get to the galactic centre. To see if the Devs have modelled a supermassive black hole like the one in the real Milky Way.

Ask yourself: is it worth it? :eek:;)
 

rgb_astro

rgb_astro
It would make quite an explorer's story on par with Lem's Ijon Tichy.

Also,
YzLR4GE.jpg
 

Ayo

Ayo
michaelfife said:
The galactic centre is 30000 LY away as the space crow flies. Since you'll be using stars as skipping stones, more like 32-33K LY.
At about 7LY per jump it would take you about 4715 jumps. After each jump you'd have to find a star or gas giant to skim fuel from, which would take some time (30mins say?). That's 2357.14 game hours.
Let's say you play every day 6hrs. That's 392 days. So it would take you a year and a month, of doing nothing else except jump/scoop fuel, jump/scoop fuel, to get to the galactic centre. To see if the Devs have modelled a supermassive black hole like the one in the real Milky Way.

Ask yourself: is it worth it? :eek:;)
Click to expand...

Sounds like Far Lands Or Bust!. Perhaps a great opportunity to raise some money for charity :)
 

Im_Lost

I
Hmm speaking of Orion, isn't Betelgeuse (a very massive star about half the size of our entire solar system, which is 650ly away) on the verge of going supernova right now?

I wonder if it will have exploded by the time that ED is set :)
 
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Yaffle

Volunteer Moderator
Yaffle
Nasher said:
Hmm speaking of Orion, isn't Betelgeuse (a very massive star about half the size of our entire solar system, which is 650ly away) on the verge of going supernova right now?

I wonder if it will have exploded by the time that ED is set :)
Click to expand...

This shows the relative sizes really well:

800px-Star-sizes.jpg


Being anywhere near it should it supernova would be the last spectacular thing you saw.
 
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Robbie

Robbie
michaelfife said:
The galactic centre is 30000 LY away as the space crow flies. Since you'll be using stars as skipping stones, more like 32-33K LY.
At about 7LY per jump it would take you about 4715 jumps. After each jump you'd have to find a star or gas giant to skim fuel from, which would take some time (30mins say?). That's 2357.14 game hours.
Let's say you play every day 6hrs. That's 392 days. So it would take you a year and a month, of doing nothing else except jump/scoop fuel, jump/scoop fuel, to get to the galactic centre. To see if the Devs have modelled a supermassive black hole like the one in the real Milky Way.

Ask yourself: is it worth it? :eek:;)
Click to expand...

Being a multiplayer game played in real-time, it would be better if the jump-ranges for exploration ships could be much larger than they were in the older elite games. I don't think I'd want to take 392 days to travel to the galactic center. Maybe it would be better to have more realistic jump ranges of 50 or even 100 lys for deep space exploration.

edit: just had a look at the above vid of VY Canis Majoris. Even at 5000 ly diameter it would take fifty 100 ly jumps to go across it. :0
 
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Thespen Tombs

Thespen Tombs
michaelfife said:
The galactic centre is 30000 LY away as the space crow flies. Since you'll be using stars as skipping stones, more like 32-33K LY.
At about 7LY per jump it would take you about 4715 jumps. After each jump you'd have to find a star or gas giant to skim fuel from, which would take some time (30mins say?). That's 2357.14 game hours.
Let's say you play every day 6hrs. That's 392 days. So it would take you a year and a month, of doing nothing else except jump/scoop fuel, jump/scoop fuel, to get to the galactic centre. To see if the Devs have modelled a supermassive black hole like the one in the real Milky Way.

Ask yourself: is it worth it? :eek:;)
Click to expand...

That's if you could travel in a straight'ish line and you meet no hostile aliens.

Think "voyager" and all the problems they had:smilie:
 

rgb_astro

rgb_astro
Robbie said:
Being a multiplayer game played in real-time, it would be better if the jump-ranges for exploration ships could be much larger than they were in the older elite games. I don't think I'd want to take 392 days to travel to the galactic center. Maybe it would be better to have more realistic jump ranges of 50 or even 100 lys for deep space exploration.

edit: just had a look at the above vid of VY Canis Majoris. Even at 5000 ly diameter it would take fifty 100 ly jumps to go across it. :0
Click to expand...

"Realistically" if/when jump-drives are discovered and are usable there won't be distances, as spacecraft would be moving through other dimensions. By this time, there will be sufficient energy source installed on a spacecraft to take it to whatever position in a galaxy almost immediately.

Here in game, since FD is talking about many years of game progress, I think it's pretty ok number of 360+ days to reach the core of our galaxy. It shouldn't be a "walk in the park" for everybody. Only for those who dare.
 

Magma

Magma
paulJ2303 said:
I am quite intrigued to learn that our own galaxy the milky way will be realistically mapped for us to explore in Elite D.
Click to expand...

I did imagine when they announced that the galaxy was going to be procedurally generated, that one of the programmers would have a "Thirteenth Floor" moment and accidentally create a procedural algorithm that reproduces the entire universe in total precision :D

"What the hell?" *shudder of realisation followed by bout of insanity*
 

Seonid

Seonid
Nasher said:
Hmm speaking of Orion, isn't Betelgeuse (a very massive star about half the size of our entire solar system, which is 650ly away) on the verge of going supernova right now?
Click to expand...

About 650 years after the fact we will know about it.;)
 

jedt

J
michaelfife said:
The galactic centre is 30000 LY away as the space crow flies. Since you'll be using stars as skipping stones, more like 32-33K LY.
At about 7LY per jump it would take you about 4715 jumps. After each jump you'd have to find a star or gas giant to skim fuel from, which would take some time (30mins say?). That's 2357.14 game hours.
Let's say you play every day 6hrs. That's 392 days. So it would take you a year and a month, of doing nothing else except jump/scoop fuel, jump/scoop fuel, to get to the galactic centre. To see if the Devs have modelled a supermassive black hole like the one in the real Milky Way.

Ask yourself: is it worth it? :eek:;)
Click to expand...

yes. it is worth it,
 

Shishakli

Shishakli
paulJ2303 said:
I am quite intrigued to learn that our own galaxy the milky way will be realistically mapped for us to explore in Elite D.
I am definitely going to our own solar system, alpha centauri (our closest star) should be worth a look too. i quite fancy orions belt (yes i watched bladerunner :D)
Also i wonder if there's a black hole at the galactic centre or perhaps a nice cafe ?
Click to expand...

I'd love to see the following scenario happen:

Player decides to be an explorer. He starts with a basic ship and goes exploring some nearby unknown systems. Builds up some creds and buys an ASP explorer with a fuel scoop and the latest in exploration accessories (maybe a Captain Kirk bobblehead for inspiration.

He jets off further and further into the unknown, building up a reputation as a capable and talented explorer. Until one day he gets offered a mission that makes him think twice:

"Plot a course to the center of the galaxy and back. 10 billion credit reward"

How long would that realistically take? We could be talking about years of real life game play. The winner gets recorded for all time as the human that first saw the event horizon at the center of our galaxy with his own eyes and is set for life.

Then whats next? Well you have all those tourist liners with things the want to see. What are the galaxies super rich going to pay for a return ticket to the heart of the galaxy? What about the scientists needing passage? Players will have to fork out a lot to get the navigation data... and if you fall behind schedule you can kiss your career goodbye... but the payoff!

Lots of potential here :)
 
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rgb_astro

rgb_astro
Shishakli said:
"Plot a course to the center of the galaxy and back. 10 billion credit reward"

Lots of potential here :)
Click to expand...

The grace race to the centre of the galaxy. Oh, it's on!

I hope there will be plenty of dynamic missions generated by the meta server to motivate adventurous ones to go far and beyond.
 

Il Guiscardo

Il Guiscardo
remember that it is not impossible that FD has put somewhere a wormhole, maybe something that does not carry too far from Sagittarius A...
 

Memnoch

M
Shishakli said:
"Plot a course to the center of the galaxy and back. 10 billion credit reward"

How long would that realistically take? We could be talking about years of real life game play.
Click to expand...
The centre of the galaxy is 27,000 lightyears -+ 1000 lightyears according to Wikiepedia.

The Asp could jump 32 lightyears with a Class 4 hyperdrive.

That would be 843.75 jumps, assuming exactly 27,000 light years is the distance travelled.

Considering that in this game that jumps are near instantaneous, but let's assume 5 seconds then:

843.75 * 5 / 60 = 70.3125 minutes or a little over 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Then you would need to factor in how long it would take you to travel in-system to find a fuel source such as a star or gas giant. Let's say it takes you 5 minutes to refuel at each system, including travel to the fuel source and the actual refuelling, and you need to refuel say once every two jumps.

843.75 / 2 * 300(5minutes in seconds!) / 60 = 2109.375 minutes or 35.15 hours.

So about 36 hours realtime to galactic core. Simply double that if you have to refuel after every single jump.

As for the poor old Panther Clipper and it's Class 8 and 13.69 jump range, using the same values above, real time to galactic core would be:

82.17 hours refuelling every other jump.

I was never any good at Math so I hope this is right. :eek:
 
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