I think it's important to distinguish between the galaxy sim and the combat sim. Clearly they galaxy is going for some level of realism, and of course the combat mechanic needs to make some concessions for understandable game play reasons. However the only explanation we are being given is some hand waving<Ahem> about politely slowing down so you can be shot in the back fair and square.
Who in their right mind would do such a thing? If they are going to dance on Newtons grave, they should at least provide a plausible excuse for suspending the laws of physics. Backstory people! A Lore based reason at the very least. Otherwise, we all have to lower our IQ to play the game, and that is something that I cannot sit by silently for.
And yes, I realize I am being an angry nerd right now... but I feel like it's for a good reason. There is enough misinformation and bad science out there, and lots of young kids will be playing this game, and getting the wrong idea about physics. Every scifi franchise makes some compromises, but the degree of wrongness matters to people like me because it shapes the next generation and what they'll try to build and accomplish.
You know, as a father (and, often enough, angry nerd myself), I see your point. There's lots of bad and wrong and incomplete information out there, even in educational institutions, and it galls me to no end.
But as someone whose love for science was inspired by Star Trek (not very high on Moh's scale of sci-fi hardness) and as a storyteller, I think you're overreacting. First of all, children are very capable of seeing the difference between reality and fiction if it is taught to them. That's not Frontier's job, they make a game, not an educational tool, it's the job of parents and educators. If we weed out every piece of fiction that incorporates wrong ideas about physics (or other sciences, for that matter), our life and the stories in our lives become somewhat dull.
Compared to a lot of other games, Elite Dangerous is, in my opinion, very good at teaching stuff that's usually handwaved in science fiction. There is no artificial gravity, the distances involved in space travel are circumvented, but not ignored, kids can see with their own eyes that the night sky we know is only a fraction of a very common type of galaxy. Asteroid belts are sparse stretches of rocks, the sound is artificial, etc. Rather than critizising the game for it's lack of realism, I am mostly tempted to praise it for the amount of realism it has compared to a lot of other science-fiction universes.
And the spaceships follow quite a number of unusual but realistic conventions: Heat is a major problem (averting the classic "space is cold" trope that even 2001 followed for asthetic reasons), even the small ships are bulky compared to the X-Wings and Vipers and Star Furies we are used to, inertia often raises its ugly head.
And, the major part you're concerned about, even though there are limits to top speed and an arcade flight
control model, the flight model itself sticks to the rules, more or less. There is a top speed, yes, but your thrusters have to counterfire to keep it. (At least when boosting, I'd have to check for the regular top speed. And yes, the arcade model keeps thrust at constant speed, that's annoying.) The "arcade" flight
control model is there, but RCS thrusters fire if you stop rotating. I think it's important to keep in mind that, whatever the reasons (gameplay or lore based, Watsonian or Doylist) for the speed limit and the arcade flight control, the developers took at least some care to show how it is achieved. We just don't see much of it from the confines of our cockpits.
So, I'm kind of looking forward to giving my son an ED account when he's a little older; I can say, "look, the computer helps you flying and keeps your speed limit, but it has to work for it, because Newton is watching." In times where we have combat planes with negative stability, a more intuitive, arcade-like flight control model for spaceships isn't unimaginable, the main point is that the game shows how it is done within the realm of real-life physics - like a good flight sim that shows the constant movement of control surfaces.
As for the lack of lore-based explanations, I agree with you. I miss a lot of them, actually. There could be a number of good reasons for the artificial enforcement of speed limits, just like modern combat aircraft enforce an artificial g-force limit. (Artificial for the plane, not the pilot.) One could be that, in a universe were everyone with a few thousand credits can own a spaceship, no one wants a madman or unconscious rookie to reach speeds where their ship can punch through the next Coriolis station or turn it into a rod from god, I don't know. (
Spatula came up with some good ones.)
But I'd like to hear those reasons, to be honest. I can live with handwaves ("The Eridani edict of 3131 prohibits speeds in excess of 500 km/h after the catastrophe at Veridian 6."), but I'd love to hear them. Just as I'd love to have a canonic, non-contradictory set of rules for FTL communication.
But, though I really love the game and have a load of respect for the developers, consistent world-building (as a story-telling, not a technical term) isn't their strongest suit in my experience. Which is sad, sometimes, because it's not that much work.
