Fiction for game mechanics

[FredTA]

Hey again guys.

So there are obviously some unrealistic game mechanics, such as the ships going at a constant speed, while there is no terminal velocity in space (except for debatably the speed of light) so in the real world the ships would be travelling at e.g: 100 m/s squared and not just 100 m/s as they would be constantly accelerating. Another example of an unrealistic game mechanic could be always coming out of super-cruise 20KM away from a space station.

Now this is not a criticism of the game in any way. I perfectly understand that over realism can make games over complicated and dull, the line has to be drawn somewhere right?

But what I am asking is: is there any fiction in place to explain why (for example ships travel at a constant speed) some game mechanics are what they are?

Thanks,
Fred T.A

 

[Gwenydd]

I can tell you the real world reason for why we have a speed limit on travel in normal space. it's because no current network system could possibly pass updates fast enough to track multiple ships with closure rates in the many kilometers per second range and changing flight vectors while keeping their positions updated for the clients in real time. Relative positions would be changing so rapidly it would literally be impossible.

As for a fictional explanation, I don't know that there is one.

 

[Susimetsa]

But what I am asking is: is there any fiction in place to explain why (for example ships travel at a constant speed) some game mechanics are what they are?

Some of the mechanics are just that: mechanics to make the game playable and enjoyable.

The speed limitation, for example, does not exist in Elite fiction and there is therefore no explanation for it (the authors were told/allowed to ignore it in their stories).

 

[kfsone]

I can tell you the real world reason for why we have a speed limit on travel in normal space. it's because no current network system could possibly pass updates fast enough to track multiple ships with closure rates in the many kilometers per second range and changing flight vectors while keeping their positions updated for the clients in real time. Relative positions would be changing so rapidly it would literally be impossible.

Just because the ships are travelling faster doesn't mean the updates need sending at different rates.

And you could smooth out the deltas with a physics related fiction that limits control input rates or frequencies.

Eve gets away with a lot by using dampeners (cooldowns) on assorted control inputs so that despite there being tons of people in a given proxmap, the actual bandwidth stays low.

 

[Calaban]

The plausibility of "slow spacecraft" revolves around the point that the only thing worth talking about is something within 100km of you.

Take that Federal Distress signal. Most of the action is centered around that cruiser. Sure, some rocket jock could zip through it at 15c... but what exactly would he be able to do in that femtosecond his weapons are in range? Not much.

So to attack the cruiser, ya gotta go there, and buzz around within 100km or so of it. To defend it, you gotta go there, and buzz around... you get the idea.

Same goes for planets, stations, checkpoints, alien monoliths, etc.

Space is BIG. Too big, in fact, to use most of it. So, for us tiny people, with our tiny lives and perspectives, we focus around small regions of specific things and goals.

Now, ships are designed to operate best with that self imposed limitation in mind, and thus, we have speed controls and artificial limits.

So, the "fluff" explanation of why there is imposed speed limits is: it keeps the overzealous pilots within the AOR (area of responsibility), for a consistent and useful amount of time. :smilie:

 

[FredTA]

So you guys think that there is some passive subsystem ensuring the ships accelerate in a certain way? Or that the ships are just programed to only accelerate up to certain speed?

Thanks,
Fred TA

 

[Rickenbacker]

I can tell you the real world reason for why we have a speed limit on travel in normal space. it's because no current network system could possibly pass updates fast enough to track multiple ships with closure rates in the many kilometers per second range and changing flight vectors while keeping their positions updated for the clients in real time. Relative positions would be changing so rapidly it would literally be impossible.

As for a fictional explanation, I don't know that there is one.

EDIT: I'm sorry, I completely misunderstood your post, and thought you meant in real space . I'm leaving it unaltered so everyone can see what a berk I am before my morning coffee.

I think it has more to do with orbital velocities. If you're travelling at a significantly higher or lower speed than something else in orbit you're in a completely different orbit. We don't have ships with enough thrust to just ignore orbital mechanics, like we do in ED.

Game-wise I have no idea how we'd explain the speed limit, though I realize it's necessary after playing thousands of hours of online flight sims (which have about the same speed limits as ED). So I dunno, chivalry?

 

[Susimetsa]

So to attack the cruiser, ya gotta go there, and buzz around within 100km or so of it. To defend it, you gotta go there, and buzz around... you get the idea.

Well, in reality, you would probably accelerate to half the speed of light, shoot some ordnance towards the target from half a star system away (taking into account the target's trajectory) and then just watch as the bullets rip through the cruiser at that speed (nothing much that could stop the amount of energy in bullets travelling at that speed).

It would not be very exciting, though. So, in-game compromises have been made.

 

[Stodgy]

Game-wise I have no idea how we'd explain the speed limit, though I realize it's necessary after playing thousands of hours of online flight sims (which have about the same speed limits as ED). So I dunno, chivalry?

It's easy to make something up to explain the speed limit. How about something like this:

When moving through a gravitational field the frame shift drive, even when idle or powered off, interacts with it creating a force in the oppisite direction. This has a similar effect to drag when in an atmosphere. Even at relativly low speeds of 200m/s the force is so strong that standard ship thrusters can not push the ship any faster.
The strength of the local gravitational field has no effect on the force strength. So if you are close enough to a space station the drag caused by its microgravity is the same as the drag from a star billions of times its mass.

This is a necessary design feature of the frane shift drive and is needed to keep the ship anchored inside folded space when using supercruse.

It also explaines why the ships didn't have speed limits in Frontier, they didn't have frame shift drives.

 

[FredTA]

It's easy to make something up to explain the speed limit. How about something like this:

When moving through a gravitational field the frame shift drive, even when idle or powered off, interacts with it creating a force in the oppisite direction. This has a similar effect to drag when in an atmosphere. Even at relativly low speeds of 200m/s the force is so strong that standard ship thrusters can not push the ship any faster.
The strength of the local gravitational field has no effect on the force strength. So if you are close enough to a space station the drag caused by its microgravity is the same as the drag from a star billions of times its mass.

This is a necessary design feature of the frane shift drive and is needed to keep the ship anchored inside folded space when using supercruse.

It also explaines why the ships didn't have speed limits in Frontier, they didn't have frame shift drives.

Yeah, I really like that kind of thing. Nice idea.

Just some fiction along those lines, like something to do with the Framshift drive to just nicely explain the game's (completely necessary) mechanics

 

[nats]

So there are obviously some unrealistic game mechanics, such as the ships going at a constant speed, while there is no terminal velocity in space. Another example of an unrealistic game mechanic could be always coming out of super-cruise 20KM away from a space station.

The above is an excellant example of why sequels are hardly ever as good as the classic games they attempt to replace. Things have always got to be changed and the process of altering them invariably loses that special quality that made the original great. I am sure these two items have been discussed in the DDF at length and probably quite riotiously and for good reason. They are both potential game killers for me.

I definitely dont want to come out of jumpspace next to a space station which avoids the need for the translation through to the inner system from the outer system which IMO was one of the best bits of Frontier.

And I definitely feel the speed limit, inflicted because of the multiplayer addition, is going to lose a lot of the realism that I felt was present in Frontier when ships flashed past you then gradually caught you up.

If that is all gone then this game may well be just a shadow of the original great games I played and loved. Cant help getting very disheartened as I hear more about the game. I hope it has a heck of a lot more great stuff added to it to make up for the loss of some of these superb original concepts that made the original games so great.

But have to say I am now preparing for some great disappointment if this game just ends up completely missing the mark like so many other remakes I have played in the past.

So far there is previous little I have seen that takes this game above millions of other lesser space games that have been made and failed since Frontier blew me away. Like so many classic games it is difficult to say exactly what made Frontier so good, but I think these sorts of little touches definitely were a part of it. Losing all these things , just for this flaming multiplayer, could be really quite bad and a major mistake on Braben's behalf. Hope I am wrong.

 

[Rickenbacker]

It's easy to make something up to explain the speed limit. How about something like this:

When moving through a gravitational field the frame shift drive, even when idle or powered off, interacts with it creating a force in the oppisite direction. This has a similar effect to drag when in an atmosphere. Even at relativly low speeds of 200m/s the force is so strong that standard ship thrusters can not push the ship any faster.
The strength of the local gravitational field has no effect on the force strength. So if you are close enough to a space station the drag caused by its microgravity is the same as the drag from a star billions of times its mass.

This is a necessary design feature of the frane shift drive and is needed to keep the ship anchored inside folded space when using supercruse.

It also explaines why the ships didn't have speed limits in Frontier, they didn't have frame shift drives.

It's a start, but we don't use the frame shift drive in "real space". And if this effect was there, it'd be easy to get rid of the limit by turning off FS drive...

 

[Rickenbacker]

Another example of an unrealistic game mechanic could be always coming out of super-cruise 20KM away from a space station.

Actually, that one I totally buy. That's your nav computer locking onto the target and dumping you a safe distance from it every time. Also, you can override it by leaving FS closer than 20km, if you're feeling adventurous.

 

[Susimetsa]

I definitely dont want to come out of jumpspace next to a space station which avoids the need for the translation through to the inner system from the outer system which IMO was one of the best bits of Frontier.

You still hyperjump into the system well away from any of the stations. To get to the planets and stations, you will have to use a so-called frameshift drive, which is basically a superfast drive. To almost all intents and purposes, it resembles the accelerated time feature of Frontier and Frontier First Encounters. You can be dropped out by interdictors (pirates) wanting to get your cargo etc.

 

[Calaban]

Well, in reality, you would probably accelerate to half the speed of light, shoot some ordnance towards the target from half a star system away (taking into account the target's trajectory) and then just watch as the bullets rip through the cruiser at that speed (nothing much that could stop the amount of energy in bullets travelling at that speed).

Well, the problem with that scenario is how do you aim? your target image under such distances and approach speeds are so light-lagged that you would be aiming at something where it was 15 minutes ago... with no predictive measures to discern where it went since then.

For that matter, nevermind aim; how would you properly line up the approach run? half a solar system away= light lag of about a day. Good luck even starting the attack in the right direction. While it works for predictable things like cities and space stations, those can be defended with point defence arrays. And if we can stop planet killer asteroids, we can stop a few bombs.

So with this sense of scale and gigantism that is truly deep space, you should probably see how things are impractical when you try to combine Human-scale concepts with the true scope of it all.

Some sci-fi writer... Niven? Drake? did a treatise on space empires, and how you could effectively defend or attack assets of value when the enemy could approach from any of the 360 x 360 degree globe. To guard the entirety of the globe was impossible. to stop any approach in space is insurmountable- you simply cant put guards in all places at once, and if you did, you would be spread too thinly to put up any resistance. So, how would you defend your homeworld, then? By defending it AT the homeworld (or at the distress signal- where enemies can approach from anywhere).

Thus the locality of things became established as the only thing that matters tactically and strategically . "Inter-system space superiority" is an outdated concept and is impossible due to the scale of it all. You can only have "within 100km" superiority at key or important places.

 

[Susimetsa]

For that matter, nevermind aim; how would you properly line up the approach run? half a solar system away= light lag of about a day. Good luck even starting the attack in the right direction. While it works for predictable things like cities and space stations, those can be defended with point defence arrays. And if we can stop planet killer asteroids, we can stop a few bombs.

Planet killer asteroids don't move at half a c - you would not really have time to react to something attacking at that velocity.

Aiming is naturally a problem, but working on the theory that the target is aiming to conserve fuel, they are probably moving in a straight line and as such their trajectory is pretty simple to predict.

There was some great fiction about this sort of long distance warfare between ships travelling between star systems (no hyperspace) in Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space series, if my memory serves...

 

[kfsone]

Planet killer asteroids don't move at half a c - you would not really have time to react to something attacking at that velocity.

Aiming is naturally a problem, but working on the theory that the target is aiming to conserve fuel, they are probably moving in a straight line and as such their trajectory is pretty simple to predict.

There was some great fiction about this sort of long distance warfare between ships travelling between star systems (no hyperspace) in Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space series, if my memory serves...

C J Cherryh's "Merchanter" series (Downbelow Station, Merchanter's luck, etc) deals with fights like this, and the difficulties of light wavefronts: an incoming system travelling at a portion of c has the effect of being ahead of the light front; if you're doing .1c and you accelerate a projectile to .1c, it has a .2c velocity relative to in-system stationaries.

Ryk Brown's Aurora series also is generally pretty good about this stuff too.

 

[kfsone]

For that matter, nevermind aim; how would you properly line up the approach run? half a solar system away= light lag of about a day. Good luck even starting the attack in the right direction. While it works for predictable things like cities and space stations, those can be defended with point defence arrays. And if we can stop planet killer asteroids, we can stop a few bombs.

The projectile is going to be riding atop of the ship's own velocity, so if the ship was doing .25c and they can accelerate a projectile up to .25c, then the projectile will be doing .5c relative to, say, a station.

And it's not going to be travelling in a straight line towards the station, but it's going to be flying an intersection course with the station's orbit, factoring in the gravity of the planet, etc. It's going to be very hard to spot.

It only needs mass, it doesn't have to be big. It doesn't need explosives. It doesn't need guidance, although you could throw a tiny-ion drive on just to make it's path less predictable at some point and it wouldn't hurt.

The only real option for avoiding it is to detect it, detect its path, and move out of the way. Oh, and hope they only fired one projectile.

Incoming ships always have an advantage: everything in the system already had an outgoing wavefront, but because it just "arrived" the incoming ship doesn't yet. The instant it arrives, light from in-system is already reaching it, the very light that will now bounce off it and become it's wavefront. So it's essentially ahead of the game. Coupled with its high velocity, it's going be effectively less light lagged until it slows down sufficiently, but if it's wanting to throw lethal projectiles around, it won't slow down. Of course, it won't know whether the target has moved or left the system until that light reaches it. But if a ship arrives in a system 1500ls from a station, the ship can watch the station for 1500ls before the station can even tell the ship is in-system.

The best approach would be to line up, short-jump/sc, check the light front and correct, short-jump/sc, check the light front, short-jump/sc, until you're 5-10 light seconds out (if you're doing .25c that's 20-40 seconds travel time), fire, jump.

 

[Susimetsa]

Explained it far better than I could have, kfsone - reputation to you!

 

[Yellonet]

Empee is a cruel god who's altar have seen many sacrifices