Monday Madness! The science of Elite or things that make you go Hmm...

[Bran Tse Mallory]

Welcome CMDR's,

Time to start the week of with a look at the way science affects us in game. From the ability to travel faster than the speed of light to the sheer number of humans that inhabit the bubble the game, like all good science fiction, requires us to suspend our believes based on what science tells us today but what is it that really makes you scratch the old grey matter and wonder how the heck is that possible.

One of my more irritating game sessions came when decided to try and move one of those navigation beacon things... Needless to say the universe seems to revolve around them as they are immovable - however given there are quite a few of them this cannot be the case. What magical hand-wavium is it that keeps them in place? Try it for yourselves, take a big fat ship out to a navigation beacon and try to move it - It won't budge despite not having any visible means of resisting the force exerted by a ships engines. How? What is keeping it in place? The universe cannot be revolving around them as there are so many... What happens to them as time goes by and the star moves through the galaxy? How can an immovable object move with it... The questions just keep going on and on until my brain hurts and I have to have drink or several to calm down.

I could of just written an entire thread on the topic but then again who wants to read my ramblings eh, I know I get bored just proof reading them - might explain why so many mistakes.... Where was I... Oh yes - You lot get the chance now to explain what it is in Elite that really stands out.

Have fun with this, no bashing the devs or Frontier - the game is what it is and follows all the rules of SciFi by making us dream of what might one day be possible and of course remember, what was once the stuff of science fiction is tomorrows possibility!

 

[Robert Maynard]

You've got to watch out for those Visitor Beacons too - they don't budge an inch when accidentally flown into.

 

[Stigbob]

They get a floating immovable rock from a planets surface and weld two colanders onto it then deploy it as a nav-beacon, the colanders rotate so you never see the handles.

 

[Whitehair]

They are all built around small black holes. The black hole mass is equivalent to that of a small planet, which is why you can't move them with your puny little ship.

 

[FoxTwo]

Remember in one recent Buckyball we **USED** beacons to stop quickly? Yeah we slam into them, brings our speed down to 0 really quick.

 

[Retrograde]

Healing lasers.

Braben talks about the game as hard sci-fi because it respects gravity, and that's fine, but it seems to me that everything else is up for grabs.

I think I'm mainly bothered when FD moves the boundaries. I'm fine with frameshift drives, and cannisters that stop in space after bumping into them, and a maximum ship speed, becaues those things were always there, but I was bothered when Galnet became accessible in our ships because that contradicted information in the books. One of them stated that only FSD ships can go faster than light, nothing else (including information). Now of course we have our remote-controlled avatars and all sorts of other instantaneous information transfer, so it's fully canon.

So I hope that FD thinks ahead in determining what is and isn't possible and sticks to that. It's what creates a cohesive fictional universe.

 

[Vorxian]

Some say, that the BIG BANG is actually the END, and START of the universe at the same time.

It happens at the point in time when Chuck Norris accidentally moves a NAV Beacon.

One thing that does irk me though is, for all our technological break thru's in the ED universe, like interstellar FTL hyper drive, infinite distance holo projection, ships using Pulsars to super charge FSD drives, we got giant stations all over the bubble, and we have enough tech to support adventures thousands of LY from home...

yet...

we still cannot back up / remotely store exploration or bounty data.

or

we still cannot access market data outside of a station...

Humans could do this in 1974. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax

What gives?

[mad]

 

[verminstar]

The market thats not a market...as in what passes as the black market. Its not a market because they dont sell anything...more in common with a fence than a market.

The rng/market joke. How come engineer materials which is best described as space junk, isnt sold on the market if they in such high demand by engineers? This stuff would sell very easily one would assume, but the market ignores all those products as though they just appear outta thin air.

The rngeers who base their work on luck as opposed to an exact science.

Telepresence that made it impossible to continue playing ironman...simply cant explain that one.

The 3D printer that makes new fighters outta thin air.

Refuelling and repairing an SRV outta materials that have no weight.

Dark side/light side and beigification.

Zero access to the market from the ship with no guides or search functions to find specific items, even on a station. One has to use out of game resources and 3rd party apps...?

Ships that a thousand years into the future cant look behind them...no rear view mirrors in the year 3300 whatever?

Just a short list as ye can see...the first couple things that spring to mind without having to think too hard ^

 

[rrobes]

Yet these beacons, immovable in space, are found on planet surfaces, or at least their twins, all smashed up.

Remember to say to yourself when you question the why's and wherefores, "This is a game". Suspend your disbelief while you play, it's better that way.

 

[Vorxian]

Remember to say to yourself when you question the why's and wherefores, "This is a game". Suspend your disbelief while you play, it's better that way.

Next time I'm tweaking an Excel model, and hit Ctrl+S to save... I'll cast a thought to ED and ponder why one cannot SAVE exploration data to the cloud as well.

 

[verminstar]

Small credit fines and bounties fer motiveless murder...instant death fer loitering...crime and punishment in ED is just laugh out loud stuff, could full pages with how ridiculous it is ^

 

[Heater]

But yet they crash on planets 1000's of LY out side the bubble.....

 

[verminstar]

But yet they crash on planets 1000's of LY out side the bubble.....

While several life pods seemingly spill outta the cargo holds of ships that dont have cargo holds...line the pods up and they about twice the size of the ship they were supposedly in...uh huh ^

 

[Barthok]

Greetings CMDR's,

not only the immovable and indestructible objects ingame that irritates me... Think of the "Airbreaks" um... I mean landinggear that reduces your vessel speed immediately... in space?

No signs of realistic physic behavior other than the ramming function between the ships.

Cheers, Barthok

 

[Vorxian]

Here's another.

Why... when I fire my cannons... why do my projectiles vanish after a certain range?

Anyone remember this from Mass Effect?

[video=youtube;6q1IaWLsyrQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q1IaWLsyrQ[/video]

"If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someone’s day, somewhere, and some time………"

CLASSIC!

Basic lessons to be learned me thinks..... Would a class-4 cannon projectile simply vanish after a couple of km's? :S

(Even more baffling)...

From the ED WIKI:

A cannon is a projectile based weapon that fires a large calibre round very similar to a current day howitzer.

OK so in WIKI, looking at the howitzer..

The M198 fires non-fixed ammunition and can be loaded with a variety of propellants and projectiles. The effective range is 18,100 meters when firing standard projectiles, which increases to 30,000 meters when firing rocket-assisted projectiles and guided ammunition. With the 52-caliber modification the range can surpass 40,000 meters.

Sooooooooooooo... In ED.

In space, when a projectile is supposed to go on forever.. Our 'howitzer' slug.. vanishes after a few km. Yet... In real, on earth.. these things can go on for 40km in our atmosphere.

 

[Theodrid]

I swear on all that is holy that the search function on the forums is from a parallel universe........

 

[buellpilot]

Zero access to the market from the ship with no guides or search functions to find specific items, even on a station. One has to use out of game resources and 3rd party apps...?

The galaxy map trade route filters allow filtering and therefore searching for items in game. So not 'zero' in game tools.

Greetings CMDR's,
not only the immovable and indestructible objects ingame that irritates me... Think of the "Airbreaks" um... I mean landinggear that reduces your vessel speed immediately... in space?

Your thrusters fire when you deploy your gear to slow the ship, its a speed limiter in the software of the ship... deploy gear, fire thrusters, reduce speed.

 

[verminstar]

The galaxy map trade route filters allow filtering and therefore searching for items in game. So not 'zero' in game tools.

The galmap filters allow ye to search out general trade routes which dont include specific items at specific locations...its just a general trade route which could include every product in that catagory. So my point stands...ye do know the difference between general and specific I presume? A general search function exists...a specific product search function does not. Then one has to work on the basis that a product in a catagory comes from a specific station or port without docking at every port with a functioning market.

Its a fairly basic market search tool that exists in alternative game markets fer decades but not elite, unless one uses out of game resources...thats one the reasons why the market in this game has become a standing joke ^

 

[Andovar]

I'll tell you what makes me go hmmm....
Why do all those 'as seen on tv' products offer a second one free, just pay separate processing and handling?
I mean who needs two nose hair trimmers or two microwave food covers?

Does this kind of madness still exist in 3303???

 

[MottiKhan]

I'll tell you what makes me go hmmm....
Why do all those 'as seen on tv' products offer a second one free, just pay separate processing and handling?
I mean who needs two nose hair trimmers or two microwave food covers?

Does this kind of madness still exist in 3303???

+1. Yeah, I guess I'm a sucker for that one. Now, I have a a house full of Chia Pets.

For the Canon and MC ammo, could the bullets be made of compressed neutrinos? Or some other non-coherent particle that can't hold itself together for more than a second?