New red-orange dot approaching the bubble at 0.8ly per minute-- Thargoid mothership?

Northpin

Northpin
Ashnak said:
Someone else already pointed out a major flaw here - or maybe a question: how can this observation be made compatible with the finite speed of light? If it's moving fatser than light, we should only be able to see it (in real space in any case) when it reaches our position.
Click to expand...

Before "someone" thought about that, they should have given a thought about speed limits in normal space and visual range combat in 34th Century when now, in 21st Century our combat aviation and most of our defensive or offensive missiles are designed for beyond visual range combat...

short answer: it's a game
 

Florenus

Florenus
Ashnak said:
Someone else already pointed out a major flaw here - or maybe a question: how can this observation be made compatible with the finite speed of light? If it's moving fatser than light, we should only be able to see it (in real space in any case) when it reaches our position.
Click to expand...
But it's the same with everything else in the game. In supercruise, while flying faster than light, you should not be able to see objects in real time. You would fly practically blind.
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
Northpin said:
Before "someone" thought about that, they should have given a thought about speed limits in normal space and visual range combat in 34th Century when now, in 21st Century our combat aviation and most of our defensive or offensive missiles are designed for beyond visual range combat...

short answer: it's a game
Click to expand...
Sure. But (until now) that game has been moving within known physical laws.
 

Kzak

Kzak
maehara said:
Physically impossible, but narratively necessary.
Click to expand...
Everything we see in Elite outside of places where we can remove helmets and life-support gear, we see through displays with sensors. It's not entirely outside the bounds of reason that our ship sensors can detect the emissions of whatever seems to be moving without being able to identify it.
 

Northpin

Northpin
Ashnak said:
Sure. But (until now) that game has been moving within known physical laws.
Click to expand...

Nope.
You can move from Sol to a random system 40000 ly away in like 3h or so. While you are still able to see that star from Sol, you'd be seeing a 40000 years old image.
Getting there in 3 hours, you might arrive in the middle of a cataclysmic event (nova like or above) - while on Earth you'd still be seeing the star for another 40000 years.


The galaxy was never accurate in this regard - the galaxy is basically frozen in time, even tho our FSD could match an idealized Alcubierre Drive.
So while we're not breaking any relativistic laws, we should still be able to see for example a stellar nursery (a dust cloud with some really dense areas - the precursors of Proto Stars) from Sol and when we get there, at the other end of the Galaxy, we might find an New Born Star that is already some tens of thousands of years old.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Ashnak said:
Sure. But (until now) that game has been moving within known physical laws.
Click to expand...
Yes - laws which don't include relativity, conservation of mass, or conservation of energy. You can have a real-time conversation between people at Beagle Point and in the bubble. You can see ships in supercruise (and sometimes other objects) in places which speed-of-light transmission would mean were impossible. It is possible to agree a single unified timeframe on a galactic basis. Regardless of the speed of light, there's clearly some means to transmit energy at super-luminal speeds between points.

If you want some technobabble explanation, a consistent one would be as follows:
- transmitting matter through hyperspace is increasingly difficult and requires more energy as its mass increases
- transmission distance through hyperspace increases the energy cost but not the travel time
- so transmitting zero-mass particles through hyperspace should be basically free, even over very large distances
- all energy emissions in real space therefore have a much faster hyperspatial equivalent
- our ships and suits sensors are generally tuned to pick up the hyperspatial emissions rather than the real-space ones
- this allows communication and detection (though not travel) to routinely take place at near-enough infinite speeds
 

WeComeInPeace

WeComeInPeace
Northpin said:
Nope.
You can move from Sol to a random system 40000 ly away in like 3h or so. While you are still able to see that star from Sol, you'd be seeing a 40000 years old image.
Getting there in 3 hours, you might arrive in the middle of a cataclysmic event (nova like or above) - while on Earth you'd still be seeing the star for another 40000 years.


The galaxy was never accurate in this regard - the galaxy is basically frozen in time, even tho our FSD could match an idealized Alcubierre Drive.
So while we're not breaking any relativistic laws, we should still be able to see for example a stellar nursery (a dust cloud with some really dense areas - the precursors of Proto Stars) from Sol and when we get there, at the other end of the Galaxy, we might find an New Born Star that is already some tens of thousands of years old.
Click to expand...
Having a more dynamic galaxy would be awesome. We could look for potential novae, and then dump biowaste onto the star until it goes boom! :alien:
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Robert Maynard
Dillon Fallon said:
Not physically accurate that you can see it, but isn't it more fun to see the approaching destruction of the bubble before it arrives and vapourises you?
Click to expand...
The fact that we can "see" ships in supercruise in "realtime", that may be thousands of light-seconds distant, suggests that, from the game's perspective, the speed of light is not a limit in terms of sensors - and, in terms of visibility of interstellar phenomenon, is effectively infinite rather than finite.
 

varonica

varonica
Ashnak said:
Sure. But (until now) that game has been moving within known physical laws.
Click to expand...

Not in relation to the galaxy, once the Stellar Forge was finished running everything was fixed, a nebula you look at from 20,000ly away will look exactly the same when you are looking at it from 1ly away. Effectively no time passes for the galaxy, and all light travels infinitely fast, instantly to every corner of the galaxy. I should imagine modeling the actual in reality time and motion of the galaxy in realtime for all players is beyond anything the current technology is capable of.
 

Cmdr. Numa

Cmdr. Numa
Ashnak said:
Sure. But (until now) that game has been moving within known physical laws.
Click to expand...
(Very) loosely. Internal spaces are built for gravity with a definitive up and down, and things (and CMDR butts) stick to the ground/table/seat despite allegedly no gravity in anything that is not a rotating station. Communications are instantaneous, solar systems thousands of lightyears away look exactly like they did from thousands of lightyears away when jumping there, and I've probably forgotten other physics loopholes in the game that are big enough to maneuver a solar system through. Oh, did anyone say speed limit and speed bleed in space ? Besides light speed obviously.
 
Last edited:

Peter Drakon

Peter Drakon
40k years is nothing in stellar time, so while not 100% accurate, the fact that the galaxy's view is "static" or more precisely there is only "one current (game) time everywhere" is not really a big deal.

This object is new however and we can see it moving light years away. If it is in whitch space - you move through another space/dimension/stuff, and thus you should not see it. If it's using a frame shift (alcubierre) drive thing - we should not see it because of light speed.

But the real question is: do we care, or do we play (and have fun)? ;) :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom