Attempt to explain propulsion as it exists in Elite

[GHDW]

.........

 

[Javert]

Actually, this was most of the reason for my original post. The idea being that frame of reference is not linked to a particular object in space, it's 'chosen' by the pilot. There is nothing inherently special about choosing a station, or outpost, or the sun.. you just need something that your sensors can get a lock on as a reference point, and then the frame shift drive can align itself with that object and drop into its reference frame.

From this point on, your drives are locked to that reference frame, and you paddle around in the sub-space around you in order to move about. You can't paddle infinitely fast, but the paddling you can do is extremely efficient. If you want to change reference again, that requires a charge up and a 'jump.'

As crazy as all that pseudo science magic is, I still find it somehow more plausible than everyone in the galaxy agreeing to some speed limit. Especially a galaxy that is filled with murderers, pirates, and every single ship is packed to the gills with an insane level of deadly firepower. As a pirate, the very first thing I would do is modify my ship so I no longer have those restrictions. If, somehow, the controlling forces were so amazingly powerful that they could create technology that is totally unable to be tampered with, then I imagine they could also make ships that, oh... DIDN'T HAVE GUNS, and wouldn't allow themselves to be rammed into other ships. In essence enforcing peace and safety across the galaxy!

I hear you, but it still has an issue in that I would then say, any pirate or whatever would modify their ship to use a different frame of reference than anyone else nearby to gain an advantage, or escape, or whatever. e.g. I could just make my enemy ship my own frame of reference and then run away from them at my maximum speed relative to them.

Therefore you would still have to somehow believe that everybody in a particular area would choose the same frame of reference - why would they do that? It's the same question as why would they agree to a drive controller.

 

[Enride]

Thrusters?

Oh, you mean the aether ramjets, well we need to acomplish high speed by newtonian means before they kick in, and they are themselves limited by the intake size and engine compression rate.
Luckily we have the aether friction field generated by the engines overflow of energy so the ship becomes quite easy to control as opposed to the old days of spaceflight

 

[MrVibrating]

^^ Ahem Michelson Morely cough cough, active vacuum, virtual particle flux, (excuse me), no preferential reference frame cough sputter.. hmph that's cleared it. Now where was i? Ah yes, i was going to say there's simply no way to rationalise a space speed limit, so we might as well give up. The only hope is to maintain pressure on Frontier to solve the network latency running up against in-game velocity (instead of, say, benefiting from it, as should be possible).

But also don't forget that we're getting stuffed on relativistic effects, too...

For years i'd dreamed of an E4 that made a fantastic game out of these elements (real speed, full relativity) as i still believe could be done, however it's now clear DB's vision has been significantly less ambitious and we're thus consigned to a non-evolving galaxy stuck in a universal timeframe (regardless of planetary rotation rates, varying day / night cycles, or accrued acceleration changes per GR), along with preferential reference frames, absolute zero speed (ie. a stationary ether) and the confounded mechanical speed limits.

Truth is, there's only one way i've found to deal with these headaches, and it's cute pet videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH2NmN5tKS0

Just look at them! How cute are they? That's like cuteness overload! Don't you just wish you could snuggle down in there with 'em? I do. I'd be right in there joining in, nom nom nom who wants a tummy tickle? Yes you do, yes you do!

That, and playing GTA V instead. And hey GTA's got official first-person mode now - come PC release in January, there's bound to be an Oculus mod, it's gonna be so awesome. Who needs a crummy spitfires in space game, not me that's for sure. Jumpgate did that sort of MP flight model years ago anyway. All i need is GTA, and fluff videos.

 

[Enride]

^^ Ahem Michelson Morely cough cough, active vacuum, virtual particle flux, (excuse me), no preferential reference frame cough sputter.. hmph that's cleared it.

Dont buy into the lies, its a conspiracy to keep us in place!

About the rest of your post, its been clear all the time that ED would not be a full realism space simulator, I dont know why youve realized this just recently?

 

[Javert]

Hey guys, please don't get into arguments about the game flight model - there are plenty of threads on the General or Gamma forums for that. This thread is for discussion of how to attempt to explain the flight model as it exists, using pseudo science.

 

[AleNes]

How this theory explains speed bleeding (FA Off) when landing gear or cargo scoop deployed?

 

[Futuristic Kung Fu]

How this theory explains speed bleeding (FA Off) when landing gear or cargo scoop deployed?

Ship's computer's fault!

 

[Nebohtes]

So, years later, I stumbled across this, and being that I don't like too much reality in my space plane fantasy, this is by far my favorite explanation. I did some math for it on Star Citizen, which has some similar acceleration rates, so the newtons required were ballpark Elite; the most powerful weapon in the galaxy would be the emissions of maneuvering thrusters. I don't like this concept, I love it.

 

[Louis Calvert]

So, there's a huge discussion going on in the gameplay forums about newtonian physics in space flight, with different people arguing about the 'speed limit' and things like that in the game, based on their various gameplay vs. realism vs. technology reasoning.

I know that Elite is not going to be perfectly newtonian, and I'm okay with that. So, what I like to do, is to attempt to describe valid reasoning for systems that are in place. I think this is a fun thing that isn't explored much in video games, which is to think of a gameplay need, then invent some physics that allows it to exist, and then simulating those physics. You get the nuance of physically simulated systems without necessarily having to adhere to normal reality

Also, it's just fun to think about technobabble.

I made this post in that other thread, and then after thinking about it some more, realizing I really liked the idea, and also realizing that it would be completely lost in that other thread, I decided the crew in this forum might be a little more interested in hearing the idea. Heck, maybe Frontier will like it and make it canon to hush all the arguing for good. WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE

SO HERE WE GO

How Thrusters Work in Elite (maybe)

Why not just newtonian?

Using standard combustion rocket engines to travel in space is very inefficient. There's no way that the ships of the sizes and masses that exist in Elite could possibly fly around with what we consider to be conventional "thrusters" that move the ship around purely by expelling gas in different directions. The types of accelerations we're talking about, and the ability to sustain them, would require fuels that burn with energy that is many orders of magnitude better than anything we can even currently theorize.

It just can't work like this. It's got to be some other mechanism.

Okay, so what then?

the engines in Elite then, perhaps, operate on different levels of physics, somewhat in the same vein as the Frame Shift Drive itself. These engine operate by pushing against a medium of particles that is otherwise intangible to us, in the universe.

In a sense, the ships are somewhat like submarines.

Boats?

Yeah boats, floating on, or submerging in, a four-dimensional ocean.

It might be easier to understand in a three dimensional analog. imagine a vessel, free from gravity, floating over an ocean. There is no air above the ocean, just empty space. You could float over this ocean all day without expending any energy, and if you wanted to change your velocity, you could just reach down to the water and 'paddle.'

The upshot is that it is very efficient to accelerate the ship by pressing against this unseen medium. This means we can get around for a long time, almost indefinitely, on a very small amount of fuel. The downside of it is that the parts of the ship that are energized in a way to interact with it, or 'submerged' in it, also suffer the opposite effect, which is a significant amount of drag. At a certain point the drag outweighs the thrust, and you can't go any faster just by paddling.

Okay, but what about the fact that everything is moving super fast relative to other things?

Okay, now imagine that this ocean is infinitely deep, and there are currents in it at different depths, running in an infinite number of directions, running an infinite number of speeds. If you could "dive" down to the depth that just happened to be going in the direction you wanted at the speed you wanted, you could just ride along like you were sitting still while the universe zipped past you.

So, this quantum 4-dimensional ocean has currents flowing in every direction at every speed, and which one you interact with changes based on how you observe it, in a sense. The frame shift drive exploits this behavior to allow the ship to travel quickly through the system, by essentially "submerging" the entire ship within the medium, and then 'diving' to a different reference frame, at which point they are magically being carried away in the currents of the dark-matter-soup. (alternatively, imagine a hot-air balloon rising up to meet different wind currents to carry it in a desired direction)

and then you come back to the surface to dock!

Right. Once you've arrived at your destination, the frame shift drive brings the ship back out of the ocean, the ship is free from the sludge and floating through space as frictionless as normal. Except, now you're floating above the ocean again, and you can't change your velocity, without "dipping" your engines back into the water.

The end result being very efficient operation, but that it also requires a constant amount of force to be applied to keep the ship at speed relative to your current frame of reference.

And with flight-assist-off?

When the thrusters /aren't/ firing, they are not affected by the drag, and can coast through space. In a sense, when you turn Flight Assist off and set your throttle to neutral, you are now completely out of the 'water' and floating like a normal space ship. However, the instant you try to apply thrust, you have to stick your engine "in the water," so no amount of extra thrusting can exceed its top speed.

Once you're paddling as fast as the water is moving by you, you can't go any faster by way of paddling. You're just wasting energy.

Why not just tap into those currents?

Well, here's where fuel and energy comes into play. "Diving" to different frames of reference requires a HUGE amount of energy, and the small engines that delicately shove your ship around in space aren't capable of that sort of output. This is what the Frame Shift Drive is for, but even then, it's a highly specialized device that requires a long charging time, not to mention the transition between reference frames is rather abrupt. Not something you can just casually do.

Okay, why not just use regular thrusters to go faster again?

Go into Kerbal Space Program, and make a ship that has the same mass as a Cobra Mk. VIII. Then, build some rockets to move around. Then, let me know how massive that rocket was, and how long it lasted. I'm actually kinda curious.

I mean, if we could vote, I'd vote for this to be the official explanation of the drive systems. Nice work

 

[tresch]

Hah, thanks! It's cool to see people still stumbling on this

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

The OP reminds me of the DDWFTTW project.
It's a wind driven craft that can outrun the wind, directly down wind; a feat that's often argued as impossible.
The difference between the moving mass of air and the still Earth is exploited in a way that traditional sailcraft cannot.

[video=youtube;xHsXcHoJu-A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHsXcHoJu-A [/video]

 

[Josua]

Not to bump this up unnecessarily, but just wanted to put in some info as of now.

The Power Plant has been described as a Fusion Reactor, one that ejects highly-energized Helium in the form of plasma through the thrusters as a form of propulsion. That would make the Thrusters be a form of Fusion Engine (or Fusion Drive, or what have you of the same terminology).

And given the bizarre, non-explained reasons as to why there's even a speed limit in the first place, we can only assume it's for the sake of safety, really. Even with shields, I highly doubt that it'll last if you constantly go upwards to 0.1c in sublight speed, which is supposedly the higher-end limit of what a Fusion Engine can speed up to, if it's constantly hit by micro objects or whatnot. Since there's no form of artificial gravity aside from centrifugal-based or non-technobabble ones, there's no "gravity" shielding to divert those micro objects from hitting you if you coast to 0.1c per second in real space.

 

[Sysmon]

Not to bump this up unnecessarily, but just wanted to put in some info as of now.

The Power Plant has been described as a Fusion Reactor, one that ejects highly-energized Helium in the form of plasma through the thrusters as a form of propulsion. That would make the Thrusters be a form of Fusion Engine (or Fusion Drive, or what have you of the same terminology).

And given the bizarre, non-explained reasons as to why there's even a speed limit in the first place, we can only assume it's for the sake of safety, really. Even with shields, I highly doubt that it'll last if you constantly go upwards to 0.1c in sublight speed, which is supposedly the higher-end limit of what a Fusion Engine can speed up to, if it's constantly hit by micro objects or whatnot. Since there's no form of artificial gravity aside from centrifugal-based or non-technobabble ones, there's no "gravity" shielding to divert those micro objects from hitting you if you coast to 0.1c per second in real space.

Winner of biggest necro on the forum? 5.5 years!

S

 

[Morbad]

Back when this thread was new I used to think there was a marginally plausible bit of handwavium that could explain things well enough.

Now I think the game is mostly a Spelljammer reskin and I'm sure Thargoids will turn out to be Neogi lifejammers with musket armed hippo people as slaves.

 

[Sysmon]

Back when this thread was new I used to think there was a marginally plausible bit of handwavium that could explain things well enough.

Now I think the game is mostly a Spelljammer reskin and I'm sure Thargoids will turn out to be Neogi lifejammers with musket armed hippo people as slaves.

I still play Banks' Culture handwavium in my head when my mind wanders into trying to explain ED space travel once again: Supercruise is like the travelling along the Skein, and the speed limit is simply the hardest the space can be folded. Thrusters should really be "thrusters" as they operate as "micro-warp" drives hence have their own upper limit. FA Off then basically decouples the warp, sending us drifting in a somewhat Newtonian fashion. FA Off is basically a warp-clutch.

S

 

[Distant Carrier]

I think when it comes to non-Newtonians all bets are off. And all hands too if you know what's good for you