ED sub-light speed physics are super-unrealistic

[Vitamin Arrr]

For a space sim I will allow some breakage of physics, like to achieve FTL.

But why should regular, sub-light-speed travel have ridiculously unrealistic physics? It's just stupid. I don't understand why a space sim like this, which seems to try pretty hard to have realism, would totally neglect physics when it comes to accelleration and velocity.

Case in point: ships all have a maximim velocity. That's idiotic. That's not how space ships work.

If a space ship starts off at fixed point A and accelerates at 10m/s^2 in a constant direction away from A, then its speed relative to point A will purely be a function of time. Until you get into the territory of relativistic speeds, where length contraction is a thing, that 10m/s^2 would continue stacking and stacking and stacking.

However in ED, ships all top out at some max speed, then even if you boost, you slow back down again after boosting. What is causing you to slow back down?! There is no air resistance in space. There is no friction. No current. Unless God has you in a tractor beam, or you yourself are accelerating or decelerating in a particular direction, then you should never ever change velocity either faster or slower.

And why is there a magic brick-wall top speed for ships? That is so dumb. What mystical force is preventing them from going faster...?

And what is the displayed speed shown relative to, anyway? It seems to be relative to the nearest asteroid or planet surface, but we all know that asteroids and planets are by no means stationary objects. They are all moving very quickly indeed around their host star... so when I drop out of supercruise in an asteroid belt, now I am moving thousands of kilometers per second faster relative to the star then when I was right in front of it. So there really is no top speed, really, there's just what the game engine artificially imposes relative to the local coordinate space.

But why? Was this some kind of programming difficulty that just couldn't be got around? If so I'd love to hear a technical explanation as to why, since I think FD could be excused for this if their reason is sound.

 

[Zeeman]

Because gameplay.

Z...

 

[Brujah]

It was a design decision to encourage dog-fighting in combat. You can also maintain a higher top-speed going forwards than you can sideways or backwards (when flying Flight Assist Off).

I've learned to live with it. FA-Off is still closer to feeling like being in an actual spaceship. I'm unlikely to ever know how it really feels, so it does me okay.

If it makes you happier, you could choose to believe the onboard computers have a failsafe to prevent the overconsumption of fuel, so cut the fuel source once the ship has reached its arbitrarily-limited top speed. Better thrusters are more efficient so allow more speed.

 

[TuxedoSteve]

This has been discussed to death, and the result is always the same. The speed limit is there to make flight, combat specifically, more interesting. Instead of ships constantly 'jousting' from multiple kilometers, getting in range for a few seconds until they pass by and have to change direction for another run. This allows ships to gain advantages over one another via max speed and boost speed.

The ingame lore explanation is the ship's flight computer which limits the speeds you can achieve relative to your current orbit. Even if you turn flight assist off, you cannot turn off this specific function of the flight computer. My personal explanation as to why this would be (no idea if it's actually explained anywhere) is that with the invention of the FSD for insystem travel, there's no need to travel in real space for extended periods of time, so the speed limit is in place as a safety measure, because a ship crashing into a station at multiple kilometers per second would be pretty bad for everyone involved

It was a design decision to encourage dog-fighting in combat. You can also maintain a higher top-speed going forwards than you can sideways or backwards (when flying Flight Assist Off).

I've learned to live with it. FA-Off is still closer to feeling like being in an actual spaceship. I'm unlikely to ever know how it really feels, so it does me okay.

If it makes you happier, you could choose to believe the onboard computers have a failsafe to prevent the overconsumption of fuel, so cut the fuel source once the ship has reached its arbitrarily-limited top speed. Better thrusters are more efficient so allow more speed.

Fuel consumption wouldn't change depending on how fast you're moving, only how hard you're accelerating (not to mention that the fact you automatically slow down after boosting kinda disproves that it's a fuel consumption thing). Besides, the thrusters just use plasma exhaust from the ship's fusion reactor for thrust, so fuel consumption is almost irrelevant anyway.

I think a limited speed that increases with thruster upgrades would be that the better thruster generate higher thrust, which allows for a legally higher top speed because the ship is able to accelerate and stop faster.
That also falls in line with why thrusters have a Max mass allowed, that would be the mass that the thrusters could push to some unspecified minimum acceleration that is legally required for a ship to avoid collisions and other dangers in time

 

[the100thmonkey]

Besides, the specific impulse of the engines relative to the mass of the ship practically limits the acceleration and speed of the ships in a fixed frame of reference - you can't move faster than the propellant! Neither are explained in the game.

Also, it's a game.

 

[Vasious]

Because gameplay.

Z...

And networking

 

[Itaki]

The speedometer don't go to infinity. It only has 4 digits. So naturally, the ship can only go to 9999.

And YOU are very welcome. lol.

 

[BlueLumen]

I'm going to go ahead and reply just to the title and not the wall of text. "Oh, so you have actually traveled at light speed and you know how realistic it is or isn't in game, and you know exactly how physics would react given the speed at which you're traveling?" You want realism, look away from your monitor for a second, you're welcome.

 

[Badben]

For a space sim I will allow some breakage of physics, like to achieve FTL.

But why should regular, sub-light-speed travel have ridiculously unrealistic physics? It's just stupid. I don't understand why a space sim like this, which seems to try pretty hard to have realism, would totally neglect physics when it comes to accelleration and velocity.

Case in point: ships all have a maximim velocity. That's idiotic. That's not how space ships work.

If a space ship starts off at fixed point A and accelerates at 10m/s^2 in a constant direction away from A, then its speed relative to point A will purely be a function of time. Until you get into the territory of relativistic speeds, where length contraction is a thing, that 10m/s^2 would continue stacking and stacking and stacking.

However in ED, ships all top out at some max speed, then even if you boost, you slow back down again after boosting. What is causing you to slow back down?! There is no air resistance in space. There is no friction. No current. Unless God has you in a tractor beam, or you yourself are accelerating or decelerating in a particular direction, then you should never ever change velocity either faster or slower.

And why is there a magic brick-wall top speed for ships? That is so dumb. What mystical force is preventing them from going faster...?

And what is the displayed speed shown relative to, anyway? It seems to be relative to the nearest asteroid or planet surface, but we all know that asteroids and planets are by no means stationary objects. They are all moving very quickly indeed around their host star... so when I drop out of supercruise in an asteroid belt, now I am moving thousands of kilometers per second faster relative to the star then when I was right in front of it. So there really is no top speed, really, there's just what the game engine artificially imposes relative to the local coordinate space.

But why? Was this some kind of programming difficulty that just couldn't be got around? If so I'd love to hear a technical explanation as to why, since I think FD could be excused for this if their reason is sound.

your own thrusters are stopping you from reaching ridiculous speeds because in normal spaceflight the human body can only handle so many G's. If your spaceship kept accelerating without reaching a top speed, then as soon as you would turn you would black out. I think you even can black out in some of the smaller ships if you turn hard enough while going very fast. Why you don't blackout in hyperspace I justify by thinking we're in some kind of Alcubierre bubble.

 

[Arindor]

This is old hat I'm afraid OP. Some people disliked how unrealistic it was during PB. As Zeewolf said: "Because gameplay", and I also find that my imagination can fill in the gaps of incredulity. To a point! Fly safe commander!!

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

One of the reason I detested Frontier (Elite II, the game) was just this.

Hooray, we're having realistic flight mechanics. It ruins the game, but at least we have realism! Who cares about gameplay in a game right? What we need is realism!

 

[xondk]

For a space sim I will allow some breakage of physics, like to achieve FTL.
.

So yeah, speed limit isn't really related to the physics of the whole thing, it is just a limit imposed.

The actual physics of movements and similar other then said limit are spot on realistic last I checked.

 

[Ant_Solo]

Wall of text to ask a very simple question.

The answer is that if ships used a real physics model for flight the game would be unplayable. Combat would simply be an incredibly high speed joust, with a long wait then a tiny moment of terror then rinse and repeat.

But why? Was this some kind of programming difficulty that just couldn't be got around? If so I'd love to hear a technical explanation as to why, since I think FD could be excused for this if their reason is sound.

 

[Pleiades]

Yeah, you might want to look for a space flight simulator, which ED isn't. I find it odd that you can accept "some breakage of physics" to allow FTLT, but you can't accept the same thing in order to provide a playable game instead of a more accurate simulation of something we're very unlikely to experience IRL. Ultimately you either accept it or stop playing the game if it troubles you too much.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Dear OP, you have started the nine thousand five hundred and thirty first thread on this exact topic. It won't go well. Enjoy your stay. You may also be interested in Rogue System.

 

[lysan]

One of the reason I detested Frontier (Elite II, the game) was just this.

Hooray, we're having realistic flight mechanics. It ruins the game, but at least we have realism! Who cares about gameplay in a game right? What we need is realism!

yeah, i hated that too.

 

[Boomer Kay]

yeah, i hated that too.

Didn't hate it, but also don't know why people have fond memories of that or think it's a better implementation than what we currently have.
Most of the time you used autopilot & fast forward to get anything done.
Combat? Select target - have autopilot align you in Fast Forward - some minute of newtonian pewpew til you drifted apart again. (there's some videos on youtube still to be found)

Fast Forward would not work that well in a time-synced universe with other players, so that leaves us with staring at our screen for an hour for a minute of pewpew.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

This is how I explain it to myself :

True reason :
Gameplay, Newtonian flight was interesting - but naturally made for completely bizarre combat. Disliked by many, liked by a few.

Immersion-preserving reason :
After losing countless ships (damaged but Pilot still alive) tumbling into deep space at insane speeds, the few luckly recovered Pilots shared their horror stories of Thruster Malfunctions and their odyssee of floating through deep space uncontrolled at over 100km/sec with only microscopic odds of salvation.

Eventually a tragically failed rendevouz with a Rescue Ship (resulting in the destruction of both the stranded CMDR and the entire Rescue Crew, which was anticipated and transmitted live on all Galactic News Channels) caused all Governments and Engine/Ship Designers to agree on a fully redundant and autonomous safety feature.
From that day on, Thrusters on all Ships were automatically limiting the maximum speed the Ships would achieve in normal space.

It was discovered that proximity of nearby Gravity wells like Planets stretched the desired envelope, but the safety feature still limited the max. velocities within acceptable limits.

 

[777Driver]

@Op - AS everyone has explained, the limit is for gameplay reasons. The technical limit (as far as ship's behaviour) can be easily explained, the brick wall is the flight computers, you can actually see the thrusters firing to limit speed (FA ON & OFF) Artificial limits through software is nothing new or mystical, has been around since the 1950's on aircraft.

As a side note, the only thing that can overcome our ship's thruster software limit is rapid descents on high G worlds.

 

[InMemoriamSirocco]

(same old "unrealistic space physics" argument

Sorry, but this horse has been beaten to death, revived several times and killed over and over again since way before release. The speed limits are there to stay to allow for dogfights which would otherwise not be possible.

One can also argue that the human body is not capable of handling the enormous G-forces that go with virtually unlimited speeds and accelerations and therefore, ship thrusters are hardwired to keep speed inside a certain limit.

It may be unrealistic, but necessary for the gameplay that Frontier intends. So it is here to stay and there is nothing anybody can do about it. Accept and move on or download FFE3D to get a game with realistic space physics.