Elite and Newtonian physics - I'm confused

[Exigeous]

I know it's not surprising at all for those that know me but I've never understood when guys pop off and say that Elite doesn't follow Newtonian physics. A couple of the guys I fly with tend to be very critical of the game, specifically of FD (yet they still play for hours and hours). Usually the comments are "well if it followed Newtonian physics", "if it had real Newtonian physics X and Y wouldn't have happened", etc.

As I've understood it from comments Braben and dev/support have made they onl thing they've done that breaks science is Supercruise, faster than light travel. I can absolutely understand that, without it we'd never even leave the starter system. To my somewhat experienced eyes and butt everything feels as I'd expect.

So when others about Newtonian physics should I just ignore them or is there something that I can correct them with?

Thanks all

 

[Mechanist]

I once flew a passenger to Strong G in my Anaconda.
I experienced a lot of Newtonian physics that day. [woah]

Have you read this guide by DCello?

 

[Arkadi]

I think the newtonians worrying has to do with speed deceleration when FA-off. In space there is not such thing becouse there is no frictional resistance in vacuum - or so I think. We have no way of utilitizing this physical effect. Even in FA-off we decelerate...

 

[Troubletcat]

If the game followed proper Newtownian physics you'd just be able to keep accelerating while not in supercruise, without the current artificial speed limit - there's no reason an Anaconda couldn't get to thousands of metres a second by just continuing to accelerate. Sensibly designed ships from a realism perspective would probably also be able to turn much faster than is currently possible in game, particularly when it comes to yaw.

As it stands ED is closer to WW2 dogfighting than what actual space combat might look like. Thing is, what actual space combat would look like would be super boring to play in a video game. Imagine all the thrill and excitement of launching missiles at blips on a radar representing ships that are literally tens of thousands of kilometres away and you're starting to get the idea.

Because of supercruise and interdictions you'd still have situations where ships ended up much closer to each other than that in the ED-verse of course, but... It's been discussed at great length in the past. I think it's pretty obvious why removing speed limits from ships and upping their yaw would make the game less interesting, not more.

 

[Armia]

I've understood it from comments Braben and dev/support have made they onl thing they've done that breaks science is Supercruise, faster than light travel.

In fact they even have some neat lore explanation for supercruise(alcubierre drive etc etc) and some of the visual/audio effects are designed to support those (pseudo) science lores. For instance, the 'boom' sound on drop to normal space is the sound of stored energy being discharged onto normal space as the warp bubble collapses. Also the blue 'tunnel' effect on supercruise countdown is to represent the blueshift from warp bubble in front of you.

... or that is what I heard.

On a related note, contrary to popular belief, if your ship's top speed is sufficiently high, it is possible to establish a stable orbit around a low G planet.

 

[NascentChemist]

They're likely claiming about the flight model. A spaceship shouldn't have a top speed, for example. Nor should a ship's turning agility (just spinning along an axis) be affected by its speed.

However, FDev explicitly decided to limit the flight model to make combat a dog-fight. So, the ships computer will limit your speed to some optimal value, for game-play reasons.

Lol, triple ninja'd.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Yeah, as above the big things are speed max cap, speed drop-off, turning rate relative to speed and kinetic weapons fire not going forever.

For some these are essential gameplay features so you don't fight a spec you can't see 20km away or play turret rotating warfare... For others they ruin the game for them. Each to their own but I'm glad even if it does feel a bit like 1945 dogfights in space.

 

[MickyG1982]

[video=youtube_share;9UMIbdN0UFE]https://youtu.be/9UMIbdN0UFE[/video]

 

[Kaocraft]

Things which do not behave consistently with The laws of physics:
• The way your ship handles.
• Your avatar's hair
• The way your SRV behaves in different levels of gravity.
• The way most weapons work.
• Cargo
• Telepresence multi crew.

 

[Soopyyy]

They're likely claiming about the flight model. A spaceship shouldn't have a top speed, for example. Nor should a ship's turning agility (just spinning along an axis) be affected by its speed.

However, FDev explicitly decided to limit the flight model to make combat a dog-fight. So, the ships computer will limit your speed to some optimal value, for game-play reasons.

Lol, triple ninja'd.

To be fair, anything with mass will have a speed limit, even if that limit is ridiculous. With that said, there would still be a limit of sorts depending on the mass and energy available to accelerate it.
The problem is, the limits in the game are... conservative. To say the least.

 

[Armia]

Thing is, what actual space combat would look like would be super boring to play in a video game. Imagine all the thrill and excitement of launching missiles at blips on a radar representing ships that are literally tens of thousands of kilometres away and you're starting to get the idea.

After watching The Expanse, I actually think someone should make a game with 'launching missiles at blips on a radar' sort of combat.

Watch this if you haven't already.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhYT-V5svNs

 

[Alex Brentnall]

After watching The Expanse, I actually think someone should make a game with 'launching missiles at blips on a radar' sort of combat.

Watch this if you haven't already.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhYT-V5svNs

Heh, I quite liked the mass effect style battle lore.

Your weapon speed - their manoeuvrability = effective range.

In other words the point at which they can't just manoeuvre away from your shells are the point that battles start making sense. Bigger ships = big slow targets so engage at longer ranges sometimes in the tens of km ranges. Small ships like fighters are really agile so fight at really close range in the 100-500m range like Elite.

 

[NascentChemist]

To be fair, anything with mass will have a speed limit, even if that limit is ridiculous. With that said, there would still be a limit of sorts depending on the mass and energy available to accelerate it.
The problem is, the limits in the game are... conservative. To say the least.

Of course there's a limit when you approach relativistic speeds!

But even an iCourier would need a long time to accelerate to those speeds.

 

[Komemiute]

In fact they even have some neat lore explanation for supercruise(alcubierre drive etc etc) and some of the visual/audio effects are designed to support those (pseudo) science lores. For instance, the 'boom' sound on drop to normal space is the sound of stored energy being discharged onto normal space as the warp bubble collapses. Also the blue 'tunnel' effect on supercruise countdown is to represent the blueshift from warp bubble in front of you.

... or that is what I heard.

On a related note, contrary to popular belief, if your ship's top speed is sufficiently high, it is possible to establish a stable orbit around a low G planet.

This. Scott Manley tried it and shown the physics in Elite is pretty accurate. I love DCS and realism too- but space is so vast I accept the gampleay limitations pretty nicely.
Let's just enjoy the game.

 

[Shiro Akai]

Game play vs realism. One want more of the first, other more of the second. People have different tastes and expectations. And if expectations aren't met to the letter they are disappointed.

And here's a quote that comes to my mind every time expectations are in discussion:

Why I should be sorry for not fulfilling your expectations. There are your EXPECTATIONS, not my obligations.

If someone wants true Newtonian physics based space encounters - read any Honor Harrington series book, typical fleet encounter will suffice...

 

[Soopyyy]

Of course there's a limit when you approach relativistic speeds!

But even an iCourier would need a long time to accelerate to those speeds.

Absolutely, I feel Fdev would have better served the illusion of simulation, had they made the acceleration taper out rather than simply ceasing. Perhaps allow us to achieve rather dumb speeds, but have it take such an amount of time to render it essentially impossible while being in an instance with other people.
Functionally the same difference but serves the illusion better.

 

[Kastor]

ACTUALLY THERE IS AN EXPLANATION!

Firstly, everyone who thinks you can just keep accelerating in a straight line in space... YOU'RE WRONG. While you can just keep accelerating it's not in a straight line, your course will always be curved by the gravitational pull of stellar bodies, both near and far.

When in orbit of a planet simply thrusting and then coasting directly towards something won't actually get you there unless the distance is very short as you will quickly move to a higher, lower or differently angled orbit and start moving away from the point you where trying to get to.

If you have 2 objects in the "same" orbit, to catch up, you need to slow down, drop into a lower (faster) orbit, catch up and then move back up to the original orbit. Initially the relative distance increases, but the sooner you do this, the more time you have to catch up. If you look up some kerbal space program stuff you can see this in action.

Now in Elite almost all points of interest are in a close orbit of something, nav beacons orbit stars, stations orbit planets and rings orbit gas giants. So in reality when your near a station your speed isn't say... 100m/s... it's more in the order of 7667m/s (the international space stations speed) + or - that 100m/s.

Now the question arises, how do we fly directly at things like we do in elite? You fly directly towards the stations and you have no trouble running rings around asteroids and the whole time you fail to cannon off into a different orbit like modern physics predicts, how is this?

The Answer: All ships in elite are constantly correcting for gravity and/or centrifugal force using their maneuvering thrusters. Every single ships has thrusters pointing in all directions. Modern space ships can't do this as they don't have ion/fusion thrusters like the ships in Elite do. If modern spaceships tried to do this they would run out of fuel in mere minutes.

Of course the faster (relative to orbital speed) one of Elites constantly correcting ships go the harder it's thrusters have to work to stay on course. Thus we have a reason why ships have a max speed.

Now a Elite ship could just hard burn in a direction and continuously accelerate... but that's a bad course of action as missiles and cannons (which lack omnidirectional thrusters to course correct) would have a much easier time catching you if you did that. Instead all ship computers keep their vessels in a given orbit at speed faster or slower than that orbit should be as a defensive measure against long range cannon sniping and single maindrive conventional ships (which have since gone extinct).



TLDR: Knowledge of Newtonian Physics alone isn't enough, arguing about space flight is an ASTROPHYSICS field, not a bog standard physics field. Go get educated on orbital maneuvering and then come back to argue space ship maneuverability. Don't say something like "If the game followed proper Newtownian physics you'd just be able to keep accelerating" like it's the obvious missing piece of the puzzle, it's not, you're just 3 steps behind.

 

[Kuroshio]

Yeah, as above the big things are speed max cap, speed drop-off, turning rate relative to speed and kinetic weapons fire not going forever.

For some these are essential gameplay features so you don't fight a spec you can't see 20km away or play turret rotating warfare... For others they ruin the game for them. Each to their own but I'm glad even if it does feel a bit like 1945 dogfights in space.

The funny thing is, the top speed is (at least in some ships) still enforced following Newtonian physics: I just checked with a Type-6 in Beta (gotta love the vanity camera), and if you, for example, go to full throttle with FA off, you can see the retrothrusters firing to keep the ship from accelerating further. It isn't modelled consistently, sadly, and doesn't explain variable top speeds, but my head canon always was that our ships have an enforced speed limit to prevent them from becoming weaponized - even a Sidewinder would create one hell of an impact if allowed to accelerate until its fuel is empty.

And, as everyone seems to be talking about The Expanse these days, there's a moment in the latest novel where Amos wonders about all the PDC projectiles that must be flying around in the solar system (and beyond someday). Head canon again, but I always explained the arbitrary maximum range of projectile weaponry in Elite by self-destruct timers (a self-destructing shaped charge would loose a lot of its forward momentum and become less threating for the innocent bystanders in a few hundred years ... )

That's not to say that everything is perfect or denying that quite a lot of things are inconsistent, but - as the Type-6 example shows - at least some thought seems to have gone into it.

 

[Soopyyy]

ACTUALLY THERE IS AN EXPLANATION!

Firstly, everyone who thinks you can just keep accelerating in a straight line in space... YOU'RE WRONG. While you can just keep accelerating it's not in a straight line, your course will always be curved by the gravitational pull of stellar bodies, both near and far.

When in orbit of a planet simply thrusting and then coasting directly towards something won't actually get you there unless the distance is very short as you will quickly move to a higher, lower or differently angled orbit and start moving away from the point you where trying to get to.

If you have 2 objects in the "same" orbit, to catch up, you need to slow down, drop into a lower (faster) orbit, catch up and then move back up to the original orbit. Initially the relative distance increases, but the sooner you do this, the more time you have to catch up. If you look up some kerbal space program stuff you can see this in action.

Now in Elite almost all points of interest are in a close orbit of something, nav beacons orbit stars, stations orbit planets and rings orbit gas giants. So in reality when your near a station your speed isn't say... 100m/s... it's more in the order of 7667m/s (the international space stations speed) + or - that 100m/s.

Now the question arises, how do we fly directly at things like we do in elite? You fly directly towards the stations and you have no trouble running rings around asteroids and the whole time you fail to cannon off into a different orbit like modern physics predicts, how is this?

The Answer: All ships in elite are constantly correcting for gravity and/or centrifugal force using their maneuvering thrusters. Every single ships has thrusters pointing in all directions. Modern space ships can't do this as they don't have ion/fusion thrusters like the ships in Elite do. If modern spaceships tried to do this they would run out of fuel in mere minutes.

Of course the faster (relative to orbital speed) one of Elites constantly correcting ships go the harder it's thrusters have to work to stay on course. Thus we have a reason why ships have a max speed.

Now a Elite ship could just hard burn in a direction and continuously accelerate... but that's a bad course of action as missiles and cannons (which lack omnidirectional thrusters to course correct) would have a much easier time catching you if you did that. Instead all ship computers keep their vessels in a given orbit at speed faster or slower than that orbit should be as a defensive measure against long range cannon sniping and single maindrive conventional ships (which have since gone extinct).



TLDR: Knowledge of Newtonian Physics alone isn't enough, arguing about space flight is an ASTROPHYSICS field, not a bog standard physics field. Go get educated on orbital maneuvering and then come back to argue space ship maneuverability. Don't say something like "If the game followed proper Newtownian physics you'd just be able to keep accelerating" like it's the obvious missing piece of the puzzle, it's not, you're just 3 steps behind.

Your explanation is good, perhaps a little hard to understand?
If I am reading correctly, its a similar situation to that of trying to land a fighter jet on a carrier. The carrier might be moving at 100km/h, so the jet will have to do 150km/h to approach at 50km/h and should the pilot reduce the speed to 0km/h he'll simply fall into the ocean (gravity and lift not withstanding) as the carrier will have moved away.
So when we approach the space station, the meters per second speed readout is relative to the station, not our actual velocity through a vaccum?

 

[Kastor]

Your explanation is good, perhaps a little hard to understand?
If I am reading correctly, its a similar situation to that of trying to land a fighter jet on a carrier. The carrier might be moving at 100km/h, so the jet will have to do 150km/h to approach at 50km/h and should the pilot reduce the speed to 0km/h he'll simply fall into the ocean (gravity and lift not withstanding) as the carrier will have moved away.
So when we approach the space station, the meters per second speed readout is relative to the station, not our actual velocity through a vaccum?

Yes. Another comparison is a pair of NASCARs drifting around a large circle track. If one tries to catch up to the other by simply speeding up he will only force himself off the track. He will only catch up this way if his traction (maneuvering thursters in Elite) is enough to keep up with his faster speed (main drive).