20,452,225,000 meters / second in my old ex-police Mk 1 Viper, souped up with a class 3 military drive and 30 G thrusters.
It doesn't just do that speed though - it can do all the other[ speeds below that, too, so i can also go slowly if i want, just like you top guns!
For instance if i was just popping over from London to Paris, i might not want to get much above a few hundred meters / sec, just like you guys!
Obviously, if i was going to fly through outer space, to go to another planet or something, i'd probably want to go a bit faster, to make the journey quicker and more stimulating! For example i can fly from London to Apollonius Lunar base in about half and hour, in real-time, in "normal space". That would take the quickest of you lot 15 hours! But yeah no it's all about the journey, and presumably longer travel times trump all other considerations, especially safety - imagine if i forgot to slow down before trying to dock..! That wouldn't be much "fun" would it?
Such a shame the overwhelming majority of ED players don't want to be able to control their own speed, and don't miss in the slightest all the cool radical stuff you can do at those speeds, in previous versions of Elite..
Unfortunately the consensus is that having control of your own spaceship's speed, today, would be far too complicated for the average ED enthusiast!
They're fine controlling their own supercruise speed, because that's awkward and unintuitive, but doing so in "normal space" with regular, intuitive thrust would be far too taxing, boring and impossible. No thanks, that's not the game they backed - and if it had been, they wouldn't've!
So don't be jealous that my clapped-out Mk1 Viper is literally millions of times faster than your spangly-new Mk4... because less is more!
At least, up to a few hundred meters / sec, eh? Cos anything faster than that is just pointless, boring and too difficult, right?
[yesnod]
