is frontier being too clever for their own good
- Thread starter Excalibur
- Start date
I asked myself
To do it in just over 4 minutes, about 60 times the speed of light
(av distance between Neptune and Earth is 4.22 light-hours, so 60C gets you there in 4.22 minutes, give or take 5% for differences in orbital position).
Don't ask about acceleration.
The genre was always called "Space Sim Genre" or "Space Combat Sim", Chris Roberts calls Star Citizen a "Space Sim" and it has some less realistic mechanics than ED....
Frontier also called Elite a 'sandbox' game...
The reason they're called space-sims is probably that during the 90s, flight-combat sims were very popular, as were 'sim' games in general. Sim City, Sim Ant, etc. Chris Roberts actually made a few flight-sim games.
And the similar things _without_ those hydraulic pistons are called trainers.
Still, Frontier has always had a better claim to the "space sim" name than many other games and I'd hope for Elite 4 to keep on holding to that right so that we can still disparage the "space shooters" that make the mistake of calling themselves "sims" of any kind.
In the last thirty months I've played more SP than MP, never mind about thirty days.
It has to be a game before it is a simulation. It's got to be lots of fun.
Having said that I think the mood of ELITE is fairly serious. It should have the atmosphere of a simulation. Even if that's more an aesthetic thing than a game mechanics thing.
Decisions about realism are very difficult to take without having the game in front of you. We can argue about whether it should take one minute or half an hour to fly between stations, but if we actually played the thing the difference between fun and tedium might be whether it takes on average 3 minutes or 3 minutes and 10 seconds to fly between stations. Tiny design decisions can throw a game out of balance.
To be honest as long as the designers know there's a general fondness for realism, I'm happy to trust them beyond that.
Having said that I think the mood of ELITE is fairly serious. It should have the atmosphere of a simulation. Even if that's more an aesthetic thing than a game mechanics thing.
Decisions about realism are very difficult to take without having the game in front of you. We can argue about whether it should take one minute or half an hour to fly between stations, but if we actually played the thing the difference between fun and tedium might be whether it takes on average 3 minutes or 3 minutes and 10 seconds to fly between stations. Tiny design decisions can throw a game out of balance.
To be honest as long as the designers know there's a general fondness for realism, I'm happy to trust them beyond that.
<puts hand up>
Yes, it took a while to learn. But it was _fun_!
This correct, the Points of Interest are destinations, of which there can be hundreds in a system. You could slow boat between them, but only a realistic speeds, so it would takes years to travel across the solar system. We're currently looking into how we can allow faster travel without breaking the current system and adding a huge cost to the development and still being fun.
Ask yourself how fast do you need to travel to travel from Earth to Neptune in a few minutes?
And now ask how easy is it to miss even a star sized object at that speed?
Michael
A system that modulates the speed depending on how close you are to a mass could solve this problem.
Michael Brookes
Game Director
Indeed, which is what we've been looking into, but the changes in velocity to do this and maintain a reasonable travel time is immense. In rough terms you'd need to double your speed every second for 30 seconds, travel for 30 seconds and decelerate for another 30 seconds and you could still easily miss your target
Of course it could be automated, but you might as well just have a jump if you're doing that.
Michael
Indeed, which is what we've been looking into, but the changes in velocity to do this and maintain a reasonable travel time is immense. In rough terms you'd need to double your speed every second for 30 seconds, travel for 30 seconds and decelerate for another 30 seconds and you could still easily miss your target
Of course it could be automated, but you might as well just have a jump if you're doing that.
Michael
Yes I meant automated and I think it won't be the same as a normal jump, since with this system you could freely steer around planets and admire them from every angle within a reasonable amount of time.
Manual as option would be nice to have as well for the people who want this.
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If it can be made so that it simply has a small learning curve until you start to get it "about right" on the first try, I'd really love to see this implemented instead of jumps. It could even be called by the same name as the "fast drive" in Elite used to be called.Indeed, which is what we've been looking into, but the changes in velocity to do this and maintain a reasonable travel time is immense. In rough terms you'd need to double your speed every second for 30 seconds, travel for 30 seconds and decelerate for another 30 seconds and you could still easily miss your target
Simple misses are not that dangerous, unless you are foolish enough to aim directly at a planet (or other destination). It's a simple matter of turning around and trying again - much like in golf.
What happens if the rate of acceleration and decceleration can change? Or does your decription already involve that?Indeed, which is what we've been looking into, but the changes in velocity to do this and maintain a reasonable travel time is immense. In rough terms you'd need to double your speed every second for 30 seconds, travel for 30 seconds and decelerate for another 30 seconds and you could still easily miss your target
Of course it could be automated, but you might as well just have a jump if you're doing that.
Michael
Michael Brookes
Game Director
Michael Brookes
Game Director
This is what we are looking at, unfortunately automation takes the point of it away as people wanted to manually control their travel in system.
It also needs to be fun and advanced orbital mechanics at superluminal speeds isn't as much fun as you think. It also becomes technologically difficult the more objects that are also travelling at these speeds.
We're looking into it, but it's not an easy problem to solve, especially as it needs to work without breaking other parts of the game and of course be a fun feature in itself.
Michael
I think piloting a ship should take an element of skill. This is after all a twitch-based game, not a point and click like Eve. So I like this idea of having to become skillful at manually handling your ship at these speeds.
I play a lot of IL-2 and in the early days I'd try all sorts of unrealistic maneuvers that my plane wasn't designed to handle. Putting it in a steep dive for example and managing to pull out just before I slammed into the ground was an adrenalin rush.
Eventually you learn what your plane (or spaceship) is capable of. ED could have that similar feel and learning curve.
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Not sure what your definition of twitch based is as I don't believe we've ever said Dangerous is going to be twitched based in the way a typical FPS is twitched based or something like Strike Suit Zero (a modern space shooter) is twitched based. We're going for a much more sedate and paced experience with flying these ships. Think more like a boat than a fighter plane