Newcomer / Intro Ship's Travel Speed

[Micah]

I'm a little confused about the scales of speed at which the ship travels.
Out of supercruise, a plain number, like 250, indicates meters per second?
In supercruise, 15 km/s is simple. 1 Mm/s means 15,000 km/s?
And how does the "c" unit (ex. 1.05c) tie in to the scale? How many Mm are in a "c"?
Thanks in advance for any clarification. I didn't find much help in googling.

 

[FaolGlas]

C is the speed of light, so 1C is going at the speed of light, 0.25C is a quarter of the speed of light, 10 C is ten times the speed of light, etc. As for the details, never bothered to find out as it doesn't affect the gameplay, and I pay more attention to the "time before arriving at the destination" number as that one lets you know if you will overshoot or not, heh!

 

[LXIV]

I'm a little confused about the scales of speed at which the ship travels.
Out of supercruise, a plain number, like 250, indicates meters per second?
In supercruise, 15 km/s is simple. 1 Mm/s means 15,000 km/s?
And how does the "c" unit (ex. 1.05c) tie in to the scale? How many Mm are in a "c"?
Thanks in advance for any clarification. I didn't find much help in googling.

300 if you round up a little. I think it's pretty clever the way they handled this.

 

[Dragosani]

I have been sitting at my computer for 1 hour 30 minutes - in hyperspace travelling to Katzenstein Dock in the 36 Ophiuchi System.....My current speed is 1,600c and getting faster....but the time is getting slower....this is one ridiculous journey.....

 

[InfiniteGremlins]

Basic units:
m - meters
km - kilometers (1000 m)
Mm - megameters (1,000,000 m or 1000 km)
ls - light seconds, the distance light travels in a second (299,792,458 m, or just under 300 Mm)
ly - light years, the distance light travels in a year
c - the speed of light

1.0/c is one light-second per second


The Frame Shift Drive supercruise is a faster-than-light Alcubierre warp drive, so it's top speeds are in multiples of c.

 

[Dragosani]

Decided to leave my ship travelling in space - still currently 1800c in hyperspace.....that's 3.5 REAL HOURS in hyperspace flying towards a station in the 36 Ophiuchi system.....3 hours ago it said it would take 20 minutes, now it's saying 19 minutes.....honestly?!


4 hours real-time to dock at a station.....loving the game but that is really taking the p1**

 

[DaveB]

Also two things about the FSD are impacted by the intensity of the local gravitational field...

1: the top speed. higher gravitational field intensity = lower top speed.
2: the maximum acceleration/deceleration the drive can achieve. Again, higher gravitational field = slower to speed up or slow down.

That's where the "slow down" warning and overshooting your destination comes from, and why often the "time left" display doesn't seem logical.

"Slow Down" - you have entered an area of higher gravitational field traveling too fast for the drive to bring you to a relative stop. Even if you zero the throttle you will not come to a stop until you have exited that area and the gravitational field is lower, allowing the drive to slow you down faster. Do that on station approach and you'll overshoot, moving further away from whatever the station is orbiting before you can slow down enough to exit SC.

In addition, if you're "in the blue", the ships computers will try to compute the smoothest approach, throttling back steadily as you approach your destination to prevent an overshoot. That's why, particularly for longer SC trips, it's more efficient to fly at full throttle until the time left shows under 20s then throttle back to the lower half of the blue zone.

 

[Feldspar]

See if you can find the blank rare commodity there, I bought 4 cannisters there of something that they wouldn't tell me what it was, an amusing bug, I think.

 

[ReaperAlex]

Decided to leave my ship travelling in space - still currently 1800c in hyperspace.....that's 3.5 REAL HOURS in hyperspace flying towards a station in the 36 Ophiuchi system.....3 hours ago it said it would take 20 minutes, now it's saying 19 minutes.....honestly?!


4 hours real-time to dock at a station.....loving the game but that is really taking the p1**

what on earth is worth 4 hours of your time just getting into station? surely any credits or reputation that might be at stake could be earnt back in 4 hrs of game time

 

[Micah]

Basic units:
m - meters
km - kilometers (1000 m)
Mm - megameters (1,000,000 m or 1000 km)
ls - light seconds, the distance light travels in a second (299,792,458 m, or just under 300 Mm)
ly - light years, the distance light travels in a year
c - the speed of light

1.0/c is one light-second per second


The Frame Shift Drive supercruise is a faster-than-light Alcubierre warp drive, so it's top speeds are in multiples of c.

good sum up of info, thanks!

 

[ScottGust]

Decided to leave my ship travelling in space - still currently 1800c in hyperspace.....that's 3.5 REAL HOURS in hyperspace flying towards a station in the 36 Ophiuchi system.....3 hours ago it said it would take 20 minutes, now it's saying 19 minutes.....honestly?!


4 hours real-time to dock at a station.....loving the game but that is really taking the p1**

NO that is too long, u should never have to be in SC longer than about 15min to target..ive had to restart game several times in the past to reset distances. (sometimes even ED chokes)

 

[Zelos1983]

a Mm is a Megameter. 10^6 Meters. The metric system is quite easy and intuitive. km would be 10^3m, or a kilometer.
c is the speed of light, light in vacuum travels at roughly 300Mm/s

 

[FaolGlas]

Decided to leave my ship travelling in space - still currently 1800c in hyperspace.....that's 3.5 REAL HOURS in hyperspace flying towards a station in the 36 Ophiuchi system.....3 hours ago it said it would take 20 minutes, now it's saying 19 minutes.....honestly?!


4 hours real-time to dock at a station.....loving the game but that is really taking the p1**

Something seems up there - Hutton Orbital in Alpha Centauri is the longest reported distance, at 0.22 light years, taking people about an hour to get there. Speed hits 2100 C, which is the max, within that time, so something seems distinctly wrong there. How far was it from the star to the station? Any chance of a strange glitch where you have seen a station in another system or something weird? It's not impossible you have a new record-holder for distance, but even then, you should have hit the max possible speed of 2100 C in less time than you have been travelling, so something is up - more info would be great to try and diagnose.

 

[Ernest Borgnine]

they are trying to scale reality in a fictional game fell lucky it doesn't take a week or longer and next time check route before excepting
a mission

 

[Kellan Fell]

NO that is too long, u should never have to be in SC longer than about 15min to target..ive had to restart game several times in the past to reset distances. (sometimes even ED chokes)

I think it's about a half hour flight from star to Hutton Orbital (maybe 40 minutes), and that's the real biggie.