Suggestions, Improvements, Confusion?

[G4m3rHead]

I'm a little bit confused as to why I am seeing smoke trails in Space, smoke trails of rockets, Hollywood style explosions in the sub freezing, vacuum environment of Space.
Why our advanced futuristic spaceships have liquid based engine and probably propulsion systems as well.
Why our spaceships blow up in a fashion as if they were in Oxygen rich environments.
Why the futuristic SSM's (Space to Space Missiles) seem like they burn fuel, releasing smoke as a byproduct of the type of propulsion system.

Yes, smoke and explosions do exist in space but not in the way we are seeing it now ingame.

• I would much rather be satisfied with Engines using charge up methods of refueling, meaning it's a powerplant that doesn't use a combustion engine but rather plasma propulsion or the likes, with lighttrails (not straight fine lines, but more messy wider chaotic trails) rather then smoketrails.

I would also much rather like to see imploding meltdown and then exploding of the powerplants discharging marvelous colors as a reaction of the "plasma" with the particles found in space. (each type of powerplant with a different effect would be nice.​

Some real life space, nuclear detonations.​

[video=youtube;uEILIf8VkgI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEILIf8VkgI[/video]​

I would also like to see these rockets use a similar system of propulsion, instead of smoke dispersing fuel like burning propulsion.​

• I've also noticed how the thrusters have this soundeffect of pulsating propulsion as if it was meant to be, yet the thrusters themselfs seem visually like afterburners.

Another thing is the sound FX in Space, it might be boring playing a game with no FX just because your in Space.
This could have been nailed by the Devs, if they have made fully integrated Sound FX in the cockpit and audio notifiers of audible events outside of teh spaceship. Meaning..
Sound can't be observed in the vacuum of Space due to the lack of gases sound can travel on.. or something of the sorts.
Its confusing when i hear my lasers shoot and multiguns spin and fire.
This could have been fixed by removing Sound FX that happen outside of the ship, but give us inside Audio FX to indicate the happenings outside the ship.
A special sound when weapons fire, a special sound when ships blow up, either AI announcment or cool subtle FX as such that it doesn't remove the immersion factor it rather compensates for what we know can not be possible.​

• As we dont know much about Space dogfights and battles, explosions of different types, the possibilities are endless, for this game to utilize, take what ever few facts there are and let the imagination run wild where it would be aesthetically pleasing to observe. Not just, fireball, smoke, debris, laser... been there, seen that, done that, right?

• HUD customization, if its this simple for us to do it..

http://arkku.com/elite/hud_editor/
...then could you guys implement it using official ways ingame to customize it..

​

 

[DocLooshkin]

A fair number of questions, there - and the honest answer to most of them is "because we're the devs and we say so". As far as I can tell, the general concept of ED is that this is all meant to be sort-of-current or near-future technology, with the main exception of the FSD and hyperspace, which ED's lead creator David Braben has reportedly described as his "one great lie". The goal is to create an almost-slightly-plausible version of the kind of flight and fight sequences seen in the Star Wars film series.

There are not, as yet, any significant departures from the mundane in ED. No zero-point energy extractors (unless one's buried in the FSD), no AIs, no quantum replication (unless you count the inexplicable death survivals), nothing that says we're running around over a thousand years in the future. Not even tractor beams - and we're highly unlikely to get to the end of this century without solving that one, probably several times over.

If it looks like a chemical rocket, it's probably because it's a chemical rocket. All else is artistic license.

Speaking as an SF fan, I'm a little ambivalent about this. It's an enjoyable aesthetic, but it's not meant to be a plausible depiction of the 34th century. ED is a kind of Steampunk, albeit less pathologically Victoriana-obsessed than most in the genre. It is slightly too limiting, in places - I would've liked for a few more lies were told, simply to add more unpredictability and variety to the game, not to mention verisimilitude with something supposedly so far ahead. Perhaps we'll see some of that when the Thargoids finally show up, or perhaps not. We shall see.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

Artistic liberty and suspension of disbelief.
.
And while I believe there is no 'sound' in space, things do emit/reflect waves that could be interpreted and translated into sound. I believe it's something to do with the ripples in cosmic radiation, but I'm no expert in the field, I just read about this sort of thing once.

 

[Wullail]

Don't engines designed to move items in space eject 'matter' to cause the ship to move forward in the opposite direction? , thats the trail.

Even mass heated by atomics being ejected would leave a trail of sorts.

 

[G4m3rHead]

The trail is not the problem, its the trail of smoke which is.. It could have been some cool cosmic reaction or whatever. Imagine if the ships left trails something like the Northern Lights here on Earth

 

[Defacto]

The engines are fusion-powered torch drives. Science-fictional, of course.

For the sound... what are you suggesting? The exterior sounds are meant to be simulated sounds recreating what the sounds would be like if we were flying in an atmosphere.

The trail is not the problem, its the trail of smoke which is.. It could have been some cool cosmic reaction or whatever. Imagine if the ships left trails something like the Northern Lights here on Earth

I don't see your point? There's a problem with our engines throwing out smoke because it's in space, but ooooh! Auroras! Why can't our engines spurt out auroras whenever we thrust?

 

[G4m3rHead]

The engines are fusion-powered torch drives. Science-fictional, of course.

For the sound... what are you suggesting? The exterior sounds are meant to be simulated sounds recreating what the sounds would be like if we were flying in an atmosphere.

But they are not simulated sound within the cockpit, and if they are "meant" to be like you sayd?! They did a poor job differentiating them.

I don't see your point? There's a problem with our engines throwing out smoke because it's in space, but ooooh! Auroras! Why can't our engines spurt out auroras whenever we thrust?

My point is, the game has poor consistency management. Its like Playing a modern military game but only you are with wooden bow n arrows and catapults, while everyone else is firing Howitzers.
Simply put the tech has not reached or cought up with the depicted environment in which we are thrown in.
There just isn't an expantion into space of this kind without the ability of equally advanced propulsion systems, i doubt these fuel based engines could even initiate a "hypercruse" or "FSD". It just doesn't make sense, and the fact that you find nothing wrong it is OK, thats your perspective on it all. But I, I can't.
We might as well have steam engines propelling us in space. I mean, i don't want to exaggerate but i do feel like the tech is not consistent to a point where its irritating, thats all.

 

[Defacto]

But they are not simulated sound within the cockpit, and if they are "meant" to be like you sayd?! They did a poor job differentiating them.



My point is, the game has poor consistency management. Its like Playing a modern military game but only you are with wooden bow n arrows and catapults, while everyone else is firing Howitzers.
Simply put the tech has not reached or cought up with the depicted environment in which we are thrown in.
There just isn't an expantion into space of this kind without the ability of equally advanced propulsion systems, i doubt these fuel based engines could even initiate a "hypercruse" or "FSD". It just doesn't make sense, and the fact that you find nothing wrong it is OK, thats your perspective on it all. But I, I can't.
We might as well have steam engines propelling us in space. I mean, i don't want to exaggerate but i do feel like the tech is not consistent to a point where its irritating, thats all.

Yes the point is that you are going to have a hard time differentiating the sounds. They're there to aid situational awareness (and rule of cool).

You have fusion torches and alcubierre drives (for FSD).
How is that not caught up with the environment we are in?

 

[DragoCubX]

But they are not simulated sound within the cockpit, and if they are "meant" to be like you sayd?! They did a poor job differentiating them.



My point is, the game has poor consistency management. Its like Playing a modern military game but only you are with wooden bow n arrows and catapults, while everyone else is firing Howitzers.
Simply put the tech has not reached or cought up with the depicted environment in which we are thrown in.
There just isn't an expantion into space of this kind without the ability of equally advanced propulsion systems, i doubt these fuel based engines could even initiate a "hypercruse" or "FSD". It just doesn't make sense, and the fact that you find nothing wrong it is OK, thats your perspective on it all. But I, I can't.
We might as well have steam engines propelling us in space. I mean, i don't want to exaggerate but i do feel like the tech is not consistent to a point where its irritating, thats all.

Woah, wait wait wait, you're getting at least one thing wrong here: The FSD is an engine seperate from your normal thrusters. While they do use the same fuel, the FSD might use it in a different way (dunno, I'm not well informed about rocket engines etc.)? I'll admit it's not very realistic anyway, but I want a game that's fun (having auroras all over your screen in fight definitely is neither fun (okay, maybe as troll), nor helpful). Remember, most players are more common with fuel using engines emitting smoke, rather than aurora-emitting engines using "plasma propulsion"

 

[CMDR Alonso]

For what I know, the power plant might be a compact fusion reactor (guess what: needs fuel, not necessarily liquid fuel, but fuel).

The thrusters I don't know, but the FSD is an Alcuberrie Drive, look for it, it's being developed as we speak.

¿What's wrong with the smoke?

About the explosions, correct me if I'm wrong, but if the ship has lots of O2 inside, then a "normal" explosion could possibly happen.

 

[Defacto]

I think that the ''fire'' when the ship explodes can be explained as a Hydrogen-Oxygen fire. There sure is a lot of hydrogen on board (several tonnes) and since a large volume of the ship is pressurized with breathable atmosphere, I think that there should be enough oxygen to produce the fireball we see in the explosion.

I've always found it a bit strange that the ship explodes when the powerplant is destroyed. Fusion reactors are generally not that destructive, the worst-case scenario is typically just the reaction stopping and the reactor being too damage dot restart. There are some exceptions though, I think that some reactors use very strong electromagnets that could rip the ship apart if something goes wrong. Some theoretical forms of fusion reactor I've seen also involves using antimatter to ''ignite'' the reactor. If the reactors in ED are AM-ignited, that could definitvely explain why damaging the powerplant causes the ship to explode into many tiny pieces.

 

[DocLooshkin]

[...] but the FSD is an Alcuberrie Drive, look for it, it's being developed as we speak.

The FSD does not appear to be an Alcubierre drive. Looking out of the windows in supercruise, our altered frame of reference appears to be uniform in all directions - and doesn't really match the description of the proposed Alcubierre drive, which is designed to contract space ahead of us and expand it behind us. Also, one ship following another would be travelling through this expanded space in the wake of the other ship - and would logically experience very obvious slowdown, making interdiction much more difficult, if not impossible.

As far as I can tell, the FSD is - at present - no more than whatever equations the devs have used to shrink and grow the virtual space around our virtual ships, depending on our distance from a planetary or stellar body. If there are any theoretical principals involved in the FSD that might be applied to the real universe - that is, anything beyond a programmed effect where our frame of reference is uniformly altered - the devs don't seem to have shared it.

In real life, both NASA and JPL apparently did some preliminary research on the subject a few years ago, but I've heard nothing since then - and it's not clear that their interest was ever anything more than a PR stunt. No-one has the slightest idea how to create the exotic matter needed for such a drive. Miguel Alcubierre himself has said that he considers the drive unlikely to be created for centuries, if ever.

 

[CMDR Alonso]

The FSD does not appear to be an Alcubierre drive. Looking out of the windows in supercruise, our altered frame of reference appears to be uniform in all directions - and doesn't really match the description of the proposed Alcubierre drive, which is designed to contract space ahead of us and expand it behind us. Also, one ship following another would be travelling through this expanded space in the wake of the other ship - and would logically experience very obvious slowdown, making interdiction much more difficult, if not impossible.

As far as I can tell, the FSD is - at present - no more than whatever equations the devs have used to shrink and grow the virtual space around our virtual ships, depending on our distance from a planetary or stellar body. If there are any theoretical principals involved in the FSD that might be applied to the real universe - that is, anything beyond a programmed effect where our frame of reference is uniformly altered - the devs don't seem to have shared it.

In real life, both NASA and JPL apparently did some preliminary research on the subject a few years ago, but I've heard nothing since then - and it's not clear that their interest was ever anything more than a PR stunt. No-one has the slightest idea how to create the exotic matter needed for such a drive. Miguel Alcubierre himself has said that he considers the drive unlikely to be created for centuries, if ever.

Maybe I made a mistake, I remember reading it somewhere, and thought it was that way.

About the Alcuberrie Drive being developed irl, I read about it recently, also I read about a guy who said he was near to get results working on his own, look for it, I may got it wrong though.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

My point is, the game has poor consistency management. Its like Playing a modern military game but only you are with wooden bow n arrows and catapults, while everyone else is firing Howitzers.

Artistic liberty and suspension of disbelief. The best solution is to stop analyzing it. I could point out nine hundred spelling and grammar errors in your posts, but I don't because it's not so bad that it diminishes the quality of your content to a significant degree. Tread ED the same way.