The Chieftan is annoying

I try not to make it a habit of relating to things that do not exist. Even it it might 1000 years from now, unless we come up with actual cryostasis tech to put us to sleep until then or a way to live that long at all, what good is it for me to worry about it? Am I also to try and relate to fire breathing dragons because lizards may evolve or mutate into that in a few million years?
It is not a choice. You watch Game of Thrones? You are relating to that world. You are using your blueprint of How The World Works to make sense of that world. Everything in GoT obeys the rules of physics as we know them, the rules of biology, human psychology etc. Even magic follows rules. Even the dragons have wings that look plausibly large enough to carry their weight, and behave like animals with physical mass and inertia, with physical strengths and weaknesses and relatable animal behaviour.

They don't look like this:

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They look like this:

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Else GoT would not be credible, and you would not be able to suspend disbelief and relate to it, and enjoy it.

Its a game. Rationality and being believable are not required. Its not real, it doesn't matter.

It does, because in order for ED to be enjoyable, you have to be able to suspend disbelief. You have to be able to pretend for a while that it is --could be-- real, so you can have the visceral make-believe experience of being a space pilot. That's the whole idea behind it. And it can only do that if it doesn't break the spell with jarringly inconsistent detail to remind you that it isn't real.

It's why even magic has rules, even fantasy worlds obey the basic laws of physics, biology and psychology, and science fiction keeps a firm foot in what is scientifically possible or conceivable. And in that, little details matter.
 
Those players arguing that they don't care about realism are shooting themselves in the foot, if you don't care then why would it bother you if we got more realistic ships?

It would make the rest of us happy and you lot don't care one way or the other so you don't lose out on anything just because we get what we want.

Why are they buying into a space-sim in the first place if they don't like playing with spaceships, that's what i want to know - you could play F117 or any flightsim with a night sky... you got your aeroplane speed limits, no yaw, a nice starry backdrop and more to the point, a self-consistent game! You could pitch and roll to your little hearts are content. Pitching, and rolling, and rolling and pitching - for the advanced ones, even rolling and pitching together, at the same time!

The "like spacey games, hate spaceflight" crew have dragged the once-premier standard of the Elite marque down into the doldrums of lowest-common-denominator mediocrity.

Without any exaggeration, everything i enjoy about Elite occurs at the speed ranges precluded by ED's space speed limit. There's little of interest involved in simply flying between worlds, besides playing with the external views whilst on autopilot, but ED doesn't even have autopilot yet, and we had to beg for years just for external views (which were still pathetically unusable last i checked). So i'm still playing FFE instead. FFE lets me play Elite. ED does not.

The game's entering its death-spiral. What's the point of any new ships when they're all hobbled to slow taxiing speeds and aren't allowed to yaw? There's no point to any of the existing ships as it is. No point to any of the 'upgrades' either. Why would anyone want to grind to earn mega-credits to spend on 'A-rated upgrades' when the only thing limiting a ship's performance is its own self-enforced space speed limit? Why not just save all that hassle and raise the cut-out velocity of your existing, perfectly-good engines? It doesn't make any sense. It's just bizarrely illogical. How is anyone with an IQ above room temperature supposed to be taken in by this?

Similarly, why would a spaceship not even have heading and direction reticles on the HUD? Why wouldn't flight-assist modes be fully configurable? Only the very densest custard-space proponents are able to swallow the line that disabling angular damping conveys anything at all of the thrills of unfettered free spaceflight (ooh wee look "full Newtonian"! (please punch yourself if that's you)) - why wouldn't the ability to toggle angular and linear damping individually be among the most rudimentary controls in the cockpit, with multiple redundant backup systems? All spaceflight is, is controlling angular and mostly, linear velocities. That, and maintaining life support... but only so that you can continue managing your velocities. "Spaceflight" = velocity control. That's basically the whole gig, in a nutshell. It's certainly where all the fun and skill is - especially when it comes to combat, or making close-passes, or playing with steep gravity wells etc. etc.

These nutters what do them there 'canyon runs' - the whole point ostensibly being that they're fast, right? They're like well fast. Proper boy racers. So speed is a good thing, then? Speed is fun? Or is it "only so much speed is fun" - after which it becomes boring and impossible and no-one said it was going to be ultra-realistic anyway? At what point is that, then? If the 'canyon racer' speed records got a little faster year-on-year, would a time come when someone went a little too fast and everyone spectating just thought it was actually a bit lame? Like, here we were just having a little innocent fun and then this nutter comes along and just ruins it? Say, 2 km/s? does that figure fill you with disdain and contempt? Or what about 3 km/s? Would that still be fun and exciting, or bordering a little too close to boring and impossible?

Just totally blue-skying here, but imagine doing one of 'em canyon runs at hundreds of km/s? I've been doing this for years, do it all the time. Striking even the most tenuous atmosphere so hard, the hull is only just holding together against the sudden flash of heat and friction.. as for spectators, you'd need a high-speed camera to see anything other than an ephemeral lightning-bolt streak past. If there were any kind of atmosphere, a streaking bolt of plasma would be all you'd see.

There's no getting away from it - everything fun and adventurous and worthwhile about free spaceflight involves unfettered access to velocity. You don't need top-of-the-range ships and gubbins to enjoy these thrills - any old crate will do. The more decrepit it is, the greater the excitement, the risks and rewards.

You don't need time acceleration to enjoy it, and you don't need to sacrifice having an FSD either (flight in 'real space' and hyperspace are complimentary, not mutually exclusive). You don't have to go fast if you don't want to. If you prefer being limited to a few hundred meters / sec, set your speed accordingly! You're the pilot, after all..

Accurate star maps matter. That increases the fun factor. That's a good kind of realism. But does that make it a 'sim'? Even if none of the ships are capable of even the most rudimentary self-propulsion? Elite should be a space sim. It created the genre of accessible space sims. That's why i love it. But that means that it needs to be capable of basic spaceflight, as an absolute minimum feature set. Otherwise there's no game there. We're left with a game fundamentally at odds with itself. Conflicted, compartmentalised, and neutered, emasculated, eviscerated of its singular purpose and raison d'etre.

Tsk.. "Chieftain"..? Meet the new boss. Same as old boss. You MAY accelerate to a few hundred meters / sec. You may NOT yaw, nor expect any instruments that differentiate or encourage any meaningful distinctions between heading and direction. Owing to the unavoidable space-speed-limits you WILL be hopelessly and tragically marooned, helpless, prone and immobilised, but for your warp drive. As such, warp speeds ARE permitted, and also, slow taxiing speeds, but anything in-between is verboten and boring and impossible, however as a special bonus concession you MAY disable angular stabilisers, if you're dull enough think that gives you so much as a fleeting taste of the real fun of spaceflight. Now off you go... "blaze your own trail" eh!
 
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Yeah noticed that instantly during the stream.

It looks like its being held back from comfortable exploration anyway, so hopefully i can just put the whole thing out of my mind.

A small sigh for missing out on the boost noise, that's for sure.

.. i can take 27ly jump. 5 internal compartments.. *sob*.
 
Youre thinking of 21st century engines. Lets expand a bit...
1) somehow we move ftl hundreds of ly without refueling on as little as 32tons of fuel

2) eagles fit tons of cargo

3) the engines are probably very small given the very small amount of fuel needed for any and all types of propulsion

Im guessing that instead of car sized engines they are suit case sized.
 
Everything is up to scale and designed with realism in mind.
You would not want to open that door in the back of the cockpit when we get spacelegs and walk into an srv bay now would you???/

What? I want the ships to be realistic, if the SRV bay is directly behind the cockpit then yes of course i'd want to walk from one to the other, if it's not then no i wouldn't.
 
Bring Back "Space Above & Beyond"!!!

And Lemmings!!!

[alien]

-gus

Edit: And I'll have at least one Chiefy... though I had originally HOPED it would be considerably Larger in Size, Armament And Performance.
I hope it comes in Black!

TONY IOMMI!!!
 
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Annoying? Not the ship just the lack of a letter.

[video=youtube;bF9N3NJwi08]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF9N3NJwi08[/video]

:D :p ;)
 
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