This may be a stupid question but I've always wondered about it. In every single one of these types of games I have played the ships always have a top speed. Is this a gameplay decision because it was determined that it was just too hard to control otherwise or are there some real life physics at play here that I'm not aware of? From my limited understanding of how things work in a vacuum shouldn't how powerful the engines are merely limit your acceleration with the top speed being infinite? (at least until you get close to c anyway) Or is there some reason why a rocket can only propel a spaceship up to a particular speed like 220m/s?
Why do space ships have a top speed?
- Thread starter Hairy
- Start date
Because the internet isn't fast enough to keep up is the basic answer, ships are limited in speed for real world technical reasons.
If it modeled real physics in a vacuum and you could achieve those speeds just think of how difficult it would be to aim your weapons, it would all have to be done by your ships computer. They decided (for good reason) that it would detract from the enjoyment of the game and went with the current flight model we have now which is a much better choice. In this case gameplay beats out realism.
I gotcha, it ended up with everyone making high speed passing runs then turning around and trying again didn't it. I only ever played the original (well, the souped up DOS version anyway) once out of curiosity way back in high school and don't really remember much of it other than how funny the 8-color graphics and POST-speaker sound effects were to me at the time. Stuff like X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter was what everyone I knew was playing then, which also had a limited top speed. I do love the flight-assist-off mode, makes for some really interesting maneuvers.
turn off flight assist
Turn off flight assist. It's awesome.
If you turn off flight assist or shut down the thrusters in the left side panel then that is exactly what happens.
i don't think that's how it works. if there's acceleration you will keep accelerating, until fuel runs out of course.
Even if you don't turn flight assist off you'll still continue moving if you shut down your thrusters, just make sure you were already moving when you did so.
Yeah it does.
People need to stop spreading this misinformation. Lots of people sucked at combat in frontier, but that does not mean that the concept was flawed. Watch this tutorial :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UMIbdN0UFE
See how they are moving at aroung 35,000km/s in that opening scene? And yet it's very easy for the player to defeat the enemy, and keep on target. That's because what really matters, is relative velocity. If you are 100 meters away from an enemy, pointing at the same vector, and you both accelerate to 35,000km/s, with the same acceleration, if there is nothing to observe around you, you are not going to see them moving at all. Anyway, the video covers all of it.
I don't think they wanted to go down that route though, because the reason so many people sucked, was because it's a foreign concept to pilot a ship like that. People think of things like jet fighters in space, thanks to star wars, battlestar, and most space video games.
I understand the reasons for the choice of model that's in the game to be because of :
1) Wanting it to feel familiar
2) Dogfighting is exciting
3) Network concerns
It's basically a game design decision. If you modeled it correctly with Newtonian physics, the game becomes extremely challenging to play. Just getting to a landing slot from you arrival point at a star can be a challenge. Never mind actually trying to engage in interdictions. I loved Frontier (Elite II), but if you want to see what flying with true Newtonian physics is like, either play Frontier or look at videos on Youtube. Space combat becomes nearly impossible as two ships basically make passes at each other, then reverse thrust and yo-yo back towards each other.
As far as ultimately accelerating to light speed, it not as simple as just firing the engines until you hit the speed of light. As you approach the speed of light, matter starts to take on more and more of the properties of energy. (The whole E=mc2 thing.) While accelerating in the real world isn't a big deal, by the time you start to approach the speed of light it begins to take extreme amounts of power to get even minor acceleration. This is because you basically have to convert matter to energy, and the more mass to an object, the more power you will need to convert all of that mass.
Yeah, you're right. I forgot about the increasing mass part of the equation. So you will increase to a point. But still eventually hit an acceleration "wall". At least based on our current types of propulsion systems.
Aside from the obvious design question, was there ever an in-game rationalisation for that speed limit? I mean, there was an explanation for the normally impossible sounds you hear from external sources (your ships sensors pick up events happening around you and play synthesised sounds to give you better situational awareness), but for that?