Spacecraft approaching the speed of light or C

[Maarschalk]

Very good explanation Dhuran, that is exactly why I like to put things in simple terms and like the way the physics work in this game the way they are!
Good balance between simplistic and realistic physics!.....:P

[Marvin]

I'm trying to help you guys make evochron as realistic as possible ....

How is it that you think afterburner should be able to get you going beyond the speed of light? Even Star Trek's impulse engines can't do that. For FTL, you need to use the jumpdrive. And the "speed-o-meter" isn't really calibrated for FTL (no Warp factors in Mercenary).

Although, I too prefer the jumpdrive in AA. If for no other reason than it keeps you from being able to orient your ship to zero degrees (even if it puts you perpendicular to a jumpgate) and then jump right through the gate. When I first started playing Legends, it took me weeks to figure that out 'cause it seemed so ... so ... impossible.

[TGS]

The suggestion for speed of light travel beyond the teleportation system of the fulcrum drives is nice but impractical for a few reasons. One the distances in Evochron are scaled down so you'd have to scale down the speed of light for it to work realistically.

Now say you did make a system of travel that worked by basically capping out your speed to a decided 'speed of light' this system would have to work with a logical mechanic for course plotting to fit within the way universe travel works currently. For example if you wanted to get from Sapphire to Thuban you would need to have an autopilot system of some sort calculate your acceleration then decceleration otherwise you would have to keep a constant eye on the travel process which quite frankly would get very boring for long distances even if scaled down. Now if you didn't do it with Inertia as a factor then either the fuel system would have to consider this or a new fuel system would have to be in place for this travel mechanic. Ultimately as neat as it would be... it wouldn't fit well against the Fulcrum drives we have now. Why have one if you have the other and vice versa?

Now as far as peoples argument about the fuel consumption and efficiency something I have been saying for quite some time as a personal frustration of mine in Evochron is that really no matter what you do jumping via the FD is almost always more efficient in both fuel consumption and travel time. Even if you only need to travel 5 km you will burn more fuel turning and maneuvering than if you simply angled your ship in the direction you wanted to arrive at and hitting f2 to jump. Why? because you'd burn 2-3 units of fuel doing it manually and if you jump you only burn 1 fuel. Yep that's right with the mantis drive from what I recall you burn 1 fuel for every sector. So as long as you are jumping within a sector/200k you are only using 1 fuel. vs 20-30 seconds of engine burning which can result in a few units being burned. As I said I never liked that system because if you are considering your fuel it really skews short distance travel. To me it just seems absolutely silly that it would be optimal to use a jump drive to cover short distances than just burning your engines.

[Maarschalk]

Very good points TGS. About using the Jump Drive for short distance travel though within a sector it does not seem silly to me, Because that unit of fuel is used for energy to open a local temporary timespace corridor and propel you inside this corridor and since the travel is almost instant you need little velocity to enter and exit the jump! So the majority of that one unit fuel is used primarely to open up the jump corridor and the rest to give you a little push to enter the jumdrive corridor!. So to sustain a jumpdrive corridor through multiple sectors you need at least 1 unit of fuel per sector and this makes perfect sense to me!......

[Marvin]

The suggestion for speed of light travel beyond the teleportation system of the fulcrum drives is nice but impractical for a few reasons. One the distances in Evochron are scaled down so you'd have to scale down the speed of light for it to work realistically.

You can easily test that in the Sol system. In the real world (the one most of us try to ignore ... except for days like today when jocks watch the Super Bowl), it takes light eight minutes to travel from the sun to the Earth. So, place your ship near the game's Earth and see how long it takes, under various conditions, to reach the sun.

[TGS]

Very good points TGS. About using the Jump Drive for short distance travel though within a sector it does not seem silly to me, Because that unit of fuel is used for energy to open a local temporary timespace corridor and propel you inside this corridor and since the travel is almost instant you need little velocity to enter and exit the jump! So the majority of that one unit fuel is used primarely to open up the jump corridor and the rest to give you a little push to enter the jumdrive corridor!. So to sustain a jumpdrive corridor through multiple sectors you need at least 1 unit of fuel per sector and this makes perfect sense to me!......

Oh I don't mean the actual process is silly. I mean the fact that it is so practical to do is silly. It's so practical in fact that to NOT do it is actually impractical. Unless of course you don't care about burning fuel.

Basically if given two choices "Manually fly from point a to point b" and "Jump from point a to point b" jumping is almost always better in pretty much every respect other than combat. Don't get me wrong I love the jumping. Granted I think it could be done better but the point is the whole idea of jumping in every sci-fi is primarily for long distance travel. Using it for short distance travel doesn't really make sense. Especially when it is clearly optimal to do so.

[DaveK]

Hi, Guys!

I got another feature request for evochron: instead of acceleration slowing down when going up to about the speed of 5,000, let's make the spacecraft start accelerating more slowly when approaching the speed of light or 299,792.5 kilometers per second when using the afterburner in inertial mode. Since there is no friction in the vacuum of space it is possible to accelerate the spacecraft to an ever greater velocity way higher than the speed of 5,000. I think the spacecraft's maximum speed should be 299,792.5 kilometers per second, not 7.9 kilometers per second. Thanks!

Cheers,
Vincent

[Edited on 2-2-2012 by Cheri50000]

Actually there is friction in space - even interstellar space contains hydrogen and helium atoms, plus odd bits of material spat out in super novae. Certainly not enough to slow you down from 5000 or so, though!

According to Einstein mass increases with velocity, so the effect of your engines actually works at relatively (sorry!! ) low fractions of the speed of light. The acceleration rate in a frame would require a long time to reach even a small fraction of the speed of light and hence a lot of fuel.

NASA's studies have shown that the fuel requirement, using water as the reaction mass from a plasma engine would require a small moon sized water asteroid (from the oort belt) to provide enough fuel to get to 0.2c, given the ship itself would need to be big to carry the requirememts for a very long journey. With jump drives and gates the only reason to try for c is to go deepspace

If the limit as in the game irritaes you try this for an "explanation" - I've still got a few bits I'm not happy about to worl through. but . . .

"This one is going to be hard to fully explain convincingly! Have a quick look at the relevant sections of the Mercenary Tech Guide and you'll see where I'm starting from.

http://evochron.junholt.se/

My initial ideas involve the spacial distortion caused by the use of graviton particles by the shield system. The shields act as weapon protection and also as deflector shields for the "muck" in space. I'm thinking along the lines that since there is a limited amount of energy available to the ship and as it travels faster the shields have a greater amount of dust, molecules and ionised particles to deflect and hence have to use a higher proportion of the energy. I'll see if I can conjure up a persuasive relativistic effect of the shield matrix that could lead to a mass increase of the particles at the point they interact with the shield and hence an exponentially increasing energy requirement.

The engines use a plasma ejection system (according to my Tech Manual :-) )

I reckon that if travel is required above 6000 the ships' designers would have decided that jump engines would the preferred method of moving from place to place. As a consequence they calibrated the ships central control AI to shunt energy to the shields at cost to the engines to ensure the safety of the ship. The ship's acceleration is controlled by the momentum of the ejected plasma and basically there isn't enough energy (nor ability of the plasma focussing system) to handle higher plasma through put or increased ejection speed - hence the speed limit is reached asymptotically.

Obviously a more streamlined shape would be more efficient (but more expensive to make and maintain) - hence military ships (based on darts!) can accelerate faster than civilian ships - this is coupled with the higher spec plasma production and ejection systems in military ships. but mil designers like civ designers still realise that only nerds like us would be interested in max speed with normal engines since sensible combat pilots would use the Fulcrum Jump Drive to micro-jump into and out of the fur-ball. I've decided that the mil designers would have limited the top speed of mil ships via the energy distribution control AI core.

I suspect that there are a few other things to incorporate and I need to have a look at how it looks when everything is put together and whether it fits in with the rest! I'll cogitate and sleep on things and see what the unconscious bit of my brain comes up with!



[Edited on 6-2-2012 by DaveK]

[DaveK]

The suggestion for speed of light travel beyond the teleportation system of the fulcrum drives is nice but impractical for a few reasons. One the distances in Evochron are scaled down so you'd have to scale down the speed of light for it to work realistically.

For example if you wanted to get from Sapphire to Thuban you would need to have an autopilot system of some sort calculate your acceleration then decceleration otherwise you would have to keep a constant eye on the travel process which quite frankly would get very boring for long distances even if scaled down.

You do and it does - I travelled 250100 sectors refuelling and jumping and only bloody mindedness to get a nice round figure kept me at it! :P

[DaveK]

Using it for short distance travel doesn't really make sense.

Several very good combat pilots use "micro-jumping" during combat to great effect . . . I know - I've been on the receiving end

But I agree - short distances fly, long distances jump and between systems, gate

[Marvin]

Speed in the Evoverse is a lot like speed on the forum. The more people viewing the forum, the greater the mass, The greater the mass, the slower each page loads.

[TGS]

Using it for short distance travel doesn't really make sense.

Several very good combat pilots use "micro-jumping" during combat to great effect . . . I know - I've been on the receiving end

But I agree - short distances fly, long distances jump and between systems, gate

Yeah. Basically my biggest pet peeve is just how much of an advantage micro-jumping is short distance over regular travel. Basically if you just weigh in positives vs negatives there is no reason to EVER burn your engines except when you are being attacked. THAT is my pet peeve. That to me just doesn't make sense.

but the only way of stopping that would be to change the design of the system or penalize people for doing short distance jumps by using more fuel or something which would feel clunky and not very thought out.

[Marvin]

...there is no reason to EVER burn your engines except when you are being attacked.

Which, for some of us, is most of the time. It is, in fact, a mistake to wait until your jumpdrive charges when surrounded by enemy ships. In a situation like that (which, for some of us, is most of the time), afterburner is your best friend.

[Maarschalk]

Yep, sometimes your AfterBurner will be your best and only friend!......

[DaveK]

but the only way of stopping that would be to change the design of the system or penalize people for doing short distance jumps by using more fuel or something which would feel clunky and not very thought out.

You do you more fuel proportionally for short jumps . . .

each jump takes 1 unit of fuel per sector (or part sector) plus 1-2 units of fuel to slow down after the jump - so if you use jumps a lot on short hops you are penalised to a degree

[DaveK]

Yeah. Basically my biggest pet peeve is just how much of an advantage micro-jumping is short distance over regular travel. Basically if you just weigh in positives vs negatives there is no reason to EVER burn your engines except when you are being attacked. THAT is my pet peeve. That to me just doesn't make sense.

Sometimes in a very hostile system I just want time to look around and think and plan!

If necessary I micro jump and when I reach max velocity I hit Inertial - more often I just use my engines to accelerate and when I reach . . . .

I've never been bounced whilst poodling along at 3000+ / I've been bounced a lot when just sitting there

[Raynor]

Hi, Marvin!

I'm trying to help you guys make evochron as realistic as possible and that's why I want to see the improvement in spacecraft speed in the next release of evochron.

Cheers,
Vincent

[Edited on 2-3-2012 by Cheri50000]

Yeah well, ultimately Vice is making the game and he'll decide what he wants in it. The majority also speaks. I don't think the majority agrees with your idea. Also, i don't think it should be anybody's wish to make the game as realistic as possible. Reality has really annoying constraints, you might have noticed already. Besides if this game or any space sim for that matter was concerned with realism, then they wouldn't exist. In the end it's all sci-fi.

[Commander Wilmot]

The only real question in my mind that arises is whether to increase the fuel consumption for jumps, but that would probably cause more problems than it would solve.

[soulsacrifice]

The fact that it is more economical to jump 100 meters in front of you than to fly is something that always bothered me as well (in fact i'm sure I mentioned it way back when I first played EL).

One possible way to balance it a little would be to have a "warm-up" and a "cool-down" for the jump drive.

Now, before anyone gets angry with me, i'm NOT suggesting that it should take time to warm up the jump drive before you can jump. If on your first jump it took x fuel + fuel per sector jumped then it would at times make it more economical to just use the engines. The amount of fuel (x) could depend on the class of drive used so people who're just starting out when fuel is most hard to come by wouldn't be penalised too much. The idea of the cooldown is so you could make multiple jumps for long distance travel without incurring the initial fuel cost each time - i.e. if you haven't jumped in the past 30 seconds you would need to "warm-up" again.

[Maarschalk]

The Idea again behind the jumpdrive is that minimal fuel is required to open up and maintain the jump coridor and that minimal amount of fuel is required once the jump coridor or gate/wormhole is entered. So if you jump from a stand still it seems logical to me that a jump requires less fuel then travelling a short distance using engines starting from a stand still position. And since the minimum unit of fuel is 1 unit(could be 10 Galons or what ever!) you need at least this much from a games coding persepective to get your ship moving and you could use one unit to get to the maximum speed allowed for 1 unit and switch to inertia and keep traveling on inertia at a constant speed without using any more units of fuel....

[soulsacrifice]

Huh? You've just explained how it works now? I already know how it works now.

Saying "it seems logical to me that a jump requires less fuel then travelling a short distance using engines starting from a stand still position" isn't really an argument in favour of keeping it the way it is. I could just as easily say "it seems logical to me that powering up a fulcram drive would take up much more energy than a few short bursts of acceleration to move very short distances". Clearly i'm not alone in thinking that.

Now i'm not saying that it should be different than it is now, or trying to push the idea or anything. It's just a suggestion I think would benefit the game as you would sometimes have to consider which would be more cost effective for very short distances and not know automatically that jumping is always going to win out.

[Marvin]

If the only way a jumpdrive uses energy is in opening the artificial wormhole, then a Mantis drive shouldn't use any more fuel than a C1 Fulcrum.

[SixZero]

If the fulcrum point draws the ship toward it, then the only fuel you'd need would be to keep that point active until it folds space or whatever. And then just enough to keep it active until you come out the other side. There's no need to burn the thrusters for a jump... I think?

[Maarschalk]

Huh? You've just explained how it works now? I already know how it works now.

Saying "it seems logical to me that a jump requires less fuel then travelling a short distance using engines starting from a stand still position" isn't really an argument in favour of keeping it the way it is. I could just as easily say "it seems logical to me that powering up a fulcram drive would take up much more energy than a few short bursts of acceleration to move very short distances". Clearly i'm not alone in thinking that.


Now i'm not saying that it should be different than it is now, or trying to push the idea or anything. It's just a suggestion I think would benefit the game as you would sometimes have to consider which would be more cost effective for very short distances and not know automatically that jumping is always going to win out.

This is only true if your assumption is based on that fuel is needed and used for the energy to open up the space time corridor/gate/wormhole by the jumpdrive. What if the space time corridor is opened up by some other means other then fuel consumption and the fuel is only needed once the coridor is opened by the jumpdrive to maintain the length and traveled distance to be achieved? Which I think is what the intent in this game is as you can see and tell that when you jump your eneregy gets completely drained and when you use your Engines only for travel you do not loose any energy. So jumping already compromises your Energy level and while traveling on Engines alone uses fuel and no Energy at all unless you use afterburners!......

[soulsacrifice]

My suggestion is intented to add to gameplay by balancing a little more the use of jumps/thrusters for travelling (very) short distances. As it stands now, as TGS points out - is that you never really have to use your engines. I think that these changes would reward players for good decision making/navigation and add a little more depth to the game.

I know a lot of people love the fiction within the game but I think IF a change can improve gameplay then there are a million ways you can explain it without drastically changing the current explanation for how something works in game. The great thing about fiction is it can be tweaked to fit the situation.

I emphasis the if because it is only my opinion that it would improve gameplay. There are plenty of reasons I can think of why someone would be against changing it for gameplay reasons, and i'd rather hear these reasons rather than "it won't fit in with current fulcram physics."

[soulsacrifice]

On a side note, I played the Arvoch Alliance demo recently - I would really love it if the drive from that game was also available in Evochron Mercenary.