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Re: Development Update #14: February 2014

#78
I have no problem with larger vessels having a higher straight-line speed. It's plausible; they have bigger engines.

Bigger ships having faster acceleration (or negative acceleration) would seem strange. And it would be weird to see big ships with a much faster turning rate than a nimble small ship.

But big ships going fast in a straight line? Seems OK to me.
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Re: Development Update #14: February 2014

#79
Flatfingers wrote:I have no problem with larger vessels having a higher straight-line speed. It's plausible; they have bigger engines.

Bigger ships having faster acceleration (or negative acceleration) would seem strange. And it would be weird to see big ships with a much faster turning rate than a nimble small ship.

But big ships going fast in a straight line? Seems OK to me.
Sure, if they have bigger engines.

But bigger ships should accelerate slower and attain lower top speeds than smaller vessels, ceteris paribus.
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Re: Development Update #14: February 2014

#81
Katorone wrote:
ThymineC wrote:But bigger ships should accelerate slower and attain lower top speeds than smaller vessels, ceteris paribus.
Shouldn't that just depend on their mass to thrust ratio?
Exactly. So if everything else is equal (including thrust), then a more massive ship will have a lower thrust to mass ratio than a less massive ship. It should accelerate slower and, in my opinion, attain a lower top speed.
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Re: Development Update #14: February 2014

#82
I'd find it logical that a bigger ship would be able to produce more thrust per mass than a smaller ship though.
A small fighter shouldn't really have a big engine. An increase in cargo would influence its top speed a lot more than that of a huge transporter.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
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Re: Development Update #14: February 2014

#83
lets view a reaction thruster based system, we assume that we have a cube shaped ship with an edge lenght of s.
we use the complete backside as exhaust port, so we have an exhaust area of s²
f is the amount of mass we can expell per area per time unit

so the expelled mass, and so thrust is f*s² = T1
our ship has a volume and as such mass of s³ = V1

now we size up our ship, double the size

V2=(2s)³=8*s³=8*V1
T1=f*(2s)²=f*4*s²=4*T1

so we halved our thrust to mass ratio by doubling the size of the ship
so we halved our velocity (in our mass-dependent-drag universe)

so: bigger is slower
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Re: Development Update #14: February 2014

#84
Flatfingers wrote:I have no problem with larger vessels having a higher straight-line speed. It's plausible; they have bigger engines.

Bigger ships having faster acceleration (or negative acceleration) would seem strange. And it would be weird to see big ships with a much faster turning rate than a nimble small ship.

But big ships going fast in a straight line? Seems OK to me.
I prefer small ships having a significantly higher top speed too.

Otherwise the whole Carrier dynamic doesn't make any sense at all if small fighters can't outrun bigger ship.

Remember that what we are comparing these speed "feelings" and numbers too here are on earth Battleships/Carriers versus airborne jet fighters!



One interesting thing they did in Aurora is have ship top speed be influenced by lots of other factors like deployment time and mission. This way even if your larger ships in theory can have identical top speeds, they never do so in practice since they are deployed more strategically to control an area for a longer time. A small fighter only launching for a very short trip to launch it's missiles/torpedo before going back to the mothership can afford to only bring fuel for the trip and have a very thirsty engine. Not so much the mothership itself that is supposed to provide comfortable accommodation for months for a crew of thousands as well as supplies, spare parts and extra fuel & ammo. The Mothership being a huge target also needs plenty of armor and defensive systems that a small agile fighter can skip due to how much harder it is to hit and how much more affordable it is to lose.
Last edited by Ixos on Sun Mar 02, 2014 5:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Development Update #14: February 2014

#86
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
McDuff wrote:Only on planets. Even if we're non Newtonian, I don't see why we have to be completely beholden to planetary mechanics in space. It is a game after all.
from a gameplay perspective: do you want a supercapital to outrun your dinky scout craft?
because that is what would happen if we do not make bigger ships tendentially slower
In a straight line, actually I do want that. I wouldn't want it to have a tighter turning circle, but a faster dead weight straight line top speed on a specialised super carrier seems like a fun thing to have.

Just because it messes with super old school ideas which treat space navies like sea navies, it doesn't mean its a bad thing. Its just different.

I appreciate I'm apparently in the minority though, and I'm OK with that too.
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Re: Development Update #14: February 2014

#87
McDuff wrote:Just because it messes with super old school ideas which treat space navies like sea navies, it doesn't mean its a bad thing. Its just different.

I appreciate I'm apparently in the minority though, and I'm OK with that too.
I have to count myself among those wishing for top speed to negatively correlate with mass, but maybe I could be persuaded to see the merit in having high-speed, high-inertia vehicles based on potential entertainment value alone? ;)
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Re: Development Update #14: February 2014

#88
Katorone wrote:I'd find it logical that a bigger ship would be able to produce more thrust per mass than a smaller ship though. A small fighter shouldn't really have a big engine.
McDuff wrote:In a straight line, actually I do want that. I wouldn't want it to have a tighter turning circle, but a faster dead weight straight line top speed on a specialised super carrier seems like a fun thing to have.
Roger that.

But let's stipulate that certain small craft optimized for engines -- and nothing else -- might be able to attain the highest possible top speed.

What they reasonably wouldn't be able to do is maintain that speed for any meaningful amount of time or distance... unlike a big honkin' cap ship, the whole point of which is long-range force projection.

------------------

By the way, I thought the giant ice asteroid impaled on one of the spikes of the new space station was a nice touch. Very reaver-esque. ;)
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Re: Development Update #14: February 2014

#89
I see this month's update is bringing fellow lurkers out of the woodwork! :D Mining looks way more fun right now than it probably should be. Too bad I just missed the Kickstarter.

I think my favourite visual today was when the red thruster glow lit up the space station. Speaking of space stations, last month's was nice looking too. Some of the previous placeholder ships looked pretty cool. That box from the combat prototype, not so much.

Speaking of visuals, I suspect the transfer-unit beam would look even more cool if it had sparkling particles like most of the beams in the HD version of Star Trek TNG. It could have more sparkers for denser deposits perhaps. Or it might look daft. Not really sure. :)
XergesXSX wrote: HUD intentional glitches: I like them. Perhaps some natural phenomena could aggravate this.

Scanner: looks great. This is much more intuitive and less obtrusive than the radial version. There is potential for some interesting mechanics with this.
These two things! One of those glitches happened when Josh was playing with pointing the scanner at the star and for a few seconds I thought the star caused the glitch. Then he started talking about how the star saturated the scanner within its band because the signal was so strong.

It got me thinking that it would be cool to have different types of stars with different types and levels of radiation. Maybe if you have a little ship with cheaper electronics and less shielding then mining in a system with a pulsar could be somewhere between frustrating and dangerous because radiation from the star would scramble your sensors or even flip bits in your computers and scramble inputs or data.

There could potentially be a lot of variety just from stars: radiation levels, luminance levels (need to rely more on scanners in dark systems), solar storms, etc. Maybe even systems with black holes. Have those be ultra-dark (ie. no light other than from glowing planets spaceships or the galaxy) and be full of heavier metals ejected when the star went nova.

Maybe I just like things too complex! :D Anyway, I was blown away this month. I could go on, but I'd just be repeating half the comments already here.
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Re: Development Update #14: February 2014

#90
Yeah its not simply about "I want big fast ships." It's about wanting the option, at any size level, to stack that bastard to the gills with thrust if I really need it to get somewhere in a hurry.

A scout ship with negligible mass and powerful thrusters should likewise be able to achieve high speeds. But those big carriers that come charging in and need 1000km to stop, and the executive yachts designed to ferry important people from board meetings to congressional hearings, they all need to happen too.

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