Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Estonia
Posts: 650

I have never figured out why there is a speed limit in space sims...
what's stopping the ship from flying faster...
an earth air and gravity create speed limits for planes but what does the same thing in space???

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: The Rugged Grains of Shaolin Soil
Posts: 32

nothing. its something they do in games. only game I can think of that didn't have it was I-War 1.

now if you want to get real technical, friction does play a part, but not in the same way. as you get very very fast, ie. near the speed of light, dust in space will start wearing away at the hull. also at those speeds, the dust hits with enough speed to produce secondary radiation, which is very bad.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Estonia
Posts: 650

quote:

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Originally posted by NegspectahDek
nothing. its something they do in games. only game I can think of that didn't have it was I-War 1.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: The Cold Northland!
Posts: 8392

Its also called GAMEPLAY. Something that this MOD has, but many people who suggest ideas, haven't got a clue about. Sorry for my negativity but its true.

A StarFury traveling at 200,000 kps isn't going to be on the screen long, nor are you going to hit it anytime soon.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Estonia
Posts: 650

Speed limit does good things on gamplay....
but it ain't ralistic. So it ain't a sim!!!

and in the show if someone asked for a maximum speed maybe they were thinking about acceleration???

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Registered: May 2001
Location: Canada
Posts: 436

What do you mean by: "in the show" ?


Yes, having no speed limit will SCREW UP you're gameplay, specially in Freespace 1/2 more than you can imagine right now....

IFH guys are doing it cuz thats how the original B5 game (ITF) was being designed and IFH is trying to achieve that (and they are nicely), but its not for every game.

And yes in real space (as well as on babylon5), ships have maximum accelerations, not maximum velocities.

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Last edited by Londo Molari on 08-25-2001 at 02:54 AM

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Z'ha'dum
Posts: 186

At nearly the speed of light one partical of dust would blow your ship to dust! Also the chemical engines on most space sims can only make you go so fast. If the game makers wanted to make something more realistic,in FS2 to go full speed your engines would have to be on all the time which would continualy accelerate you until you engines dont have enough power to propel you, thats in a game with proper physics(and a real b*tch to manuver). The main reason for speed limits is so that it wont really piss off the consumer.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Estonia
Posts: 650

so techinicaly you could take the Omega and make fly-bys of shalin @ 250000km/s =)

Just wondering how big is omegas ramming speed???

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Z'ha'dum
Posts: 186

A omega wouldnt be capable of traveling speeds anywhere near that.Im not sure about kilometers but NO SHIP is capable of going 176,000 miles p/s, it is imposible, an ion engine wouldnt be even able to go 1000kp/s. The only ships that can get within 10'000kp/s would have to have asymetric fields like minbari.At that speed the ship would be twice as large,and the crew would move like snails,even when the running! Would anyone care to know why?

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: University Park
Posts: 268

One tidbit I remember was in "Severed Dreams", when Sheridan's forces and Clark's forces were closing, somebody was doing a distance countdown, and they went from 800km to 700km in about a second, which meant both sides were probably heading at each other at 50kps.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Z'ha'dum
Posts: 186

It seemed they were traviling alot slower than that,but I've noticed no distance on any scifi show is ever correct. In "A Call to Arms" the Excaliber was chasing a Drakh and they said 3000km, but at that distance the ship wouldnt be visibe, when thay showed it looked more like 10 miles than 3000km.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Edinburgh
Posts: 23

Hi,

I hate to think what would happen if Zoobafoo ever looked through a telescope, his head might well explode . What nobody has yet raised are the practical considerations of velocity. In practical terms top combat speeds could easily be dictated by all sorts of factors, limiting effective speeds to make use of in combat even though there is no actual "top speed" in space, discounting the light speed barrier. The most obvious, to my mind, being the practicality of high relative speeds compared to your target. The aforementioned 200,000 kps Starfury wouldn't have a hope of hitting you either (ignoring the whole matter of how long a Starfury would have to thrust to achieve such a velocity, partially because there are so many ways to circumvent the necessity of the Starfury itself thrusting up to that velocity from a 0 kps start). There's no point in zipping past defenses at high speed then trying to slow down to hit your target because you'll probably zip right past the target. Also remember that having human crew limits the acceleration a craft can use. Anything much above 3g is damn near intolerable except in specialised seating and there were a lot of people standing up even on the White Stars' bridges.

Bye,

Dave

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Burnley England
Posts: 177

This is turning into another one of them there is no sound in space argumants
The higher the speed in space you travel the higher the pressure (Armagedon), so if you travel at about 50,000Km per hour the pilot would be crushed, or at 26,000Kph that would be the equivalent of 10 gravities.
Like in the last ep of season 2, where sheridan says human pilots can black out while doing centauri fighter maneuvers. This says each race reacts differently while travelling in space, and some races will be able to cope with higher speeds.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Rovaniemi, Finland
Posts: 10

quote:

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Originally posted by Cr@zYdAvE
This is turning into another one of them there is no sound in space argumants
The higher the speed in space you travel the higher the pressure (Armagedon), so if you travel at about 50,000Km per hour the pilot would be crushed, or at 26,000Kph that would be the equivalent of 10 gravities.
Like in the last ep of season 2, where sheridan says human pilots can black out while doing centauri fighter maneuvers. This says each race reacts differently while travelling in space, and some races will be able to cope with higher speeds.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location:
Posts: 42

Theory of Relativity

Is anyone forgetting that anything traveling as fast or faster than the speed of light turns to energy? E = MC^2, duh. Alot of the math from any show usually doesn't work out... And you're right, it isn't the speed that kills you, it's the inertia gained from the velocity that will turn your body into chunky salsa. Think about taking 20 or 30 or 40 Earth gravities instantaneously when the ion engines on your ship fire. It would liquify your skeleton, internal organs, flesh, etc. without some sort of gravity or inertial distortion field surrounding you (i.e. Star Trek's "Inertial Dampers")... oh well, I guess that's why they call it "Science Fiction".

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Registered: Jun 2001
Location: Bristol, Wilds of Somerset, England
Posts: 75

A ship would only be able to travel as fast as it's engines allow- as somebody said the limit for a particle/ion engine would be 1000 kps, which is way below the speed of light.
The acceleration of the craft would, however, differ- a Omega could, in theory, run the same speed as a Starfury, but it would take much longer to get to the same speed. With Star Furies, I'm guessing they normally maintain lower speeds to allow them to retain a higher degree of maneuverabilty and accurucy.
And ramming speed basically means as fast as possible- like when Sinclair engages after burners trying to ram the Minbari War Cruiser

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Z'ha'dum
Posts: 186

The g limit for a pilot is around 6-7g's, at 9 you black out, and around 12 your ribs crush and then your dead.

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Registered: Jun 2001
Location: Bristol, Wilds of Somerset, England
Posts: 75

Yeah, that's probably the limit for the Star Furies, cause the power/weight ratios of them to their engines let's them. Somehow, despite the far more powerful engines, I don't think you could find a Omega out accelerating a Starfury
However, the point is that they are probably able to run at the same speed- hell, the omega might even be able to outrun a starfury, given that it has bigger engines and so might be able to make the Ions be accelerated even more

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: England
Posts: 17

I've heard that they have descovered a cercumstance when matter CAN go faster than the speed of light.

Hawking radiation.

As I understand it, its dust etc. spun to extreme velocities around an event horizon.

HA! Theoretical physics, I love it.

A cap ship can eventually go faster than a fighter, it just takes a lot longer for the rate of change of momentum (I think) because the mass is so much more. Even so, there comes a point when the mass of the ship and time dialation compared to another inertial frame of reference is just way out of whack.

Blah. I hate all the work around sci-fi do. Inertial dampeners, warp, etc etc. Physics may be restricting, and harder to deal with, but can be more fun.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: I dont know?
Posts: 101

In "A Call to Arms" when the EA ships are escaping the exploding Shadow Planet Killer those ships were going extremely fast, i mean starfury type speeds. How the hell did those cap ships go so god damn fast? Could the EA tech improve so much in five years?

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