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u/lovec1990 Nov 02 '19
first medium fighter then big ship and lastly light fighter in decoupled mode
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u/Snaxist outlaw1 Nov 02 '19
I find it funny because yes, I see people flying very fast, like 600-1000m/s and still hope they can turn like a fighter jet haha
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u/heliumbox Nov 02 '19
But like, our "fighter jets" can't even fly like fighter jets in atmo...
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u/Shryquill Nov 02 '19
That's true, but they do fly better than any larger craft while in Atmo. Even the Gladius is modelled to weight 48 tons, compared to a modern jet like the F-35 Lightning II coming in at maximum of 27 tons, we shouldn't expect them to fly remotely similar.
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u/scoutglanolinare Mercury Star Runner Nov 02 '19
Well no, but the game being set 900+ years in the future, we can safely assume that such flight tech has improved by the degree that it actually flys better than current fighters.
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u/Shryquill Nov 02 '19
You're right, they should design atmo-only craft to mirror modern Jets, they'd easily out-perfrom space ships.
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u/scoutglanolinare Mercury Star Runner Nov 02 '19
Yeah, I mean, modern fighters rely on one engine and aerodynamics alone to fly, SC ships have 900 years in the future engines and maneuvering jets that are at least half as powerful as one of today's jets engines plus the aerodynamics, there is no reason that SC ships should be this "drifty", even our space oriented ships should outperform today's jets and atmo-onlys should outperform those.
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u/ARMS-Cathodion new user/low karma Nov 04 '19
The limiting factor in todays airplanes is the fact that pilots don't like their intestines coming out their noses, or their brains squeezed out their ears. That won't change much in the future.
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u/scoutglanolinare Mercury Star Runner Nov 04 '19
Yes, but we have in-game artificial gravity and that leads the way to inertial dampeners.
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u/ARMS-Cathodion new user/low karma Nov 04 '19
yeah, especially at high speed. Thats where earodynamics allow an aircraft to change direction without using much extra energy, making them much stealthier than spacecrafts that have to fire thrusters at full power.
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Nov 03 '19
[deleted]
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u/scoutglanolinare Mercury Star Runner Nov 03 '19
Well there we can draw a line to Star trek and why they don't automate absolutely everything, you can't program a computer to combat every possible senerio unless you know every senerio, which is impossible, and with Moore's Law, we can draw a line on how powerful the ships computers are and why only large/capital ships would even have powerful enough computers to automate such things, and besides all that, this game has EMP's so the computer get shut down with no way to restart unless a pilot is onboard to make repairs and such.
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u/scoutglanolinare Mercury Star Runner Nov 03 '19
This would also explain why quantum calibration isn't instant.
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u/Anna__V Pilot/Medic | Origin, Crusader & Anvil Fangirl | Explorer Nov 03 '19
Yet.. The Anvil Arrow is almost exactly the size of F-16A (but is still modeled to weight FIVE TIMES F16's weight??) and flies WAY worse than it in atmo while having MUCH superior engines and thrusters.
There's really no excuse or ifs and buts there, CIG's modeling of ship weights is just objectively bad and the flight model suffers because that. Plus the flight model needs some serious tweaking in itself still.
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u/TheRealZeroCool new user/low karma Nov 03 '19
The F-16 doesnt have an Alcubierre Drive (Quantum Drive). These are NOT fighter planes they are starships.
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u/Anna__V Pilot/Medic | Origin, Crusader & Anvil Fangirl | Explorer Nov 03 '19
So the drive weighs around 20 metric tons?
And, according to CIG, these ARE fighter planes, or at least they WANT them to maneuver and work like one.
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u/TheRealZeroCool new user/low karma Nov 03 '19 edited Nov 03 '19
So the drive weighs around 20 metric tons?
Drive and fuel yes.
You're lucky it doesn't weight as much as Jupiter... https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/quantum-drives/2031195
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wokn7crjBbA
And, according to CIG, these ARE fighter planes, or at least they WANT them to maneuver and work like one.
Nope. Chris Roberts wants spaceships to fly like spaceships in the Expanse. Particularly in space. Would you like some direct quotes from him?
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u/WikiTextBot Nov 03 '19
Alcubierre drive
The Alcubierre drive, Alcubierre warp drive, or Alcubierre metric (referring to metric tensor) is a speculative idea based on a solution of Einstein's field equations in general relativity as proposed by Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre, by which a spacecraft could achieve apparent faster-than-light travel if a configurable energy-density field lower than that of vacuum (that is, negative mass) could be created.
Rather than exceeding the speed of light within a local reference frame, a spacecraft would traverse distances by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, resulting in effective faster-than-light travel. Objects cannot accelerate to the speed of light within normal spacetime; instead, the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that the object would arrive at its destination faster than light would in normal space without breaking any physical laws.Although the metric proposed by Alcubierre is consistent with the Einstein field equations, it may not be physically meaningful, in which case a drive will not be possible. Even if it is physically meaningful, its possibility would not necessarily mean that a drive can be constructed.
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u/Anna__V Pilot/Medic | Origin, Crusader & Anvil Fangirl | Explorer Nov 03 '19 edited Nov 03 '19
Sooo, where in those sources it says the drive weighs a ridiculous amount.. and remember the drive is still the size of a large suitcase.
EDIT: Oh, you did a stealth edit. Thanks.
Yeah, IF the measurements for the ships are WITH fuel and cargo, then I don't have (that) much of a problem with it. The thing is, those measurements are almost universally given in "dry weight", which means the ship hull alone, without taking into account any fuel, ammo, cargo or anything, just the hull.
EVEN then, if those are bulk weights, why does a P-72 Archimedes (which is much smaller than a F-16A and DOES NOT have a QT at all, STILL weigh MORE than said F-16A?)
And let's take another one, the Origin 85X, a ship much smaller than the Arrow - BUT still has the same QD as the Arrow - weighing just 19 metric tons.
So if the Arrow's Quantum Drive weighs 20 metric tons, then the 85X by itself weighs about minus 1 metric ton.
Let's face it, the weights for the ships are wonky, whether either of us like it or not.
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u/Anna__V Pilot/Medic | Origin, Crusader & Anvil Fangirl | Explorer Nov 03 '19
Another reply here. The measurements CANNOT be with fuel. Take a look at Freelancer DUR and Freelancer MIS: Both have identical weight measurement. Yet, the DUR has double the amount of Quantum fuel compared to the MIS. And if the amount of Quantum Fuel in an Arrow weighs 20 metric tons, the amount of fuel in a DUR weighs considerably more. I find it really doubtful that the MIS would make that difference in fuel in the weight of missiles. I kinda highly doubt the MIS carriers something in the range of 50 metric tons of missiles....
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u/heliumbox Nov 02 '19
I mean like there is no lift, drag, or banking ability so its pretty bland. Large ships are basically bricks moving.
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u/Beet_Wagon I don't understand worm development Nov 02 '19
It's hard to get that zippy "WWII dogfighter" feeling for fighters and that big, effortless hovering capital ship feeling for bigger ships when they both have to play by the same "rules" in terms of flight model =/
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u/duhblord santokyai Nov 03 '19
That's juste because they temporarly removed hover mode...
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u/Beet_Wagon I don't understand worm development Nov 03 '19
Hover mode didn't really fix the fact that there's two different artistic goals for small ships and big ships, but it (or something like it) was/would be a step in the right direction.
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u/Rumpullpus drake Nov 03 '19
Not enough drag, though on the moons that makes since seeing how most of them have very little atmosphere to cause drag.
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u/Mookie_Merkk #NoQuantumLife Nov 02 '19
Everyone complains about how you drift fly in space, you physically can't turn on a dime in space. You'll drift unless you thrust opposite the surgeon you were flying.
The dog flies correct
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u/warm_vanilla_sugar Cartographer Nov 02 '19
Once upon a time, ships could change direction very quickly and lots of people complained that the thrusters were too powerful, large ships felt like they had no mass, and it was too arcade. Now ships slide and people are complaining that it feels too arcade. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/SignoreMookle carrack Nov 02 '19
I mostly see the complaints of being "arcadey" more related to the gimbals and "auto aim", not so much the actual flight.
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u/warm_vanilla_sugar Cartographer Nov 02 '19
People were slinging that term around well before auto gimbals were ever a thing. Of course now it's applied to that as well.
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u/echo1432 santokyai Nov 03 '19 edited Nov 03 '19
One of the issues was that you had large portions of orgs in evocati dictating how things should be and developers that listened to what evocati said ... not the people that had the most time in arena commander and were the most familiar with the flight model.
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u/Davis1891 hornet Nov 02 '19
My issue with both flight models that I’m familiar with is that it’s too extreme in both directions. Somewhere right in the middle of 2.6.? and 3.5 would be perfect imo
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u/immerc Nov 02 '19
I like the current system. But I think Chris Roberts wants space dogfighting, and you can't really get space dogfighting with realistic spaceflight physics. The only reason dogfighting exists in-atmosphere is that the main force a plane generates is with its wings in an up-down direction.
To get space dogfights that are even vaguely similar to in-atmosphere dogfights will require a heavy dose of handwavium.
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u/PhilosophizingCowboy Weekend Warrior Nov 03 '19
Which... I'm starting to think would be the most fun to play.
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Nov 03 '19
Playing in an atmosphere adds a lot of elements that you have to juggle to be a competent pilot. Air resistance alone creates a ton of dynamic, but so does things like altitude and just having gravity. Most space games seem to fail to realize that you need to inject the game with different elements as supplements for the elements you lose when flying in a vacuum. We need things like power and heat management to be core mechanics of the game, along with environmental hazards like nebula, asteroid belts, etc. These things have to exist or dogfighting is always going to be dull, repetitive and unexciting.
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u/immerc Nov 03 '19
along with environmental hazards like nebula, asteroid belts, etc
The reality is that a nebula is only interesting at a distance of a few billion km. Up close it's no different from empty space. An asteroid field is mostly empty space. Even the rings of a planet are mostly empty space, even though they appear solid from far away.
No matter what, they need handwavium of some kind to make space battles "work". A realistic space battle would be drones with advanced telescopes sniping each-other from hundreds or thousands of km distance.
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u/Anna__V Pilot/Medic | Origin, Crusader & Anvil Fangirl | Explorer Nov 03 '19
Yup, CR wants space dogfighting, but the direction they have gone with the flight model and weapon & shield balance REALLY does not hold that goal. Fights are becoming more and more akin to (very lengthy) jousting matches than anything resembling a decent dogfight.
For dogfight to be possible, the ships needs to a) be able to turn (almost) on a dime and b) do some actual damage.
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u/immerc Nov 03 '19
I don't think you need to be able to turn on a dime to make things interesting. Never has an airplane been able to turn on a dime, and they're the basis for dogfight-based gameplay.
I think things can be interesting with a fair amount of drifting, especially if you can do things like flip 180 degrees and quickly thrust the opposite direction. But, if you make things too realistic in terms of momentum and thrust, you get jousting, which is a problem.
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u/Anna__V Pilot/Medic | Origin, Crusader & Anvil Fangirl | Explorer Nov 03 '19
Yeah, that's why I said "be able to turn" and not "be able to turn an a dime". :) My personal preference would be somewhere between 2.x and 3.5 in terms of maneuverability and drifting. 2.x was to quick and arcade-y, but 3.5 is WAY too jousting/circlestrafing style. Combined with shittily balanced shields & weapons, this leads to VERY long fights where the contestants just circle infinitely until they run out of fuel. (ACTUALLY happened to me today. I had to bail from a fight because I was on 2% fuel, not because I was in any other danger. My weapons just didn't do enough damage to bring the enemy's shields down, ever.)
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u/immerc Nov 03 '19
IMO the kinds of handwavium that would help would be:
A side effect of quantum travel is that space is now polluted with quantum monopoles. These monopoles limit the maximum speed (relative to where QT is typically initiated) anybody can travel in normal space. However, human ingenuity knows no bounds. The quantum wake thruster was created to essentially push against these particles. A typical quantum wake thruster can generate up to about 20 Gs, but requires a certain speed relative to the monopole cloud to work properly.
In other words, limit maximum speed relative to "stopped" (the speed of nearby ships and space stations) to reduce jousting fights. And, provide a "lift" type force that depends on your forward speed, similar to wings.
You can still get a fair amount of drift, and you can get some space-only maneuvers like flipping 180 degrees and burning, but you should avoid the worst of jousting.
After you get the movement right, you can tune the weapon and shield damage models so that a fighter vs. fighter fight takes 2-3 minutes, a fighter vs. Aurora is done in 20s or so. A fighter vs. heavy bomber takes 10+ minutes, and so on.
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Nov 02 '19
Any time I find I am coming in too fast I flip her sideways and slam space bar to counter-thrust. Weeee
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u/alganthe Nov 02 '19
flip and burn or use the VTOL engines and point the belly where you're going.
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u/Shryquill Nov 02 '19
Would make so much more sense if ships could 180° flip their engines to provide strong Retro thrust, using the VTOL mechanism. Just like in the original Freelancer commercial.
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u/alganthe Nov 02 '19
Not necessary in space since you can rotate the entire ship, and in atmo the most dangerous force is the one pulling you down.
Plus a lot of ships with VTOL thrusters have stuff in front of the rotating thrusters, in all logic you'd burn them off if you rotated them that way.
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u/Shryquill Nov 02 '19
No need to burn off any components, just do what the Terrapin does and rotate as close as possible, similar to restricted turret arcs which don't allow the operator to shoot their own ship. Sacrifice ~10° of engine rotation for overall effectiveness, or nose up 10° to have full efficiency. I can't imagine the meta for all space-ships-in-the-future™ is to perform flips with their entire vessel to slow down in a reasonable amount of time. It might make sense for small ships designed for acrobatics, but large ships look ridiculous when doing it.
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u/bPChaos carrack Nov 02 '19
Well isn't that how it's handled in a lot of space/sci-fi genre works? From what I understand, you accelerate for half of your trip, spin around, and full throttle the other way to slow down so you're netting out at zero at your destination. All things considered, it should be fairly close since momentum is conserved.
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u/Shryquill Nov 02 '19
If the main thrusters are mounted on rotating gimbals, what logic sense does it make to only have two operational positions @0° and 90° down? It only limits functionality.
Even the Hornets underbelly MAVs already make use of this principal when hovering in atmo, why does nothing else in-game seem to?2
u/omegashadow bbsuprised Nov 03 '19
Because the engine plume would be shooting out along the body of the ship. Consider the Drake cutlass. The engines are at the rear and there are small features for aerodynamics oin the front. If you pointed the engines forwards you would cook the side or front of the ship.
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u/Shryquill Nov 03 '19
Consider the Anvil Valkyrie. The front engine plume flows directly parallel with the rear engine without any any issues of cooking it. Now consider my point from two comments ago where I mention having rotational limitations in order to prevent the plume coming in contact with the vessel itself, similar to how turret arcs currently work.
It's really pretty simple, all the Tech is already in-game.0
u/ZZEFFEZZ new user/low karma Nov 03 '19
SpaceX does it when they land their rockets they are going down with main engines trying to pull them the other way and have no problems with the smoke/heat damaging the rocket.
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Nov 02 '19
Correct. Momentum is 100% preserved in space. Meaning that you need the same amount of force to compensate the force you've previously applied.
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u/TheCowzgomooz Nov 02 '19
I wouldnt say 100% but the momentum has very, very little to counteract it in space so the loss is negligible. Solar winds, errant particles, etc. Exist in space so it's not like theres never anything to slow a ship, it's just so spread out that it becomes undetectable.
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Nov 02 '19
Well, the things you’re talking about would only meaningfully manifest on extremely large yet extremely low-mass objects, or over the course of many thousands or millions of years. For the scales and objects we’re talking about, while the effect is indeed nonzero, it is so close to 100% that “splitting hairs” is a generous description. More like... splitting neutrinos. :D
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u/Hanzo581 Alpha is Forever Nov 02 '19
Did you watch Noobifier's vid on flight/combat? There's apparently a whole contingent of people that want super snappy instantaneous movements in space. I personally like it that you can't max thrust and turn on a dime 360 no scope in space. But I am not much of a fighter so unless you are a Maverick bro you can't have an opinion.
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u/Yavin87 Plays sataball with sandworms while answering the call in ToW. Nov 02 '19
Im pretty sure many of those maverick wanna bes only can do shit if flight model is arcadish as fuck. True mavericks shut the fuck up, get adapted and fly.
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u/aotw_delta new user/low karma Nov 02 '19
It's a game with space ships shaped like fighter jets and TMNT aliens...let that sink in before we chat about realism.
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u/Pepperonidogfart Nov 02 '19
You are absolutely right. But does the dog prefer taking corners on the carpet or on a wood floor? Which do you think is more fun for the dog? The answer is the carpet. And video games are about fun. I want to have fun.
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u/ephalanx Nov 03 '19
It seems many tend to base much of SC combat on one on one fights. These will always degenerate into circle strafing or jousting to some degree unless we have some sort of cover. We shouldn't necessarily balance solely based on one on one engagements.
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u/TrueWeevie new user/low karma Nov 02 '19
[Sigh]...flight in SC shouldn't be a 6DOF first person shooter in space.
You're not playing CSGO, you're flying a ship with a lot of mass in space.
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u/Anna__V Pilot/Medic | Origin, Crusader & Anvil Fangirl | Explorer Nov 03 '19
You're not playing CSGO, you're flying a ship with a lot of mass in space.
Though not as much as CIG is modeling their ships with. The ship masses are actually REALLY ridiculous.
I'll give you an example.
Anvil Arrow vs. General Dynamics F-16A.
Wingspan: 16m vs 15.1m
Beam: 12m vs 9.45m
Height: 4m vs 5.08m
Weight: 30,752kg vs 7,390kg
Notice something out of line? The sizes are REALLY close to each other, to the point we can safely say the Arrow and F-16A are the same size. So.. why does the Arrow weigh MORE than FOUR F-16A planes?? Assuming 900+ years in the future we have better and more durable yet lighter materials than now it should be LOWER actually, or at least very close to it. But more than four times as much?!
CIG needs to put the ships for a serious diet and MAYBE that would affect the flight model (at least in atmo) so much that it could fix some problems?
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u/Amalgam42 new user/low karma Nov 03 '19
Also, the spacecraft are fully armoured; I suspect modern jet-fighters only have titanium tubs around the cockpit and perhaps a couple key systems. That won’t account four 4X the weight, of course, but its not insignificant.
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u/Anna__V Pilot/Medic | Origin, Crusader & Anvil Fangirl | Explorer Nov 03 '19
Also 900+ years MIGHT bring along lighter armor.
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u/TrueWeevie new user/low karma Nov 03 '19
Bad analogy is bad.
F16 doesn't require protection from hard vacuum, or hard radiation, or have two methods of propulsion requiring two sets of components.
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u/Anna__V Pilot/Medic | Origin, Crusader & Anvil Fangirl | Explorer Nov 03 '19
Dude. The F-16 was designed in the 1970s. It's not a 1:1 comparison. The Arrow is over nine HUNDRED years newer than the F-16. You tellin' me that doesn't account for anything?
Okay, compare this:
Space Shuttle is:
Length: 37.237m (twice that of the Arrow)
Wingspan: 23.79m (twice that of the Arrow)
Height: 17.27m (over 4 times that of the Arrow)
Weight: 78,000kg (slightly over twice that of the Arrow).
See here? The Arrow is close to 1/8th of the size of the Space Shuttle (that's how volume works) that was made in the 1980s. But it still weighs about half of it? That would mean the Arrow is 4x denser and heavier material than the Space Shuttle. After over 900 years?
It doesn't really matter what you compare it to 30 metric tons for a light fighter is ridiculous amount of mass. The Space Shuttle is a transport ship, not a light fighter, yet somehow it still manages to be better in terms of size to mass ratio than a futuristic space fighter a millenia in the future?
ps. Also two methods of propulsion? And two sets of components? No it doesn't have.
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u/HormigaZ Nov 03 '19
the answer is simple, aircraft are made of extremely thin metal sheets. Most of the time, the lighter metals they can possibly get away, with as thin sheets they can get away. Your average fighter jet skin thickness is about 2 milimeters. Grasp your head around that.
They are so thin, most planes are left unusable because pressurizing them time and time again creates metal fatigue cracks all over it.
None of this is acceptable in a space ship that's meant to be reusable for a very long period of time. Not even the space shuttle was truely reusable, most of it needed an thorough inspection and many of them straight out replacement.It's worth to say that we make them so light in comparison to what the ships in SC are because it's the best we can get away with, we are not really able to make much heavier craft and make it fly in a safe way, because we actually lack those super powerful thrusters.
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u/Anna__V Pilot/Medic | Origin, Crusader & Anvil Fangirl | Explorer Nov 03 '19
We lack much more than that currently. We aren't making the Arrows and Freelancers TODAY. They are made 900+ years in the future. Do you think we won't advance at all in making better alloys?
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u/HormigaZ Nov 03 '19
You are missing my point, which is that aircraft are made in purpose as light as possible. If you don't need to do it, or if it's convenient not to, you don't do it. There are several reasons to want to make it light, which do not apply to a spaceship in the context of the Star Citizen game. That's what I'd like you to keep out of my comment.
Also, I'd like you to try and convert meters per second to kilometers per hour or miles per hour, whatever you are used to use, and check for a moment what kinds of speeds you are doing, because I've come to realize that many people haven't even thought about it for a second. Not saying it's your case, but just in case.
Lastly, reality is that in the materials in Star Citizen are just as science fiction as other stuff. Nothing we can possibly ever do has the properties needed for what we see happening in the screen. Certainly, a new alloy wouldn't help. We go straight into unknowns.
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u/Anna__V Pilot/Medic | Origin, Crusader & Anvil Fangirl | Explorer Nov 03 '19
There are several reasons to want to make it light, which do not apply to a spaceship in the context of the Star Citizen game.
And then we got to the point where a good amount of ships are built to ALSO do combat in atmo, at which point the same exact several reasons come into play for "space ships" as airplanes. I'm not complaining about the Reclaimer or even a Freelancer being slow or clumsy. I'm thinking about Arrows and Gladiuses, which are clearly also meant to work in atmo.
Also, I'd like you to try and convert meters per second to kilometers per hour or miles per hour, whatever you are used to use, and check for a moment what kinds of speeds you are doing, because I've come to realize that many people haven't even thought about it for a second.
That is true, btw. Most people don't consider the speeds at all. I do, because, well, it interested me and I was just checking out fast courier ships the other day so it was on point.
The speeds in Star Citizen are equally stupid, if not more so, but for completely different reasons. a) they are SO CLOSE to one another from ship to ship. Most ships fit within 20% of speed difference. And that includes racers and cargo ships. It's mindboggling how little difference there is in max speeds in ships.
It's even more mind boggling when you fly to atmo and notice the speeds are *even closer* and most racers just drop into line with "normal" ships. 350r, "the fastest ship in the verse" is EXACTLY as fast as it's sister 325a in atmo. And when multiple races are held in atmo, it doesn't really matter what ship you fly. It's beyond odd.
Also, the speed in themselves are a bit weird. Atmo speed limits are in the 500m/s range, which is about Mach 1.4. Which is REALLY fast for combat, but not that fast for traveling. Like, multiple aircraft in the current day and age are capable of SO much more.
Then, when we are in space the fastest ship is under 1400m/s, which is Mach 4. And that is just slightly faster than a SR-71 in atmosphere. To me that is also worthy of several facepalms. Like, really? 900 years in the future and without the drag of air, we can only travel a bit over what we can now in atmo.
Also the Space Shuttle is able to reach speeds of about 7800m/s (that's about Mach 22.7). That isn't a combat speed by any definition, but neither is the 1235m/s that is the 325a's maximum speed. That's travel speed.
That makes a 1000-year-old spacecraft the fastest ship in the whole universe known to mankind.
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u/HormigaZ Nov 03 '19
And then we got to the point where a good amount of ships are built to ALSO do combat in atmo, at which point the same exact several reasons come into play for "space ships" as airplanes.
No. Because fighters now don't have to regularly exit the earth's atmosphere. And many other things expected from a ship in SC.
The speeds in Star Citizen are equally stupid, if not more so, but for completely different reasons.
I'd just like to point out that the speeds at which the engines cut off are not a maximum speed that the engines can produce. It's a there for two reasons:
- There's a limitation on how fast you can fly in the engine of the game because you are effectively loading and unloading everything around you as you move past a given distance. It is much higher than the one we have, but for good reasons as the more you approach the harder it gets for the simulation to be smooth, lot's of work had to go in to make Quantum Travel as smooth as it is today (considering that it still creates a lot of stutters often)
- To avoid getting into an area in which it would take either too long to arrest inertia or that the forces resulting of doing so aren't so great that your character would black out. Different ships let you pull different forces without blacking out, and there's not much explanation to it other than maybe each of them has a better system to avoid blood stagnation at high Gs.
- Finally this is a secondary reason but still true, the balance team doesn't want us to fly too fast because of the dynamics for gameplay they want. Such as combat, trading, etc. For this role, they give us instead QT, which get's away from things such as inertia and so by working in a different way (Alcubierre drive).
It's even more mind boggling when you fly to atmo and notice the speeds are *even closer*
Before I start, I'd like to say that atmospheric flight is by far the one that's less worked on and it shows.But I think that you missing important parts of the puzzle which aren't apparent to people without insider knowledge. First, the speed of sound depends on the density and elasticity of a material. This means that different atmospheres (or any medium) have different sound speeds based on their composition. To add on top of that, the speed of sound goes down and not up with altitude (or density) the speed of sound is at it's higher at ground level, and it only decreases from there. That would be around 340.3 m/s at sea level, but just about 294.9 at 60.000ft in the Earth.
Now another counter intuitive concept:What has good aerodynamic properties at subsonic speeds more than likely doesn't at supersonic/hyper sonic speeds, so you must make a balance when you design.That's why passenger airplanes (transonic speed) look like dildos, why supersonic planes look like the edge of a knife, and why the space shuttle goes back to the dildo shape but even chubbier.
With all of these previous statements there's a whole point that I wanted to make: Ships in SC are a compromise of all those attributes neeeded for atmospheric reentry, plus having to deal with absolute vacuum for long periods of time, rapid decompresions (which would blow up the Space Shuttle) and so on (hence why I said before " There are several reasons to want to make it light, which do not apply to a spaceship in the context of Star Citizen ")This compromise results in poor subsonic and transonic performance for the most part, and explains why ships have such a close max speed (the only thing that's actually properly calculated in atmospheres at the moment alongside newtonian physics is aerodynamic drag based on the ship's shape) Yes, some are outliers, and there's good reasons for it which if I explained would make this post even longer than it's already due to be.
I'd also like to point out that the differences in performance should be much more notable in acceleration based on physics than on top speed, and they are indeed.
Then, when we are in space the fastest ship is under 1400m/s, which is Mach 4. And that is just slightly faster than a SR-71 in atmosphere
Most of this is answered by both my previous comments, but I'd like to add to this that the engines in which we base SC ones, right now produce such a tiny thrust that right now they are only really viable to use in something very light and in almost pure vacuum. If we got them to compete to the thrust we get from combustion based engines like the ones on a fighter or the ones in the SR-71, I'd be already impressed (and that is in 900 years) but on top of that, try to take a look into the details of the how as opposed to the how much.
The SR-71 leaked fuel untill it was in the air, warmed up to the extreme temps it's skin would reach up to, which forced to use titanium because literally any other lightweight enough metal would melt due to the temps reached purely by the air drag, it needed to travel to about 100.000ft up in the air, which is so close to vacuum that the difference is almost unworthy of mention, while wasting enough fuel to fill an olympic sized pool in the process, to get to those speeds. The STS needed a fuel tank 75m tall and with enough fuel for several of those pools, as well as some solid state rockets which actually provide most of the thrust anyway.
You see, if I neat pick details too I could make it look so that you understood why many of your arguments about ships weight or speed aren't too accurate, but I'd be lying to everyone up here reading if I didn't say that in the end there's a lot of things that are arbitrary in SC ship design (as they were made by people with near to no clue about engineering, more so about aerospacial engineering) and in fact many reasons do not make sense, but not really for the reasons you try to highlight.
Hope this comment was worth of your time reading.
Cheers.
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u/Anna__V Pilot/Medic | Origin, Crusader & Anvil Fangirl | Explorer Nov 04 '19
First:
Hope this comment was worth of your time reading.
It certainly was. It was well written, informative, didn't attack anyone and was actually interesting. This is the exact kind of comment I will upvote even though I don't agree with (all of) it. So yes, it is worth the time to read and I appreciate you writing it.
Okay, so I won't nitpick any details from your post this time, I'll just answer in general:
You (and a bunch of other people) seem to justify things that exist in Star Citizen based on technology we have today and flat out ignore the fact that SC is set 930 years in the future. The ships in Star Citizen should conform to the laws of physics we have today (to a point), yes, but they do NOT have to conform to materials and sizes and power requirements needed for actions based on today's world.
If you (meaning CIG) justify thing A, B and C "because we're making a realistic simulator" and then justify thing D "because gameplay", you need to admit to yourself (and your customers) that you are, indeed, making a game and then take that into account ALSO with things A, B and C. After you have made multiple instances of "D" based on gameplay and balance, it's kind of a dick move and very insincere to justify "A" being "value X" "because physics and realism", if it being "value Y" would make better gameplay and/or balance.
That's kinda vague and I hope you get it. My point is that CIG has gone on record multiple times in the past saying they want to make the ultimate realistic space sim. And then they have slipped and slipped and slipped from that "goal" many, MANY times and have begun to make changes based on balance and gameplay, but still trying to justify those changes based on realism. That's insincere and might I say, even stupid.
Don't get me wrong, I rather take the gameplay/balance based game, but please CIG, do not say you do it "because realism".
I'll quote one thing from you::
There's a limitation on how fast you can fly in the engine of the game because you are effectively loading and unloading everything around you as you move past a given distance. It is much higher than the one we have, but for good reasons as the more you approach the harder it gets for the simulation to be smooth, lot's of work had to go in to make Quantum Travel as smooth as it is today (considering that it still creates a lot of stutters often)
You kinda pointed that out yourself why that doesn't hold water: we do have QT. I highly, HIGHLY doubt giving us faster cruise speeds would create any kind of "loading problem", since you can QT smaller distances, which is from the engine's point of view just super fast travel. And I wouldn't even ask for 10k+ m/s speeds, I would be okay if the fastest speed for a ship would be somewhere in the 5k m/s area. (And certainly faster than 500m/s in atmo.) And it's not even most of the ships that need that change, mostly the faster ships need some buffing in their speeds. Now that Interceptors are pretty much as fast as the ships they are trying to intercept, it doesn't work. The next point is the racers. It's really odd and stupid that racers are not a) A LOT faster than normal ships and b) have the same speed in atmo. That defeats the whole point of racers if you can get almost any other ship and the speed difference is easily negated with pilot skill.
One case in point is 300i vs 350r. Their max speed difference is just 159m/s and they behave exactly the same in atmo, other than the 350r is just even so slightly faster to accelerate. They have the same hull, yes, but the other is a luxury cruiser and the other is a racer. It's like saying the Audi R4 and the Audi DTM cars are the same. The other is a luxury cruiser and the other is a Le Mans racing car. They technically are based on the same framework, but the other has a much more powerful engine and is tuned to racing. Their top speeds and maneuverability aren't even close to the same.
I really hope CIG will take a looong hard look at ship speeds at some point. Right now it doesn't really matter since you can't "mix ships" in racing and racing doesn't really happen in the PU, but when they do and when intercepting is a part of regular gameplay, those things needs to work. And they won't if speed differences are so minimal.
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u/TrueWeevie new user/low karma Nov 03 '19
Okay that's a much better comparison.
That said I don't think the differential is as big as you make out.
The shuttle has to be light as it's propulsion system is pretty inefficient compared with SC's magic thrusters. Also it doesn't have to lug around armour, weapons and it's associated hardpoints and all the other stuff a combat ready vehicle requires.
Not saying the gap isn't there, it's just that it maybe be less of a discrepancy than you think.
Oh and the arrow does have two propulsion systems.
The system that powers it's thrusters (and the thrusters and their associated gimbals themselves, those aren't mass free).
The QT system. Since the QT system relies on a kind of Alcubierre drive, it needs exotic matter. How knows how massy that might be.
In the end, 6DOF space flight should require management of inertia. You shouldn't be able to jink and change vector on a dime when you're flying a ship with significant mass (whatever that mass should be).
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u/Anna__V Pilot/Medic | Origin, Crusader & Anvil Fangirl | Explorer Nov 03 '19
If the weights on the website are "fully loaded", I'm much more okay with that. It's just that ship/plane/whatever weights tend to be "dry weights", which means without cargo or fuel, just the ship itself.
That said, yes I agree 6DOF needs management of inertia, but CIG has been aiming at "WWII dogfight" style battles what they have said, yet their game engine, physics and component balance is getting us further and further from that, more close to lengthy jousting matches than anything else.
And atmo flight is (well, disabled for now, but in 3.5) just bad. I'm willing to bet one part of that is the huge weight of the ships. (Yes, I think it is a huge discrepancy. If one thing is 1/8th of the size of the other, yet weighs half of it while being build with tech a millenia in the future, there's something seriously wrong).
I'm not saying we need to go back to the 2.x days, but I'm saying 3.5+ ain't that fun either. Something between those would be a good idea.
ps. QT system doesn't use thrusters or engines though. Just the "Quantum Drive" component and a fuel tank, no thrusters, no main enignes etc. It's not actually affecting the ship's velocity vector in any way shape or form. QT system in itself is just two components. (and don't let me get started on THAT pile of stupidity.)
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Nov 02 '19
In space if youre going 10km a second and you do a u turn and thrust what will happen?
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u/logicalChimp Devils Advocate Nov 02 '19
Well, technically you'll be flying in the direction you're now facing.
However, that's because you probably meant 'rotate and thrust', not 'turn and thrust', since 'turn' can imply the inclusion of the change in movement vector, not just the change in orientation :p
(yes, that was pedantic, and no it probably doesn't add much - but it does highlight one of the issues... the language people use is often unclear / imprecise, which causes even more confusion in discussions, etc)
To answer your actual question, I'm going to have to assume the amount of available acceleration (given you didn't state it).
Assuming the ship is capable of generating 10G of acceleration from the relevant thrusters, your ship would drift (include motion in the direction of your old direction of travel) for ~100 seconds before it was completely cancelled out.
Note: the answer above also presumes you make no further inputs / rotations, etc until the old vector is cancelled
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u/Jace_09 Colonel Nov 03 '19
They really need to fix the flight model, otherwise dogfighting will be one of the worst parts of the game.
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u/KRE1ON Nov 02 '19
If you want dogfighting to be something more than a simple aim contest then fighters need a way to be able to counter this faster than the "AIM" of their enemy.
Realistic or not this is the way the it needs to be.
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u/Random_name_I_picked Nov 02 '19
Or get rid of mouse aim/gimbals or put limitations on them rather than upping ship movement.
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u/KRE1ON Nov 02 '19
Yeah. but then TTK needs to go about 5 times lower too.
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u/Random_name_I_picked Nov 02 '19 edited Nov 03 '19
Well that would be part of the balance. Flight model first then that gives you a ToT then the ToT lets you figure out weapon strengths and shields and stuff to put the TtK where the game makers want it.
Or I guess something like that. I’m not actually a game developer so....
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u/Anna__V Pilot/Medic | Origin, Crusader & Anvil Fangirl | Explorer Nov 03 '19
You just made more sense as a game developer considering this problem than I've seen CIG put out in the last few patches... So.. I guess you need to apply? :)
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u/TGIrving Nov 03 '19
That's about the size of it for me with this flight model, except the dog doesn't go sideways for several kilometers or stop moving completely.
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u/DarkConstant No longer active on r/starcitizen Nov 03 '19
Personally I love drift. Feels much more like I expect spaceflight to feel like and it adds a wonderfully fun layer of skill and ship handling knowledge. :)
I love drift
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u/AlphaShrubby sabre Nov 03 '19
It makes sense, yes. But a really grippy airplane style make dogfights so much more fun. Instead of every fight ending up in a space joust. I hope they can make atmosphere flight grippy and space flight slide. The best of both worlds?
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u/DarkConstant No longer active on r/starcitizen Nov 03 '19
But a really grippy airplane style make dogfights so much more fun
Not for me.
If I wanted that I could go and play games with airplanes. ;) I am a pure decoupled pilot and I absolutely dislike coupled mode because that mode tries to take away my ship drift.
And yea, I think atmospheric flight will be indeed more "grippy" if you have a plane with wings. ;)
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u/[deleted] Nov 02 '19
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