There’s a competition to guess which system it’s in…
Hmmm…let me see how many rocky worlds there are floating in the galaxy… 
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ED is getting Corvette sized ships in some future update, they showed off a Federal Corvette in today’s newsletter.
http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=38a4287ad3
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Not too keen on the look of the Federal Corvette. The balance of detail feels wrong, the best models have large areas without any detail and then incredible detail in just the right places. This model just feels like it has detail splattered wherever there was a free space on the mesh.
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Again, I agree with you. It’s just a bland ship devoid of any character, as if it was a novice’s greeble study.
Now if all those plates moved around in a semi-transforming fashion, I could see the point. For example, if this was the “deployed” version of the ship, with it pulling all those plates tightly together when in a hostile environment…
I don’t know what is up with you two, I think that is a wonderful ship, the “engine plates” that are devoid of any detail actually stick out as something that should be fixed, as opposed to making more parts of this ship like that.
Also I’m pretty sure that the team/person that made the model is professionally qualified and beyond “amateur” skill level that was the norm for the old forums.
I reserve judgment until I see textures on it, could hold a lot of detail the geo is being built around, not a huge fan of it atm though.
Textures are probably gonna be more or less generic, since they sell paint jobs.
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Yes, the engine plates are the best detailed part of the ship.
Having paid an exorbitant sum of money for Elite Dangerous and finding it has a wonderfully newtonian physics model yet a horrifically ill-conceived tiered top-speed system for ships (meaning some cheaper or freighter type ships have a low top-speed while more expensive “sports car” type ships have high top-speed) I find myself watching this game like a hawk. I want to contribute to I-Novae but I want assurances that this type of arcade’ish top-speed system will not infect this game, ever. Differences in overall engine power or acceleration I can understand, but there should be no top speed in space, I should be able to go as hazardously fast as I wish, in any ship, provided I have the fuel for the appropriate maneuvering ‘burns.’
I only played ED for roughly 1 month, I argued for a refund and was denied. I have not had any desire to return to the game as long as the tiered top-speed system remains.
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Our primary focus is differences in acceleration however we do have top speeds for “regular” space flight so that if you spend 20 minutes accelerating you aren’t going to have to wait 20 minutes to decelerate. In terms of its implementation this is a limitation enforced by your flight computer to prevent you from dramatically overshooting your destination while under manual flight control. To offset this limitation we have a special “jump” mode for inter-solar flight that rapidly accelerates you to allow for quicker travel between celestial bodies. This ability will be limited by “jump fuel” which is a finite resource. We will absolutely have top speeds for atmospheric flight due to drag, etc. Basically if you start going too fast in-atmosphere your ship becomes very difficult to control and starts to burn up. The exact point at which this happens is determined by atmospheric density and altitude (which affects atmospheric density) combined with a rough approximation of the shape/aerodynamics of your ship.
Of course this may change during playtesting which will ultimately decide a lot of the nuance in our flight models.
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Thank you! I am honored by your fast reply!
This (regular space only) top-speed can be a complicated issue for the lay person’s English language. However from what you said, it seems highly unlikely that this fantastically conceived game will ever have the same ship cost based “regular space” tiered top-speed system that ED has. As long as there is an game-engine-limited-top-speed-ceiling that is uniform for all ships in space, and not a faster top-speed for a “snail” class ship over a “cheetah” class ship. Tiered acceleration differences are reasonable and to be expected. If the more-expensive “snail” class ship has a dramatically faster acceleration than a very cheaply made “cheetah” class ship I am perfectly fine with this.
I expect atmosphere to be a different experience altogether. What you said about the top-speeds seems perfectly reasonable to me. ED has nothing like this too of course 
In fact, very few games have, only the old Battlecruiser 3000AD series, and then only rocky worlds, not gas giants!
I will try to participate in the playtesting when it comes available again.
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To elaborate a bit on that part: those are not artificial, arbitrary limits. Your ship can absolutely fly faster than that, for example if you were going in warp at high speeds and couldn’t stop fast enough before entering an atmosphere. Consequences on your ship will be disastrous, but you can definitely exceed that “max” speed temporarily if your ship supports it.
It’s basically the same than for real airplanes: aerodynamic models state that when drag ( due to atmosphere friction ) equals the amount of thrust, the plane can’t go faster. That’s how you determine top speed for airplanes. We use a similar model, which means there’s no arbitrary limit, only practical constraints.
In space, you can reach any speed just by accelerating, but at normal ( non-warp ) accelerations it could take many hours to reach thousands of Km/s, which isn’t practical. That’s why we have a warp mode which demultiplies the accelerations and that allows you to reach such speeds in a very short amount of time, to travel far distances.
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I’ve never thought about interstellar travel in that way. You’re so smart : )
Oh I should have withheld my response until I saw the other cofounder!
Oh my goodness. Okay. You explained it perfectly! I am terrible at explaining it as I am trying to be overly cautious.
I will silence myself and try to be constructive. My worries have been quelled. The flight model of this game is nothing like ED in terms of top-speed. Thank you!
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I suspect the lack of a comment by @Kichae here is that he’s been overcome by a massive nerdgasm…
Because I know I have. Too few games do decent atmospheric flight modelling. Does this mean we’ll also see designs (at some point…) specifically designed for more efficient re-entry and/or higher re-entry speeds?
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Aerodynamics/flight control surfaces simply just don’t work past a certain threshold. In fact, I think we are already going faster in the current prototype than what is realistic in the in terms of speeds in an earth-like atmosphere. Currently in the Hellion I can do mach 3-4 at ~100m altitude and upwards of mach 20 at higher altitudes. I’ll have to specifically test the reentry to see what speeds I can attain while maintaining control. However, this is a pre-alpha configuration likely to change during play testing.
I think our atmospheric flight model might mean it is more likely to have planetary defense craft (cannot enter space) that would be more maneuverable than spaceships which rely on thrusters and lifting body characteristics to “fly” in atmospheres. However, this is not something we’re considering for Battlescape at the moment. Player ships will be defined as “spaceships”. But it is an interesting idea for a future MMO I think.
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Hmm… The planetary defense craft would make for nice AI defences for ground installations though, if they were to feature in Battlescape at all.
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I would imagine there is a bit of hand-wavy science behind the ships atmospheric flight. Sure there would be terminal pressure limits on the hull at certain speeds and altitudes, but in terms of control surfaces and aerodynamics, I assume it would be hard to accurately model all of that without adding crazy amounts of work.
Not to mention the forums would absolutely erupt in riots if they started adding wings to spaceships.
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