So it’s not necessarily a speed limit then, but more of a minimum acceleration limit? Who cares if the relative speeds are 10km/s if you can match velocities in seconds?
It’s my business when you try to limit speeds below which I can make those maneuvers. I ask because the 3km/s is not even half of orbital velocity of the Earth. If the game wants to standardize it’s speed/acceleration limits across battlescape and TQFE, and still have the ability to have your IDS(or whatever you call it) counteract gravity whilst still maintaining the ability for orbital mechanics, then you will have relative speeds in excess of 7km/s. There’s no if, and’s, or butts around it.
Unless I’m taking Flavien’s words out of context about what the scope of orbital mechanics means, there will be these huge relative velocities. At this point the “top speed” argument is moot. There’s no point. For perspective, here’s a gif that shows orbital velocities at LEO compared to a standstill. (~7.2km/s)
If this is the case, then your issue lays with maximum/minimum acceleration and a ship’s ability to match velocities in a reasonable time - not top speed.
I think JB has a very specific vision/desire for gameplay that isn’t fully shared by the rest of us. Based on his posts, he seems (I could be wrong) the type to prefer very structured systems crafted to present one single, or a small range of very similar, gameplay experience/s. Anything that falls outside of that is anathema, or at least undesirable.
In the warp prototype, the speed limit scales according to proximity. When you’re within 10km of a mass, you can move at speeds no higher than 3km/s. But as you rise from the planet surface, that speed limit also rises. By the time you’re 100km up, you have plenty of room to drift along at orbital speeds. As I’ve said on numerous occasions, the warp prototype supports orbits but they’re about as topical as sails.
Problem with speed limits and orbital mechanics is that you break your orbital mechanics by having a speed limit. Looking at the new blog post, IBS will have simple orbital mechnics by having gravity influence ships in a realistic manner.
Thing is, to be in a 400km orbit around a planet like Earth, you need to be moving at around 7.5km/s, if there is a speed limit due to other factors like ship or station proximity, you loose your orbit. (ISS is in 400km orbit)
Wow, this took forever to write on a tablet, enjoying my holiday atm…
/edit
I think Crayfish suggested a on/off switch for gravity to solve this problem, on IRC recently.
If I remember correctly, from a technical standpoint, you would need to limit velocities near planets in some manner. If you were traveling at warp velocities, the engine would be forced to try and procedurally generate an entire planet in a single frame or two.
As for intercepting and evading people at high velocities, I would propose other limitations that would allow for the probability of intercept while still allowing the possibility of evading said intercept. This could be done with a fuel economy mechanic. i.e. there’s a maxium ship acceleration and an optimally efficient acceleration. At the most efficient, you could probably get across the half the system on one tank, whereas at maxium you might get to the next planet if you’re lucky.
Since there is likely to be capital ships, I wouldn’t propose this fuel mechanic to be total fuel, but rather a “warp capacitor” (besides, getting stranded sucks). Realistically speaking, no ship would be able to break the speed of light without a warp drive. When the drive is off (runs out of capacitance), the ship drops back down to non-relativistic velocities and would have to be charged before engaging warp again. This balance between efficiency and acceleration would allow a more natural interception ability.
In the event that someone catches up to you (and assuming that most combat is designed to take place at non-relativistic speeds), there would need to be a way of dropping the other person from warp. I would propose in that case, that each ship’s drive could have a natural warp frequency. Any ship could destabilize another ship’s warp simply by flying close enough to them (mutual interference, causing both fields to drop and capacitors to empty). Naturally, larger ships would have larger warp fields and be more energetic, requiring more field strength i.e. more or larger ships to drop them from warp. Allies could naturally sync their frequencies up to fly in formation.
I do feel that any interception in an empty area of space would need a significant level of HUD work to make it feel more natural. I remember playing Elite: Frontier 2, and how the lack of reference points made combat feel awkward and clumsy. It really needed artificial reference points in order to make combat not devolve into a jousting tournament. I would propose something like a +2 through -2 second virtual acceleration vector grid be placed under the target, along with an arrow for the instantaneous velocity vector. Also an aim point for velocity vector matching, or possibly a +2 second path prediction display based on current inputs would be ideal. Of course, the usual virtual contrails might work as well, but I would hope for something a little more inventive and unique.
I was talking about being able to turn your engines on or off. With them switched on your thrusters automatically maintain your altitude and with them switched off you fall.
I get the feeling that for gameplay reasons any space stations in battlescape may have to use magic thrusters to keep them in a geostationary low earth orbit. It depends how well the warping and intercept systems work. If the warp system is good then real geostationary orbit distances could be okay. If intercepting is easy then perhaps LEO stations could have realistic orbital speeds.
Well yes, there surely will need to be some magic involved considering that planets and stations are going to be stationary. While ships might have speed limits for practical combat reasons and be affected by gravity. It’s a disconnect that will need to be fixed at the point where ships interact with the static objects.
As with many other features, it depends on funding. Flavien and I discussed celestial mechanics and “interaction zones”, and my take on it is while doable (1000’s of coding man hours doable), it would not be doable under minimum funding conditions, it would require us to hit the “jackpot” as Flavien put it.
If you remember the ICP battleship following zone: “ICP1 took me 50-100 hours, and that was just for a battleship, and it had many restrictions/specifics to the system”. - Flavien Brebion
While we all want it, like we want many things, it’s a matter of resources, scope & priority.
What is currently implemented in engine is discrete orbital mechanics of player ship to massive object, like a planet or moon. There are HUD indicators for setting direction and speed, once you reach both of those conditions, you can disable flight assist and your ship will maintain orbit without any further player input.
What is not in-engine is full blown celestial mechanics. Planets orbiting stars, moons orbiting planets, rings orbiting moons/planets, etc. “celestial mechanics make the game 10 times more complex to code” - Flavien
It’s a frame of reference problem/network code issue. To make all that work smoothly for a multiplayer game will take more resources than we’d have available in a minimum funding condition.
Not giving speed limits here, but as an example of the speeds we’re dealing with in terms of netcode, in the current prototype, the conventional thruster speed indicator pegs out at 50 Km/s, and the warp indicator at 300,000 Km/s. The big issue with celestial mechanics is zone transition system which runs perfectly smooth without network stuttering.
I’m sure Flavien can do a better job explaining it.
It’s not a limit, it’s just where the indicator ends, you can keep accelerating, and there is a text readout now that gives actual speed. The indicator bar is how you set your speed in flight assist mode. I’m probably not explaining it well, but I can’t show a screenshot of that just yet.
for battlescape’s intended match based gameplay orbits probably would never get noticed, but i’ve been thinking that a static solar system map thats the same every time would get dull fairly quickly. Might be good to randomize the position of the planets and moons in their orbit on match start, just to add some more variety.
