Game alignment with Newtonian & Einsteinian physics - ideas

[Faustov]

I am pretty sure the OP didnt REALLY mean Einsteinian physics at relativistic speeds, but simply classical Newtonian physics. At true relativistic speeds, say, at least 80% of the speed of light, where Einsteinian physics starts to be relevant there can be no game and it would objectively be no fun. Not up for debate or personal taste. We can safely assume he meant Kerbal Space Program-like physics.

Actually I'll edit the title to include both, Einsteinian and Newtonian, but you are correct. In fact I was hoping to explore some other thoughts:
* why is communication over radio (and limited to few KM but instant) instead of quantum?
* why is time flowing 1:1 when traveling through accelerators which seem to go to/beyond light speed?
* why is electronics based on FPGA (therefore, CMOS)?

That being said, the old argument of even real classical physics leading to a high speed jousting game is very real. The unfortunate reality is that future space battles will be extremely boring and done by computers. None of the cool Star Wars dog fights but lots of accelerating, shooting past your opponent and then decelerating. Shame, because the whole navigating to stationary (whatever 'stationary' means) objects would be cool. Just combat can't work.

IMHO not necessarily, it could still be cool, as long as solutions implemented are well explained with in-game lore.

Pressure needs a medium (any air, fluid or solid matter), no medium no pressure no "explosion shockwave". Another fact to explain this in space its pretty cold. But a space suite has a cooling system! Because without a medium the only way the astronaut can get rid of his own body heat is infrared radiation. And this effect is to slow to cool the astronaut suite.

Void is the medium, and the matter that is exploding is decompressing and therefore it should be forming a shockwave, right?

There would be no such things as maximum speeds like we have in 99.9% of space games, just maximum accelerations, based on engine thrust and ship mass, and avoiding too high accelerations which would splat the squishy pilot inside the ship. You would have real orbits, and would require the use of the computer to navigate, so you would give general commands to the computer to go to certain areas, or achieve orbit etc., and it would then carry out the commands.

INDEED! And it could be reflected in the game IMHO without making it not fun. I can think of a few ways, for example: confirm sector void is not exactly void (even make some sectors denser than others, affecting speed), acceleration to behave as boost only (instead of increase of V up to a certain limit), and so on.

Now when a ship gets its death blow it has a hizzy fit, and then sits quite still glowing like an ember. Where did its momentum go? Should it not drift along its pre-explosive path! Until it encounters resistance! Or gets pulled by the local planet to burn up on re-entry! Instead it then vanishes. I think a more interesting end would be for those repair drones to go to work on the remains and salvage whats left. Braking it down like when you dismantle a station module.

Yes, this behavior should be improved, I'll add it to the first post.


As for the ship shape comments: I quite like the non-aerodynamic approach to most designs of ships, e.g. the Plutus has curvy shapes which makes sense in gas mining, while the Khaak ships make perfect sense to fire beams from every angle, etc. I think shipmakers in the game must have had the dilemma when designing ships: should my ship be cheaper because no special shape is required in the void but then useless if they ever have to enter the atmosphere?

[RodentofDoom]

300km doesn't even get you to any of the Lagrange Points
I'm sorry but this just shows you can't adjust from ground-based perceptions of distance to the reality of just how huge distances get in space.

You (and the other 2) missed the point. The gates in X4 are a few hundred km apart. Aside from getting there (which would require spacecraft which look and function much like spacecraft today, which don't look like jets), you don't need giant boosters anymore or 90% of your size devoted to fuel. You're only flying a few hundred km to get from point-to-point. Yea, you need something to get there first (like the atmospheric lifter from X3).

In that regard, the ships aren't gonna look that much different. Yea you don't need wings, but given the short distances and much lesser speeds and acceleration required, they're not gonna look that different from fighter jets (or at least less so than space craft). We're talking about something that needs a much smaller portion of its size devoted to fuel, and more to its payload (whether that's heavy weapons attached to the frame, or a bunch of cargo/person space).

And not to get derail into the whole chemical rocket fuel vs jet A thing, but a VTOL doesn't need airflow, it just needs O2 to catalyze the fuel. Would that be more efficient/cheaper in space than rocket fuel? I really don't know. Point is its easy to fuel, and you don't really need any more fuel for a couple hundred km journey than you need today.

We're not going to Mars, we're doing the equivalent of a regional flight.

To drive this point: This is the X universe, which is small, not our (probably ) gateless universe.

Naah I didn't miss the point
The OP wants realism
I'm just pointing out that realism would be incredibly tedious and dull, because physics.

Essentially X4's Jump Gates are Einsten-Rosenberg Bridges
Hypothetically to reduce the energy requirements to establish that bridge you want an area of interference in the gravity well, say that caused by another nearby star.
That area of interference is not going to be close to the star, it's going to be in the far reaches of the system, and the distance will essentially be dictated by the masses of the 2 stars in question. (odds are that area ,if such exists, will lie somewhere between the Kupier Belt and the Oort Cloud for Sol)
Even if the ships in game could travel at .2C the distances involed means the time taken to travel them is very, very long.

Using realism when you arrive in a system, theoretically, if your sensors are high tech enough, you could see everything in the system as it will be either emitting or reflecting light.
The downside to that is, if you arrived instystem somewhere around the orbit of Neptune, that light you're seeing is upto 6hrs old (3hrs to the star, 3hrs+ for the other side of the orbital path)
You will have a view of the system as it was, in the past
How the hell do they represent that in a game

The only people who want relaism are idiots who dont actually understand what it is that they want

[Faustov]

The X4 universe organization is quite explainable, for example by: space is big, but not all parts of it are interesting. Where there was an area of interest (resources, etc), a sector with an ecosystem has been created. And gateways between these sectors make it possible for ships as small as few meters, 1-person ships to travel in reasonable time.

Gateway mechanics can be explained in multiple ways, therefore I'm not listing them as an area for improvement. If I recall correctly however, the gateways are somewhat "lost tech" and therefore new gates cannot be created (lore), therefore their mechanics must be something different than we know, and obviously not gravity wells, since mass would have to be present nearby (note: on 100km earth orbit, gravity power is 82% (writing from memory)).

[JSDD]

consider a missile with "fins" flying in space:
according to the laws of nature, it will fly straight ahead unless there is a force applied on it. these "kind of fins" are therefore useless because there is no air that can apply a resisting force on the missile. so missiles have to have several (!) propulsions just to be able to turn around and follow the target ... like a ship. and by the way, it would make no (physical) difference if that missile is spherical or elongated (or cubic) ...

would it look "better" ?! ... i guess: no.

orbits:
considering the fact that the orbital period of any mass in space (planet, sun, moon, whatever ...) increases with increasing distance (kepler´s 3rd law), you would have no "static" regions where station A is about the same distance to station B after a while. you would have to "bind" stations kind of together to create anything resembling an X3 sector-like amount of stationary objects.

would it look "better" ?! ... i dont know. it would on first glance, look kind of interesting, but is it good for game play ??

... some time ago, i had the same ideas about a more realistic game play ... once you have a deeper look into it, it becomes more difficult to defend that position somehow ^^

[Faustov]

consider a missile with "fins" flying in space:
according to the laws of nature, it will fly straight ahead unless there is a force applied on it. these "kind of fins" are therefore useless because there is no air that can apply a resisting force on the missile. so missiles have to have several (!) propulsions just to be able to turn around and follow the target ... like a ship. and by the way, it would make no (physical) difference if that missile is spherical or elongated (or cubic) ...

would it look "better" ?! ... i guess: no.

No, it'd be enough to change the vector of the main propulsion - something military jets in our reality are capable of doing for the last 40+ years.

orbits:
considering the fact that the orbital period of any mass in space (planet, sun, moon, whatever ...) increases with increasing distance (kepler´s 3rd law), you would have no "static" regions where station A is about the same distance to station B after a while. you would have to "bind" stations kind of together to create anything resembling an X3 sector-like amount of stationary objects.

would it look "better" ?! ... i dont know. it would on first glance, look kind of interesting, but is it good for game play ??

Depends on the mass - in fact, stations seem small enough to not affect each other, and so far it seems planets are also too far away to make a visible impact impairing the game.

[JSDD]

consider a missile with "fins" flying in space:
according to the laws of nature, it will fly straight ahead unless there is a force applied on it. these "kind of fins" are therefore useless because there is no air that can apply a resisting force on the missile. so missiles have to have several (!) propulsions just to be able to turn around and follow the target ... like a ship. and by the way, it would make no (physical) difference if that missile is spherical or elongated (or cubic) ...

would it look "better" ?! ... i guess: no.

No, it'd be enough to change the vector of the main propulsion - something military jets in our reality are capable of doing for the last 40+ years.

... and the missile will start to turn around itself like crazy ?!

orbits:
considering the fact that the orbital period of any mass in space (planet, sun, moon, whatever ...) increases with increasing distance (kepler´s 3rd law), you would have no "static" regions where station A is about the same distance to station B after a while. you would have to "bind" stations kind of together to create anything resembling an X3 sector-like amount of stationary objects.

would it look "better" ?! ... i dont know. it would on first glance, look kind of interesting, but is it good for game play ??

Depends on the mass - in fact, stations seem small enough to not affect each other, and so far it seems planets are also too far away to make a visible impact impairing the game.

planet movement and the likes would be on top of my list to make more "real" ... or at least a bit more functional. otherwise they are just decoration

[Faustov]

... and the missile will start to turn around itself like crazy ?!

It doesn't have to, depends on the solution chosen. For the sake of the game, I think it's enough. https://www.google.com/search?q=thrust+ ... g+in+space

[Olfrygt]

Pressure needs a medium (any air, fluid or solid matter), no medium no pressure no "explosion shockwave". Another fact to explain this in space its pretty cold. But a space suite has a cooling system! Because without a medium the only way the astronaut can get rid of his own body heat is infrared radiation. And this effect is to slow to cool the astronaut suite.

Void is the medium, and the matter that is exploding is decompressing and therefore it should be forming a shockwave, right?

Im sorry to burst your bubble. But in space there are no shockwaves. A supernova is only such dangerous because a star! is losing up top 70% of its mass. But a ship, or a bomb even the biggest nuclear bomb u can build will do nothing to other ships. The target ship is the only "medium" for the explosions force. Everything else is just some radiation and micro molecules. Only accelerated parts of a destroyed ship can damage other ships if they hit.

U can`t apply pressure to a vacuum and shockwaves are nothing else then pressure applied to matter. Water can transport pressure (Tsunamis) earth can transport pressure (earthqaukes) and so on. But in space? Nope, no shochwave, no splashdmg.

That's why a collision in space is noiseless. Because a soundwave is nothing other then a shockwave, only less intense. And yes i know about electromagnetic noise (Jupiter sounds rly greepy). But that's something diffrent.

[radcapricorn]

Im sorry to burst your bubble. But in space there are no shockwaves. A supernova is only such dangerous because a star! is losing up top 70% of its mass. But a ship, or a bomb even the biggest nuclear bomb u can build will do nothing to other ships. The target ship is the only "medium" for the explosions force. Everything else is just some radiation and micro molecules. Only accelerated parts of a destroyed ship can damage other ships if they hit.

This "some" radiation is very well enough. In atmosphere, the prime medium of a nuclear explosion is air. Absorbing the aforementioned "some" radiation, it heats up and expands rapidly, producing a gigantic shockwave. In space, indeed, there's no air. But radiation from the explosion does not disappear. In fact, it would travel unhindered uniformly in every direction. What do you think would happen to nearby matter, such as a space vehicle? Quite the same thing as with air. Depending on distance to the blast, it may get vaporized, or an internal shockwave may be produced, cooking and smashing everyone and everything inside. It can very well do many things to "other ships". Not to mention the effects that would be felt by electronics even far, far away from the blast.

A very small nuke, detonated ~400km above ground (which is, interestingly, close to the altitude of today's ISS), caused quite an effect on Earth's surface. As for "the biggest" nuclear bomb (even though this one probably can't really be built) - we have loads of them just shy of 150 million km away. And every flare is felt here on Earth, the photons, the radiation, the plasma, all of it. Thankfully, they're just shy of 150 million km away, and we have a magnetic field.

[Kintanar]

3. Gravity
3.1. Most stations are not rotating to create artificial gravity, yet player movement on stations is "earth-like". EDIT: I don't suppose races in X4 are able to harness the power of gravity, because otherwise it would be number 1 weapon choice.

In X:Rebirth, to build any ship or station you needed Podkletnov Devices. Is true that the Podkletnov anti-gravity shielding effect is probably a science hoax or could be true, but at least the effect has been not proven or disproved today.

[Faustov]

Im sorry to burst your bubble. But in space there are no shockwaves. A supernova is only such dangerous because a star! is losing up top 70% of its mass. But a ship, or a bomb even the biggest nuclear bomb u can build will do nothing to other ships. The target ship is the only "medium" for the explosions force. Everything else is just some radiation and micro molecules. Only accelerated parts of a destroyed ship can damage other ships if they hit.

This "some" radiation is very well enough. In atmosphere, the prime medium of a nuclear explosion is air. Absorbing the aforementioned "some" radiation, it heats up and expands rapidly, producing a gigantic shockwave. In space, indeed, there's no air. But radiation from the explosion does not disappear. In fact, it would travel unhindered uniformly in every direction. What do you think would happen to nearby matter, such as a space vehicle? Quite the same thing as with air. Depending on distance to the blast, it may get vaporized, or an internal shockwave may be produced, cooking and smashing everyone and everything inside. It can very well do many things to "other ships". Not to mention the effects that would be felt by electronics even far, far away from the blast.

A very small nuke, detonated ~400km above ground (which is, interestingly, close to the altitude of today's ISS), caused quite an effect on Earth's surface. As for "the biggest" nuclear bomb (even though this one probably can't really be built) - we have loads of them just shy of 150 million km away. And every flare is felt here on Earth, the photons, the radiation, the plasma, all of it. Thankfully, they're just shy of 150 million km away, and we have a magnetic field.

Thank you for explaining this so much better than I did

On a separate note: I am adding 1 more point: collisions with objects that have no shield should be very lethal even at relatively small (in sector-space sizes) speeds.

[Olfrygt]

Im sorry but u are still wrong. Nothing will happen, probably the crew of enemy ship gets cancer if the radiation has enough energy (to create ions). But i guess most of it will be infrared light and visual light. U should probably try more hard science fiction not star trek.

Radiation can't create shockwaves, some of it gets absorbed the rest will only travel through other ships and crews. Yes radiation can only do damage if it gets absorbed.

And don't forget if u twice the distance the radiation will be only 1/4. Dunno the english name of that law but its simple mathematics. Trust me i'm working with radiation every day.

On a separate note: I am adding 1 more point: collisions with objects that have no shield should be very lethal even at relatively small (in sector-space sizes) speeds.

That's correct, depending on v and mass. But to be honest, we need real collision detecting system anyway. Even in X3 it was more realistic. 18000km/s directly into an asteroid and what happens? my ship jumps back like a basketball .

[Tamina]

On a separate note: I am adding 1 more point: collisions with objects that have no shield should be very lethal even at relatively small (in sector-space sizes) speeds.

That's correct, depending on v and mass. But to be honest, we need real collision detecting system anyway. Even in X3 it was more realistic. 18000km/s directly into an asteroid and what happens? my ship jumps back like a basketball .

So realistically, an (assuming) indestructible ship should bounce back thousands of kilometers per seconds into the other direction then?
I for my part use the phase drive to warp through asteroids upon impact

However the last couple of posts show pretty much how ridiculous this discussion is. You have to draw a line at some point, even if not for the sake of "fun" but at the point where our current understanding of physics on newtonian or even quantum level start to differentiate from reality - which it does. I see no point in this discussion but I am not playing the spoilsport here.

[Faustov]

That's correct, depending on v and mass. But to be honest, we need real collision detecting system anyway. Even in X3 it was more realistic. 18000km/s directly into an asteroid and what happens? my ship jumps back like a basketball .

Hence I suggest to focus on collisions of items without a shield - since we don't know how it works. Maybe it generates some field behaving like anti-gravity? But then again, why would it not be pierced by energy weapons. Maybe the game would benefit from more kinds of shields? Currently they are differentiated by size only. Perhaps it should be: shield reactor (defines power) and shield type (defines behavior, e.g. better vs some weapons, worse vs others)?

So realistically, an (assuming) indestructible ship should bounce back thousands of kilometers per seconds into the other direction then?
(...)

No, it can be done better without sacrificing gameplay, as long as there are open minds behind it

[Geonis]

That's correct, depending on v and mass. But to be honest, we need real collision detecting system anyway. Even in X3 it was more realistic. 18000km/s directly into an asteroid and what happens? my ship jumps back like a basketball .

Hull damage on collision was removed in 1.20.

[Axeface]

You want collision damage back like in x3? Lol ok....

[radcapricorn]

You want collision damage back like in x3? Lol ok....

Why not? It was there until 1.20:

• Removed hull damage on collisions until the auto pilot has learned to fly around things!

Although, such future where this could be reverted seems rather... distant.

[Socratatus]

Considering this game has a vibrant and smart community, I'd like to propose a collection of ideas of better alignment of game physics with "our reality" physics. Hoping for an open ended thread.

1. Explosions
1.1. Xenon ships are supposed to be solid, therefore why do they explode exactly like any other ship, when destroyed? Lack of oxygen should result in minimal effect.
1.2. Destroying a vessel inside the "artificial atmosphere" of a docking platform, should actually result in a bigger explosion than in outer space, due to the presence of Oxygen and higher temperature
1.3. Splash damage. Considering a modern rocket right now has impact on Earth of about 0.5km, in space, with no friction the impact should be much wider. For example, in X4, firing the biggest torpedo against a mine field should trigger them all if they are within 1-2km.

2. Movement
2.1 Considering no friction, and ignoring the Keppler's law or impact of planets and moons, in short, the bigger the ship, the faster it should move in any direction. I understand however that can be counter-intuitive to players.
2.2. Missiles have their own propulsion, which is relative to ship propulsion and therefore should be added up.
2.3. Flying with boost through the "artificial atmosphere" should have some serious overheat results due to high speed and high air density.
2.4. Ship debris should not stop in space, since there's no friction.
2.5. There should be no maximum speed, only maximum acceleration
2.6. Collisions of objects without shields (or with shields too - depending how shield tech is explained/narrated) - should have a strong impact. E.g. a space suit bumping into a station at the speed of 3-4m/s should result in death.

3. Gravity
3.1. Most stations are not rotating to create artificial gravity, yet player movement on stations is "earth-like". EDIT: I don't suppose races in X4 are able to harness the power of gravity, because otherwise it would be number 1 weapon choice.
3.2. on stations, debris should fall to the ground

4 Time & Tech
4.1. Communication over radio (and limited to few KM but instant - judging by the static) instead of quantum.
4.2. Time flowing 1:1 when traveling through accelerators which seem to go to/beyond light speed?
4.3. Why is electronics still based on FPGA (therefore, CMOS)?


Any others?

Daaaammmn. You make some good points.

[Falcrack]

You want collision damage back like in x3? Lol ok....

Why not? It was there until 1.20:

• Removed hull damage on collisions until the auto pilot has learned to fly around things!

Although, such future where this could be reverted seems rather... distant.

I want collision damage back, but only enabled in specific instances when the player is in direct control of the ship (ie not autopilot, or not piloted by an NPC). For that aspect, at least, if we crash into something, it cannot be chalked up to bad AI pathfinding. For any other collisions (ie one AI controlled ship crashes into another AI controlled ship or station), collision damage should not be a thing.

[Socratatus]

The premise "it would not be fun" is something I disagree with.

Agree.

It would not be fun is always used to explain away things, that with a little effort would be MORE fun...

In truth the real answer is, "It would take too much effort."

For instance it would be nice to see things act with gravity in a Station dome... And I wouldn`t mind learning how to fly a ship with newtonian movement. I understand the basic principles of it: lots of turning and drifting and sliding to a solution while mainpulating the engines... But then the AI would need to learn it too.