Why do ships have max speed?

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SpaghettiCat
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Why do ships have max speed?

Post by SpaghettiCat » Wed, 23. Mar 22, 13:51

This always confused me: the ships are in space, they should be able to accelerate to whatever speed since in space there's no air resistance. Why do ships' speed max out?

Fulgrymm
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Re: Why do ships have max speed?

Post by Fulgrymm » Wed, 23. Mar 22, 13:58

For game balance reasons, I assume.

Alan Phipps
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Re: Why do ships have max speed?

Post by Alan Phipps » Wed, 23. Mar 22, 14:16

... and so that you can stop in time to do anything useful. :D
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SpaghettiCat
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Re: Why do ships have max speed?

Post by SpaghettiCat » Wed, 23. Mar 22, 18:20

But it's such an obvious wrong thing about space and there's no explanation for it offered by the game. I thought this was a space sim

Alan Phipps
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Re: Why do ships have max speed?

Post by Alan Phipps » Wed, 23. Mar 22, 18:43

Well first and foremost it's a space game, which rather implies that you should be able to enjoy playing it. :wink:
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X2-Illuminatus
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Re: Why do ships have max speed?

Post by X2-Illuminatus » Wed, 23. Mar 22, 18:59

As Alan mentioned it's first and foremost a game, not a realistic representation of the universe or its physics. ;) Simulation in X games usually refers to the fact that the whole universe is simulated beyond what the player has in their field of vision. So even if you're not there, ships fly around and interact with other ships or stations. With each X game the level of complexity increases and thus the ways in which the player as well as NPCs can interact with each other and the universe increase, as well.

If you're looking for a realistic space game, Kerbal Space Programm might be something for you. Or more futuristic: Evochron Legacy is said to have a somewhat Newtonian flight model. (Haven't tried it out myself, yet.)
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Fulgrymm
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Re: Why do ships have max speed?

Post by Fulgrymm » Thu, 24. Mar 22, 04:22

Evochron: Legacy does indeed have Newtonian flight physics. Just be careful when approaching planets, if you come in too fast you'll burn up in the atmosphere.

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nponoBegHuk
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Re: Why do ships have max speed?

Post by nponoBegHuk » Wed, 6. Apr 22, 20:52

Let's talk some real world physics:

Yes, the ship can accelerate pretty much infinitely (we don't talk near speed of light speeds here for sake of simplicity), as long as there is fuel, but stopping the ship will take just as much time, and it would need you to turn your ship around 180 degrees and use your main thrusters pointed forwards working at the same power as before to do that.

Also as a fun fact, since a mass of a space ship is usually proportional to its volume, which is usually a cubic function, and the thrust is proportional to the area of the nozzle which is a cuadratic function, that explains why bigger ship means slower acceleration, even when it has much bigger engines. Let's take for example an imaginary ship which is shaped like a cube 1x1x1m, weights 1 ton and has an acceleration of 1m/s, being the reactive engine the size of one side of a cube (1x1m). If we develop another similar ship ship with twice each dimension it's weight will be now around 8 ton (2x2x2) but an area of the engine nozzle will increase only to 4 square meters, which will result in overall acceleration being half of that of the smaller ship (power increases by a factor of 4, while mass increases by a factor of 8, acceleration = power/mass= 4/8=0,5).
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Lotharian
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Re: Why do ships have max speed?

Post by Lotharian » Sat, 14. May 22, 14:40

If you want to try a space game without max speed, try "Aliants" from the late 80s. That mess should illustrate why space games have max speeds rather than max accelerations.

Das Attorney
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Re: Why do ships have max speed?

Post by Das Attorney » Tue, 31. May 22, 16:20

This game (and indeed any game) is limited by the amount of simulations per second it can perform. If a ship is travelling fast enough (as OP proposes), then collision detection and all sorts of physics goes down the toilet because the game cannot simulate the environment fast enough for the speed the player wants to go at.

kar dragon
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Re: Why do ships have max speed?

Post by kar dragon » Tue, 31. May 22, 17:46

Also, if I recall my physics correctly, the amount of energy needed to keep accelerating grows exponentially, so it doesn't matter if a ship has infinite fuel if it can't burn it at an infinite rate. At some point, your thrust peaks, and you can't increase the speed at which the ship can move.

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Re: Why do ships have max speed?

Post by AleksMain » Sat, 4. Jun 22, 19:07

SpaghettiCat wrote:
Wed, 23. Mar 22, 13:51
This always confused me: the ships are in space, they should be able to accelerate to whatever speed since in space there's no air resistance. Why do ships' speed max out?
Fun fact:
For centuries, physicists thought there was no limit to how fast an object could travel. But Einstein showed that the universe does, in fact, have a speed limit: the speed of light in a vacuum (that is, empty space). Nothing can travel faster than 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second).
What is more realistic, than the ship moving with speed less than speed of light ?

You can use Jumpgates for instantaneous travel between locations though.

All X ships are based on:
Helge_Kautz_in_Farnham_s_Legend wrote:A craft of a type normally used for orbital transport found in deep space, travelling at near light speed.
Also you can equip ship with jump-drive:
Helge_Kautz_in_Farnham_s_Legend wrote:"She carries the first prototype Quantum Singularity Tunnel Drive, to avoid twisting our tongues we like to call it a jump-drive. So far, the Getsu Fune has successfully absolved more than a dozen unmanned jumps of up to two light hours. Gentlemen, I'd like to spare you the ugly details. I'm not a physicist myself, and you know more or less the same as I do about its mode of operation. To cut a long story short, it creates a singularity that's stable for a few nano-seconds, long enough to pull the ship through hyperspace to its destination instantaneously. And it's perfectly safe for humans. Or so our instruments assert."

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