Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

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Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by IansterGuy »

This is a summery of gravity discussions that where lost in web-server wipe of 2012, from around March to Aug 12th. Though this is a summery of past discussions involving many community members, for simplicity sake I will just talk as if I came up with many of the ideas and refinements of ideas, which in reality was proposed by someone else.

There previously had been discussions in the forum about adding gravity to VegaStrike. Currently there is a small movement and work being done on a branch of VegaStrike called Vega-Ogre. This Branch seems to aim to add a different graphics layer to the game, so to benefit from the collective development of the OGER project. “Log0” who is openly working on the project, has stated that it is his intention to implement gravity into the OGER Branch of the game. To me this is quite exciting because it means the graphics part of the engine will benefit from a larger collective of programers, even ones not part of the VegaStrike Project. To me externalizing development work in multiple areas sounds like a good idea, maintenance wise.

VegaStrike by name is a space simulator, but unlike most space simulators it implements Semi-Newtonian Physics along with a small handful of other Space games. I say Semi-Newtonian because none of the fast action simulation games actually implement gravity, either because there are no planets, or planet gravity is simply ignored like currently in VegaStrike. The reason for this is many fold. Pure space simulation games like Orbiter do implement gravity, and atmosphere, but it is slow pace and not an action game.

There is an important fun factor that must be maintained in a game that intends to attract action game fans, and not just hardcore simulator fans. Traditionally there has been a conflict of interest between fast pace action and creating physical realism, because realism normally means slowing down the game to a time frame that matches reality; and we all know that reality is kinda too slow sometimes.

Fortunately there is a reprieve from this in a game that takes place in the future, technology can be almost anything that you desire it to be without sacrificing any set in stone realism. A great example is the SPEC Drive or a Warp Drive, which supposedly bends space-time in order bypass the light barrier. The effect is speeding up in game travel insanely, and good thing to because I doubt that many would play for days just to travel to planets in the solar system at accelerations that would not kill the occupants.

Other examples of tech that has been used to speed up action in various video games and movies are inertial dampeners, Warp gates, Stargates, Gateways (StarShip beaming teleporter), space elevators, personal Teleporters, Slipstream, Hyperspace, Starburst, Wormholes. Some of the listed are duplicates under a different name and some have scant sudo-scientific explanations like Stargates, Starburst and wormholes; but others could be plausible under current scientific theories such as string theory, or other grand unified theories of everything. If one submits to 8 higher dimensions, suddenly there is much more room for hyperspace, slipstream, teleporter beams, warp field generators, inertial dampeners, and even artificial gravity.

I propose that Vegastrike can be both a fast pace action game and a hard core simulator. The condition being the game accept as cannon Grand Unified Theories of Everything that suggest higher unrecognizable dimensions not directly accessible, except temporarily through energized technology.

You may ask why this is necessary, and I will answer this by describing the problems that arise with implementing gravity as they have been discussed previously. Gravity is simple, every bit of mass simply pulls on every other bit of mass depending on the distance away. Though there are issues with programing Logo has said it is completely doable. The real issues that arises is that every little dam thing is constantly moving and it makes for a navigation nightmare. There are also a maximum thrust issues because the ship occupants can only handle so much acceleration and the ship hull and thrusters could only provide so much force given realistic materials.

First I'll tackle navigation. When everything is moving every way at the same time it takes a lot of math to calculate a perfect intercept vector, let alone not crashing into the target. Planets are orbiting the sun moons are orbiting planets, satellites are orbiting moons, and your in a ship trying to track that satellite starting from the orbit of another satellite orbiting a moon. How would all those orbits stay perfectly reliable? How would one calculate that for autopilot? How would one display the orbit information to the player on screen, without creating endless lines all over the screen, or way to far away to see? What would the controls need to be? It has been said that we don't have The AI expertise on hand to program an autopiolot that can navigate and make decisions in combat while navigating gravity, how will the humans even manage to handle gravity may be the first question? I will too simply answer each of these.

Some orbits will have to be made on a permanent path like the planets and probably the stations or not move at all, and ships maybe the only objects that are naturally orbiting. Even they may ignore everything but the most significant objects. Autopilot would be calculated or rather estimated dynamically with the AI's priority given to avoiding crashes. Orbit information would be displayed on navigation viewer or overlay, where size of distant objects can be exaggerated so orbits can be seen and orbit paths would be viewable one object at a time. A new set of controls would be necessary to deal with navigation issues like reference points, orbits, itineraries, and object tracking. I have previously posted and got assistance on a proposal for these new controls for gravity and I will sometime post a revised version. Obviously navigation solutions would require much more detailed answers than this.

Thrust constraints pose another slew of issues that goes deeper than it seems. Obviously SPEC (warp) is needed when travelling in between planets, but to avoid crashing SPEC powers down when approaching gravity wells created by planets and stations. Supposedly the strong gravity of planets interferes with the warp envelope, and oddly enough the stations effect SPEC too, but not other ships. I suspect this fail safe would be some SPEC drive jamming device, and if it was, spec jamming devices could fix the problem with ships too easily escaping into spec. This is a core game play issue, and changing it will alter the game combat dramatically. Combat dynamics is it's own subject so I will only focus on how gravity ties in to this.

Gravity from massive objects leaves a ship with only thrusters to manoeuvre the way things are in game right now. This is good for playability until one tries to make all the variables realistic. If planets are made the correct size, if distances are real, if gravity is correct, and if ships and occupants can only handle so much acceleration before expiring, then previous debates on the issue dictate that something must be adjusted. The maximum amount of thrust was debated between setting it around 10G which is around the maximum a human can withstand constantly; or something lower that modern materials could withstand like the 4G of NASA ships; or setting it much higher under the assumption that some new materials and technology like inertial dampening would protect the occupants from the forces of gravity and inertia >10G. The problem with a too low acceleration rating of thrusters is that when large ships travel too nearby a planet without a proper orbit, the acceleration of gravity will too quickly exceed the acceleration of the thrusters which would make the ship unable to hover above a planet within any margin of control or safety out of proper orbit. It would also mean that some larger ships could never land on some planets. To me this sounds like an excellent game play opportunity. Imagine being chased by a capital ship which cannot safely manoeuvre in lower orbit. Yet what should maximum thrust be set at exactly? Personally, I propose that it should be set high enough that capital ships can land on small habitable worlds; but low enough that small ships pursued by larger ships can play a game of chicken near gas giants. The hope of the small ships would be that the larger ships can't manoeuvre well enough to chase without risk of getting pulled into the planet and crushed.

More thrust issues has to do with how long it takes to escape the gravity inhibiting the SPEC drive. Currently landing is relatively quick because the ship can dock with the planet once it is within 1000km. Take offs drop the player off partially out of the spec inhibiting gravity field. I think skipping takeoff and landing sequences is great to save time, I also think that sometimes landing should have to be done manually the long way, like when propulsion is significantly damaged, or when under attack. This way planet gravity will need to be respected, even on dockable planets. There is no atmosphere in the game currently, and there is no soil to land on, but there would be a possibility to create them later if the new OGRE branch is made to support them.

Thrust would need to be enough so that landing and takeoff is as fast as can be future realistic. If thrusters cannot be realistically adjusted, then I propose that Mono-magnetic lifts be made cannon for in atmosphere flight. Mono-magnetic lifts would be like anti-gravity, but with a plausible explanation of how they work, using monopole magnets repulsing insulating particles of the atmosphere. Mono-magnetic lifts would reduce fuel consumption and travel time in the atmosphear. It would increase manoeuvrability and even allow under thrusted capital ships to land on some smaller planets. In general I support using futuristic technology like this to ramp up the fun factor while keeping true to unbending, science and physics.

From my point of view this pretty much sums up my version of gravity discussions without the detailed debate. I intend to make other summaries for other subjects like flight governors (gravity compensation, speed matching, collision avoidance), Propulsion (emergency stops, point and fly), Technology (shields, deflectors, tractor beams, nanotechnology), and proposed navigation controls for gravity.

Please feel free to discuss any mistakes I have made or important things about gravity discussions I missed.
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by charlieg »

:thumbsup: :)
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by Hicks »

Can any of the coders implement gravity? i suppose that is the main question at the moment
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by klauss »

There was a patch with gravity implemented. It was under review, and somehow it lost its momentum (the demise of the review board may have had something to do with it).

Thing is, we can't just enable gravity, we have to find a solution for all the gameplay problems that come with it.
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by pheonixstorm »

The other problem was the patch was incomplete though if I recall
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by Hicks »

Well lets get started on a list of the gameplay problems?
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by klauss »

Impracticable delta-v on orbit shifts if accel < 2g, negated gameplay effects (ie: work for nothing) if accel > 2g.
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by log0 »

To IansterGuy and co. What you really want is not vegastrike but pioneer spacesim. It is still alpha, but it has all you are asking for. Newtonian physics with gravity and orbits, manual and setspeed flight modes. More important it was written with this functionality in mind, as part of the gameplay.
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by pheonixstorm »

And is a much younger product than VS. VS is nearly 12 years old I think or close to it.
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by IansterGuy »

klauss wrote:Impracticable delta-v on orbit shifts if accel < 2g, negated gameplay effects (ie: work for nothing) if accel > 2g.
I don't think lack of thrust to quickly change orbits paths on the same planet is really so much impracticable, as much as a new dangerous gameplay strategy that should be accounted for when flying under thrusted ships. Neither is >2 g too much thrust to keep those same gameplay elements introduced by gravity. If the planet is a gas giant, then that strategy will always exist. If speaking of other unrelated things coming out of balance when gravity is introduced, it would require some testing to find out how it feels. A great example is ship acceleration which was being discussed. I would love to test the game with both gravity patch and the acceleration patch but the acceleration patch seems to be not found currently. Here is a the gravity patch someone presented last year. I have been trying to appy the patch to a copy of my SVN using RabbitVCS on Ubuntu and TortoiseSVN on Windows_7. It is not working for me and I am not sure exactly what file to run it against, maybe it needs revision 13248, but I guess the next thing to do would be to try to make the changes that file states manually and see what happens.
log0 wrote:To IansterGuy and co. What you really want is not vegastrike but pioneer spacesim. It is still alpha, but it has all you are asking for. Newtonian physics with gravity and orbits, manual and setspeed flight modes. More important it was written with this functionality in mind, as part of the gameplay.
Ha ha, well there is an interesting prospect. I think I recognize this trick from my old sales training, “Send troublesome customers to the competition” said more nicely LOL. What the heck are those guys doing over there anyways when they could have been over here? :-) I guess some people like to build from the ground up. One thing I worry about though is projects forking themselves into obscurity. One would think the more people working on a common vision the more gets done. The politics just need to be managed so that many people with there individual motivations can get what they want out of the project.

Maybe more forks means more venues for people to be attracted to a project, but projects with a reputation like TORCS, overshadow their many improved forks like Speed Dreams, making them hard to find because some people think torque is as good as it gets for open source games. I don't believe Pioneer is a fork, but it may be doubling up effort on the game engine side. I don't know enough about the state of the VegaStrike engine or others, to know when a different engine is necessary warranted from a technical standpoint. My thinking gameplay wise was there is hardly any game play constraints that cannot be solved, or that a solution hasn't already been presented. Though I have not communicated myself well thus far, even the basic controls as they are now are good and can be expanded upon keeping keys basicly the same or similar.

My thought was that the unmodified version of VegaStrike can be or most of everything that various come and go and dabble again developers have wanted it to be with very few actually noticeable compromises. It would then be easier to make modifications to that game that simply disabled or adjust the undesirable features because removing features would be easier than adding them. Thought since the game would be made in symmetry and harmony with itself anyways, there should be no need except for remakes and alternate universes that require a different balance.
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by pheonixstorm »

There are actually several newer space sims out that include things that VS has been lacking for years though some are no longer developed, no longer open source, or as with pioneer still considered alpha.

Pioneer actually gets updated regularly. Haven't played it yet, but I have told klauss we could look into the code used by pioneer and simerge.

Simerge is an interesting project. It has planetary flight (i think) and walkable interiors. Its problem.. hasn't been updated since 2011 I think.. maybe 2010.
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by Deus Siddis »

pheonixstorm wrote:Pioneer actually gets updated regularly. Haven't played it yet, but I have told klauss we could look into the code used by pioneer and simerge.
You might be able to pick something off the bones of simerge but it died pretty early on.

Pioneer is the exact opposite. In a year or two they probably will have surpassed VS in every department. Their main weaknesses are that they plan to not support player fleets, player colonies or anything on foot, be it inside of craft and bases or over their amazing procedural terrain. (In other words they are a clone of Elite 2: Frontier, albeit a massively improved clone.)
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by Hicks »

I was looking at the roadmap to 0.6.0 http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... dmap:0.6.0 and there is a lot of work in there to get planetary flight in there, and i assumed you would some sort of gravity to get that to work to feel real. I believe the game would become very popular if you are able to implement gravity etc with planetary flight and walkable craft. It would make it much more then just a space sim.
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by pheonixstorm »

Deus Siddis wrote:You might be able to pick something off the bones of simerge but it died pretty early on.
Not entirely dead, but deffinately on life support. Last message on the subject had development on hold but not abandoned. May well be dead but who knows.
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by log0 »

IansterGuy wrote:]Ha ha, well there is an interesting prospect. I think I recognize this trick from my old sales training, “Send troublesome customers to the competition” said more nicely LOL. What the heck are those guys doing over there anyways when they could have been over here? ...
Well, I don't see pioneer as an opponent to vegastrike. It is an alternative space sim with its own specific features and goals. Or to use an analogy, you won't go to a truck dealer if you want to buy a sports car.

The competition I see is about possible contributers. But this is a general issue for open source games. The most important factor here is imho to show activity and progress to be an attractive project. And this can be really hard given the fact, that contributers are working on the project in their spare time. Being new and having some bling helps of course.

What I see is, that vegastrike is pretty much complete, and that it is really hard to change basic functionality, due to its complexity, age and lack of manpower. So maybe it would be better to focus on the features it has and make them really great, like multiplayer for example.
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by Hicks »

i suppose he question is what is the goal for vegastike in tems of features and gameplay?
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by klauss »

log0 wrote:What I see is, that vegastrike is pretty much complete, and that it is really hard to change basic functionality, due to its complexity, age and lack of manpower. So maybe it would be better to focus on the features it has and make them really great, like multiplayer for example.
I agree, although I'd change the last part to... "like a single player campaign".
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by log0 »

klauss wrote:like a single player campaign
Sound like a goal. What about a short term roadmap? The one in the wiki will be totally outdated, given that most devs are gone...
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by IansterGuy »

Hicks wrote:I was looking at the roadmap to 0.6.0 http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... dmap:0.6.0 and there is a lot of work in there to get planetary flight in there, and i assumed you would some sort of gravity to get that to work to feel real. I believe the game would become very popular if you are able to implement gravity etc with planetary flight and walkable craft. It would make it much more then just a space sim.
I took another look at the road map for version 0.6.0 and it looks like a good plan to me. Though I talk about gravity a lot I really don't think it is high priority mostly because there are other things that would be needed anyways to make it useful like that planetary flight, entering orbits, smarter autopilot, and various tweaks like acceleration rates. Pioneer actually reminds me of what ChuckStarcaster wanted at one time, no need for faster than light travel due to readily available time skipping, but using time skipping for interplanetary travel would kill a plausible storyline, thank goodness for SPEC the speed multiplying device. I think if gravity was to be implemented it is better to define it's function now rather than as an afterthought once everything had been set. I see VegaStrike as first and foremost a space shooter, that dabbles very closely to space flight simulator and that is the way I like it. Action should always be fast pace with no need for time skipping.
klauss wrote:
log0 wrote:What I see is, that VegaStrike is pretty much complete, and that it is really hard to change basic functionality, due to its complexity, age and lack of manpower. So maybe it would be better to focus on the features it has and make them really great, like multiplayer for example.
I agree, although I'd change the last part to... "like a single player campaign".
I would say that prioritizing existing features is a good idea, though I would not want to limit development to a specific finish line, but rather checkpoints on the road-map. Maybe disciples should be reading and improving the VegaStrike Bible and be asking cannon questions about story to JackS. As for cannon physics, I think that could do with some tweaking as science progresses. As I have said elsewhere the game play is more timeless than than the graphics. Game play would include story and the space flight which makes the game fun. Graphics makes the game attractive. I personally think that the Nano-Plague back story is great and workable because it could explain why the universe is not highly AI mechanized, but rather so dismal looking due to species having to think and solve every problem themselves, without advanced AI assistance for fear of a Nano-Plague cleansing attack.
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by pheonixstorm »

I wish the crash had not occured.. I had posted a bit of the Nano-Plague back story.. but anyway, Instead of features we really need to bugfix and refactor so that any advanced features such as walkable interior, 3d bases, planetary flight, gravity... will be much easier to add in w/o breaking things.
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by Deus Siddis »

pheonixstorm wrote: Not entirely dead, but definately on life support. Last message on the subject had development on hold but not abandoned. May well be dead but who knows.
Well way back when I was contributing to simerge as a content creator, but before I got very far with my first model Image, the project founder announced he was shifting his efforts to a new commercial project based on the same technology. So while the GPL code remains behind, further open development ceased at that point as no one took over for him.
log0 wrote: Well, I don't see pioneer as an opponent to vegastrike.
It isn't an opponent of vega strike the project or its contributors but potentially of it's engine. If eventually pioneer's engine has 90% of the features the VS mods need and it is easier to add missing but desirable feature on to it than the VS engine, then making an engine switch becomes a sane goal for those mods.
It is an alternative space sim with its own specific features and goals. Or to use an analogy, you won't go to a truck dealer if you want to buy a sports car.
The question then is what advantages does/will this sports car have over that truck. Perhaps better multiplayer, fleet mechanics and campaign scripting support?
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by log0 »

Yeah, vs engine is ugly to work with from code and content contributors pov. I am with @phoenixstorm here about refactoring and cleanup.
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by maze »

I understand the point that given the thrust values, and the fact that flight control is computerized, in the end of it the only significant effect of gravity when you're flying around would be to make you waste a bit of fuel when you're moving at constant or zero speed.

But, two remarks:
1) if we actually had to fly all the way to the planet's ground instead of docking hundreds of kilometers from the ground, and compensate for the acceleration of gravity during the way, that little bit of fuel would be quite a lot actually.

2) Fuel consumption is not the end of all to this story: one thing I would expect to be able to do and to witness other ships do if VS was a "finished" game would be to put myself/themselves into orbit. Capships in particular have rather NOT go down to the ground.
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by klauss »

maze wrote:2) Fuel consumption is not the end of all to this story: one thing I would expect to be able to do and to witness other ships do if VS was a "finished" game would be to put myself/themselves into orbit. Capships in particular have rather NOT go down to the ground.
Well... that's the whole point I'm trying to make!

How do we reconcile orbits and orbital maneuvering with linear navigation?
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Re: Summery of gravity discussions that where lost

Post by maze »

I thought about it a little. It is indeed a little complex but there is a solution.
In the below I define Strongest local attractor as:
Strongest local attractor = target whose gravitational pull is the strongest of all existing targets in the ship's current position.

What you have to do is measure speed not as the speed in the Galilean referential attached to the local sun, but as speed relative to an hypothetical circular orbiter around the strongest local attractor (including when that attractor is the local sun, see below). In effect, there's an infinity of possible circular orbits (as many as there are directions in a 2d space). The orbit relative to which speed is to be be calculated is the one whose direction is defined by the current velocity vector of your ship in the Galilean referential attached to the strongest local attractor, ignoring the radial component of your ship's speed in that referential.

Now, your ship doesn't need to spend any significant amount of fuel to maintain zero speed, if and only if the pulls of secondary local attractors are negligible in front of the pull of the strongest local attractor. That would be the case most of the time... except in double star systems! Double star systems are one problem I still need to think about.

Another slight question mark is the stability of the retroaction when there's multiple possible circular orbits. In the end I tend to think that is a non-issue unless the nose of your ship is pointed radially relative to the strongest local attractor.

When following an elliptical orbit, you'd have negative speed near the high point of your orbit, and positive speed near the low point of your orbit.

But if realism is what you want, you'd better not stop half-way through!
Your main problem is not related to planetary orbits but to stellar orbits. Planets have huge speeds relative to one another. Relative speed of Mars and Eatth can be anywhere from 6000 m/s approx. to 54000 m/s approx.
If those were implemented, given how SPEC technology works, nearly the whole trip time would be accelerating from zero speed in the referential of the departure planet to zero speed in the referential of the arrival planet. Going from the Red to the Blue Planet in a ship with 5G accel, you'd need maybe 10 seconds to cover the distance at full SPEC multiplier, and... anywhere from 2 minutes to 18 minutes of acceleration to catch up with the earth's speed relative to Mars!
Now, keep in mind that in the very end all this is the direct consequence of gravity effects. Star system are kept together by gravity. It would feel weird to implement gravity in the form of attraction of skips by planets, but forget about planetary speed and the local sun's attraction.

But ok now maybe the game could have all this in the framework I describe above. Here's what it could be:

1) Don't reduce accelerations of ships. SPEC as it now stands is to be ditched. Instead, SPEC or whatever it's called is now a (more or less, but not more than before) goofy SF technology which reduces the Gs acting on the pilots.

2) Speed to be calculated as I describe above as the speed relative to the stable (circular) orbit around the strongest local attractor defined by the direction of the current non-radial velocity vector of the ship in the Galilean referential attached to the strongest local attractor. This mode is called orbital speed, and is the default mode for calculating speed. Define a key binding to toggle between orbital speed, speed relative to target, stellar speed (Galilean referential attached to the local sun) or if needed interstellar speed (Galilean referential attached to the black hole at the galactic center). Oh, I nearly forgot speed in the non-Galilean referential moving and rotating with strongest local attractor for planetary take-off and landing, atmospheric flight and amphibian submarine ships. Amphibian submarine ships are cool btw, someone should be making a mod.

3) Ditch SPEC as it now stands and replace it by cryogeny. When the pilot is in cryogenic sleep, the computer puts him in some sort of dream state where he still receives information from and can still give orders to the ship (a bit like in Ubik if you will). Since thought processes are incredibly slow at those low temperature, from the point of view of the pilot (and player) it feels exactly as if time would accelerate during cryogenic transe.

4) Ship computer wakes up the pilot based on preset conditions regarding radar objects, or when destination is reached and orbital speed reduced to a low value.

5) Having a cap on travel speed now makes sense, provided the value can be altered by the player. Not only does it make sense, but it also matters! Max travel speed is really the speed you travel at in interplanetary trips! What limits your travel speed is the fact that you don't want to spend too much fuel accelerating from and decelerating to zero orbital speed.

6) is optional. Maybe we don't want to cap travel speed after all, or maybe there's a special kind of extreme efficiency/low acceleration thrusters that you can upgrade your ship with like, say, matter/antimatter thrusters or mini black hole propulsion. Use these to "slowly" accelerate until close to the speed of light. Relativistic effects kick in, including space compression/time dilation so that the time YOU spend in the trip is not that huge after all.

7) is also optional. Simply put, we don't want 6) to utterly destroy all story lines, so we reintroduce SPEC multipliers, but only for interstellar travel. In practice, you don't get to fire the SPEC drive before your speed is large in front of the galactic speed of stars, so you don't get the weirdness that I describe above for the Mars-Earth trip.
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