chuck_starchaser wrote:
for some reason it doesn't "feel" you're going anywhere nearly as fast.
Even if you go relatively fast, like 20000 or 40000, it doesn't feel like it. Maybe we should designate a seperate discussion to the problem and see if we can make things more clearly when others kick in.
Not sure what you mean by "there are no engines".
Have you ever seen an engine in VS?
Like buying one, repairing one, replacing one with an upgraded one or as a cargo to trade?
You can buy Engine Upgrades, but if propulsion is only a by-product of energy production, and given that there are no engines, they might better be called Propulsion Upgrades.
What's lacking is maneuvering thrusters, in the models.
Yes, and I'd love it to be in control of the thrusters when flying. And they should be strong enough ...
BTW, where do the enourmous amounts of electric power go that would probably be generated by a reactor that has sufficient output of by-products to pull a ship-mass of a few thousand tons forward at 10g? How much fuel would it take to create so much by-products?
There's no conflict there, at least theoretically.
It is somehow evident to me that a theory, pretending --- in the extreme case --- that you could accelerate a single particle like an ion or neutron as much as to accelerate a mass of several thousand tons at 10g (eventually continually for some time to get the mass up to some speed) would not work out practically.
Matter and energy are interchangeable.
If you eat a loave of bread, it is gone irreplacebly, no matter how many other loaves you can bake with the energy you gained from the one you ate.
But if I somehow sucked the energy you gained from the loave out of your body and transformed it into a loave of bred: What does that theory say about getting that same loave back that you ate?
I won't think it to be the same loave unless the theory could actually prove that it is the same loave.
the speed of light; so you could multiply the mass of the propulsion material just by using more energy accelerating them.
Ok, what does it take to accelerate a particle close enough to the speed of light as to accelerate a mass of 2000 tons continously at 10g for 60 seconds?
I don't doubt all too much that it could work in theory, but my point is that it would evidently have to work practically. To me, it's perfectly acceptable to assume that there is fuel, reactors, engines, thrusters and energy to drive spaceships in a game at fun speeds without the exact type of fuel, the working principles of the reactors, engines and thrusters and the kind of energy being disclosed in detail. But if the game insists on realistic detail and discloses it and claims to enforce these settings to get to a realistic simulation, it should be a setup that could evidently work practically. Otherwise, I would always think that it cannot actually work that way, and that would bother me.
Convince me that it would work practically. Do some mathematics on it --- I'd do it myselfe, but my mathematical skills are insufficient for such things. I think it's possible to come up with some basic numbers that indicate things like the numbers of particles needed for propulsion and then to make some educated guesses on the amount of fuel needed, the size of the reactors and some technical requirements the thrusters would have to fullfill. Once we've got these things, we can decide if it still appears sufficiently realistic that the proposed method of propulsion could actually work. If we think it does, it would be possible way to go, but if it doesn't, we should think of something else.
Do some math on it, I don't think that propulsion would work out.
ditto
You don't think it would work?
If you want to stay with realism, you'll end up where are now, in RL --- no need for a game to simulate that ...
I disagree. RL is not that bad; just that we *choose* safety over excitement.
Wahh, that's a rather optimistical statement!
RL is not a question of choosing safety over excitement or the other way round but of struggling to fight your way through a steadyly decreasing number of options to choose from. Most of it is about functioning as to the expectations of others, for if you don't, you'll suddenly find your options significantly reduced. An ultimate option is putting an end to it, but many people don't have even that left.
And whenever you step on un-realism, you create a frustration that tends to sooner or later impact something else. Deviating from realism is like lying.
All of us live in their own reality, and everybody else deviates from ours. Since nobody can really tell what's real, we all get constantly frustrated. But that doesn't mean that we're constantly lying.
Such considerations have a tendency to end up in word games
When you lie to someone, later on you may have to lie about something else to keep your story consistent with the first lie, and the two lies later become 4 and so on.
That's not true. It would be impossible to lie then, or you're about constructing a tautology.
Best not to lie in the first place.
Yes, it can make things easier. But others become tremendously difficult, though that remains usually unnoticed because honest people tend to think that things are just as they are and that it would not be honest to pretend that they are not or that they could be different. And there are many things that could be easier for honest people it they were willing to lie about them. I'm struggling with these things, sometimes, but I try to avoid it and to remain honest.
Am I lying to myselfe when I try to avoid it? Is trying not to lie a lie in itselfe?
Lost playability can be restored in no time by some creative solution. Lost self-consistency can be very hard to restore.
That's very good reasoning
Well, if propulsion is a by-product of energy production, we should rather think of methods to get rid of the energy and/or of the heat involved.
No; theoretically you don't need much mass at all, since you can convert energy into mass by relativity.
You still need some amount of energy in an appropriate fashion to achieve propulsion. You need a considerable amount of such energy to (continously) accelerate some mass of 2000 tons at 10g.
No matter how much mass you convert into energy or the other way round, the above amount of energy doesn't change, and the suitable fashion of it doesn't change much --- unless we assume, for example, propulsion is achieved by force fields that cling to the structure of the universe to 'tow' the ship forward.
My knowledge of such things is insufficient, thus I cannot yet imagine how it could practically work without getting into technical problems with either too much energy or too much heat or both of it (letting aside other possible problems).
Technical questions as per how would one accelerate particles to 0.0000001% of the speed of light in an engine only a few feet across are another matter; but I'd be willing to sweep such technical questions under the rug, as long as the basic questions can be answered.
But that is a basic question. It's like loosing self-consistency to set up great background theories with so much seriousness and then not to check out if they can, with sufficient evidence, yield workable solutions with at least the same seriousness. It may be considered as a kind of lying to construct a truth that renders impossibilites --- like in simple logic, where an assuption is made and something is deduced from it, it may turn out that the deduction is false and thus, the assumption must also be false unless the logic is false. Besides, it's important to learn that the way of reality is indeed not to care about that, thus logic is somewhat irrelevant there. Reality is not self-consistent in the first place.
As for playability, it's important that propulsion works in a suitable manner, no matter what theoretical background is behind that. If we cannot come up with a sufficiently consistent theoretical background now, we can as well maintain self-consistency
and playability by not giving such a background at all, or better, some background vague enough to be acceptable by and sufficiently explaning things to players and still not restricting us in providing a better background later.
Players do not play a theoretical background, but a game.
And even if you get too much energy left over after that, well, once the capacitors are charged you reduce fuel consumption, or even turn the reactor off completely.
What if I still need propulsion?
And how much fuel would we need to have propulsion? I think that we can do some mathematics on it to get realistic numbers.
4 metric tons of helium 3 would supply the world's total energy needs for one year, IIRC; so, no issue, IMO.
How many by-product particles are needed to propulse the ships in VS? How much fuel does it take to produce these particles?
BTW, if only 4 tons of helium 3 can give so much energy, how hard are they to come by? Is there still abundancy problems then?
