Engines, speed and movement

[notAnAlt]

Oh man! I so wanna help on the weaps I love weaps

[Prototype]

I'll cover weapons in the infantry section, but if you want an idea of what sort of weapons we are looking for, look at the Flan pack, that's basically a testing ground at the moment, of course we need someone to actually make those guns work independent of Flans mod.

[Iv121]

So if anyone doesn't agree with the engine stuff last chance before I move it into a separate thread and mark it as solved.

[҉]

So if anyone doesn't agree with the engine stuff last chance before I move it into a separate thread and mark it as solved.

...

What in hell would give you the impression that I agreed? You can't just declare that this is solved.

[ACH0225]

Well I was thinking of having mass and engine power determine too speed, but that's about it.

Higher mass should make slower acceleration, but better engines should be higher speed. You could have the hugest engines in the game, but you would be slower than a fighter until it reached its' max speed, when you would creep up on it. That fits the whole "slow huge spaceships, small fast spaceships" thing.

[Professor Fenway]

There is a fixed, top speed for every ship. Every ship has the same value for the top speed, say 10% speed of light. This is a value that will be hard to reach. So in that case, there is a top speed.

However, whether a ship is FASTER is determined by acceleration. Acceleration determines how much speed is added per second. Therefore, a ship with higher acceleration will reach a higher speed faster than a ship with lower acceleration.

In your example Iv, yes, it is true that ship A that started with 20 m/s velocity is faster at the time. However, if we keep tacking on speed to ship B because it accelerates faster, eventually ship B's speed will overtake Ship A's speed, and then B will be faster.

Argue all you want, but it's true. If you don't want to understand and learn real physics, fine. Not my problem. It's your future, not mine.

I don't agree with your proposal in any form. I say mass and type of engine affect acceleration, and therefore, how long it takes to reach the top speed for every ship. Speed is dynamic.

[fr0stbyte124]

I should have been following this thread closer, sorry.
First off, I don't want to discuss relativity too much in this thread or why the light speed limit exists, but the gist is that the speed of a photon is constant in any direction regardless of your frame of reference. If you've accelerated to 0.9C relative to an observer on a planet, photons shooting out the front and the back of your space ship will appear to be moving away from you at the same speed. Your perception of the universe is distorted to accommodate this, and it is a fundamental property of the universe that it happens. If you look at it like that, it's no wonder that you can't go faster than something which appears to be moving consistently faster than you. Also there is no concept of a universal velocity. Not only do we have no way to tell how fast our galaxy is moving through the universe, but mathematically, the question doesn't even make sense.

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Now regarding acceleration. The technical limitation of all of this is that planets be far enough apart that only one ever need to be loaded into video memory at a time. It's trouble enough having moons and space stations to deal with, but planets can be on entirely different servers, and two servers won't be able to marshal the video buffer simultaneously. My thinking is that the ideal distance would make neighboring planets ~2x the size of vanilla stars in the sky. I'd have to look through my notes to make sure, but off the envelope math would put that distance at something like 1200km. Considering that we want ships to have a practical navigation speed for moving around planets which are currently pegged at 5km across and 150 km^2 in area, 240 planet lengths just to the nearest planet is simply too cumbersome to deal with.

That's one of the reasons I've been pushing for the warp bubble concept, where your velocity depends on your proximity to any other physical objects and the size and shape of your own bubble. As you approach planets, space objects, and other ships not in your bubble, you will continue to decelerate all the way down to normal speeds, but you can move quite rapidly through empty expanses. This would be an entirely different system with different properties from your standard engines, though the two might become intertwined somehow. It doesn't answer the question of how to deal with engine acceleration and ship mass, but it does limit to velocity range at which the physical engines would need to deal with to more practical numbers.

As for Newtonian physics, Minecraft doesn't natively support it. Any acceleration or momentum you see is a hack which avoids using mass, and the constants are tweaked to where it looks convincing. Players and mobs, for instance, fall significantly faster than sand blocks, which you can easily test for yourself. Minecarts displace other objects at a lower rate than they are displaced by collisions, which is what allows then to be pushed by the player and other minecarts. If we start trying to emulate true Newtonian physics, I think you will find that Minecraft behaves nothing like it should. My vote is for not trying to go hardcore physics engine on this and instead focus on tweaking the handling to whatever feels right.

Btw, to end the argument about computational feasibility of adding additional mass to a ship, it would be rather cheap and straightforward. Deriving a symbolic solution for the moments of rotation and acceleration with calculus would be painful, but there is no need to do anything symbolically here. Instead, it would just be a bunch of weighted sums, which is a physics app's bread and butter and is very cheap if you are careful about it.

[Chairman_Tiel]

Btw, to end the argument about computational feasibility of adding additional mass to a ship..

You mean the one that ended six pages ago?

[Iv121]

Yea ...

I also support the idea of bubble just in a form of interplanetary jumps between gravity wells like in SoSE, as it adds more tactical choices.

Well to summarize your position in short Frost : What would be written on an engine - top speed or acceleration ? That would pretty much determine which option you support. I believe that acceleration, if let's say calculated as you want, will be purely aesthetic.

Also LJS you should learn to go for compromises, like I did. You can't blame me in blindly arguing now though .

[҉]

Also LJS you should learn to go for compromises, like I did. You can't blame me in blindly arguing now though .

Your 'compromise' boiled down to me agreeing that you were right. Forgive me if I don't.

[Iv121]

You didn't even bother reading didn't you ? I am not arguing for the sake of it and I'm trying to get results, agreeing to co-operate and improve upon the existing variations. Please do bother reading and hopefully agreeing. I suggest you going for the compromise as you might not get another deal. Somehow you remind me the local "peace" initiative , maybe I should also go for a compromise for you to just begin to talk about compromises ? Srsly let's stop this nonsense and move on.

If however you do not agree to co-operate it seems Frost is gonna make a verdict soon anyway...

[҉]

I suggest you going for the compromise as you might not get another deal.

Go cry more.

[fr0stbyte124]

Btw, to end the argument about computational feasibility of adding additional mass to a ship..

You mean the one that ended six pages ago?

Yes, that one. You are welcome.

Well to summarize your position in short Frost : What would be written on an engine - top speed or acceleration ? That would pretty much determine which option you support. I believe that acceleration, if let's say calculated as you want, will be purely aesthetic.

In other space games, they do give you a top speed, because that is way players are used to flying. If you don't cap the speed, you will end up with players running their engines at full power and then slamming into things because they didn't start using full power to slow down starting at the halfway point. From a gameplay perspective, we should give players what they expect, whether it is realistic or not, or it is going to be frustrating to play.

The only complication from having a top speed is like I said before, there is no such thing as a universal measurement of velocity. If you undocked from an orbiting space station in a slow ship, you might very well be moving faster than your top speed. If that is the case, how does one slow down to match the frame or reference of the planet, or vice versa? In other games, stations and planets are all stationary, so it never comes up, but I don't want to do that here. I'm not sure how to handle this. I'll have to think about it.

But regardless of how it is handled, players aren't going to want to deal with slowing down over a long period of time. That's the main point against acceleration.

[Iv121]

I suggest you going for the compromise as you might not get another deal.

Go cry more.

I warned you LJS, oh I warned you … I consider this topic closed and will move it soon.

[҉]

I suggest you going for the compromise as you might not get another deal.

Go cry more.

I warned you LJS, oh I warned you … I consider this topic closed and will move it soon.

You warned me of what, exactly? That you would use your moderator powers to declare yourself the winner of the argument? Don't make me laugh.