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Besides, the vast distances in space and the time it takes to travel those distances is probably the largest roadblock to creating a super-realistic space sim.

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Sure, but there is a lot of ground between Freelancer and "super-realistic." You can get a heck of a lot closer to realistic than Freelancer did and still make a fun game. You could probably even make a "super-realistic" space game that was fun, as long as you didn't insist on it being a simulation. An RTS or turn based game or 4X game based on real physics using the computer to smooth over the details could be interesting, challenging, and fun, too.

But that's not really the issue.

I don't think D.A. made Freelancer unrealistic to make it fun. I think they did so to make it accessible. Most people don't really understand what space is like. Even most adult, intelligent, educated people don't understand why space is black, or how big it is. Unless you've studied astronomy, it's hard to deal with the really big numbers involved, or to compare them to real world experience.

--milo
www.starshatter.com

Independence War does a good job of making a more realistically sized universe. However, the smaller areas of Freelancer made it possible to have an exploration aspect to the game. It is possible in Freelancer to hide a base in a nebula and give the player a good chance of finding it; in I-War 2 a players chances of finding an uncharted base anywhere are quite small.

Sure, if by "exploration" you mean "aimless wandering around." In a larger universe, exploration would require more thinking and more tools - scanners that show mass density in a given region, a means of analysying traffic patterns through a solar system, an astronomy analyser that looks for unexpected spots on a photographic plate, spy transponders that allow you to track enemy ships as they move through space, probe droids that can scan space for you and report back their findings. Those are just off the top of my head.

For me, any of those choices would have been more fun and interesting than just stumbling upon an enemy base in some improbable purple fog patch in an equally absurd debris field.

But they would not have been as accessible to people who don't know anything about space or space opera.

--milo
www.starshatter.com

Meters will only be projected when the distance to the specified object gets below 1000 (=1Km)
Therefore the game cannot use this scale since approaching an object will show a countdown in M already starting under 2K.

Maybe the M stands for mile and the K for 1000 mile..

Then again, the tradelanes should be alot bigger in size then when reaching it lol
Ok stations too lol and planets for sure! but for playability i can fully understand the sizes ofcourse.






"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished, unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets"
-Voltaire-

No no no.

The base unit of measurement in Sirius is the "centon".

M is for megacenton
K is for kilomegacenton


ER

Well if you really wanna get technical why aren't the planets, stations, and even the trade lanes moving or revolving around their stars?? If you think about it the trade lanes are seriously messed up as you have a line of structures that make a straight line between two stellar objects that should be in orbital motion. A real trade lane would be more along the lines of a station at both ends that fire ships at tremendous speeds to the opposite station, without the "boosting" sections along the way as the current lanes are.

Everything in the FL galaxy is static in its position in space, completely opposed to realism.

So yes, everything is simplified, distances are shorter, objects are static, and lanes between objects can have boosting members along their paths.

Speaking of rotation. I've noticed a couple of planets that actually rotate along their axis. Kind of fun to fly around Planet Curacao to try to stay in a geo-synchronus orbit (btw, it was a thrill just seeing the planet spin). But my question is this: Why did they only have a handful of planets spin? Why didn't they make all the planets spin? Also, I can't remember the other planet that was rotating...only reason why Curacao sticks in my mind is because it was so close to liberty space (which is usually where I hang out). Cheers.

I noticed the neutron star in one of the omega's spinning too. Kinda made me happy for a little bit

K=1000
m=100

In this game thats all they stand for, if I try to think they are Kilometers and meters its just makes the game less believable. So I just think of 80K as 80000
Freelancer units. They did not go out and make a space sim, they made a space game.

Those tiny little systems sure are pretty though

Why didn't I register the day after?

The unrealistic distances bothered me a litte at first but then I gave thinking about it and just enjoyed the game.

What I did find a bit perposterus is all these hugely dense asteroid fields which are RIGHT NEXT TO PLANETS! Surely the planets gravity would have sucked in all those rocks and the planet would have been pumbled to death! Still, its fun that the asteroid fields are so dense as in reality such as our very own asteroid field in our solar system, you would never actually come across loads of asteroids in one place and they are seperated by something like thousands of miles.

"Surely the planets gravity would have sucked in all those rocks and the planet would have been pumbled to death!"

Puh-leeze. How would, for instance, Pittsburg have any chance of sucking up a nearby debris field when even a gas giant can't exert gravity on an unmoving light fighter with it's engine's cut just outside the atmosphere? Obviously the gravity in Sirius is being counteracted by something (maybe there's extra "dark energy" ).

With freelancer you just have to shut off your brain because the game is clearly not a space sim. It's just a game (again, "just a game" is as opposed to "a sim" ).

Edited by - Sapient6 on 01-04-2003 17:47:14

Fair enough. Lets just leave it as Freelancer the arcade game, which is what it is and never really tries to be anything resembeling a sim. Which to be honest is allright, as trying to fly in space with Newtonian physics is a bitch am im sure ive played a space game that had it and found it very annoying, im sure someone here will know the name of a space sim that had Newtonian physics.

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im sure someone here will know the name of a space sim that had Newtonian physics.

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MANTIS
Frontier: Elite 2
Frontier: First Encounters
Warhead
Independence War
Millenium Four (canceled)
Terminus
Babylon 5: Into the Fire (canceled)
Jumpgate (early versions, drag was added for release)
IWar 2: Edge of Chaos
Homeplanet / B5:IFH (in development)
Starshatter (also includes an arcade flight model for people who don't like newtonian)

I feel like I'm forgetting one, but that may just be a sign of insufficient caffeine density in my circulatory system. Must increase coffee consumption...

EDIT:
Ace of Angels - I knew I was forgetting one!

--milo
www.starshatter.com

Edited by - milod on 01-04-2003 22:33:13