the stars are to small yes. some of the stars are smaller than the planets. but of course if microsoft created an actual scale model of a star compared to the planets it would be waaaaaaaaaay to big depending on what kind of star it is though. Even though its a computer game if it the stars were that big you would probably go blind if you stared at them! lol impossible i say.

"You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you cant pick your friend's nose."

Han Solo - "What an incredible new smell you've discovered [!"

If you want to travel in trade lanes for several hours to reach one planet to another, its fine with us.

CCP did a great job with EVE when it comes to planet scale..

I'm pretty sure they had the same problems with scale as DA did. But their solution was to just make the planets appear to be further away..

So lets say you jumped to a planet.. Well instead of being right on top of the planet. You would come out of warp still 25,000km away... If it were a gas giant, I noticed you would be no less than 200,000km away still. I'm not sure what would happen if you cruised the rest of the way towards the planet. Because even at 300 meters per second.. 200,000km is still perty far away. So I never wasted my time testing that.

EVE really spoiled me in the beta though. It's a really pretty game.. And when you leave one planet at warp speed (1.999au/s) the planet quickly becomes just another star in the back drop of space.

Yeah, but there´s a big difference in creating planets in a game just for background and the ones you can actually land on. The option of landing on planets is one of the best things in Freelancer IMHO.



" Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well."

I fully understand that the concept of tradelanes would need an overhaul if these planets went into orbit. But I don't know why they didn't at least implement planet rotation. Seems like that could have been fairly easy to do, not to mention pretty to watch. Could give each planet a set of 3 or 4 docking rings so you don't have to fly all the way to the far side each time you want to dock. (I'm assuming here that the planetary dock rings would be in a fixed satelite style orbit, circling at the same angular rate as the planet rotates.)

What if the trade lanes orbitted too? That would work, Planet rotation is a must.

But if you want realism there are some things they need to fix first: Trails, Why the hell do the ships have trails?! We're in space, trails happen in atmosphere (Ok they might happen in systems full of gas but none with open space.) Also, In space if you're travelling at 200m/s and turn off your engine, you will still travel at 200m/s and not slow down until a force is acting on you in a different direction.

Orbiting trade lanes? How would that work if planet A with a faster orbit is behind the sun when viewed from planet B?

BTW you can approximate the inertia thing by switching off the engine (Z). The gentle slowdown you experience while doing so is caused by... erhm... the millions of small particles everywhere that are the remains of the thousands of ships that were blown up over the years .

Rght now we have the technology to enter a planets atmosphere depending on what kind of gravity and atmosphere is on the planet. But in Freelancer you have to use a docking ring. And the tranisition scenes such as landing on a planet, i think they should put the whole landing. Like the Jumping? How you can look through the cockpit and see everything and not go out to the other view. It might take up more room but it'll look cooler.



Edited by - SpAz on 08-05-2003 23:54:44

For the curious, this is what real life scale looks like

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030508.html - Mercury passing in front of the Sun

Edited by - richard on 09-05-2003 04:50:10

Scale sucks in this game. If you want scale to be accurate, buy Indpendencence War, Edge of Chos.

Alliance Fire & Rescue

The question of how to implement trade lanes in the presence of orbiting planets really intrigued me.

Having trade lane entrances/exits at fixed positions relative to a planet is no big deal since each planet has five LaGrange points where trade lane entrances/exits can be placed.. The problem would be the "in-between" gates-- I don't see how those can be kept in position between two planets on different concentric orbits around one star.

If the trade lanes are just entrance/exit gates and nothing in between I suppose that would restrict the game too much (no more trade lane disruptions). I guess that would be the trade-off if one wants orbiting planets and realistic distances.

Well, just a note to an old msg. Someone already made an asthronomically-correct freefrom space combat/exploration/trade game. It's called Frontier.

Check out more here:
http://www.frontier.co.uk

From the site:

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"Frontier" also set a number of firsts. It was the first game to have real-sized planets, where cities could be viewed from orbit, it was the first to use curved surfaces (bezier), the only game to do a palette-fit every frame to get best use of colours (Amiga and ST only), and (apart from First Encounters) is the only piece of software (games or otherwise) that attempts to simulate our entire galaxy.

Planets orbit and rotate correctly, so if you stay in one spot you will see sunrises, and the progression of stars, planets and moons through the night sky. It is possible to watch Saturn-rise from one of its moons.

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Hey Man... This is the neighborhood of make believe.....

I think I see a little trolley....