If you want realistic depiction of inertia then go play I-War II... kill your engine and you can float into the unkown... or that planet right in front of you.

You don't really kill your engines in I-War 2. They just thrust for as long as you hold down the appropriate button - as a real spacecraft would. They didn't have constantly running engines, as is depicted in most space sims. And I like being able to continue accelerating forever. That was really cool.

I liked the Starlancer flight system. Here's how I see it:

Liberty ships, being the lightest-armored, should be the fastest and most maneuverable. The Rhino would be the ideal ship for making fast cargo runs to places where speed is essential(i.e. the border-worlds). The Patriot would be a quick(comparing it to the Naginata of Starlancer), agile skirmisher, great for hunting slower transports in wolf packs. The Defender would be the ideal police vessel, with the ability to catch up to criminals without wasting money on expensive cruise disrupters. In short, Liberty ships would rely on the pilot's skill and precisely calculated hit-and-run tactics.

Rhineland, on the other end of the spectrum, would rely more on heavy firepower and excellent armor to get the job done fast(much like how the German ships in Starlancer were typically big, slow, and utterly lethal). Their ships would be much slower, but more survivable.

The borderworlds/criminal ships would follow the same ideas. The rogues think more about hitting a target fast then jetting away with a hold full of loot before police could catch up. The Corsairs would be mroe centered around deliberate assaults on established bases, using large fighters for drawn-out engagements.

It would work. It works in every other game on the face of the planet. By making all ships have the same handling, you throw the scale towards the old "bigger is better" way of thinking. Light fighters don't stand a chance against heavier ones unless the heavy pilot is a complete dolt. Cruise disrupters prevent the smaller ships from making getaways(which is supposed to be what they're good at), and make them easy meat for the big guns. There is, by definition, a "best" ship in this game; this was not so in Starlancer. With whatever patches they decide to release, I hope they fix things.


Reaper: $200,000,000.
Rockets: $100,000
The look on that pilot's face when you launch a full pod of screamers up his tailpipe: priceless

Guys,

Please if you really read all of Rikaelus' post you would know he meant to use the word "FRICTION" but mistakenly used INERTIA, Open your eyes and cut ppl some slack... Sheesh...

Cheers,
Lynx

---

Please if you really read all of Rikaelus' post you would know he meant to use the word "FRICTION" but mistakenly used INERTIA, Open your eyes and cut ppl some slack... Sheesh...

---

But, even if he did mean "friction", he would still be wrong .
As I stated in my post, even the microscopic spacedust would exert friction upon any ship traveling through space and eventually bring it to a stop.

who gives a damn.

Dont mess with the Ninja[!

Dredd,

Cut ppl some slack... for in this case you are likely to be the one who is WRONG!

Stop in relation to what??? do you really think the eath is stationary? Do you think the Sun is STATIONARY... ? Cmon man you are applying physical theory to the real world and theory does not always have an application to the real natural universe. Sure there is minor, miniscule amount of friction but all it would do is slow an object, if the object were to get even close to a celestrial mass it would be far more impacted and accelerated by the gravity unless it hit but then it would keep moving....

UNLESS you believe all matter will eventually STOP only then are you right! and now we are having a philosophical discussion and not a scientific one.

Good day!
Lynx

eh.... 80 m/s isnt that bad and if ur upset go cruise somewhere

tradelanes are about 3km/s, takes a little over two seconds to get between to 7km apart trade lane entrances...

iwar 2 is cool with constantly accelerating, so after a while it stops counting but i think i clocked myself at near 100.000 km/s ....

and in StarLancer, the Shroud could go over 1000m/s (afterburner with engine cranked to 100% power)

Cool down Lynx, he just means that there are always forces in play that will prevent an object from having a constant direction and speed off of inertia. At least, I assumed that's what he meant.

The conclusion, at least somewhat relative to this thread: Freelancer and realism are mutually exclusive things!

Since we're on the topic of astro-physics, wouldn't the ships themselves be destroyed when they pass close to a gas giant?? The mass of Jupiter alone has a tremendous amount of gravity that a small object like a ship would easily fall victem.

Let's also take into account the proximity to the stars. Most of the systems that I've actually taken the time to click the star to gauge the distance ranges from about 40-50 km's. I would think that being that close to a star would probably turn you into a crispy critter regardless of your shield strength. Am I wrong in making that statement??

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance..."



Edited by - ***opelli on 12-03-2003 22:15:49

At least Marco gets it.


I just get tired of every twelve year old that just found out in their science class that "sound doesn't travel in space", or that "things keep moving in space", come into a forum and announce it like it is some grand discovery, and then proceed to complain that the game should therefore follow those loosely based principles, when they usually don't even understand the entire principle behind their statements...not that I am a physics proffessor, but I at least go deeper than surface appearance.

Be well,

Pyrate Dredd

***opelli, like I said... Freelancer=unrealistic, for gameplay reasons. Else, you could argue that Sirius in its mass over twice our sun would engulf the puny Liberty system, and well beyond, and if New York and Pittsburgh. Just try to pretend K stands for "kilo-super-miles."

But...You bring up an interesting idea. It would be superbly cool, imo, if there were gravity wells from planets, big asteroids, etc., that you had to contend with as you flew around. I think only the top-down (and really fun) Star Control games had anything like that that I can remember...

You wanna know why they did what they did?

Freelancer is nothing more then a future console game. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see this game on x-box soon. I see nothing in this game that puts above a standard console game.

Once you think of that you can come up with answers to about all of you're questions regarding the developer's mindset.

What does setting all ship speeds to 80/200/300 have to do with what type of game it is?

This game was being developed before the Xbox was even out. Sure, you can make a statement like that and base conclusions on it, but they'd be fundamentally flawed because your beginning argument is an assumption. Also, this is a mouse and keyboard game. And it's a menu interfaced flight game on top of that. That's about as far as you can get from console territory...

And what's so bad about console games? You going to diss Everquest because it's on the PS2 now? You use a mouse and keyboard for that game, both on the PC and the console, and you'd probably do the same with Freelancer. The Xbox would definitely be capable - hell, MORE THAN capable - of running this game, and it'd be no different than playing it on a PC (mod community aside).

Edited by - Aerundel on 13-03-2003 07:06:48