Is WC too arcade like?

Originally posted by Ijuin
While having constant acceleration with no ceiling on maximum speed might be more realistic, it would probably make gameplay more difficult. Take the following situation: You are pursuing an enemy fighter, and he afterburns away in an attempt to outrun you. You pursue, and spend most of a minute shooting him down. Both of you are accelerating all this time, which results in your ship having a speed of tens of thousands of kps relative to when you started the chase. It will then take you another full minute firing your afterburners in the opposite direction to kill your speed, then you have to repeat the whole cycle again in order to come back to your starting point.
Acceleration should of course get less as you get faster since your mass increases with m' = m/(sqrt(1-(v^2/c^2))) so you need more and more force to achieve the same acceleration.
Now that would be realism...
 
Assuming that the acceleration rate of the ships is on the order of 500 km/s^2 as according to the ship specs, it would take about 4-5 minutes to get up to 75% of the speed of light (c), which is about 300,000 km/s, and below that relativistic effects would be too small to notice. If you want to get REALLY realistic, include the time dilation effects too--if you get too close to the speed of light, the rest of the battle behind you speeds up immensely while you are off chasing one or two ships.
 
Now THAT sounds awesome. All of these realistic physics effects would be awesome!

What is this game? Where can I buy it :p ??
 
Greatest problem with realistic physics is that it doesn´t appal to masses. Not all are interested
to program ships computer to intercept and
open fire and then watch battle last 1.2 seconds...

Still Iwar had small time acceleration effect
when you used main drive, wich was some sort
of hopper drive.
 
Originally posted by Bhaktadil
Anyone played or even heard of Darklight Conflict? I didn't think so , either.

Actually I bought it and played it about half through. Then I got bored by the rather hard, but pointless missions. But I don't see where this game is in any way real physics. On contrary. It feels way more arcade then WC.

PS: If you look for real physics you migth have a look at Jumpgate. It needed me more then 1 hour to learn how to land without kissing the station walls 29 of 30 times.
Heck you might need a half sector and burners to break down in a fully loaded cargo ship.
 
That depends how much acceleration is. One G should be
most used beacuse long time in high G harms crew. That is
unless you have some speudo-scientific way to move
ship or shield crew from G effects. In wing commander and most scifi universiums capital ships use their artifical gravity generator to negate acceleration effects.
Lightspeed can´t be acheved with chemical
or ion thrusters beacuse their exhaust will not fly as fast as light. I remember that in old Elite 2 top speed was only about 270000 km/s and in that game all engines used hydrogen.
Corrections?
 
i seem to remeber you could get military engines that ran on military fuel and produced radioactives, i think they were smaller and more efficient or something, but i seem to remember the flight dynamics game was virtually impossible without your autopilot to do it for you
 
Originally posted by Rami Sihvo
Still Iwar had small time acceleration effect
when you used main drive, wich was some sort
of hopper drive.

I-War had three different drives. There was the conventional drive (with the Newtonian physics model), the Linear Displacement System (LDS for short) drive, which was the high speed in-system drive, and could move the ship very rapidly. There were no Newtonian physics involved with this drive system. Whichever direction your ship was pointed in was the one it was travelling in, and there was no momentum (made for a great set of brakes when your conventional speed got too high). It also made the ship immune to things such as weapons fire. Finally, there was the Jump Drive, which used LaGrange Points in a manner similar to jump nodes in Wing Commander.
Both of the in-system drives (conventional and LDS) worked best with computer assistance. The conventional drive used the computer to balance out thrust and reaction, so that you didn't need to worry about moving one way after you'd thrusted another (it would also keep your speed down). Since the LDS drive was capable of extremely high speeds, and was typically used to transit to a specific location or for pursuit, the autopilot was typically engaged while using it.
In both cases, the computer could be deactivated/left off if you so desired (for example, to take advantage of the ability to strafe in combat). You could always leave the computer on while using the conventional drive, but a skilled pilot could do some pretty amazing stuff with it off.
Having the computer was probably one of the best ideas for the game. That way, when your momentum vector got a little too wild, you could turn on the computer assist, get straightened out, and then turn it back off again.

Incidentally, I would venture a guess that the fact that the drive system is abbreviated LDS, and that the orbital station you spend a lot of time visiting is called Salt Lake City, is NOT a coincidence.

:p
 
Originally posted by Ijuin
Assuming that the acceleration rate of the ships is on the order of 500 km/s^2 as according to the ship specs, it would take about 4-5 minutes to get up to 75% of the speed of light (c), which is about 300,000 km/s, and below that relativistic effects would be too small to notice. If you want to get REALLY realistic, include the time dilation effects too--if you get too close to the speed of light, the rest of the battle behind you speeds up immensely while you are off chasing one or two ships.
Not that you'd be able to see that, because the light of the accelerated battle first has to catch you.
 
Originally posted by junior


I-War had three different drives. There was the conventional drive (with the Newtonian physics model), the Linear Displacement System (LDS for short) drive,

Ok, that was it. Noticed how certan speeds hitting in asteroid
didn´t affect on you even when you used coventional drive?
I didn´t never try how fast i could go. Were there any
speed limit with computer assisted fligth off?
 
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