Rename the Reactor FTL Chamber

[OfficialCoding]

Before Power 2.0 dropped, Reactor FTL Chambers were simply known as jump drives. However, The name Reactor FTL (faster than light) Chamber is actually incorrect using default settings. Assuming that it takes 1 second to jump between 2 arbitrary points, the distance not exceeding 8 sectors (16 km, 9.94 miles) you only then travel 9.94 miles per second, nowhere close to the speed of light. So while the name sounds cool, it is incorrect. Could it please be fixed in the next patch?

 

[MacThule]

Or just change the spatial distance metric (not block size metric) in the UI to be AU rather than KM....

I have always felt the jump distance far too short, but increasing it to actual FTL proportions under the current metric would be absurd and yet at the same time jumping from one star to another is definitely FTL travel.

Quite the connundrum.

 

[OfficialCoding]

Or just change the spatial distance metric (not block size metric) in the UI to be AU rather than KM....

I have always felt the jump distance far too short, but increasing it to actual FTL proportions under the current metric would be absurd and yet at the same time jumping from one star to another is definitely FTL travel.

Quite the connundrum.

You are correct. I have 2 fixes:
1) In the Universe Update, make the universe full sized, and that will then make jumping from 1 star to another FTL travel, or
2) they could, you know, just rename it Reactor Jump Chamber.

 

[DeepspaceMechanic]

The name Reactor FTL (faster than light) Chamber is actually incorrect

Right. While they're at it, they should rename "warpgates" too. To something like "stargate" or "wormhole portal".

It's all just sci-fi, of course, but warpgates certainly have nothing to do with the (potentially but not necessarily faster-than-light, and definitely non-instantaneous) hypothetical space locomotion technology called "warpdrives"

 

[Nosajimiki]

Before Power 2.0 dropped, Reactor FTL Chambers were simply known as jump drives. However, The name Reactor FTL (faster than light) Chamber is actually incorrect using default settings. Assuming that it takes 1 second to jump between 2 arbitrary points, the distance not exceeding 8 sectors (16 km, 9.94 miles) you only then travel 9.94 miles per second, nowhere close to the speed of light. So while the name sounds cool, it is incorrect. Could it please be fixed in the next patch?

I would argue that the constant of C is just much slower (and far less constant) in starmade than in the "real" universe. A ship that arrives into visual range 1.5 sectors away often takes several seconds to become visible and when you shoot, the thing you are firing at is often somewhere else before you even see it. That said, things in starmade are also often so massive that they can have significant impacts on the timespace continuum in their local vicinities causing time to slow down and speed up erratically like a bunch of man-made black holes armed with cannons that fire miniature balcholes at each-other. This time-space phenomenon is known to many starmade civilizations as LAG, and has been known to cause entire galaxies to collapse into oblivion.

Understanding this, it becomes apparent that the actual speed of light in starmade is really only .5-1.5 sectors per second (5-15km/s on most servers or 1-3km/s on default servers.). This means that FTL is in fact many times faster than light.

 

[OfficialCoding]

I would argue that the constant of C is just much slower (and far less constant) in starmade than in the "real" universe. A ship that arrives into visual range 1.5 sectors away often takes several seconds to become visible and when you shoot, the thing you are firing at is often somewhere else before you even see it. That said, things in starmade are also often so massive that they can have significant impacts on the timespace continuum in their local vicinities causing time to slow down and speed up erratically like a bunch of man-made black holes armed with cannons that fire miniature balcholes at each-other. This time-space phenomenon is known to many starmade civilizations as LAG, and has been known to cause entire galaxies to collapse into oblivion.

Understanding this, it becomes apparent that the actual speed of light in starmade is really only .5-1.5 sectors per second (5-15km/s on most servers or 1-3km/s on default servers.). This means that FTL is in fact many times faster than light.

I would argue that the constant of C is just much slower (and far less constant) in starmade than in the "real" universe. A ship that arrives into visual range 1.5 sectors away often takes several seconds to become visible and when you shoot, the thing you are firing at is often somewhere else before you even see it. That said, things in starmade are also often so massive that they can have significant impacts on the timespace continuum in their local vicinities causing time to slow down and speed up erratically like a bunch of man-made black holes armed with cannons that fire miniature balcholes at each-other. This time-space phenomenon is known to many starmade civilizations as LAG, and has been known to cause entire galaxies to collapse into oblivion.

Understanding this, it becomes apparent that the actual speed of light in starmade is really only .5-1.5 sectors per second (5-15km/s on most servers or 1-3km/s on default servers.). This means that FTL is in fact many times faster than light.

That is not what I am talking about. obviously we don not play on super computers and things take time to load, and there is also ping, but the speed of light is still 186200 mps, and nothing is gonna change that. What they need to do is just rename the chamber. How hard could that possibly be?

 

[Nosajimiki]

That is not what I am talking about. obviously we don not play on super computers and things take time to load, and there is also ping, but the speed of light is still 186200 mps, and nothing is gonna change that. What they need to do is just rename the chamber. How hard could that possibly be?

Is it? Starmade is abstracted reality at best. Stars fit in a 10km wide sector, worlds are measured in the hundreds of meters, entire star systems are less than 100km wide. Since the planetary diameter of our solar system is 10 light hours, on that scale, it should an hour for light to cross a single sector... so, saying that the speed of light is not the speed of light in starmade is a pretty fair assessment :D

 

[OfficialCoding]

Is it? Starmade is abstracted reality at best. Stars fit in a 10km wide sector, worlds are measured in the hundreds of meters, entire star systems are less than 100km wide. Since the planetary diameter of our solar system is 10 light hours, on that scale, it should an hour for light to cross a single sector... so, saying that the speed of light is not the speed of light in starmade is a pretty fair assessment :D

but the universe update will fix that I think. It should fix that. The laws of physics are not altered because Starmade is scaled.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

but the universe update will fix that I think. It should fix that. The laws of physics are not altered because Starmade is scaled.

The universe update will almost definitely not make Star Made to scale. And the laws of physics aren't changed, you near instantly teleport halfway across a solar system with the default settings. It's just that for the purposes of the game being playable the size of the universe has been toned down.

 

[OfficialCoding]

The universe update will almost definitely not make Star Made to scale. And the laws of physics aren't changed, you near instantly teleport halfway across a solar system with the default settings. It's just that for the purposes of the game being playable the size of the universe has been toned down.

Oh, because Seed of Andromeda has full sized planets and it lags like none. lagless full sized planets are possible. Also, that game is written in C++, which runs faster than Java.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

"playable" doesn't just mean performance. We could do with bigger planets for the sake of more building room/places to explore, but all full sized planets would accomplish is giving an unnecessary amount of travel time between locations. And that's a problem that gets worse with the distances between planets (and other things worth seeing). You either have absurdly long travel time, make FTL chambers basically mandatory or increase the ship travel speed to the point where things like combat would need to be totally overhauled. Extra reliance on jump drives would also be a negative for exploration, as it would reduce the risks of chance encounters with pirates/potential fauna.

 

[OfficialCoding]

"playable" doesn't just mean performance. We could do with bigger planets for the sake of more building room/places to explore, but all full sized planets would accomplish is giving an unnecessary amount of travel time between locations. And that's a problem that gets worse with the distances between planets (and other things worth seeing). You either have absurdly long travel time, make FTL chambers basically mandatory or increase the ship travel speed to the point where things like combat would need to be totally overhauled. Extra reliance on jump drives would also be a negative for exploration, as it would reduce the risks of chance encounters with pirates/potential fauna.

but that is realism. They could just make the max speed higher, like 10 kilometers per second. And yes, realistic distances between planets is realistic.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Trying to find where I said it wasn't? Realistic doesn't mean it makes for a better game.

 

[JinM]

I can imagine that sectors and systems are not staying in the current size.

I don't agree with OP, the name FTL more fitting as it's giving the player ideas of using advanced technology. Jump Drive doesn't sound so cool.

It's a game after all, and the name of any object within the game gives the player possibilities to phantasize about stuff. A game basically simulates a reality within the gamers mind. This simulated reality within the mind of the gamer is not the real world, its an own interpration of the imaginated world.

Jump Drive doesn't sound as powerful as FTL technology.

FTL technologies incorporate jump drives but also other stuff like using warp gates or wormholes. Everything that can bring you from point A to B instantly.

Who says that the level one and level 5 FTL chamber use the same technology. Maybe level one chambers use jump drives and level 5 chambers use blink drives.

By using a broader and more powerful term you leave the interpreation of the actual involved technology up to the player. A very good thing in a creative sandbox.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Oh, because Seed of Andromeda has full sized planets and it lags like none. lagless full sized planets are possible. Also, that game is written in C++, which runs faster than Java.

Isn't Seed of Andromeda at human scale like minecraft? Moving around at no more than a few meters per second makes LoD balancing very easy. You load a 200x200 ish block of chunks at a time, and render distant stuff using highly simplified continuous meshes that don't actually have any physics associated with it. However, StarMade is a ship game where you might be whizzing by a planet at 1000 m/s, and need to load things far enough in advance to make calculations on what you might run into by the time you get there. To make a planet "life sized" and be able to handle LoD within the physics engine would require being able to load and unload 100s of millions of blocks a second whereas "slower" minecraft like games can get away with as little as 1 million blocks a minute.

At best, starmade can preload all the blocks in a planet at once, and then just optimise how it's rendered at which point, you are limited mainly by memory.

 

[MacThule]

Oh, because Seed of Andromeda has full sized planets and it lags like none. lagless full sized planets are possible. Also, that game is written in C++, which runs faster than Java.

You do realize that Starmade is written in both C++ and Java?

 

[OfficialCoding]

You do realize that Starmade is written in both C++ and Java?

lol i did not realize that. It must be primarily Java because of all the java stuff you see in the files.

 

[MacThule]

lol i did not realize that. It must be primarily Java because of all the java stuff you see in the files.

Yeah, it started purely in Java, but IIRC they dovetailed C into it a couple years ago to allow better optimization and control. At this point I believe the engine still consists mostly of Java with some C objects and functions, but they have mentioned more than once that they have the ability to use C for things Java can't do or can't do well.