Ship Max Speed Determined by Mass

[Proxima_Centauri]

It's not. The strain of accelerating a large mass at that speed without inertial reinforcement would tear the ship apart.

Wut
By that logic, aircraft carriers should just fall apart at the seams, considering that they're some of the fastest ships in the fleet despite their size

Protip: Games like EVE Online (with slow large ships) are NOT accurate as far as physics is concerned

Mass is related to energy linearly in the kinetic energy equation, and therefore a larger mass requires the same force per mass to accelerate.

 

[Mered4]

Wut
By that logic, aircraft carriers should just fall apart at the seams, considering that they're some of the fastest ships in the fleet despite their size

Protip: Games like EVE Online (with slow large ships) are NOT accurate as far as physics is concerned

Mass is related to energy linearly in the kinetic energy equation, and therefore a larger mass requires the same force per mass to accelerate.

Aircraft Carriers are some of the slowest accelerating ships in the fleet, bro. They take freaking forever to go places. Cruising speed is pretty high, sure, but getting there is an entirely different story.

The engineering required to support a Titan class warship from EVE (several km in length) would necessitate many smaller weak points within the superstructure. Accelerating swiftly without an inertial dampening field (Star Wars uses these) could cause a catastrophic failure to said superstructure, resulting in the fiery death of the spacecraft in question. This is, of course, mostly based on assumptions in a game setting. The lore has to point to some of these engineering problems to make it fit in the universe. We don't really have lore, so we'll just go with what works best with the framework we have and then make some meta to explain it.

As to your last point, thrusters in real life have a decreasing efficiency the larger they get. I highly doubt they've solved that particular problem (it isn't unique to conventional rocket engines) in the time of Starmade. This is reflected in the diminishing returns for our thruster blocks the more we have on board.

 

[Malacodor]

Aircraft Carriers are some of the slowest accelerating ships in the fleet, bro. They take freaking forever to go places. Cruising speed is pretty high, sure, but getting there is an entirely different story.

Yes, and?

 

[Captain_Stripes]

Aircraft Carriers are some of the slowest accelerating ships in the fleet, bro. They take freaking forever to go places. Cruising speed is pretty high, sure, but getting there is an entirely different story.

So that right there sounds like a good and stable balance between ships. Small ones get up to top speed faster and bigger ones get to top speed slower. Only if that was implemented in the game. Oh wait it already is.

Like I said in a previous post if someone want their massive titan to move as fast as a fighter they're sacrificing too much.

 

[Mered4]

So that right there sounds like a good and stable balance between ships. Small ones get up to top speed faster and bigger ones get to top speed slower. Only if that was implemented in the game. Oh wait it already is.

Like I said in a previous post if someone want their massive titan to move as fast as a fighter they're sacrificing too much.

Your big guns don't matter if I can zoom behind you, outside your cone of fire. That's the advantage.

And it isn't in the game, because the difference isn't all that drastic.

 

[refirendum]

thruster efficiency needs to go down as the size increases for that "sacrificing defenses for acceleration" thing to actually work. the only acceleration advantage right now is the turning speed advantage, whcih isn't factoring into straight line speed limits. If you go beyond the limits of a human or the materials of the ship to withstand acceleration forces IRL, you'll end up with a dead human in a very fast moving spaceship-shaped hunk of metal. which I believe should be the primary factor for limiting max accel of a larger ship.

the max accel graph will be sloped for slower max on larger ships and higher max on small ships. the thrust/weight ratio should determine how much % of the max accel you can achieve with your thrusters, and once you are above what's neccesary to achieve max accel, you can stop with the thrusters since you aren't going to accelerate faster with any more. topspeed is still supposed to be the same for everything.

and then add the aforementioned jump mechanics, and then the thrust/mass issue will be much more balanced than now.

 

[JonasWalker]

This is bad. Ships should be worth something, something you want to keep, actually have an impact if lost rather than "oh well, I have 20 more".
-Partial Snip-

If you want any semblance of PvP, both on the individual and faction levels, you have to accept that not only will you have to expend assets in attempt to achieve your objective but that you have to be able to both simultaneously replace those losses and increase your overall forces in a timely manner. Anyone who's production and logistics base prevents them from at least matching their opponent rate of output will soon find themselves overall outnumbered and by extension outgun in direct proportion to the conflicts duration, and while not fatal in and of itself it is a very severe disadvantage. One just needs to look to the dilemma of the Tiger vs T34 on the Russian steppe in WW2 for a very clear lesson as to how badly it can end and how it can be at least partially mitigated on the tactical level. Frankly if the loss of a single ship would drastically gut a factions ability to wage war, either because they cannot replace it or it would take so long as to be impractical in the given time frame, then frankly its not an asset they can afford to fight with. Which is probably why you really don't see much PvP right now as ships seem to costly and difficult to replace so not many are willing to risk them in a conflict.

So TLDR if you want more PvP action then you want ships to be easier and quicker to replace in some form as otherwise no one is going to want to willingly spend their hard to replace and expensive investments on actual combat. Even if you can go "Oh well I have 20 more" then you'd still want to preserve them when practical as every loss you don't have to replace means another unit that instead can be used to build up your reserve with no additional expenditure of resources. There is a very big difference between spending assets knowing you will lose at least some and wasting them needlessly.

 

[refirendum]

If you want any semblance of PvP, both on the individual and faction levels, you have to accept that not only will you have to expend assets in attempt to achieve your objective but that you have to be able to both simultaneously replace those losses and increase your overall forces in a timely manner. Anyone who's production and logistics base prevents them from at least matching their opponent rate of output will soon find themselves overall outnumbered and by extension outgun in direct proportion to the conflicts duration, and while not fatal in and of itself it is a very severe disadvantage. One just needs to look to the dilemma of the Tiger vs T34 on the Russian steppe in WW2 for a very clear lesson as to how badly it can end and how it can be at least partially mitigated on the tactical level. Frankly if the loss of a single ship would drastically gut a factions ability to wage war, either because they cannot replace it or it would take so long as to be impractical in the given time frame, then frankly its not an asset they can afford to fight with. Which is probably why you really don't see much PvP right now as ships seem to costly and difficult to replace so not many are willing to risk them in a conflict.

So TLDR if you want more PvP action then you want ships to be easier and quicker to replace in some form as otherwise no one is going to want to willingly spend their hard to replace and expensive investments on actual combat. Even if you can go "Oh well I have 20 more" then you'd still want to preserve them when practical as every loss you don't have to replace means another unit that instead can be used to build up your reserve with no additional expenditure of resources. There is a very big difference between spending assets knowing you will lose at least some and wasting them needlessly.

In reply to this, I agree with the logic behind this. this means economies. economies big enough to replace destroyed investments almost instantly. for fun big team battle-style pvp, you also need lots of players on each side. well you can't do that with economies that can easily be managed and run by a single player. thus you have to make resource-finding harder to get the player count, and from there it's up to the players to build up the economy on-server to have that resource flow for the big pvp.

additionally, these two posts were off the main topic of ship mass and acceleration.

 

[The Wozard]

1. Your idea of big ships moving slower is 90% already in the game. Larger ship require more blocks to move compared to smaller ships, Not to mention their acceleration is less and if you want it equal you have to add more and more blocks.

2. Movement of titans is already ridiculously slow. Fighters can out maneuver titans like crazy, if people would stop trying to run away in a strait line. Titans turn slow. USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. That's partly why drones work well. They get in close and a titan cant turn to get a good shot at them fast enough.

3. It doesn't make any sense. Ships already, for some unknown reason slow down in space, we don't need them acting as if mass has some importance aside from turning(and even then it is iffy). Capping a ships speed based on mass to me sound ridiculous. It should be caped based on engine to mass ratio. The more engines to mass ratio you have the faster you can go.

 

[refirendum]

the topspeed is not what should be capped. it's the acceleration. please to first check you understand the difference between speed and acceleration.

recently a 800k mass titan showed up and the small destroyerss could not out-maneuver it because the titan just accelerated in reverse and ran to put them back in its firing range. this is not what a titan is supposed to do if they still have more shields than the small destroyers can break. the point of destroyers is to be compact, fast, and anti-capital with minimal defenses. this obviously didn't really work out there.

 

[The Wozard]

Well titans are subject to the square cubed law. So based on real laws a ship twice you size would required 4 ships to destroy as well as 4x more resources to build. Also, If the enemy engages you and tries to fight on their terms don't, He was flying one way, just fly the other way. Every engagement doesn't have to end with a victor. If you are not in a position to win, run.

 

[Malacodor]

If you go beyond the limits of a human or the materials of the ship to withstand acceleration forces IRL, you'll end up with a dead human in a very fast moving spaceship-shaped hunk of metal. which I believe should be the primary factor for limiting max accel of a larger ship.

Fast accelerating fighters can kill their pilots just as well.

recently a 800k mass titan showed up and the small destroyerss could not out-maneuver it because the titan just accelerated in reverse and ran to put them back in its firing range. this is not what a titan is supposed to do if they still have more shields than the small destroyers can break. the point of destroyers is to be compact, fast, and anti-capital with minimal defenses. this obviously didn't really work out there.

Just wait for the new thrust mechanics.

Well titans are subject to the square cubed law. So based on real laws a ship twice you size would required 4 ships to destroy as well as 4x more resources to build.

It's either a squared or a cubed law (the latter is correct) but not both. A ship twice as long/wide/tall has 8 times the volume and mass.

 

[Colt556]

I, personally, love big ships. I love capital ships. However part of the draw of big ships is they're slow, methodical, and imposing. When I see a 700m long ship doing barrel rolls and flipping about like a spastic idiot it ruins the appeal of having a ship that large. It no longer looks cool, it looks stupid. I despise watching cap ships bob up and down as the player inside tries to chase and kill their enemy. It just looks bad. Also part of the appeal of cap ships is their rarity. You don't throw a titan at every single opponent you see, it's cumbersome to move around as it's slow and often too big for jumpgates, so when you decide to field a titan it needs a damn good reason.

All of these factors are what make big ships cool. If you remove these factors then you lose the cool factor of big ships, they become just another ship in the universe with nothing special about them. So with all that being considered I suppose slower speeds. If you wanna bring a titan in that's fine, you will make your enemies tremble in terror. But part of that terror isn't just because of how big or how powerful your ship is. Part of that terror is the realization that you are serious, the mere fact that you went to the trouble of bringing that behemoth means they aint gonna be getting of lightly.

So to skip my ramblings, I don't mind slower cap ships. The whole point of small ships is to be quick and agile, with big ships being slow and strong.

 

[Malacodor]

I, personally, love big ships. I love capital ships. However part of the draw of big ships is they're slow, methodical, and imposing. When I see a 700m long ship doing barrel rolls and flipping about like a spastic idiot it ruins the appeal of having a ship that large. It no longer looks cool, it looks stupid. I despise watching cap ships bob up and down as the player inside tries to chase and kill their enemy. It just looks bad. Also part of the appeal of cap ships is their rarity. You don't throw a titan at every single opponent you see, it's cumbersome to move around as it's slow and often too big for jumpgates, so when you decide to field a titan it needs a damn good reason.

All of these factors are what make big ships cool. If you remove these factors then you lose the cool factor of big ships, they become just another ship in the universe with nothing special about them. So with all that being considered I suppose slower speeds. If you wanna bring a titan in that's fine, you will make your enemies tremble in terror. But part of that terror isn't just because of how big or how powerful your ship is. Part of that terror is the realization that you are serious, the mere fact that you went to the trouble of bringing that behemoth means they aint gonna be getting of lightly.

So to skip my ramblings, I don't mind slower cap ships. The whole point of small ships is to be quick and agile, with big ships being slow and strong.

Do you want to limit max speed or max acceleration?

 

[Colt556]

Do you want to limit max speed or max acceleration?

Acceleration. In space you don't have a top speed, you go as fast as you can go as long as you have the power for it.

 

[Mered4]

Acceleration. In space you don't have a top speed, you go as fast as you can go as long as you have the power for it.

We are using those Newtonian physics though, so technically ships can have a max speed.

 

[PizzaPress]

We are using those Newtonian physics though, so technically ships can have a max speed.

c=75 km/h?
I don't even.
If that's the case, beams, cannons, and missiles are all FTL.
I'd like if(did I say this before? It's worth saying again.) active(Bobby/Player/NPC) ships would have no damping.
Thruster scaling could even be nerfed then.
(Mass-based turning, where art thou?)

 

[Mered4]

c=75 km/h?
I don't even.
If that's the case, beams, cannons, and missiles are all FTL.
I'd like if(did I say this before? It's worth saying again.) active(Bobby/Player/NPC) ships would have no damping.
Thruster scaling could even be nerfed then.
(Mass-based turning, where art thou?)

Newtonian physics allows for the existence of an ether that causes drag in space.

 

[Malacodor]

Newtonian physics allows for the existence of an ether that causes drag in space.

A hypothetical ether, the existance of which was disproven, would not interact with matter, only light.

 

[Mered4]

A hypothetical ether, the existance of which was disproven, would not interact with matter, only light.

I didn't make the rules, bro. That's just how they are designated. Game designers have been referring to space with drag as Newtonian physics since before I was born