I am not sure if this has already been suggested...

Just like air particles, but with ions and space particles. Your ship could become up to 20% faster while trailing behind another ship. The ions rushing to fill in the space cleared by the first ship, would leave a clear space, allowing the ship to rush through space much faster. Like wind resistance, but it's more about ion resistance, slowing your ship down..
A cone of slipstream trailing behind your ship, relative to its size and shape, would be called slipstream space.
The space could also warp according to how fast you are going and in which direction you are travelling.
This might also bring into the game, a new stat for ships:
eg.
Slipstream Turbo Speed: 250m/s
Slipstream Speed: 90m/s.

This also would increase a tendency to trail behind trade ships, pirates, so the use of conc mines and prox mines is increased.

Suggestions and Feedback Appreciated

Estrian Prosis..

I really like this idea. It makes running more difficult.

good point ghost.

It could also promote player convoys and escorts. Have a taur in the lead, and a train of moths drafting him. A %20 increase in speed would mean that 4 or more drafting ships would deliver at about the same rate as 5 non drafting ships, thus covering the cost of the (cargo challenged) lead ship.

Fighters might pull in front of heavy combat ships for a short term slingshot.

etc...

Very good idea in theory, one of the best I've seen on here in a while. It has real plusses for traders, pirates, group play, and anti-running combat pilots. It might even allow for more speed disparity between trade ships, as the bigger ones would be encouraged to make use of convoys by being slower than their current speed when flown solo.

However, implementation strikes me as being . . . challenging. Inc?

I hate to be the wet blanket, but slipstreaming only works when you're in a fairly dense, but not too dense, liquid or gas. Space doesn't have much of anything in it, hence it being space. Luckily, we've got another mechanic that covers this and could be used to gain the exact same effect, possibly with an easier implementation as well- Good old gravitic drives.

Since gravitic drives work by "denting" space and dragging the ship along as it "falls" into the dent, ships should be able to combine their drives and create a bigger dent. As long as the ships are reasonably close together, their drives can act together as one larger, more powerful drive. The upside to this over straight up slipstreaming is that the orientation of the ships is irrelevant with gravitic drives- they could be beside each other, in a line, or in a bomber formation to provide overlapping fields of fire and coverage for each other's blind spots.

NPC convoy ships already form up like this, so speed boosting would simply provide some incentive for players to get in and join the formation. Possibilities include being able to toggle a "group movement" feature, that would force a convoy to move in a fixed group formation (by one pilot) at high non-turbo speed, but allow individual ships to spin around so as to direct their weapons at incoming attackers. Pirate groups would be able to do the same, forming their own ship clusters to preserve and enhance their ability to run down trade ships and convoys. Another possibility is to set up the gravitic drives to work against each other, allowing a group of pirates to essentially ensnare a lone trade ship, slowing to to a meager 5m/s or worse.

Lecter's got a good point, I'm not sure how the devs could do this in the short term. It might be a pretty big project. IRS brings up a good point as well and a good alternative, although I'm not sure how realistic vendetta's flight model is to begin with =) It might be feasible to get away with the slipstream idea considering the current standards the game works with. If not, the alternative you presented could be cool as well.

We could use the ion explanation if ships used ion drives...

The engines work by hurling ions out the engines to push the ships forward, since space has relatively small amounts of ions floating about solo ships move more slowly. When ships trail each other, the ion colectors can gather the pre accelerated ions from the lead ships in addition to the stuff already floating around. The already accelerated ions would get additional acceleration while the normal ions get the usual batch of acceleration. Essentially higher ion densities behind ships would provide trailing ships with more ions with which to propel themselves allowing higher speeds.

There may be a little conservation of momentum issue there but I'm going to say that ions in front of the ship can get passed directly into the ion drive's accelerator without going into some sort of storage first.

This may perhaps be the best idea I've ever read. I am backing you 100% in wanting this feature, as it would make even the simple act of flying fun. I mean, picking a trajectory and sticking to it, using it during firefights to gain some speed on a foe, the possibilities are endless.

And honestly, I would think that a quick hack using coordinates wouldn't be too hard for the devs. But I'm no expert.

We have space junk, and we don't really have to give a second of thought to the 'explanation'.

However, to the extent that IRS's approach would make implementation easier, I like it.

Looking at the title, I immediately wrote off this thread in my head as 'just one more whiner about top speed.'

But it is so much more.

This idea has real potential, and would create yet another area in VO where skill trumps basic numbers. This is easily one of the top five best suggestions I have ever read on this forum.

100% win

Excellent!

Awesome, I'm all for this!
I would rant on about trade potentials, but someone has already done this =P

Has anyone considered the potential in the racing tubes?

Yea to this idea. I have no idea as to implementation, besides the obvious visual: Make a cone (light blue?) that has a core, where you the maximum effect and gradually diminishes in efficiency as you move radially outwards in any direction. This would allow 'drafting' (getting higher top speeds as a group) and much more.

As for the technobabble explanation: Let gravitic drives have a gravitic wake, where creation of a gravwell is easier/stronger gravitic wells can be created with the same expenditure of energy that is used for ordinary ones.

I don't mind giving the trailing ships a speed boost, but I would mind giving the lead ship a speed boost. So to really take advantage of this, you would need at least one ship that could go that fast on it's own to be in the lead.

having one super speedy ship to lead adds for the potential for a quadrant of fighters to become inescapable, whereas i believe the uses of this slipstream would be more targeted at providing a short term speed boost for a pursuer, and give bombers a chance to keep pace with their fighter allies.

The solution is that if a ship does not have a significant size (hornet and below?) it will not create a wake that can be ridden. No vult could create one, but a rag might have a small one, not easily followed.

Or, rather, each ship added into the gravitic wake reduces the overall speed of the formation towards the average speed of all craft. This way faster ships will be pulled on by the rest of the formation, and slower ships will get a small boost. This might even tie in with mass, where a large capital ship would drag along a troupe of fighters with no issue.

I like the explanation that IRS gave.

[stamp of approval]

Make the slipstream real narrow at first so it's a challenge to pull off. Also have the speed increase proportional to the velocity of the leading craft.