Have you guys heard of a solar sail? It's like a sail, but uses light instead of wind and it's supposed to go extremely fast.

Until a lil Bb sized astroid rips thru your solar sail. The sail has to be HUGE to work. Maybe good idea for an ebrake. hey..maybe the devs can install solar sails on a moth!!

A solar sail the size of texas wouldn't miss even a few square kilometers of material missing. A sail even larger, which, realistically, would be needed for actually leaving the solar system, would be impacted by impacts with micro(and macro)meteorites even less.

The very size that makes it such a target also works to protect it from those inevitable impacts.

And realistically speaking, the material in a solar sail would be so thin and light, by necessity, that it wouldn't be affected by bullet-, or probably even head-, sized projectiles. Think about how small a hole a bullet will leave in a piece of paper versus metal or concrete for a down-to-earth example.

+1 to Solar Sails though

i honestly find the speeds to not be too bad. its not as bad as X3 where it takes FOREVER to get to point a to point b unless you use the time dilation feature (which you coudnt do online) i think the size/scale and speed of things seems to be about right. so i really dont see the problem.

If it were real combat, then all anyone would need to do is fling some space dirt in front of your really fast moving ship and KABOOM!!!