I was flying an EC-89, being pursued by someone in a Valkyrie X-1. I managed to run across 3 sectors in my piece-of-shit free bus without his top-of-the-line interceptor catching me.

I'm not sure whether this is a bug with the performance statistics on the respective ships, or the text in their descriptions, but either way it should be fixed. It is confusing to noobs and makes the game less fun.

Observed behavior: High-end fighter and interceptor craft are unable to catch even the slowest ships in the game

Expected behavior: Interceptors should have absolutely no problem running down even moderately fast ships, to say nothing of the pokiest ship in the game.

Steps to repeat: Get in an EC-89. Run away from someone who wants to kill you. Alternatively, get in a fighter and try to chase someone.

X1 had 2 Law Enforcement Neutron Blasters and a UC battery.

The EC89 probably had a free batt and nothing else, but I'm guessing on that one.

Summary of chase:
• X1 spots EC89 at a distance of about 2000-3000m in Latos H2. X1 engages turbo on a full battery. EC89 was already at full turbo (I believe). EC89 jumps to Latos H2, still over 1000m away from X1. X1 jumps as soon as it is able to, blindly assuming that the Ec89 went to O12 (which it did).
• X1 spots EC89 in O12 at 2000m or so, waits for 2/3rds full battery, then punches turbo. WH was about 5000m away at beginning of chase. EC89 arrives at WH and enters it with X1 still about 1000m behind. X1's battery charge runs out 500m from the WH. X1 fully recharges and jumps through the WH.
• X1 spots EC89 at 1500m. Waits for 2/3rds full battery, then punches turbo. EC89 jumps away still over 1000m away from X1.

The distances quoted are within a 500m range of being accurate, and most likely err on the side of being too small than too long. I do know that the EC89 was more than 1000m when it jumped from Sedina b8, however.

X1 and other ships could probably use a turbo thrust boost, as the current setup doesn't lend to good RP. However, I'm not sure I classify this as a bug.

Last I heard theres an upper limit to the speed in VO. I suppose they could give you some more but I think it would have to come at a severe price.

With the differance between the two ships that already exists I cant really see this as balanced. An 89 is not intended to be a helpless target....just a beginner ship.

PaKettle, I said "turbo thrust boost", not speed boost. It takes a lightly armed X1 approx 12 seconds to reach 225m/s. That's a bit insane.

I don't know about that. I think an EC-89 should be a helpless target for an X1 in much the same way that a Cessna 172 would be a helpless target for an F-16.

Just a reminder that the respective performance of the individual client at loading a sector can drastically impact the results of this sort of multi-sector chase. Ie, if the person in the bus loads the sectors quickly (say, preloaded all textures, fast connection) and the person in the X1 loads them slowly.. that will have a significant impact.

Very true, however, I'm running a last-gen macbook pro (2.53ghz, 4gb DDR3 ram) with preloaded textures, running on a 1megabyte/sec connection. If anything, I should be loading sectors faster than others.

edit: heh. 1megabyte, not megabit (typo fail). ladron, we're on the same speed internet.

I know that you probably feel fairly happy about your system specs, but you should know that my computer has twice as many processor cores (at roughly the same clock speed) and twice the ram of your machine. Also, my network connection is an order of magnitude faster. And most importantly, I have a tape drive.

If we were using Pentium 2's with 64 MB of RAM on 56k modems, client performance issues might play a significant role. This was a ship performance issue, plain and simple.

zak.wilson has exactly the right idea.

Damn, nice machine/setup then. However... once you hit a certain threshold it shouldn't matter too much, should it?

Edit: just re-read your post. Yah, I agree that we were dealing with ship issues rather than client issues (though it's only a semi-educated guess).

I've played VO on a computer with similar specs to ladron's (a bit less memory, and no tape drive) and one similar to Aticephyr's (a bit more clock speed and, I think twice the L2 cache). It doesn't seem to make much difference in sector load-time. VO doesn't use all the memory or all of more than one core.

And what's even worse, it doesn't even make good use of my tape drive. Come on, guild, you guys are seriously slacking.

We could use it to make sound effects. DLTs in particular could be pretty exciting.

I will review the Suggestions post about interceptor turbo thrust differences. We may want to dial down ships, rather than dialing up others (or both), which may annoy people, but the point is differentiation, right? Anyway.. let's continue this on Suggestions.

I wonder if Incarnate and others remember drive music....