It's just my opinion, but I think everything goes REALLY slow... I would enjoy this game much more if it would all speed up a bit. Especially the top speeds of the ships... When I'm flying my brand new Valk at top speed (even with turbo boost) I feel like I'm riding a bike on the highway :) It's terrible to watch those asteroids literally creep by. I mean, it's outer space... I don't think a Boeing 747 should go faster than a state-of-the-art combat space ship, right? The slow speeds make it feel much less real. I'd really love to see the top speeds (in both regular flight and boost) tripled (or even more). (of course, the same would have to happen to rocket/laser speeds) You could also maybe increase the distances a bit...(this would require some more dramatic changes of course) I mean, a wormhole, and three miles further on.. ANOTHER wormhole... djeez, this must be my lucky day :P Though this is of secondary importance :) Top speeds should really go up if you ask me.

This would make trading less boring... This could make "just flying" fun, trying to fly through asteroid belts at high speeds (preferably also avoiding them :) ). Imagine "wooshing" passed a space station, instead of floating by. It would also make it less easy to hit/take out a ship, making it harder for pirates and easier for traders / newbies. And if people WANT dogfights, they will automatically go slower, because they'll realise they can't hit sh*t shooting passed eachother at Mach 20 or something (though it is very common for something even as primitive as a Space Shuttle :P)

You should get the feeling of "i'm going really fast now", instead of "i wish i was at the other space station already so i could dump this cargo"...

Of course, again, this is just MY opinion... (though i think it's a really good one :P)

.. slightly more text than i had planned :)

Appearantly no one agrees? Or are you all just too lazy to read it :)

I'd really like to know why this isn't a good idea...

I didn't before, but I do now. I've died way too many times in a medium engine with advanced gatling gun fire on my ass. I literally boost seconds before the enemy turns on me and starts firing, and yet I get reduced to 0-12% instantly using a medium engine/fast charge combo. Before 3.1.7 the advanced gatling gun wasn't too strong, but now it is because of the speed reduction and inability to boost away fast enough. By speed reduction I don't mean that the physical properties of the ships have changed, but rather what the standard equipment on a ship is now, which is a medium engine and a fast charge battery. So the majority of players went from traveling at 200m/s to 180m/s.

I'd like to propose the following changes to the engines:

Light - 160m/s
Efficient - 180m/s
Medium - 200m/s
Heavy - 210m/s

The Heavy can consume just a little bit less energy, seeing how it runs out so fast and you can't boost tap anymore... making it kinda useless. Anyway, I definitely agree that a slight speed boost is needed right now. I like the luxury of traveling without boost tapping, but I also don't want to fall asleep traveling through sectors. When we need to explore bigger sectors in the future, that slight speed increase can go a long way.

***EDITED***

Hmmm... I actually had another thought. How about making the torque and maximum speed of an engines opposites of each other? In other words a light engine would give you the greatest maneuverability, but at the cost of lower maximum speeds. And then the heavy engine would have the highest speed, but you wouldn't be able to turn as fast. That would give both engine types advantages and disadvantages. I mean does anyone buy a light engine anymore? It's useless. I'm not sure, but I think you can get away with consuming very little energy (same as efficient engine) for ALL the engines with this balance technique. Say goodbye to boost tapping. What do you think?

Physically, that doesn't make much sense, but it's not a bad idea. Except maybe that a heavier engine weighs more and thus accelerates less quick. Maybe instead of giving each ship an "agility" spec, you could give it a "mass" spec. (depending on hull AND configuration) Mass IS the only thing that influences agility in space anyway. You could eventually also make cargo add up to the total mass, so that a heavy loaded transport would be more sluggish than an empty one.

And you're absolutely right about falling asleep while travelling through sectors :) Though I still think 200m/s in boost mode is quite slow. I think the regular flight speeds should be seriously increased, at the cost of higher boost energy consumption. I think "boosting" should be used when you need to get out of some place really quickly (under heavy attack at close range). So you could increase boost thrust (resulting in faster acceleration), but slightly increase the energy cost. That way you can actually "get out of there". Of course this is only good when you seriously increase regular flight speeds. Now everyone is flying around with boost on. In other (space) flight sims, turbo boost is used mostly in battle, and for short bursts. I mean 55m/s for a medium engine... That's 198 km/h... In space???? People DRIVE faster than that (in germany, at least). And when you use turbo all the time, a stunning 648 km/h... You wouldn't be able to keep up with a World War II Messerschmitt 262. It would take you over three weeks to get to the moon :) I don't see myself exploring deep space any time near at those speeds...

I'm sure you all saw Episode 2, where Obi-Wan gets chased in the asteroid belt? He sure wasn't creeping at 55m/s (and he didn't use turbo boost :P)

So... regular speeds up, boost acceleration and energy consumption up. And the mass spec is also a really good idea if you ask me :)

To say it in short again:

UP: Boost speed, boost acceleration, boost energy usage, normal speed

If your regular flight speeds would be high enough, you wouldn't need it anymore in normal flight. So boost would actually be used to get out when you're dying or outnumbered. To prevent over-usage, you could make it only work when you have full energy, or make it use up a LOT of energy. (something comparable to star trek impulse speed, but slightly less fast though :)

Djeez :) OR you could make boost available as a seperate component to add to your ship, which needs to slowly recharge after being used. (give some engines like free engine a light "built-in" version for newbiez)

I'm gonna shut up for a while now :)

I like it the way it is.
Arolte I've very much against the idea of making it so you can either turn or move. That sounds like it would suck (as well as make no sence). The ship that has good torque would always loose because the other ship would stay far enough away that it could straif away from the shots, but still close enough to hit the other ship. A good torque is only useful in fairly close ranges, and the range is controlled by the person with greater speed.

Making sense?

- Top speed of 198km/h in space... I realise there should be a top speed, but this is really really low.

- A fully loaded transport with two advanced gatling turrets accelerates just as quickly as an empty unarmed transport...

Acceleration should depend on mass (what else? aerodynamics?)

I really think a "boost" is something you use in emergencies, not to travel around. Now you have to, because traveling around without boost is terrible.

I agree with the general complaint here, but for a different reason. In another thread, some people were discussing the turbo exploits in the past version and how people should use skill and not exploits to escape pirates and things like that. This caused me to think that such a thing would be possibly, if I could skillfully navigate my ship at high speeds through an asteroid field, making any lesser pilot have an extremely hard time following me. For a better picture, just imagine any popular space-combat movie. While this might be currently possible in, say, sector 11, its not really something that we can do anywhere else. If I try to dart around some roid the way things are now, I can be easily destroyed before I'm halfway around it.
I don't really have a problem with the speed the way things are now, I just wish it could become more difficult to fly at top speed through an asteroid field. There are, as I see it, two possible ways to deal with this: either increase the speed of the ships by a lot, or create many more smaller asteroids.
In addition, I also agree with Arolte's updated idea. As for the comment on the lack of realism, I disagree. Most of the ships have the engine pointing out the back. A "heavy" engine capable of producing much more speed than the others should be, of course, much heavier. It follows then, that if the ship wanted to turn or strafe in any direction, a heavier engine would be more difficult to rotate to point up/down or whatever. This effect be countered by a stronger rotating mechanism, yes, but such a mechanism would also increase the abilities of a smaller, lighter engine. Also, were the engine held in one place and the exhaust itself redirected by a steerable nozzle, it would also physically be much harder to steer an exhaust stream producing lots of thrust and traveling at a higher speed.
Anyways, I think this idea would increase the balance in some parts of the game, and it would make it a bit easier for the people who don't want to be killed (newbs) to stay away from the people who would like to kill them (pirates).
On a side note, while I'm discussing realism, there's boosting in general. Not that I think the current method should be changed, I realize it works well for gameplay, I just find myself wondering, in the vacuum of space, what sort of force is causing my ship to slow down when I release the boost button?

You can ask yourself the exact same question about what force is limiting your top speed? If your engine has a constant thrust, you should keep accelerating at the same rate. Same goes for rockets...

If we're talking about making sense anyway: What I don't understand is, if one engine would be so much heavier (and larger), why would a heavy engine fit on a Light Fighter such as the vulture? You could split the ships up in different classes, each ship accepting only certain suitable parts for its class. So applying a slightly more advanced version of the "large/small weapon slot" system to all parts.

But you're right about the asteroids :) One time I saw a pirate coming at me from quite some distance, and I thought, I'll hide behind this REALLY close asteroid... I was dead before I got there. The problem is that the asteroids SEEM small, but in fact they're really big. And that makes it look like you're going really really slow. I don't know what it is that makes them look small though, they just do. I think seriously upping speeds (in normal flight, so steering is possible) could result in some much more interesting chases. I mean, if you see a chase now, it's one guy boosting, and the other boosting right behind him, waiting for the first one to run out of energy. REALLY exciting. Or of course like RocketMan suggested, downscaling everything, so it still looks like you're going fast. How about not making such a big difference anymore between boost/regular top speed, and just making "boosting" a really quick way to get to that top speed?

(and I might add that higher speeds would make trading safer and less boring :)

Its in space so only a few laws of pysics are important:

Inertia
Action = Reaction
Gravity (but we don't use this)

So more mass (determined by ship type and equipment) will cause less acceleration. There is 1 universal top acceleration to prevent destrucion of the driver (modern jets can liquify there piolet's). Engines provide a number of newtons of thrust which when applied to the mass of a ship determines it's rate of acceleration. Note that velocity is not used in any part of this and the maximum is based on what you can turn at.

This creates a very realistic space game.

Also note my great ship "mass" idea :P

Think about it, it would help balance the game. If I want a 20k armor, dual gatling turret, triple gauss cannon battleship, fine, but I might as well forgot about dodging rockets or shooting through asteroid rids (which will undoubtedly be possible in the near future :D). If I want to trade huge amounts for huge profits in one trading run, fine, but I 'll be much less agile when I encounter pirates. You could give each component, cargo unit and hull a "mass" tag. This is basically what's being done with the different ships having different agilities... But it would be more realistic (and fair?) to do it this way. I mean, yes it's too bad for that trader that just lost 16 units of rare minerals, but that's the risk you take. No pain, no gain :P

On the long run, you could also give each ship a "stealth" number (like in another really good game), linked to it's surface size (and maybe some other factors), which would determine the distance from which your radar can detect it. That would help balance it too, and give you the possibility of "safely" trading small quantities, or sneaking up on that huge sluggish carrier of the greedy, impatient trader :).

I don't think that human reflexes could control a ship moving at realistic speeds. Realistic speeds, that is to say realistically fast enough to make travel in space possible, are a good 100 times faster than what we have. Some sectors would be traversed from end to end faster than you can blink. I don't even think that you'd have much luck controling a ship at two or three times the current velocities, and I know that at such speeds the skill curve would be so high as to drive off everyone who wasn't dedicating thier life to this game.

I also know that the AI would suddenly seem viciously good, not because it was, but because reflex would become so ultimately more important over the average range of ability than ability itself.

I also worry about intersection detection due to lag as velocity increases. Imagine you are boosting toward a roid and make a course correction to avoid hitting it. The server meanwhile in the .2 seconds that it takes for your packet to get to it computes that at your current velocity you have now embedded yourself 25 meters deep in a roid and so issues you. We already have problems like this (blowing up after docking for instance), and higher speeds will only exacerbate the issue. For similarly, imagine your ultra high velocity ships and weapons blinking and flickering around the screen because the velocity that the move is so much higher than the packet transmission rate that the server is constantly having to reupdate everyone's position to somewhere rather far removed from its projection of thier position. Small lag becomes more important.

Finally, let me let you in on a secret. For the most part, in all movies, and in all video games, all the things you are seeing are moving at between WWI bi-plane speed and WWII fighter speed. There are some very good reason for this. At above that speed, it becomes difficult to fit the motion of the object into the viewing frame of the human eye (or the screen or whatever). Also, at above that range of motion, it becomes impossible for conscious human reflex to keep up with the motion of the objects. At above that range of motion, fights are engaged by necessity at visually uninteresting distances with quite small targets. Things go from being visually uninteresting dots to flashing by in a blink of the eye in a hurry. The faster the planes go, the less combat tends to resemble a classic visually evocative 'dog fight', and the more it tends to be resolved by quick slashing attacks. For the most part, fighter kills in WWII involved one pilot killing another pilot _who couldn't see him_. By now, most fighters kills involve one pilot killing another pilot _with neither pilot ever seeing the other_. That's what you are really asking for when you start asking for speeds to increase.

This 'conceit' of slow moving close range dog fighting is maintained in order to have interesting visual effects even when the technobabble of the game or show indicates it most certainly should not occur. One really good example is ST:TNG. Here we have ships which can move under impulse at good fractions of light speed and which can readily acceed light speed almost instanteously, and which have weapons capable of affecting targets several AU away, and sensors capable of detecting events occuring serveral light years away _in real time_. And yet, when combat occurs on the screen its always between to ships parked practically nose to nose and dancing in a balletic way _as if tactical manuever ammounted to something when you had weapons with ranges in the hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

So, while this is a very interesting thread, I don't think you really have thought through what you are asking for, nor do I much think you would like it if you got it, and besides which I've heard the devs say before that they tried this in a early version of Vendetta and not surprisingly they didn't like it.

I agree with Daon Rendiv, but i think there SHOULD be a top speed (only not such a low one). There SHOULD be some pirates, to make the trading a bit exciting, too. It's useless to sit and watch those traders woosh over your head at 2000m/s :)

I'm gonna study some more now :P

Hello ...

first... sorry for my bad english.

/me agree with all of this

The Mars Express goes to Mars at 10800Km/h with no active engines ... only inercial navigation and use the engines ONLY for bearing corrections and speed modification.

I think that Vendetta must change the speed and navigation concept with very bigger cruise speed ... the acceleration times must be increased and the sector dimensions too. The boost would give an extra power for accelerate at a VERY HIGH cost of energy.

With this modifications to mantain the speed there's no need to have activated the engines and the ships have inercial navigation.

This changes will benefit the RPG game and the strategy to pirate. If you want a dogfight you slow down and fight.

I'm suggesting REAL phisical space navigation.

I need a dev answer please :)

Of course, it is not possible to not limit speeds. And it is perfectly possible to program synthetic "errors" into the AI of the bots. About the learning curve, you would find quite quickly that you crashed into everything at high speeds, and start to control your speed near asteroids. I am also not asking to make speeds realistic for space travelling (because the distances to be travelled aren't, either). I am asking for a "feeling" of speed. The one you get playing Need4Speed, or a combat flight sim.

And in the end, it's not what the devs like that's important, it's what the gamers like.

Lol. I need to learn to put all my crap into one message :) Sry...

About the special effects in movies... Regardless of the real speed, what matters is that it LOOKS like you're going fast... And I don't feel like I'm going fast playing vendetta...

If you were to really REALLY crank up speeds, you'd have to increase the distances (sector size) too, of course.

In response to previous posts: I said faster speeds, not realistic speeds. It's obvious that realistic speeds wouldn't be possible, and that if they were introduced, the ships could just continually accelerate and have no top speed, which would be bad for the game. I just think the ships should be able to go somewhat faster, that's all. Also, about the dogfighting, I didn't say imagine what dogfights would be like at faster speeds, like in combat movies. Go back and reread my post. I said look at what evasion is like in space combat movies. Think back to movies like Star Wars or Wing Commander where small fighters perform near-suicidal acts by attempting to navigate a dangerous asteroid field. Those types of things aren't really possible the way the game is currently; it's not very difficult to navigate any of the asteroid fields. I think if the speed were increased or scale reduced, it would give pilots with more skill the ability to evade others with less skill. Realism has no part in what i'm saying, i'm just suggesting this might make the game more balanced, or at least more fun.

Note that reducing the scale of some roids and adding more of them would not really change the mechanics of a typical dogfight. Perhaps this could be done in only a smaller fraction of sectors instead of all of them. For instance, if a pirate was on your tail, you'd head to sector 11 to lose them in the asteroid belt.

Chances are you won't really make it to sector 11 if you have half a decent pirate on your tail :) Raising the speeds (and by no means do I ask for close-to-real speeds) would solve this all much easier. Higher speeds would just make arcade mode more popular with newbies, and as they get better, they could start using physics mode. And it's not because you CAN go 300m/s that you have to dock at that speed, right ? It would really be fun and challenging to go through a bunch asteroids at speeds like that, though. (and while doing so, getting rid of for example a heavily armed sluggish pirate, or just a bad pilot :)

But I'd really like to hear what a dev has to say to this (and my physically correct mass-determines-inertia proposal :). (if they don't read this, we're all just wasting our time)

I personally would like to see faster ships also... but I just don't think it's possible right now. To do this, I think that there would have to be different classes of ships (more on this later), otherwise the current ships would lose any balance they have now: valks would be uber-deadly; rags would be... well, uber-wobbly :-)