I think that asteroids and and other objects in space should move, this would make mining harder I realized, so is ships were also able to land on asteroids, and personally I think it would make the game more interesting in combat. Also give the radar screens a bit more radarish feeling to them, and lightening up the different galaxies would make flight a little less complicated.

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huh?

i understood half of that...

but making asteroid move aroind instead of just making the spin would make AFK mining impossible and it would be pretty cool

I think it would cause frame-rate issues.

Er, not to mention LOTS of overhead on the servers...

Then have it so that when someone enters an empty sector, the position of the asteroids randomizes.

That would kick ass, since they are theoretically moving so slow (Compared to your ship) that it is almost impossible to detect.

What Miha said, about server load. As for position randomization, this would make it difficult to have 'arena'-type locations, since you'd have to first scout, then camp them. I would wager a bet that this would reduce the amount of player-generated content.

Also, our 'Radar' monitors are fine they way they work right now, in my opinion. A discernible Radar 'sweep' or any other visual effect wouldn't do much for immersion, besides, it's not like we have a rotating antenna on our ships. If anything, our sensor arrays are permanent spheres of observation.

Or perhaps I'm interpreting too much into the suggestion?

Lightening up the galaxies? Do you mean, make the ambient light stronger? I think the change towards the darker look was a change for the better.

The asteroids are moving.

The asteroids you see clumped together are just the ones that are gravitationally bound to each other, and that is why you see them together. All the other asteroids drifted so far away that you can no longer find them. Inter system jumps tend to alway place you in a sector near a major gravity field, which is why you always end up near a clump of roids. What we commonly refer to as "brakes" is really just a computer controlled form of thrust, devised to artificially simulate stopping, which, by definition, is synchronized with the nearest cumulative gravity field.

Are you suggesting that we disable the auto synchronization of the computer controlled braking system?

See, thats a bullshit answer.

Of course we know that the asteroids are moving, we just want visual confirmation.

Although i see the logic behind what your saying.

What if there were such Things as Comets that randomly fly out and have a chance of destroying a station, players can come and try and destroy the comet and get a special item which can launch little tiny Drones, which are basically missiles with weapons.

As you can see that suggestion i just made, makes no damn sense.

"stopping, which, by definition, is synchronized with the nearest cumulative gravity field"

stop: to arrest the progress or motion of : cause to halt

motion: an act, process, or instance of changing place : movement

place: physical environment : space

So... nope. Sorry. (noimnotrlylulz) Stopping, by definition, is synchronized with whatever space you imply. Gravity has zilch to do with it. Clearly Vicros was specifying that asteroids move in relation to one another, as some of them do already. You were just choosing to misunderstand him. Is everyone's post in this thread completely pointless? Yes.

Definitions being a courtesy of Merriam-Webster Online.

See, I figured that since asteroids are not generally found so close together in space (from what I've read. Which could be wrong), the asteroids in tight little bands around a few stations are actually asteroids that have been found and laboriously towed into a location that can be conveniently mined.

Its perhaps a government service to find asteroids and tow them into the gravitational center of a sector. Maybe somebody pays prospectors to go out into the great beyond scouting for new 'roids to drag, or else the scanners and ... gravitational wave nets ... are too expensive for private entities, and so the governments take responsibility for it.

The hive may do the same thing, and thats why every sector with roids, even those without stations, has its roids tightly clumped together.

If this were the case, then they could also be stabilized when they are brought in to make them motionless relative to the station and therefore convenient to mine.

EDIT: This also suggests a kind of mission:
Equipped with a special scanner, a mining station loads a pilot into its accelerator tunnel and fires it out tens of thousands of meters into space, where its special long range scanner can detect asteroids at gigantic distances (which appear or don't appear randomly maybe). Once a pilot has or has not found a roid, he /explodes (or /warpHome) and reports the new roid and is informed that the government will go collect it soon.

What the HELL are you talking about Mynt? Do you know how much what you said doesn't make any sense what so ever from a physics perspective? Is that definition by chance from the days when people thought there was a luminiferous aether ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether )that filled space? This was proven false a long time ago, around the time general relativity ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity ) hit big! Then again, this definition may be for the layman (none physics types) out there.

It's garbage like that coming out your mouth that makes people hate you Mynt (not me personally, but others.... and in this case even me). Everything is always moving, you can only match velocity, since there is no absolute location to take as reference you can never really "stop" by your definition. What's more, your implication that, "Stopping, by definition, is synchronized with whatever space you imply. Gravity has zilch to do with it.", is horrid. Who taught you that the space has nothing to do with gravity? Please tell me so I can go find them and slap them with a very large fish!!

As for Roda's assessment that the roids are just the only ones that didn't drift off, it's also false in most respects, as the roids would affect each other (with gravity) and there is no way they would stay stationary, at best they would be orbiting themselves. However, Roda's argument is closer to the truth under some conditions, mainly...

In the presence of lagrangian points ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point ), these are special locations in space where gravity fields cancel out, thus a stationary object at such a point (stationary relative to the said point in space, which may itself be moving) would remain stationary, and any rocks that drift near such a point could in theory end up not drifting any more. These points are fairly common, in fact we have several relatively close to home, one between the moon and earth, and another between the sun and earth.

Thus, it is more likely that when you jump into a sector you come out at the nearest lagrangian point, and not at the nearest gravity field. This would make sense for many reasons, and would also explain why you need to be away from a gravitational well to make a jump. In fact, lagrangian points are used right now to make space travel more efficient ( http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2002/release_2002_147.html ). Also, when you come out of a jump, not sure if space was bent or you come through an alternate dimension or whatever, it would make sense that you want to come out at a point of 0 gravity to ensure your ship does not get torn up or whatnot... Also, entering at the nearest gravity well would imply you almost always jump into the Star, since it's gravity will usually be stronger then the gravity of anything else around, so a lagrangian location makes more sense...

Anyhow, I think that's enough to appease my anger at your rude mutilation of the physical laws Mynt, please NEVER say anything like that again.

That is all!

-drazed

Maybe they all there together & stuff for solidarity.

The question naturally arises, can different reference frames be physically differentiated? In other words, can we conduct some experiments to claim that "we are now in an absolutely stationary reference frame?" Aristotle thought that all objects tend to cease moving and become at rest if there were no forces acting on them. Galileo challenged this idea and argued that the concept of absolute motion was unreal. All motion was relative. An observer who couldn't refer to some isolated object (if, say, he was imprisoned inside a closed spaceship) could never distinguish whether according to some external observer he was at rest or moving with constant velocity. Any experiment he could conduct would give the same result in both cases.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_special_relativity

Even if we make roids move, we will then demand a feature to sync our ships movement to a roid, and then the roid will appear stationary (again).

To have roids move in relation to other roids, could be of some interest, if you where to work out the details.

My own idea is to completely redesign ion storms, such that they are a stream of particles from the nearest star, with a slight adjustment of angle to represent the orbital velocity of the roids. The objective being to add an addition frame of reference, where someone that is stationary in respect to the roids, "feels" as though the roids and themselves are in motion (through a solar wind). This effect could be added to all sectors, and simply be scaled up for ion storms.

Roda, drazed objected to the fact that the explanation was wrong, not reality.

Also, a spaceship (and, more to the point, the objects inside) moving along a straight line at a constant velocity would experience a very strong gravitational pull in the vicinity of larger objects and would therefore have to use thrusters to stay on course and artificial gravity to make the subject inside believe 'nothing is happening'; both occurrences could be detected without having to rely on external points of reference in order to deduce movement.

Roids moving in relation to other roids *in-game* is, as said before, just as bad an idea as roids moving at all on a large scale, since many, many movement vectors would have to be recorded and updated. Let's just accept that we have an absolute point of reference.

As for the ion storm idea: Since I do not know exactly how sectors are instanced, the effect you describe might only be achievable by making the roids move themselves.

Lastly, thanks for the rant drazed. It summed up what I wanted to say nicely.

Edit: Perhaps a few, very prominent roid groups could be made to move, thus treading a line between overload and immersion. Personally, I'm fine with stationary roid fields, though.

toshiro:
Nothing was ever said about maintaining a course. Traveling past a gravity source is undetectable except by observing an external reference. If you could detect a gravity field that was not traveling with you, that would count as an external reference.

There may be, in reality, a velocity in space that is an absolute speed of zero, but there is not any proven experiment that can detect it.

Our planet, solar system, galaxy, are all in motion, and there is no proven experiment that can tell us the absolute speed of any of these.

"stopped" is a relative term, in that it is a measurement of speed, in relation to something else, and it can not be measured otherwise.

Saying 'there is no proof against it' does not mean 'it exists'. For all intents and purposes, a frame of reference is always required.

If you want to start splitting hairs: I was not talking about the detection of the gravitational field by using the field itself, but the reactions to it required to be taken by the ship (to make you believe you weren't experiencing one).

Technically, you would not be detecting the mass itself, but its consequences (which you would be doing anyway, since we cannot perceive a force, only its effects).

A (badly constructed) analogy: If a car has made tracks in the sand, you do not need the car itself to determine, e.g. the weight of the car.

toshiro: all your attempts to discredit Galilean relativity simple end up proving it. In each of your examples you insist on referring to an external factor. If you do manage to disprove Galilean relativity, please post a scientific paper on the subject, as you would be certain to gain international recognition for it.

The point of this thread is that someone wants roids to move.

and my point is that we don't have to actually make the roids move, we need only provide the proper frame of reference for the perception of movement.

You see, Roda, you fail to perceive that I do not say that you do not *require* an external influence, just that you do not require *it, itself* to measure it. Please read my posts more closely.

As for the idea of creating the impression of movement (contrary to what I said before; I misunderstood you), that would, of course, work.

Some of those definitions are a couple centuries old, yes. Even if modern science disproved the notion of a Luminiferous Aether, I fail to see how that has any bearing on other concepts at that time. Drazed, if you're reasoning by analogy, blaming me for thinking in the dark ages seems a little unfair.

"What's more, your implication that, 'Stopping, by definition, is synchronized with whatever space you imply. Gravity has zilch to do with it.', is horrid."

Okay, so now we're quoting a quote of an argument based on a quote. So go back to Roda's original claim, "stopping, which, by definition, is synchronized with the nearest cumulative gravity field". Now let's look at something you said, drazed.

"Everything is always moving, you can only match velocity, since there is no absolute location to take as reference you can never really 'stop' by your definition"

I assert that everyone thinks accordingly. Nonetheless, some asteroids do engage in movement. And by 'movement', I mean motion, by which I mean change in position, by which I mean change in distance to asteroids that are motionless to one another. So, I make a new assertion; this suggestion is intellectually bankrupt.