Bigger planets/stars?

[Xephyr]

Personally, I think its strange that a ship or station be the size of a planet. Unless the planets are meant to be far in the background, having them a bit larger wouldn't hurt.

[Charon Mass of Goo]

True dat, and maybe some new stars? its getting boring looking at the same old same old

(Complaint) lol

[Psycholis]

Speaking of scaling, it's hard to get a sense of the true scale of some of the ships in game. I know the CSC is quite a bit bigger by the docking screen which shows the centurions landed on it. I bet the Phobos is a massive eye-of-sauron monster. Seeing that the regular commonwealth stations populate in the millions, they must be super-massive. I guess what I'm really getting at is which is bigger, the phoebos or the iocrym? The ranx dreadnought or the aqulla class? It probably would be overkill to put this scale in game, but it'd be cool to get a sense of scale.

[Xephyr]

If the ships were to scale, they wouldn't fir on the screen. The planets would look a bit better bigger.

[OddBob]

I always thought it might be somewhat cool to up the station scale by an amount that would make an outlaw cache the size of a Gain Processor.

Also more range in ship sizes would be neat as well - however eventually you either have to zoom out or increase the overall scale (including speeds) or both.

[Periculi]

Won't larger graphics require more memory and therefore possibly reduce performance on lower end machines?

[Desolator]

Won't larger graphics require more memory and therefore possibly reduce performance on lower end machines?

For JPG it isn't a big issue, but considering the amount of objects in the game, that could be a real issue.

[Xephyr]

Won't larger graphics require more memory and therefore possibly reduce performance on lower end machines?

Yes, that is true, but you shouldn't really be using a lower end machine.

Think of it this way: as soon as you unpack your blazin' fast new computer, it is obsolete. Faster, better, and swifter hardware is available. What does that make a 3 or 4 year old machine? simply ancient (according to technology standards)

[Betelgeuse]

you are talking to people who still play ascii gfx games
Transcendence is high end for many.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Well, if you tried to make everything to scale, you would have to make the actual solar system to scale, then that would probably make it so you take half an hour flying to another planet.

[Xephyr]

Well, if you tried to make everything to scale, you would have to make the actual solar system to scale, then that would probably make it so you take half an hour flying to another planet.

Not necessarily. I just want larger planets and stars, and maybe the ships a bit more accurate, but not to scale.

[OddBob]

The solar system is to scale already.

one pixel = 10,000 km
one second real time = 1 minute game time

lasers travel at the speed of light (although your perception is instant), etc.

However all of the ships have ridiculous fast accelerations and top speeds. Also the ships, stations etc are presumably enlarged so you can see them - they are not thousands of km long.

You CAN increase the scale and flight mechanics do not go away - the Ai can't handle it because it thrusts all the time but increase your max speed by 100 times and make the systems 100 times bigger and leave everything else alone and it takes basically the same amount of time to get across the system (got to leave time for decelerating though).

[Desolator]

one second real time = 1 minute game time

I think you mean the other way...:

1s GT = 1m RT
(1 second game-time = 1 minute real-time)

[OddBob]

I meant it how I said it - the misunderstanding likely results from our conflicting definitions of real and game time (they can be interchangable sort of)

realtime - one second real time is how long it takes the second hand on your clock (Presumably located in REALity) to move once - assuming an accurate clock

gametime - simulated in the computer - in this case, one minute in game time passes every time the second hand on your clock moves once.

AKA one minute game time = one second real time.


Okay that wasn't really any better now that I re read it. Anyway, it should be obvious the general idea regardless of which way you call it (doing it wrong results in slow motion )

[Charon Mass of Goo]

Yes, that is true, but you shouldn't really be using a lower end machine.

Think of it this way: as soon as you unpack your blazin' fast new computer, it is obsolete. Faster, better, and swifter hardware is available. What does that make a 3 or 4 year old machine? simply ancient (according to technology standards)

In the united states, we only get 5megs of (what was it? mega hurtz or somthing...) while other countries get 10, and we are paying twice as much! All the good tech that other people are using (Civilian computers in other countries) in the U.S. is being hogged by the important government people (probably) so increasing the already sort-of-demanding graphics that the games has ("Don't shoot that shockwave blaster too much at once junior, it'll lag the game!") would be bad for us americans... Stupid greedy political mrons.

In case you didn't get the message: Not all of us have access to high-end machines in the first place, and for some of us, tech gets released slower than snails pace.

doing it wrong results in slow motion

For some of us, the game is in slow motion, slower than it should be.