Gravity

[TedStudley]

Gravity effects would probably be good. It's not very realistic without them

[Karl]

Yeah, gravity wells would be cool to have in some places... but in most of space, unless you're rather close to a planet or star, the effect of gravity is so minor that the game is still relatively realistic without constant gravity effects.

[goat not sheep]

What if there's a giant star in the system?

[Karl]

I think that would be a perfect place to have a gravity well, then.

[Betelgeuse]

hmm maybe it would be an interesting weapon. Lay one out and things start getting pulled to it.
Would make them easier to hit.

[TedStudley]

you could have a curved effect with cannon fire, if you were close to a planet or star. it would require some extra thought into where you were aiming at

[Burzmali]

Um, the gravity of the sun is strong enough to hold Pluto in place. If you tried to reduce your orbital velocity with respect to the sun while in Earth's orbit, you'd begin falling sunward pretty quickly.

[OddBob]

but in most of space, unless you're rather close to a planet or star, the effect of gravity is so minor that the game is still relatively realistic without constant gravity effects.

The sun still affects stuff in the solar system by a noticeable amount. It's rather massive.

Anyhow: realism.

I like realism, I really do. For me realism = fun.
I prefer in fact excessive realism down to tiny details. But there are situations where it's not feasible or applicable. Stargates are the perfect example, the reason why is later. As long as it's consistent and not patently ridiculous, I'm fine with it (unrealism).

I have to digress here and talk about consistency. Consistency is more important that realism. A fantasy setting with wizards and magic is not realistic, magic does not exist. But it can be consistent, and follow it's own rules, and because I do not encounter magic in everyday life, I can learn how magic is supposed to act in game, and if it behaves accordingly, everything is fine.

Things become more problematic when you take something the player knows to be true in real life and say it works different in game. A wooden door that is incompetently indestructible with the small nuclear arsenal available to the player is not consistent with real life (we know wood is fragile) and also not realistic. A force field is not realistic either, but we don't have force fields in real life, so you can say they are resistant to small nuclear arsenals. As long as they are consistent and as logical as possible within the game, it's okay. -ish. I still don't like it when we get a magic 'tractor beam' when a grappling cable does the job just fine and makes sense too.

Now, stargates. Faster than light travel is, as we know, not possible. Thus, not realistic. Stargates are the chosen way around this. This is fine and necessary for the entire premise of the game. As long as stargates don't change how they work every week to suit the needs of the plot (cough, Star Trek) then it's a necessary unrealistic device.

But gravity: gravity could not be properly simulated in game, because the reason stuff doesn't fall into the sun is that that stuff is orbiting it. Things in transcendence do not orbit the sun, and waiting for a docking space to open up at the fuel station would be a major pain if you have to keep from falling into the sun the whole time.
Even if you found a way around this, it would likely be more of an annoyance than anything, mainly because of Transcendence's very fast accelerations (also the fact that you end up standing still a lot in transcendence) and small scale. If Transcendence had systems scaled to their real size (Actually, if you follow the 1 pixel = 10,000 km rule, as well as one second equals one minute, Transcendence is exactly to scale, down to the speed of light and everything! Sweet! I believe the accelerations are still crazy fast however, but I must admit I never did any calculations. The Wolfen can go from 25% light speed in one direction to the other in less than a few minutes, so I'm guessing that's kind of high) then maybe it would work, and I would actually like this*.

But it's not, this means we'd have to put in some sort of odd gravity simulation that doesn't work right. When you're not close to the sun, it is zero. After you pass the magic point, all of a sudden you get sucked in. And we're back to indestructible drywall.



*Once I scaled Eridani up to ten times bigger than it is now, but I also increased max speeds to adjust. I did not increase acceleration. It worked just fine, it took about the same time to get from place to place as it does now, although it was a little trickier to time the deceleration burn, as you had to slow down much more. The AI thrusts all the time in combat, so it ended up zipping all over the screen, but I found that with short bursts or lots of turning I could maneuver just as well as I could now. The high max speed doesn't affect combat otherwise because of the following reason:
when you're zipping along really fast, and so is your opponent, in the same direction, you can thrust around and dogfight and such just fine, because even though you're both moving at the same really high speed, it's in the same direction, so you are not moving relative to each other, and it's just like it was when speeds were slower.

[TedStudley]

I was thinking maybe something where destroyed spaceships near planets wouldn't just sit there, but would actually move towards them. And just say that the engines of starships are powerful enough to escape gravitational fields.

It's just kind of disappointing for me to see how great a game Transcendence is, and then see one small detail like that left out. I'm just a perfectionist like that.

[Karl]

Let's get some science in here:

The acceleration due to the sun's gravity at 1 AU--the distance of the Earth's orbit--is about 0.0059 m/s^2. That level of gravity is not going to have a noticable effect in-game unless you sit around and wait for it. For comparison, remember from high school physics that the Earth's gravity pull at sea level is about 9.8 m/s^2, more then a thousand times greater. So, unless you are relatively close to a strong gravity source, the effects of "gravity in space" are not going to make a noticible difference on things like flying and shooting. Of course, you could have it anyway just for realism's sake.

I was thinking maybe something where destroyed spaceships near planets wouldn't just sit there, but would actually move towards them.

Hey, I like that! Add gravity AND help clean up the messy destroyed spaceships at the same time. 8) So maybe having low level gravity fields could have a meaningful impact on gameplay after all.

_____

p.s. OddBob, I love what you said about games and logical consistency.

[OddBob]

And just say that the engines of starships are powerful enough to escape gravitational fields.

It's just kind of disappointing for me to see how great a game Transcendence is, and then see one small detail like that left out. I'm just a perfectionist like that.

I don't even know where to start. First we add in something complex for the sake of realism and then we magic it away with a handwavium explanation that has no basis in reality? What was the point in the first place?

This is what I was talking about with consistency. If wrecks are affected (by the way, they'd all just clump together on top of the planet? Crash land? What?), your ship should be affected, bullets should be affected, stations should be affected. That's how it works in reality, and everyone knows this. Making them learn that in Transcendence having engines magically makes you immune to gravity is the exact thing I'm trying to prevent.

The current situation (wrecks remain on site) makes sense. Yes, there is the necessary evil of stopping the ship so that the player can loot it, but they're still orbiting the sun, just like the planets are, and this keeps them more or less in place. (remember scale: in the time frame you spend in system a planet wouldn't move noticeably)

You may have meant something like this:
the ship's computer automatically makes course corrections to compensate. This makes sense, but again defeats the purpose. Why have gravity if you're not affected by it?

I'm a perfectionist like this: I like things to make sense.

Now I'm not totally against gravity, but for me to accept it it would basically require everything to use it and also make sense. Planets, stations, wrecks, everything would all have to orbit the sun (or planets) and move in the way they should, and there would probably have to be some sort of trajectory plotting line that would let you make the necessary adjustments (and slingshots!). You'd almost have to actually simulate it, and then, wham, you're playing Orbiter Lite. Either
1. Say it's negligible/not important/too complicated and ignore completely.
2. Get it right, all the way.

[Karl]

A low level gravity field (which is what exists in most of space), would only have a noticable in-game effect after several minutes (or hours) or more, so it actually could seem to be only affecting wrecks, even if it were affecting everything.... therefore preserving consistency!

...I'm assuming that we're simulating fairly realistic grvity fields here, by the way...

Space stations would naturally have engines to compensate (or they could slowly orbit planets, which would be extremely cool), and, as you said, planets wouldn't move noticably in the time frame anyway. And we're not buzzing scenic black holes or landing on and taking off from planets with our personal spaceship, so we wouldn't need handwavium gravity-defying super engines.... Though the in-game engines are pretty powerful... they might be strong enough to land on and escape from medium-sized planetary gravity wells already without any handwaving or scotch-tape explanations. Also, I consider all of the planets and stars in the game to be "significantly in the background", which explains why you don't crash into them. (Which also means that you could play with the strength of their gravity wells to a certain extent.)

Of course, then there's the whole "what happens when a wreck finally reaches a planet" issue. I say: let it crash and burn!

That takes care of the major gravity issues... I think. And if I forgot any issues... well... then they're just not important.

p.s. "Handwavium" is cool word. Very hackish!

[FAD]

Perhaps the best solution would be to set up a system that has gravity wells, black holes and what not to cover certain aspects being mentioned that the game is lacking.

And just to note about gravity in space, in general, yes it's true that objects will follow a trajectory 'orbit' or path around stars, planets and the likes. But lest we forget that even so, there is still an orbital decay in which gravity will eventually pull unpowered objects in--namely, derelict ships, asteroids and other space debris.

[TedStudley]

and with gravity, why not have the planets actually orbit the sun, not just sit there! It wouldn't have to be very fast, but when you leave a system and then come back later, some things ought to have at least moved

[goat not sheep]

And stations? Some stations...in fact most actually spawn near planets. So... by moving planets...it really screws up herectic.