Distance Scale in combat

[Grandpa Kim]

Not that I would ever ridicule anyone, but the squares are about 1/2 inch on my screen.

[Suicide Junkie]

Now consider that all engines in SE4 say slower than light speed travel (unrealistically) on them. One combat square is more than 3 light years if you call it a parsec. Doesn't quite work out.

Why do you say "unrealistically"?
While sublight speed travel is a given in RL, the warppoints in SE4 will give FTL travel... The description implies that ion,etc engines aren't what are used to travel warppoints.

[Fyron]

You don't need any special engines for the warp points, or there would be such components in the game.

[oleg]

Originally posted by Grandpa Kim:
Not that I would ever ridicule anyone, but the squares are about 1/2 inch on my screen.

You need a bigger monitor then !

[Ed Kolis]

I always called them "combat sectors"... says what they are straight out Well, sometimes I've tried to get trendy and called them "subsectors" but that sounds a bit too cheesy...

[Cyrien]

Read what I said more closely. It is unrealistic if you use the parsec as a measurement for 1 combat square.

It is quite possible that the engines are sublight as it takes light only a few hours to travel from the sun to the outer limits of our solar system. The systems in SE4 are 13x13 grids. Thus to travel from one edge of the system to the other in a single game month is possible with the fastest ships at sublight speeds, indeed at just a few percents below light speed you could do it in a few hours.

Sun to Pluto 5.4 hours
So 5.4 x 2 = 10.8 hours to go from one side to the other.

A parsec on the other hand is just over 3 light years in distance all by itself. Move several of those in one combat turn, one combat turn being a small measure of time (some minutes or hours) and you have much faster than the speed of light for engines. Quite unrealistic.

I was simply stating that a combat square is clearly not a parsec. Hope no confusion resulted from that.

[Fyron]

A parsec is 3.26 lightyears.

It is quite possible that the engines are sublight as it takes light only a few hours to travel from the sun to the outer limits of our solar system.

Actually, it takes at least 6 game days (as there are 30 in one turn) to do that (and that is if you mod engines to get 30 MPs ). Light does not take 6 days to reach the edge of a system, so all engines must be sub-light. That, and they are all specifically labeled as sub-light.

[ April 10, 2003, 19:26: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]