OT: How fast is light speed in SE4 terms? -> Maximum possible speed? -> insanity

[PvK]

Actually, you quoted me, not Fryon. I wasn't even addressing Fryon in that discussion, but Graeme Dice, who was saying that SE4 started out with faster-than-light drives (i.e., speed 6 would be greater than light).

This is an interesting academic question, but as long as there is no interstellar movement without instantaneous warp points, it's of course not practical at all, for gameplay reasons. SE4 maps and movement are hugely abstracted, and a ship that could move even 100 sectors per turn would er, change the gameplay quite a bit.

PvK

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by oleg:
Even though Earth is 3rd planet, one can argue that it is two, not three sectors away from Sol -
Mercury can be modeled as sitting on "top" of star. Thus you can rescale your calculations by 2/3

That is worth noting. It would affect any sort of calculation of the various distances for each sector. But doesn't affect my calculations for the speed of light in sectors. Since my calculations are based on the distance of Pluto to the Sun, and I am of course assuming that Pluto is 6 sectors from the Sun.

Originally posted by PvK:
Actually, you quoted me, not Fryon. I wasn't even addressing Fryon in that discussion, but Graeme Dice, who was saying that SE4 started out with faster-than-light drives (i.e., speed 6 would be greater than light).

This is an interesting academic question, but as long as there is no interstellar movement without instantaneous warp points, it's of course not practical at all, for gameplay reasons. SE4 maps and movement are hugely abstracted, and a ship that could move even 100 sectors per turn would er, change the gameplay quite a bit.

PvK

Sory about the misquote. Fixed it.

Yes a ship that could move 100 sectors would affect the game play just a bit. Assuming of course that the warp points were still there. But a ship capable of 100, or even a 1000 for that matter, sectors per month movement would still take many years to travel between systems without the warp points.

Even Light speed aint all that fast on a galactic scale.

Geoschmo

[Slick]

If you want the answer to these and similar questions, try reading "The Physics of Star Trek" - see link below. Be forewarned that most of the discussions in the book show that it is impossible to do all the things you see in Star Trek. Since the arguments are based only on the current knowledge of physics, I like to believe that there is lots of undiscovered physics out there that not only makes it possible, but makes it feasible. It's a pretty good read.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...99854?v=glance

Slick

[Spoo]

If you agree that you can't go faster than the speed of light (excepting warp points), light speed would be 30. After all, in a simultaneous game ships can't move any faster than 30 sectors/turn.

[Suicide Junkie]

If you agree that you can't go faster than the speed of light, light speed would be 30.

That just means light speed is at least 30. If lightspeed was higher, we'd still agree that SE4 ships aren't capable of going at the speed of light.

[Andrés]

why 30? Aint 255 the max allowed mov?

[Suicide Junkie]

There are only 30 days in a simultaneous game month.
Ships can only move 30 in simultaneous games, no matter how mant MP they have.

If you are talking a modded sequential turn game, then the max would be at least 510 movement.

255 standard, plus 255 (or more) bonus movement, IIRC.