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[Plasmodium]

Hey guys,

So I was thinking about ship speed limits and how it doesn't really make sense in space. I also feel like it makes most ships, even destroyer-sized ones feel very slow. It's especially annoying when trying to get to the other size of the battlefield or trying to chase down remaining ships.
Furthermore, it feels weird when your ship loses speed after maneuvering jets or burn drive expire.

My idea was to remove the speed cap to make combat more dynamic (don't get me wrong it's already a blast ^^) and more realistic, but making going over the previous ship speed cap either generating flux (the faster you go, the more energy you need to accelerate) or having diminishing returns on acceleration to keep it balanced and to prevent ships flying around at crazy speeds. Additionnal speed due to burn drive, maneuvering jets and co should probably be kept as long as you don't accelerate in another direction.

Ship with garbage acceleration/maneuvering will still feel sluggish to fly, but at least they would go faster than 10 km/h 

I'm not sure how much work that would represent, how hard it would be to balance or if it is even feasible or fun at all, I just thought it was an interesting idea to discuss. Maybe I just watched The Expanse too much lately ^^

[devurandom]

Try setting combatSpeedMult to 2f in Settings.json

[sector_terror]

I disagree, I find the speed by default just fine. The only "issue" is capitals taking a while to get to the front when I'm the pilot, but that's perfectly balanced and it's the price I pay for being the main battle tank that waltz in and solos an entire front line. I'm also not sure how it be more or less "realistic" here, or why that's something to care about when we're in sci-fi with radically different naval technology and design, or why it should change the balance design.

[Tartiflette]

The issue with that idea is that it's a bottomless pit. First you want uncapped speed, then you need a larger battle area to have space to maneuver (because you have to turn backward to slow down more efficiently), then you need unlimited weapon range to deal with the increased distances, then you need 3D space because otherwise you can't really dodge projectiles or other ramming ships, and we are now way past the point where it's just a different game with different rules.

[Kakroom]

then you need 3D space

That... seems like kind of a jump. All the previous things you listed are pretty compatible with the game as it's presented now.

Not that I have any particular preference for them. The one thing among everything mentioned in this thread that I'd be really interested in is uncapped weapon ranges, just because projectiles disappearing into the void after an arbitrary number of miles... bothers. Otherwise I accept that the game tends to draw from the Star Trek school of "British Navy but in space" with slow-moving hulks of Gun lining up broadsides and such.

[Plasmodium]

I'm also not sure how it be more or less "realistic" here, or why that's something to care about when we're in sci-fi with radically different naval technology and design, or why it should change the balance design.

It might have been poorly worded but realism isn't the main point for me, though I think it's a nice added bonus to have a bit more Newtonian physics. I think hard speed caps are a bit frustrating and it's sometimes hard to read whether you're going at full speed or not and in which direction. You keep pressing W (or whichever direction key), your engines light up but nothing happens cause you're already at max speed. Your burn drive expires and your ship miraculously slows down. This is what bothers me the most.

The issue with that idea is that it's a bottomless pit. First you want uncapped speed, then you need a larger battle area to have space to maneuver (because you have to turn backward to slow down more efficiently), then you need unlimited weapon range to deal with the increased distances, then you need 3D space because otherwise you can't really dodge projectiles or other ramming ships, and we are now way past the point where it's just a different game with different rules.

Hmm I disagree. The goal isn't to make drastic gameplay changes and go full Star Citizen. For me it's mostly about changing a hard speed cap to a soft speed cap so that you can still accelerate without going three times as fast as before, thus keeping the gameplay the same. Of course that might require tweaking the numbers. I think the map is already big enough to account for such changes. As for weapons range, I think unlimited range could have a big impact performance wise as there would be a lot more projectiles on and off screen, so I would be fine with keeping things as it is.

I understand if most people are fine with it as it is, it's personnally one of my only pet peeves with the game and thought it was interesting to discuss. Sorry if it's unclear, not a native English speaker so ideas are sometimes a bit hard to convey properly ^^

[intrinsic_parity]

I think hard speed caps are a bit frustrating and it's sometimes hard to read whether you're going at full speed or not and in which direction.

This is not because of the hard speed cap. It's because there are no static references to judge your speed against. I think the problem could be even worse if higher speeds were allowed.

Also, there's no way the gameplay could stay the same with this change. The game is balanced around the range of speeds that ships can achieve. Projectile speeds and ranges, map sizes, ship dimensions etc. are all balanced around this range of speeds. If ships are allowed to exceed those speeds by any significant margin, then all of that balance is wrong, and combat doesn't work (you can't hit anything because it's always out of range and moving too fast, everything is ping-ponging around the map etc.). Even 2x the current speed would be pretty drastic, all of a sudden your SO frigates are going 400+ u/s.

Consider that currently many ships can accelerate to top speed in only 1-2 seconds (or less), then if there is no speed cap, ships can reach 2-3 times the current max speed in 2-6 seconds. I don't really see how you can prevent ships from going 3+ times their current top speeds... A flux generation mechanic would mean you would have lots of overloaded ships going 3x their current top speed (lol). Acceleration with 'diminishing returns just means it takes you 10 seconds instead of 6 to get to 3x the current top speed. If the diminishing returns were actually drastic enough to prevent your speed from exceeding current top speeds, then it would be indistinguishable from a speed cap, you would just approach the sudo-top speed more sluggishly. I think you would need to drastically decrease current acceleration values to have any chance of keeping average ship speeds in the current range, which is the opposite of the effect you want, I think.