Another case where fiction is more fun than realism. Is there not a "Sound Effects" slider or some other sound option of this type? (I'm actually asking. I really don't know.)
+1 If this takes >10 minutes to add.
-1 If it takes longer.
Basically this is all I'm asking for -- an option. I imagine in practice it would actually be extremely easy to add, although 10 minutes to add any feature in a modern programming project is a pipe dream. ;-)
I'd estimate about 15-60 minutes to implement the feature that only produces the sounds heard by your current command ship, plus 30-120 minutes testing -- then adding a hull outfit to drop back to the existing behaviour when realism mode is enabled would probably be only on the order of a couple of minutes. In terms of comparison to the industry, however, that's hugely on the low side (the rule of thumb for any given minor non-content feature is 1-4 hours to implement and twice as much time for testing). Obviously I've never seen Stargazer's source code so I'm not sure how elegant it is and how many things are hard-coded, which would heavily influence the implementation time.
Why remove sounds? Sure, it's unrealistic, but it's science fiction. We have guns that shoot black holes for gods sake.
Firefly. It is made of awesome. It does not simulate sounds in space. It is also science fiction. ;-)
They relaxed this a bit for Serenity (although this is because the scenes involving sounds were supposedly in the upper atmosphere), but if Firefly does it, it is pure and holy and incontrovertible and all unbelievers must be smote. ;-)
I think of Starfarer more as the simulation of a command interface than of actual space, the sounds are converted sensor output, like you said in your third paragraph. No sounds would not add realism but would only be detrimental for the atmosphere.
I disagree! A lot of emphasis in Starfarer seems to be to simulate your officers as a command crew. You can transfer your crew from ship to ship to take direct control, but otherwise you are a physical avatar, and that will only become more evident as the game progresses and it moves away from being a Gratuitous Space Battles and becomes more of a Starfury.