An observation on Star Wars speeds

I was just watching the space battle scenes from SW and RoTJ when it suddenly struck me; those ships weren't flying more than 200 - 400 MPH (320 - 640 KPH) during the actual engagements. Unrealistic for space I suppose, but the dramatic effect was marvelous. Then I checked the common EoC speeds. Did anybody realize that these ships routinely travel at upwards of 2,000 MPH (3,200 KPH)! It's no wonder getting the Star Wars mod ships to fly right was such a pain. It also explains why you can't really see the other ships. With speeds like this, the engagement ranges are vast. And when you finally do get close enough to see another fighter, it's already passed you at the literal speed of a bullet.

Now before MajorTom gets all upset about the balancing issues that he spent months on, I'm not suggesting doing anything. This was just meant as an observation. And, I suppose, an explanation as to why we'll never have cinematic looking battles at close ranges with EoC at the current speeds.

It makes me laugh and think of all the people who always criticize Lucas for having his space fighters behave exactly like WW-II aircraft. Apparently he had enough foresight to realize how boring a realistic space fight would be, and instead opted for a more exciting dog-fight style approach. If these critics ever got a realistic space battle they'd probably be bored to death. Since at realistic space combat ranges nobody would ever see each other and the entire battle would take place as little blips on a scanner screen. Modern fighter combat already works this way. Which explains why you don't see a whole lot of fighter pilot movies anymore. It's just not that exciting.

Anyway, food for thought.

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It's one of the reasons that capital ships and stations in EOC look so small - you fly so fast even a 3km long station can be passed in a couple of secs. Try flying past a station with your throttle set very low and see how huge it looks!

-- Steve
Stephen Robertson
I-War series co-designer.

That's a really good point! I think a lot of the people who ocassionally complain that the EoC ships are too small (or think they're too small) don't realize just how fast they're going. (Considering how gigantic these ships actually are.)

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Originally posted by Second Chance


an explanation as to why we'll never have cinematic looking battles at close ranges with EoC at the current speeds.

In movies, you're a third person viewer and you can dynamically zoom in on a scene and use a focal length that's proportional to an objects speed.

With flux, you are in first person so you can't zoom dynamically dependent on speed. Visual zooming would distort distances and after all space is supposed to be big! You thus have to keep distances constant and "zoom" the speed.

Like I mentioned before in the other thread: I tried ships at lower speeds between 300 and 500m/sec. If the ships spawn 50 km apart it takes 1 1/2 hours to engage in battle. To fly past a little 5km asteroid takes 10 minutes.

I would love to reduce the ship speeds in our mod. That would be a lot better for the server performance, reduce lag enormously and give us much better, more consistent hit rates. The ships could spawn 5 km apart the whole map would only be 20 km in diameter (instead of 200) and the asteroid would only be 500m in size. The smaller models and textures would greatly improve graphic preformance too.

Unfortunatly we don't have any models for asteroids that small! A hollow asteroid or a single station would fill up the whole map.
Sure, we could scale the avatar sizes down, but we don't have the matching collision hulls. Without the proper models the question of re-sizing the maps to accomodate lower speeds is fully academic.


Iwar2 Multiplayer Fan Site

Originally posted by Stephen Robertson PS

It's one of the reasons that capital ships and stations in EOC look so small - you fly so fast even a 3km long station can be passed in a couple of secs. Try flying past a station with your throttle set very low and see how huge it looks!

-- Steve
Stephen Robertson
I-War series co-designer.

Speaking of huge:

Here's Shanes Spiff streaking past a station at the blinding speed of 50m/sec.








Iwar2 Multiplayer Fan Site

That really is a cool little model. [8D]

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