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Distance between planets?


Abyzmi

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Any idea on the distance between planets? Will the distance feel like planets are far away from each other, or will it be something stupid like No Man's Sky where you fly for 3 minutes and you're already at the next planet?

 

How is it going to work exactly? It says that there are a huge number of planets in the game, but will the be laid out in various solar systems with a heliocentric model or will it be more that you just fly into the distance and find a planet eventually?

I guess I prefer a more realistic model with a heliocentric orbit (or at least laid out like one even if they don't actually orbit), and vast distances between planets.

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So far, the running theory is that the further the distance, the faster it is to travel (IE: Going from one solar system to the next via stargate) but in a solar system, you are reduced to slower methods of travel. How slow, and how big the solar systems will be we don't know just yet.

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My bet would be that it would be heliocentric solar systems. The game to me seems to be heading to a mostly realistic interpretation of real life. The planets and moons might be a little smaller in comparison but hopefully the spacing between them would be scaled appropriately. If we look back to the teaser trailer we can see the two main planets situated close together, the main reason for this is mainly to show off the games main points. Just imagine the tidal forces between those two planets, both planets would have been destroyed a long time ago.

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probably going to be pretty close to scale. But we will have better engines in the game given that it is set in the future. Im kind of hoping that the devs dont tell us. I would love for it to be up to us to figure out how far the next planet is given that when the game first goes live no one will be flying to space atleast for awhile.

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  • 1 month later...

Hello everyone!

 

As far as I can tell, the distance between planets in a solar system will be much longer than in the recent trailers (JC Baille also said that in the god mode trailer).

Novaquark said that you will first have to unlock warp technology, because the distance will be too long to travel effectively with standard engines. It will probably take a long time (weeks or even months in real time) after the release to gather the necessary tech to reach other planets. The Stargates, that will be necessary to reach other solar systems - which will be even farther away, may actually not be implemented from day one.

One main reason for that is that they want to encourage players to settle and work together instead of quickly go their own ways and leave you with a mostly empty universe. Also, this is meant to make discovering new planets and systems feel like a real big achievement.

 

So I think we can expect really great distances.

 

About rotating planets and real orbits: somewhere in the Q&A (I think it was near Q&A 30 or so) Nyzaltar said, that they have 3 options for solar systems in mind, static planets with the sun only rotating in the skybox, only rotating planets and real orbits.

 

For now, it's only the skybox.

 

If they find a way to make a "sticky" planet atmosphere, so that ships in the atmosphere could move along and so remain static relative to the planet, rotating planets will be the solution they are aiming for.

 

Real orbits will most likely not make it into the game for several reasons.

Such a mechanic would require everything (asteroids, planets, player build ships and structures) to follow an orbit, otherwise static space stations could for example be run over by a planet.

Also it would make navigation much more difficult, as you would have to calculate where your destination-planet would be when you will arrive.

Just like it is a thing with real-life mars missions, distances between planets would change over time, making it more expensive (time and fuel) to get there in some times.

 

Like many other aspects of the game, this may all be subject to change.

 

Greetings

 

TheRealBeowulf

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My bet would be that it would be heliocentric solar systems. The game to me seems to be heading to a mostly realistic interpretation of real life. The planets and moons might be a little smaller in comparison but hopefully the spacing between them would be scaled appropriately. If we look back to the teaser trailer we can see the two main planets situated close together, the main reason for this is mainly to show off the games main points. Just imagine the tidal forces between those two planets, both planets would have been destroyed a long time ago.

 

Well 'scaled appropriately' is a wide definition.

 

Scale our universe down by a factor 100 (earth dia 12k - DU ~ 100) or even 1000, even FTL (lets say 20c) won't get you anywhere near the galactic center  which is some 25k light years away. So it would only be 250 LY in this model and you make that trip in 12,5 years - not cool.

 

If you want a vast galaxy, you can do it. There are estimated 20k stars within 100ly from the sun (so 1ly here - trip: 18 days). Which would be enough of course, but players would still only inhabit a fraction of one galaxy. You only get to know the direct neighbours of our sun. I think that this kind of model would suffice, because you just have to have the feeling of a vast, dangerous, enormous and living galaxy.

Travelling further will just not be possible, it would take (even with 20c) too long. Depends what they do with those probes though...

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30,000 years to get to the next system, over a year to get to the nearest planet - all dealbreakers for me unless there's plenty of other stuff to do in the game in the meantime... and my PET better be cute and good at what she... er... guys?

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With conventional engines (type: exhaust something) it's completely impossible as a whole, because c is the limit and fast as hell but in terms of traveling times to another star it's ridiculously slow. With time dilation and length contraction it's faster for the passenger, but still won't get you anywhere far. You would need 100.000 years to cross our galaxy and 25.000 to reach canis major (next dwarf galaxy).

You could do ftl travel (which is in-game too), but even with speeds above c, let's say 10.000c, you need 2,5 years to go to canis major, yay we're so fast! Let's go to andromeda...250 years.

On to m51 - 2500 years.

To the edge of observable universe 4,6million years - with 10000c.

 

 

I'd be surprised even when we someday be able to reach the next star.

When you introduce real orbital mechanics then good luck on hitting that planet in the first place and then braking for like 5 days so you don't get a nice slingshot out of that system again. Would be fun though, but I think most people won't be able to do it

 

It should be a long ride to the next planet, even with ftl. Space is supposed to be wide and huge. Even in a game it should be that way, because the scope of the universe is so hard to grasp. Transport that awesome feeling you sometimes get while looking at the stars to DU. Then it'll grand

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What if all the underlying "jump tech" is  just an extension of the Calabi-Yau manifold tech we're using for our storage packs. It's a logical extension from the fact we'll have jump gates - inter-system travel could be C-Y based as well - smaller engines, smaller power reqs, shorter jump distances.

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travel time is more important to a game than distance, imo. The next planet could be close (which is a great visual even if not realistic) but takes 20 minutes to get to with engines balanced at a slower speed, or a real Earth to Mars distance with engines scaled up.

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