EVE General Discussion

Ohai

We all love Eve online, if we didn't, we wouldn't be here now would we?

But this isn't complaining about NeX, or vanity, or ship spinning or whatever, this is about Eve as an emulation of reality, and how it utterly fails to be that. I'm not sure if it actually attempted to do so, but yeah, Eve is set in space, you don't see Trees growing upside down or see floating houses. This is the same thing; how immersed am I in the setting?

I'd be willing to guess that most of you have at least a passing interest in astronomy & physics, given that you (Most likely) have Eve online, a game set in space, as your main MMO.

Feel free to comment on my mistakes, and fill it out where I missed something, I'm not exactly an authority on these things. Also, I would never advocate realism over gameplay.

Omissions

-Gravity; your ship flies the same speed receding or proceeding from a planet, when there should be a big difference in Delta-V needed.

-Vacuum physics; Eve online's ships handle like submarines more than spacecraft. It's as if there's an invisible medium, with the ships plowing through that.

-Multiple star systems; We never see any sort of double, triple or quadruple stars in a given system, there's always one solitary star.

-Alternative biochemistries aside from the familiar Telluric (Water solvent, carbon base, Oxygen-breathing) one. While these alternatives are unconfirmed, it would be more interesting as a game world to see these things.

These specified below in bold are technically in the game, but they have negligible effect beyond a very isolated case.
-Black Holes; You could argue Wormholes are black holes, but if they were even remotely similar, they would destroy the solar system they inhabit, and rip apart any visiting ships. (If Minmatar projectile guns can kill a ship, so can massive gravity)

-Sub-stellar objects; Think white dwarfs, brown dwarfs & neutron stars, perhaps even Wolf-Ryat stars or Magnetars.

-Stable wormholes

-Nebulae that aren't just cosmetic backdrop

-Volcanic planets (That are actually volcanic, as in, multiple supervolcanic calderas) , "Hot Jupiter" planets, the accompanying debris cloud from boiling atmospheres, Planets with water mantles, Rogue planets, Hothouse planets.....

-Planet compositions

-Moons that don't resemble Earth's moon; every single one I've seen is grey & bland)

-Planetary height maps in general space (I think there are height maps in close-zoom PI)

-Actual asteroid belts that orbit the entirety of the system.

Oversimplifications

-Asteroid belts defy all logic:

*Asteroids orbit hundreds of thousands of KM apart
*A belt of that size & spacing is actually physically impossible in such close proximity to a planet; the asteroids would Form a tenuous ring around the planet, or they would condense into a planetesmial beforehand (Before they ever orbited the planet)

-There is no compression of planets/moons from proximity to other large bodies (All planets in-game are almost perfect spheres, they have no noticeable oblong shape like Earth & other planets). This is really evident in a moon orbiting Rens IV; it is 50,000 KM distant form the planet (Next to nothing), is very small & has no distortion.

-There are only green plants on habitable planets, even around F-O class stars where they would be purple, or around G-M where they would be green through black. (The plants would deflect the harmful UV radiation from the F-O stars, making them bluer/purple, and those around G-M are darker to absorb more energy from the entire spectrum)

-Animals (Multicellular organisms in-game) from planets other than the Earth are edible, even though DNA Chirality, the base elements & other minor factors (Like Phosphorus over Arsenic) are ignored.

-Most planets have little in the way of axial tilt, although there are multiple exceptions

-Where do ships get their reactants for fuel?

Mistakes & Oversights

-Star systems have orbits that would be unstable in real life (Gas giants perturbing orbits of smaller ones, for instance)

-When at FTL speeds, the Blueshift & Redshift are only visible at "The end" of "The Warp Tunnel", when they should be visible (As Greenshift & Yellowshift) all the way to in front of the ship, since the space directly in front of the ship is still approaching extremely quickly, with the rear leaving equally quickly. (Simply put, the whole screen in front of your ship should be blindingly-bright blue, and behind you brilliant red)

-Also at FTL speeds, you fly through planets with no ill effects.

-Space stations (NPC ones, POS' & Customs offices) do not orbit at a geosynchronous orbit, they're just "wherever".

-Ships moving at FTL speeds would have their engines blow right through the hull & destroy the ship, since the initial acceleration of the engine unit into FTL would precede the rest of the ship. But I suppose the ships are built differently.

-"Fluid routers" make no sense, and the EPR experiment pretty much shows it's impossible to get coherent information through, since the particles are forced to be chaotic via the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.. (And I've read the wiki page on these routers).

-Ships, even though they're in space (Where there isn't any meaningful friction), keep their engines on when flying in a straight line. They also have no maneuvering jets, just their main engines, so it's impossible to change direction without turning a nozzle/exhaust in another direction (Which they don't).

That's my list for now, tell me what you think, and where I went wrong :3

QFT

We live in an area of space where the Higgs Field is extra thick and chunky.

Magnetars, wolf-rayet, black holes and a bunch of other stellar objects exist already. You wouldn't know that though on account of being a massive nub with virtually no experience of eve.

First..

A very large portion of what you have said above is just plain wrong.

Second.. (And the only thing I feel like responding to) I actually would very much like a semi realistic orbital mechanics flight system in this game. Most people I have talked to about this seem to be of the opinion that it would be to complicated and un-fun.

With the correct interface for managing it however, I think it could be just as intuitive as our current system of navigation. It would also add a HUGE amount of depth to games combat mechanics IMO.

It's called Fiction

We are dealing with a story involving wars many years in the future in another galaxy between immortal trans-human capsuleers. If that didn't already require a certain suspension of disbelief for immersion, you also forget that we are playing a game. Games should be fun. Most of us would rather that the designers focused more on the game elements than turning what is obviously a space opera into a pseudo-"hard sci-fi" setting.

Most sci-fi settings at least pay lip-service to science, in one fashion or another. But, tbh, if they pretty much threw that all out the window and went all E.E. Doc Smith on EVE, I wouldn't mind one bit. EVE is about the human epic, it's a human story, and space is simply the backdrop.

Please show me where IN REAL LIFE, I can sign up to get implants that will allow me to interface directly with a space-faring vessel of roughly the size of a supercarrier and control it with my mind.