Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I find it to be very odd that larger vessels are so much slower than smaller. Odd because the constraints on velocity on a planet, like Earth, do not exist in space. A ship in water has to cope with the drag of the water against its hull. The more surface area of the hull, the greater the drag, and the more power necessary to push the ship. The more power, the larger the engines and the more fuel they use. Which means you need a larger ship, which has a larger surface area in contact with the water. Eventually, its a case of diminishing returns, where any increase in the size of engines results in only a miniscule increase in speed.

But, in space, drag is eliminated. The main determination of engine size is how much inertia to overcome. You could put a Destroyer's engines in a Titan and the Titan would eventually get up to a velocity similar to the destroyer. Eventually. A very long eventuality, in fact. But larger ships also have larger engines. More thrust means more acceleration, not more velocity. Velocity is determined by the amount of thrust over a period of time. There are some issues with torque and such, so larger vessels would accelerate slower than smaller, but they could get up to the same speed.

And that's where my thoughts are at. An upper limit that is the same for all vessels. But different rates of acceleration depending on the mass of the vessel. And perhaps create a means by which pilots can change the engines in their vessels, though at a loss of other fixtures. Less cargo space, fewer hardpoints, small rigs, things like that.

WTB triage carrier that can go at 6k m/sec like my Ares. Or sieged dreadnoughts that go at 2k m/sec and do a "drive-by" of a POS.

Yet another example where realism must take a back seat to ensure game balance.

I think the fluff explained it as "the warp drives cause local gravity fields to have a more adverse effect than normal" etc. etc, which causes it to be similar to flying in a body of water, or as a previous post so eloquently said, we're playing submarines online.

black ops cloaked would be quite fun as well.



But this basically. it be return of nano, the BS edition (no pun intended).

What about the idea, the big ships are so slow cause if f.e. a BS drive with 6 km/s it needs the orbit of a planet to do a swing-by manoeuvre, for a simple change of directions...

But maybe the devs were just to much influenced by Star Wars, where the Mon Calamari cruisers and star destroyer are quit lame, unlike a Corellian frigate or fighters.

EVE does not use rocket propulsion as we think of it.


The ships are always stationary, and the universe is moved around them. This is why when you shut your drives down, your ship coasts to a stop. In a sense we are overcoming drag on larger ships, because the universe is increasingly resistant to being moved around a larger mass. It's also very strechy, which is why multiple ships can be going in all directions at the same time, space is putty in the hands of our drive engineers.