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More realistic lasers or lore explanation needed for current ones.

Author
Verity Sovereign
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#21 - 2012-04-18 20:40:58 UTC
"And any battle above 600,000 KM should result in a stalemate with no one hitting each other. With intelligent enough juking, even a laser couldn't hit a target moving quick enough."

That is just two light seconds, not enough time to dodge, and a ship will run out of propellant if we are being realistic.
any thruster producing over 0.1g (and thats still not enough to dodge in 2 seconds when when considering ships of the size in EVE), is going to burn through propellant like crazy.

But to the more general point, with Juking and battle at distances measured in light-time, its not a stalemate, its a matter of endurance.
One's heat sink, power output, and propellant must be taken into account - a higher power output allows you to do more with the propellant you have, but obviously a higher power output means your ship will melt sooner, there is no way in hell that they will radiate enough heat (via blackbody radiation) throughout the course of the battle to have much of an effect - even victorious with no damage, a ship would need a long time to recover (to cool down, and then refill its propellant tanks)

Eve is so far gone from what space combat in space would really be like, that threads like this are laughable.

Lasers would PWN
Warp wouldn't exist
Shields wouldn't exist
Cloaks wouldn't exist
There'd be no maximum velocity (for practical purposes) on standard engines
All ships would require fuel/propellant
The other ship would be a pixel at best when in combat, due to the ranges involved.
Any stationary (ie proceeding along a predictable path, such as an orbit) structure would be easy as heck to kill.

Is this how you want EVE?
Thutmose I
Rattium Incorporated
#22 - 2012-04-19 23:48:29 UTC
Verity Sovereign wrote:
"And any battle above 600,000 KM should result in a stalemate with no one hitting each other. With intelligent enough juking, even a laser couldn't hit a target moving quick enough."

That is just two light seconds, not enough time to dodge, and a ship will run out of propellant if we are being realistic.
any thruster producing over 0.1g (and thats still not enough to dodge in 2 seconds when when considering ships of the size in EVE), is going to burn through propellant like crazy.

But to the more general point, with Juking and battle at distances measured in light-time, its not a stalemate, its a matter of endurance.
One's heat sink, power output, and propellant must be taken into account - a higher power output allows you to do more with the propellant you have, but obviously a higher power output means your ship will melt sooner, there is no way in hell that they will radiate enough heat (via blackbody radiation) throughout the course of the battle to have much of an effect - even victorious with no damage, a ship would need a long time to recover (to cool down, and then refill its propellant tanks)

Eve is so far gone from what space combat in space would really be like, that threads like this are laughable.

Lasers would PWN
Warp wouldn't exist
Shields wouldn't exist
Cloaks wouldn't exist
There'd be no maximum velocity (for practical purposes) on standard engines
All ships would require fuel/propellant
The other ship would be a pixel at best when in combat, due to the ranges involved.
Any stationary (ie proceeding along a predictable path, such as an orbit) structure would be easy as heck to kill.

Is this how you want EVE?


About the warp drives: Quantum gravity may change that.

About the shields: they are explained as a swarm of nanites.

about the cloaks: Quantum gravity may change that (for how eve cloaks work) , nanotech may change that (for material cloaking)

about the max velocity: explained by the warp drives.
Thutmose I
Rattium Incorporated
#23 - 2012-04-19 23:50:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Thutmose I
Verity Sovereign wrote:
A railgun is never going to shoot a projectile anywhere close to C,
We can be very generous and say 0.1C (an order of magnitude below C, but still far far far beyond what an explosively propelled projectile could attain), but then at 1 light hour away, they will see the IR signature of the railgun firing, and have 9 hours to avoid it.

Particle beams could get much closer to the speed of light, but the ability to focus one at such distances is dubious at best.

"for any lower wavelength your mirror device would not be efficient enough to properly focus the beam, and would vaporize itself."

Pure BS.
1) you don't need a mirror
2) Mirrors work just fine all the way past visible, which is orders of magnitude smaller than a microwave wavelength.

"The primary advantage of an FEL is not the high frequency, it is ability to generate high ENERGY beams with variable frequency."

I'm going to call BS on this, or ask for clarification as well. Variable frequency is a large benefit, but then shouldn't you be arguing we dont need frequency crystals at all? (using such crystals would seem to preclude EVE lasers being FEL based)
High energy beams has nothing to do with FELs, many other types of lasers can match the outputs

And the ability to vary frequency is not connected to output, so I don't see why your statement attempts to link them


1) mirror would be for better aiming at moving targets

2) our current mirrors are not efficient enough to work for the energy of the beam needed to damage the ships, unless you can find me a link with a 99.999999% effective mirror.
Thutmose I
Rattium Incorporated
#24 - 2012-04-20 01:14:41 UTC  |  Edited by: Thutmose I
double post somehow
Aleron Selwyn
Rattium Incorporated
#25 - 2012-04-20 01:37:52 UTC
Verity Sovereign wrote:

Pure BS.
1) you don't need a mirror
2) Mirrors work just fine all the way past visible, which is orders of magnitude smaller than a microwave wavelength.


You are quite right about the fact that you do not need mirrors to create a laser; however, a laser with no mirrors would have to either have a very high gain medium or just be physically very long. (Such a laser is called superradiant.)

In this case, the whole point of building a superradiant laser is to avoid dissipating any power in the laser itself. As I will show in a minute, even the most minute amount of power dissipated in a laser of the power levels that EVE deals with will probably damage something.

There are very few gain media that work in the visible-light spectrum that would not be prohibitively long if constructed to be superradiant, due to the low gain. A nitrogen laser that emits ultraviolet light can be superradiant, with a long enough laser cavity. The best option by far, however, is to use an FEL. An FEL can have enough gain to be superradiant without mirrors, and the gain medium is nearly a vacuum, so there is no partially absorptive elements in the laser cavity at all. In fact, an FEL should only create a beam going in one direction, avoiding a weaker backwards beam, which most other types of lasers would have a problem with.

As for creating mirrors that would work in the visible-light laser at these power levels: even the tiniest bit of absorption will almost definitely damage the mirror.

Let's assume that we are working with dielectric mirrors, which are the highest reflectivity type of mirror that we have yet managed to create. Such mirrors work by layering materials with different refractive indices so that there is some light reflected at the boundaries between the two materials. The layers are spaced in such a way so that the reflected light constructively interferes with the light reflected from all of the other layers.

Assume that we have a mirror that is 99.999% reflective. Say we are working with a Dual Light Pulse Laser. This laser takes 2.67 GJ per shot. Let's pretend that the laser is 100% efficient at converting energy in the capacitor to energy in the form of light, so no heat comes from laser inefficiency. The mirror will absorb 26.7 KJ of energy per shot. For a 500 gram mirror made of silicon dioxide, this would be a temperature change of about 50 kelvin - every 2.7 seconds. I'm not going to do the math for this part. but that is going to damage the mirror. Silicon dioxide, or whatever similar substance the mirror is made of, is not going to conduct heat away fast enough not to be damaged, and you can't go sticking metal rods into the center of the mirror to conduct heat away either.

Also, I am not accounting for intracavity flux here. The fact that the light is bouncing between two mirrors means that the amount of light inside this cavity is much higher than the beam exiting the laser. This means that a proportionally higher amount of energy will be absorbed by the mirrors and by whatever the gain medium is itself.

This is for one of the lowest power lasers in EVE.

Verity Sovereign wrote:

"The primary advantage of an FEL is not the high frequency, it is ability to generate high ENERGY beams with variable frequency."

I'm going to call BS on this, or ask for clarification as well. Variable frequency is a large benefit, but then shouldn't you be arguing we dont need frequency crystals at all? (using such crystals would seem to preclude EVE lasers being FEL based)
High energy beams has nothing to do with FELs, many other types of lasers can match the outputs

And the ability to vary frequency is not connected to output, so I don't see why your statement attempts to link them


High energy beams definitely have something to do with FELs. FELs are the only type of laser with a gain high enough not to be prohibitively long AND low enough light absorption by the intracavity elements to not be damaged by repeated high-energy firing.

The OP is arguing that we don't need frequency crystals:
Thutmose I wrote:

4) instead of Frequency crystals, use undulators, or some other name for them.


TL;DR: any laser type other than FELs will damage components of the laser at these power levels, even for the lowest power lasers in EVE.
Verity Sovereign
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#26 - 2012-04-20 14:19:01 UTC  |  Edited by: Verity Sovereign
A 500 gram mirror?
For 2.67 GJ?
Lulz?
Does it really matter what wavelength you'd be using?
Not to mention that Mirrors will have that heat generated only at the very surface (your lens may be 500 grams but the 5 grams on the very surface get vaporized), whereas lens will have the waste heat dumped throughout the thickness of the lens

Why are we even talking about the lens/mirrors, when much more waste heat will be generated by generating the laser in the first place - the mirrors/lenses are not the major source of waste energy.

Considering we have ships using 1400mm artillery (look how f*ing big a 120mm cannon is IRL - Battleships IRL never exceeded 500mm guns, and EVE ships use 800mm machine guns)

I'm thinking of lenses several meters in diameter, as a realistic laser weapon on a realistic combat ship.
You need a wide focusing array for 2 reasons
1) is becuase of the effect of diffraction
2) is because the energy needs to be dispersed enough at the point of origin that it doesn't damage the weapon.
ie with a 30 meter lens/mirror, the energy is distributed along 15^2* pi = 702 square meters.

If you can focus that to a 10 cm spot, then all that energy is going to be dumped in 0.1^2*pi = 0.03 sq meters

At the very least, small frigates should have 1-2 meter lenses/mirrors, and they should be focusing them down to spots of centimeters or less.

Vaporize target, lens/mirror survives.

Now with very high frequency light, a lens is out of the question, and instead you'll be using grazing incidence mirrors - which will have a much much larger surface area than the area of the aperture.

FELs would be the best option, for sure. EVE isn't very realistic in the use of frequency crystals, I don't think you can get frequency doubling crystals to get you any wavelength higher than UV - and you are still going to have a lot or IR or lower light being put out, which will basically be wasted because its not focused (and if you tried to filter this out, your filters would melt)

I tend not to think of units in EVE as being real, ie an eve "Gigajoule" is not an SI "gigajoule" - the same goes for the mm's of the cannons. Explosive projectile weapons just don't scale up like that. 1400mm guns are ridiculous


All the other weapon systems have similar problems with heat - they won't achieve anywhere near the efficiency you'd get with light transmission from a mirror.
The arcing on the railguns....
125mm autocannons? lol
Gallente fire anti-matter, which should be 10's of thousands of times more powerful than a nuclear warhead of the same size, yet, Winmatar Fusion ammo is comparable in damage.

EVE and realism don't go together.

If we had realistic lasers in EVE, there'd be no frequency crystals, we'd be using soft (or perhaps hard) X rays, focused via grazing incidence lasers or diffraction gratings, with aperatures as wide as you can make them and still fit them on the ship, which would extend their ranges into light seconds, to even several light hours for the larger weapons.

Cloaks wouldn't work as it would be impossible to hide their blackbody radiation. If you could stop blackbody radiation, the ship would heat up until it melted itself.


And btw, "quantum gravity" is an appeal to ignorance/technobabble.
Its not valid to argue that because we can't say with 100% absolute certainty that something is impossible, that it is therefore realistic

And when I say max velocity, its not explained by warp drives.... why does my interceptor stop accelerating at under 500 m/s
Ships should be able to continuously accelerate (until they are approaching relativistic speeds).
Thutmose I
Rattium Incorporated
#27 - 2012-04-20 21:18:50 UTC
Verity Sovereign wrote:

A 500 gram mirror?
For 2.67 GJ?


This is the reflecting volume. your 700 square meter mirrors (grazing incidence mirrors included) would have about this mass as well, as for your wavelengths, the reflecting depth would be a few microns.

Verity Sovereign wrote:

Why are we even talking about the lens/mirrors, when much more waste heat will be generated by generating the laser in the first place - the mirrors/lenses are not the major source of waste energy.


the point of an FEL was that the internal waste heat can be more easily routed to a heat sink, and would be much lower than any other laser, i believe aleron mentioned that, please read posts properly before responding.

Verity Sovereign wrote:

Now with very high frequency light, a lens is out of the question, and instead you'll be using grazing incidence mirrors - which will have a much much larger surface area than the area of the aperture.


it is not surface area that matters, it is volume. for very low frequency light (microwaves) you can make much more efficient lenses/mirrors. your grazing incidence mirror, is a type of the dielectric mirrors which aleron mentioned.

Verity Sovereign wrote:

The arcing on the railguns....
125mm autocannons? lol
Gallente fire anti-matter, which should be 10's of thousands of times more powerful than a nuclear warhead of the same size, yet, Winmatar Fusion ammo is comparable in damage.


Red herrings, but anyway: Railguns would not need to be as high energy as the lasers, as much harder to design armor to resist them, the energy would be at max, an order of magnitude or two higher than current ones, which work well up to about 30MJ, the arcing could be solved by changing rail materials, or using fluid/arc rails.
Antimatter has containment issues, so most of the mass of the round would be containment. assuming the Fusion rounds are just thermonuclear warheads say a 10MT warhead, then they would get about the same energy as 465 grams of antimatter, which would be very very hard to store in the sizes of the rounds used in eve.

Verity Sovereign wrote:

Explosive projectile weapons just don't scale up like that. 1400mm guns are ridiculous


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav here is a 800mm gun, which is getting close, and this was made in WWII, so we could make larger now, let alone in a few thousand years.

hmm seems ive used up quote limit, so no more proper quotes.

if EVE and realism do not go together, why are there lore explanations for almost all of the science in the game? those indicate that there is supposed to be a large amount of realism.

Cloaking would work until you overheat, which if you had a large heat capacity material to soak up the heat, would solve that problem temporarily, say for 24h or so, i see no problems there. this heat issue also explains the no online modules while cloaked rule.

anyone who knows anything about quantum field theory would understand why a quantum theory of gravity would allow for warp drives, but i will explain, as you do not seem to, as you refer to it as technobabble.

a quantum theory of gravity would allow for gravitons to be produced simply by making the energy and spin states available, in a similar way that modern colliders work. This would allow for a conversion of electricity into gravity, which would result in much much larger gravitational fields than masses do, due to the massive difference in the strengths of the involved forces.

the max velocity of you ship is explained by the warp drives, as a drag on the background gravitational field, similar to the effects on a maglev train moving at low speeds. This also explains the speed difference between a MWD and a AB

Please stop posting ignorant responses. some of your points about lasers are good, but the rest....
Jack Egivand
Rattium Incorporated
#28 - 2012-04-20 22:00:46 UTC
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0410022
^quantum gravity production mechanism, using superconductor junction between high temp cupric and low temp metallic superconductor spin state transition.
Verity Sovereign
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#29 - 2012-04-21 11:48:24 UTC  |  Edited by: Verity Sovereign
Quote:
This is the reflecting volume. your 700 square meter mirrors (grazing incidence mirrors included) would have about this mass as well, as for your wavelengths, the reflecting depth would be a few microns.

But in between shots, the heat will diffuse much more than a few microns. Surface area affects cooling
The total mass of the mirrors, and the surface area, are very important for rate of fire

For what its worth, the vert high energy lasers used in fusion experiments today are IR lasers (or IR-> UV).
There is no need to go down to microwaves, and doing so kills your range - you'd need to jack up your power output orders of magnitude to get the same range, negating any gains from going from something like 99% efficiency, to 99.9% efficiency

Quote:
it is not surface area that matters, it is volume.

Surface area is very important - both for heat dissipation, and for ensuring the energy is dispersed at the source, and not concentrated to destructive levels

Quote:
Antimatter has containment issues, so most of the mass of the round would be containment. assuming the Fusion rounds are just thermonuclear warheads say a 10MT warhead, then they would get about the same energy as 465 grams of antimatter, which would be very very hard to store in the sizes of the rounds used in eve.

If they can store plasma indefinitely, they can store antimatter in very similar ways. The mass of the antimatter should be about the same as any other plasma round - speaking of which, its very unrealistic to have plasma shells or plasma weapons, the mass of the plasma would simply be too low - unless we are shooting it at relatavistic velocities, in which case, we'd call it a particle beam, and in either case, projectile guns shooting a canister of plasma would be a joke.


Quote:
Schwerer_Gustav here is a 800mm gun, which is getting close, and this was made in WWII, so we could make larger now, let alone in a few thousand years.

Guns are very much a mature technology, don't expect much improvement. Notice that gun is 37meters long to shoot a projectile 0.8m wide. A 1400mm gun would be 5 times that size...
Speaking of which, if 1 unit of ammo represents several autocannon rounds (one for each barrel?), and each autocannon round has an 800mm diameter, and for proper penetration, we can assume its longer than it is wide, well, just 1 round would be over half a cubic meter in volume.
For a 1400mm round, well lets just assume it fires a sphere (though it would be better approximated by a cylinder with a height that is twice the width) 4/3 pi* r^3 = 1.43 cubic meters, according to EVE, its just 0.025 cubic meters...
See what I mean about eve units not being the same as ours? (indeed, it seems even the prefixes for mili/mega/giga must not mean the same thing)

Quote:
anyone who knows anything about quantum field theory would understand why a quantum theory of gravity would allow for warp drives, but i will explain, as you do not seem to, as you refer to it as technobabble.


a quantum theory of gravity would allow for gravitons to be produced simply by making the energy and spin states available, in a similar way that modern colliders work. This would allow for a conversion of electricity into gravity, which would result in much much larger gravitational fields than masses do, due to the massive difference in the strengths of the involved forces.

the max velocity of you ship is explained by the warp drives, as a drag on the background gravitational field, similar to the effects on a maglev train moving at low speeds. This also explains the speed difference between a MWD and a AB

Please stop posting ignorant responses. some of your points about lasers are good, but the rest....[/quote]
Right.... please tell me how gravity waves, which travel at the speed of light (this has been experimentally verified), are going to lead to FTL, as the warp drive is?

Your "drag" on gravity fields is BS, and even if it weren't, that would imply that max ship velocity should vary depending on how close to a star/planet you are. Why would it even have any effect when the warp drive is not active.

Shields are a swarm of nanites? why not a swarm of faries? they both have the same explanatory power.

Please stop posting ignorant responses. none of your points about lasers are good, except that EVE should be using FEL lasers
Duchess Starbuckington
Doomheim
#30 - 2012-04-21 16:02:40 UTC
Stop trying to fix what isn't broken. Lasers are fine. If you want realism, you're playing the wrong game.
Aversun
Systems Federation
#31 - 2012-04-21 23:35:46 UTC
"Ah yes, more realistic Lasers, we dismissed that claim"
Dude, not sure how much more you could flog this horse before its a meat flavored slushee on the floor
Thutmose I
Rattium Incorporated
#32 - 2012-04-21 23:44:20 UTC  |  Edited by: Thutmose I
Verity Sovereign wrote:
Right.... please tell me how gravity waves, which travel at the speed of light (this has been experimentally verified), are going to lead to FTL, as the warp drive is?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive like this, as the eve lore states, with some caldari scientist solving some of the difficulties mentioned, quantum gravity solves the energy requirement issues.

please link this experiment about the gravity waves? when I last talked to the guy in charge of LISA (early 2011), they had not found any (hence the need for LISA), so this experimental confirmation must have been in the last year.

They do theoretically go at c.
Thutmose I
Rattium Incorporated
#33 - 2012-04-21 23:46:15 UTC
Aversun wrote:
"Ah yes, more realistic Lasers, we dismissed that claim"
Dude, not sure how much more you could flog this horse before its a meat flavored slushee on the floor


would probably be going more smoothly if the trolls did not keep throwing random other things for me to explain... as for the lasers, i was hoping that someone would have ideas on how to make edits to the equations to make them have almost identical stats to present, but allow for a lore explanation.
Thutmose I
Rattium Incorporated
#34 - 2012-04-21 23:47:48 UTC
Duchess Starbuckington wrote:
Stop trying to fix what isn't broken. Lasers are fine. If you want realism, you're playing the wrong game.


If EVE is not meant have realism, then why does most of the ingame science have some sorta lore explanation, and why do the graphics try to go for realism?
Duchess Starbuckington
Doomheim
#35 - 2012-04-22 00:10:58 UTC  |  Edited by: Duchess Starbuckington
Quote:
why does most of the ingame science have some sorta lore explanation

Only the cloning technology really. The rest is either not mentioned or total fail.

Quote:
and why do the graphics try to go for realism?

... What?
Are you serious?
Have you never seen a Tempest? A Moa? A Blackbird? I could go on for a very long time, but TL:DR: it's a very, very short list of Eve ship hulls that would even fly straight, let alone make any kind of sense.

Frankly I'm amazed the Tempest can even make a sharp turn without bits snapping off, let alone endure actual combat.
Thutmose I
Rattium Incorporated
#36 - 2012-04-22 00:15:27 UTC
Duchess Starbuckington wrote:

Only the cloning technology really. The rest is either not mentioned or total fail.

Quote:
and why do the graphics try to go for realism?

... What?
Are you serious?
Have you never seen a Tempest? A Moa? A Blackbird? I could go on for a very long time, but TL:DR: it's a very, very short list of Eve ship hulls that would even fly straight, let alone make any kind of sense.

Frankly I'm amazed the Tempest can even make a sharp turn without bits snapping off, let alone endure actual combat.


They at least make an attempt to explain most things

As for the ships, no EXTERNAL drag in EVE so they would fly, the drag is internal, centered on the warp drive. Some ships with very lopsided engines i agree are rather silly, but most would work, just not optimally (can be explained by location of the warp drive).
Duchess Starbuckington
Doomheim
#37 - 2012-04-22 08:40:52 UTC
Quote:
They at least make an attempt to explain most things

For everything they explain, there are another ten things that make no sense whatsoever.
The overriding principle is pretty simple: Gamplay comes first. And in that respect lasers are just fine where they are, so do please stop trying to **** with them because they happen to be the realism aspect that bugs you.

One of my favorite logical WTFs isn't actually a scientific one, it's stations allowing any random pod pilot there is to store enough antimatter in their hangers to knock a good sized hole in a planet.
But hey, if they didn't it would break the game. Simple really.

Quote:
As for the ships, no EXTERNAL drag in EVE so they would fly, the drag is internal, centered on the warp drive. Some ships with very lopsided engines i agree are rather silly, but most would work, just not optimally (can be explained by location of the warp drive).


It's not just the drag either, seriously take a look at a Tempest some time. This is a ship still in service with the republic military - see just how little holds it together in places (for example that bottom engine, and the "bridge"-like section at the front).
The fact it can fly at all is a minor miracle when it's that structurally unsound, but act as a frontline warship?

I'm no engineer, but even to me that one is a glaring example of "... guys, WTF" design, but I'd much rather have current EVE where it exists to hyperrealistic where it doesn't.
Thutmose I
Rattium Incorporated
#38 - 2012-04-22 08:50:28 UTC
Duchess Starbuckington wrote:

For everything they explain, there are another ten things that make no sense whatsoever.
The overriding principle is pretty simple: Gamplay comes first. And in that respect lasers are just fine where they are, so do please stop trying to **** with them because they happen to be the realism aspect that bugs you.

One of my favorite logical WTFs isn't actually a scientific one, it's stations allowing any random pod pilot there is to store enough antimatter in their hangers to knock a good sized hole in a planet.
But hey, if they didn't it would break the game. Simple really.

It's not just the drag either, seriously take a look at a Tempest some time. This is a ship still in service with the republic military - see just how little holds it together in places (for example that bottom engine, and the "bridge"-like section at the front).
The fact it can fly at all is a minor miracle when it's that structurally unsound, but act as a frontline warship?

I'm no engineer, but even to me that one is a glaring example of "... guys, WTF" design, but I'd much rather have current EVE where it exists to hyperrealistic where it doesn't.


The amount of energy you can store in the fusion ammo is greater, based on my argument earlier. The stations may store your ammo in such a way that it does not have a chance to explode, so doesn't matter what you have in it, i would worry more about some of the other goods they let you store, like the various forms of contraband.

I did agree with you that the construction of some of the ships is a bit off, but they have been known to change that, look at the scorpion, as for the construction, depending on the metals used, it might hold together, and would be cheaper to build, and that empty space makes it harder to hit.
Duchess Starbuckington
Doomheim
#39 - 2012-04-22 11:28:06 UTC
Quote:
The stations may store your ammo in such a way that it does not have a chance to explode, so doesn't matter what you have in it

All it takes is one stupid or malevolent person with a cargohold of antimatter/fusion/pony ammo and said station, (civilians and all) is drifting wreckage. But again however little sense it makes, things are the way they are to make the game work.

Likewise, lasers are how they are not because that's how they really behave but because that's how they work from a gameplay perspective. Again, why fix what isn't broken?

Not to mention given the hilariously overpowered state of projectiles right now, a rework of lasers would be an utter waste of time that could be better spent bringing Winmatar back into line.
Verity Sovereign
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#40 - 2012-04-22 12:25:02 UTC
Your wikipedia sci-fi drive does nothing to show that the drive would actually work, the idea is old, before specilation on how fast spacetime can be distorted.
Your warp bubble cannot be made to travel faster than the speed of light. It might allow for ships to go the speed of light, or at least near to it, without using obscene amounts of propellant (approaching infinity)
Gravity moves at the speed of light: http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2001-4/
(of course, its an indirect measurement)

This "drag on the warp core" thing is a stupid argument meant to reconcile EVEs unrealistic max non-warp speeds. Yet you want realism when you are going out of your way to justify non-realism?

Drag doesn't have anything to do with it anyway.
Its about center of mass. If the center of thrust doesn't go through the center of mass, there will be a torque, and the ship will spin.

Being in a vacuum or microgravity environment has nothing to do with this.


EVE is not realistic at all.