Glacial (physical) pace ...

[vorpal+5 (OP)]

Hey,

I appreciate a lot my current setting with 20% research and survey. Some might say it is not enough and I know some of you play at 10%, but hey, I find it slow enough 

Anyway ... I was thinking of an alternate setting. That would involve a bit of DB editing. Divide by 10 all power output of all engines, to slow down ships by a factor of 10! Because we know Steve has been quite generous in speed for spaceships, and no way Nuclear Thermal Engine or even Fusion would reach such high speed (2000 to 4000 km/s, and no acceleration needed !!). So ... what would be the 'rippling' consequences of having atrociously long travel time? 

3 years to reach Neptune ... It means a lot of fuel and expanded luxury crew quarters ... Would it change Aurora completely, making it not even viable? I'm not too sure. Any idea or thoughts? Perhaps that's too much.

[Gyrfalcon]

At low (conventional) tech levels, its possible you won't be able to reach a planet any longer - if the planet moves 'out of range' in the 5s pulse from the ship, it might not be able to move to orbit. You'd certainly have to plan head on approaches, otherwise you'd see the planet swing by majestically on its orbital path while your slow as molasses ship flounders behind.

[nuclearslurpee]

Obviously game pace would be slower, but a significant knock-on effect would be on missile combat. At 0.1x engine speeds it takes 10x as long to close the range meaning you can fire a lot more missiles before a beam ship can close. Obviously that depends on your salvo size being able to overwhelm PD/AMMs, which brings up another point: AMMs and beam PD (not final fire) would get many more launches/shots before ASMs reach their targets. Likely I think you would see missiles become completely useless in this case as even low-level Gauss Cannons would get to fire on an incoming salvo across multiple 5-second increments.

[StarshipCactus]

Seconded the not being able to catch planets. That is an issue that would make most gameplay impossible early on. Conventional engines are too weak.

[Steve Walmsley]

It would also increase effective energy weapon range by 10x for the purposes of closing down a superior range opponent.

In that scenario I suspect longest-range beams win, regardless of speed differential.

[xenoscepter]

Hey,

I appreciate a lot my current setting with 20% research and survey. Some might say it is not enough and I know some of you play at 10%, but hey, I find it slow enough 

Anyway ... I was thinking of an alternate setting. That would involve a bit of DB editing. Divide by 10 all power output of all engines, to slow down ships by a factor of 10! Because we know Steve has been quite generous in speed for spaceships, and no way Nuclear Thermal Engine or even Fusion would reach such high speed (2000 to 4000 km/s, and no acceleration needed !!). So ... what would be the 'rippling' consequences of having atrociously long travel time? 

3 years to reach Neptune ... It means a lot of fuel and expanded luxury crew quarters ... Would it change Aurora completely, making it not even viable? I'm not too sure. Any idea or thoughts? Perhaps that's too much.

From C# Lore:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10239.0

Travel in the Aether
A ship or missile constructed of Trans-Newtonian Elements exists in multiple dimensions simultaneously. A TN ship travels primarily in the Aether, with only a small intrusion into normal space to maintain a connection. Because of the compressed distance within the Aether, a ship moves much more quickly from the perspective of a viewpoint in normal space than would normally be expected given the available engine technologies. As the Aether is fluidic in nature the ship must be under constant power to maintain that speed. Unlike conventional spacecraft in normal space, ships in the Aether can use the compressed fluidic environment to change course quickly, like a ship in water. If a ship should suffer so much damage that it loses structural cohesion, the wreckage will be pushed out of the Aether, like an object floating to the surface of a fluid, and therefore will be detected easily in normal space.

While gravity wells help with the formation of TNE deposits, that same increased compression and turbulence is dangerous to TN ships. Small ships, up to perhaps 500 tons in mass, can navigate those currents. Any larger vessel is likely to be severely damaged or torn apart. Therefore, TN ships larger than 500 tons are built in orbital shipyards and use shuttles or other small craft to move cargo, ordnance or fuel from surface-to-orbit and vice versa.

[vorpal+5 (OP)]

Well, seems not much viable indeed!

[kingflute]

Well, seems not much viable indeed!

Not wit hthe game as is.  Maybe in the future, Steve will add an option that changes some of the rules, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.  It would be an interesting variant of Aurora though.

[Polestar]

Vorpal+5,

This idea actually does seem viable to me, at least in part. Couple of ideas:

A. Start with a massive star, like Formalhaut. Generate systems until you have one that looks kind of what you have in mind for a home system. Tweak as desired, and play. For extra fun, set up a large asteroid field distant from the star. I'm playing a game now that includes a resource-rich Fomalhaut with a large, distant asteroid belt and, even with mid-range Fusion drives, distances and travel times slow down the game pace quite a bit.

B. Take a star with a distant secondary, ideally one in which the secondary is not O-class or M-class. Generate and tweak the secondary's system until it suits. Remove all planets from the primary - this also eliminates all possibility for Lagrange points - and add a bunch of comets, 10 or 20 of the things set to various distances out to way out. I played a game once with a set-up this this and, let me tell you, travelling 50+ billion km just to get to a warp point changes the entire game dynamic!