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Why FTL?
- Thread starter Damiani
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Another day passes by, another guy_who_is_fun_at_parties has problem with video game not being a scientific paper
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Because sci-fi would be somewhat boring if every crew in every spaceship would die of old age before reaching their target.
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Really? Oh that is a relief because magical FTL travel is a bit too unrealistic for me. But if it is not actually FTL travel, why even bother calling it that?
Um not sure what to say there, about realism for concluding I said with was not actual FTL travel.
The four seen FTL in game:
They allow the ships to travel interstellar distances in reasonable times without breaking the rule that things with mass cannot travel faster than the speed of light in any given frame of reference.
By distance travelled vs time taken, they are travelling faster than light, but they do not exceed the speed of light at any given time.
One method warps space, shifting the ship in time space, where time space can expand or contract or both fast than light can move, but in its own frame of reference the ship itself does not travel anywhere near close to the speed of light.
One method uses a wormhole to tunnel through time space to the new location so the two locations are next to each other meaning the ships can then travel there at slower than light speeds
Two methods use going to different dimensions where the rules might be different.
None of them are about simple accelerating more and more trying to go as close to, at, or faster than the speed of light using thrust, which as far as we know is impossible
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Well, none of the modes of travel are moving faster than light. Warp drives create distortions in normal space to make the distance shorter, hyper lanes involve using subspace tears, which allows a ship to travel further per meter in subspace than in normal space and wormhole stations just make the space they are traveling to into the space that they are occupying.
Nothing, I assume, is traveling faster than the speed of light.
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Do keep in mind that nothing in science is set in stone, they're what we know "TODAY" and what we can reproduce results of with technology "TODAY".
We can't physically exceed the speed of light with what we know today.
People couldn't physically get to space with what they knew 100 years ago.
Atoms couldn't be broken apart 200 years ago
To say that we for certain can't do something 100 years later or even 1000 years later is just plain foolish.
We can't physically exceed the speed of light with what we know today.
People couldn't physically get to space with what they knew 100 years ago.
Atoms couldn't be broken apart 200 years ago
To say that we for certain can't do something 100 years later or even 1000 years later is just plain foolish.
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Here is one thread talking about a STL Mod
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/realism-hard-sf-mod-discussion-thread.920976/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/realism-hard-sf-mod-discussion-thread.920976/
it is not actually ftl...warp bends space around it and the ship doesn't really travel FTL
wormhole....actually a shortcut....ship not travelling FTL
hyperlane...travel outside the physical universe, not breaking FTL in astrophysics.....
wormhole....actually a shortcut....ship not travelling FTL
hyperlane...travel outside the physical universe, not breaking FTL in astrophysics.....
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... I was just watching this video about light speed and got really curious about the subject so I felt like asking it. Not sure why so many people are insulted by the thread.
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When rail travel was first being introduced to the public, people feared that humans simply could not survive travelling at such immense speeds. Of course they were wrong, but we should not think too badly of them. They were afraid of something they didn't understand.
We've come a long way since then, and understand a great deal more about the world around us. Some of the finest minds our species has known have dedicated their lives to observing the universe, reasoning logically from their observations, and testing their conclusions as rigorously as they can.
Could you explain just why you feel that since the former people once said "This is impossible" based on fear and ignorance, we should not believe the latter people who say now "This is impossible" based on reason and evidence?
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Because it is very common for some people to immediately declare any given work as immeasureably bad simply because the laws of physics there are a bit different than they are here and frankly we're all very bored of them by now. Especially when the complaint seems to be that, instead of mechanical or narrative problems, the technobabble is not up to (the impossibly high) snuff.
Realism is not and never will be the end-all-be-all of fictional works. It might be a nice bonus objective for some, but the thing creative works actually benefit from is internal consistency. Realism might be the easiest thing to keep consistent (depending on the work, of course) but it's by no means the only way a work can be consistent.
So what if the FTL mechanics are unrealistic as all hell? If they make for a good story or gameplay and are kept internally consistent (and sometimes not even then, just look at Star Trek) why get so bothered about them, unless the science being realistic is the whole point and that is not the case here.
If you just wanted to know exactly why FTL is necessary for Stellaris, play Kerbal Space Program for a bit. Notice just how obscenely long the travel times are and that's simply inside a single star system. Stellaris needs FTL to keep things moving without the timescale being counted in years, at minimum.
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That's a little bit different. It was possible to get to space with chemical propulsion rockets. For an object with mass to accelerate to faster-than-light speeds, however, would require infinite amounts of energy according to all currently accepted (and exhaustively tested) models of the physical universe. It would also be equivalent to time-travel, and violate causality.
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And 200 years ago they decided that atoms couldn't break apart at all, they were the be-all end-all fundamental particles. Something we take for as granted today such as atomic fission was complete crazy talk.
I'm not saying that I disregard the merits of the modern scientific theory, for one I myself am currently majoring in Astrophysics and computer science. The theories we have established now has withstanded decades of peer-review and complies (mostly) with mathematical models we have developed over centuries.
My point is that, looking back at history and how science progressed over just the last century, over just the lifetime of say our grandparents. It would be a little short sighted and pessimistic to say that "Light speed is the universal speed limit for eternity, us humans will never, in a million, or a billion years, somehow travel faster than the speed of light".
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I really, really, really want a space game where all that no-FTL relativity stuff is actually implemented. But the first thing you have to understand is that it would be like no strategy game you'd ever seen before. Your fog-of-war would be atrocious, and this would be the defining feature of the game: if there's an enemy fleet coming you won't see it until it's on top of you. When you launch a ship, it can't turn round or even maneuver in interstellar space. And anyone who just wants to kill you as opposed to capture your planets can do so trivially easily by just firing some flak at your planet at 99% lightspeed. You're dead before you even see it coming.
Many of these features are wholly incompatible with what makes a game fun. You want to commit an action and get a response, and things in slower-than-light space are just about the least responsive systems you can imagine in that it takes centuries for the diplomacy screen to even work, let alone anythign military you might try to do.
So the game I want would be a very weird game, probably with a customer base composed of just myself and the OP.
Which is why no-one will ever make it.
Get back in your hugbox you smelly hippie.
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Isn't there an event about finding a relatively primitive sleeper ship or something?
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No.
This is a terrible argument and a gross abuse of the notion of Socratic ignorance.
Yes, we don't know everything. But if there was anything you would want to put money on as not being possible ever in a billion years, it's FTL. Every single scrap of science we have says it's impossible. Every single scrap of science we had 500 years ago didn't say that faster-than-horse travel was impossible, or that atomic power was impossible, or that computers were impossible. You could look up in the sky and see a hawk; that travels faster than a horse, men just didn't know how to do likewise. You could look up higher in the sky and see the sun; that produces heat better than a burning dungpile. You could point to the wisest man in the land and say that he can calculate 12*12 faster than the town oaf; men just didn't know how automate the process.
The situation with FTL is qualitatively different in that there is nothing in the universe which exhibits the property.
So please stop misrepresenting this as "Just another example of some eggheads' hubris of omniscience".
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