PLEASE change the planet distances...

[Factoruser]

- From 15 megametres to 30 gigametres etc. The lowest distance between Terra and Venus is 41 gigametres. 15 megametres are not much more than the diameter of Terra - no need to calculate whether this is inside the Roche limit... It's like you're telling, that New York is just 3 kilometres away from the centre of Prague...

Of course you'll get a top speed beyond 300 Mm per second, if you multiply the current top speed with 2000... - Interplanetary travel isn't easy. You always need some kind of FTL magic, even inside the solar system if you don't want to hang for weeks. - Simply say that the platform hub creates a "warp field" at let it drain power...

[qwr]

I agree the distance is way too low. I setup my very first space ship to get to Vulcanus with one thruster, and I was surprised and disappointed it only took like 2 minutes.

[angramania]

You always need some kind of FTL magic, even inside the solar system if you don't want to hang for weeks.

It takes only 8 min for light from Sun to reach Earth and 250 minutes to reach Neptune. No need for FTL.

- From 15 Megametres to 30 Gigametres etc. The lowest distance between Terra and Venus is 41 Gigametres.

Green circuits are created from iron and copper in factorio, in reality this results in short circuit. Even colors of iron and copper ores are reversed in factorio. Engineer in factorio can carry gigantic factory in his pocket. Forget about reality if you play factorio.

[Factoruser]

You always need some kind of FTL magic, even inside the solar system if you don't want to hang for weeks.

It takes only 8 min for light from Sun to reach Earth and 250 minutes to reach Neptune. No need for FTL.

You can't reach fractions of light speed THAT easy resp. survive every acceleration. It will also take a month to reach 10 percent of light speed with 1 g acceleration. Dunno how much a human can bear over hours, but definitely nothing close to the world record which means seconds of g forces.

- From 15 megametres to 30 gigametres etc. The lowest distance between Terra and Venus is 41 gigametres.

Green circuits are created from iron and copper in factorio, in reality this results in short circuit. Even colors of iron and copper ores are reversed in factorio. Engineer in factorio can carry gigantic factory in his pocket. Forget about reality if you play factorio.

Fiction doesn't need to be false. And there is no "ore colour". Of course iron ore is mostly brown of rust, and there are blue copper ores, but the colour is depending on the mineral. Normally, most ores a simply some kind of grey. - I was too lazy to change this with the Asimov mod... Fool's gold is also an iron ore for example.

Computer games are simplifying things, because they should be fun. Just imagine that you are running 500 times there and back when carrying absurd amounts of material... - Or imagine you have to do so because the programmers didn't want to bestow you (like some "running games" without fast travel shortcuts). But computer games / fantasy / science fiction have to follow some "real life" rules. For example, that you are slaying a monster with a sword and not with a toothbrush. Everything should make sense and needs to be a bit familiar, therefore most fantasy worlds are inhabited by humans although all domestic and wild animals are at least a kind of chimeras of existing creatures.

A solar system that fits easily between Terra and Luna doesn't make sense. New York is not lying inside the inner city of Prague.

[Factoruser]

I agree the distance is way too low. I setup my very first space ship to get to Vulcanus with one thruster, and I was surprised and disappointed it only took like 2 minutes.

It shouldn't last longer, it should only have sensible values. Note that the stuff from Gleba spoils, so "it won't be good" if one trip would last several hours...

[mmmPI]

I think 2 different things are mentionned here , 1) the gameplay time it takes for platforms to go from a planet to another, 2) the numbers shown by the game to try and convey the scale of what's happening.

I think the 2) can easily be changed so that the value for speed and distance are multiplied by 1000 or 10^4 or 10^6, so it would "sound" more realistic scale, but if the 1) isn't changed, it will also mean that the engineer inside the platform is submitted to 1000 or 10^4 or 10^6 stronger acceleration.

I think the 1) is the hardest to change, as mentionned for the spoilage in Gleba, and for the general difficulty of the game.

There is no way around some "gamey" physics to me.

[angramania]

You can't reach fractions of light speed THAT easy resp. survive every acceleration. It will also take a month to reach 10 percent of light speed with 1 g acceleration. Dunno how much a human can bear over hours, but definitely nothing close to the world record which means seconds of g forces.

But you do not need to reach light speed. If you like math let's do it.
Distance from time: s=(a*t^2)/2
Half path with acceleration, half path with deceleration. 3600 seconds in hour
Lets write JS function in browser to calc time in days: td=function(a,s) {return Math.sqrt(s/a)*2/3600}
g=9.81 m/s
Distance from Earth to Venus is from 38 to 261 millions km. Lets take 50 millions for relative positions of planets we have in SA.
td(g,50e9)
39.66 hours
So it takes only day and half to reach Venus with maximum comfort.

If passenger accept 4g acceleration then it takes only half of this time:
td(4*g,50e9)
19.83 hours

A solar system that fits easily between Terra and Luna doesn't make sense. New York is not lying inside the inner city of Prague.

So you have no objection to star system with non moving planets. And it is ok for you to have drag in space. To hell physic, but the number of zeroes should be correct! Amusing.

[angramania]

I think the 2) can easily be changed so that the value for speed and distance are multiplied by 1000 or 10^4 or 10^6, so it would "sound" more realistic scale, but if the 1) isn't changed, it will also mean that the engineer inside the platform is submitted to 1000 or 10^4 or 10^6 stronger acceleration.

What acceleration? We have drag in space here, so speed is constant and acceleration is zero for most part of distance. Small exception at start/stop.

[mmmPI]

I think the 2) can easily be changed so that the value for speed and distance are multiplied by 1000 or 10^4 or 10^6, so it would "sound" more realistic scale, but if the 1) isn't changed, it will also mean that the engineer inside the platform is submitted to 1000 or 10^4 or 10^6 stronger acceleration.

What acceleration? We have drag in space here, so speed is constant and acceleration is zero for most part of distance. Small exception at start/stop.

The one at the start and stop precisely !

The physical interpretation of reaching a speed that is the same as the one shown currently in game but multiplied by a 1000 or more factor in the same amount of time would mean that the acceleration need to be also multiplied by the same factor and if increasing all the value by 1000 factor help to convey the "realism" of the scale/distances better, it would also reduce the "realism" of the possibility for a human being to be in that platform and sustain the start/stop acceleration.

[angramania]

The physical interpretation of reaching a speed that is the same as the one shown currently in game but multiplied by a 1000 or more factor in the same amount of time would mean that the acceleration need to be also multiplied by the same factor

But what is current acceleration in game? Player can see speed in GUI but not acceleration. You need to measure speed change for several seconds, convert this seconds to in-game time and divide. And this will be average acceleration, as it is not constant because of drag. So you need to start editor, measure and calc it by ticks and select maximum of all values. I'm sure that most of the players have not bothered and have no idea what is current acceleration. So it doesn't matter if it will be changed by a few orders.

"realism" of the possibility for a human being to be in that platform and sustain the start/stop acceleration.

Human being? This "human" without any equipment somehow can breath sulfuric and ammonium atmospheres, he feels himself comfortably under 4g of Vulcanus and in low atmosphere pressure of Aquilo. Who knows what other superhuman abilities he have. And what equipment he have in space platform. It is supposed that even human can survive dozens of g under some conditions like being immersed in liquid and breathing it.

[mmmPI]

The physical interpretation of reaching a speed that is the same as the one shown currently in game but multiplied by a 1000 or more factor in the same amount of time would mean that the acceleration need to be also multiplied by the same factor

But what is current acceleration in game? Player can see speed in GUI but not acceleration. You need to measure speed change for several seconds, convert this seconds to in-game time and divide. And this will be average acceleration, as it is not constant because of drag. So you need to start editor, measure and calc it by ticks and select maximum of all values. I'm sure that most of the players have not bothered and have no idea what is current acceleration. So it doesn't matter if it will be changed by a few orders.

"realism" of the possibility for a human being to be in that platform and sustain the start/stop acceleration.

Human being? This "human" without any equipment somehow can breath sulfuric and ammonium atmospheres, he feels himself comfortably under 4g of Vulcanus and in low atmosphere pressure of Aquilo. Who knows what other superhuman abilities he have. And what equipment he have in space platform. It is supposed that even human can survive dozens of g under some conditions like being immersed in liquid and breathing it.

You seemed to have missed the point here. Which is to explain that changing the GUI value for planet distance isn't going to be "more" realistic if it's all x1000 or x10000.

You seem to tunnel vision on what's realistic or not according to you ( or your ability to quickly estimate). And not on the fact that there is a gameplay proposition of changing the actual time to travel between planet which is different than previously mentionned change.

I'm still unsure what's beeing discussed here by other members that's the point of my intervention. I do understand you have a strong opinion on what YOU find the more realistic. But that is unrelated to what i explain ( and asked ).

[Factoruser]

Distance from Earth to Venus is from 38 to 261 millions km. Lets take 50 millions for relative positions of planets we have in SA.
td(g,50e9)
39.66 hours
So it takes only day and half to reach Venus with maximum comfort.

- If you assume that you've got a propulsion that can reach 700 kilometres per second and it's easier to use than some FTL technology. In Factorio, this is much too long anyway.

There is no way around some "gamey" physics to me.

Correct. Simply make some warpdrive stuff. - How should you've come to Nauvis' system anyway if you don't have a technology like this. Wormhole accident ?

[angramania]

- If you assume that you've got a propulsion that can reach 700 kilometres per second and it's easier to use than some FTL technology. In Factorio, this is much too long anyway.

Any propulsion allows to reach any sublight speed. Why humanity suffer from very limited speed in solar system? Because we can't catch asteroids and convert them to fuel.
39 hours in Factorio equals to just 11 minutes of real time. My early ships traveled longer between planets.

[Factoruser]

Any propulsion allows to reach any sublight speed.

Not without a swing-by manoeuvre. Especially jet propulsion can normally only reach the speed of its jet.

Why humanity suffer from very limited speed in solar system? Because we can't catch asteroids and convert them to fuel.

There's not nearly enough stuff between the planets to fuel any ship. But our propulsions are suffering from too less fuel, that's right. We might reach 700 km/s (2,5 mio. km/h) if we would have a "dwarf planet" of fuel... It's also hardly imaginable that a nuclear powered ion propulsion would once reach this speed, although you might need just 1/1000 of the mass for the "fuel". Therefore you will still always either travel for months through a solar system, or use some FTL magic.

[mmmPI]

Correct. Simply make some warpdrive stuff. - How should you've come to Nauvis' system anyway if you don't have a technology like this. Wormhole accident ?

Therefore you will still always either travel for months through a solar system, or use some FTL magic.

I propose " Promethium infused solar wings" ! Those were just a prototype to proove people saying it's unreliable wrong, but it actually ended up prooving them right, when the prototype went missing in the crash that caused the engineer to end up in Nauvis. Probably because nobody expected any collision with promethium asteroids in space, like those are from a video game world.

[Jap2.0]

Human being? This "human" without any equipment somehow can breath sulfuric and ammonium atmospheres, he feels himself comfortably under 4g of Vulcanus and in low atmosphere pressure of Aquilo. Who knows what other superhuman abilities he have. And what equipment he have in space platform. It is supposed that even human can survive dozens of g under some conditions like being immersed in liquid and breathing it.

I don't remember if I've heard this addressed before, but is there an implication that because the engineer crash-landed on nauvis he's wearing a space suit of some sort already?

[angramania]

Any propulsion allows to reach any sublight speed.

Not without a swing-by manoeuvre. Especially jet propulsion can normally only reach the speed of its jet.

Are we talking about reality or factorio drag in space? In reality you can even throw stones in one direction and with every stone you will get some acceleration in opposite direction. This acceleration is short lived but it still increase your speed. And it doesn't matter what is limit to the speed of stone relative to you.

[Holy-Fire]

Remember when the power consumption/production of most machines was measured in watts?

At some point they scaled everything by x1000 because it made more sense this way. (Though arguably now some of them are too big.)

I see no reason they shouldn't do it here.

So you have no objection to star system with non moving planets. And it is ok for you to have drag in space. To hell physic, but the number of zeroes should be correct! Amusing.

First, I'll point out that if we accept that space is littered with asteroids, drag makes perfect sense - since the ship will impart some of its momentum onto these asteroids (and the net force will be proportional to the square of the speed).

Anyway, I think there is a very simple principle at work here - games should be as believable as possible without interfering with the desired gameplay.

"Believable" is not the same thing as "realistic", and we can argue about what is believable (and who does the believing) and what is the desired gameplay.

But I'd argue that:

1. Non-moving planets is needed to keep the gameplay focused and not turn it into Kerbal Space Program. And it's believable if we take the star map as an abstraction and not representative of actually stationary planets.

2. Drag is needed for the intended mechanics, is intuitive and is somewhat believable (see above).

3. Scaling the interplanetary distances does not affect the gameplay, and would be more believable to a sizable chunk of players.

I don't really mind one way or the other, but I'd say the case for such scaling is strong.

[Holy-Fire]

Any propulsion allows to reach any sublight speed.

Not without a swing-by manoeuvre. Especially jet propulsion can normally only reach the speed of its jet.

Are we talking about reality or factorio drag in space? In reality you can even throw stones in one direction and with every stone you will get some acceleration in opposite direction. This acceleration is short lived but it still increase your speed. And it doesn't matter what is limit to the speed of stone relative to you.

To reach arbitrary speeds you'd need an endless supply of stones and energy to throw them. And if you don't want to be subject to the tyranny of the rocket equation, that supply will need to magically materialize rather than being carried.

I guess if you encounter objects along the way which have energy, you could try to collect them and use them as fuel, while gaining a net positive change in momentum. But such a system would be quite complicated.

[evanrinehart]

The current common understanding of space age's spaceship physics is that space is an ocean and obviously the ship can only reach a max speed limited by the resistance with the ambient water vs engine thrust. There's nothing wrong with that but I have a fun alternative head canon.

Space is not an ocean and there's no drag. Space platforms don't bother with two sets of engines one for accelerating and decelerating, they're just on one side. So for most transfer plans this will require rotating the platform (not shown in game) somehow during the trip. Also the engines nominally run continuously over the entire trip, so the rotation will need to be spread out in time in a carefully computed way. I didn't do any calculations yet for exactly what the realistic implications are for this story, call it "one continuous burn-but-you-have-to-come-in-backwards-to-stop" theory.

At the very least you can take away that accelerating toward the planet the entire way isn't feasible since these platforms have no reverse thrusters. So there's a limit to your speed.

Don't even try to shoot holes in this, it's undeniable!

On the size of the solar system being too small look at TRAPPIST-1 system for inspiration. On close approaches the planets in this system have distances comparable to the distance between earth and the moon.