Not sure if this fit better in another forum, but anyway. It appears like there has to be some sort of 'jump' or travelling through 'hyperspace' one way or the other if the game is to have interstellar travel. A possibly more realistic alternative would be near-lightspeed - If you are in a spaceship that is in near-lightspeed travel to a nearby star, the time taken observed from the ship could actually be pretty short. However, the time taken for the travel observed from a planet would be millions of years. Maybe if allowing backward time travel you could explore the star systems on different times during a timeline. Sounds complicated though. I actually find it kinda pathetic when I see that a game has put up some simple wormholes for interstellar travel. However, Stargates (from the series) are actually pretty cool. That is probably because the depth the stargates are given, like: - All the chevrons for dialing to other planets - The value of knowing stargate adresses, which you might put on a great deal of effort to collect - Having a unique history, being built by an ancient alien race from a different galaxy - Their weaknesses from alien attacks through a different stargate, and the effort people who have studied its technology put up for stopping such attacks. For the realism of jumping you could attribute its possibility to "all the things that we do not know." For all I know there could be a substance on some distant planet which could give you telekenethic powers - because no one can say for sure that there isn't any. It's pure pseudoscience alright.

Sorry, travelling near speed of light is not possible. If you would encounter a single atom (let alone a rock) on your path, there would be so much energy in the collision that your ship would be no more. If detonation velocity of TNT is 10k m/s, an object with detonation velocity of 0.3kkk m/s will have quite influence.

Think of a bullet. When it hits target, it may make a hole with 5mm radius, but it will cause a shockwave in the target material and the hole it leaves target from can have radius of 20cm. If your starship does not have enough mass, the explosion will slow the collision shield down so much that the rest of the ship will collide with it.

Something around 1 million km/h is maximum speed in travelling the traditional way in space, so if you want a realistic game you have to limit world into a single starsystem.

Quote:Original post by zer0wolf

I think having wormholes or stargates of some sort are pretty well essential, because traveling at even the speed of light would be really, really slow when trying to achieve intergalactic travel.

It wouldn't be. The velocity of a ship is measured from e.g. Earth. For a person that inside a ship when the velocity aproaches the speed of light, from inside the ship it aproaches infinity, because the time slows.

If you just forget about the part about blowing yourself to pieces in near-lightspeed, wouldn't at least be a bit cool to populate the fourth dimension of a universe?

Time = Distance / Speed

Interestingly this is not true when you get close to the speed of light. Time, Mass, and Length are all varied when traveling at great speeds. I am unsure of the equation (used to know from Physics II (college)), but it is a ratio where you will precieve things differently at high velocities. For example, getting close to light speed, although ~4 Light-years is a long distance, it will NOT take 4 years to travel to that specific location, as the distance between your location and the target are reduced during travel. Although this is true... you would need to be going 0.999999999999C (made up value) in order for the gamer to not want to shoot himself. :P

[Edited by - DarkInsanePyro on November 22, 2008 1:06:36 PM]

Quote:Original post by zer0wolf
Uhmmm.... okay? The closest star to the Earth, besides the Sun obviously, is Alpha Centauri, which is 4.37 light years away. This means that, even traveling at the speed of light (hence the light years part), it will take 4.37 YEARS.

Call me strange, but if I'm playing an intergalatic space faring game, I'm not going to want to sit there for 4.37 years for me to get to the closest planet in the game. [wink]

No. Velocity = Distance / Time. Time for the passangers slows down. Therefore velocity increases. The travel will take 4.37 years when observer from Earth. Inside the ship it will take the time to accelerate to the speed of light and decelerate (of course accelerating to the speed of light is also impossible, because the mass of the ship grows to infitity and the engine maximum power is constant, but this assuming you've got HUGE amounts of energy, you can get near the speed of light).

Quote:Original post by Nichollan
If you just forget about the part about blowing yourself to pieces in near-lightspeed, wouldn't at least be a bit cool to populate the fourth dimension of a universe?

How do you want to populate time? ;-)