Forced Time Acceleration

[kennworl]

There is an issue that ecraven discovered when trying to orbit Ceres when starting from earth and forcing x10000 time acceleration. The physics goes absolutely bonkers. Works ok on x100.

I like that the time acc automatically scales back when I am close to something to give me some reaction time, and presumably to avoid a physics engine freakout. Why do we have a force option that drastic?

While we're on the subject, I've noticed that some people out there like the idea of a nice slow run through a system to give a sense of scale, to the point where they have turned their collective noses at the idea of in-system FTL to cut down transit times. Why have x10000 at all, as this would seem to do the same thing (as well as generate unexpected game behaviour).

Ok people, let me have it! :-)

[WKFO]

I always thought that the problem with x10000 time accel has sth to do with the rate of update of physics. The in-game time passes so quickly that AI has no room to make small adjustments to fine tune the orbit. I mean if we had an unrealisticly-alienly-incredibly fast CPU and lots of RAM we could manage to make a ship collide with a peanut and suffer damage on x10000 time acceleration. (If you start programming in assembly you will get used to use your CPU speed to make timers and stuff...)

On this subject; I really like the forcing time accel because navigating in low orbit of planets is not very enjoyable only using the first time accel. While getting to the other side of the same planet I can leave my ship in orbit, make myself a cup of coffee and read the entire Space Odyssey series. When I come back I would probably be halfway there. So unless we have another soultion like in-system FTL I like it this way.

[bszlrd]

Yeah, forced time accel can be useful in some cases. In the manual it's indicated that using it can be dangerous.

[kennworl]

I'm not saying get rid of time acceleration, just limit where it can be forced and/or improve the physics (or autopilot) to cope with it. Ecraven thinks that an n-body gravity physics engine should be able to cope with x10000 easy (and pioneer has only 2-body), so maybe the autopilot needs a pay rise.

[FluffyFreak]

Better link to this thread-post now viewtopic.php?f=7&t=501&p=5089&hilit=fa ... ight#p5089