A Question on Speed

[iamdanthemansta]

I saw someone doing a Let's Play with this game and I had a question for those who have it: I noticed that depending on your settings you could accelerate and not slow down, ie how physics actually works, but if you can do this what stops you from just going faster and faster? Could you accelerate to the speed of light?

[Malix82]

yes, in theory you could accelerate indefinately, BUT:
- acceleration slows down gradually (ie, speed gain per time interval gets smaller) and the "realistic" speed you could achieve by using afterburner is around 8000 (this was talked in a starwraith forums but I can't find the thread, sorry) before you run out of fuel

edit: on a glance this thread talks about roughly the same thing:

[GoldenShadow]

You will run out of fuel eventually. Its more fuel efficient to just use your jump drive, even if you accelerated to 8,000 speed with thrusters.

And acceleration rate decreases as you increase speed.

[iamdanthemansta]

Ah I see. You'd run out of fuel but they are also artificially limiting it by making the amount of fuel needed to accelerate grow really fast.

[Malix82]

Originally Posted by iamdanthemansta

Ah I see. You'd run out of fuel but they are also artificially limiting it by making the amount of fuel needed to accelerate grow really fast.

The actual physics of the "slowing acceleration" is explained in the forum thread I linked you. Ofc I'm not a physicist, but it sounds reasonable.

[iamdanthemansta]

Originally Posted by Malix82

The actual physics of the "slowing acceleration" is explained in the forum thread I linked you. Ofc I'm not a physicist, but it sounds reasonable.

You would have more mass thus have a harder time accelerating, but the effect would be hugely less pronounced then you see in the game.