In reality, there is (almost) no force to reduce speed in space.
It was quite unituitive to me in the beginning that when I boost the spaceship, it works lke a car on earth rather than a spaceship. I’d have liked the spaceship to continue to gain speed when either the boost was applied or you continue to throttle the engine. They could have kept a fuel limit to keep the speed in check.
What are your thoughts on this? Would you have liked this to be more based in reality or prefer the familiar car based speed/acceleration that’s in the game?
You must log in or register to comment.
I expect the developers chose this to make sure the casual user is going to enjoy the game first than aiming for accurate physics.
Most people would likely struggle with piloting the spaceship if they’d have to consider proper inertia and momentum.
It would be nice to have the option for it, maybe a mod idea?
Yeah I think that’s the basis for that decision as well. They already have simulation in letting us assign powers to different components, this addition would have felt like the real thing to me!
Definitely, someone will make a mod. Alas, I’m on Xbox.
Personally what would you prefer? I’m trying to gauge the sentiment in this community
Xbox supports mods. It won’t support everything, especially mods that require a script extender, so hopefully you’ll be able to benefit from a more accurate space navigation mod at some point.
Oh, I didn’t know that. That’s going to be fun!
Oh also mods typically disable achievements.
That’s fine, if they are good :)
Personally I prefer the arcade-y feeling for that kind of game.
Agreed. It feels the same to me as the fighters in Star Wars Squadrons, which is familiar and comfortable.
I can appreciate a goal of realism, but it definitely feels like a hard balancing act with fun. I mean… When I get shot in the game I don’t actually die either, haha.
A similar gripe: if I leave a planet, post-cutscene, the game points me back at that planet, thrusters on.
Why the hell would I be facing towards the thing I just left?
I can get around a lot of other immersion issues by making sure I walk into my ship and sit myself in the cockpit before trips. But why. the. hell. am I facing the planet I just left.
Pretty framing, mostly, I assume. Alternatively you’d just be facing black space. It looks prettier to show you the planet you were on since it’s visually interesting and allows you to scan it quickly and decide if you want to land at any other POI on the planet instead of leaving. Leaving isnt much more difficult, either.
Do wish the flight controls felt a bit more like Elite or even Space Engineers. But it’s amazing they have vehicles and space flight at all on this engine.
The game simulates counter thrust (inertial dampening) so you don’t just float away. It would be nice to have this turned off optionally.
The fuel is the weirdest shit. The tutorial made it seem like a way bigger deal than it is. You don’t even have to buy the stuff. It automatically refills after each jump and costs nothing. It’s just a really piss poor artificial way of limiting your single jump range. Could have just as easily been an arbitrary number on the drive instead.
Starfield has some pretty soft scifi under a hard veneer. It’s more a Star Trek/Wars than a The Expanse. I think there’s deceleration to add to a more arcade-y feel. If it bothers you it can be explained by your ship firing retrothrusters when the throttle isn’t engaged.
Though I would like an Elite Dangerous-style button to turn off Flight Assist
I mean, you can also hear sound in the external space view. The Expanse also had sound in space, and it’s trying to be “harder” sci-fi.
The sounds within the craft in Starfield sound great, and admittedly it would be weird to have the external view fall silent, however more accurate it would be.
It’s a game, and there will always be tradeoffs for ease of play and general entertainment value.
I hadn’t noticed that they fire up retro thrusters. That’s a good attention to detail.
I don’t think they do, you have to imagine it.
🫠
if I remember right I think ships slowed down in the expanse also without thrust haha, Im pretty sure noticing the same thing when watching that show
When they were in space I only remember seeing them slowing down either when using RCS or after a flip so their engines are decelerating them.
I immediately thought “piloting” felt like paddling a bathtub while trying to use an abacus with the other hand. The physics and just “feel” of piloting are awful to me, and I’m basing that on ancient space sims like Freelancer. Did they play any other space game throughout history before making this?
Haha, your analogy is spot on! I think it’s still fun but my ‘science’ brain gets quite conflicted when piloting it.
I’ve made a few games with accurate phsycis for spaceships. It always ends up with a lot of players complaining about not being able to control them. The way I usually handle this is having a match speed button or other form of dampening, but it’s still not enough for some players.
Starfield made spaceships behave like aircraft. That’s the other method you see often. It makes more sense to us humans who have only experienced life on earth. It’s why Star Wars does it, even though a person doesn’t even have to control it.
I don’t think either option is “wrong.” I do personally prefer the former, but that’s from someone with hundreds of hours in KSP and many other space sims. For a mass market game, the airplane model is probably the correct choice, at least as a default. I would love a toggle to change modes though.
I have never played an accurate physics game. True, it could become tough to handle, especially in combat.
Now that I’ve played more of this game, I think a mod that simulates accurate physics might break the combat as designed currently.
Here’s one of mine that I did recently for Ludum Dare 53. it’s 2D and not combat, but accurate Newtonian physics. The same applies in 3D with just one more axis to control. I don’t think I have an easily publicly accessible 3D game online.
The ships essentially have fully enabled flight assist. So when you let go of the throttle, there are forward thrusters that immediately start to cancel your velocity. In real life, this is pretty pointless since speed is relative, but you could at least set your reference frame to your target planet.
It’s the same in most space-based games, and whilst disappointing for fans of physics, it would be far too difficult to properly simulate, as funky things happen in physics engines when ludicrous speed is achieved.
It would be easier to simulate, since not only is the physics known and easy, not doing anything (no deceleration) is also very easy.
That’s not how physics engines work, mate.
Well, how do they work?
They have a tick speed, which is how often they update the values for objects being simulated, if you’re going too fast, you jump too far between ticks, and can skip collisions and such entirely, it ends up far too janky, and is why otherwise accurate games have top speeds.
The maximum speed is not what we are discussing here, it is the automatic deceleration, which has to be calculated each tick. The maximum speed is the same in both cases.
Yeah no, I got confused, I shouldn’t discuss things in the early hours lol
I don’t feel the same kind of “grip” that a car would have in game but I see what you mean. I personally don’t hate the current physics. The more arcade feeling works well in combat like others have mentioned here. One could say that a real spaceship might behave the same way to avoid reaching speeds that would be hard to control. Like a governor on a motor.
But if a mod came out with more realistic physics I would be totally up for trying it.
I am very annoyed at spaceship controls. Some attempt at realistic momentum is desperately needed in the game. It just feels so wrong. No magical force should apply inertia to a moving object in space.
This is the first mod I want.
I think the behavior could actually make sense with real physics, as the vehicle might be designed to mimic what the driver expects rather than real physics. For example, my car often shuts off the engine when I am not accelerating because it is a hybrid. So, if I don’t press the gas pedal, it wouldn’t really make sense for it to move. However, it is designed to artificially engage the engine when none of the pedals are pressed to more closely mimic the behavior of non-hybrid cars.
If most pilots are used to the behavior if a vehicle in atmosphere, a space ship might be designed to mimic that behavior (through weak reverse thrusters or something else) to make it easier for pilots to get used to.
That does not make sense. Breaking in space costs as much fuel as accelerating.
Starship designers assumed that you want to slow down when you let off the throttle, much like today’s One Pedal mode in electric cars. Otherwise you would’ve engaged cruise control if you wanted to keep the same speed.
Exactly; the idea is familiarity, not efficiency. To be fair, this argument doesn’t make sense for all situations, so it is possible I misunderstood what the original post was talking about specifically.
I don’t think any game models this fully, even the more hardcore space sims. I think this is beyond the scope of a general RPG like Starfield unfortunately.
Plenty of space games have real Newtonian physics. It’s one the simplest thing to do as far as realism in gaming. Even Asteroids has more realistic space flight.
The real reason is the engine does not handle player speeds very well. It never has. If you notice, you can’t make your max speed higher than 150, and your boost speed is only double that for a very brief period of time. The only reason I think you’re able to even go faster is because there’s no world to fall through in space. There’s barely anything rendering to be affected by the speed. If you were to try going super fast in Skyrim or Fallout, you can fall through the world as you start going faster than it can render, and it doesn’t even take that much speed to hit that point.
My max speed is 199. No mods, no boost. I’ve read this 150 limit thing before and was confused why my ship was faster.
Elite Dangerous does. I forget what they’re called, but there’s a toggle keybind that lets you turn the stabilizers or whatever off so that if you throttle up and then cut the throttle you’ll continue moving infinitely in that direction until you turn the stabilizers back on or thrust in a different direction.
It lets you do wildly badass shit like boosting past someone, cutting throttle and stabilizers, spinning around, and blasting them as you fly backwards and they’re still trying to turn around.
I guess that’s turning off the inertial dampeners, I heard Starfield lets you do that but I haven’t tried it. But yeah the flight model of ED is far better.
I don’t think you can in Starfield, or at least I didn’t see options for it. Elite Dangerous ruined me on space flight, I always look in game bindings now for disabling the dampeners and also a button that immediately cuts all throttle, didn’t find either in Starfield’s bindings
I read about it, apparently it’s RB on controller or LAlt on keyboard. Haven’t tried it.
No cut throttle button though, hopefully a mod will do that if Bethesda doesn’t.
That’ll be a game changer, I have to try it out soon
I tried it, doesn’t seem to be a toggle. Gonna be tough to fly that way. I like the shooting in Starfield but don’t like the flying as much.
It’s not exactly difficult to program. The only reason they would have done it this way is because they think it feels better to control. Realistic space physics results in a lot of crashing into things, or more commonly flying past them, which can result in frustration.
Yeah in Elite Dangerous it’s amazing how fast you can overshoot something when you are traveling at the speeds needed to traverse a solar system in minutes.
Outer wilds had this. I often die due to speeding up too much hahahah.
