Sufyan: .
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. Everything is less than a minute away..
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It took 6 hours real time and I could not take a break as I would never be able to catch up with the convoy again..
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anothername: .. oO
Come on now! :(
But besides that hilarious confusion its a great thread to follow :D
[...]
Within a star system, everything is just a minute or two away using warp drives. Moving through dozens upon dozens of systems with a gigantic freighter that takes a minute to shift it's mass towards the next gate however adds up quickly to hours. Also, having to slow down to keep the convoy together adds friction: One scout is one system ahead, another is one system behind making sure there are no rival player gangs stalking us. Finally, every time we did spot other people in a system, everything halts until we figure out if it is safe to move again.
Without having to maintain security the freighter pilot could probably have done it in 2 hours. A lone frigate could have done the trip in about 30 minutes if the player is well prepared and quick on all the mouse-clicking.
To be perfectly clear: Eve Online models extreme distances and planets are cleverly designed to feel nearly as big as the real thing. It is technically a perfect fit for this thread, except in general gameplay the warp drives makes it so that most gameplay takes place within 50km which can be covered quite quickly pushing 1000+ meters per second at combat speeds. The game space is HUGE, but it rarely feels that way while playing.
tremere110: Independence War 2 It takes place in a realistically modeled star cluster. It's not Earth's solar system so things might be closer in that star system than here - but the distances are plausible.
Kardwill: That's the one I thought about. Sure, there are "warp drives" in the IWar universe : "Linear drive" to zoom from station to station around a planet, and jump points linking planets and stars when you need to go far.
But even with those, the systems feel big. Using linear to link to neighbor planets takes a long time and is a blind frenetic run, not the usual "boosters that allow you to leasurely look the planet getting closer", and using a jump point means getting there, avoiding the militia if you're in an enemy system, waiting for your turn (there's some heavy traffic around them) or risking a collision to force your way in, making a tricky insertion manoeuver without knowing what awaits you on the other side... It's not years long, but it FEELS like serious business. Like you're doing a "real warp jump", and not a grocery run ;)
And some systems are really huge. Even the biggest space stations feel tiny out there, when you're spying it from afar in silent mode to detect your next prey.
Or go Kerbal, and play with near-real physics and year-long orbits. It's one of the best games I ever played, and even if the Kerbal system is a 1/10 scale model of ours, it still feels freakishly huge, especially when you have a guy stranded on a planet half-a-system away, and you realize you'll have to get an automated module in a 1km radius of him if you want to bring him home, "the martian" style. ^^
You seem to have perfectly understood what I'm talking about.
Out of all the suggestions in the thread I'm most excited about Kerbal.
Elite: Dangerous also seems interesting, judging from the gameplay footage you're not racing around balls floating in space but (for a game) rather large celestial bodies.
X3 is another couple of games that appear to have a sci-fi setting to my liking. Big plus for being set in the Sol system!