Quote
Originally posted by Joseph Burnette:
For an on-topic question: Why does armor for a Defender have the same mass as armor for a Confederate Cruiser?
i think b/c armor is in absolute damage tolerance, as opposed to damage tolerance per area or simply in armor thickness (if they both got 10mm of extra armor it'd weigh hundreds of times as much to armor the cruiser, but if they both get exactly enough armor to absorb 10 points of damage, they'll both also get exactly the same mass)
Quote
Why do disabled ships drift to a stop? (Anybody heard of Isaac Newton and the laws of motion?)
space isn't empty, everything will stop eventually. the only thing wrong with this is that the time scale is way off (i.e. 100k years vs. 1 second). but that's the same for acceleration, too. every ship in ev has an acceleration value greater than its speed value, which means every ship accelerates to max velocity in about 3.3 seconds or less. if you assume space fighters have greater top speeds than atmospheric fighters, (hey, even our clumsy and slow shuttle cruises at mach 26), then they're pulling more than 10 g's. accelerating to mach 26 in 3 seconds would actually be closer to 100 g's, which means anyone unlucky to be in the ship at that time would proceed to become a stain on the rear wall. of course, that's more along the lines of 30 real seconds per game second, unlike the stopping thing, but it's really just a question of gameplay vs. reality. it would be almost impossible to dock if disabled ships kept on their original course and maintained their last turning velocity while the player's ship took a full minute to reach its maximum speed (if you've ever read the honor harrington series, it's not far from right- combat in that kind of situation can take hours, it's not exactly the kind of thing which would get someone to buy a game)
------------------
if tin whistles are made of tin, what's a fog horn made of?