How would max velocity at cruising not be the energy efficient?If we are in space, we are moving without friction and only the relative gravity fields of different celestial bodies acting upon our ships. We shouldn't be continually applying thrust because we won't be suffering from the effects of drag to slow us down.Are there then factors that we don't know of that will slow us down or cause our thrusters to constantly be firing?asked by Lamavras
TL;DRRoberts says nothing slows ships down, so thrusters and fuel are only used when changing velocity vector or orientation, while the flight system limits low-velocity speed for g-force reasons and autopilot or warp disengages before nearby objects.
The simple answer is no, actually we don't have any sort of elements that would retard your speed, so once you're moving at a certain speed, as long as you don't want to change your direction, you're not really firing your thrusters or using energy or stuff.Really the flight control system limits your speed at the low velocity stuff, which is where you would be dogfighting, purely because of g-force and pilot safety issues.And that's when you step up to autopilot or warp, where you're gonna move quickly in system, then it accelerates much faster, but then obviously in a straight line, and that's also why it pulls you out of autopilot or warp before you get close to another ship or other celestial body because at those kind of speeds, even .2 the speed of light, you just can't deviate your course quickly enough to avoid a collision without doing significant damage or killing the occupants, because you'd have to... It would be a lot of forces to even deviate a small amount at that sort of speed.So we are energy efficient, if you were at the top low-velocity that the IFCS sets and you're just going straight, it's not firing any thrusters. You're just basically cruising. The thrusters are really only being used and the fuel's only being consumed when you are changing your velocity vector, or your orientation.