Disclaimer: I am currently sober so I apologize if this makes no sense.
So I hit the internet the other day because I was curious about the planet scale. Along the way, I ran across an interview that sent me flying in a completely different direction. That interview was this one [HERE]. This interview talked about the universe size as it is now and how big they are looking to make it upon release. According to the article, the universe is 1 million by 1 million by 200km right now. Their goal for release is for it to double in size to 1 million by 1 million by 400km. That makes 400 quadrillion cubic km! That's friggen huge! Right?
Wrong. That seems awfully small for what they are trying to do. I remembered reading that quantum travel was supposed to be 0.2c or 20% of light speed (referenced HERE about 1/4 of the way down the page CR posted some info). So how is that supposed to work? If the speed of light is roughly 1.079 billion km/hr, and the entire universe is only 1 million km, it would take us 16.68 seconds to travel from one end to the other.
So how is this going to work? How are they going to fit everything inside this relatively tiny box? It got me thinking. The way I see it, there are only three options.
The first is the tiny man theory I have seen a few times. The map may be 1 million km long, but that would seem to be an infinite distance if we were the size of a dust mite. What if the Javelin was actually the size of an ant? We just didn't know it because we were also shrunk in proportion? What if this was why they have placed so much attention on levels of detail? Anyone else getting flashbacks of the movie "Honey I shrunk the kids"?
The second theory is that they will be connecting multiple boxes. What if the Stanton system is what the current map box is for? What if all the other systems had their own boxes? That would mean that the jump point system would literally be the only way to travel from system to system. It wouldn't matter how much fuel you carried. You simply could not fly between solar systems because they were not really in space with relative distance between. The jump points would be acting as a sort of loading screen as you moved from instanced solar system to instanced solar system.
The third, and most disturbing option, is that they are trying to cram all this into that little box. The only way I see this happening is by using the quantum travel system like a loading screen. Each point of interest (planet, station, asteroid, etc.) would have a limited amount of space attached to it. Beyond which, you simply would be running (or flying in this case) against an invisible wall. If you dropped out of quantum travel in between these points, you would be issued a separate empty box with the planets showing on a (skybox) relative to your position. This would leave almost no wasted space in the universe, but would also only give an illusion of distance. The space between planets and other points would not exist.
I don't know. Maybe I need to drink more and stop thinking about these silly little details. What do you think? Am I just reading too much into a single statement that CR made around 2 years ago? Is my sober napkin math completely wrong?
So I hit the internet the other day because I was curious about the planet scale. Along the way, I ran across an interview that sent me flying in a completely different direction. That interview was this one [HERE]. This interview talked about the universe size as it is now and how big they are looking to make it upon release. According to the article, the universe is 1 million by 1 million by 200km right now. Their goal for release is for it to double in size to 1 million by 1 million by 400km. That makes 400 quadrillion cubic km! That's friggen huge! Right?
Wrong. That seems awfully small for what they are trying to do. I remembered reading that quantum travel was supposed to be 0.2c or 20% of light speed (referenced HERE about 1/4 of the way down the page CR posted some info). So how is that supposed to work? If the speed of light is roughly 1.079 billion km/hr, and the entire universe is only 1 million km, it would take us 16.68 seconds to travel from one end to the other.
So how is this going to work? How are they going to fit everything inside this relatively tiny box? It got me thinking. The way I see it, there are only three options.
The first is the tiny man theory I have seen a few times. The map may be 1 million km long, but that would seem to be an infinite distance if we were the size of a dust mite. What if the Javelin was actually the size of an ant? We just didn't know it because we were also shrunk in proportion? What if this was why they have placed so much attention on levels of detail? Anyone else getting flashbacks of the movie "Honey I shrunk the kids"?
The second theory is that they will be connecting multiple boxes. What if the Stanton system is what the current map box is for? What if all the other systems had their own boxes? That would mean that the jump point system would literally be the only way to travel from system to system. It wouldn't matter how much fuel you carried. You simply could not fly between solar systems because they were not really in space with relative distance between. The jump points would be acting as a sort of loading screen as you moved from instanced solar system to instanced solar system.
The third, and most disturbing option, is that they are trying to cram all this into that little box. The only way I see this happening is by using the quantum travel system like a loading screen. Each point of interest (planet, station, asteroid, etc.) would have a limited amount of space attached to it. Beyond which, you simply would be running (or flying in this case) against an invisible wall. If you dropped out of quantum travel in between these points, you would be issued a separate empty box with the planets showing on a (skybox) relative to your position. This would leave almost no wasted space in the universe, but would also only give an illusion of distance. The space between planets and other points would not exist.
I don't know. Maybe I need to drink more and stop thinking about these silly little details. What do you think? Am I just reading too much into a single statement that CR made around 2 years ago? Is my sober napkin math completely wrong?
