Talk:Relativity effect

"If the theory of relativity would apply, the plasmoid would be fired with the start speed plus ship speed." That's not true. That's using classical mechanics. With relativity, to add two speeds v₁ and v₂, you'd have to do this:

v_combined = (v₁ + v₂) / (1 + (v₁ * v₂) / C²)

where C is the speed of light.

In the game classical mechanics are used, with an cap on the maximum speed (wrt the viewer).

-- SvdB 00:42, 22 Nov 2004 (CET)

Hey SvdB, are you sure about that. I've being getting empirical data that for projectiles, their speed in the is the same regardless of how fast the ship is going. I did it with the Chenjesu Broodhome and timed how long it took for the crystal projectile to wrap all the way around for the following cases: stationary broodhome, fired forward-broodhome at max speed, fired backwards-broodhome at max speed. But maybe there's more going on in the code than I'm guessing. How exactly does the code determine a projectile's speed? I'd like to figure this out before editing this page.

Erm, right. It's just for ships. If you add speed to the ship, by pressing forward, or by bumping into an asteroid, the ships behaves as described above. Projectiles (at least the ones for which I've checked the source) get a fixed speed at launch time, which isn't related to the ship's speed.

— SvdB 16:08, 13 Aug 2005 (CEST)