[kir2yar]

If we talk about logic, then why there is no auto-ETS? Emptied the weapon storage - redirect energy to them. Shields full - all power on the engine. Shields low - redirect energy from weapos(if not low) to shields.

[Kolgena]

That one makes sense though. A pilot might need to run like hell, in which case he wouldn't care if his primaries energy was empty. He'd cram all energy into engines and maybe shields to aid survivability.

[Spoon]

That would explain why every laser in the game makes the same sound when it blows past.

That or the Dev's where lazy and didn't want to make a different laser whoosh for each weapon type. 

It's currently not even possible to set different flyby sounds for primary weapons
It's been requested but no coder seems interested.

[jr2]

Sound generated by ships travels through their subspace drives into the subspace aether, where other subspace drives pick it up and it is relayed into the other ships.  The first few test runs of subspace drives ran into a problem as this was altogether too loud for a human pilot to endure, until a way was found to put a muffler on the subspace drive to decrease the harmonic resonance transmitted from the ships' engines and systems to each other through the subspace medium.

Maybe that's why the Shivans are so mad at us.. their masters never cared for their comfort and didn't install subspace mufflers.  Could also explain why we had a time making the Shivan drives work on captured craft as they weren't designed with a muffler and the muffler interfered with its operation.

It is, however, unknown why the proximity of craft to each other in real space affects the volume of sound transmitted over subspace.   

Or something like that

[General Battuta]

Sound generated by ships travels through their subspace drives into the subspace aether, where other subspace drives pick it up and it is relayed into the other ships.  The first few test runs of subspace drives ran into a problem as this was altogether too loud for a human pilot to endure, until a way was found to put a muffler on the subspace drive to decrease the harmonic resonance transmitted from the ships' engines and systems to each other through the subspace medium.

Maybe that's why the Shivans are so mad at us.. their masters never cared for their comfort and didn't install subspace mufflers.  Could also explain why we had a time making the Shivan drives work on captured craft as they weren't designed with a muffler and the muffler interfered with its operation.

It is, however, unknown why the proximity of craft to each other in real space affects the volume of sound transmitted over subspace.   

Or something like that

I still get sound when I tick 'no subspace drive' on the player ship

[Snail]

luminiferous aether, that's how the Mi-Go fly

[jr2]

I still get sound when I tick 'no subspace drive' on the player ship

Herm.. well... party pooper

[Kopachris]

That would explain why every laser in the game makes the same sound when it blows past.

That or the Dev's where lazy and didn't want to make a different laser whoosh for each weapon type. 

Here's my explanation... energy weapons generate EM interference patterns that a fighter's Comm system picks up on are heard by the pilot.  Different weapons have different interference patterns, and intensity of the sound comes down to the degree of interference generated (like on big beam guns) and the distance from the source.  Shield impacts could be said to generate EM interference as well.

Yeah... EM interference patterns would at best be picked up as random static I'd imagine. Edit: o wait, you mean like a computer interprets the EM interference. Well, you've got to have a human-grade FFT algorithm in there to separate out all the patterns, I think.

What's wrong with a situational awareness system? It's about the only explanation that actually makes sense. (though, subluminal lasers and such means that sense doesn't matter)

Can't we combine the two?  We could combine EM interference and doppler velocity data (i.e. radar).  (BTW, for some examples of "sounds" from our sun based on doppler velocity: http://soi.stanford.edu/results/sounds.html )

This doesn't really explain missile whoosh-by sounds and projectile sounds (i.e. machine guns). Missiles... MAYBE, if the radar has a high enough resolution for an object that has a frontal area no smaller than 10cm or so, but definitely not bullets.

Sure it does!  Remember, we're over 300 years in the future.  It's conceivable that they could have radar with high enough resolution to pick up bullets.

[SpardaSon21]

Or ladar, even.

[NGTM-1R]

Sure it does!  Remember, we're over 300 years in the future.  It's conceivable that they could have radar with high enough resolution to pick up bullets.

Infrared search and track would be simpler and possible with modern technology. Hell, you could do it optical if you really wanted.

[SpardaSon21]

This is science fiction though.  They're not going to do things the easy and simple way.

[Snail]

This is science fiction though.  They're not going to do things the easy and simple way.

Well, IMO, 'good' science fiction should do things the easy and simple way.

[StargateSpankyHam]

Theoretically, if you had a weapon powerful enough to cause ripples and vibrations in the space-time continuum itself, then you could get 'sound' to propogate across space, as the vibrations would cascade along space, to any ships nearby. Unfortunately, without gravity-based weaponry, or something analogous, I really don't see this happening on any weapon, short of something on par with a gamma-ray burst, or perhaps larger. It might spontaneously tear holes through space-time and make everything in the region flash to plasma.

The Sathanas' subspace (weapon?) thing at Capella might have done it, but we will never really know.

[General Battuta]

Gravity waves are insanely weak because gravity is a stupidly weak force, and I dunno where this 'holes in spacetime' thing lines up with real physics per se.

[Luis Dias]

Whoah, come on people. You have ships here moving at 20m/s, you have friction in empty space! Sound is the least of FS' "physics" problems! This is a fun game, but don't even try to explain this ridiculous gameplay into some form of technobabble.

[Rodo]

technobabble.

....

technobabble.

.......

technobabble.

But.... technobabble rules man!

[jr2]

20 m/s is part of the subspace drive deal... they are intrinsically linked with the subspace aether which "anchors" the ships to the other dimension, making them behave as if they were "flying" in .... water.  lolz.  w/e  Yes it's stupid.  But so are space-faring vessels that travel slower than a 4-cylinder ecobox.

[z64555]

That would explain why every laser in the game makes the same sound when it blows past.

That or the Dev's where lazy and didn't want to make a different laser whoosh for each weapon type. 

It's currently not even possible to set different flyby sounds for primary weapons
It's been requested but no coder seems interested.

Oh noes. 

Well, having a unique flyby sound per primary weapon would require some provisions for the sound equipment to identify which primary the projectile belongs to. If you had something of an Ammo.def, or ammunition definition file, you could link the sound ques to each ammo entry, including secondaries.

Second phase would be to see how the current sound system works... which could be a bear from what I've been gathering.

Sure it does!  Remember, we're over 300 years in the future.  It's conceivable that they could have radar with high enough resolution to pick up bullets.

Infrared search and track would be simpler and possible with modern technology. Hell, you could do it optical if you really wanted.

Remember though that the radar/lidar would also pick up the billions upon billions of meteorites and other assorted space junk. Having a high-speed (>200m/s) meteorite would sound just like a bullet, but you would not only have to consider resolution but also the computing power of the shipboard control system.

Not to mention the range of the bugger. 

[NGTM-1R]

Remember though that the radar/lidar would also pick up the billions upon billions of meteorites and other assorted space junk. Having a high-speed (>200m/s) meteorite would sound just like a bullet, but you would not only have to consider resolution but also the computing power of the shipboard control system.

You vastly overestimate the density of matter in interplanetary space.

[Enzo03]

I didn't see this brought up so...
...
...so what about in a nebula?
It is basically dust and gas, right?
How well would sound travel through that?

edit: actually, according to http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art29542.asp nebulae aren't good mediums for sound propagation :-\

edit again: I had an epiphany just now.  Instead of a stupid microphone/supersonic ear/hypersonic ear/awizarddidit/Tyrian 2000's Mega Sound Chair/BECUZITSOUNDZGEWD, there is a device which scans an area for, oh, I dunno how far, uh.. ... this:

I call it the fridge logic sound in space detector because I don't think anything like this could really work at all.
Also, the broken line behind the red dot is where the sensor wave either has reduced efficiency or cannot scan at all because, well, it hit something.