Newtonian Propulsion Mod!

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, with the latest beta, the idea has potential for implementing!

Destroyer drives will have an acceleration ability of something about 0.0001, with heavier ships getting even smaller numbers

One thing for sure, is that it will be very important to start slowing down before you get to your destination.
I've crashed into starbase terra many times
(Time to mod in turning ability, I guess )

Hehe. Whoops. Big crater on Vendrin Junction VI now.

[ December 22, 2003, 20:27: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Phoenix-D]

Would be nice if you would tell us -why- this now has potential..

Actually you can do it with the current patch, it just gets messy because you have to asign "bonus speed" to all the components. Bonus because it ISN'T divided by the number of engine slots..

[Suicide Junkie]

Mainly the custom slots are working nicely.
So, I can force different size ships to have different engines, and make the small ships accelerate faster than the big ones.

[Phoenix-D]

That's good. I was afraid I'd end up having to puit custom slots on the ships manually (i.e. draw them in the top-down view)

[Slick]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
One thing for sure, is that it will be very important to start slowing down before you get to your destination.
I've crashed into starbase terra many times
(Time to mod in turning ability, I guess )

Hehe. Whoops. Big crater on Vendrin Junction VI now.

Unless it has been changed, all you need to do is steer slightly to one side of the target station or planet and when you get in range, the "Shuttle Over" button turns green, then push "S". Insta-stop, insta-repairs, etc. In fact, when you exit, if you are fast enough, when you get back into your ship, you will find that it is still moving and if you hit the full speed button fast enough, you will quickly be at full speed again.

This is a bug and quite unfair during combat since you can recharge shields and do repairs instantaneously with respect to the combat timeframe. Granted, you are only cheating yourself. I think planets/stations should not allow "Shuttling Over" when >1 ship is within a small radius. (Elite has such a restriction, probably to prevent this exploit.)

Slick.

[Suicide Junkie]

Even if you shuttle over, you'll still be going the exact same speed when you return, but your throttle will be set to zero.

In this mod, the stopping distance of your ship will be at least an order of magnitude larger than the shuttle over distance.
So if you're heading straight for the planet at more than 5% speed or so when you shuttle over, nothing can save you.
If you're heading just past one side, you'll get one chance to shuttle over before you go whizzing by. That's not so bad.

While cruising from warppoint to warppoint, 2000 speed is fine.
When you enter your destination system, you'll need to immediately start slowing to half that.
As you get to 500-1000 ls from your destination, you should be slowing even more, and then ease yourself to a stop nearby.

[ December 23, 2003, 16:24: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Ed Kolis]

Now if your top speed is something like 2000, wouldn't that make the "increase/decrease speed by 1/4" buttons kind of coarse? I wish we could change the amount that those buttons affect your speed... I hate controlling my ship's speed with the mouse, the slider's soooo tiny and speed is VERY vital to avoid crashing into things!

Of course in a Newtonian mod, most likely the pace of the game will be slower so you'll have more time to react, right?

And what's to stop the player from whizzing around the system at 8x timescale when he doesn't have any time-critical missions to complete? Instant acceleration!

[Ed Kolis]

Too bad the turning won't be newtonian - i.e. you use your turning thrusters and your ship just rotates, it doesn't actually start GOING in the direction it's pointing at whatever speed it had before...

But at least there can be different sizes of turning thrusters for the different hulls, so we won't have the "level 12 turning thruster on a battleship quadruples its turn rate" or something...

[Suicide Junkie]

The time multipliers actually seem to have very little effect on the game, so far.

Acceleration is very slow, so even cranking up the timescale to 8x leaves the little blue bar to climb one pixel at a time.
There is more than enough time to click a steady speed before you get to it, and in combat, your choices are not "Speed X" they are "accelerate or decelerate?" You'll never reach your desired speed before it changes drastically

When you're cruising, you're moving at quite a clip already, and adding a time multiplier to your reaction speed dosen't help
Even if you do use it, you'll only have it kicked in for a few seconds before you need to slow it back down.

[ December 24, 2003, 03:38: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[solops]

Interesting. Any more on this? Looks like a "turnover time" pop-up calculator for a zero-zero arrival might be handy.