Thrust update is coming!+My observations [Dev Build 0.19525]

[Crimson-Artist]

the long awaited thrust update is already in the dev build which means that its coming this weekend. I've played around with it and have some observations as well as a short break down on how it'll work. Bare in mind that i was playing a dev build version of this, its very possible that some or all of the details will change when its released.

How it works.

• Ship's max speed is now determined solely by its Thruster Mass-to-Module ratio. The more thrusters you add the faster your ship can go. only 2.5% of your ships mass needs to be devoted to thruster modules in order to achieve the server max speed.

• ship cores have a default max speed of 25 m/s.

• The new Thrust Menu can be access from the menu navigation on the top of your screen when you open your inventory or other hot key menus. This where you will can allocate thrust as well as access other settings.
  • Thrust is actually acceleration. when you allocate thrust in a direction you are actually determining how fast you will achieve max speed rather then how fast you can go in that direction in general. This is of course is still effected by your ships max speed.
  • You can allocate thrust in 4 ways. forward/backward, left/right, and up/down and rotational. You can allocate points by dragging sections of the triangle in the direction you want. alternatively you can press the press set buttons on top to set all thrust in a given direction. Currently every time you change your thrust settings it takes 10 seconds for it to take effect. this may or may not stay as this could be potentially exploited.

• Most of the directions are self explanatory but rotational is something at requires some explaining. Rotation determines your rotational speed and it effects your overall thrust in all directions. 50% is the default setting, increasing your rotational thrust increases your turning speed but decreases your acceleration in all directions. 100% rotational thrust completely stops your ship from moving but gives you the absolute maximum turn speed. Turning the rotational thrust down will increase your acceleration in all directions but will make it harder to turn. 0% rotational actually still allows you to turn, it just makes it really hard.
• A side from thrust allocation you can now toggle momentum dampeners. Thats right newtonian physics are now default in a way. They default to on but toggling them off will allow your ship to move endlessly without slowing down once in motion. To counter this there is a second setting that will automatically toggle auto dampeners on if you leave the core. This too can be toggled off and must be toggled off if you want a ship to be truly frictionless in space.

• The dimension based turning is still in however it plays a more supplemental role to rotational thrust. Didn't get a chance to test specifics but at least you don't turn nearly as slow as 1.0 1.0 1.0 generally now.

Observations

• While I really like the way this is going I do feel that having thrust allocation be toward only 3 directions rather then 6 promotes kiting. Allocating all of your points into forward/backward thrust allows you a surprising amount of speed. Being able to fly backwards as fast as you can fly forward has the unintentional consequence of allowing you to just fly away from an enemy while still being able to fire all of your weapons while still offering a lot of evasion options.
  • If thrust allocation was broken up into all 6 directions then you would specifically need to build a ship that can only fly backwards at maximum speed. its still exploitable but at least if things go south you can't change directions as quickly.
• Thrust allocation should also determine total achievable speed in that direction rather then just effecting acceleration.
  • Having thrust only effect how fast you will achieve max speed doesn't really change the way we play the game. Heck, just turning down the rotational thrust alittle bit boost your acceleration in all direction big time. To the point where I can see players not even allocating thrust much since with the correct ship design theres no downside to equalizing your thrust.
  • Making the max achievable speed in a direction be determined by thrust allocation will force players to prioritize a direction thus promoting dog fighting as well as more thought being put into capital ship design. For example: would you rather go 130 m/s foward/back, 10 m/s left/right, and 10m/s up/down or would you rather only be able to go 50 m/s in all directions?
  • This can also work with the previous observation as putting all of your thrust into backwards wouldn't leave you with much room to do much else.

Those are some of my concerns but overall I like where this is going. I highly advise people to test out the thrust overhaul in the dev builds in order to plan out refits accordingly.

 

[nightrune]

Thank you so much for this!

 

[Dellexe]

Sweet info, thanks.

I would like for the time to change thrust to go down to 5 seconds rather than 10. 10 seconds is quite a long time if you're in a fight, and 5 seconds still stops players from being able to rapidly switch to be extremely maneuverable.

Also, I don't think that the thrust should be split up into every direction. The only one that it could need tweaking is Forward/Backward, as you said. How about Left/Right, Up/Down, Forward, and then Backward, to still keep the system relatively simple.

Anyways, this is SWEET! Time to do redesign my Stargate ships (again!)!

 

[timethatswasted]

I agree that it would be nice if forward and reverse thrust were separate settings. All you can really do is make it easier or harder to turn and roll.

Without that what does this thrust update really add beside a nice interface? And the ability to adjust your inertia? Which I really like by the way.

Also, this may just be me, but smaller ships felt way less manuverable...

But again I have to say, the interface is great. I especially like the quick reference buttons. ..... I've already cought myself yelling out "full speed to forward thrust!"

<_<
>_>

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Sweet info, thanks.

I would like for the time to change thrust to go down to 5 seconds rather than 10. 10 seconds is quite a long time if you're in a fight, and 5 seconds still stops players from being able to rapidly switch to be extremely maneuverable.

Also, I don't think that the thrust should be split up into every direction. The only one that it could need tweaking is Forward/Backward, as you said. How about Left/Right, Up/Down, Forward, and then Backward, to still keep the system relatively simple.

Anyways, this is SWEET! Time to do redesign my Stargate ships (again!)!

I think the idea is that players are suppose to set their ship's thrust before hand rather then pulling a menu swap to gain an advantage. It puts more emphasis on ship variations and classes rather than making one ship a jack of all trades in terms of maneuverability.

that is unless the 10 sec thrust change is only if your ship is not under attack. kind of similar to the way HP only increases if your ship is not damaged
[DOUBLEPOST=1450324303,1450324179][/DOUBLEPOST]

I agree that it would be nice if forward and reverse thrust were separate settings. All you can really do is make it easier or harder to turn and roll.

Without that what does this thrust update really add beside a nice interface? And the ability to adjust your inertia? Which I really like by the way.

Also, this may just be me, but smaller ships felt way less manuverable...

But again I have to say, the interface is great. I especially like the quick reference buttons. ..... I've already cought myself yelling out "full speed to forward thrust!"

<_<
>_>

from what i've seen not much else, unless there config changes or something. No new blocks anways

 

[Dellexe]

I think the idea is that players are suppose to set their ship's thrust before hand rather then pulling a menu swap to gain an advantage. It puts more emphasis on ship variations and classes rather than making one ship a jack of all trades in terms of maneuverability.

that is unless the 10 sec thrust change is only if your ship is not under attack. kind of similar to the way HP only increases if your ship is not damaged
[DOUBLEPOST=1450324303,1450324179][/DOUBLEPOST]
from what i've seen not much else, unless there config changes or something. No new blocks anways

Oh yeah, there should be some kind of limit in place to stop crazy amounts of thrust switching, but having stuff like "ALL POWER TO FORWARD THRUST" "MILITARY THRUST" and "MORE POWER TO MANEUVERING THRUSTERS" have been a staple of Sci-Fi for decades now, and it'd really suck, in my opinion, to have that element of RP cut out.

One possible compromise is to make the time-to-thrust redirection change depending on the severity of the changes.
An example of this could be going from everything even to adding a bit more forward thrust taking just a second or two, but pulling lots of thrust power out to change turning speed could take 10 seconds or so.

Increasing the time to thrust change while under fire is also a good limiting factor, and doesn't stop people from wanting to cruise around at maximum forward thrust and then have an "all stop" to slow down as they reach their destination.

 

[timethatswasted]

interesting.... if your ship is over the required thrust for your mass you are able to go over the max server speed. That's fun...

 

[TheOmega]

What if
you also had to allocate a percentage of your ships power generation to thrust as well as having a full 6-directional system + rotation.
That could lead to racing ships, and a system to passively buff shields besides ion passive, and weapons without overdrive.
This would also lead to more specialized ships, which I think would be a good thing.

 

[jstenholt]

Any word on being able to dump all of your thrust into one axis for a short duration? I feel like this was discussed by one of the devs.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Any word on being able to dump all of your thrust into one axis for a short duration? I feel like this was discussed by one of the devs.

unfortunately no. though i believe that sounds like something a effect should do

 

[jstenholt]

unfortunately no. though i believe that sounds like something a effect should do

Yeah, but I don't think we'll be getting an effect update any time soon, although we desperately need one.

 

[Exozen]

What if
you also had to allocate a percentage of your ships power generation to thrust as well as having a full 6-directional system + rotation.
That could lead to racing ships, and a system to passively buff shields besides ion passive, and weapons without overdrive.
This would also lead to more specialized ships, which I think would be a good thing.

^ So much this. I feel like thrusters should use more power, currently their power consumption is pretty unnoticeable/negligible IMO. I think their power consumption should be something you have to think about.
And it would be interesting to see asymmetrical ships which move left better than right / etc. with the 6 directional system.

 

[alterintel]

I vote for (like it's really a vote, :p) 6 planes of adjustment, but not in all 6 directions:
Forward, Back, Lateral Strafing (Left/Right), Vertical Strafing (Up/Down), Pitch, and Roll

 

[Mariux]

Damn, I've waited for this so long. I owe Schema more cookies than I can count.

 

[darkracer125]

^ So much this. I feel like thrusters should use more power, currently their power consumption is pretty unnoticeable/negligible IMO. I think their power consumption should be something you have to think about.
And it would be interesting to see asymmetrical ships which move left better than right / etc. with the 6 directional system.

what the hell are you talking about. thrusters use way too much power.
it sucks with the bigger ships
for some of my ships i cannot power the thrusters with the power soft cap.
i need docked reactors just to move (slowly move)

if you think that thruster use too much power then stop making insects and build an actual ship

 

[nightrune]

if you think that thruster use too much power then stop making insects and build an actual ship

This is uncalled for. You made your point before this. You wanna build titans fine. You wanna build fighters fine. It's a sandbox everyone plays differently and its awesome.

 

[Winterhome]

what the hell are you talking about. thrusters use way too much power.
it sucks with the bigger ships
for some of my ships i cannot power the thrusters with the power soft cap.
i need docked reactors just to move (slowly move)

if you think that thruster use too much power then stop making insects and build an actual ship

That might have to do with the problem of your ship being 30-40% thruster modules and 1mil mass.

 

[Lancake]

To clarify, the reason why it takes 10 seconds (or maybe longer depending on what we'll put in the config) to make new changes apply on your ship is to prevent exploiting in mid battle. Sure, some of you would love that you can change it on the fly instantly...But can you imagine a capital ship going 100% rotational thrust for 5 seconds so it can keep its huge guns aimed at your smaller ship while you're trying to flank it?

Some of you want to split it up in front, back, left, right, up, down (and even more, pitch X, Y, Z,...)
Not really possible in a graphical way though. You can't just put those 6 options in a heptagon and have it work properly.

Spamming 6 or more sliders doesn't seem to be a great option either. What we have now allows enough tweaking and is simple to use.

 

[NeonSturm]

Thrust forward/backward,
push-effect up down ??? COMBAT-EXPLOIT-DETECTED :D

I'd like a capital to move forward/backward and rely on agile stop/damage drones to fight.
It will certainly encourage the use of up/down shuttles to enter/leave planets.

Edit:

• I like it to be changeable only through a shipyard to make it balanced rather than the 10-second delay stuff
  • 
    
  • or it could be a good tactical manoeuvre if bound to a hotkey.
• There can be 2 graphs. one for strafing/brake-acceleration, one for rotating.
  • 
    
  • And a slider to set general extremes - brake/acceleration balance.
  • Movement change and max speed?

 

[godmars]

Doesn't look like it's in the OP, but the mothership can also inherit thrust from docked entities. Which is gonna be greaaat for modular rail-based ships.