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

[Malacodor]

..., Pitch, and Roll

You forgot Yaw.

 

[Kilim]

They should make it so that you can only reconfigure thrust in a shipyard, it's not good that you can do it midcombat, because this makes it so that a big battleship is able to do max reverse to easily outmaneuver a fighter.

 

[lupoCani]

Newtonian physics? Praised be schema!

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.

How about three sliders alongside the triangle, for distributing thrust already allocated to the axes? Or, if we settle for backwards/forwards, one slider?

 

[Lancake]

Newtonian physics? Praised be schema!



How about three sliders alongside the triangle, for distributing thrust already allocated to the axes? Or, if we settle for backwards/forwards, one slider?

That sounds pretty good, but still leaves 3 more sliders for rotation, so 6 total. Either way, at this stage it's a bit too late too implement that. Perhaps for another release.

 

[Kilim]

Also, I think it would be better to be able to make it so that you can set the forward and back independantly, few spaceships have the same sized thrusters on the front as the back...

 

[Lecic]

you also had to allocate a percentage of your ships power generation

You mean like... currently? Where thrusters drain a % of the power you're generating when you're using them?

They should make it so that you can only reconfigure thrust in a shipyard, it's not good that you can do it midcombat, because this makes it so that a big battleship is able to do max reverse to easily outmaneuver a fighter.

I was going to post this myself. Completely agree.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

just recently tested the latest dev build [0.19531] and i can confirm what godmars said. We can now choose to inherit the thrust from all of our docked entities. for example, a parent ship can have 0 thrust modules and a docked entity could have 50. when toggled on the parent ship will now be able to fly as if it had 50 thruster modules. pretty sweet stuff

 

[alterintel]

a parent ship can have 0 thrust modules and a docked entity could have 50. when toggled on the parent ship will now be able to fly as if it had 50 thruster modules. pretty sweet stuff

Praise Jesus, err uh, I mean, Praise the All Might Cat God

Soooo much Yes

Now I'm waiting to see if the parent ship will inherit the dimensions of docked entities. Will docked length width and height begin to affect turning speed?

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Praise Jesus, err uh, I mean, Praise the All Might Cat God

Soooo much Yes

Now I'm waiting to see if the parent ship will inherit the dimensions of docked entities. Will docked length width and height begin to affect turning speed?

not sure. haven't really tested that but from what I've seen if it does it might not have as big of an impact.

i've also tested how the ai reacts with the thrust changes. they seems to act normally however at the moment an AI ship that gets all its thrust from docked entities will still move as if it has 0 thrust so there is some work to be done

 

[Kilim]

Why thrust in all directions needs to be able to be configured independently:

Just google spaceship and you'll find loads.
90% of scifi lore out there have with a great magnitude larger back thrusters than forward thrusters - makes no sense to have it so that forwards and back are the same...should be configured separately.

 

[Lancake]

Why thrust in all directions needs to be able to be configured independently:

Just google spaceship and you'll find loads.
90% of scifi lore out there have with a great magnitude larger back thrusters than forward thrusters - makes no sense to have it so that forwards and back are the same...should be configured separately.

How many sci-fi ships do you see doing 180's to brake? Isn't acceleration in elite dangerous the exact same for front and back? That sidewinder can't even de-accelerate well if you just look at the thrusters :X. Those tiny ones you show are aimed a little bit to the front. Not enough to cancel out the big thruster acceleration.

So many sci-fi ships out there and almost none of them distinguish front and back acceleration, except for looks. Star Wars doesn't seem to care, eve online doesn't care, the X-series doesn't care, ...

The star destroyer has like 7 or so sub-light Ion engines? Huge things, you don't see meaningful thrusters at the front though. During the films/series and its games, how many star destroyers did you see doing 180's to cancel out their forward thrust?
The bombers and fighters in star wars don't even use newtonian physics, they act and fly like they're in atmosphere...while in space...

While I think it would be nice to be able to split the thrust up in the positive and negative axis. Gameplay wise it could make some ships accelerate waaay too much. Small ships got a big boost in mobility and in acceleration, allowing them to split up further and put more thrust in forward acceleration would just be over kill.

 

[nightrune]

You mean like... currently? Where thrusters drain a % of the power you're generating when you're using them?



I was going to post this myself. Completely agree.

I was thinking only being able to change after a reboot. That way you can still do it live if you want, but it makes you vulnerable.

 

[Ithirahad]

How many sci-fi ships do you see doing 180's to brake? Isn't acceleration in elite dangerous the exact same for front and back? That sidewinder can't even de-accelerate well if you just look at the thrusters :X. Those tiny ones you show are aimed a little bit to the front. Not enough to cancel out the big thruster acceleration.

That may be so, but how many Sci-Fi ships do we see accelerating to a reverse as fast as they accelerate forward...

 

[Kilim]

Isn't acceleration in elite dangerous the exact same for front and back?

It's at least 3x slower in backwards than front.

What I'm trying to say is that it will be good for smaller ships, the ones that keep being bullied because of their tiny size. Since small ships have high turning rate, they can assign the majority of their thrust to the forward axis and just turn instead of strafing. Strafing is what makes it so that big capital ships are able to outrun/strafe a fighter, by simply reversing.

I don't think that small ships should be able to easily kill big ships, but at least make it so that it's harder for the big ones to insta-kill them by not forcing us to have to use back thrust the same as forward thrust, making it a lot easier for big ships to force smaller ships in their 180 degree firing arc.

In elite dangerous, stuff like this exists because of the very fact that front thrust is so much faster than back thrust.
Watch how the massive anaconda never even tries to reverse, since that eagle fighter is so maneuverable. It tries to use it's massive thrusters to get enough distance to try to turn on the eagle instead.

 

[Andir]

looks like the asteroid spawns are tweaked as well. I'm seeing Larimar where it wasn't previously and I think something got more voluminous. My general storage chest is overfull now. @ver. 19533 Edit: It also looks like capsules/resources went down as well.

 

[GRHayes]

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.

How about the ability to do inertial slides or cut engines and coast. You know like space actually works.

 

[AssIn9]

How many sci-fi ships do you see doing 180's to brake?

battlestar galactica. StarGate.

I vote for each direction separate.

 

[badmojo]

I wish the orientation and placement of the thruster modules played some part in this, for example to get full acceleration you would need the max required thrusters facing the rear, if you only have half the required amount, you could only achieve 50% forward acceleration. If you wanted to allocate more thrust to other axis you would have to have thrusters facing the other directions, even as far as having no forward facing thrusters would make it impossible to stop without doing a 180 and applying forward thrust.

Unless I'm confused, we can throw a block of thusters anywhere on our ship, in any orientation, and achieve max movement in all directions. That seems like it removes a lot of potential for interesting ship building, sort of like how boring it is to work with things like power capacitors, where you end up just plopping them down wherever there's room.

 

[Ithirahad]

How about the ability to do inertial slides or cut engines and coast. You know like space actually works.

When you turn off auto dampening, you can do all the coasting you want. No more weird space friction.

 

[Andir]

battlestar galactica. StarGate.

I vote for each direction separate.

The Expanse ... it's a new show on SciFi (I'm only two episodes in)... they turned around to do a heavy burn to slow themselves down.