Thrust Mechanics Explained

[der_scheme]

Actually, capital ships unable to move would be an extreme nuisance. Imagine warping in with the fleet to a huge firefight, but alas, what's between you and the enemy capital you planned on taking down with your weapons? A planet.

I don't see an issue there. You still could attack with dreadnoughts, but you'd have to choose a different method of FTL. The new system will force us to carefully think about our combat tactics, since each method of FTL favors different approaches.

Tugs. We need tugs.

!!

capital ship are already hard to move around , as a titan/planetoid builder I know what im talking about x)
for example one of my ship takes about 2 minutes to do a 180° , and I think max speed is not the problem but acceleration , it would be better that, at a certain mass, even if you add thruster your acceleration will still be the same.

anyway as schema said your ship will still be able to move, but slower the more you add capital ships systems

Nothing is keeping you from equipping a jump drive instead of a "Capital ship" drive. Only because it's labeled like this, it doesn't mean that capitals (in the general connotation) can't equip something else, or that freighters will be limited to jump drives (for example).

 

[Criss]

Alright. I am going to give my reasoning for this capital ship nonsense nd then I am out. This thread read became a big mess fast. Look. I'm making a capital ship with hyperspace right? I want my big spaceship to move. Not just with hyperspace but with conventional thrusters. Suddenly once a hyperdrive is installed I no longer have a need to even design engines for my space ship. Even if the debuff is literally 1% server speed, that is still incredibly crippling for the ship and Its just as viable an option. I have space stations already and if I basically get a new type that has hyperspace capabilities why would I ever care about regular space stations again? Let's not blur the lines between a ship and a station.

Now, thats pretty much my only complaint about the post. Im sure cal doesn't even want to look back here since it was suppose to be about thrust mechanics.

 

[Top 4ce]

The Hyperdrive just makes a ship something like a Mothership from Homeworld. Its a mobile base of operations, like a Death Star. Its used as a mobile offensive station. You Hyperdrive your Flagship in, release your forces, have the rest of the fleet Jump in and attack the objective. As the battle continues, dead pilots spawn into the Flagship and continue the fight. Sure you can put a super weapon on it, to make it more effective, but it's not the ships purpose. Most capitals are not going to be carrying Hyperdrives, it's use is for a mobile base of operations, that's it.

That being said, I do think 1% would be much better than 0%, giving the base some sort of way to move outside of Hyperspace.

 

[Criss]

The Hyperdrive just makes a ship something like a Mothership from Homeworld. Its a mobile base of operations, like a Death Star. Its used as a mobile offensive station. You Hyperdrive your Flagship in, release your forces, have the rest of the fleet Jump in and attack the objective. As the battle continues, dead pilots spawn into the Flagship and continue the fight. Sure you can put a super weapon on it, to make it more effective, but it's not the ships purpose. Most capitals are not going to be carrying Hyperdrives, it's use is for a mobile base of operations, that's it.

That being said, I do think 1% would be much better than 0%, giving the base some sort of way to move outside of Hyperspace.

Players will find a way or reason to treat it however they want. To me it's still a space ship, and like your example, even the death star was capable of moving in sublight speed. To be completely honest, the similarities between this and the way EVE handles FTL is astounding. The only thing missing is the capability for hyperspace vessels to launch other smaller ships just as far using a jump bridge.

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

Players will find a way or reason to treat it however they want. To me it's still a space ship, and like your example, even the death star was capable of moving in sublight speed. To be completely honest, the similarities between this and the way EVE handles FTL is astounding. The only thing missing is the capability for hyperspace vessels to launch other smaller ships just as far using a jump bridge.

It's similar to eve, but not quite the same. Capital ships can use both onboard FTL methods there but not gates and subcaps can only use what is effectively hyperdrive onboard without the steering here, the proposed capital system.

Then again, FTL concepts in scifi as a whole typically breaks down as 1) move really fast, 2) Move normally in some alternate space that corresponds to vastly more normal space, or 3) Skip the space between you and your target altogether (gates/wormholes/jumpdrives/etc). Not too much variance there, so when you have a game trying to develop FTL rules, working with some similarities to other games is likely unavoidable.

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

I have suddenly lost interest in Starmade for until the time that this is implemented (this is a good thing)

 

[GaeasSon]

I really think you may be making this unnecessarily complex in places:

Thrust and Speed limits: Nature has solved this one for you. Treat Mass as a variable relative to speed.

Let Energy consumption and thrust scale linearly with the number of thrust blocks.
Let (Acceleration=thrust/mass)
Let turning speed scale with (thrust/(mass*(Average of the dimensions orthogonal to axis)))
Let effective mass = mass*(ServerSpeedLimit/(ServerSpeedLimit-velocity))​

Performance Hacks: Let heavier ships improve their performance by spending energy. Let me spend e to lower my effective mass and maneuver like a lighter vessel, both turning and accelerating.

FTL: I like the Jump drive and the Gates. I'm not feeling it with the Hyper-drive. If you are going to turn a Ship into a base, why not just make this a drive for re-positioning bases?

A hybrid approach:
If I might suggest a fusion of the Hyperspace/GoVery Fast drive that might seem more intuitive to your players?

Set two server speed limits. One is the natural Asymptote for unassisted velocity. Another is the actual server speed limit based on system performance. Through in-game engineering a ship can exceed that first limit without anything exciting happening. They just "Go very fast". When they exceed the second barrier, the client and server continue to track ship speed and position, but other clients stop trying to render the speeding entity, and the speeding client stops trying to render any other entities. Non-rendered interface objects like stars and entity location diamonds remain for navigational purposes. When the Speeding vessel drops back below the server limit, other client resume rendering it, and that players client resumes rendering it's surroundings.

 

[NeonSturm]

It's similar to eve, but not quite the same. Capital ships can use both onboard FTL methods there but not gates and subcaps can only use what is effectively hyperdrive onboard without the steering here, the proposed capital system.

Then again, FTL concepts in scifi as a whole typically breaks down as 1) move really fast, 2) Move normally in some alternate space that corresponds to vastly more normal space, or 3) Skip the space between you and your target altogether (gates/wormholes/jumpdrives/etc). Not too much variance there, so when you have a game trying to develop FTL rules, working with some similarities to other games is likely unavoidable.

You forgot "Travel in another dimension where further away destination A may be even close to you than neighbour B" something like swap long with short distances based on some hyper-dimensional transformation... (I think it is called far-plane invaderes or similar) :p

You also forgot SlipStreams (like in the movie Andromeda) -> you can travel very fast, but not a direct route, not enter/leave anywhere. :p


Gates (X3-Reunion, Stargate) are distance-skippers, but you have to decide how big you want to build them (In StarGate, energy consumption = radius^(x>=2) * distance^(y>=1) with (I guess) x=3, y=2, but don't quote me on that)

Gates and StarGate's Wormhole-drive (some experimental thing build by Antikers) have size requirements. Even there hyperspace requires a certain energy level to enter (nothing a ship smaller than a F302 2-person fighter can handle - it required instable Naquadria to do it.)

It is the balance which makes things interesting (available for only big or only small, investment (logistic, credits/time), %size occupation in your ship, ...)

 

[Malacodor]

The directional thrust system sounds awesome. My only concern is that there would need to be some sort of cool down after you have assigned your thrust directions so you can't immediately change your settings. Otherwise people could just put 100% of thrust into reverse on a whim and kite backwards like they do now.

This is a very important point. Perhaps changing thrust distribution should only be possible in shipyards.

I was never a fan of titans being able to move as fast as fighters anyway, it's silly.

Why should bigger ships have lower speed caps than smaller ones in space? This makes no sense.

Gates :
I do not like the idea of getting propelled somewhere and beeing scraped on arival, because someone thought it a fun idea to reduce the receiver to a 1 Block Ring!

It should be possible to look through jump gates, just like in Portal.

 

[Criss]

It's similar to eve, but not quite the same. Capital ships can use both onboard FTL methods there but not gates and subcaps can only use what is effectively hyperdrive onboard without the steering here, the proposed capital system.

Then again, FTL concepts in scifi as a whole typically breaks down as 1) move really fast, 2) Move normally in some alternate space that corresponds to vastly more normal space, or 3) Skip the space between you and your target altogether (gates/wormholes/jumpdrives/etc). Not too much variance there, so when you have a game trying to develop FTL rules, working with some similarities to other games is likely unavoidable.

I was being somewhat ambiguous. It is obviously not exactly the same but those three systems are in EVE as well just under a different name. Since it isn't even implemented yet I am not going to go into specifics as to how it will all look and feel in the end. The steering thing has me skeptical. They haven't said capitals cant also use the jump drive. I Assume that would require more power.

This is a very important point. Perhaps changing thrust distribution should only be possible in shipyards.


Why should bigger ships have lower speed caps than smaller ones in space? This makes no sense.


It should be possible to look through jump gates, just like in Portal.

There is no reason for my super capital carrier flagship to move faster than a fighter. Its a trade off and its pretty much the way it is in every sci fi universe created. Capital ships are slow.

Seeing through gates is unnecessary and removes the potential for content. Example: gate camps. How do I know its safe on the other side? That risk would disappear with portal-like gates. I don't think this game would handle it very well either. Just more things to slow down the game.

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

You forgot "Travel in another dimension where further away destination A may be even close to you than neighbour B" something like swap long with short distances based on some hyper-dimensional transformation... (I think it is called far-plane invaderes or similar) :p

You also forgot SlipStreams (like in the movie Andromeda) -> you can travel very fast, but not a direct route, not enter/leave anywhere. :p


Gates (X3-Reunion, Stargate) are distance-skippers, but you have to decide how big you want to build them (In StarGate, energy consumption = radius^(x>=2) * distance^(y>=1) with (I guess) x=3, y=2, but don't quote me on that)

Gates and StarGate's Wormhole-drive (some experimental thing build by Antikers) have size requirements. Even there hyperspace requires a certain energy level to enter (nothing a ship smaller than a F302 2-person fighter can handle - it required instable Naquadria to do it.)

It is the balance which makes things interesting (available for only big or only small, investment (logistic, credits/time), %size occupation in your ship, ...)

My list wasn't meant to be all inclusive so much as contain the basic elements most sci-fi uses for FTL, but the basic point is there. I definitely agree about balance making or breaking the element in terms of interest.

Why should bigger ships have lower speed caps than smaller ones in space? This makes no sense.

This is one area where I would prefer realism take a back seat to balance. Just because an aspect makes sense based on reality doesn't mean it works best as a gameplay element.

I was being somewhat ambiguous. It is obviously not exactly the same but those three systems are in EVE as well just under a different name. Since it isn't even implemented yet I am not going to go into specifics as to how it will all look and feel in the end. The steering thing has me skeptical. They haven't said capitals cant also use the jump drive. I Assume that would require more power.

My point was that while they are in Eve by different names they also exist in other scifi predating Eve, in some cases by the same name. I don't think Eve created any new concepts for FTL so it felt like unnecessarily poking at SM for doing the same in copying already existing FTL ideas.

In either case I think both use a variety of FTL to create interesting dynamics for different kinds of ships and since there are only so many FTL basic concepts duplication was inevitable (though really the hyperdrive/hyperspace mechanic as the op describes doesn't exist in Eve as eve warps are normal space events and don't allow navigation once engaged, or really free navigation at all since you have to have a specific location marked somehow to warp to).

 

[Criss]

In either case I think both use a variety of FTL to create interesting dynamics for different kinds of ships and since there are only so many FTL basic concepts duplication was inevitable (though really the hyperdrive/hyperspace mechanic as the op describes doesn't exist in Eve as eve warps are normal space events and don't allow navigation once engaged, or really free navigation at all since you have to have a specific location marked somehow to warp to).

I stated EVE because more people may recognize those systems with that reference. Popular game. And again lets not be nitpicky and specific about things. I know the differences. Hyperspace is still incredibly simlar to a jump drive from EVE in allowing a capital ship to travel much further than regular warp drives without a gate. No SM did not steal it from EVE and that was not what I was getting at at all. There really are no better options in terms of FTL so I am not surprised that these three will soon to be included in the game.

As a side note, I just witnessed the gate in action on a devbuild. It is freakin amazing and I cannot wait to work on some gates.

 

[Zeno9141]

I stated EVE because more people may recognize those systems with that reference. Popular game. And again lets not be nitpicky and specific about things. I know the differences. Hyperspace is still incredibly simlar to a jump drive from EVE in allowing a capital ship to travel much further than regular warp drives without a gate. No SM did not steal it from EVE and that was not what I was getting at at all. There really are no better options in terms of FTL so I am not surprised that these three will soon to be included in the game.

As a side note, I just witnessed the gate in action on a devbuild. It is freakin amazing and I cannot wait to work on some gates.

Hold on.

GATE?!

*Downloads devbuild*

 

[GaeasSon]

As to large ships and speed caps....

I'd rather take the hit to acceleration rather than max speed, I think. I hate hard speed caps anyway. I'd much rather push against an asymptote than a wall. It just feels wrong to accelerate smoothly then "clang!" no more acceleration for you!

 

[Comr4de]

This subsystem, when placed on your ship, will activate a "capital ship" flag in your ships meta data, imparting a permanent debuff to your ship (currently we plan to have it set your ships thrust to 0 and reduce the ships max speed to 0%, based on server max speed.)

I think y'all are going a bit too hard on the speed debuff. I'm pretty sure that a mobile station is nobody's idea of a capital ship. Besides, one of the most fundamental mechanics in combat is maneuverability. There is an excellent reason why pirate stations are so easy to kill. It's because they can't outmaneuver your ship; it's static.

reducing thrust and max speed to 5-10% is much more reasonable than removing engines entirely.

 

[NeonSturm]

Why should bigger ships have lower speed caps than smaller ones in space? This makes no sense.

It does from an economic perspective:

For a small fast ship you have to spend mabye 10% fuel per second, for a big 100%.

With the medium you can go to shops, get the best offer (stock = near max), go to another shop, sell the best offer (stock = near min), but the huge ship you can't get enough trade items to pay your fuel.

With small you can transport passengers to other stations and these 1-5 passengers will play you a few cr each. Large ships won't get more passengers.​

It also makes sense from a balance perspective:

Small ships need to be able to escape, thus you put higher quality items into them, getting this tiny % extra thrust.

Big ships know that no matter how fast they are, there will always be faster ones have the opportunity to choose their angle of attack.
There are less entities in the universe which are a treat and these entities often have the need to reduce their own losses rather than suicide themselves
(would humans have ever evolved so far if they risk a few peoples to die to stronger prey (maybe bee-swarms)?).​

And it makes sense from a physics perspective:

IRL we can't build ships >an aircraft carrier. The larger they are, the more they risk to break apart by tidal forces.
We also can't build ion-thrusters for long space ships, because their thrust force is dependent on surface area. Larger ships would have not more profit -> more diminishing returns

We wouldn't build huge ships, because they wouldn't be able to rotate fast enough for the manoeuvres we need them for, thus they would need at least 3-4 90° thrusters to be somewhat use-full and 6 90° to have most of them being able to thrust in the chosen direction
-> dependent on technology maybe too much dead mass.​

It also makes sense from a Newtonian perspective that ships are faster than big ones when near them:

If humans stay on a conveyor belt, they don't need own energy to start moving.
Small ships may have similar technologies (tractor rays) which are more efficient are far more compact than using own propulsion.​

 

[Vakna]

As to large ships and speed caps....

I'd rather take the hit to acceleration rather than max speed, I think. I hate hard speed caps anyway. I'd much rather push against an asymptote than a wall. It just feels wrong to accelerate smoothly then "clang!" no more acceleration for you!

Completely agree with this, acceleration is a much bigger deal with considering ship sizes. One which I think has been overlooked and should absolutely be addressed.

 

[Criss]

As to large ships and speed caps....

I'd rather take the hit to acceleration rather than max speed, I think. I hate hard speed caps anyway. I'd much rather push against an asymptote than a wall. It just feels wrong to accelerate smoothly then "clang!" no more acceleration for you!

Are you suggesting a smoother acceleration to max speed that isn't abrupt in the end? That would be nice and probably not too hard to implement.

 

[NeonSturm]

If you can have more than one of these ships it is not your flagship.

Maybe your operational base =/= a flagship. Flagship == most technological advanced ship or ship with a glory history.

Sadly you are not encouraged to have lower tech in all ships but your flagship.
Got an idea about prototype ships

 

[Gamel]

I was thinking this won't come until maybe next next next build
I am surprised when I saw this is already in the dev build

http://www.twitch.tv/mushroomfleet/b/561988636