Thrust Mechanics Explained

[Vakna]

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

You're confusing capital ships with flagships dude, there's a significant difference.

 

[NeonSturm]

You're confusing capital ships with flagships dude, there's a significant difference.

True, corrected my post
Ty for the feedback

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/flag ships

 

[Malacodor]

It does from an economic perspective

No, it doesn't. Lower max speed means longer travel time, which means one has to pay more for crew wages, food, life support and so on.

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.

Fighters could even escape a faster titan. Simply make a U-turn and laugh about the titan's low turn rate. By the time the titan has turned and is ready for ludicrous speed the fighter should be out of sensor range.

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​

From a physics perspective it makes the least sense. There are no tidal forces in space. Diminishing returns result in a lower acceleration, not in a lower maximum speed.

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.

How is this even related to max speed?

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.​

Do you even know the difference between speed and acceleration? Bigger ships do of course need more energy to accelerate, but this in way limit the maximum speed.

 

[NeonSturm]

1. Not if fuel is more expensive than crew wages.

2. I didn't spoke about scouts vs titans. I spoke about:
In a system with 256 tiny, 16 small, 4 medium, 2 big, 1..2 huge ships in 16^3 sectors, it is more common that tiny meets small than that big meets huge or tiny meets huge.

3+4.
What I said about tidal forces... I meant space craft in combat need to resist their own thrust forces.
Have a 10m (7 body + 3 thrusters) ship accelerating at 1m/s means that thrusters have to resist 700 Newton * kg per 1m body
Have a 100m (70 body + 3 thrusters) ship accelerating at 1m/s means that thrusters have to resist 7'000 newton * kg per 1m body

int maxSpeedFrom(speed, distance, force /*acceleration==deceleration*/){
   var d = distance /* - distance without acceleration*/
   var a = distance / 2 //= distance / (acceleration + deceleration part)

   if( mass = constant )
   {
      var time = a / avg(0, 1*force)
      return time*force
   }
   else /* mass != constant */
   {
      var time = a / avg(0, sqrt(1*force))
      return sqrt( time*force )
   }
}

How is this even related to max speed?

You reach only that much top speed.
If you subtract 1/3 (distance without acceleration/deceleration) from real distance first, you know how big your fuel tanks need to be.
IRL Fuel tank size =relates-to=> top speed.



We have no fuel, but going faster should give less speed per energy (if we want realistic behaviour)
capping your speed depending on power tanks capacity if regeneration alone is not sufficient to counter occasional stopping-effect hits.
EDIT: less thrust may be miss-leading, replaced by less speed.

You could go faster but then a single stop beam (which could drain speed linearly) will nullify the investment of more energy if you go faster than it would if you go slower.
This would be closest we can get to real life without introducing fuel or artificial-feeling limitations.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Yay! Someone mentioned motion beams! Am I seriously the only one who realises that flag ships are still just ships, and thus able to be affected by push and pull. I would just build a ship with loads of push weapons, get it inside my flag ship, and fire away!

 

[Ithirahad]

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

That's amazing... Now Schema just needs to have a skybox effect while warping.

Yay! Someone mentioned motion beams! Am I seriously the only one who realises that flag ships are still just ships, and thus able to be affected by push and pull. I would just build a ship with loads of push weapons, get it inside my flag ship, and fire away!

Won't work. Notice that flagship equipment lowers a flagship's MAX SPEED, not just thrust.

 

[Sen OTS Tier]

For warp gates, it was mentioned that you could end up losing parts of your ship if the size isn't right.
I think that to combat this, we should be able to select the warpgate and have a readout tell us the size of the gate. I think this would help any scout ships that are sent through first better, judge the size of a gate, instead of making an extremely dangerous guess.

 

[Gamel]

That's amazing... Now Schema just needs to have a skybox effect while warping.


Won't work. Notice that flagship equipment lowers a flagship's MAX SPEED, not just thrust.

How about dock the flagship to a platform then use a tug to drag the platform??? Or the platform can move by itself

 

[FunnyBunny14]

That would work.
(Slamming my head against the wall because I didn't think of it.)

 

[Jananton]

When I watched that video on Twitch immediately the movie and the spin-off TV series with the name Stargate came to mind.
I wonder if it will be possible to put in a kind of dial up system in there. That would be interesting indeed and add a lot of tactical possibilities. ;-)

Greets,

Jan

 

[NeonSturm]

How about dock the flagship to a platform then use a tug to drag the platform??? Or the platform can move by itself

But how would you hyper-drive the dock @Gamel

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

But how would you hyper-drive the dock @Gamel

Just have the tug itself be able to dock to the ship and drag it along when the capital enters Hyperdrive. It does limit what you can do with a section of the ship exterior since the tug will need to be not much under half of the dimensions of the ship in any direction, but seems like it should be doable.

 

[NeonSturm]

Just have the tug itself be able to dock to the ship and drag it along when the capital enters Hyperdrive. It does limit what you can do with a section of the ship exterior since the tug will need to be not much under half of the dimensions of the ship in any direction, but seems like it should be doable.

I guess schema will make the dock of capitals also a temporary station :p

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Or he could just make it so that hyperdrive doesn't work on a ship if that ship is docked to another ship (or station). That way we can still have the interesting aspect of tugging. He should also make it that there is a cooldown after undocking to activate the hyperdrive. That way it isn't just a simple dock, move, undock and activate the hyperdrive to escape enemy fire, but you have to wait a while to be able to use the hyperdrive, and thus you would have to fight of the enemis for a while.

 

[Gamel]

Or he could just make it so that hyperdrive doesn't work on a ship if that ship is docked to another ship (or station). That way we can still have the interesting aspect of tugging. He should also make it that there is a cooldown after undocking to activate the hyperdrive. That way it isn't just a simple dock, move, undock and activate the hyperdrive to escape enemy fire, but you have to wait a while to be able to use the hyperdrive, and thus you would have to fight of the enemis for a while.

A cooldown time sounds highly doable

 

[Saber]

Anti-Gravity Module (self buff)

• This system will allow your ship to hover in the gravity of a planet

Everyone is freaking out over FTL (Which is going to be amazing don't get me wrong) and I'm over here excited about finally making my Pod Racers hover, and then making a track for them. :D

 

[AtraUnam]

There are only 2 parts of this I don't like:

1. Capital ships shouldn't be immobile even if they only get 1% thrust
2. Instead of artificial speed caps thrust division should just distribute acceleration based on the ships TWR

 

[therimmer96]

Not sure if this ha been brought up (internet took 5 mins to load 1 page, not loading anymore) what would happen if you have a tiny ship with the hyperdrive and negative effects of hyperdrive, and dock that? When you execute the current tp comand from a docked entity, everything gets dragged along, I assume the hyperdrive is the same, with a fancy effect as well.

 

[ltmauve]

Not sure if this ha been brought up (internet took 5 mins to load 1 page, not loading anymore) what would happen if you have a tiny ship with the hyperdrive and negative effects of hyperdrive, and dock that? When you execute the current tp comand from a docked entity, everything gets dragged along, I assume the hyperdrive is the same, with a fancy effect as well.

The tiny ship probably doesn't have enough hyperdrive capacity to haul a capital. Anyway, who here wants to make a gate that looks like

Forcing a solid connection will make the calculations harder and reduce flexibilty

 

[Daveorock]

That's amazing... Now Schema just needs to have a skybox effect while warping.

I'll just leave this here...

Spoiler

As of the aug 27th dev build (also, if you aren't following the FTL discussion thread, jump drives are now functional)