A change to the way that thrusters work.

[TryPhos]

Note: Sorry if this has been posted before, I only looked on the most reacent posts for anything of the like.



The one thing I do not like in this game is the way thrusters work. The only issue with them is that, even though my small fighter has nine thrusters on it, it is possible for it to reach 200 km/h. I think that the way thrusters should work is that, instead of making each thruster able to reach basically an infinite speed (over time, of course), each one should only add a few km/h to the ship's top speed. In addition to this, I think the blocks-to-thrusters ratio should greatly affect each individual thruster's top speed. The only reason that I think thrusters need to be changed is because, in pretty much every single movie, game, board game, anything to do with space ships, the massive ships move slowly and the small ships move quickly.

For example: Imagine a small, drone-esque scouting ship. This ship has a size of, say, 20 cubic meters. Logically, this ship should not be able to go 200 km/h. If each thruster increases the top speed by a base of 2 or 3 km/h, and the ship has 5 thrusters out of that 20 blocks, then the ship would only be able to travel around 10-12 km/h (based on how harsh the blocks-to-thrusters ratio is, but in this example it is relatively low).

This would balance a lot of things, such as massive, 300-meter-long battlecruisers being able to go 200 km/h with a large blocks-to-thrusters ratio.

Another example: Imagine a gargantuan, planet-destroying ship that eats motherships for breakfast. This ship is overpowered as hell due to the fact that it boasts both a massive weapons array and can move lightning fast almost instantly. Lets say this ship is made up of 1,000,000 cubic meters and only 2,000 of those are thrusters. The blocks-to-thrusters ratio is a whopping 500, which, if I apply my idea (using the math that for every 5.01 of the ratio, a percentage of the each thruster's top speed is reduced) makes each thruster only have a 1% efficiency, which rounds the top speed to a balanced 60 km/h.

This change would force massive ships to allot more space to thrusters than weapons, hopefully balancing things a bit more. Obviously, the math needs to be changed, exemplified a ship that has the mass of 300 cubic meters and 20 thrusters only being able to go 55 km/h.

The equation, written out:


ratio = (blocks/thrusters) / 5.01

then, efficiency (is a percentage) = 100 - ratio (round down to the nearest whole to avoid 100% speed loss on some occasions)

then, output = efficiency (as a decimal) * 3

then, output * number of thrusters = top speed



EDIT: It seems that people don't understand what this change would do/ why this should be implemented. This change is all about combat. It makes every size of ship, if well designed, usable AND destroyable. It would pretty much end all massive ships being invincible while aiding smaller, less durable ships. If this were to be in the game, a high-speed engine would be needed to travel across empty spaces, but there are tons of those ideas so I won't go into detail.

 

[Nootau]

What\'s to slow you down? This is space. Logically with the lack of something to slow accelleration, there is no reason the maxium amount of speed should be obtainable by all vessels.

 

[ShallowShi]

\"mass of 20 cubic meters\"
\"mass of 1,000,000 cubic meters\"
\"mass of 500 cubic meters\"
Mass is not dimensions.

 

[Archer6621]

Makes me wonder, what is the mass unit in this game? I\'d assume tonnage

 

[TryPhos]

I said THE mass OF cubic meters. I understand that meters^3 is volume and not mass. I only did so because I would rather not convert it, and the equation still works. Plus, I don\'t even know what unit the game uses.

 

[Vollaran]

I do agree that larger ships need to have slower acceleration rates and should not be able to accelerate to full speed in a few seconds, but there are no speed limits in space, as Nootau pointed out. I think the mass should severely affect thrust after a certain amount of mass is achieved which would force people with giant ships to have large engines. In other words, large ships should not be able to accelerate past, say, .5 kilometers per hour per second. Hope this opens up other suggestions and ideas.

 

[ShallowShi]

Sorry. I didn\'t read it that way (obviously).
As for conversion, it\'s simply 10 blocks, or 10^3 meters, equal one unit of mass.

 

[ShallowShi]

Can we please do away with it?

 

[ShallowShi]

Considering length is measured in meters, I\'d assume tonnes as well. Yet, 10 cubic meters having the mass of only a tonne... this shit we\'re building is rather lightweight. Not to mention everything has the same mass. Oh well. Who expects such realism is a voxel creation sandbox? xD

 

[ColeDragoth]

I think they acceleration is fine as is, big ships turn really slowly and a small ship can find a blind spot easily to dig a hole through the ship right now. Big ships cant even turn to fire them... and turrets can be retarted. I would like to see thrusters get a reduction in benefit when placed behind other blocks. Right now your thrusters can be hidden away in you ship surrounded by blocks of metal and still propel you. This doesn\'t make any sense, thrusters should get bonuses to speed for being exposed on the rear side with no blocks immediatly behind them.

 

[kiheerSEDMAN]

It is true that big ships accelerate ridiculously fast and also turn slowly, and this does take away from combat.

If this is implemented it will need (I know this is talked about a lot) a FTL Drive, it will balance out by the fact that big ships have good FTL drives, and small ships don\'t.

This is simply a travel tool, you can\'t use it in combat due to the teleport-esque speed.

 

[Biza]

Gravity.... you have any idea how much fuel a ship has to burn to fly away from the sun? How much \"drag\" that is?



@nootau

 

[Biza]

What I would like to see from Thrusters:



Direction, pointing a thruster backwards should make you go backwards faster

Sideways & at the front/back of the ship should make you turn faster

Sideways middle (sideways as in top/bottom, port, starboard pointing towards ship) strafe faster

Pointing forward, well duhh. That would make big ships require a lot more thrusters and make positioning those thrusters harder as well as requiring more power to move every which way faster. small ships wouldn\'t have to worry about it.

Right now small ships are hard to hit, big ships are easy to hit. big enough disadvantage to me.

 

[Biza]

What I would like to see from Thrusters:



Direction, pointing a thruster backwards should make you go backwards faster

Sideways & at the front/back of the ship should make you turn faster

Sideways middle (sideways as in top/bottom, port, starboard pointing towards ship) strafe faster

Pointing forward, well duhh. That would make big ships require a lot more thrusters and make positioning those thrusters harder as well as requiring more power to move every which way faster. small ships wouldn\'t have to worry about it.

Right now small ships are hard to hit, big ships are easy to hit. big enough disadvantage to me.

 

[Ciber]

I say we have the speed limit act as a sort of \"speed of light\" which you can get closer and closer to but never reach. Such that the faster you go the slower you accelerate. Say the speed limit is 50km/s. By the time you reach 25km/s you are accelerating at half the rate, so it will take twice as long to get to 26km/s as it did to ge from 1 to 2km/s. By the time you reach 37.5km/s your acceleration has been halved again. and so on and so forth.

The effect of this is that ships which have a larger proportion of engines would be able to actually outrun ships which had more weapons instead of being hounded for many sectors. Or the reverse would be true.

 

[CodatheSpaceFox]

Thrusters in space, regardless of power or anything of that sort. Provide infinite acceleration as long as they are creating reletive force. Surely, there is a bit of imbalance to things. *Cough Cough* Alpha *Cough*

Directional support of thrusters would be an nice addition to give larger vessils more agility, or to turn a smaller vessil into an all direction fighter like a turret would be respectively, and these concepts make sense in space combat almost seemlessly. Weaponry would need to be balanced respectively first, since the AMC is a bit riduculous and missle pods could use a few more thrusters themselves if you asked me. But again, Alpha release game.

Point being, do the thrusters need work? Yes. would a FTL drive be a good addition? Personally I\'d say no, as acceleration is a key principle in space or atmospheric flight, and the amount of force put on the body could very well turn it into an accordian when entering warp-esque travel. If I were to say, I\'d leave acceleration reletive to the thrusters collective force themselves, and their position from the center of the vessil respectively. That way massive carriers could still travel quickly into and out of combat, but the requirement of speed would make their own firepower less of a requirement, as they\'re carriers. Just like naval vessils are split between carrier and combat classes. Battleships aren\'t carrying your bacon painted fighters people, the carriers are.

Maybe some new types of thrusters would be nice, boosters especially would make combat and travel far more interesting, as it\'d take a lot more power to fire them up, but the increase of travel would be worth it, and they\'d make effective boosters to smaller vessil agility in supporting roles. A streemline bomber would especially make excellent work of these, as well as the average dog fighter ship.

Also, some heavier thrusters with slower \"spin up\" would make trade vessils a much more effective method of use, as they are meant to get from A to B safely, so the slower reletive acceleration could add up to warp-esque speeds in controlled sectors of space, and could make battering ram ships a force to be reckoned with.

 

[TryPhos]

First off, please don\'t use the term \"FTL drive\" when talking about this game. No server/client running on any computer would be able to compute a ship in this game going 299,792,458 blocks per second. I would rather a term such as \"jump drive\" or \"warp drive\" be used.

In regards to the idea, you are right. If this were to be implemented, some drive that would achieve high speeds on a set path would be needed to travel long distances, but that is not what my idea addresses. This would balance out combat much more than it is and hopefully end the reign of invincible ships that can also run away at a moment\'s notice. The counter to this, of course is just to make even bigger ships, but if you build a ship larger than 1,000,000 blocks, it deserves to be powerfull. All in all, this change would make every type of ship usable in combat, from motherships to the lowliest drones.

 

[TryPhos]

I already explained this to Nootau, who also said that an engin can accelerate infinitely. No! Assuming that these engines work like rockets today, their max speed is the speed at which gas comes out of them. Nothing in the real universe can accelerate infinitely, as the universe itself has an energy limit (which is unimaginably massive, but still). As stated in above replies, new engine types would be needed, but they would have to be unusable in combat so that huge ships cant just warp home once their shields dip below 25% power.

 

[Nootau]

If you look, our planet has already sent probes out of this system, the only issue is time. Now if you wish to say that such a silly thing as celestial gravity is what slow you down, then answer me this. When my ship does not have thrusters, why do I not move towards the sun or a near by planet?

Gravity isn\'t something that simply slows, it is a pull towards a direction. So accellerating closer to a gravity source would not slow you but make you accellerate more quickly than your system should be able to.

 

[TryPhos]

I only want this implemented because it would balance ships when it comes to combat. This would stop huge ships from demolishing all opposition if they want to move fast.

Also, from a physics standpoint, space may not stop movement due to the fact that space is nothing, but acceleration would not be infinite. If it were, light in the real world (even from the sun) would be moving so fast that it would be able to move matter individually and destroy our planet easily. Plus, light from other galaxies would basically act as nukes, destroying our planet and all other matter in the universe. Also, the acceleration is based on what the ship uses to propell itself. I assume these thrusters use something similar to rockets, i.e. shooting gasses out the rear (which would make the top speed the speed of the gass)