A More Realistic Thruster Scenario for Big Ships

[John Sheridan]

So right now, if you want, you can make your star destroyer accelerate faster than a drag car. Which is ridiculous.

All that needs to be done (and it may already be done just needs heavier "punishment" for big ships) is this:

The bigger the mass of the ship, the more thrusters you need on an EXPONENTIAL scale (or similar). So the little fighter might need to be 10% thrusters for "great acceleration" (whatever that is), and medium ship might need 20% for the same speed, and a giant 200000 block ship might need to be 35% thrusters for the same affect.

This means giant ships have to sacrifise other things in order to be remotely quick, there is only so much hull space available. People will start to sacrifise speed for more space for shields/cannons etc. Right now they do not. They could just make bigger "engine compartments" and put alot of thrusters in there, and many will, but at least they had to PAY to do that, in some way, also it would look ugly for many, dont underestimate people wanting their ships to look nice! Or they will pay for it in other ways, keeping their hulls to one block thick etc.Whatever gives them more space.

I think this is a good way to slow down acceleration of big ships which still leaves it in control of the player still (rather than just doing a brackets seperation of mass to figure out some form of punishment value)



ALSO related (Better calculation of turning speeds for ships big and small):

http://star-made.org/content/ship-size-vs-turning-speed#comment-46900

 

[Nootau]

Why should larger ships be punished at all?

 

[John Sheridan]

Because they arent F1 cars. Tahts why big ships should be punished in terms of reducing their ability to behave like one without abnormally powerful engines.

I don\'t recall seeing the Star Destroyer in Star Wars doing barrel rolls or accelerate like a pod racer, so hows it OK for this to happen in Star made? Same goes for star ship enterprise, battlestar galactica etc. They are big powerful ships not meant to be agile.

There has to be some benefit of being small.

Doesn\'t take a genius...

 

[Nootau]

If you didn\'t notice, in those worlds smaller ships could never take on a larger one without hundreds of ships or plot device tools. Here in starmade with time and skill you can have smaller ships to attack and actually make larger ships worry. So if you are supporting making larger ships slow tugs like they are shown in those outlets, are you also supporting making smaller ships close to meaningless to larger ships in the same way they echo in those outlets?

 

[Agent Zirdik]

Dunno, I think this seems to be reasonable. Larger ships with greater mass should either have a lower max speed (which I don\'t think makes sense), or it should accellerate slower than smaller ships. This is much in the same manner in which shield effeciency was changed such that it takes exponentially more shielding for larger ships while smaller ships needed less shielding blocks.

Personally I think it\'s rediculous that my supercarrier can accellerate at a comparable rate to the intercepters it carries.

+1

 

[Nootau]

It can only do that if it is build similar to your intercepters in respect to thrust vs mass.

 

[Wade]

in space wieght isnt really an issue is it? and you are comparing spaships to vehicles on land this is space where a cube can go as fast as an aero dynamic one..... space is whieghtless hence mass and shape has no meaning.... It\'s not like you have gravity or air drag to deal with

 

[Wade]

if you want realistic then a ship should not decellerate as fast as it does either and you should have to have thrusters in every direction to change the speed in the direction your going. Look at voyager 1 and 2 rhink they have had fuel for the past 30+ years?

 

[WolfChild]

Good Sir.

 

[John Sheridan]

Inertia. Once the object is going then sure its size makes no difference. We are talking about acceleration, not the fact it can go forever.

A small ship will require less thrust to go forward than a big ship. I\'m not a pyhicist (however you spell it) but I think thats pretty common sense.

Now this is a game. We can\'t have big ships turning and accelerating like small ones, because it makes small ships shit to have. Small ships should have an advantage of being a lot more agile and quick to accelerate.

The only way to do this and keep it to the players control to change, is to do like the shield blocks, start retarding the gain the more blocks you have. This will mean a big ship will require SHITLOADS of thrusters more percentage wise, than a small fighter, to get the same acceleration effect.

 

[Zoogoo40]

Physicist

 

[Wade]

i hear what you are saying but really a small ship should not beable to go against a big ship toe to toe. That is why people are comming up with a way to put ships into classes smaller ships should be attacking smaller ships or a whole bunch of small ships attacking a bigger one. Even the case on accelerating unless you have have gravity as a factor 10 pounds of thrust is 10 pounds of thrust in space it will make a ship of any size go just as fast for just as long with no gravity or drag on any shape. Smaller ships already have an adavantage of faster shield regen capabialities than larger ships.... A guy with a hand gun should not beable to take out a tank for example smaller ships already have adavantage sort of cause they can get in really close to avoid the guns of the bigger ship its all in the tactics and the ability of the pilot..

as for multiplayer I do reilize there are alot of servers out there that have huge ships all over the place and they just fly around killing the poor new guy that joined the server and that is unfortanatate i hope more blaancing rules are applied but this game is still an infant and i have no idea what schema has planned for this game.... Due to the imbalances and my lack of ship creativity at this time I play mostly single player honing my skills and testing out new updates at this point in time

 

[John Sheridan]

Not sure where you pulled this small ships should not be able to go toe to toe with big ships... they don\'t. lol

In fact, small ships would get an advantage by big ships requiring more thrusters % wise than small ships require.

 

[Wade]

i know they dont right now but what is being suggested would make it so little ships could easily go toe to toe I think the way it is work well since mass and wieght have no bearing space anyways so it\'s all moot point... Infact if you want realistic, you should have to have thrusters in every direction to change direction thrusters in the rear of the ship should really only make a ship move forward I like the game the way it is as far as thrusters go as long as your thrusters are a little over your total mass your good to go so in a way that is taken in account put one thrust on the back of a 2 block ship and put one thruster on the back of a 100 block ships which one moves better?

 

[MisterVec]

It is not a simple thing: How does one model the turning speed of a variety of vessels without that turning speed also being dynamicly calculated every time a block is added/removed? Starmade can be hard enough on one\'s processor as it is.

Further, there are several factors hugely important to maneuvering in space that simply aren\'t modelled in Starmade at the moment. People often forget about them.

1) Structural integrity plays a big part on how fast one can turn in space. Ships aren\'t unbreakably solid and their insides do flex when put under stress. If one\'s maneuvering thrusters are too powerful and apply too much sudden stress on the spaceframe, the ship will snap like a twig.

2) People can\'t physically handle abrupt maneuvering at high g\'s, especially if they\'re not properly oriented, belted down, and have access to special gear to help keep all their blood from shooting out of their eyes. This is especially problematic the further one is away from the ship\'s center of mass. Someone standing near the front of a long ship that makes a sudden left can find themselves flung into the right-hand wall at several hundred miles an hour. Your little starmade pilot doesn\'t have to worry about that, of course, but that\'s another limit placed on ship maneuverability.

Those things aren\'t modelled in Starmade and, honestly, they\'d suck some of the fun out of it if they were, on top of requring a lot of additional engine overhead. Instead, they get a rough modelling of those concepts based on ship mass. If you want to go on and on about realism, you need to include these rather inconvenient facets, too, man.

 

[Wade]

agreed well put mr. vec

 

[Wade]

What Is Microgravity?








Feb. 15, 2012



















\"Up\" and \"down\" mean different things in space.




Image Credit:


NASA











› View Larger Image







Microgravity is the condition in which people or objects appear to be weightless. The effects of microgravity can be seen when astronauts and objects float in space. Microgravity can be experienced in other ways, as well. \"Micro-\" means \"very small,\" so microgravity refers to the condition where gravity seems to be very small. In microgravity, astronauts can float in their spacecraft - or outside, on a spacewalk. Heavy objects move around easily. For example, astronauts can move equipment weighing hundreds of pounds with their fingertips. Microgravity is sometimes called \"zero gravity,\"

source from nasa



so in other wards if you attached a spary can to a large ship and the same type of spary can to a very large ship they would go the same speed the only time wieght and mass are an issues is for payloads trying to leave a gravity well like a planet or a moon do you really think voyager 1 and 2 are still using thier thrusters to go as fast as they are going? thier mass or wieght have nothing to do with how fast they are going curently

 

[John Sheridan]

To Wade: Small ships cant go toe to toe even if big ships get nerfed in terms of thrust/speed/turning. Have you tried to fight a big ship, a really big ship, with a small fighter? You will be there for the next 10 minutes trying to break its shields. This makes your point moot. Put some turrets on your capital ship or fly to your hangar.

To MisterVec: See first link in my first post above for how to calculate turning speed. Also re your comment about counting blocks dynamically as they get blown away - I imagine this game already does this counting very well. I know with almost certaintly I was battling a giant ship and I shrunk it down to 50% of its size, and it really felt QUICKER. So the game is in fact already doing this hence my suggestion would not genuinely be a concern or extra processing requirement to calculate thrust abilities of a ship as it gets shot to peices.

Now about structural integrity, this game is not simulating anywhere near that level so no point considering this point. About people not handling high G\'s, same thing, game is not a simulation. There is a big difference between genuine realism which this game is NOWHERE near, and game balance realism. I rant on about the latter, only citing genuine realism when the game balance is broken, falling back to realism or \"what would star trek do\" helps get a point across.

 

[MisterVec]

Turning speed is currently based on ship mass and ignores thrust. Linear acelleration is a function of thrust vs mass. These are values the engine keeps track of dynamically already and form the basis of the movement model you find unsatisfactory.

If one removes structural integrity or astronaut vulnerability modeling factors, then there\'s no reason why a big ship cannot accellerate as quickly or more quickly than a fighter, as that\'s entirely a function of trust-to-mass. Basic, simple physics. With ships having no need to dedicate a percentage of their internal structure or total mass to simply keeping the vessel together, realism has little to no bearing on how they are constructed.

What you seem to be suggesting is a way to artificially, arbitrarily limit the accelleration of big ships simply because you don\'t like how it feels in the context of the game. That\'s not really about realism, though, so I don\'t understand why one would pretend it is.

 

[John Sheridan]

I think you are missing the point, this is about game balance, not real life.

Small fighters should be able to outmanuver and out accelerate a giant ship with ease unless that giant ship has significantly more thruster blocks (% wise). The player with the big ship can still make his capital ship a rocket in acceleration, but like shield blocks, his going to need significantly more of them as they lose their efficiency. Thats what I Am after.

That\'s it. No pyshics involved here. Purely game balancing. No one wants to see these Nascar Capital ships hitting the max speed limit in 2.5 seconds - that also happen to turn as quickly as a ship a quarter of their size (a related problem). That\'s it. Pretty straight forward, and dare I say, pretty reasonable.

Just a final note about your structural integrity you keep mentioning, this is an entirely different topic feel free to create a new thread for it to discuss how schema could possibly code this, seems like a bitch to me unless you have some great idea for it..I like complexity I am all for it.