Thrust Mechanics Explained

[marcus87]

I see a little problem with the gates. If they are really circles then that would impact shipdesign. Basically any ship with astheticall details like antenna or a ship like the mother ship of the higari from homeworld would need a much bigger gate than say a ship that is build like a cylinder.

We could very well get "cylinder´s" of doom. Could the stations not provide jump point that allow for a certain mass to jump the the partener gate?

 

[therimmer96]

Capital ships should not be rendered pretty much useless by its ability too FTL, a rebuff yes, but not NO MOVEMENT EVAR!!!. Perhapsnusing shields, for example , seeing as it "generates a field around the ship, it uses the shield projectors to generate the field", disabling the shields

Even if you do add this rebuff, make it server configurable so that we can fix it. Please.

 

[Megacrafter127]

If they are really circles

They are not limited to circles, they can be any closed shape.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

The ships not moving when they have hyperdrive at all part...
If they can't move, people won't bother building stations anymore (except maybe for their faction home, or if something gets implemented in the new faction system in which they have to build stations).
Those ships should be able to move because, you know, they are spaceships, and spaceships tend to want to move. I agree that they definitely need a speed debuff, because otherwise people would just build huge ships all the time.

My suggestion:
To make it so that the ships still can move, but there should be three things:
1. Overdrive won't increase the ship's top speed.
2. The top would be half of the server speed limit on every direction , and the thrust percentages for the top speed will be calculated with that debuff, so a ship that has hyperdrive and 90% thrust to forward movement, with the server speed limit at 100, will be able to move forward at a maximum speed of 45, but will be really slow in any other direction, so it most likely will be something along the line of 50% to forward thrust, so people need not worry about really fast capital ships.
3. The ships acceleration would also be half what it normally would be.

These numbers are examples, and they really should be configurable in the server config if it were to be in the game.

 

[Ixalite]

Will there still be automatic engines? I currently love the way you can put a timer on a push-module and have your ship move on its own while you do other things. It sounds like that may be going away.

Additionally, it sounds as though every time your thrust changes, you must enter the GUI and adjust the direction it will be sent. Do we simply set the ratios, and then added or changed thrust divides up automatically?

Could additional ship cores be a capital ship system? For a substantial increase in mass/decrease in speed, could there be a second ship core on a capital ship, such that both must be destroyed in order to destroy the ship/kill the player?

Could mobile spawn points be a capital ship system? As long as we are installing factories on capital ships, how about a spawn point so that fighter pilots can spawn on their carrier?

Could there be a catalog option to replace docked entities on a larger ship? If a turret is shot off, could there be an option to buy that turret back onto the ship directly without spawning an all new ship? In this way, fighters can be replaced on AI carriers.

Have you considered implementing Linear power REVERSE EXPONENTIAL thrust (with y=x^0.65 or something)? Under such a system smaller ships gain high acceleration, but the larger an engine is, the less efficient. On our server, we have this currently in operation to good effect. Smaller ships can generally outrun larger ships, and capital ships can be quite slow indeed.

Have you considered the effect on AI that high power consumption has? For our RP server we have been trying to perfect a thrust system for several months, and have ruled out limitation of thrust through power usage because the AI cannot manage power use in combat. If a ship cannot keep its engines going all the time AND fire weapons, the AI Prioritizes movement and maneuvering over combat, and becomes useless.

 

[Creeper__God]

The new thrust mechanics sound great.
I'm getting lots of ideas for things like Saber's skid racing tracks. People could assign different thrust percentages to give their "car" more speed, menuverability, etc... based on their driving style.

 

[aceface]

Please do call it warp drive instead of jump drive, and transwarp drive instead of hyper-drive, i just think it sounds more mature

 

[jzimmerman4]

It might be more fitting if a hyper-drive capable ship was called a Flag Ship instead. Also, Flag Ship is used less often so it will help prevent some confusion when a fleets Capital is not their Carrier/ jump ship.

 

[Fade]

Rest of the post makes perfect sense to me and is very exciting!
BUT this part scares me a bit:

From here however, things change. Instead of being able to simply apply that pool of thrust in any direction, a player must first enter a GUI (I don't have a sample for you currently, sorry) and assign the amount of thrust from their pool that they would like to use for each direction of movement. This means that if you want to fly forward (relative to your front of your ship) you must assign a % of your thrust in that direction. If you want to be able to stop moving forward, or even begin to move in reverse, you must assign a % of thrust to the rear direction of your ship (or rotate your ship and retro-burn with your forward thrust.)

If I make a small agile fighter, i want it to be able to dogfight well, this is also a very important part of PVP.
While these changes make sense for big ships, applying them to small ships will make it impossible to make a well-rounded fighter.
Ofcourse you could give each side 16% or so, for every direction(6).
Which leaves me with 16% forward thrust to chase....
Needless to say almost everyone can just fly away from me.
Everything on forward then? Yes, but then I can't evade or reposition myself for shooting.
Also flying right now feels good! why make it so restricted?

I feel this would ruin PVP on the small scale.
Ships will never be able to do real dogfights, just jump in, jump out.
Or be semi-agile but have no chase at all (this will make for very boring and uninteresting gameplay I feel).
If I'm correct in understanding your proposal completely...

 

[Ithirahad]

This sounds good, but I think we need two speed limits: Thrust speed limit (After this speed thrusting in the same direction won't do anything but maintain your speed or slow you down. This is your %-of-server-speed-limit dictated by ship configuration) and the server limit (Fastest physically attainable speed - Collisions and kinetic effects can force a ship to this speed, but their thrust can't normally get there; you can still use thrust to slow down but can't change direction very well.)... It should be entirely possible to use kinetic beams to drag a large ship around faster than its own speed (Tugboats!), but with the danger of the larger ship, which has slow braking due to its really slow thrusters, smashing into the tugs or into something else (a station, for example).

In addition, something has to be done about space friction. It just feels really weird... Needs some kind of change that allows its benefits to still be optionally taken advantage of without making flying feel awkward.

Capital ships should not be rendered pretty much useless by its ability too FTL, a rebuff yes, but not NO MOVEMENT EVAR!!!. Perhapsnusing shields, for example , seeing as it "generates a field around the ship, it uses the shield projectors to generate the field", disabling the shields

Even if you do add this rebuff, make it server configurable so that we can fix it. Please.

Agreed, but already addressed by both Schema and Calbiri. IIRC those posts are on Page 2. I agree though, it should be configurable.

 

[NotoriousGIB]

I think the general plans for the future are promising...the only bit that I would say we maybe ought not to implement is the anti gravity module.

I mean, having escorts and capitals able to hover in the gravity field of a planet is just opening the door to massive planet eating salvage ships again. Or what's to stop a capital parking up inside gravity and blowing the bejesus out of someones secondary base? Where would the need for exploration and planet landing ships be?

Like I say, brilliant stuff otherwise, really like the direction, but please dont bring in anti gravity modules...planet gravity is fact, we overcome this with low mass/high thrust, not some white-man voodoo magic block.

Thanks for making StarMade

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Anti-gravity modules are needed. I don't know how the defensive powerconsumption works, but if it was to increase power consumption exponentially per module, big ships would eventually be too big.
The reason for the anti-gravity module is that people want to salvage a planet sithout having to reverse and brake all the time, it just doesn't feel right. And with the thrust debuffs, it is needed more than ever. Also, the stop effect module should have had that function, but due to a bug, it didn't.
And what does it matter if you eant to build a huge salvaging ship? If you want it, you should be able to have it.

Edit: @Calbiri :
Just a quick question, but didn't the explosive effect stop movement effects when used defensively already?

 

[Criss]

I think everyone on this thread needs to calm down. Trust me when I say that the devs hear us out on all issues. Read through the thread before you post the same complaint as the last 20 people please. It's redundant and adds nothing new to the topic.

 

[Johnathan Dahmnation]

Please do call it warp drive instead of jump drive, and transwarp drive instead of hyper-drive, i just think it sounds more mature

Eh, the concepts don't feel the same. A warp drive and hyperdrive may be synonymous, and a transwarp drive a faster warp drive, but all the above aren't jump drives. The first 3 are fast movement, the last is teleportation. I don't really share the feeling of being more mature either

Rest of the post makes perfect sense to me and is very exciting!
BUT this part scares me a bit:

"stuff in the op about thrust allocation"

If I make a small agile fighter, i want it to be able to dogfight well, this is also a very important part of PVP.
While these changes make sense for big ships, applying them to small ships will make it impossible to make a well-rounded fighter.
Ofcourse you could give each side 16% or so, for every direction(6).
Which leaves me with 16% forward thrust to chase....
Needless to say almost everyone can just fly away from me.
Everything on forward then? Yes, but then I can't evade or reposition myself for shooting.
Also flying right now feels good! why make it so restricted?

I feel this would ruin PVP on the small scale.
Ships will never be able to do real dogfights, just jump in, jump out.
Or be semi-agile but have no chase at all (this will make for very boring and uninteresting gameplay I feel).
If I'm correct in understanding your proposal completely...

I know this thread isn't supposed to be really for suggestions but rather feedback but after thinking about it I would like to propose a modification regarding the thrust allocation issue.

Instead of the percentage of allocated thrust being the speed limit in a particular direction, allow the actual amount of thrust compared to mass to determine my speed in a given direction.

An example:

Ship A is a large ship with a 1:1 total thrust:mass ratio
Ship B is a small ship with a 2:1 total thrust:mass ratio

Ship A allocates 50% of thrust forward giving it's forward thrust:mass a 1:2 ratio, it can move forward at 50% speed max
Ship B allocates 50% of thrust forward giving it's forward thrust:mass a 1:1 ratio, it can move forward at 100% speed max

The point is to allow higher thrust:mass that smaller ships achieve more easily to be leveraged for speed as well as acceleration so that a small ship can allocate thrust for dog fighting while still being able to intercept larger craft AND still turn their noses towards a backpedaling capital ship to concentrate their forward damage on target without being left in the dust.

 

[Keptick]

A very interesting read. I just have some minor things that I'd like to add:

1. Higher base thrust for the system we currently have. As of now, even making a fighter with a good acceleration without gimping the already gimped (due to size) systems is a very hard thing to do.
2. Once the directional % thing is implemented, increasing the thrust pool's default value will also be a very good thing to do. Since not doing so would just be a gigantic acceleration nerf to everything. Since everything already accelerates rather slowly at 100% thrust in every direction. Imagine what would happen if it was only, say, 75% thrust in a single direction with the current system. Even nimble fighters would be turned into turtles.
3. I don't know if having the % system proportionally affect the top speed is a good idea... Or perhaps, any direction apart from forward should suffer from this effect. That means that ships can't just fly backwards and shoot since the following ship won't suffer from the same max speed debuff (since it'll be going forward). Travelling would also not be affected much.

 

[Jananton]

Some very interesting thoughts are vented here and the initial ideas described sound like a good way to upgrade the propulsion system.

Trying to read a little between the lines I presume that also the dampening system (the left shift key) will be adjusted accordingly. In other words higher mass and lower percentage of reverse thrusters will result in a longer dampening period - read distance traveled - and vice versa. No more hitting the brakes and come to a quick stop pressing space, if one hasn't plotted the course correctly, or started breaking procedures for a shop or asteroid in time, then one will collide with it, including all problems that come with that.

As others mentioned I think zero speed for hyper-jump ships is not something I would like. Rather in analogy to sea going vessels one could consider those more to behave like super, or mammoth tankers, extremely slow to accelerate to a relative very low top speed and in reverse extremely long winded to bring to a stop. Since these will probably mostly be fitted as either platforms for military purposes, or as large industrial refineries and factories, I think some maneuvering, for instance move into a sweet spot between asteroids, would be quite important.

Anyhow, it all sounds very interesting, so keep up the good work. ;-)

Greets,

Jan

 

[Fade]

I know this thread isn't supposed to be really for suggestions but rather feedback but after thinking about it I would like to propose a modification regarding the thrust allocation issue.

Instead of the percentage of allocated thrust being the speed limit in a particular direction, allow the actual amount of thrust compared to mass to determine my speed in a given direction.

An example:

Ship A is a large ship with a 1:1 total thrust:mass ratio
Ship B is a small ship with a 2:1 total thrust:mass ratio

Ship A allocates 50% of thrust forward giving it's forward thrust:mass a 1:2 ratio, it can move forward at 50% speed max
Ship B allocates 50% of thrust forward giving it's forward thrust:mass a 1:1 ratio, it can move forward at 100% speed max

The point is to allow higher thrust:mass that smaller ships achieve more easily to be leveraged for speed as well as acceleration so that a small ship can allocate thrust for dog fighting while still being able to intercept larger craft AND still turn their noses towards a backpedaling capital ship to concentrate their forward damage on target without being left in the dust.

Sorry if it was off-topic
Your modification looks like an elegant solution!
Hard to judge by numbers only, but I like the idea

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Thrust is already going to have a higher base value. I do however think that small ships shouldn't be bothered as much by the max speed %. Maybe there could be a certain mass, and everything with less than that mass would have an additional speed buff, but not a lot, just so smaller ships can assign less % of thrust to a direction so they can still essentially be fighters, and less mass would have a higher buff. Anything above that mass would not have a buff, but it also wouldn't have a debuff.

 

[Tomino_sama]

When Logic arrived, many players questioned why it was even in the game. Some called it useless. Skip forward to now and everyone that know how is using it and those that don't know how are learning.

With FTL all changes are in OP are on point and welcome additions to the game as a whole. I can't wait for these changes and offer no refinement to this.

 

[Dalmont]

I have absolutely no complaints and am currently dro... I mean building a carrier with anticipation.