Ship speed, max speed and thruster spam
- Thread starter TGess
- Start date
I have a steadily growing list of things to test.agreed. I does not make any physical sense that a big ass ship with a worse thrust/weight ratio can turn quicker than an small fighter. I want to an example in real life: big touring busses have around 600-800hp, sport cars like a Porsche 911 GT3 RS have around 500 hp, still the Porsche is quicker around tracks, because he is lighter and build for these quick turns
its a vector, and the lenght of the vector of your ship will not go past 150m/s whatever happens, if you have thrusters that are angled relative to the forward of your ship, they wont be as efficient for going forward but when needed they can give sideway thrust
even if your ship could theoretically go 300m/s, it wont
another way to see it, since we cant go past 150 m/s, your result of 212 cannot happen in this game, so lets do it backward, on the xy direction you are going 150, which mean on the x you're going somewhere around 106 and same for the y axis (that is if you have an angle of 45 degree from the x axis)
it is indeed simple geometry and basic logical thinking
even if your ship could theoretically go 300m/s, it wont
another way to see it, since we cant go past 150 m/s, your result of 212 cannot happen in this game, so lets do it backward, on the xy direction you are going 150, which mean on the x you're going somewhere around 106 and same for the y axis (that is if you have an angle of 45 degree from the x axis)
it is indeed simple geometry and basic logical thinking
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Porsche is going to out preform a bus in any situation other than amount of people it can hold. you take another vehicle break it down closer to a porsche size like a jeep, which will still fail on maunvering capabilities in comparison. jeep will infact flip on those same turns, regardless of vehicle they still have to follow the rules of inertia which also exist in space, I=L/W. but there is another form of resistance that we dont see in space and that is gravity. that resistance on earth helps in deciding factors of how we design in shape, while on earth. this is about one of the few rules that don't apply in space or at least shouldn't. Another factor when comparing flying ships on earth vs space is aeordynamics, which only exist on earth and not in space.
so on earth, designing 2 porsches exactly the same except one has a blockier build will mean the difference in turning where is in space, gravity having no effect. i can build a blocky ship in space and have about same turning capabilities as others since those restraints aren't there.
so on earth, designing 2 porsches exactly the same except one has a blockier build will mean the difference in turning where is in space, gravity having no effect. i can build a blocky ship in space and have about same turning capabilities as others since those restraints aren't there.
There is a huge difference between Airplanes medium and space. Drag is caused by air and the medium airplanes fly in has a lot of it. The bigger you go the more drag and the faster you go the more intense that drag gets because you are catching more particles.
Saturn V needed 5 because it had a lot of weight to get into orbit through drag and has a big surface area(more particles) a Jet is a lot lighter and a very small amount of drag compared to the rocket. Just pointing this out as it isn't a very good point to raise against the post.
Space is a lot different. In this game there are no particles slowing you down just the max cap. So the issue isn't the delta -v its your speed. delta-v (acceleration) just takes more power to achieve with a larger ship. in this game however there is no delta-v only speed.
Saturn V needed 5 because it had a lot of weight to get into orbit through drag and has a big surface area(more particles) a Jet is a lot lighter and a very small amount of drag compared to the rocket. Just pointing this out as it isn't a very good point to raise against the post.
Space is a lot different. In this game there are no particles slowing you down just the max cap. So the issue isn't the delta -v its your speed. delta-v (acceleration) just takes more power to achieve with a larger ship. in this game however there is no delta-v only speed.
Here is how it should be approached. What are the goals of any optimal design of thrusters?
1) There should be interesting design considerations that avoids narrowing to a specific meta.
2) Haulers should not be able to out run smaller vessels and should be much less maneuverable.
3) The number of needed thrusters should be reduced to a reasonable level to alleviate annoyance in design.
4) Long travel times should be reduced, be automated, or be made to be more interesting than dodging asteroids for hours.
So if we can agree to these principles then we can discuss if OP fails or succeeds to meet those goals. I think it's clear that his design succeeds at 2, 3 and kinda solves 4 but utterly fails at 1. If lower tier thrusters are objectively worse and offer no trade off then ship design around thrusters quickly narrows to having x amount of top tier thrusters.
I agree with CalenLoki there should be something like fuel efficiency to differentiate small and large vessels. I like the drag changing for ships but I worry that it's going to be hard to explain to 99% of the player base. A separate (extremely heavy) device that improves fuel efficiency would seem a better choice.
Another thing to consider is that with the advent of capital ships this entire discussion might be moot if you're able to use capital ships as a long range hauler ship. That of course will depend on exactly how they work and the price of their operation.
I think to solve 1 and 3 I'd like to see the same ratio of improvement between the thrusters (marginal improvements) but increase their overall effectiveness. Calen's point about acceleration is moot as we have full control over how fast our ships accelerate and as far as I'm aware it's still relative to mass so a hauler would still accelerate at the same speed just with less thrusters. Now if we mean to complain that a hauler could accelerate like a small vessel with only a few more thrusters I would agree but that should be solved by some other means such as limiting the throughput of propellant so that more piping or tanks is required per thruster. So a small vessel would have no throughput issues but a large ship would have to sacrifice maneuverability.
The idea about decreasing max speed due to mass seems to solve 2 perfectly.
Not sure how to solve #4 though. I think heavy hauling should not be a "common" occurence it should be something planned in advanced and something your group could coordinate on. You should not be able to strap max speed thrusters on your ship and never have to worry about pirates, you should be prepared to defend yourself every time you go out with a slower ship. To accomodate hunting ships perhaps we should add a sort of radar system that highlights objects of considerable mass in the vicinity. So a smaller ship could hide within a field of asteroids but a large hauler would light up big and bright due to its considerable density.
1) There should be interesting design considerations that avoids narrowing to a specific meta.
2) Haulers should not be able to out run smaller vessels and should be much less maneuverable.
3) The number of needed thrusters should be reduced to a reasonable level to alleviate annoyance in design.
4) Long travel times should be reduced, be automated, or be made to be more interesting than dodging asteroids for hours.
So if we can agree to these principles then we can discuss if OP fails or succeeds to meet those goals. I think it's clear that his design succeeds at 2, 3 and kinda solves 4 but utterly fails at 1. If lower tier thrusters are objectively worse and offer no trade off then ship design around thrusters quickly narrows to having x amount of top tier thrusters.
I agree with CalenLoki there should be something like fuel efficiency to differentiate small and large vessels. I like the drag changing for ships but I worry that it's going to be hard to explain to 99% of the player base. A separate (extremely heavy) device that improves fuel efficiency would seem a better choice.
Another thing to consider is that with the advent of capital ships this entire discussion might be moot if you're able to use capital ships as a long range hauler ship. That of course will depend on exactly how they work and the price of their operation.
I think to solve 1 and 3 I'd like to see the same ratio of improvement between the thrusters (marginal improvements) but increase their overall effectiveness. Calen's point about acceleration is moot as we have full control over how fast our ships accelerate and as far as I'm aware it's still relative to mass so a hauler would still accelerate at the same speed just with less thrusters. Now if we mean to complain that a hauler could accelerate like a small vessel with only a few more thrusters I would agree but that should be solved by some other means such as limiting the throughput of propellant so that more piping or tanks is required per thruster. So a small vessel would have no throughput issues but a large ship would have to sacrifice maneuverability.
The idea about decreasing max speed due to mass seems to solve 2 perfectly.
Not sure how to solve #4 though. I think heavy hauling should not be a "common" occurence it should be something planned in advanced and something your group could coordinate on. You should not be able to strap max speed thrusters on your ship and never have to worry about pirates, you should be prepared to defend yourself every time you go out with a slower ship. To accomodate hunting ships perhaps we should add a sort of radar system that highlights objects of considerable mass in the vicinity. So a smaller ship could hide within a field of asteroids but a large hauler would light up big and bright due to its considerable density.
There are no particles slowing people down in real space, but for performance reasons, the devs implemented space drag into the game, so you do actually need constant thrust to move, and the drag increases based on the mass of the ship (no aerodynamics though).
https://wiki.starbasegame.com/index...e._Can_you_explain_the_reasoning_behind_it.3F
https://wiki.starbasegame.com/index...e._Can_you_explain_the_reasoning_behind_it.3F
Space does contain particles. But that wasn't my point, I was stating this game won't allow you to stack speed by just using constant thrust and its not to do with particles its to do with the max speed limit and the fact that they don't use delta-v they use speed.
Thnx for the link some nice info there.
Thnx for the link some nice info there.