MrVorgra Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 People be like, low rads = 0.50, I be like High rads = 0.02 I have enjoyed the messing around with placing directional thrusters, however some Gyros would be appreciated for these ship like these. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ohm is Futile Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 The last post nails it imo. Prograde pointer would be quite handy. Switching autobrake off would be VERY handy (like seriously, extremely handy and fun) Single blockpower=power a multiple blocks with same overall size is necessary. And MOST important for me - actual speed display, we really need some nice info about our actual speed, it would help tremendeously, as speed perception can be misleading (sometimes I fly at 1500m/s thinking I barely move, and than slam into station or smthing... quite surprising experience :D) I have to second this. All of it. As for gyros, I dunno. I don't think we need them. The thing I expect is giving a lot of people trouble is that thruster placement has a huuuuuge impact currently. Placing thrusters in line with the center of mass(CoM) will cause them to give only strafing/braking thrust and no torque (which is logical). In that sense, splitting thrusters into different blocks when placed across the CoM so the middle of the block is not lined up with the CoM will yield higher rotation values. Also, given directional thrusters have the same power per cubic meter as regular thrusters, they are plain better than regular thrusters for rotation if you place them strategically. That is, in the sense that you can place them so as to "waste" as little thrust in terms of efficient placement in relation to the direction the thrusters are facing. The big question, then, is do we want to create separate blocks for rotation and strafing. Because if we add gyros, it becomes very simple to limit oneself to gyros for rotation and everything provided by thrusters becomes icing on the cake whereas thrusters would be mostly used for strafing which gyros simply cannot do. Hmm. Then what you can do is use only directional thrusters with gyros and get some very funky flight patterns with some designs. You could make ships with very high rotation speeds and nearly no strafing power, but dedicate a fair amount of volume to thrust and braking thrust and get some extremely mobile ships, depending on how inertia is applied. Currently, inertia in one direction seems to dissipate once a ship reaches its top speed in another direction. With sufficiently crazy thrust/braking thrust values and rotation, the need for strafing thrust would be rendered moot unless you actually like to strafe. You could immobilize a ship by simply accelerating to max speed in one direction and then letting the braking thrusters stop you, regardless of any previous maneuvers. My conclusion is that if gyros are indeed added, they should have lower potential for rotation than thrusters and be used for greater placement convenience to help alleviate the issue people are having to get their ships to rotate. On a somewhat different note, anybody else find that the thrust to max velocity ratio of engines is a little weird right now? Like, it's not too hard to build ships that can go from 0 to max speed in <5 seconds and brake at a similar rate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AssaultShaker Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This one knows what's up. To attempt to answer your question, I think that is the actual power of the engines now. I believe Koonschi explained it as artificial acceleration constraints being taken off. And yeah, lots of break power is possible with D-Thrusters now. If anyone can expand further on the engine acceleration changes, I'm all ears. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpha16 Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 Hmmm I think I have a fair idea of how to allow omni-directional thrusters to stand face to face with directional thrusters. If I understand this correctly, the volume of omni-directional thrusters is partitioned amongst each face according to the surface area of the face, making each side weaker as a whole. Directional thrusters on the other hand use 100% of the internal volume as power for one face. The solution to this is to allow the omni-directional thrusters to divide the internal volume DYNAMICALLY depending on the amount of faces currently firing and the amount of power each face is outputting. So if an omni-directional thruster is only firing its forward-facing thrusters to brake, then 100% of the internal volume is allocated to one face; however, if the player is strafing and braking at the same time, 2 faces of the omni-directional thruster may be firing at the same time and thus the internal volume is allocated between both faces. If the strafing face wants 30% power then the braking face only gets the remaining 70% power. TLDR: an omni-directional thruster should work exactly the same as a directional if only one face is firing, but if more than one face fires then the volume is split between the amount of active faces. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ohm is Futile Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This one knows what's up. To attempt to answer your question, I think that is the actual power of the engines now. I believe Koonschi explained it as artificial acceleration constraints being taken off. And yeah, lots of break power is possible with D-Thrusters now. If anyone can expand further on the engine acceleration changes, I'm all ears. Yeah, it's just that it seems weird to me that I need to add crazy amounts of engines to have a higher maximum speed, whereas thrust itself will never be an issue. Maybe I haven't been conducting my tests at a big enough scale, since thrust does seem to be affected more by mass than maximum velocity is. I haven't calculated how the proportions differ and I should. I have a gut feeling the proportion is roughly the same though. What if we actually made engines give less thrust, but compounded thrusters' thrust into forward thrust and not only engines'? And then buffed the engine block's effect on maximum speed? Dunno, just thinking out loud. Hmmm I think I have a fair idea of how to allow omni-directional thrusters to stand face to face with directional thrusters. If I understand this correctly, the volume of omni-directional thrusters is partitioned amongst each face according to the surface area of the face, making each side weaker as a whole. Directional thrusters on the other hand use 100% of the internal volume as power for one face. The solution to this is to allow the omni-directional thrusters to divide the internal volume DYNAMICALLY depending on the amount of faces currently firing and the amount of power each face is outputting. So if an omni-directional thruster is only firing its forward-facing thrusters to brake, then 100% of the internal volume is allocated to one face; however, if the player is strafing and braking at the same time, 2 faces of the omni-directional thruster may be firing at the same time and thus the internal volume is allocated between both faces. If the strafing face wants 30% power then the braking face only gets the remaining 70% power. TLDR: an omni-directional thruster should work exactly the same as a directional if only one face is firing, but if more than one face fires then the volume is split between the amount of active faces. Interesting, but complicates things a little bit. Also kinda makes directional thrusters redundant then. No, not entirely, I'll agree, but if normal thrusters have the same potential as the directional ones, then why not benefit of the potential extra thrust in other directions of the regular thruster? Sure, it complicates things a bit when performing more complex maneuvers, but still. I'm also debating what is easier for new players to understand? That thrust gets divided by the number of sides of their thrusters are firing (which is incredibly hard to predict when considering maneuvers, even more so if you combine directional and regular thrusters) or that location matters for thrusters? By the way, the numbers in game actually do show that eventual placement of a block in one location versus another is going to have a different effect on rotation. Another thing I'm just realizing and putting out there as I think it is that there is no indicator in game for strafing thrust and its maximum velocity (at least on thrusters alone, not accounting for the fact that you can actually yaw the ship and then glide sideways for a fair bit). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tsunamik Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 Max velocity sideways/backwards is actually exactly the same as max velocity forwards - so it is determined by your main engine. Easily tested with basic block cube and thrusters only :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gblnk Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 Maybe I haven't been conducting my tests at a big enough scale, since thrust does seem to be affected more by mass than maximum velocity is. I haven't calculated how the proportions differ and I should. I have a gut feeling the proportion is roughly the same though. The way the game presents the numbers is a little confusing. Thrust appears to be affected by mass only because what the game calls thrust is actually acceleration. I'm not really sure how maximum velocity is calculated. What if we actually made engines give less thrust, but compounded thrusters' thrust into forward thrust and not only engines'? And then buffed the engine block's effect on maximum speed? Dunno, just thinking out loud. I think the additional thrust would be pretty miniscule if you did that. Personally, I think engine thrust was increased way too much in the latest beta. I think my ship went from 80m/s2 to 300m/s2. That's pretty crazy. A 1Mt+ ship going from zero to max speed in 5 seconds just makes no sense to me. Max velocity sideways/backwards is actually exactly the same as max velocity forwards - so it is determined by your main engine. Easily tested with basic block cube and thrusters only It seems counterintuitive, but it kind of has to be that way. Otherwise you rotate your ship and suddenly you're breaking the laws of physics. I'd kind of like to see ship specific speed limits removed altogether and replaced by a much higher universal speed limit. Acceleration is enough of a limiting factor. But I suppose the forum would be flooded with complaints from people not being able to steer battleships at 5000m/s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AssaultShaker Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 I suppose the forum would be flooded with complaints from people not being able to steer battleships at 5000m/s. I'm not sure if I'm loathing or loving the idea of all the posterior distress this would cause. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guswut Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 Anybody else crashing to desktop in Player menu ? (i) Anytime I move the mouse over any tab icon in the player menu, the game crashes :( I didn't see anyone else with the same issue in this thread nor in the Beta Bug Report forum, but I've had the same issue on my end. I submitted a bug report via the in-game option (which takes you here https://www.avorion.net/bugtracker/report.php) and I've also started a thread in the Beta Bug Report forum here: http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2260.0.html . Could you also confirm if you're still having this issue, and if so what are the specifications on your machine? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mottenkugel Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 I'd kind of like to see ship specific speed limits removed altogether and replaced by a much higher universal speed limit. Acceleration is enough of a limiting factor. But I suppose the forum would be flooded with complaints from people not being able to steer battleships at 5000m/s. No speed limit would make sense, but if you remove the limit, you would have to be able to set the throttle to a specific value. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tsunamik Posted February 22, 2017 Share Posted February 22, 2017 You can easily remove speed limit... There is module for that :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gblnk Posted February 22, 2017 Share Posted February 22, 2017 You can easily remove speed limit... There is module for that :-) True. But it might as well not exist, because no one is willing to waste a slot on that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AssaultShaker Posted February 23, 2017 Share Posted February 23, 2017 You can easily remove speed limit... There is module for that :-) True. But it might as well not exist, because no one is willing to waste a slot on that. This is 100% accurate haha Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oreganor Posted February 23, 2017 Share Posted February 23, 2017 I think this is an important question because, as far as I can tell, Directional Thrusters make regular Thrusters obsolete. Why do I say this? Because: Directional Thrusters only require a fraction of the Engineers as regular Thrusters. With this patch, with regular Thrusters, my small ships required 4 or 5 Engineers (which, for a small ship with only 2 or 3 module slots, seems excessive), but when I filled the same volume with Directional Thrusters, I managed to get by with just 1 Engineer. Directional Thrusters are much more effective than regular Thrusters. On my designs, anyway, I could get more than double the maneuvering thrust with Directional Thrusters (in place of regular Thrusters) by having them face forward on long leverage arms. Doing it that way, they provide lots of Brake Thrust with a very significant added bonus of either Yaw or Pitch (never Roll, though). It's rather easy to end up with more Brake Thrust than Engine Thrust. Only a small fraction of my Directional Thrusters are aimed in any direction but forward (maybe 10 or 15%) and that's mostly to get a bit of Roll. The problem with using frontal thurst to geneate torque is... ...That your design will not be able to strafe in any direction AT ALL. In fact, omnithrusters provide MORE overall thrust per volume than directional but spread it around all their surfaces. So BOTH are usefull depending on were you place them on your Hull. Here is the "procedure" I followed to "update" all my crafts to better performance (see the caveat below) on the new thruster approach: - MOST IMPORTANT CHANGE IS NOT RELATED TO THRUSTERS. It's related to engines... They provide AN HUMONGOUS ammount of forward thrust now. So the first thing you need to do is cuting the volume of your existing engines to less than half. This will put your forward thrust to manageable levels, reduce your top speed BUT... Will cut dramatically down the energy spenditure of boosted mode, which in turn will allow you to stay FAR longer in boost mode, which in turn will result in faster travel. - The second most important change is, again, not on thrusters but on engines. They aren't vectorial engines any longer meaning your course will not "magically" change by simply pressing "W". This, in principle, looks like a nerf on maneuverabillity but in reality is not because, thanks to the new retrograde marker, you can point your ship towards it and use maximum forward thrust (Even boosted thrust is safe now) WITHOUT it wildly changing course at high speeds (ie no more high speed collisions against stations while trying to do an emergency stop). Sadly, low speed maneuvering requires more rotating and lateral thrust (ie strafing) has become more important at correcting the small drifts on your intended trayectory. - Important to highlight is the fact that the whole thrust effect of a given thruster block (doesn't matter the type) is applied ON THE CENTER of the block. Keep that in mind when comparing to the Center of Mass possition. Sometimes is usefull to split big symetrical thruster blocks that instersect any of the CoM axis so you can get some extra rotation speeds with the same volume (and the inverse is also true if you want just lateral thrust WITHOUT increasing rotation speed too much). - The Center of Mass of your craft CHANGES in real time. Watch the effects of adding (or loosing to damage) big heavy blocks because they will move it and with this, the rotation performance of your thruster distribution will change. With the above been highlighted, here is the recipe I followed: - Removing all thrusters from my ships. - Cut all my engines to half the volume. In the space I "liberated" on each engine I added directional thusters aimed at the front. This will instantly give you some rotation (depending on how far your engines are from the CoM) and will immediatly select which ratio between forward thust and break thrust you want to have (try to keep always between 1/3 and 1/2 ratio between Thrust and Break thrust). This can be also achieved by surface thrusters in a more efficient way... But from building PoV, it's easier to keep some magnitudes frozen from the beggining while tweaking other on the fly. - Now the lengthy process, which is to add thrusters to achieve rotation. Simple rule, the farther from the CoM (That colored "cross" that appears in build mode) you put your thrusters the more rotation speed you will get for the same volume. So if you want a maneuverable ship put your thrusters on the surface of your design. Anything above 0.6 rad/s will give you a ship able to turn fast enough to use your main thrust to kill your speed and peform sharp turns in boost mode. Remember that the new directional thruster concentrates all its thrust (derived from the whole volume of the block) in the directions marked by the "holes" or "burns"... Use the rotation key (Default to "R") to select the direction you want to alter with this thrust. ONE IMPORTANT WARNING At the moment of writing this lines, the delta data (The red/green numbers telling you how your stats are going to change) are bugged and think the block you are placing is an omnithruster, so ignore them when placing directional thrusters... The "white" stats are ok. - At this point you will probably have a ship that accelerates and breaks as you like and rotates as you like, that spends globally less volume on maneuver related blocks... Finished? NO!!!!. If you have been abusing Directional Thrusters (as you should... :) ) you will realize your ship barely strafes at all, which is very important not only for combat but to not having to perform too many main thrust rotations when travelling. Well, you have 2 options: Spend dedicated directional thrusters perfectly aligned to the CoM (so they do not change your rotations) or convert some of the direction thrusters on the "corners" of your ship to omnithrusters that give better overal result when you are concerned about lateral thrust (remember that omnithrusters "waste" some thrust on break thrust, so compensate for this by going for 1/3 ratio when "balancing" engines thrust versus break thrust in the first step). There are still some important data that's not visualized that would help tremendously ppl that's learning to build their ships to spot something is "wrong": - The already mentioned delta data bug with directional thrusters. - The total abssence of "lateral thrust" data. We have thrust (forward), we have break thrust (backward), but we need "up/down" and "left/right" also so ppl can see how each thruster affects the whole maneuverability of their designs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fidtz Posted February 23, 2017 Share Posted February 23, 2017 Thank you for a really interesting post, oreganor. Just quoting the bug section as this explains a lot. ONE IMPORTANT WARNING At the moment of writing this lines, the delta data (The red/green numbers telling you how your stats are going to change) are bugged and think the block you are placing is an omnithruster, so ignore them when placing directional thrusters... The "white" stats are ok. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guswut Posted February 23, 2017 Share Posted February 23, 2017 You can easily remove speed limit... There is module for that :-) True. But it might as well not exist, because no one is willing to waste a slot on that. I completely disagree as I find it is a perfectly acceptable use of a slot if your goal is to get rid of the gameplay-imposed top speed. The key is to switch it out when you don't need it (usually with a quantum hyperspace upgrade, as they're pretty mutually exclusive in usage). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ohm is Futile Posted February 23, 2017 Share Posted February 23, 2017 - At this point you will probably have a ship that accelerates and breaks as you like and rotates as you like, that spends globally less volume on maneuver related blocks... Finished? NO!!!!. If you have been abusing Directional Thrusters (as you should... :) ) you will realize your ship barely strafes at all, which is very important not only for combat but to not having to perform too many main thrust rotations when travelling. Well, you have 2 options: Spend dedicated directional thrusters perfectly aligned to the CoM (so they do not change your rotations) or convert some of the direction thrusters on the "corners" of your ship to omnithrusters that give better overal result when you are concerned about lateral thrust (remember that omnithrusters "waste" some thrust on break thrust, so compensate for this by going for 1/3 ratio when "balancing" engines thrust versus break thrust in the first step). I really doubt balancing matters when you want to strafe. I've never had my ship rotate itself unless I was specifically inputting something that generates yaw. In fact, I would strongly suggest to put your strafing thrusters away from CoM so that they can double up as yawing(and/or pitching/rolling) thrusters. Also, my own personal tip is to break up thrusters that are near the CoM into smaller pieces that don't cut across the CoM. This also increases rotation potential. The only downside is that you have a lot of smaller, weaker pieces around your ship then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tsunamik Posted February 23, 2017 Share Posted February 23, 2017 Yeah, we can be slicing our thrusters again, yay! :D Luckily effect is so mediocre right now, that its not really worth it :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oreganor Posted February 23, 2017 Share Posted February 23, 2017 I really doubt balancing matters when you want to strafe. I've never had my ship rotate itself unless I was specifically inputting something that generates yaw. Maybe I didn't explain correctly... ATM the game do not simmulate reallistic thrust regarding torque (It would be a real pain to have to balance thrust symetry... It's fun on games strictly focused on that, like KSP... But a game with combat elements?!?!? No way). Rotation exhibits a very high acceleration, while max rotational speed is what's been altered by the torque generated by each thruster. I see a lot of ppl calling this "newtonian"... But has nothing to do with reallistic physics nor a real newtonian model... And it's perfectly ok, for as long as it's fun and ship behaviour forces the players to make tradeoffs between this or that stat. I would strongly suggest to put your strafing thrusters away from CoM so that they can double up as yawing(and/or pitching/rolling) thrusters. On my explanation, it's about BUILDING PHASES and controlling final stats. OFC you can keep on increasing your rotation speeds... But you can't fine tune it easily if each block alters multiple stats, that's why I offered a gradual approach based on how easily is to "lock" certain maneuverability stats. If you play the game on x1 collision damage... The last thing you want is a 1MT elongated ship rotating at 1rad/s... Meanwhile that same ship is interesting to have at least between 1/4 - 1/6 "lateral thrust" on the smaller axis seen when you are are showing your high weapon density facing to the enemy... And even if it's a civ, you should never let lateral thrust fall below 1/10 forward thrust if you want to control drift decently at docking maneuvers or while avoiding obstacles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sny Posted February 23, 2017 Share Posted February 23, 2017 On my explanation, it's about BUILDING PHASES and controlling final stats. OFC you can keep on increasing your rotation speeds... But you can't fine tune it easily if each block alters multiple stats, that's why I offered a gradual approach based on how easily is to "lock" certain maneuverability stats. If you play the game on x1 collision damage... The last thing you want is a 1MT elongated ship rotating at 1rad/s... Meanwhile that same ship is interesting to have at least between 1/4 - 1/6 "lateral thrust" on the smaller axis seen when you are are showing your high weapon density facing to the enemy... And even if it's a civ, you should never let lateral acceleration fall below 1/10 forward thrust if you want to control drift decently at docking maneuvers or while avoiding obstacles. How do you tell what your lateral thrust is? Rotation is nice and all, but lateral thrust (or lack thereof) is the thing that makes ships "feel" out of control... for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oreganor Posted February 23, 2017 Share Posted February 23, 2017 How do you tell what your lateral thrust is? Numerically you can't... That's why I pointed we need those stats. Operatively what I do is bringing my ship in front of a station docking port and see how far I move strafing in the different directions (I use the docking ports because the distance shown there is the one between it and the closer point of your hull). That helps me get an accurate feeling of how much time I need to reach a possition and then move back again. For me it's mainly a problem related to combat... If you can move a distance equal to your smaller axis, as seen by an enemy that shoots projectiles, in less than half the time those proyectiles take to arrive to you... Then you can dodge most incoming fire. OFC this is the absolute minimum needed... The faster you are able to strafe that distance, the more extra time you can invest into creating random patterns that help fooling predictive aiming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AssaultShaker Posted February 23, 2017 Share Posted February 23, 2017 Good guide Oreganor. Everyone read it before complaining any further :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ohm is Futile Posted February 24, 2017 Share Posted February 24, 2017 How do you tell what your lateral thrust is? Numerically you can't... That's why I pointed we need those stats. You know, you can hold left shift and mouse over your own ship to select it. That will show the velocity value, you can then look at that from a complete stop and also compare it to the top bar to see how it measures up with your max velocity. It's not perfect, but it does provide a numerical estimate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oreganor Posted February 24, 2017 Share Posted February 24, 2017 You know, you can hold left shift and mouse over your own ship to select it. That will show the velocity value, you can then look at that from a complete stop and also compare it to the top bar to see how it measures up with your max velocity. Thanks for the tip!!!... LOL... I literally never thought on using middle mouse button while shift clicking to select 3D entities... I just clicked UI elements. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C0r3y Posted February 24, 2017 Share Posted February 24, 2017 Patch is not live yet. And it's live! stable branch is still old version no update available same with stable server version Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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