Jump to content

Welcome to the Forum!

The best place to exchange builds and ideas! Vote for the best ideas and suggestions here.

Join the Avorion Discord!

Connect with other passionate players and talk about the latest news.
Discord

DLC Avorion Into the Rift Out Now!

Now available on Steam!
Steam

Thrusters vs Gyro arrays for various ship sizes


Speed
 Share

Recommended Posts

This probably has been discussed before on these boards, but then again, these boards are kind of low traffic, so maybe not.

 

In case you were ever wondering the mathematical reason bigger ships turn slower (I was).

 

I did a little bit of investigation; I looked up the dependency of moment of inertia to radius (moment of inertia is the amount of torque you have to apply to a 3d object to get a certain angular acceleration) and I realized that moment of inertia scales by the radius to the FIFTH power.  Meanwhile, the torque provided by thrusters in Avorion scales by the fourth power of radius, because the amount of force a thruster produces is proportional to its volume (radius to the third), while the amount of torque it provides is proportional to its distance from the center of gravity (radius to the first).  Radius^3 * Radius^1  = Radius^4.

 

The torque provided by gyro arrays in Avorion will scale by radius to the third (because the torque they produce is proportional to volume only).

 

So the take-aways are these:

1)For a ship shape that relies solely on thrusters for maneuverability, doubling its dimensions will reduce its maneuverability by 2.

2)For a ship shape that relies solely on gyro arrays for maneuverability, doubling its dimensions will reduce its maneuverability by 4.

3)Therefore, gyro arrays are essentially useless for large ships.

4)And conversely (and not so intuitively), there is ship size range below which gyro arrays are (in general) vastly better than thrusters!  What I don't know is if that size range is larger than the smallest practical ship size.  That depends on how the game is balanced, and what exactly the ship's shape is.

 

1-3, at least, are what we intuitively expect.  Anyway, actually knowing the math allows me to make better-informed decisions for ship design.  Personally, I already load up my huge ships with massive quantities of directional thrusters already, though I also use a small number of gyro arrays.  I may just eliminate the gyro arrays entirely now. I had already noticed they did next-to-nothing... now I know why.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The main advantage for the Gyro Arrays, is that their efficiency is completely independent from their placement, so they can be placed into ship's center of mass and still perform perfectly, compared to Thrusters, which would only provide braking, strafing and reverse in the same position. Directional and Omni Thrusters on the other hand the only blocks providing strafing and reverse, also regardless of their placement, so the positioning only affects the rotation.

 

Thus, I use Directional Thrusters to provide general maneuverability and only use one or two Gyros to address the rotations (usually Roll), where the Thrusters are not covering for.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The main advantage for the Gyro Arrays, is that their efficiency is completely independent from their placement, so they can be placed into ship's center of mass and still perform perfectly, compared to Thrusters, which would only provide braking, strafing and reverse in the same position. Directional and Omni Thrusters on the other hand the only blocks providing strafing and reverse, also regardless of their placement, so the positioning only affects the rotation.

 

Thus, I use Directional Thrusters to provide general maneuverability and only use one or two Gyros to address the rotations (usually Roll), where the Thrusters are not covering for.

 

I break my directional thrusters up.  For example, if I want to make a 12x12x5m thruster, I might use sixteen 3x3x5m thrusters.  The idea is that a single shot cannot destroy all the thrusters (at the cost of making each one of them a bit easier to destroy).  But this has an additional benefit: even when placed on the craft's centerline, they can provide roll, because half of the thrusters are on each axial side. Basically, when I roll, the appropriate half of the grid will fire.

 

I also place A LOT of thrusters on my big vessels in order to give them the maneuverability I desire, and I place the thrusters behind an armored grid, which blocks incoming fire from almost all directions.  This is my 15 slot super battlecarrier.  I am no artist, I can't even begin to conceive how some people are able to create many of the insanely detailed and beautiful ship designs I've seen.  This is the best I can do.  (Also, I believe in utilitarian design over beauty.)

 

 

LT9Fdx3.jpg

XvucwEB.jpg

U3XdKio.jpg

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  (Also, I believe in utilitarian design over beauty.)

not really  ;D

He makes better ships than me at least ::). Nice round and grille'd engines ! She strongly resembles a longer Moxie in shape, though much bigger too.

Also, wow, that ship must be strafing well with all those thrusters :o ! And those huge turrets must cut through enemies like butter.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gyros are much supperior for sphere/cube ships, while longcats better with thrusters(for pitch and yaw ofc) doesnt matter the size

  (Also, I believe in utilitarian design over beauty.)

 

not really  ;D

Why build a boring cube or sphere ship?  The game can get boring and monotonous enough, with all enemy ships just exploding like popcorn the instant you target them, even on so-called "Insane" difficulty (unless "Insane" difficulty means "insanely easy", in which case, it's named correctly).   

Also, a cube ship is really easy to hit as opposed to a ship with a narrow frontal aspect.

 

You are wrong about gyros being better for large ships.  No matter what shape your ship is, thrusters will eventually become better once you exceed a certain ship size.  It's a scaling law.

 

But yes, I ignore the fact that the game is an incomplete model and play it more like how it might actually work if magic hyperspace drives were actually possible.  Because otherwise, you just build a boring derp cube.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I break my directional thrusters up.  For example, if I want to make a 12x12x5m thruster, I might use sixteen 3x3x5m thrusters.  The idea is that a single shot cannot destroy all the thrusters (at the cost of making each one of them a bit easier to destroy).  But this has an additional benefit: even when placed on the craft's centerline, they can provide roll, because half of the thrusters are on each axial side. Basically, when I roll, the appropriate half of the grid will fire.

 

I also place A LOT of thrusters on my big vessels in order to give them the maneuverability I desire, and I place the thrusters behind an armored grid, which blocks incoming fire from almost all directions.  This is my 15 slot super battlecarrier.  I am no artist, I can't even begin to conceive how some people are able to create many of the insanely detailed and beautiful ship designs I've seen.  This is the best I can do.  (Also, I believe in utilitarian design over beauty.)

 

I see breaking thrusters up as superfluous. As long as they're placed away from the center of mass, they give decent maneuverability. I prefer using whole chunks for the maximum per-block durability. By the way, Thrusters do need to be placed in vast amounts, i.e. roughly 4 times over the volume of Engines, to achieve good performance, and many players end up adding more when the design is essentially complete, because they do not realize that.

 

You're getting there. You just need to pre-design the ship (i.e. have a rough idea of how you want it to look like), distribute systems accordingly and delegate more time for the visuals. Most beautiful designs are made that way, or they use an existing design from other franchises. Personally I think vast majority of them are way overblown in the amount of individual blocks.

 

PpnNF7n.jpg

mYcljh5.jpg

Axy0txb.jpg

H0LFeg6.jpg

mkCjLdp.jpg

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I see breaking thrusters up as superfluous. As long as they're placed away from the center of mass, they give decent maneuverability. I prefer using whole chunks for the maximum per-block durability. By the way, Thrusters do need to be placed in vast amounts, i.e. roughly 4 times over the volume of Engines, to achieve good performance, and many players end up adding more when the design is essentially complete, because they do not realize that.

 

You're getting there. You just need to pre-design the ship (i.e. have a rough idea of how you want it to look like), distribute systems accordingly and delegate more time for the visuals. Most beautiful designs are made that way, or they use an existing design from other franchises. Personally I think vast majority of them are way overblown in the amount of individual blocks.

That's a beautiful ship, though, it's rather small (which is fine, it just means that you'll have to upgrade from it to a larger ship eventually).  However, you did not address the point I make about thruster grids.  A thruster grid placed on the centerline can still roll your ship, because it's capable of firing just half the grid.  A single thruster block won't help you roll because the entire thing must fire.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

These are the stats for my 15 slot super battlecarrier (battlecruiser) variant (0.5m armor).

 

 

nKYo8KL.jpg

 

 

These are the stats for the "dreadnought" variant (1m armor).  A lot less maneuverable, armor is heavy! 

 

 

iSvA990.jpg

 

 

Now that torpedoes appear to be nerfed to be less dangerous than mosquitoes, maybe I'll go back to the battlecruiser variant, though I'll have to update it to the latest version by giving it torpedo tubes.

 

The reason I put engines on nacelles is so that the rear of the ship can be reserved for thrusters. That significantly improves manueverability.  Furthermore, in front of the engine nacelles I can then put thrusters, which will also be far from the center of gravity and help with pitch, yaw, or both (both, in this case, since there are four nacelles).

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's a beautiful ship, though, it's rather small (which is fine, it just means that you'll have to upgrade from it to a larger ship eventually).  However, you did not address the point I make about thruster grids.  A thruster grid placed on the centerline can still roll your ship, because it's capable of firing just half the grid.  A single thruster block won't help you roll because the entire thing must fire.

Its more efficient to use Gyros if you care about turning in one direction and keep all thruster to their respective dimensional limits. You can test how the efficiency of a thruster rises as it goes further and further away from the center of mass. So even for Roll, you can dedicate thrusters on either "wings" of your ship, and they will also provide up/down vectors. And if you have no much wings to talk about, then use Gyros instead, and get up/down vectors from your pitch thrusters on the front of back of the chassis.

 

I'm currently building a Cruiser version (11 slots) of the similar design pattern. I use Google Spreadsheets to pre-plan the usage of volume. This is why the ship I shown has precisely 8mil m^3 of volume.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's a beautiful ship, though, it's rather small (which is fine, it just means that you'll have to upgrade from it to a larger ship eventually).  However, you did not address the point I make about thruster grids.  A thruster grid placed on the centerline can still roll your ship, because it's capable of firing just half the grid.  A single thruster block won't help you roll because the entire thing must fire.

Its more efficient to use Gyros if you care about turning in one direction and keep all thruster to their respective dimensional limits. You can test how the efficiency of a thruster rises as it goes further and further away from the center of mass. So even for Roll, you can dedicate thrusters on either "wings" of your ship, and they will also provide up/down vectors. And if you have no much wings to talk about, then use Gyros instead, and get up/down vectors from your pitch thrusters on the front of back of the chassis.

 

I'm currently building a Cruiser version (11 slots) of the similar design pattern. I use Google Spreadsheets to pre-plan the usage of volume. This is why the ship I shown has precisely 8mil m^3 of volume.

 

I'm not sure I'm following you on the first sentence.  Anyway, I'd love to see your 11 slot design when it's done. It will probably be a lot prettier than mine. This is my 11-slot design at trinium/xanion tech level. Kind of ugly, but it's got a very small frontal cross-section; enemies have a tough time hitting me when I'm facing them.  You see the 0.18 rad/sec roll?  That's ENTIRELY from gridded thrusters.  If I un-gridded my thrusters, the ship would have zero roll.  I'm tellin' ya- gridded thrusters for the win!

Ultimately though, roll is not a very important maneuverability stat, since this is space. :) (Well, I may be giving the game too much credit- this is nothing like space at all.  Real space is incredibly, extremely, mindbogglingly empty.)

Also, you may notice that I paint all my ships black; this helps to radiate waste heat (yea, I know...) and it also makes them harder to see (black = space camouflage ;D )

 

 

drXXIhO.jpg

 

I may have to upgrade the ship's maneuverability a bit; it's about as maneuverable as my 15 slot design.

 

BTW, why does roll, pitch, yaw, etc. show up as rad/s and not rad/s^2?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Holly

Call me uncreative, call me abuser, do whatever

but i cant feel good about my ship whithout ~2 on yaw and pitch and ~1 on roll

 

no guns no modules 13 slot cube roughly 50x50x25

sCwAQhc.png

 

 

 

to be relevant to the topic here is img of gyro's

 

9dIU33l.png

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure I'm following you on the first sentence.

What I mean is, there's no reason to place thrusters near the center of mass, or on any of the ship's axis for that matter, ever. You will get full extent of sideways/reverse/braking velocities no matter where the thrusters are, but you will always get better turning rates when placing thrusters on the tips and ends of your ship. If you have a particular dimension where you have a problem putting thrusters to great effect, you can use a Gyro, that can be placed anywhere.

 

The ship I've posted has four maneuvering groups of the same total volume: Thrusters facing forward for braking and reverse, thrusters facing sideways for turning, thrusters facing up/down for pitch and a Gyro Array in the middle of the ship, that covers the Roll. I could've used thrusters for roll by placing them on the "wings", past the engine blocks, but it would break the geometry, expand the forward profile, give superfluous up/down strafing and still would not be as powerful as the Gyro. In fact, in perfect scenario I could've reduced the Gyro by half and add some additional thrusters on the ship's tail to improve Pitch. Note that the entire functional purpose of that tail is a lever, that turns the ship around the center of mass, which is in the middle of the main body. 

 

 

Anyway, I'd love to see your 11 slot design when it's done. It will probably be a lot prettier than mine. This is my 11-slot design at trinium/xanion tech level. Kind of ugly, but it's got a very small frontal cross-section; enemies have a tough time hitting me when I'm facing them.  You see the 0.18 rad/sec roll?  That's ENTIRELY from gridded thrusters.  If I un-gridded my thrusters, the ship would have zero roll.  I'm tellin' ya- gridded thrusters for the win!
My point is, you can replace those grid thrusters with a single Gyro, and you'd probably get ~5 times the Roll speed. That, or you could break it into half the Gyro and another half as the thrusters placed on the engine sections, which would provide more balanced stats.

 

Ultimately though, roll is not a very important maneuverability stat, since this is space. :) (Well, I may be giving the game too much credit- this is nothing like space at all.  Real space is incredibly, extremely, mindbogglingly empty.)
It's not very important for ships with candle-like geometry. If your ship is broader, then it is necessary to avoid unwanted collisions and also to align yourself to point more weapons towards the target. Thankfully, broader ships will also have easier time getting that Roll with thrusters.

 

Also, you may notice that I paint all my ships black; this helps to radiate waste heat (yea, I know...) and it also makes them harder to see (black = space camouflage ;D )
Black surfaces also absorb heat better, so its kind of counter-productive ;) Given the distances in space, visual detection would be irrelevant, as it would be much easier to find ships via infra-red emission (heat signature).

 

BTW, why does roll, pitch, yaw, etc. show up as rad/s and not rad/s^2?
Because its a measure of top angular velocity, not of its acceleration rate.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My point is, you can replace those grid thrusters with a single Gyro, and you'd probably get ~5 times the Roll speed. That, or you could break it into half the Gyro and another half as the thrusters placed on the engine sections, which would provide more balanced stats.

Oh, I understand your point now.  However, your point is wrong because you misunderstand my intent.  The gridded thrusters are NOT MEANT to provide roll (not really) they are for pitch and yaw and side-slip (strafing).  My point is, because I make them gridded instead of a single block, they provide me with roll authority as a free benefit.  So now, a thruster that is meant to provide pitch, yaw, and stafing ALSO provides roll as well, for free. Because my roll authority is provided for free by gridding my centerline pitch/yaw/strafing thrusters, I don't need to add a gyro to provide roll.  I can use the volume that would have gone towards a gyro block for something else, like shields.  So gridded thrusters are superior to ungridded thrusters (when they are on the ship's centerline) because they are a more efficient use of blocks.

 

 

Black surfaces also absorb heat better, so its kind of counter-productive ;) Given the distances in space, visual detection would be irrelevant, as it would be much easier to find ships via infra-red emission (heat signature).

 

I agree that real space combat would take place VASTLY beyond visual range, but this is Avorion, where space combat unrealistically takes place within a few km.

 

By painting yourself black, you don't increase your heat emission. You simply decrease your equilibrium temperature.  All objects in space at thermal equilibrium will be emitting as much heat as they are absorbing (and generating).  A reflective vessel simply needs to be at a higher temperature to emit the same amount of IR radiation as a dark vessel.  The amount of IR emission will be the same because energy in will equal energy out.

 

Additionally, the black body equilibrium temperature in space is very low; right now, 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, it's dropped to about 3 degrees K in intergalactic space.  In interstellar space, it's a bit higher (not sure exactly, I forgot the number) but it's probably like 5 K or something like that, depending on the stellar neighborhood you are in.  VERY close to a star, it's a lot higher, obviously, but that's only a really tiny portion of the space in a galaxy.  That said, it could be argued that space combat might happen close to stars sometimes...

 

Actually, wouldn't a reflective body have a higher equilibrium temperature in all environments?  It just takes longer to reach its equilibrium?  So maybe you'd paint your spacecraft white if you wanted to minimize the amount of damage it took from nuclear or antimatter explosions (which would create brief flashes of VERY bright light in the visible spectrum).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...