Newtonian physics, velocity, scale and fuel efficiency

[Zormac]

Anyone who has played a space sim with newtonian physics (KSP, Star Citizen, Space Engineers) knows that fuel in space should be used to increase velocity and correct the trajectory, not push you all the way to your destination.

Empyrion is a great game, but the space flight feels just like atmospheric flight without aerodynamics. While an arcade style is good for a change, I think that at least being able to move forward without thrusting all the time could be more useful. This way, we could save fuel for acceleration/deceleration only, and for hovering in the atmosphere, but have more freedom in space.

Also, I know that there are several glitches when it comes to huge scales in games, but I'd like to know what the limiting factor would be for Empyrion in particular. Planets/moons/asteroid belts are too close to each other, and the maximum speed limit is incredibly low - about as fast as a sports bike on land. That's not even close to Mach 1. What limiting factors are keeping the devs from stretching those limits, increasing distances and cruise speed to, say, Mach 5?

I'm not hating or flaming, by the way. It's an honest question, because I love the concept of the game :)

[JDaremo Fireheart]

you can change the distance between planets easily in the sectors.yaml file

[Frigidman]

Originally posted by JDaremo Fireheart:

you can change the distance between planets easily in the sectors.yaml file

Not really the point of the topic.

For the topic:

Agreed on fuel use in space. It should only be for altering direction. Sadly though, the ship is always trying to 'stop you', which eats fuel when you let off the key. So when you are on the key, its expending fuel too. Hopefully they look at this, and employ a sort of dampeners off setup.

For speed...Think of the speed right now as 'tactical speed'. The speed in which you can do manuevers, fight, explore, plot. Then think of a faster speed in which those things are not really viable. Then think of the warp speed to jump between systems. They are missing that middle speed... but it was in the survey as something they are thinking about.

Kind of like E:D and its 'supercruise' mode, vs 'drop out' mode. In non-supercruise, you truly feel like you are moving slow. Dogfighting in roids is very slow, and evenslower if you are in an Anaconda, or other large capital class ship. When you escape into supercruise, you are going much faster than the guy you left behind... but, you cannot shoot your weapons, or turn on a dime either.

So... I think a 'middle' speed is coming. Just need to wait a bit.

[Tryst49]

AS far as I know, fuel use does diminish when you reach max speed in space. My power use when thrusting goes up to 60% and drops to around 20% at max speed. My only gripe is that I have to keep my finger on the key to keep moving forward.

We don't actually have full Newtonian physics or we'd be sliding sideways when we turn the ship around without stopping the forward motion first.

However, it is strange that thrusters don't work on a planet but do in space. We don't have thrusters stopping forward or sideways sliding in atmosphere but we do have thrusters stopping us going forward in space.

[Frigidman]

Originally posted by tryst49:

It's not a reverse thrust issue when you stop pressing forward or we'd have the ability to hover nose down in mid air on the planet also because reverse thrust would stop it moving forward.

In space, there is reverse thrust (in all directions you are moving). When you let go of any motion key, you 'stop' (as it applied reverse thrust to stop you moving in that direction).

On land, as you say... reverse thrust is missing for pointing down/up, or being rolled sideways. It exists for directly level (down thrusters), and upside down (up thrusters).

I've been on their case to get that fixed, to have reverse thrust in all directions so long as your ship is designed with enough force to compensate its mass in gravity. I mean... space engineers does it, how hard can it be if that mess can do it? ;)

[Zormac]

Originally posted by tryst49:

AS far as I know, fuel use does diminish when you reach max speed in space. My power use when thrusting goes up to 60% and drops to around 20% at max speed. My only gripe is that I have to keep my finger on the key to keep moving forward. It's not a reverse thrust issue when you stop pressing forward or we'd have the ability to hover nose down in mid air on the planet also because reverse thrust would stop it moving forward.

We don't actually have full Newtonian physics or we'd be sliding sideways when we turn the ship around without stopping the forward motion first.

Yup, I don't acually want full newtonian physics either. Already play too many games like this and I like the arcade feel that this one has. But as you pointed out, holding down the thruster is really annoying. Maybe they can add an option for using the key to increase thruster power, not just toggle the thruster on/off. This way you can hold W until max power, then let go. And either decelerate with S or press X to go to 0 thrust, which will automatically decelerate it and slowly stop.

[TinyDewDrop]

Disable the front thrusters to safe fuel. Or use a W macro or disable all thrusters.

Sadly we still can not add component groups to the hotbar to easily switch on/off the thrusters.

Using kerbal technology I should be able to reach the moon by barely using any thrusters :P. But luckily that won't happen here. Too complicated.

[Zormac]

Originally posted by JDaremo Fireheart:

you can change the distance between planets easily in the sectors.yaml file

It's good that you can do that, but it would be horrible to reach them at 100m/s.

Originally posted by Frigidman:

Kind of like E:D and its 'supercruise' mode, vs 'drop out' mode. In non-supercruise, you truly feel like you are moving slow. Dogfighting in roids is very slow, and evenslower if you are in an Anaconda, or other large capital class ship. When you escape into supercruise, you are going much faster than the guy you left behind... but, you cannot shoot your weapons, or turn on a dime either.

Yup, I'm a big Elite Dangerous fan. But even in normal cruise you can easily reach 400m/s.
But I'd love a supercruise speed in Empyrion. Then I could do as our friend suggested and change the distances in the file.

[threefinger]

I'm sure more speed adjustments are coming, as for the newtonian physics, I think they are actually pretty close to being there in space. Its just that the game auto-corrects with reverse thrust, if you were to group all of your front facing thrusters and power them down you would continue at max speed with zero thrust applied. Hopefully this will be improved on by letting us put thruster groups into the quickbar for easy on/off instead of having to dig through the Panel whenever we want to stop.

The horizontal sliding is due to what Frigidman said about reverse thrust not being applied side-side or front-back while in atmo, which means if your ship is tilted slightly, the reverse thrust attempting to keep you stationary from the bottom actually pushes you in the direction you are tilted in

[Tryst49]

Originally posted by threefinger:

The horizontal sliding is due to what Frigidman said about reverse thrust not being applied side-side or front-back while in atmo, which means if your ship is tilted slightly, the reverse thrust attempting to keep you stationary from the bottom actually pushes you in the direction you are tilted in

This is what I'm saying should be changed. Either we have no reverse thrust when we let go of the forward key in space or we have the ability to remain stationary in atmosphere regardless of attitude. It really seems that the two things are bass ackwards. I would actually prefer a key to stop all motion in space relative to the nearest solar body (much like the O key in atmosphere) but have the ability to thrust forward to max and then let go and drift at full speed to save fuel.

Alternatively, have the ability to turn on and off "anti-drift" in both atmosphere and space so space flight acts like it does now but atmospheric flight stops us sliding when tilted when it's turned on. When it's off, we get sliding in atmosphere like we do now but full Newtonian physics in space.

[JDaremo Fireheart]

Originally posted by ;217691032428645745:

AS far as I know, fuel use does diminish when you reach max speed in space. My power use when thrusting goes up to 60% and drops to around 20% at max speed.

If you are using that much power, time to add more generators or larger ones. My usage when travelling in space never exceeds 10%

[JDaremo Fireheart]

Originally posted by threefinger:

The horizontal sliding is due to what Frigidman said about reverse thrust not being applied side-side or front-back while in atmo, which means if your ship is tilted slightly, the reverse thrust attempting to keep you stationary from the bottom actually pushes you in the direction you are tilted in

It also means the center of mass of the ship is way off. I hardly ever get drifing in my ships.

[Frigidman]

I'd kill to be able to nose my ship downwards in atmosphere without it auto-piloting into the ground ;)

On the subject of game mechanics and the 110ms2 speed... its more of a physics issue with the block based game and other components (weapons fire too). They can increase it a bit more, but it starts to get a wee bit unpredictable. The faster two entities are moving toward each other, and weapons fire... the higher chance the collision tick misses and the shot flies 'through' an entity.

Especially when you take an almost unlimited way to build a ship into account.

In E:D, they have 'set ships' and 'set bounds' and 'set rules' for everything. They can kind of get away with the higher velocities (even though visually, to us, it SEEMS like the ships are moving in the same reaction times, maybe even more slow in ED... despite its 'telling us' its going 400ms2).

Heck, EGS could double all its display numbers, and then people suddenly think we are all moving twice as fast! Hehe.

[Frigidman]

Originally posted by JDaremo Fireheart:

Originally posted by threefinger:

The horizontal sliding is due to what Frigidman said about reverse thrust not being applied side-side or front-back while in atmo, which means if your ship is tilted slightly, the reverse thrust attempting to keep you stationary from the bottom actually pushes you in the direction you are tilted in

It also means the center of mass of the ship is way off. I hardly ever get drifing in my ships.

Well arnt YOU special.

Every ship I've tried, both made myself, and pulled off workshop (and even the prefabs), ALL slide into the ground if I am anything but 'perfectly level' to the ground.

[Zormac]

Originally posted by JDaremo Fireheart:

Originally posted by ;217691032428645745:

AS far as I know, fuel use does diminish when you reach max speed in space. My power use when thrusting goes up to 60% and drops to around 20% at max speed.

If you are using that much power, time to add more generators or larger ones. My usage when travelling in space never exceeds 10%

Well, the point is not really power usage %. It's fuel consumption. You can have 100 generators and then your % would show less than 1%. My problem is the juice to run that.

[piddlefoot]

The devs are looking at this and thrusters and we have been asking them lots for changes in this area, lets hope they come around.

Ive been asking for a completely new fuel system for thrusters, the ability to thrust up to speed and turn thrusters off and drift, and for the brakes code to be modified so it only kicks in if the ship is un-occupied as a failsafe for run away ships, like we saw in SE.

So if they go down this road they need new sections to the tech tree, new techs, liquid fuel and then solid fuel research in tech tree, all the animations and 3d models that come with new things in a game need to be done, the base code for its functionality as well, fair bit of stuff to be done so I hope they start looking at it soon and go for 5.0 or 6.0 for this change, would be a nice change.