Idea: Reverse thrust?

[Meat]

So to brake in bigger, longer ships is next to impossible without turning in 180 and burning back, and even then you drift off in random direction. Is it possible to get reverse thrust engine, or something like that, to brake you down faster?

[Seraphin]

There is already automatic reverse trust as soon as you don't push "W" anymore.
If your ships doesn't slow down fast enough, you need more thrusters. Also don't forget it's in the nature of big ships, they are not that easy to fly than a fighter.

I would go into the other direction and say turning is even to fast.

[thedamngod]

To talk in Kerbal terms: Add more boosters thrusters :D

The effectiveness of thrusters is currently determined by surface area in the direction you want them to fire, but they will be reworked to be volume based in the future. There is a break thrust statistic in the stats overview of your ship in the build menu and the ship menu (hotkey 'P', leftmost tab) which you should keep an eye on.

So I'd currently recommend to add thin, big thrusters to the sides of your ship. You can even stack them with a small layer of hull in between as they dont check for obstruction by blocks other than thrusters.

[Sir Snuffles]

when i place thrusters i've noticed that you want it so the block has lots of tiny thrusters instead ofhaving a long and thin thruster on your ship. Cuboid thrusters 3x3 tend to do the trick as they have a lot of smaller thrusters on them than a long piece.


Hard to explain

[Aarmik]

I would personally welcome the addition of inertial nullifiers, or something, for stopping ships. Maybe as a later game block?

When it comes to thrusters, I think what matters is how much surface area you have pointing in a specific direction. Making a large block will generate uneseccary volume and mass, making thin "sheets" facing different directions is much better in my experience. Also, you can cover up thrusters without fear.

[DarkHoodness]

It's a shame you can't have engines facing in any direction other than backwards, so that you'd be able to use them as thrusters too if you wished. Block rotation is a thing, so it seems kind of arbitary.

The existing thruster block would still be useful for smaller ships. Sloped thrusters would be nice, too. :)

[Seraphin]

Engines facing in any direction as more powerfull "thrusters" may be an interesting idea, but I think they should get some penalty then ... for example to make them much slower to react onto changes.

So engines are more powerfull but they slowly power up and down.
Thrusters on the otherhand are weaker but work instantly.

But for my idea I think the WASD steering would need to get a rework too then.

I'm missing up and down (vertical-) movement anyway, just beeing able to strafe left and right is not enough for space.

[Captain Hards]

use Q and E to strafe up and down. i try to use thrusters only when im trying to dock. when turning around to slow down after using main engines use CTRL to change your view directly behind you before lettign go and only firing engines after completing the turn. Hope this helps

[DAKKA]

Reverse thrusters don't make any sense.

If you need to retreat from battle, then boost out of there as fast as your are able. If you're constantly hitting things, then your ship is either too big/long or you need to learn how to manuever your ship around objects.

You don't need the largest ship in the galaxy nor the fastest.

[DarkHoodness]

We'd (or at least I would) like stronger "backwards" thrust to make it easier to slow down. How does that not make sense? This could easily be acheived by being allowed to place forward facing engines - And it's what I did with several of my creations in Space Engineers.

Alternatively, the game could copy Endless Sky (NOT to be confused with No Man's Sky) and have the ship automatically turn around and face the opposite way that it's travelling in and thrust to slow down when "S" is held down when it's above a certain speed, but that might be a little hard to program.

E: Maybe improving the UI to make it easier to see which direction the ship is travelling in would help with this too. Then we could see which direction to thrust against to slow down, without ending up heading in a weird direction instead. :P

E2:

Originally posted by Seraphin:

I'm missing up and down (vertical-) movement anyway, just beeing able to strafe left and right is not enough for space.

Review your controls, this game has vertical movement.

[obliviondoll]

If you want stronger reverse thrust, build bigger thrusters.

That said, I think a system where you CAN freely rotate engines would be nice. There's ALREADY a penalty for using engines in place of thrusters - they only provide thrust in one direction.

[Subquake]

If you want more maneuvering thruster power, you need to stack flat panels of thrusters in a row, they work based on surface area and not volume as of now:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=849920624

[DarkHoodness]

Back of my ship:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=849843933

Front of my ship:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=849919362

Thrust: 31.2 m/s
Brake: 8.4 m/s

This is the issue I have. There is almost as much surface area for forward-facing thrusters as there are for backwards-facing engines, yet thrusters are too weak to slow down my ship effectively.

[Subquake]

Originally posted by DarkHoodness:

This is the issue I have. There is almost as much surface area for forward-facing thrusters as there are for backwards-facing engines, yet thrusters are too weak to slow down my ship effectively.

Try redesigning your thrusters similar to what I showed in my picture by placing many thin slabs of thrusters, that adds a lot more power, since currently in the game not volume, but surface area of thrusters count.

[DarkHoodness]

Originally posted by Subquake:

Try redesigning your thrusters similar to what I showed in my picture by placing many thin slabs of thrusters, that adds a lot more power, since currently in the game not volume, but surface area of thrusters count.

Seems a bit haxxorish which may be patched out later, but yeah - My ship has 2 "spoilers" of these now which actually help slow it down. Now my braking force is above my thrusting force. Thanks!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=849955972

[Die Zahl]

Originally posted by DarkHoodness:

[...]
E: Maybe improving the UI to make it easier to see which direction the ship is travelling in would help with this too. Then we could see which direction to thrust against to slow down, without ending up heading in a weird direction instead. :P

^ this