So confused about Space... made it to Moon on single stage and without Infinite fuel...but...

[ElfBossHogg]

I managed to build a test space ship with 4 SRBs and one main stage. The main stage has one large liquid engine with 6 Large Hydrogen Tanks and 3 Large Oxygen Tanks. I pressurized the tanks to 800 ATM so they have lots of fuel. I've been trying a ton of different ways numerous times to try to figure out the best profile to get to the Moon.. everything from running expected orbital mechanic attempts to direct shot.

Running as if there are standard orbital mechanics I'm easily able to get to 300K geo-stationary with 90% of my fuel left. At that point I attempted a lunar insertion... burn along the same orbital line and point 20% towards the visible moon space. At that point I'm able to get a good approach to the moon till I hit about 80k from the moon and then it just goes "weird". At that point I was expecting I'd flip and burn so that the moon's gravity will take me the rest of the way. It says I'm still closing on the moon but all of a sudden I'm flipped and face the opposite direction and I'm going 200m/s away from it. Was never successful in any of my attempts. Consistently had the flip issue or it appeared I was just drifting away from the moon map and the map never flipped.

For my last attempt I thought I was on to something... I decided to go straight up and just keep on aiming at the centre of the moon ball. It seemed to work with a few weird things along the way (a 180' flip at about 100k from Earth). I made it to within 30k of the moon by aiming at the centre of the sphere; it had me looking at the middle of the large crater when I moved to an exterior view. When I got with 30k the craft suddenly flipped and I was moving away at 120 m/s... I flipped it again and burned against it eventually overtaking the bump and made it to the surface. Successfully made it to the moon without infinite fuel or infinite electricity and 35% fuel left. Should be enough for a return home... took off from the moon and burned slowly and steadily directly at the centre of the Earth... was doing 490 m/s return right pass 300km... then it started to slow... pressure was around 20% in the tanks so I was expecting it. I kept a slow burn and was able to get it to 190 m/s with 180km left to Earth when the fuel finally cut out... should be enough to drift and let Earth's gravity do the rest. Nope... speed started reducing and eventually I found myself sucked back and doing 50 m/s to the geo-stationary point. It's almost like that point has it's own gravity point.

Frustrated at this point because nothing makes sense. If we knew what the rules and equations are to how space works it might be manageable but at this point its not following anything ideally predictable. I searched for videos and comments with regards to the ideal profile and it doesn't seem like anyone has identified anything.

[Anwaan]

But SpAcE!!! I can't believe any developer with any morals would release something like this and think it's good. They know it's trash and either were over-eager in their abilities or just didn't care. I don't believe for a second they were working on it "for years" as they claimed. I'll wager they didn't start on it until after they announced it (gasses might have already been in the works) but once they made the announcement, they were committed.

It hadn't been too long of a time prior during a q&a that they said space would likely never happen due to limitations. I wish I could find the video, but I don't remember which youtuber it was with. They wanted to, but didn't see how they could do it. This is what we got when they tried to force their engine to do something it was never originally designed to do. They knew it wouldn't work but fully committed anyway. Now we just have to hope they buckle down and try to actually make it somehow make sense.

[Copilot]

https://tenor.com/nl/view/stormworks-ship-capsize-broken-dumb-gif-26527126

[superosh]

I don't have this DLC, yet.
But what happens, when in "orbit", just accelerate on the horizontal velocity-vector ?
So just "prograde" without pointing to moon (so no "outward").
This should put (IRL) your orbit into a (kind of) free return-trajectory.
I guess, you know this basic stuff already...but again, just accel. on on the X-axis when in orbit(to raise apoapsis in the direction of the moon).

[Primus]

There is no orbital mechanics modeling in the DLC. Just point your nose at the Moon and blast off till you hit Moon surface. That's what I did and honestly, I don't see any point in doing any space missions.

[NiceGuy]

This is not KSP nor Juno. This has NOTHING to do with space simulation, orbits, vectors, gravity or anything else, you'd might know about real life space and planets. There are no planets, it's just a flat earth/moon map.
There are just 3 environments, earth, space, moon with a hard border between them. So the point where your spaceship "flips" is when you cross the border between two environments.

[Aven]

At this point, the game should be renamed Fauxworks: Build and Pretend.

[ElfBossHogg]

From an experimentation perspective I tried a number of methods.

For the orbital mech attempts I tried prograde and retrograde burns. I used 3 weather sensors on different axis to tell me if the delta x,y,z made sense (in space there is zero wind but they read speed and direction relative to your vehicle). I was aiming it what appeared to be all the right directions.

I tried writing a navigation module but put it aside as the instaneous flips were causing havoc. From a LEO perspective it "seemed" to function but when it came time for leaving geo it was whacked. I had to burn along the prograde line and steepily inwards. Once I reached what appeared to be moon influence (~40k?) I turned and burned retrograde. It did the opposite of what I "expected" and my speed towards the moon dwindled. Eventually I had to turn and burn directly at the moon to make it or I just kept drifting.

From all that I experienced it appears that geo may be simulated by making it another gravity point whose influence is much greater then Earth or the Moon. I don't know what the boundary lines are but it seems that once you cross it you are just getting sucked back to some point designated as geo.

[ElfBossHogg]

Postat inițial de NiceGuy:

There are just 3 environments, earth, space, moon with a hard border between them. So the point where your spaceship "flips" is when you cross the border between two environments.

From a flip perspective I both flipped going straight up, which I assume is due to a zone transition, and going orbital, which may be due to zone transition or crossing over to the other side of the map. The flips were not predictable. A map crossing rarely flipped and in some tests I didn't flip at all.

[NiceGuy]

We all are just guessing what their "mechanics" are as the defs don't say anything about it. The only thing which is crystal clear is, it's NOT the way as it should be compared to real life 🤯🤪🫣

[superosh]

That was my plan:
In Storm/Star-Works we have 3 major gravitional "bodies" (non rotating/flat).
1. Earth
2.Moon
3. Man in the middle...the magic "GEO-meta" orbit. (= sucks you in and stops at the 300 km from earth mark)

Maybe there is a logic like:

if some x-velocity...
do some y++ (until i.e. 8 km above moon's surface (IRL: there should be no mountain more than 8k)

then:
if burn retro
do closing to moon' surface

if retro is not enough means: x-velo = 0 BEFORE i.e. 8k surface
do suck back to GEOmeta's blackhole, and suffer in infinite madness until end of time....

[ElfBossHogg]

Yup... it's infinite madness. The frustration is that in any game you need to know the rules. The devs aren't communicating or demonstrating them and we have no real clue on what they are. They don't seem to follow RL so we can't use that as an analogy. At this point it's like trying to play basketball with a ball made of jello and hurricane fans blowing from both of the nets.

[superosh]

Strange, within their update-logs, there are pointing out how it works IRL:
(Note from Sep 22th)
https://steamcommunity.com/games/573090/announcements/detail/3738606975149008395?snr=2_9_100003_

It seems to be, that all this is not true.
So...than it's cheating, wrong advertising....

However thanks again @ElfBossHogg, I like your "mission-reports" :-)
And for now, I will stick with "Orbiter Space Flight Simulator", then.
I see only two options:
1. they should use real physics (a bit complicated within static 2D worlds)
2 or...as you pointed out allready...a documentation is needed + a presentation of an eart-moon-transfer.

[Anwaan]

Postat inițial de superosh:

Strange, within their update-logs, there are pointing out how it works IRL:
(Note from Sep 22th)
https://steamcommunity.com/games/573090/announcements/detail/3738606975149008395?snr=2_9_100003_

It seems to be, that all this is not true.
So...than it's cheating, wrong advertising....

However thanks again @ElfBossHogg, I like your "mission-reports" :-)
And for now, I will stick with "Orbiter Space Flight Simulator", then.
I see only two options:
1. they should use real physics (a bit complicated within static 2D worlds)
2 or...as you pointed out allready...a documentation is needed + a presentation of an eart-moon-transfer.

Yeah... about that... So many people got sucked in by the real science talk, that hey completely missed the 2-3 sentences that actually said anything at about about the game itself. I tried to point them out several times, but of course the "SpAcE! cadets just screamed at me to stfu.

[Sunshine]

Thank God we completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the whole game for this amazing space experience...
As an avid steam ship builder and user, I am unable to play since the patch dropped, but at least 12 year olds can now fly "to the moon".

[stevy]

The game basically has a really tall map with the moon on top. You can't orbit the Earth, just gotta go straight up.