Eagle Prospector RCS is Unbalanced

[Bribe Guntails]

I've found that the placement of RCS thrusters on the EP make for poor strafe and rotation maneuvers. Strafing in one direction induces rotation in the opposite direction, and a rotation in one direction induces strafe in the opposite direction. This makes for inefficient maneuvers that require additional time and propellent to counteract. Turn-and-burn maneuvers don’t completely avoid this problem.
Is this intended for the Eagle Prospector? If not, what’s the current step to tackling it?

[Uriel]

I've noticed that too, but always assumed it was intended to counter the effect of having a full hold. I'll check when I can, but seems to me that the effect is less noticeable when the cargo hold isn't empty.

[desrtfox071]

Originally posted by Bribe Guntails:

I've found that the placement of RCS thrusters on the EP make for poor strafe and rotation maneuvers. Strafing in one direction induces rotation in the opposite direction, and a rotation in one direction induces strafe in the opposite direction. This makes for inefficient maneuvers that require additional time and propellent to counteract. Turn-and-burn maneuvers don’t completely avoid this problem.
Is this intended for the Eagle Prospector? If not, what’s the current step to tackling it?

It is. Also, different autopilots/thrusters mitigate these differences more or less effectively. None of the ships are optimal.

[Bribe Guntails]

Originally posted by Uriel:

I've noticed that too, but always assumed it was intended to counter the effect of having a full hold. I'll check when I can, but seems to me that the effect is less noticeable when the cargo hold isn't empty.

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

It is. Also, different autopilots/thrusters mitigate these differences more or less effectively. None of the ships are optimal.

If the RCS was unbalanced to accomodate the cargo mass then the ship would spin around it's tail when strafing. As it is in-game when you strafe the ship rotates around its nose, this points to more thrust being applied to the rear of the ship.

[Bribe Guntails]

I've tested the first 3 autopilot systems on the Eagle. AP 1 and 2 experience the adverse imbalance and struggle to counteract it. AP 3, the demilitarized one, is able to almost-completely counteract the adverse yaw when strafing but still experiences adverse strafe when yawing.

[Uriel]

Originally posted by Bribe Guntails:

If the RCS was unbalanced to accomodate the cargo mass then the ship would spin around it's tail when strafing. As it is in-game when you strafe the ship rotates around its nose, this points to more thrust being applied to the rear of the ship.

Are you perhaps using a gimballed main torch ? If so, anything below the demilitarized autopilot is unable to use that properly, so spin as you described should be expected. Same if your thrusters are missaligned, and of course, if both, it's worse.

Might be worth testing with and without fly by wire, too. If there is somehow a defect in the way the autopilot translates "forward" to the thrusters when using fly by wire, it could start burning the main torch before the gimbal mount is centered again, which in turn woud translate into some drift.

I'll try a few things later, see how that turns out :)

[Uriel]

I can confirm there is a clockwise rotation. My Eagle uses a K44 main torch (gimballed), MA350 RCS (not gimballed), and autopilot is NDCI. I'm using fly by wire, and when using the forward key (not just the main torch key, but forward), the ship will have a slight clockwise rotation when empty. The rotation is significantly increased when loaded. I'll do some more tsting later with different setups to see how that works.

Also, I just found another bug : after picking dead bodies, and then collecting a few ore, ALL the bodies clipped through the hull and spread in radial directions. I managed to pick back some of them, then kept proceeding with my propulsion tests. At some point, I was accelerating strongly in a direction, and 3 bodies clipped through the hull and launched forward in a fan pattern, keeping the velocity of the ship PLUS some.

Gonna do a proper report on that one.

[desrtfox071]

Originally posted by Uriel:

I can confirm there is a clockwise rotation. My Eagle uses a K44 main torch (gimballed), MA350 RCS (not gimballed), and autopilot is NDCI. I'm using fly by wire, and when using the forward key (not just the main torch key, but forward), the ship will have a slight clockwise rotation when empty. The rotation is significantly increased when loaded. I'll do some more tsting later with different setups to see how that works.

Also, I just found another bug : after picking dead bodies, and then collecting a few ore, ALL the bodies clipped through the hull and spread in radial directions. I managed to pick back some of them, then kept proceeding with my propulsion tests. At some point, I was accelerating strongly in a direction, and 3 bodies clipped through the hull and launched forward in a fan pattern, keeping the velocity of the ship PLUS some.

Gonna do a proper report on that one.

Do you have a cargo pod attached? I have noticed that adding a cargo pod to one side of an Eagle can cause what you describe.

[Uriel]

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

Do you have a cargo pod attached? I have noticed that adding a cargo pod to one side of an Eagle can cause what you describe.

Not at all. Don't have any reactor leak either. I'll do some further testing when I have time. For now I suspect incorrect centring of gimballed main torch, but I need more data.

[sherwood]

I'd like further documentation/player reporting on this since I have done plenty of testing with both a "standardized" minimal Eagle Prospector setup and even more complex ones, and all of them seem to suffer from glitchy RCS. It's so bad that if left unchecked and sitting idle in autopilot you can burn through your entire fuel supply in minutes. Pretty baffling, honestly, since I 100% believe this to be fault with the game and not the boat itself.

Flying with any kind of autopilot will just drink all of your fuel. I can understand the argument of "it'll fly better when it's laden," but that argument doesn't really work because the RCS sitll fires nonstop regardless of what your mass is or whether or not the thrusters are gimballed.

In fact, if you look at the ship really carefully, it just wobbles nonstop when RCS thrusters are blowing which leads me to think that they are too close to each other and aren't compensated for that and the code has never once been altered to make them work more effectively

[db48x]

It helps a lot to upgrade to variable–thrust RCS jets plus the demilitarized autopilot. With this combination it will use reduced thrust from your RCS so that it overshoots less, or hopefully not at all.

However, I agree that it could be improved some to help new players who don’t have upgrades yet. If the autopilots would lean on the reaction wheels more when they needed small corrections, then they would overshoot a lot less and get into a lot fewer oscillations. On the other hand it would generally take longer to settle the ship after a maneuver; the reaction wheels are pretty wimpy compared to the nuclear RCS systems we have :)

Incidentally, the tutorial video is surprisingly good; it taught me a lot. Of course I skipped it at first. The follow up video in the same playlist is more of a story than a tutorial, but it is excellent. Definitely worth your time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-FMx5q1fXA&list=PLQq90nMLNLDTvVx6qQiD4VmTW7kKmGzzZ

[Koder]

Originally posted by sherwood forest knight:

I'd like further documentation/player reporting on this since I have done plenty of testing with both a "standardized" minimal Eagle Prospector setup and even more complex ones, and all of them seem to suffer from glitchy RCS.

Could you record the behaviour you are describing?