Agility Focused Thrusters

bn

B
-Suggestions (either one or the other or possibly both):
--Agility Focused Thrusters = slower top speed but improved agility (pitch, yaw, roll, acceleration, etc...)
--Engineering option for regular thrusters to increase agility (so would be slower than dirty drive for example but have better agility).
 

Uthael

Uthael
Might actually try out a Mamba again if this gets in. It's supposed to be a sidegrade to FDL, not inferior to it. More speed doesn't mean much with such a large top-down profile and low turning speed.

Then again, it should be slightly more powerful on slower-turning ships.

Edit: But don't make it a module. It would turn generalist ships into well-performing dogfighters.
 
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Elyssaen

E
Given how one-dimensional thruster engineering is, I'm strongly in favour of this. Normal thrusters scale speed, acceleration and handling equally (same multiplier applied to same mass/optimal mass factor), with only Enhanced deviating a bit (speed scales more strongly). I think handling also equally applies to both pitch/yaw/roll (turning) and lateral thrusters.

The only advantage of how one-dimensional this is is that individual ships fly in distinctly different ways that you can't do much about. But overall I think it'd be more interesting if you could choose to dampen a ship's weaknesses or lean in to its strengths.

Personally I'd love it if there were more different types of core thrusters than just Thrusters and Enhanced Performance Thrusters – I'd dig it if we got deep into vectored thrust vs vernier thrusters vs control moment gyroscopes.

But more realistically, they should balance Clean Drives (they currently lose too much performance and draw more power; I think they should draw less power and be competitive on handling, only losing out on speed/accel against Dirty), balance Drive Distributors against Drag Drives (Distributors should be noticeably better on a heavy loadout), add a new engineering effect (call it Gimballed Drives) that improves handling more than speed or acceleration, and an engineering experimental (Supercruise-Optimised) that improves handling and heat in supercruise specifically.

Then you should get a wide spectrum of viable builds – e.g. Clean/Supercruise-Optimised on an exploration-focused Asp X, Gimballed/Drag on a pirate Corsair, Dirty/Drive Distributor on a combat-focused hull tank FAS, Gimballed/Supercruise-Optimised on a Type-9 freighter, etc.
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
aRJay said:
How about swapping it for reinforced? Is that used by anyone?
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There's a use case with reinforced in that it makes it much less likely for someone to shoot out your drives. Certainly on a T-9 you're going to be outrun by everyone anyway so having reinforced might give someone chance to escape someone shooting at them from behind. It's not common by any means but I have heard of people using reinforced.

Only thing I've noticed clean drives is less heat build up during combat in gravity wells and it gives me an extra second or two before hitting 100% heat with silent running- both solved by heat sinks.
 

CMDR Vic H Weaving

C
bn said:
-Suggestions (either one or the other or possibly both):
--Agility Focused Thrusters = slower top speed but improved agility (pitch, yaw, roll, acceleration, etc...)
--Engineering option for regular thrusters to increase agility (so would be slower than dirty drive for example but have better agility).
Click to expand...
Would this be available for all ships? This is just my opinion, but I feel that large ships are too maneuverable with good engineering as is (specifically, the Anaconda, the ship I fly), and any further increase in agility would make this ship feel... fictional? Instead of the enormous hulking mass of ship used as a light frigate by some navies, it would be ship that flies at even slower speed, but could somehow spin like a smaller ship.

I apologize if I might be raining on the parade a bit, but I would like to follow on to this by suggesting it be limited to a certain (smaller) classes of thrusters, or that the benefits of the modification scale with ship mass, much like the enhanced performance thrusters on offer at Farseer's base. One of the benefits of a small ship (e.g. an Eagle, SLF) is that it can leverage it's maneuverability to stick to larger ships' blind spots, and this lack of maneuverability is an important constraint for larger ships.
 
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aRJay

aRJay
CMDR Vic H Weaving said:
Would this be available for all ships? This is just my opinion, but I feel that large ships are too maneuverable with good engineering as is (specifically, the Anaconda, the ship I fly), and any further increase in agility would make this ship feel... fictional? Instead of the enormous hulking mass of ship used as a light frigate by some navies, it would be ship that flies at even slower speed, but could somehow spin like a smaller ship.

I apologize if I might be raining on the parade a bit, but I would like to follow on to this by suggesting it be limited to a certain (smaller) classes of thrusters, or that the benefits of the modification scale with ship mass, much like the enhanced performance thrusters on offer at Farseer's base. One of the benefits of a small ship (e.g. an Eagle, SLF) is that it can leverage it's maneuverability to stick to larger ships' blind spots, and this lack of maneuverability is an important constraint for larger ships.
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Keeping in mind that engineering is not restricted by module size if you want to restrict this by size then a new thruster would make more sense.
 

Elyssaen

E
CMDR Vic H Weaving said:
Would this be available for all ships? This is just my opinion, but I feel that large ships are too maneuverable with good engineering as is (specifically, the Anaconda, the ship I fly), and any further increase in agility would make this ship feel... fictional? Instead of the enormous hulking mass of ship used as a light frigate by some navies, it would be ship that flies at even slower speed, but could somehow spin like a smaller ship.
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I'd imagine a balanced engineering blueprint wouldn't quite make the Anaconda as agile as the similar sized Federal Corvette. But your mileage may vary about what kind of agility seems right to you for a large pad ship. That said, you must find that problem with the Corvette already, and you wouldn't have to choose this engineering option for your Anaconda, so I suppose you'd be in the same position.

Verisimilitude and what feels 'right' are tricky. On some level we're supposed to view an Eagle as a fighter jet and an Anaconda as a battleship, but we mix our mediums (air and sea) there at some peril. The laden mass difference between an Eagle and an Anaconda is about a factor of 12, which is less like "fighter jet to light frigate" and more like "fighter jet to military transport jet" or "patrol ship to guided missile destroyer". All this to say, I don't find Corvette-like size and handling feels wrong, but I get it's a very personal thing.
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
anShpan said:
Well... I'm using clean drives on explorer and on Shadow Runner (Cobra V) that runs at 16% heat on full throttle with everything powered up.
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Not sure how the heat management compares between the two ships, but my Python would run at 18% with g5 dirty drag drives while doing the same.
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
anShpan said:
Sure, but Cobra V on G5 Clean / DD is kind of more agile and fun to fly then Python, right?
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True, but dirty drives in the same ship would make the ship faster and more agile with no noticeable downsides.

I binned off the idea of cold running ships anyway as I can't find any gameplay to support them. Even for smuggling, I run an armoured plant with dirty drives, pop a heat sink or go silent running- assuming I'm even scanned, and it's job done.
 

anShpan

A
Dillon Fallon said:
True, but dirty drives in the same ship would make the ship faster and more agile with no noticeable downsides.
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Downside for me that it will run at 18+% on DT/DD and ship gets scanned then. At 16% I was scanned 4 (four) time over few months and for some reason only by Anacondas.
Dillon Fallon said:
I binned off the idea of cold running ships anyway as I can't find any gameplay to support them.
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I love my "invisible" Cobra V. Don't need any weapons and for my activities at the moment it is perfect fit.
Dillon Fallon said:
Even for smuggling, I run an armoured plant with dirty drives, pop a heat sink or go silent running- assuming I'm even scanned, and it's job done.
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Sure, but I don't need to do anything, just running as usual, fully shielded, etc. and never scanned.
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
anShpan said:
Downside for me that it will run at 18+% on DT/DD and ship gets scanned then. At 16% I was scanned 4 (four) time over few months and for some reason only by Anacondas.

I love my "invisible" Cobra V. Don't need any weapons and for my activities at the moment it is perfect fit.

Sure, but I don't need to do anything, just running as usual, fully shielded, etc. and never scanned.
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Each to our own of course, but it's not something that's helped me in any way, even after years of doing every illegal activity in the game that it's possible to do.

Either way, none of this takes away from the idea that something that boosts a ships agility (especially in supercruise) would be a bad thing if there was some kind of balance around like losing some straight line speed. We have enhanced thrusters up to c3, so this could work the other way at the top end.
 

Uthael

Uthael
CMDR Vic H Weaving said:
Would this be available for all ships? This is just my opinion, but I feel that large ships are too maneuverable with good engineering as is (specifically, the Anaconda, the ship I fly), and any further increase in agility would make this ship feel... fictional? Instead of the enormous hulking mass of ship used as a light frigate by some navies, it would be ship that flies at even slower speed, but could somehow spin like a smaller ship.

I apologize if I might be raining on the parade a bit, but I would like to follow on to this by suggesting it be limited to a certain (smaller) classes of thrusters, or that the benefits of the modification scale with ship mass, much like the enhanced performance thrusters on offer at Farseer's base. One of the benefits of a small ship (e.g. an Eagle, SLF) is that it can leverage it's maneuverability to stick to larger ships' blind spots, and this lack of maneuverability is an important constraint for larger ships.
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Valid concern and good point. Anaconda is a VERY light ship for its size, which is reflected by its high jump range and shield strength.

My solution would be that this upgrade adds a large amount of mass. For story purposes, it would be like adding additional strafing thrusters or making the current ones larger. More thrusters = more mass. Enough extra mass would slow your ship down.
 

bn

B
CMDR Vic H Weaving said:
Would this be available for all ships? This is just my opinion, but I feel that large ships are too maneuverable with good engineering as is (specifically, the Anaconda, the ship I fly), and any further increase in agility would make this ship feel... fictional? Instead of the enormous hulking mass of ship used as a light frigate by some navies, it would be ship that flies at even slower speed, but could somehow spin like a smaller ship.

I apologize if I might be raining on the parade a bit, but I would like to follow on to this by suggesting it be limited to a certain (smaller) classes of thrusters, or that the benefits of the modification scale with ship mass, much like the enhanced performance thrusters on offer at Farseer's base. One of the benefits of a small ship (e.g. an Eagle, SLF) is that it can leverage it's maneuverability to stick to larger ships' blind spots, and this lack of maneuverability is an important constraint for larger ships.
Click to expand...
My thoughts are at a minimum there should be some option for ships with lower agility/high speed to sacrifice speed for more agility. Conversely I think it would be fair to have the opposite (higher speed/lower agility thrusters for slower ships).

If balance is an issue maybe restrict this to certain ships (so the already super agile ships would only be able to get speed focused; the already super fast ships would only be able to get agility focused). Maybe ships that already have good agility and speed cannot get either (they just get the regular thrusters/regular engineering).

One thing I see quite frequently on here is people shooting down any ships suggestions/changes because it will upset balance. I don't think the ships are well balanced to begin with. Having a little more customizability with ships beyond engineering would be nice. There is also the issue of the newer ships just being flat out better; I think at a certain point they should allow upgrading ships to V2 (for credits) to be on par with the newer ships to reflect implementing tech improvements to older hulls.
 

Uthael

Uthael
Yeah, there is no ship balance. Ships becoming completely obsolete is fine in the real world, but shouldn't happen in a game. Would rather see some favored ships become unavailable for buy and rebuy then others becoming obsolete.

I'm very much against exclusive upgrades. Every ship should be able to take on every upgrade, provided the ship's stats support upgrade's installation (slots, mass, cooling,...).
 
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