Ships Are we missing something?

[popuptoaster]

First off let me say i like this new ship, this is not a complaint.

With new ship having an explorer tag and many testers complaining that it lacks any obvious explorer ability I have to wonder if we are missing something?

The devs are not daft and are fans of games, gaming and I would guess space sims or they wouldn't be doing this so why would they put a ship togther this way?

One thing i can see that makes me wonder is those rotating engines, I am wondering (and hoping actually) if the ships "in atmosphere" performance is going to be heavily influenced by their designs, it would add a huge extra dimension to the exploration game if, for instance, the Anaconda and the Asp both suffered from issues on higher gravity worlds.

Those tilt engines on that Diamondback would give it extra lift to get off the ground as well as improved roll control if they could be rotated independantly and with the guns very close to the centre line of the ship it's not bad at shooting at smaller close range targets, could it be an impressive design for the planetary part of exploring?

They also look a bit like thrust vectoring nozzles, I know Elite already uses differential thrust, I'm not sre about vectoring though?

In flight, engines level.

Spoiler

Gear down, engines angled down,

Spoiler

What do we think? Pie in the sky or a possibility?

 

[WR3ND]

Cool little ship design, isn't it?

In the "real world" I'm not seeing how the thrusters would add much to lift, beyond just being powerful enough to overcome gravity in the first place (of course), though the "wings" might. The thrusters could easily add to pitch control though, similar to thrust vectoring, as you said. They could make for a more vertical takeoff trajectory with less runway needed too though.

I'm guessing that we're not going to see much in the way of real aerodynamics at work in the game though. I think most of the ships will just be able to muscle their way through the atmosphere with their orientation control thrusters along with using their shields to help cut through the atmosphere (if need be).

But yeah, as things are, I'm a bit baffled by the Diamondback's lack of exploration capabilities, considering the Cobra makes for a better explorer (among other things) at what looks to be half the price. Guess we'll just voice our take on that, hope for the best, and see what happens.

 

[Ziljan]

I would think that the attitude thrusters would be enough to keep any ship aloft in atmo. The ship is nuclear powered and those side and bottom thrusters can deflect hundreds of tons worth of mass so you know they have to be quite strong. It doesn't have to be an insane amount of lift like a booster rocket, just enough to overcome gravity's acceleration. Besides, the wings don't have the proper shape or size to provide any lift. They more like combat armor than actual wings.

As for breaking orbit? For that you would need the rear thrusters to build up escape velocity in a reasonable time frame. I am assuming here that SC would be completely non-functional on a planet's surface.

 

[WR3ND]

Yeah, I'm thinking along the same lines as you. I had gone back and edited my post to convey that a bit better.

 

[popuptoaster]

Don't forget we have only seen those attitude thrusters working in a gravity almost equivalent to that of Earths moon in the space stations, some of the planets out there have many many times that along with very dense atmospheres.

There must be an upper limit on what the thrusters can handle without the main engines lending a hand.

DB has said that in the Elite galaxy because of hydrogen fusion energy is so cheap as to be almost free, that still does not mean a small thruster can lift a large ship off a heavy gravity world.

My point was not that no ship can land or take off on planets, it was more that this ones "exploration" classification may relate more to it's ability to explore more hostile worlds than the others rather than to its ability to travel in large jumps across space.

 

[LKx]

Well, while we might not have enought information to properly judge the ship in relation to planetary landing, that expansion is probably at least a couple of years away, and the diamondback is released "now".

btw, i don't think that any current ship could do atmospheric flight just by the brute force of current thrusters... because i don't think they are so powerful.

In normal flight ships go realitively slow compared to current atmospheric jets, so i think that their thrusters are all high fuel efficency thusters with relatively low thrust.
Some kind of evolution of our ion thrusters, which are very fuel efficent, but provide very low thrust.