So as I understand it, you generally want your ships mass to be BELOW optimum mass. If it is ABOVE optimum mass, some components (IE: shield generators) will not work at peak efficiency.
Is this correct?
Is this correct?
Can someone explain ship mass to me real quick?
- Thread starter Blitzen Trap
- Start date
Major caveat that I've seen time and again: shield optimal mass apparently only takes into account your ship's hull mass. If this is correct, think of it like this: there's armor on a battle tank in real life. One person gets in the tank, that person is protected by the tank's armor. Now if two or three more people get in, obviously the tank is now heavier because there's more people. But do the protective qualities of the armor decrease? It wouldn't make sense, at least not in my example.
Thruster optimal mass on the other hand, is the summation of all mass on your ship.
Thruster optimal mass on the other hand, is the summation of all mass on your ship.
So to increase overall mass for the Mods that say "exceeds optimal hull mass" What do you do? Upgrade thrusters? Powerplant? Shields? Im looking at that an yet have figured out how that part works. I get the other aspects that one though still confuses me.
Upgrade the thruster's, that error mean's your thruster's dont have enough power to lift the ship if you add that.
what confuses me is the elite equasion of mass / thrust = speed.
any object in space provided with any propulsion should continue to accelerate regardless of its mass. there is no friction and so a small ship should have the exact same top speed as a giant one. there is no reason why mass should slow down a ship in space.
One thing it would do though would make it harder to stop. I have had to convince my self that the ships are programmed to limit max speed for a given mass because otherwize stopping it would be too difficult. but that does not really explain it, and is not a good reason because the speed needed to prevent the ship from stopping as intended would be way above the speed it is limited too.
So i guess mass /thrust = speed Because "reasons"
(answering the question)
Ok so its goes like this.
You need therusters that can handle the ships mass. so you upgrade them..
you can look on the right hand pannel hen in outfiting and it tells you:
power draw / power draw deployed / power
You want to be using less KW of "power deployed" than you have available "power"
bigger thrusters use more kw of power.. same for things like lasers and sheilds..
if you upgrade thrusters and now your power draw is 19.21KW. but your "power" is 18Kw
Then you need a bigger power plant as well.
the bigger power plant will gibe you more available power.
So you may find now you use 19.21 and have 20.00 available. (this means you have power to spare and all is good in the world, and you can upgrade other things that use power too.)
Power distributors are importaint. they distribute the power from the power generator to the 3 main usages. "system" "engine" "weapons"
The better the power distributor the better it distributes the power to these 3 systems. (the faster they replenish reserve power after being used.)
I.e
you have 4 pips to the engine, and you hit boost. with a small power distributor you could not boost again for 10 seconds.
but with a bigger power distributor you could boost again after only 3 seconds... (time scale is used as an example, please dont go timing the difference then come tell me actually its only 7.3675 seconds and 4.123 seconds respecttively)
Same with power based weapons like lasers...
you shoot and then cant due to having ran out of power. a small distributor would take longer to refill them with energy. a large one would refill them sooner.
and sheilds. They recharge faster with a bigger distributor than they would with a small one..
but there is no point having huge thrusters and the best power distributor you can have if you don't have the power available. If your power generator does not have enough power for your build then things will start to turn off as you deploy hard points etc. (usually life support is the 1st to go.. so make sure you have enough power)
I think that covers it.
any object in space provided with any propulsion should continue to accelerate regardless of its mass. there is no friction and so a small ship should have the exact same top speed as a giant one. there is no reason why mass should slow down a ship in space.
One thing it would do though would make it harder to stop. I have had to convince my self that the ships are programmed to limit max speed for a given mass because otherwize stopping it would be too difficult. but that does not really explain it, and is not a good reason because the speed needed to prevent the ship from stopping as intended would be way above the speed it is limited too.
So i guess mass /thrust = speed Because "reasons"
(answering the question)
Ok so its goes like this.
You need therusters that can handle the ships mass. so you upgrade them..
you can look on the right hand pannel hen in outfiting and it tells you:
power draw / power draw deployed / power
You want to be using less KW of "power deployed" than you have available "power"
bigger thrusters use more kw of power.. same for things like lasers and sheilds..
if you upgrade thrusters and now your power draw is 19.21KW. but your "power" is 18Kw
Then you need a bigger power plant as well.
the bigger power plant will gibe you more available power.
So you may find now you use 19.21 and have 20.00 available. (this means you have power to spare and all is good in the world, and you can upgrade other things that use power too.)
Power distributors are importaint. they distribute the power from the power generator to the 3 main usages. "system" "engine" "weapons"
The better the power distributor the better it distributes the power to these 3 systems. (the faster they replenish reserve power after being used.)
I.e
you have 4 pips to the engine, and you hit boost. with a small power distributor you could not boost again for 10 seconds.
but with a bigger power distributor you could boost again after only 3 seconds... (time scale is used as an example, please dont go timing the difference then come tell me actually its only 7.3675 seconds and 4.123 seconds respecttively)
Same with power based weapons like lasers...
you shoot and then cant due to having ran out of power. a small distributor would take longer to refill them with energy. a large one would refill them sooner.
and sheilds. They recharge faster with a bigger distributor than they would with a small one..
but there is no point having huge thrusters and the best power distributor you can have if you don't have the power available. If your power generator does not have enough power for your build then things will start to turn off as you deploy hard points etc. (usually life support is the 1st to go.. so make sure you have enough power)
I think that covers it.
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One word, "gameply." You can't dogfight at 3000km/s, that's why our ship's have a 100% speed limit.
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fair enough you cant dog fight at those speeds. but that still does not explain why a cobra is faster than a python or a type 7 etc.. More agile yes by all means. as thrusters are used to change direction and inertia means that the larger mass is more difficult to slow down/change course.
but basic physics says that they should be the same speed top speed an acceleration.
Drop a feather and a 2 ton weight in a vacuum at the same time from the same height. and they both hit the floor at the same time, because there is no friction. and acceleration and top speed become the same nominal value as dictated by the propulsion. or in the case of the example of feather vs weight propulsion is provided by gravity.
So provided the propulsion is the same value then acceleration and speed will always be the same regardless of mass in space.
inertia is the only thing that changes, so agility is the only differentiating factor.
So its still laws of physics don't apply here because "reasons"
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Like I said 100% , Fdev just decide's what a particular ship's max speed will be "for balance reasons."
Like I said 100% , Fdev just decide's what a particular ship's max speed will be "for balance reasons."
I have to stick to space computer will not allow ship to travel faster or it would be uncontrollable reason lol.. it does not make 100% sense but i can try and blame that on those shoddy computer programmers that messed up my nav computer a week or so ago and it wouldn't remember my rout until they issued a os update for it. at least i can try and convince my self that the reason is an actual trait of physics vs slightly safety minded flight computer programmers, and not a game balancing mechanic because the latter would break immersion for me lol.
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The second two Elite games (Frontier and First Encounters) toyed with Newtonian physics, and it was reasonably shambolic. ALL real space travel and combat took place in a Newtonian way, and the use of a time dilation (speed up button) to make interplanetary travel was the only way to get around the fact that some journeys would take several days/weeks in normal space. You accelerated towards something and at the midpoint you decelerated. Not very exciting, and overshooting, auto-pilot notwithstanding, was commonplace.
Basically, if something is too realistic then it isn't fun any more. The design decisions for normal space travel in Elite are largely based upon (a) the original Elite's ideas which worked amazingly well, and (b) gameplay considerations such as ignoring directional gravity. (Gravity in ED is used to modify only your SC speed. It's just as easy to accelerate away from an object as it is towards it, which really, really, really isn't how physics works!)
In a nutshell, ED is trying to stay a game, not trying to become a space sim.
Haha..
Imagine when ever we have a lift off, and when ever we are able to fly 30 times the speed of light in Supercruise, how "unlikely" it is to be able to survive the G-Forces you will experience when turning around to interdict somebody..
Not to mention the full stop form supercruise.. There will be nothing more then a little pile of Goo on the windows, IF the windows, or ship, are still there..
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The reason that a feather and a two ton weight hit the floor at the same time from the same height in space, compared to dropping them on earth is not about the differences in mass. On Earth if you do that the two ton weight will hit the ground first because of the way the feather is shaped and the way it interacts with the atmosphere. If you were to drop a two ton weight and a two gram weight, they would both hit the ground at the same time, whether you did this in space or on Earth. However if you wanted to move a two ton weight it would take more energy than it would to move a two gram weight. This is the same in space as it is on Earth. Think of an ocean liner vs a dingy. If you were to push against a dingy you would find it very easy to push away. Try doing the same with an ocean liner and it would not budge. You would need more energy to move the ocean liner than the energy you would need to move the dingy.
You people are arguing about the physics of the ship top speed in normal space... when we have that whole handwavium concept of a frame shift drive? C'mon now...
Is the difference between optimal and max mass rewarded in maneuvrability? I.E. can I maneuver/rotate faster with lower mass? I had a feeling this if at all only applies to cargo.
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