Can someone explain what's going on here? Ships upside down planetside...

[Jmanis]

One of my common tactics if I'm searching the surface of the planet is to flip the ship upside down. This gives me a better view of the planet surface. Last i tried this on a high G world, I noticed my ship slowly plummeting to the ground,,, but also noticed this plummet didn't happen when upright. It struck again while I was docking today... see this video.

[video=youtube;bGANEs2dmtc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGANEs2dmtc[/video]

In both halves of the video, that drop starts without touching the controls at all; I'm simply holding steady, then when i reach a certain point of turning the ship just starts dropping. From the 0:20 second mark, I start the turn and just take my hands away from anything.

Any ideas?

EDIT: FWIW, this also happens on low-G worlds, it's just more pronounced on high-G

 

[Suvi Anwar]

redacted

 

[Dargo187]

That's quite simple to explain. Your top-mounted vertical thrusters aren't as powerful as the bottom-mounted ones and therefore cannot support the ship's weight. There's no real explanation as to why the one is weaker than the other, but I personally think it is because of the way you supposed to fly a ship on surfaces. You can still fly upside down, but you'd have to apply thrust to maintain the altitude. This gets harder, the higher the gravity of the planet is, to the point where you simply cannot hold that altitude and start to descent. One thing to note: Your ship will drastically heat up because of using the weaker top-mounted thrusters and them needing more output because of that.

 

[Riverside]

All ships have ventral thrusters capable of level 'flight' in any amount of gravity. The other thrusters don't have that extra factor. It's a bit gamey but it does mean any ship with any thrusters will always be able to leave any planet.

 

[Jmanis]

All ships have ventral thrusters capable of level 'flight' in any amount of gravity. The other thrusters don't have that extra factor. It's a bit gamey but it does mean any ship with any thrusters will always be able to leave any planet.

Yeah... so that's knackered me before when I've ended up upside-down on a high-G world

I guess the ventral thruster stuff makes sense, though in the second roll, it's a sharp, sudden decline. I get the "physics" of weaker thrusters and stuff, but it must just be a "On or off" thing rather than an actual calculated thing, otherwise the dropoff would be more gradual at first (i.e as it turns, there's less and less vertical thrust being applied to the ship, so it should begin to slowly drop at, say, 15 degrees roll, and increase before reaching it's peak at a 90 degree roll.

 

[S3B4ST13N]

There's no real explanation as to why the one is weaker than the other,...

The designers didn't think their customers would be flying upside-down on high-G worlds?

 

[Sysmon]

A-rated thrusters don't always have that issue. Haven't tested them in very high G environments, though.

S

 

[Riverside]

A-rated thrusters don't always have that issue. Haven't tested them in very high G environments, though.

S

They have the same feature, all ship & thruster combos do. Of course the effect is less noticeable with more powerful thusters, but it's there for all of them.

 

[varonica]

Yeah... so that's knackered me before when I've ended up upside-down on a high-G world

I guess the ventral thruster stuff makes sense, though in the second roll, it's a sharp, sudden decline. I get the "physics" of weaker thrusters and stuff, but it must just be a "On or off" thing rather than an actual calculated thing, otherwise the dropoff would be more gradual at first (i.e as it turns, there's less and less vertical thrust being applied to the ship, so it should begin to slowly drop at, say, 15 degrees roll, and increase before reaching it's peak at a 90 degree roll.

There's a technique used for landing ships on high grav worlds, trying to drop straight down on belly thrusters usually ends up a bit....rough! You sit stationary on belly thrusters above the surface and tilt the nose slightly down, you will start slowing gliding down a long incline, pull the nose level to stop or slow descent. So yes it is a calculated thing at least as far as forward and rear tilt is concerned, and I am talking about very high grav worlds here, not your 2's and 3's, more 6 and upward. When you roll your thrusters (all of them working together) will try and maintain height, so on a relatively low, high grav world it may seem sudden because the ship will be able maintain height for quite a roll distance before giving up. On a high, high grav world I suspect just a few degrees will see you start to drop and slide sideways. Only one thing to do, go and test it

Here's a candidate to run the tests on, HD 148937 3.

 

[Stealthie]

That's quite simple to explain. Your top-mounted vertical thrusters aren't as powerful as the bottom-mounted ones and therefore cannot support the ship's weight.

To be pedantic, it isn't that they aren't as powerful, rather that they're just not automatically supplying the additional lift required to support the weight of a ship.
You can verify this in zero-g by using the vertical thrusters to move around and you should find that moving "upward" is just as fast as moving "downward".
It seems to be a "software" problem rather than a hardware inadequacy.

Falling while banked is a different issue.
Simple fact is that you've got thrusters on the top and bottom of your ship and none on the sides so when you're banked there's nothing capable of keeping your ship off the ground.
It's the same reason why yaw is (almost) always slower than pitch and roll.

First rule of flying in high-g is to make flat turns rather than banking.

 

[Arkadi]

First rule of flying in high-g is to make flat turns rather than banking.

That's right. Had to learn this lesson the hard way too, 5kly's out exploring .. and banking at 5g world made me hug the ground. A final hug with an express ticket back to the bubble.

Maybe having extra light and undersized thrusters without boost capability didn't help either back then.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

It's what happens when you give programmers a spec.
You get what you asked for and nothing more.

'For gravity affected flight, add compensatory vertical lift from the underside thrusters.'

 

[Jmanis]

It's what happens when you give programmers a spec.
You get what you asked for and nothing more.

'For gravity affected flight, add compensatory vertical lift from the underside thrusters.'

On the one hand I want to get all defensive and say "But I'm a programmer and I know this stuff"... and on the other I remember my final-year computer graphics and animation class at university and being the only one who actually put basic physics into their animation... other students were wowed that I did a space ship with rotating components at variable speeds :/

Seeing cars go round a corner by instantly snap-turning 90 degrees cannot be unseen...

 

[Factabulous]

All ships have ventral thrusters capable of level 'flight' in any amount of gravity. The other thrusters don't have that extra factor. It's a bit gamey but it does mean any ship with any thrusters will always be able to leave any planet.

Not sure about "any ship with any thrusters will always be able to leave any planet". On my built-for-light-weight explorer DBX I got stuck on a (I think only) 4G planet. I could take off and maintain level flight, but as soon as the nose went up the speed dropped and I started heading groundwards. Didn't help that I had no 'boost' available at all (under-rated PD FTW). No stars near the horizon, and didn't feel like heading up at 5 degrees until space so relogged to non-Horizons in space. But that was an edge-case.

Hmm, suppose I think it should say:
"any ship with any thrusters will always be able to leave any planet ... eventually"

 

[Julio Montega]

I had the dropping problem mostly on the FGS,
here are my observations:

- thrust levels and acceleration levels of vertical/lateral thrust in space are identical
- thrust downwards when flying upside-down in planetary cruise has less juice
- as we fly in no atmospheric conditions there is no beneficial aeroframe generating uplift

So yes it is a coding thing, magical better performing upwards-thrusters.
Consistency never was on the strong side of elite.

 

[Riverside]

Not sure about "any ship with any thrusters will always be able to leave any planet". On my built-for-light-weight explorer DBX I got stuck on a (I think only) 4G planet. I could take off and maintain level flight, but as soon as the nose went up the speed dropped and I started heading groundwards. Didn't help that I had no 'boost' available at all (under-rated PD FTW). No stars near the horizon, and didn't feel like heading up at 5 degrees until space so relogged to non-Horizons in space. But that was an edge-case.

Hmm, suppose I think it should say:
"any ship with any thrusters will always be able to leave any planet ... eventually"

You may be right that the ability to boost is also needed, I haven't explored in a minimally equipped ship in a long time. I thought if you could get the ship vertical it did the same trick, but I have no recent experience to compare with yours.

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

On the one hand I want to get all defensive and say "But I'm a programmer and I know this stuff"... and on the other I remember my final-year computer graphics and animation class at university and being the only one who actually put basic physics into their animation... other students were wowed that I did a space ship with rotating components at variable speeds :/

Seeing cars go round a corner by instantly snap-turning 90 degrees cannot be unseen...

Automan... From the 80s... As yousaid - it can't be unseen.

 

[S3B4ST13N]

I had the dropping problem mostly on the FGS,
here are my observations:

- thrust levels and acceleration levels of vertical/lateral thrust in space are identical
- thrust downwards when flying upside-down in planetary cruise has less juice
- as we fly in no atmospheric conditions there is no beneficial aeroframe generating uplift

So yes it is a coding thing, magical better performing upwards-thrusters.
Consistency never was on the strong side of elite.

I wouldn't say "magical" .. The forward thruster module of the space shuttle consists of 14 primary thrusters with thrust levels of 3,870 Newtons (870lbf), and 2 Vernier thruasters with a thrust level of 106 Newtons (27lbf) .. different thrusts provide different levels of control and stablisation.

I'd hazard a guess and say the design is deliberate.

 

[Morbad]

Just assume your planetary landing suite includes upgrades to the ventral thruster ducting that only activate to counter gravity and only when flight assist is on.

Yes, this is highly arbitrary, but so are other facets of the flight assist modes and of the Elite: Dangerous flight model as a whole.

 

[Dargo187]

The designers didn't think their customers would be flying upside-down on high-G worlds?

From the looks of it, they really didn't consider it. Grave mistake. [haha]