Newcomer / Intro Engine Pips and H/V Thrusters?

[Jaggid Edje]

I'm asking if there is any place to see the impact (i.e. numbers) that engine pips has on the thrusters of the ship that are not the main throttle. Either in game, or somewhere online.

I had been working on the assumption that engine pips only effected maximum throttle speed and boosting, just based on having read that somewhere when I was new a few months ago. After landing on a quite high G planet yesterday, however, I'm pretty darn sure the engine pips also effect my vertical and horizontal thrusters; without 4 pips in engines my ship was crashing if I tried to hover while oriented parallel to the planet surface.

That got me curious....but google searches and an hour+ of reading things didn't really get me any details. Only thing I did learn is "why" landing gear deployed slows your speed so much (for the curious who don't know, it is because the ship diverts power from main thrusters to all the auxilary thrusters while landing gear is deployed...until I read that I had thought it was just a safety thing.)

Anywho, if anyone knows the answer to my first sentence question I'd appreciate! Thanks!

 

[Chris Simon]

A quote from CMDR Corrigendum's research paper:

"ENG pips do scale linearly, but differently for each ship. In other words, your 2-pip speed will always be exactly halfway between your 0- and 4-pip speeds, but the ratio of your 0-pip to 4-pip speeds is a hidden property of the ship hull. This property varies wildly: for example, a Vulture retains ~90% of its top speed at 0 pips, while a Viper gets ~62% and a Type-9 gets only ~31%.ENG pips do scale linearly, but differently for each ship. In other words, your 2-pip speed will always be exactly halfway between your 0- and 4-pip speeds, but the ratio of your 0-pip to 4-pip speeds is a hidden property of the ship hull. This property varies wildly: for example, a Vulture retains ~90% of its top speed at 0 pips, while a Viper gets ~62% and a Type-9 gets only ~31%."

I don't think somebody compiled a whole table.

As for the lateral and vertical thrusters, yes, they are affected by the pips the same way main engines are.

I'd just correct you on the boosting - the boost speed is always the same, no matter the pips. But as pips affect the recharge speed of your ENG capacitor, more pips in ENG mean you can boost more often.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

Awesome, thanks @Chris Simon ! I had noticed the differences in ships regarding top (non boost) speed and egine pips. For some of them engine pips hardly impact top speed at all..which is cool. I guess I can assume the ratio of the impact on Horizontal and vertical thrusters is similiar to the main thruster effect for each ship.

I did already know the boost thing (recharge vs. top speed), I guess i just didn't word things well in my original post.

One of the more difficult aspects of this game for me is quantifying various ship statistics; I have an inner need to spreadsheet everything in life and the lack of actual numerical information can sure make that difficult.

 

[Chris Simon]

Awesome, thanks @Chris Simon ! I had noticed the differences in ships regarding top (non boost) speed and egine pips. For some of them engine pips hardly impact top speed at all..which is cool. I guess I can assume the ratio of the impact on Horizontal and vertical thrusters is similiar to the main thruster effect for each ship.

I did already know the boost thing (recharge vs. top speed), I guess i just didn't word things well in my original post.

One of the more difficult aspects of this game for me is quantifying various ship statistics; I have an inner need to spreadsheet everything in life and the lack of actual numerical information can sure make that difficult.

Yeah, that has always been a problem in Elite. Some of the stats were never officially published by Frontier and never will. I guess it's their strategy to discourage people from overanalyzing things.
Their goal was to make every ship "feel different".

That being said, nobody prevents you from buying every ship and spending a week measuring speeds and accelerations and making your own spreadsheet.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

Their goal was to make every ship "feel different".

Well, they definitely succeeded in that regard! It's one of the aspects of the game that I like the most.

That being said, nobody prevents you from buying every ship and spending a week measuring speeds and accelerations and making your own spreadsheet

....hahaha...no thanks, I'm not feeling the need quite that strongly. What surprises me though is that no one else has done it yet. Or more likely, that the person(s) who have done it haven't made all their data more publicly available. Probably because there's no real point to it other than curiosity.

 

[Chris Simon]

Well, they definitely succeeded in that regard! It's one of the aspects of the game that I like the most.


....hahaha...no thanks, I'm not feeling the need quite that strongly. What surprises me though is that no one else has done it yet. Or more likely, that the person(s) who have done it haven't made all their data more publicly available. Probably because there's no real point to it other than curiosity.

People did do some amazing research. For example the pips effect on shields is very well documented.
But as far as trusters go, perhaps nobody found it worth their time as the results vary much more than in other areas.

 

[the100thmonkey]

There was a chart showing how thrusters worked with some 20 or so ships, but it was pre-engineering and was archived when the new forums were put up. It went into some detail on acceleration and deceleration times, including lateral and vertical thrusters.

You can see maximum translation and rotation speeds in coriolis, but you can't see the acceleration curves.

 

[sgurr]

...

I'd just correct you on the boosting - the boost speed is always the same, no matter the pips. But as pips affect the recharge speed of your ENG capacitor, more pips in ENG mean you can boost more often.

I thought that until I recently jumped back in my lovely DBS (sooo grateful for those 2 extra size 1s). The DBS, and DBX I think, both have their boost speed affected by ENG pips. I'm not sure if they're the only ships that do.

As for the OPs question, I suspect there's a lot of knowledge in the PvP community but perhaps not something that's been written down.

Oh, and re the speed reduction, handwavium aside early on in development there were a lot of, ummm, high speed incidents on approach to dock, and unwanted "collateral" when scooping indentured workers. The half speed restriction for scoop and landing gear deployment arrived at the same time.

 

[sgurr]

There was a chart showing how thrusters worked with some 20 or so ships, but it was pre-engineering and was archived when the new forums were put up. It went into some detail on acceleration and deceleration times, including lateral and vertical thrusters.

You can see maximum translation and rotation speeds in coriolis, but you can't see the acceleration curves.

Ah ok, I never saw that

 

[Chris Simon]

The DBS, and DBX I think, both have their boost speed affected by ENG pips. I'm not sure if they're the only ships that do.

That may seem so. What is happening is a bit different. I may have oversimplified it a little bit too much.
I probably should have said "The boost applies the same thrust, no matter the pips".
But as you are starting from lower speed, it may not bring you to the max in one boost cycle.

 

[Maymo]

Yeah the ships all have their own rules...

The DBX for example isn’t capable of reaching its displayed top speed in outfitting no matter how many times you boost because it suffers from such abrupt deceleration. This makes it lurch around rather unpleasantly in combat and despite having similar dps as the Vulture you have to spend a lot of time gunning the engines to keep pace.

Other ships like the T6 can take two boosts in order to reach its top speed but once it gets moving it holds onto its boost speed very nicely...

The Viper 3 and 4 also share this trait if I remember rightly, they hold their boost speeds for longer. Makes the Cobra3 vs Viper4 debate interesting...

You can’t always trust what Coriolis or outfitting say about a ship until you’ve spent some time in one because of these interesting hidden traits.

 

[Ebel]

Here is a good write up by Maj. Klutz on high gravity landings if you are interested. Gives some good info on thrusters.

High gravity landings

 

[sgurr]

That may seem so. What is happening is a bit different. I may have oversimplified it a little bit too much.
I probably should have said "The boost applies the same thrust, no matter the pips".
But as you are starting from lower speed, it may not bring you to the max in one boost cycle.

It's genuinely different for the DBS, I've tested. I noticed a different behaviour when I first jumped back into it from my usual.

Go to max boost speed with 4 eng pips, then quickly go to 0 eng pips and boost again and you will be slowing down while boosting.
Or, fly at max throttle with 4 eng pips (no boost), shift to 0 eng pips and boost and you will still slow down while hearing the boost sound.

Max boost speed at 0 pips is slower than non boost speed at 4 pips, (~435m/s vs ~460m/s, even when starting from ~460m/s) at least on my DD5 DBS. I've not noticed this on any other ship.

Edit: adding numbers and speeling is hard

 

[Jaggid Edje]

Here is a good write up by Maj. Klutz on high gravity landings if you are interested. Gives some good info on thrusters.

High gravity landings

That was an excellent read, thank you for sharing the link.

 

[Chris Simon]

It's genuinely different for the DBS, I've tested. I noticed a different behaviour when I first jumped back into it from my usual.

Go to max boost speed with 4 eng pips, then quickly go to 0 eng pips and boost again and you will be slowing down while boosting.
Or, fly at max throttle with 4 eng pips (no boost), shift to 0 eng pips and boost and you will still slow down while hearing the boost sound.

Max boost speed at 0 pips is slower than non boost speed at 4 pips, at least on my DD5 DBS. I've not noticed this on any other ship.

I'm currently too far from my DBX to try this, but..
If you want to be sure, try boosting from the standstill. Boosting from 0 should bring you to the same speed with any number of pips in ENG.
But naturally, you could be right. It's wouldn't be the first time a ship behaves differently than any other.

 

[sgurr]

I'm currently too far from my DBX to try this, but..
If you want to be sure, try boosting from the standstill. Boosting from 0 should bring you to the same speed with any number of pips in ENG.
But naturally, you could be right. It's wouldn't be the first time a ship behaves differently than any other.

Just tried:
0 pips, 0 to 395 m/s
4 pips, 0 to 482 m/s

I haven't flown the DBS for such a long time i have no memory of whether it did this back then, but I noticed something was different the first time I got into combat. Couldn't figure out what was going on till I searched/saw a comment in the ship thread about it.

 

[Maymo]

I'm currently too far from my DBX to try this, but..
If you want to be sure, try boosting from the standstill. Boosting from 0 should bring you to the same speed with any number of pips in ENG.
But naturally, you could be right. It's wouldn't be the first time a ship behaves differently than any other.

I don’t know about the DBS, I’ve not spent any time in one...

But the DBX will possibly rewrite everything you thought you knew about thruster behaviour, it begins to decelerate before the boost has even finished boosting....if that makes any sense....

It even sounds like its thrusters need lubing, they sound rusty. Part of its charm...