I've not personally seen interdictions be affected by mass or velocity (not saying you're wrong though), but I love that you're playing with supercruise mechanics. I think it's a sadly overlooked aspect of the game.
I've been working on my supercruise recently, and have trying out things like making my straight-line path (a nonsense term in space) "longer" by avoiding gravity wells, which gives me more velocity and makes my journey shorter.
Also been playing around with pirates trying to interdict me, evading it, and "dogfighting" with them in supercruise.
Sometimes I can avoid an interdiction entirely just by outflying them until I reach port, if my ship is agile enough and the system has enough gravity wells to play with. And of course it's always fun to make them emergency-drop into a planet, star, or ring.
Last night, in my T-6, I out-maneuvered an Anaconda that was trying to get an interdiction lock on me, and actually managed to get directly on his tail. He had no idea what to do, and the game just slowed him down to a crawl, as he tried to turn to get on me. I just chased him for a bit, his wake directly centered on my screen, lol.
I wish FD would put more into supercruise, it's such a misunderstood part of the game.
A 3d mesh representation of gravity wells, for instance, would be amazing. Make that what a "navigator" role in multicrew can see, or something, or what a "navigator" NPC crew member can give you.
Ok, several things to think about.
Thrusters do not work in SC. You cannot fly sideways or backwards. All you can do it pitch, roll and yaw.
Having made the VA routines and used them while in different ships, so far they work exactly the same in a Sidewinder, a Cobra, an AspX, a DBX, a Dolphin and a Python. The time needed to make a 180 deg course change at the same speed (NOT THROTTLE SETTING) in SC is the same for all of them. Same thing for using yaw to reverse directions but yaw is a LOT slower than pitching. The difference between the various ships in SC seems to be exclusively acceleration with heavier ships having slower acceleration but max speed in SC seems to be the same.
What happened in your T-6 V Anaconda was that when he sped up to try to get behind you, he also needed more space to make the turn than you did so you, at a slower speed, were able to turn (probably pitch) faster and get behind him. I have done the same thing more than once. I may have video of doing it.
The "agility" rating is only applicable to normal space.
That now lost DEV paper I read about interdiction was clear about it that the faster the target ship is going, the farther from it the attacker can be and get the interdictor to lock. But this >>
https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Frame_Shift_Drive_Interdictor << still indicates that speed changes the length of the tether.
The DEV paper also addressed how the combination of velocity and relative mass of the ships affected the attackers ability to pull the target off the escape vector.
Think of it this way, a small mass at high speed on a long tether would apply more force than the same mass at a slow speed on a short tether. Like centripetal force. The attacker is trying to swing around behind you inside the cone and use his Inertia (mass + velocity) to overcome my inertia.
Inertia vs Mass Mass and inertia are two concepts discussed in the field of mechanics, in physics. The concepts of mass and inertia are widely used i
www.differencebetween.com
So back to my original post in this thread.
The slower I am going, the closer the attacker must get and the closer he is the smaller the size of the 50 deg cone behind me he must stay in to try and pull me off the escape vector. If, as the DEV paper implied, the relative masses of the ships effects the force the attacker can bring to bear, then the best way to beat the interdiction is to be in a heavy ship at slow speed. The only thing that could beat you would be a heavier ship.
Here are some videos of me beating interdictions. >>>
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WYGlL1buNlATmWiXJ2wIgeN7HQ1QIRoZ
drive.google.com
Hook ‘em!
