The way gravity affects our drives seems a bit counter-intuitive to me. If I'm heading towards a planet or sun with a constant throttle position, I slow down. Yet if I head away from a planet or sun with a constant throttle position, I speed up. Since gravity is a force of attraction rather than repulsion, shouldn't the opposite be true? :S
I just don't understand the gravity of the situation
- Thread starter Skatez69
- Start date
exactly!
Well your fsd doesnt want to crash into a planet at 30000000000 km a second, so I can understand it slowing down. and I guess gravity gets weaker with distance.
Deleted member 115407
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Try doing it in realspace... you will most certainly see yourself speed up as you approach the planet.
As for the frame shift drive, it has something to do with how mass affects its ability to warp space-time, or some other scientific mumbo jumbo.
In the end it's just a video game. Pew!
As for the frame shift drive, it has something to do with how mass affects its ability to warp space-time, or some other scientific mumbo jumbo.
In the end it's just a video game. Pew!
In normal space everything works as expected - turn of flight assist and your ship will drop down to the planet, if you are too close to the planet.
In super-cruise things work differently. The FSD gets negatively affected by mass. The larger the mass the more problems it has to "shift the frame of reference". The FSD compresses the space around your ship. More compressed space, less distance to travel in the same time -> faster. Since close to a mass it is less effective you get slower - as the FSD can't compress the space effectively enough.
Blame your ship's computer. It has it's own ideas about how fast you should be going at different times.
25% throttle might equate to, say, 20c when you've got a planet 5KLs away targeted but if you see a USS and target it, you'll slow down to, say, 0.1c without touching the throttle.
Un-target the USS and it'll flash past 'cos you're back to 20c again.
*EDIT*
Point being, in the case of planets, it's not that your ship is slowing down because of gravity.
It's slowing down 'cos your ship's computer thinks you might want to go there so it slows you down so you don't zip past it too quickly.
25% throttle might equate to, say, 20c when you've got a planet 5KLs away targeted but if you see a USS and target it, you'll slow down to, say, 0.1c without touching the throttle.
Un-target the USS and it'll flash past 'cos you're back to 20c again.
*EDIT*
Point being, in the case of planets, it's not that your ship is slowing down because of gravity.
It's slowing down 'cos your ship's computer thinks you might want to go there so it slows you down so you don't zip past it too quickly.
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It makes sense, if you're warping spacetime a certain way and then come across a bit that's already warped, the drive is gonna have to work harder to maintain the same spacetime geometry and keep it stable.
It's just the onboard computer, which handle the speed automatic.
Nope. Don't forget you are not moving through space. Your FSD compresses the space in front and stretches the space behind you. (A warp drive in ST terminology) and inside this ever-compressing space bubble you are moving at "normal" speed.
And as it turns out, compressing the spacetime seems to be harder in the gravitational field. I.e. The stronger the gravitational field, the less your FSD is able to compress the space in front of you, resulting in lower supercruise speed.
Makes a lot of sense, but then the ship must warp an awful lot of space.... just head out to Hutton Orbital to see my point... once you're past the half way point, you start to slow down even though you're still 1/8 Ly away from anything...
But that's mixing two things together. One is FSD affected by gravity and the other is the flight computer which is programmed to accelerate the first half and decelerate the second half of the journey. Try flying without the target selected.
I did. Made no difference, still slowed down, even when pointing slightly away from the station...
For speed, I fly in a curve with out any bodies targeted. It works for me.
How FSDs work in a nutshell.
Supercruise is using a 'warp field' that rapidly expands and contracts space-time around it. However unlike a 'true' warp drive, our speed is wholly dependent on the wells of gravity around us.
Think about it like rolling a big ball across a field. It's easier to roll the ball across the flat parts and harder when you have to contend with hills.
The post above's link describes it way better.
Supercruise is using a 'warp field' that rapidly expands and contracts space-time around it. However unlike a 'true' warp drive, our speed is wholly dependent on the wells of gravity around us.
Think about it like rolling a big ball across a field. It's easier to roll the ball across the flat parts and harder when you have to contend with hills.
The post above's link describes it way better.
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Incredibly interesting, thank you so much for directing me to it!!
Except that planets aren't hills. They're valleys. If you think about it this way, the SC speed drain when leaving a valley makes a little more sense. Planets only slow you down when you're trying to escape their space-time valley. You can hit a planet going full speed. The reason why we slow down when heading towards planets is because of automated safety features in the FSD that make accurate arrival easier for humans to control. The same automated slow down happens if we Target a station or USS, and this goes away if we de-select that Target. Planets do the same thing on approach, but this is more automated and doesn't require you to select the planet as a Target. Presumably this is because you are much more likely to hit a planet than a relatively tiny space station.