Where did you get that from? That was not the idea at all.
The Frontier games had a newtonian flight model, and from the beginning it was stated ED would not have one.
Physics of thrust in normal space
- Thread starter stachUman
- Start date
The Frontier games had a newtonian flight model, and from the beginning it was stated ED would not have one.
They did this in Frontier (Elite 2). It was horrible. Trying to dogfight when your relative speed is easily measured as a %age of C, because any pirate/victim you might encounter would not be going anything close to your velocity and there was no such thing as everyone slowing down to sensible fighting speeds. It was endless high speed jousting with the help of the autopilot to get you turned around from wicked fast in one direction to come back at your opponent ending up wicked fast in the other direction.
Returning to the sublight/jump drive mechanic of original Elite was the right way to approach this. It may well not be accurate, but it does make for a fun game.
Returning to the sublight/jump drive mechanic of original Elite was the right way to approach this. It may well not be accurate, but it does make for a fun game.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
.... plus much use of the time-compression feature.
Only because you were doing things wrong...almost certainly burning your thrusters when you should not have been.
They should have looked at I-War which din't have these issues. Comabt and travel was decoupled in that game.
Actually I don't mind the concept that is presently designed into the game. I played all the earlier Elites as well and I've come to the conclusion that the present design is actually a really good compromise. IF - it worked as designed. Because it actually doesn't. I haven't actually sat down and documented all the little niggles that make combat irritating at times but I am pretty sure that if it worked as advertised then it would be way better.
Some examples -
I fly a FAS with optimum engineering including the best dirty drives "material" can buy. Top speed is pretty damn impressive with great thrusters - according to the numbers. Yet in combat I find that a stock FAS flown by an NPC can often fly away faster than I can; I can't turn as fast as he can and so on. With full pips in engines of course.
Corvettes have the characteristics of a spitfire - certainly more than I have in my maxed out FAS.
NPC's weapons are "super" - that is, my thrusters can't avoid their PA's when they shouldn't even have been able to get a lock when I have been thrusting away at an angle.
Same with rail guns - they shouldn't have been able to get a lock, let alone fire and hit.
There are times when my thrusters simply don't appear to work.
Fighting a cutter is painful! It's the cutter which is slow - not me! Yet moving around a cutter is excruciating.
And so on.
So I'd be happy if they's just make flight work as advertised.
Some examples -
I fly a FAS with optimum engineering including the best dirty drives "material" can buy. Top speed is pretty damn impressive with great thrusters - according to the numbers. Yet in combat I find that a stock FAS flown by an NPC can often fly away faster than I can; I can't turn as fast as he can and so on. With full pips in engines of course.
Corvettes have the characteristics of a spitfire - certainly more than I have in my maxed out FAS.
NPC's weapons are "super" - that is, my thrusters can't avoid their PA's when they shouldn't even have been able to get a lock when I have been thrusting away at an angle.
Same with rail guns - they shouldn't have been able to get a lock, let alone fire and hit.
There are times when my thrusters simply don't appear to work.
Fighting a cutter is painful! It's the cutter which is slow - not me! Yet moving around a cutter is excruciating.
And so on.
So I'd be happy if they's just make flight work as advertised.
These are problems with your piloting, not the NPCs being able to do something a CMDR cannot.
Video evidence or it didn't happen.
NPCs use a strange mix of FAoff and FAon iirc, but generally a dirty drived FAS will never be outturned or outsped by a NPC FAS.
Also, CZ NPCs have engineering, so they can come close.
edit: ninjas ninjas shakes fist
I thought NPCs dont use FAOFF.
I guess @Morbad can explain that better, they use some very specific thruster control iirc, but I have no idea about how that works.
NPCs adhere to FA On limits at all times: dump ion mines, they stop dead in space; their thrusters burn continually, etc and so on. The argument of how they implement those limits is academic. For all practical intents and purposes, they are FA On.
In more than five years, about 7k hours of play, and 40-50k NPC kills, I cannot honestly say I've run into a non-bugged NPC that was doing something I could not do with FA On. The only possible exception is how fast they can cycle railguns...never any delay or inconsistency, they spam them flawlessly...however, this isn't super human really, just a little better than what I can do. And contrary to popular belief, even Elite NPCs can miss with railguns.
Yes, they have full control over all of their thruster axes, but so does anyone with two sticks, and even KBM users can fake this well enough for NPCs to not be at an advantage.
I know Ion Doncaster has some other thoughts on how NPCs execute thruster control, but I'm fairly certain he'd also agree that any distiction from our FA On is academic.
According to Sarah Jane, its been a while, NPC's don't use FA off
I stand corrected, it's only the axis control then, which I mistakenly remembered...
Point stands though, an NPC FAS can't compete with a dirty drive CMDR FAS.
I thought once NPCs used FAOFF. It was to me the only explanation that they would fly as fast backwards as forwards. Or nearly as fast. The mere thought that reverse speed is same or close to forward speed dint even occur to me - it was just to silly to think retrothrusters would be as powerfull as the regular ones at the ship's rear.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
We used to be able to beetle off maintaining full boost.
It got "fixed" - as it was too easy to escape from attackers.
Boo, so we're not just flying in treacle; it's magic treacle.
It was too easy to use it offensively.
People complain about reverski now, but in the pre-release beta you used to be able to drift backwards at full boost speed, with more rotational damping than we have now, with 0 pips in ENG, while spamming missiles from three km beyond the range at which any pursuer's weapons were likely to reach (even if they had missiles, you were flying away from them and they were flying toward yours).
It was a completely absurd scenario, but also one that would not be possible in a system free of such caps.
In a rocket or thruster using a chemical propulsion, the acceleration is purely dependent on the natural log of the weight ratio (weight of the ship before and after the propellant is expended and expelled); whereas the maximum velocity (yes there is one) is determined by tanh of the product of the specific impulse/c and the natural log of the weight ratio. Sheesh! It's not rocket science.
Possibly, except I don't recall ever EVER being anything like a close relative speed to my opponent. The game nearly went straight into the bin on account of my first encounters with any kind of enemy were at such amazing velocities relative to each other, that getting into a situation like the video details was a practical impossibility.