Horizons Thrusters Offline, Expected Behaviour

rxay579

rxay579
General question / informal poll here.

If your thrusts go offline in your ship (disabled, damaged, overheating, or just plain turning them off), what do you expect to happen?
This is a fill in the blank question because I think I'm too new to know what I should expect.


I ask because I recall that in a CZ, months (?) ago, the only way I survived one particular fight was that the pursuer shot out my thrusters and then couldn't keep up with my uncontrolled wreck shooting through space. After being glad I was getting out of range and a short panic from knowing I had no AFMU, I decided to try rebooting the module (something I had read) which repaired it by something like 2% and I was able to stabilize. I jumped into SC, back to a station, shaking with adrenaline.

More recently, in a CZ, I had a ship with some magic weapons (a heat weapon, I currently suspect) that disabled my ship flat out. The weird thing was that my ship came to a complete halt (thrusters slowed me down to a complete stop), allowing the NPC ample time to casually destroy me. I had reported it as a bug and stayed away from combat (NPCs were all god-like killing machines to me, players were nowhere to be found). Later, I thought to test it out, got into normal space, throttled up to speed, then went into modules and just turned off my thrusters; my ship throttled down to stationary (with the maneuvering thrusters), then just sat still.

Now, why the double hockey sticks would offline thrusters use their dying breath to stop your ship dead in space? I know, this might be a matter of preference, maybe even balance, but I've been searching the forums and can't find an answer. I am actually willing to listen, but I need someone to explain it to me.

Thanks in advance for any helpful responses.

** EDIT / TESTS **

I've done a few basic tests and this is what happened.

Test Ship: Sidewinder (my crash test dummy ship)

In space, flight assist on. Shutting down thrusters with momentum: Stabilizing thrusters bring the ship to a full stop, then ship remains stationary.
In space, flight assisf off. Shutting down thrusters with momentum: Stabilizing thrusters inactive and ship continues last trajectory without change.
In space, flight assist on/off. Shutting down thrusters without momentum: Ship remains stationary (gotta be complete).

Near planet (under 1km), flight assist on. Shutting down thrusters with momentum: Stabilizing thrusters inactive and ship continues last trajectory with gravity effects.
Near planet (under 1km), flight assist off. Shutting down thrusters with momentum: Stabilizing thrusters inactive and ship continues last trajectory with gravity effects.
Near planet (under 1km), flight assist on/off. Shutting down thrusters without momentum: Stabilizing thrusters inactive and ship begins to drop with gravity effects.
 
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rxay579

rxay579
I'll have to test it again with FA off in my next gaming session.

Even still, if the thrusters are disabled/damaged/etc, how would they bring the ship to a halt?
 
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Shar

Shar
rxay579 said:
I'll have to test it again with FA off in my next gaming session.

Even still, if the thrusters are disabled/damaged/etc, how would they bring the ship to a halt?
Click to expand...

Handbreak..... seriously thats a very good question. assuming FA does not have it's own micro thrusters.
 

rxay579

rxay579
The best thing that I can come up with is that some group (or very vocal person) was upset that their targets were floating away after they shot out their thrusters.
Maybe I'm just on the other side (the pirate victims) of the debate; I'd still like other input, though.
 

Ursula_17

Ursula_17
Sounds to me more like your Power Plant was destroyed to 0% this disables your thrusters and you come to a stop. It is also the best way to kill big ships. Target their power plants through sub targets on the left hand side panel...
 

rxay579

rxay579
I know it wasn't the power plant in either incident.
In the first incident (floating out of control), I rebooted my thrusters and came back online; you can't reboot the power plant (to the best of my knowledge).
In the second incident (full stop), I had the clarity of mind to check my module health and they were all above 80% (at least during the first shutdown, it happened in two separate instances in that encounter).
 

syngyne

S
Mike Reacher said:
I think FD just don't like physics. (or the laws of physics)
Click to expand...

It was a balance thing, IIRC. Imagine if you're a pirate and are taking out a target's drives rather than killing them. Well, good luck getting any cargo from them as they go sailing off into space.
 

Xenoit

X
syngyne said:
It was a balance thing, IIRC. Imagine if you're a pirate and are taking out a target's drives rather than killing them. Well, good luck getting any cargo from them as they go sailing off into space.
Click to expand...


....Match velocity, blow cargo hatch, laugh as the explosive decompression shoots their cargo into my scoop? That's what I would do at least. Lazy     ignorant pirates shouldn't get it easy because they can't fly.
 

rxay579

rxay579
Garix said:
OP have a look here.

Had the same issue and was directed to the most probable cause.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up. Some of the new effects seem quite a bit more powerful than I'm used to dealing with (i.e. completely disabled while still in fighting shape) and I'm definitely not taking combat lightly after the NPCs have had their engineer upgrades. Sadly, by the time I realize an NPC can stack this effect, it is too late to escape, especially when my thrusters work against me.
 

rxay579

rxay579
I did some basic tests (added to original post) and the space flight results are what throw me off. I don't know if this would qualify as a bug or just a balance thing to keep pirating viable (per syngyne's comment).
Maybe the answer is to keep a finger near FA off (or just fly combat that way) until I've determined that the opponent doesn't have the ability to shut me down.
 

Lucius-Darcia

Lucius-Darcia
It should be, that you float away if your thrusters/power plant get disabled. The NPC's still do it, they boost a last time before they powerplant goes offline because they hope, that they float faster than you can fly.
But for gameplay reasons this is nonsense. It would make piracy impossible and every disabled target would fly out of range or at least this far, that you end up always a few kilomtres outside of the combatzone. So for gameplay reasons, the ship stops (or shpuld at least) when thrusters/pp get disabled. If you deactivate flightassist you still float away and that is the proofe that NPC's also use FAoff if they float away ;)
 

varonica

varonica
rxay579 said:
I'll have to test it again with FA off in my next gaming session.

Even still, if the thrusters are disabled/damaged/etc, how would they bring the ship to a halt?
Click to expand...

FDEV use a modified version of physics to make dog fighting interesting. In real physics thrust in space would keep you accelerating continually until you ran out of fuel. This doesn't happen in ED, the thrusters at a certain power push your ship along at a certain velocity. In real physics even minimal thrust if applied for a long enough period of time would eventually push your ship to velocity where relativity physics increased your mass to the point where the increase in velocity would be unnoticeable (to an outside observer that is, time dilation on board the ship would render the crews experience different). So, our ships require thrust to move and keep moving, reduce thrust to zero and speed reduces to zero, it doesn't actually require reverse thrust, zero thrust = zero speed, 10% thrust = 10% max speed and no more etc. No it's not how things should work, but it does make dog fighting in space possible.

I predict FA off will give the same experience, let us know.
 

Frenotx

Frenotx
I've always thought it was odd, too. If the thrusters are ever disabled for any reason (destroyed, switched off, etc), I expect the thrusters to do nothing. I expect the ship to maintain the last trajectory, and the stabilizer thrusters do nothing (i.e. "drift"). It makes very little sense to me that inoperable thrusters would have the ability to stop a ship.
 
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