Wankel engines in space?
- Thread starter CATPAIN KIRK
- Start date
I believe the comment from el_tel was a Spaceballs reference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXOAc5yt218
Lol - didn't notice - nice one
it doesn't matter if he's right or wrong, space ships look better with big engines on the back and Frontier don't want players to have to flip over and use the main engines to brake like current spacecraft do, it's as simple as that.
There is no specific, logical explanation other than the the ships look better and fly better the way they are.
If you want more realistic space flight and spacecraft KSP may be what you are after playing.
Maybe the thrusters over the main engines have a better engine belling effect so get more force applied, with the exhaust expelled at a high velocity.
Given boost is forward only maybe the main thrusters are limited to match the other vectors, given the over all speed limits the ships have, and boost really represents their capabilities. Though that wouldn't explain the limitations on boost unless the limit was the turbo pump's ability to pump fuel through the reactors to become the exhaust.
Given boost is forward only maybe the main thrusters are limited to match the other vectors, given the over all speed limits the ships have, and boost really represents their capabilities. Though that wouldn't explain the limitations on boost unless the limit was the turbo pump's ability to pump fuel through the reactors to become the exhaust.
"Over use of boost may cause damage*"
*Boost Systems Inc are not responsible for damage caused by over riding the safety cut out systems.
To much boost kills engines, we know this from current day turbos (nitrous is even more dangerous if over used)
I can foresee many more station crashing incidents to come.
He's not right, he merely has an opinion.
KSP is a neat game, however I'm not saying that there should be full newtonian physics in ED, I'm just saying that breaking should take longer than accelerating and accelerating backwards should take way longer than accelerating forward. By how much would remain to be determined.
The current implementation of negative thrust feels counterintuitive and wrong. I use a HOTAS with the thrust axis mapped to forward and having the reverse option mapped to a switch on my little finger. So at the move of my pinkie, it only takes seconds until I fly backwards at the same speed I was moving forward a few seconds before.
Exploiting that just feels cheap. I'm not asking for realism, I'm asking for an intuitive flightmodel that doesn't favour cheap tricks (i.e. flying backwards at full speed and firing) and I do so because in my opinion it would be more complex, more challenging and therefore more fun.
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You wont get what you want, FD built the flight model the way THEY think it's fun to play and they have said time and time again that they are building the game THEY want to play.
As i said if you don't like the way it flies you'll have to find something else to play, I certainly wouldn't play a game i thought was full of "cheap tricks"
You are entitled to an opinion but you want a fundamental change in the way the game plays, FD are still balancing the game, thrusters already got a bit of a nerf and you have only been flying the agile faster moving ships (unless you had a go in the Lakon 9?) and they are supposed to be able to change direction quickly.
FD say the Sidewinder generates the most G and it does that in a turn if you hit boost NOT if you suddenly switch into reverse and the G force is within human pilot tolerance so reverse thrust is obviously not overpowered in that sense
Such hostility...
Who says that I wont get what I want? You?
As you said FD are still balancing the game. Nothing is set in stone and if I manage to convince the devs they'd rather play a game with a more intuitive and complex flight model, then that's what they'll do.
Moreover, what I'm asking the devs to take into consideration is not a "fundamental change in the way the game plays", but some minor tweaks to the otherwise well-made flight model. Say ~insert abitrary value here~ less deceleration, and an equal decrease in backward acceleration.
And no, I don't have a Lakon, but whilst I assume it has a lot more inertia, I guess the fact that thrusters are able to propel it backwards at the same acceleration as forward remains unchanged.
Moreover, I never mentioned any g-forces. You're missing the point. My point is that the way ships are designed, they'd never be able to achieve the same thrust backwards as forward.
Last but not least, no offense intended, but your posts read a bit hysterical. I was calmly stating my point not posting "OMG FD IF YOU DON'T MAKE THE GAME I WANT I STOP PLAYING, SULK REALLY HARD AND PLAY KSP !!!ELEVEN!!", so your advice to play another game is rather immature and inappropriate.
This is a beta and discussing mechanics is what a beta is for.
There was no hostility in my post, I was simply pointing that no matter how many times you are told the ships fly the way they do for fun and they look the way the do because it's cool, you don't seem to listen.
The mechanics you are trying to get changed are the flight model and the ship designs, both core aspects of the game that are pretty much set in stone by now.
You seriously think that because you don't like that the ships can go backwards as fast as they can go forwards FD are going to rework everything?
Almost every review or preview you can find of this game praises the flight model, that and the sound design are being held up as top notch elements of the game and possibly the best of any space game so far.
Move on to something else, you won't get this changed.
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The size of the thruster exhaust may not be reflective of the amount of thrust generated. In fact we have very little knowledge on how the thrust is generated at all in ED, the only thing we can safely assume is, that some kind of physical material must be expelled to cause the reaction that we can observe.
The size of the exhaust may even increase the power of the thrust if the exhaust reactant is compressed and pushed through a smaller opening, as a smaller cross section does mean increased speed of the expelled reactant. Therefore you would not need impossibly large engines to create huge amounts of thrust in a vacuum.
Part of the rear engines may even be there for 'show' in normal space flight, as part of the exhaust opening may be used, as someone else mentioned, for the frameshift and hyperdrive modes of the engines, which do only know forward motion.
To cut things short, bigger exhaust does not necessarily mean that more thrust is created.
The size of the exhaust may even increase the power of the thrust if the exhaust reactant is compressed and pushed through a smaller opening, as a smaller cross section does mean increased speed of the expelled reactant. Therefore you would not need impossibly large engines to create huge amounts of thrust in a vacuum.
Part of the rear engines may even be there for 'show' in normal space flight, as part of the exhaust opening may be used, as someone else mentioned, for the frameshift and hyperdrive modes of the engines, which do only know forward motion.
To cut things short, bigger exhaust does not necessarily mean that more thrust is created.
You apparently lack reading comprehension. To me, it would be more challenging and therefore more fun to have this mechanic tweaked. Taking on NPCs was remotely challenging until I learned how to explot this, after which it became easier than taking candy from a baby and now I constantly find me abusing backward thrust because not doing so would be ridiculous.
I seriously think that changing a single value in a spreadsheet would be worth it to achieve more intuitive, challenging and complex flight model. Quite prepotent, I know. It should be clear by now that I wasn't aiming at changing both, the ship models and the flight model but only backward thrust capabilities to a minor extent.
Here we go again. Let me explain this to you: Telling someone to basically "**** off and play another game" because you disagree with a simple suggestion you obviously don't comprehend in the first place would generally be perceived as hostile.
It's not that hard, is it?
How about we put it this way: If there was a serious problem with the flight model, as you suggest, this would have been picked up during 4 Alpha builds and the Alpha and DDF players. Suggestions would have been put forward to modify the flight model and if it seemed sensible and fitted with the FD vision of the game, the changes would have been implemented.
That didn't happen and we have the flight model we have today. No doubt tweaks will be made along the way such as the already discussed further tweaks to the power of thrusters but I doubt that it will change in any significant way.
That didn't happen and we have the flight model we have today. No doubt tweaks will be made along the way such as the already discussed further tweaks to the power of thrusters but I doubt that it will change in any significant way.
Agreed..
@CATPAIN KIRK
Surly engines capable of hyper speed are going to be huge compared to engines only capable of normal space flight thrust, and so I believe this explains why the reverse thrusters are smaller than the forward ones, yet able to generate the same amount of normal space flight thrust
As to weather it would make game play better to reduce the reverse thrust, I would want to test first to make an opinion.
btw I suspect your getting a bit of hostility here cos your SHOUTING your user name at us !
I'm not very educated in Elite canon but...
I think it's established that the sub-light drive is inertialess, involving exotic particles and very rapidly spinning disks. The delay in the speed change is just because it takes time to ´´spin up´´ or down the machinery.
The exhaust is for ejecting the dangerous waste produced by the engine. The particles are actually invisible to the naked eye, but the ship sensors can detect them and the particles are displayed on the view screen in bright blue.
I'm not sure where I picked up this piece of information, I don't know if it is true for this version of Elite, and I don't know if it is canon for any of the Elite versions, but I think it's pretty obvious that the engine doesn't just thrust the craft forward... why would we have top speeds, then? These are spacecraft, not submarines...
The ´´Afterburner´´ works by injecting witchspace fuel into the engine assembly. The afterburners here work pretty differently from the old Elite fuel injectors, but I think that they're supposed to be the same thing.
The Witchdrive itself is not really an engine. It's just capable of punching holes in space. I believe the Torus Jumpdrive works somewhat like a warp drive, warping spce-time insetad of punching holes in it like the witchdrive.
... But once again, I'm not really well-read into elite backstory, and I'm not sure what's non-canon, semi-canon and actual canon.
I think it's established that the sub-light drive is inertialess, involving exotic particles and very rapidly spinning disks. The delay in the speed change is just because it takes time to ´´spin up´´ or down the machinery.
The exhaust is for ejecting the dangerous waste produced by the engine. The particles are actually invisible to the naked eye, but the ship sensors can detect them and the particles are displayed on the view screen in bright blue.
I'm not sure where I picked up this piece of information, I don't know if it is true for this version of Elite, and I don't know if it is canon for any of the Elite versions, but I think it's pretty obvious that the engine doesn't just thrust the craft forward... why would we have top speeds, then? These are spacecraft, not submarines...
The ´´Afterburner´´ works by injecting witchspace fuel into the engine assembly. The afterburners here work pretty differently from the old Elite fuel injectors, but I think that they're supposed to be the same thing.
The Witchdrive itself is not really an engine. It's just capable of punching holes in space. I believe the Torus Jumpdrive works somewhat like a warp drive, warping spce-time insetad of punching holes in it like the witchdrive.
... But once again, I'm not really well-read into elite backstory, and I'm not sure what's non-canon, semi-canon and actual canon.
Agreed..
Surly engines capable of hyper speed are going to be huge compared to engines only capable of normal space flight thrust
While I agree that the big guys in the back are needed to get the ship going to FSD/Hyperspace, it's not a question of speed (only apparent speed) as the drive bends space around the ship. If speed (velocity) was involved any deviations from a straight line would liquefy the ship and it's contents instantaneously - heck just accelerating to those linear speed in that short of a time would!
Agreed..
@CATPAIN KIRK
Surly engines capable of hyper speed are going to be huge compared to engines only capable of normal space flight thrust, and so I believe this explains why the reverse thrusters are smaller than the forward ones, yet able to generate the same amount of normal space flight thrust
As to weather it would make game play better to reduce the reverse thrust, I would want to test first to make an opinion.
Fair enough - of course I don't have any first hand experience how the game would play with reduced backward thrust either, but I'd assume it would be more akin to a an athmospheric flight simulator and it would be highly dependent on the difference between forward and backward thruster capabilities.
Nice explanation though.
btw I suspect your getting a bit of hostility here cos your SHOUTING your user name at us !
Yeah - thought as much myself - I picked the name because a misspelled name in all caps leads people to believe that the person behind it is a complete moron - and it's always good to be underestimated in a multiplayer game.
Unfortunately this apparently inherits the side-effect of attracting the simple-minded because it leads them to believe they finally found someone even dumber than themselves.
@Defacto: Thanks for the canonic explanations, very much appreciated.
Retros don't perform as well as main engines unless there's a strange braking force in play. I've seen enough people talking about how retros are too strong on the forums and I wasn't wholly confident with regards to my notes from Alpha so I decided to sit down and run the same test as I did before in the current build.
Note: Time shown is time between first frame showing a speed greater than 0 and first frame showing a speed of 100 or greater (to avoid the drag effect from approaching top speed muddying the waters). I only recorded at 30fps so temporal resolution isn't great but I think it serves its purpose.
Flying an Eagle with 2 pips.
Verticals Up....... 3.701 sec - 27.0 m/s
Laterals Right..... 3.732 sec - 26.8 m/s
Verticals Down..... 3.732 sec - 26.8 m/s
Laterals Left...... 3.733 sec - 26.8 m/s
Retros Back........ 3.732 sec - 26.8 m/s
Main Forward....... 2.899 sec - 34.5 m/s
This holds with the rule of thumb I'd noted during Alpha that all thrust axis are uniform with the exception of main engines. This was the same with the Sidewinder and Cobra (EDIT: From the previous build) when I tested it and although I'm sticking with my Eagle a bit longer I could get the values for the Sidewinder from single player if wanted.
Note: Time shown is time between first frame showing a speed greater than 0 and first frame showing a speed of 100 or greater (to avoid the drag effect from approaching top speed muddying the waters). I only recorded at 30fps so temporal resolution isn't great but I think it serves its purpose.
Flying an Eagle with 2 pips.
Verticals Up....... 3.701 sec - 27.0 m/s
Laterals Right..... 3.732 sec - 26.8 m/s
Verticals Down..... 3.732 sec - 26.8 m/s
Laterals Left...... 3.733 sec - 26.8 m/s
Retros Back........ 3.732 sec - 26.8 m/s
Main Forward....... 2.899 sec - 34.5 m/s
This holds with the rule of thumb I'd noted during Alpha that all thrust axis are uniform with the exception of main engines. This was the same with the Sidewinder and Cobra (EDIT: From the previous build) when I tested it and although I'm sticking with my Eagle a bit longer I could get the values for the Sidewinder from single player if wanted.
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@Rueplays: That's interesting information, so what I'm asking for is already in place, the effect is just so miniscule it's barely noticable. Imho it should be increased.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.