Why do you overtake planetary probes when not applying thrust?

[Maize]

Okay, this is a scenario that I run into almost every time I map a planet, and while it's not bothersome enough to pose a serious problem, it's perplexing:

1. I'm approaching the planet, and when I'm about 8-9 seconds out, I cut throttle to 75%.
2. When the planet fills the targeting reticle, I cut thrust completely in order to coast to a stop.
3. When the planet is about the size I want it to be to get a decent view (at this point I'm typically slowing rapidly, but still moving), I pop open the probe interface and start firing off probes in a standard pattern depending on the efficiency target.
4. The first 1-2 probes make the "firing" sound, but I don't see them anywhere. After between 1 and 5 seconds, they come flying out from behind me.
5. They impact as expected and the rest of the action runs normally.

Is this just an, "It's a game, don't sweat it," situation where nobody really thought about what was going on with any rigour, or what? If you shoot a probe forward from your ship and you're not actively accelerating, there should be no reason you'd wind up in front of it. It'll be moving at the muzzle velocity at which you fired it plus your ship's velocity at the instant of firing, I would think.

Or do the probes get shot out of the sides of the ship and travel perpendicular to the ship's trajectory for a while before turning toward the planet? (Is it possible to fire a probe while using the exterior camera suite to watch it?)

[This post presumably brought to you by too much time in the black.]

 

[Maize]

To answer at least one of my own questions, you can in fact launch the camera suite while in the DSS, but AFAICT you can't fire a probe while doing so. :/

 

[Sapyx]

Is this just an, "It's a game, don't sweat it," situation where nobody really thought about what was going on with any rigour, or what? If you shoot a probe forward from your ship and you're not actively accelerating, there should be no reason you'd wind up in front of it. It'll be moving at the muzzle velocity at which you fired it plus your ship's velocity at the instant of firing, I would think.

Part of the problem here is attempting to use real-world science (conservation of momentum) to explain a hyperscientific event (firing miniature Supercruise-capable probes from a ship travelling in Supercruise). We could simply handwavium it away by saying "we don't know how Supercruise works, so we can't say whether normal-universe rules apply".

As I understand it, use of "Acceleration" is irrelevant when talking about supercruise, because, being a "space warping" technology, the ship doesn't actually accelerate. Which is probably a good thing, since if we were actually accelerating that fast, we'd probably be pulling millions of Gs and become nothing more than a smear of jelly on the back wall of our ship.

From a gameplay perspective, I'd assume it's to keep the probe scan times consistent. I haven't really noticed whether probing a planet takes the same amount of time no matter how far away from it you are, but in any event, they wouldn't want to give an advantage to players who "gimmick the system" by getting faster analysis times simply by firing the probes while travelling at the maximum allowed speed.

Or do the probes get shot out of the sides of the ship and travel perpendicular to the ship's trajectory for a while before turning toward the planet? (Is it possible to fire a probe while using the exterior camera suite to watch it?)

Since the concept of mapping probes was added long after the ship models were made, I suspect that our ships don't have a "probe launching port" from which they emerge. Nor is the DSS an external module, so that the probes can emerge from a hardpoint. The DSS probe-launching interface, which lets you fire off probes in any and all directions, implies it's some kind of wraparound turret array the probes are launched from.

 

[cmdr milesred]

I'm curious, what is your speed on planet approach, as in what is the seconds meter saying?
Otherwise, never once seen what you describe as I am almost always at a full stop before I fire, you don't seem to be.
it takes me about 2-4 seconds to stop, my planet approach is quite fast I thought as my reticule time to target is usually somewhere between 8 and 6 seconds

 

[Codger]

I'm curious, what is your speed on planet approach, as in what is the seconds meter saying?
Otherwise, never once seen what you describe as I am almost always at a full stop before I fire, you don't seem to be.
it takes me about 2-4 seconds to stop, my planet approach is quite fast I thought as my reticule time to target is usually somewhere between 8 and 6 seconds

Even at zero throttle in supercruise, you don't actually stop. There's a bottom limit to your speed, and it's not zero. It's 30..something...I can't recall the exact number.

 

[Maize]

I'm curious, what is your speed on planet approach, as in what is the seconds meter saying?
Otherwise, never once seen what you describe as I am almost always at a full stop before I fire, you don't seem to be.
it takes me about 2-4 seconds to stop, my planet approach is quite fast I thought as my reticule time to target is usually somewhere between 8 and 6 seconds

6 seconds is pretty typical for me.

 

[Maize]

Even at zero throttle in supercruise, you don't actually stop. There's a bottom limit to your speed, and it's not zero. It's 30..something...I can't recall the exact number.

Right, I know. But the point isn't whether you're moving or not -- it's whether you're accelerating or not. So long as you're decelerating, the probe should never be moving more slowly than you are, because it was moving at at-least-your-current-speed the moment you launched it.

The one thing that occurred to me after I posted it is that even if my throttle is zero, I could still be accelerating due to the planet's gravity. I tried to watch the actual speed numbers this past time, though, and they were definitely decreasing, soooo....

Part of the problem here is attempting to use real-world science (conservation of momentum) to explain a hyperscientific event (firing miniature Supercruise-capable probes from a ship travelling in Supercruise). We could simply handwavium it away by saying "we don't know how Supercruise works, so we can't say whether normal-universe rules apply".

As I understand it, use of "Acceleration" is irrelevant when talking about supercruise, because, being a "space warping" technology, the ship doesn't actually accelerate. Which is probably a good thing, since if we were actually accelerating that fast, we'd probably be pulling millions of Gs and become nothing more than a smear of jelly on the back wall of our ship.

From a gameplay perspective, I'd assume it's to keep the probe scan times consistent. I haven't really noticed whether probing a planet takes the same amount of time no matter how far away from it you are, but in any event, they wouldn't want to give an advantage to players who "gimmick the system" by getting faster analysis times simply by firing the probes while travelling at the maximum allowed speed.

This is kind of what I was getting at with the, "Is it just a case of 'It's just a game, don't sweat it too much,'". But yeah, the Supercruise-and-how-many-Gs-am-I-pulling element had crossed my mind before. I suppose that if the explanation is that the ship is actually moving at conventional speeds but Supercruise is making non-adjacent points in space adjacent at regular intervals, then it could likewise be argued that the momentum imparted to the probes would be a tiny fraction of the apparent speed we interpret the ship to be moving, and that if the probes also move using supercruise technology, the conventional speed might be a neglible factor fo their apparent speed, so they may in effect be able to move as if they were launched at a fixed speed that's not relative to the ship's apparent speed at all. nodding

 

[Jmanis]

Are they fired forward? I assumed they fire more like a rocket, departing perpendicular to the ships trajectory momentarily, before moving towards the target.

 

[Maize]

Are they fired forward? I assumed they fire more like a rocket, departing perpendicular to the ships trajectory momentarily, before moving towards the target.

That's what I'd wondered about briefly, but then I just recently came to a full halt and managed to get a trajectory dot rather than a line-and-dot somehow, and when I hit fire, there was just a glow directly in front of me, which implies the probe was fired directly from the nose of the ship moving straight forward.

(That said, as mentioned in other comments above, it's not unlikely that there's no specific physical exit point or method of firing.)

 

[Sapyx]

The one thing that occurred to me after I posted it is that even if my throttle is zero, I could still be accelerating due to the planet's gravity. I tried to watch the actual speed numbers this past time, though, and they were definitely decreasing, soooo....

Another good example of Supercruise physics being very different from Newtonian physics: in Supercruise, gravity doesn't speed you up, it slows you down.

 

[Orvidius]

The way I look at it (and yes, this is game-science handwavium), is that the probes aren't being carried along by your supercruise warp bubble, and instead they generate their own which takes over when they leave the ship. We know that supercruise speeds are relative to the nearby gravitational bodies and use their frames of reference rather than your own, and so as soon as the probe leaves the ship, it's under its own independent trajectory without inheriting any momentum.

 

[Maize]

Another good example of Supercruise physics being very different from Newtonian physics: in Supercruise, gravity doesn't speed you up, it slows you down.

Well, kindasorta? Is there an explanation for how gravity affects supercruise, actually? I haven't tried to look it up other than THAT it affects supercruise. The effect seems to be a weird oscillating rubber-bandey kind of thing, though, that always struck me as being more about turning various points of a supercruise trip into little minigame tests than adhering to a strict pseudoscientific explanation, but that might just be me. Like, it seems that you slow down regularly during the long approach phase, but as soon as you start getting close enough that you're going to have to think about when to cut thrust, you suddenly accelerate rather dramatically, like a sort of unexpected slingshot effect.

 

[Orvidius]

Yeah, gravitational fields have a dampening effect on supercruise speed, and you can go much faster as you get further away from everything. That sort of "speed up" effect that you notice when you get close to things is misleading. If you look at your actual speed number, you're slowing down dramatically. The available speed/throttle range dropped more quickly than the ship can actually lose speed, so you're over your maximum speed, which makes the engines churn loudly, and the throttle bar looks like it ramps up. But it's just showing that your actual speed is higher than what you can set the throttle to, and you lose speed quite quickly.

 

[Maize]

Yeah, gravitational fields have a dampening effect on supercruise speed, and you can go much faster as you get further away from everything. That sort of "speed up" effect that you notice when you get close to things is misleading. If you look at your actual speed number, you're slowing down dramatically. The available speed/throttle range dropped more quickly than the ship can actually lose speed, so you're over your maximum speed, which makes the engines churn loudly, and the throttle bar looks like it ramps up. But it's just showing that your actual speed is higher than what you can set the throttle to, and you lose speed quite quickly.

Oh, that makes sense. I think it's the sound that's deceptive for me.