Have played around with a few tiny SV builds. Main things I've come away with is a strong desire for a couple new things; 1) 1x1x1 Generators & Fuel Tanks. Normal 1x1x2 Genie is serious overkill, as is the 1x1x2 Fuel Tank. -- plus a 1x1x1 Fuel Tank would be a big help when making really compact but CoM balanced SV/HVs. 2) Some combo Thrusters where thrust came from both ends. For really tiny stuff a 1x1x1, but mostly a cool looking 'jet' one at 1x1x3 for F/B & L/R. Make those a bit more powerful than a current 1x1x1, but with similar HPs as a regular 1x1x3, so it wouldn't be so fragile when exposed. In the pic imagine if all the thrusters were dual-direction. And if Genie/Fuel were available in 1x1x1 versions; they're exposed on bottom atm. 3) Non-CC Small-blk 1x1x1 & 1x1x2 Ammo Boxes that held 125/250SU and had 100/200 HPs. So it could _touch_ other CCs & Extensions... -- gotta say that 'no touchies!' bit is really getting old I know 1 & 2 aren't likely. #3 already existed, but were removed. Yet for some reason not only is the Lrg-blk 1x1x2 Ammo Box still in, but we still have to buy/unlock it to get to the Ammo CC...
Important NOTE: The thrust-torque always generates in relation to the planes created by the different axis spread from the CENTER OF MASS, not anything else! (added to 1st post)
What @Frigidman said. The players will best understand it with some examples either photo or, better, a short video.
How about: "Thrusters cause rotation around the two axes perpendicular to the thruster direction, with a stength proportional to the thrusters' distance from the center of mass. Ships always rotate about their center of mass."
I wanted to update my Inheritor SV for A10.6 EXP. I gave up. I can make it a tier 4 vessel. BUT, I still need 17 RCS to achieve basic maneuverability (not fancy maneuverability). Still I need a crazy amount of fuel tanks and generators to cope with the new thruster performance. Or I could swap those Jet M thrusters with Jet S models, but that looks pretty dump on this build. When making a tier 3 out of it by removing the shield gen and all the RCS devices the vessel turns like a rock. Even if I arrange the thrusters away from the COM. And speaking of the optimal thruster arrangement: I´ve heard there´s also an aerodynamics model coming. So wing equipped and streamlined vessels would be assumed to perform the best. But you still wanna have a good yaw value and therefor you will be still forced to arrange the thrusters in a boxy shape, on the edge of the vessel, right? This is kinda contradictorily to that aerodynamics concept (example in the screenshot). It also just looks stupid. I had some fun building my last 10.6 SVs. But it is becoming pretty boring and repeating the way you have to set up your thrusters to achieve a good maneuverability as long as you don´t want to build some insane costly RCS into it. Future SV designs will kinda all look the same. Thrusters on the very edges of the vessel, mostly mounted on the tips of modular wings I guess. Squarish footprint designs will prevail the workshop. Ah, and speaking of modular wings: I often try NOT to build with these, or at least not to use them as wings. They count as full blocks and therefor are enlarging the vessel´s footprint and lower its yaw value. Makes no sense to me. Never did. I´m currently very unhappy with that new flight model. Not to mention the huge amount of additional devices needed like the tier extender blocks or additional fuel tanks and generators. It just doesn´t feel any rewarding to me building stuff with all those creativity limiting changes. I really was keen to update this vessel for 10.6 since someone asked me in the comments if I could do it, because it was his favorit SV that he likes to use ingame. But after messing around with it for 2 hours I must say, I have no fun in doing another update of any of my older builds (not to mention that I already did a huge update on the Purgatory SSX for A 10, not even 3 months ago), and I kinda feel exhausted on building new stuff for 10.6. I had to speak that out. It really buggs me. Not happy.
I'm still wondering what this really means, because my brain is going various ways with it. And since none of my SV's actually can force themselves up off their docking pads (LOL) I am not really in a position to test every permutation to figure out what you are intending here So, I ask, please, a simple graphic? Do thrusters farther out from CoM make a difference? Do thrusters pointing in a direction have any effect based on their location? Do like-direction thrusters placed together make a difference vs pushed a part?
Thrusters apply torque proportional to their perpendicular distance from the CoM: Thruster 1 doesn't contribute any torque because its line of force passes through the CoM (in red). Thruster 2 contributes more torque than Thruster 3 because it has a larger perpendicular distance (where the dotted and dashed lines intersect) from the CoM.
Ok...generation from planes clear enough. I am interpreting the term "thrust-torque" indicates the torque being applied when the thruster is firing, or is the torque always available as was the RCSs (therefor maybe calling it thruster-torque for some of us more persnickety individuals) , and is the amount of torque graphed by distance from CL of mass. (gets stronger/weaker by distance from perpendicular plane) LOL...geostar 1024 posted while I was hen pecking at the keyboard.
Well if this turns out to be what we end up with then I want to say...Hurrah! flying bricks just got a boost.
It's just physics? And I'd point out that RCS was much better for flying bricks because you could stuff the whole volume with them. That said, torque is proportional to the perpendicular distance to the CoM (for constant thrust), so putting thrusters out on pylons ought to give you really good results. But, because the moment of inertia calculation is *still* the simple uniform-mass version (rather than weighting every block by the square of its distance to the CoM), doing so will increase the bounding box of your ship and increase your moment of inertia more than the torque you'd get from those thrusters.
Lol..the flying brick statement was an attempt, (albeit not a very good one), at humor. I am waiting until Monday, (or whenever 11 drops), to get hands on testing; then I will answer my own questions. I like to have as much information revealed in the forums as possible for not just myself. I also feel there is a great deal of relation balancing between the three restrictions, as you and others have pointed out; until then it seems a waste of time doing any in depth building of ships or bases which also might result in rather shallow testing results.
Thanks, this clears things up greatly. Although doesn't clear up what I asked about .... in that other thread. So still a little confused.
Oookay, I didn't have time to play with A11 much but first thing I noticed... ships have variable directional max speed in SPACE? I mean WTF? Why would my ship slow down in space when I'm coasting? What is a slowing me down? Black Matter? Seriously wtf. I can kinda wrap my head around it in atmo and gravity, where a bad shape could limit my max speed, even if it technically should limit my acceleration if a side of my ship is not "aerodynamic" but SPACE? Why would I have different max speeds to different sides IN SPACE? Sorry but that has to go. I don't expect a realistic flight model from EGS, I seriously don't there are other games for that, but I'd like a believable flight model... something which doesn't brake my suspension of disbelief. My ship slowing down if I turn sideways while coasting (autobrake off, no thrust active) in orbital playfiled is not believeable, it is directly against any believability, because it's against the physic fundementals! "An object in motion stays in motion, unless acted upon by external force" - Isaac Newton. In the simplified space we have in the game, there is NOTHING which would act on my ship there, thus I shouldn't slow down. I can't record a video right now but I hope my screenshots will convey what I mean - keep in mined, the ship has autobrake off, and I accelerated in straight line, before Iturnedautobrake off and stopped accelerating. Ship right after I stopped accelerating Ship when I turned sideways to the direction of travel Ship after I turned my front towards the direction of travel again
I'd just like to chime in and agree with everyone else that RCS and thruster torque are a mess now, especially on very small or very large ships. I have almost 1600 hours in Empyrion, plus hundreds in far more hardcore physics games like KSP and Space Engineers, and even I'm confused and frustrated with getting very basic SV designs to work as intended. Example: try building a very small survival SV with the usual 6 thrusters in each direction (plus a generator and fuel tank) but no RCS. It barely turns in some directions with any arrangement because apparently they aren't far enough offset from the center lines of mass. Add an RCS, and suddenly it's turning so fast and twitchy that you can't aim at anything with guns or navigate through a hangar door... unless you add a bunch of steel blocks or cargo weight to slow it down, and then you have to add even more down thrusters for the extra weight and back thrusters to recover forward speed, which adds more CPU as well. This defies common sense, not just basic physics. It's forcing us to resort to manually turning individual thrusters on and off, or come up with crazy asymmetrical placement designs, or having to get in the settings and turn down mouse sensitivity to nothing just to have reasonable flight control, and then having to go back into settings to turn it back up if/when you exit the ship. Most of my medium sized SV blueprints with one RCS are handling ok without modification. But I'm not seeing any evidence that removing them entirely will result in a ship that handles well, unless you spend hours messing with thruster placement. And RCSs still have the in-game description REQUIRED for all ships. If the goal here is to remove RCSs from the game and move them to thrusters like HV all-in-one hover units, it's not working well. All of this has to be extra (and needlessly) frustrating to new players, especially if they don't already have blueprints to spawn. Blueprints still allow you to 'cheat' and build ships without investing tech points in the individual parts as long as you meet the minimum level requirement. So if you're just starting out and spend your hard earned tech points on components and put together your first small SV by hand, it's likely to be nearly impossible to fly it for no apparent or logical reason. One solution already mentioned would be to have a simple speed limit on rotation. Another would be variable torque on RCSs, ideally automatically changing with the current mass of the ship so we don't have to mess with yet another slider.
I must admit: thruster placement mattering and aerodynamics... i am not a big fan of. For the simple fact: it limits designchoices... big time. Since you have to put your thrusters at the furthes point from CoM and have wings to be effective there isn't any way to circumvent that. So design is set. Also that your vessel is more effektive when shaped like a dart is pretty much disappointing. That makes everything SV like look like todays boring all-the-same fighter jet designs. Some might find that exciting but i like the more creative ways. Things like asymmetrical designs like star wars millenium falcon, or every ship in the star citizen universe are a thousand times more interesting to me as any f-22 sh!t fracking boring fighter. Sounds frustrated? Yeah kind of. I remember when the game first pitched and 7n the vid you saw SVs with only backwards facing thrusters takingvoff and landing vertical. Then they said there will be thrusters in all directions needed and itvwas disappointing. Especially when they said they don't want you having to build big ugly thruster phallanx in every direction to make a vessel that flies good.... talking about broken promises right there. And now we have physics heavily influence design. To me it looks like it is time to rethink thruster mechanics and RCS mechanic to have an alternativ ways to build without wings and thrusters on every corner. - Maybe RCS and wing blocks share the same functionality but exclude each others. - Thrusters being modular and endine blocks define the force applied while nozzle blocks define the direction, no matter the size - having directional/rotating thrusternoozles - HVs could have all force applied thru ground repulsor unit type hover engines with thrusters only being bossters May work to be done. But hey, i didn't call for conplex physics. I wanted a game where it is fun to build, not another engineering game. Eleon, you called it.
Wings aren't a requirement, they're a bonus. Nothing more. Adding them gives you added lift in atmospheric environments, you lose nothing by not having them.
Except for needing more downward faceing thrusters that prowide the same lift, correct? Wings technical let you lift off the ground without downward facing thrusters, just not in a vertical way.
No. You need the exact same amount of thrusters you needed in 10.5 or any earlier version. In fact, if anything you need less thrusters now that they all got a massive thrust boost and even a brick produces lift on it's underside so any ship recieves lift whether it has wings or not. Wings only let you lift off the ground if they're big enough relative to the size and weight of your ship and the atmospheric density of the planet you're on.
