So, I love aerial battles and my favorite science fiction vessels are almost always small starfighters, like the X-Wing or the Viper. It's no coincidence, then, that I instantly fell in love with the UCH Dart. I have but just recently started playing Empyrion, and as soon as I stumbled upon that wreckage, I put everything I had into getting it back into working order. I've reiterated on it several times since then, giving it a full steel frame, fitting larger back-facing thrursters and giving it gattling guns to fight off small threats. It's been a great experience! However, I felt that, while Empyrion's aerial fights can be fun, they almost never hit that sweet "cinematic" spot you would find in games like Combat Flight Simulator or X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (yeah, I'm that old). I thought that it might have something to do with Empyrion's "mandatory" 3-axis, 2-way thrusters. You never run any risk of falling or losing your target from overshooting them, since you always have a set of thrusters to save your butt. Besides, SVs don't work without thrusters facing up, down, left, right, back and front, right? Right??? Well, my Dart was standing there, and all I needed to do was to turn some thrusters off and see how it would handle. And BOY, was I surprised. At first, I simply turned off the downwards-facing thrusters, and that makes almost no difference. You can't press C to go down, but there are other ways to do that, such as turning your nose down and flying in that direction, or, y'know, pressing I to let your ship freefall if you're in a planet's atmosphere. Then I turned off the side-facing thrusters, and that also worked surprisingly well. You can't strafe, obviously, but you can still turn your ship or, even better, bank it to the side and hit the gas. Then I turned off the front-facing thruster, and that simply makes it so you can't properly brake, or move directly backwards. Then I finally turned off the upwards-facing thrusters and... I hit a wall. While you can point your nose down with just the back-facing thruster, you can't point it UP, to go for a running take-off. I was about to settle for that, since the ship was already pretty "dogfight-y", and content myself with the knowledge that an SV can work well enough with just back and up thrusters, but then I remembered what RCS actually stand for. The system is almost never used in very small ships in the game's current build, since the thrusters can do what it does with less CPU overhead, but if it could provide me with just enough torque to lift my ship's nose... AND BOY DOES IT EVER! I installed a RCS in my Dart, and with it I could easily pull off a running take-off, without the use of upwards-facing thrusters! Not only was I running a SV with just backwards-facing thrusters and a RCS, I was also having a blast with the dogfight-like physics - point your ship's nose to where you want to go, and keep accelerating or you'll fall! I don't think the setup will perform too well against the currently established designs (there is a distinct advantage to be had on being able to strafe towards any direction and braking at a moments notice), but I'm planning on hooking a friend to have a competition of sorts between ships with only those elements (maybe also with a small thruster facing forward, since we don't have functional wings to help us reduce our speed - nor would they work anyways in space). I think it will be fun! Maybe the next step might be setting up an open tournament in the future? Only time will tell. Anyways, seriously, I'm having a blast. Go give this a try! PS: There might even be a real advantage to be had there in the fuel economy department. Huh! I'll test that out. PS2: Could this be used to take off from high gravity planets using only the back engines as well? Hmmmm, it would surely make sense...
I use a sv with 2 rear thrusters and an rcs as my first early game scout ship. Faster than a hv, super cheap, and very fuel efficient. Plus fun to fly.
There are a number of ships in the workshop with the kind of flight mechanics the OP is looking at. I was subbed to some, but the couple I tried to get links for have links that aren't working. (Not sure why they show in my subbed items, but I cannot access the page. Might be a Steam issue.) Most of them look similar to current aircraft designs.
I've tinkered with more configurations and layouts than Avagadro has numbers. I've quite a few fun ships that have only one rear-facing engine and an RCS. Yes, AN, as in one. I know there are plenty of designers out there who can't possibly build a ship without 23 of these, and 60 generators, but I can only feel bad for them. They're missing out on a whole different experience. Glad to hear you're having fun though. That's the only thing that really matters. Whoever has the most fun wins the game.
