about upcoming change to thrusters.

[cy414]

i read that thrusters are getting changed to volume rather than surface area, but could a combined system be used?

 

if it was a system that was volume x surface area in a set direction for acceleration and volume x block depth in direction for top speed it would add in interesting twist to  designing that wasnt driving players to either stack for surface area or make borg cubes for volume.

[SageThe13th]

Yes.  This is the method I always supported.  It made sense to use the surface area.  It's just that this also caused game breaking problems.  Using volume as a base and adding in the area of each face as bonus to that direction makes the most sense and gives us the best of both worlds.

[DivineEvil]

I agree. It might also be necessary to add a safe-guard into the formula, that would prevent overly flat thrusters with workable volume, such as an exponential reduction of thrust if the thruster face is too large compared to the depth of a block in the same direction. Still, it might over-complicate stuff.

[cy414]

I agree. It might also be necessary to add a safe-guard into the formula, that would prevent overly flat thrusters with workable volume, such as an exponential reduction of thrust if the thruster face is too large compared to the depth of a block in the same direction. Still, it might over-complicate stuff.

good point. maybe determine acceleration and speed with 2 equations for surface area in direction X block depth in that direction?

[Thundercraft]

i read that thrusters are getting changed to volume rather than surface area, but could a combined system be used?...

I agree. It might also be necessary to add a safe-guard into the formula, that would prevent overly flat thrusters with workable volume...

 

Guys! Are you just reading about upcoming changes and you already have suggestions on how to further nerf or "safeguard" Thrusters?  ::) Or have you done like me and opted into the beta branch to test out the changes first hand?

 

If you haven't even tried it, suggesting further changes to upcoming beta branch changes would be like posting a movie recommendation based on hearsay or watching a single trailer.

 

Earlier, several people complained about how Thrusters worked. The dev listened and now Thrusters have been seriously nerfed. (See this post in the beta branch topic for before and after screenshots for an idea of how much it's been nerfed.)

 

This change is new to the latest beta branch. It's not even part of an official update, yet. And, already... more thruster suggestions? Please, at least try it out, first.

 

As for the idea of preventing players from creating thin sheets of Thrusters... Why? What purpose does that serve? With the way thrusters are in the beta branch, we need a larger volume of Thrusters than the volume of ship Engines just to get something that handles better than a flying bathtub made of uranium.

 

The ship I'm designing now has a much larger volume of Thrusters than Engines. Yet, I'm still forced to create these Thrusters in thin sheets in order to have a decent Brake Thrust. Doing it that way comes with a disadvantage, though: Thrusters in the form of X-Y thin sheets have noticeably less Pitch / Yaw / Roll thrust than if the same thruster volume was a single Thruster. (This can be verified by using 'Merge Selected Blocks' to combine them into a single block.)

 

P.S.: I'm thinking that those of us who spend a lot of time designing ships will tend to get tired of having to redesign them every time the way Thrusters or Engines work is radically changed.

[cy414]

As for the idea of preventing players from creating thin sheets of Thrusters... Why? What purpose does that serve? With the way thrusters are in the beta branch, we need a larger volume of Thrusters than the volume of ship Engines just to get something that handles better than a flying bathtub made of uranium.

 

The ship I'm designing now has a much larger volume of Thrusters than Engines. Yet, I'm still forced to create these Thrusters in thin sheets in order to have a decent Brake Thrust. Doing it that way comes with a disadvantage, though: Thrusters in the form of X-Y thin sheets have noticeably less Pitch / Yaw / Roll thrust than if the same thruster volume was a single Thruster. (This can be verified by using 'Merge Selected Blocks' to combine them into a single block.)

clearly, FrOm WhAt im ReAdIng ;), its not working then.

 

its not a matter of "preventing", its a matter of having a system that means its not needed to do something as counter intuitive as as having layers of thin thrusters blowing through each other to create more thrust than if you hit merge to create a single block.

 

P.S.: I'm thinking that those of us who spend a lot of time designing ships will tend to get tired of having to redesign them every time the way Thrusters or Engines work is radically changed.

this is early access/open beta. the point is for players to find and respond to things so they can be changed to be better in the actual release.

kinda missing the whole point if you are arguing against changes during a period dedicated to finding and changing things.