Non-linear rotational behavior (easier to rotate decent, harder to rotate fast)

[AstroOwl]

What i am trying to come to is to make achieving at least decent rotation levels easier, but achieving too fast rotation harder, and also, to buff small ships rotation while nerfing the large ships rotation.

 

What is the change, exactly?

Rotational speed in game, if i understand correctly, is w~M/I, where M is applied momentum, and I is the moment of inertia along the corresponding axis.

 

Proposal is to make momentum scale non-lineary, in a way like

 

actual momentum = C*M^(P), where

 

M is momentum actually generated by thrusters and gyros

C,P = constants, C>1, P<1.

C=1,P=1 corresponds to current linear situation.

 

How this would look like at least for some chosen numbers?

If coefficients are chosen properly, this would lead to following:

a) it would become easier to achieve rotation for ships before certain size (than now), and harder - for ships past that size.

b) achieving at least some rotation would become easier, but achieving very high rotation would become harder than now. I mean, when you just start adding gyros/thrusters to your ship, rotation increases faster than in linear case, but as you get past certain level, it becomes harder and harder.

 

 

Below, i show the graphs for the case of C=10, P = 0.89. This is just one of the possible parameters, by making C and P closer to 1, this changes can be made less noticable (or more noticable if P is even lower and C is even higher), or made more noticable just for small/large ships. But here, we set dependency as M(actual)=10*M^(0.89).

 

On this graph, i simulate (more details at the end of post) the scaling (changing size without altering any structure) of the same ship. So, portion of the ship dedicated to thrusters stays the same, but of course, inertia of the ship grows bigger as the size increases, and so do its thrusters.

I used a ship which had 0.36 rad/s @ size of exactly 8 upgrades.

 

Rotation scaling for C=10, P=0.89: grey line. Blue line: linear case (as now in the game).

X - axis: upgrade slots

Y - axis: rotation, rad/s

Ship shape, density, and structure is constant.

 

Here is how non-linear behavior affects ship of same size and inertia, but with varying amount of thrusters.

Linear (blue) vs nonlinear (grey) behavior for the case of ship of size between 7 and 8 slots.

X - axis: more/less thrusters on ship

Y - axis: rotation speed, rad/s.

Achieving ~0.32 is roughly as hard as in linear variant, achieving less rotation is easier than before, achieving more rotation is harder than before.

 

For the case of large, say, 12-slot ship:

Linear (blue) vs nonlinear (grey) behavior for the case of ship of 12-slot-size.

X - axis: more/less thrusters on ship

Y - axis: rotation speed, rad/s.

 

Achieving 0.1 rad/s is ~30% harder

Achieving 0.2 rad/s is ~42% harder

(so, it becomes increasingly harder to achieve faster rotation, and in general, larger ships are nerfed)

 

 

Now, let's look at the case of same parameters, but small (4-slot) ship:

Linear (blue) vs nonlinear (grey) behavior for the case of ship of 4-slot-size.

X - axis: more/less thrusters on ship

Y - axis: rotation speed, rad/s.

 

Achieving 1.5 rad/s requires ~35% less effort

Achieving 0.5 rad/s requires ~43% less effort

(so, it becomes increasingly easier to achieve at least some rotation, and in general, smaller ships are buffed)

 

 

This all was the example for C=10, P = 0.89. But what if we want to play around a little and see what else can be done? I'll show examples for different parameters below the spoiler. Nothing special, actually, just a little more simple graphs.

 

C = 2.10, P=0.95: Large ships are nerfed, while small are almost unchanged

C = 2.6, P=0.96: small ships are buffed, while large are almost unchanged

C = 45, P=0.8: almost like the changes in the very first graph i shown in post, but much more dramatic

 

 

Proposed change is not very realistic, but personally.. this is not a sim. I would like to see an interesting game, even if it means unrealistic changes.

 

Overall, what i want to say is it's really sad to see how some people are struggling to get their ship to at least some rotation, while others see how bad it is that maneuverability is not a limiting factor in creating humongous ships - it's too easy to make anything behave like a fighter, and therefore, certain mechanics, like independent targeting, or rotating turrets instead of ship, are not actually needed in combat.

 

This removes some interest from the game, as for me - and that's why i propose non-linearity of rotation. Thanks.

 

 

 

[Ohm is Futile]

TL;DR: Thrusters and gyros should behave somewhat like hyperspace cores at least in terms of rotation. The requirements should be exponential to increase rotation more, thus making larger ships either less maneuverable or require an ever-increasing amount (percentage) of their volume dedicated to maneuverability at the cost of other potentially more useful internals such as shields, generators, etc.