FTL and Rotation Tweaks

Ohm

Hi Walt,

So after pretty much clearing my little corner of the galaxy in bounty mode, I've noticed a couple of things that I think should be part of the core game.

The first one is a slight tweak to FTL jump fuel usage calculations. It feels pretty good with a small ship, but with larger ships, even with 100% efficiency, it gets really ridiculous. My suggestion would be to add perhaps a flat cost to jump per FTL drives. Say 20 fuel per FTL so a 5 FTL ship requires 100 fuel to jump even an inch away. In turn, I would make it cost less fuel for the distance of the jump.

The point is to keep short distance jumps roughly in the same ballpark, but make long range jumps with larger ships a bit more affordable because currently you get into a sort of catch-22 as ship size increases since it requires a crazy amount of fuel. It often costs more than your total fuel capacity so you make the ship a bit bigger to accommodate more FTL drives, but then the cost increases even more...

The other issue is that I think ships can rotate too fast. It's way too easy to keep enemies in front of you regardless of ship size/shape and even thrust capabilities. From a physics' perspective, it sort of makes sense, although rotation could realistically be an issue for either long or wide ships. The edges would experience significant forces from the rotation, not to mention the crew.

Anyways, long story short, I would require an exponential amount of thrust as mass and size increases to turn ships around themselves. This would encourage different designs and give smaller ships a bit of an edge in picking where they engage larger ships from. It might also be interesting to just make attitude control a bit harder in general so that you have to focus on it a bit more if you are worried an enemy will try to exploit a weak spot.

Other than that, I'd just like it if the UI showed a bit more information, especially regarding thrust and rotation. It can be quite hard to judge how fast your ship really is.

Otherwise, thanks for this amazing game, it's a lot of fun already!

Walt

Ohm My suggestion would be to add perhaps a flat cost to jump per FTL drives.

Do you mean replace the FTL efficiency mechanic with a flat cost? The reason FTL efficiency exists is to make it so that it matters where you put your FTL Drives. I'd like to keep that.

Also, how far are your FTL jumps? Maybe I should reduce how much distance factors into the cost equation.

Ohm The other issue is that I think ships can rotate too fast.

The way thruster physics works, there's not really a way to solve this without making ships move slower as well. Thrusters simply exert force in a single direction, and the physics engine takes care of the rest.

Ohm Other than that, I'd just like it if the UI showed a bit more information, especially regarding thrust and rotation. It can be quite hard to judge how fast your ship really is.

Yeah this is on my list, thanks!

lucadena

Walt The way thruster physics works, there's not really a way to solve this without making ships move slower as well. Thrusters simply exert force in a single direction, and the physics engine takes care of the rest.

Does the physics engine take into account the distance of the engine from the center of mass of the relative axis?
In reality if the engine is on the center of mass of the axis relative to the engine, the ship should not be able to turn at all, instead an engine far from the center of mass should be more efficient (i think in english it is referred as "twisting moment")
For simplicity you should use a percentage of the engine(s) power to make the ship turn.

Ohm

For the FTL drives, no I meant to have two components to the calculation. One flat cost per drive as you said, but also a distance-based variable. I just suggested to add a flat cost and lower the distance based factor as it currently makes it near impossible to reach other systems. Even jumping half a system away quickly becomes problematic.

As for the thruster thing, that's a shame. After some testing, it quickly became clear to me that there is absolutely no way to use agility as an advantage in a 1v1. My almost 1,5 million credit hulk of armor and guns can easily keep my cheap, low mass thruster stick in front of it (or whichever direction it wants to face the enemy) and shred it to pieces. I tried both using the back engines to broadside it and strafing, both close and far away and it just tracked me perfectly.

The closest thing you can have to flanking an enemy 1v1 is taking out enough thrusters/control rooms first, but on larger ships this is highly impractical and smaller ships are long dead before you can really reduce their mobility.

Walt

This is the current FTL cost equation:

(0.05 + 0.05 * (distance^0.75)) * mass / efficiency

I welcome proposals for changing it.

Ohm

I'm no math nor coding wizard and looking through the files for parts, it seems mass is hard coded? Is it a simple matter of number of blocks, regardless of type? I mean, armor blocks have density values, but that's it.

Anyways, I would suggest something along the lines of:

Number of FTL Drives * 20 + (0.05 * (distance^0.75)) * (0.75 * mass) / efficiency
Alternatively : Number of FTL Drives * 20 + (0.05 * (distance^0.85)) * (0.55 * mass) / efficiency

This results in a slight reduction across the board as far as my tests go. Having a flat cost per jump per FTL punishes mainly large ships for making many jumps and ships with more FTLs than needed (usually to compensate for poor placement) or simply to raise fuel caps. Second one obviously punishes you more for distance than mass, but still seems to result in a net decrease in fuel costs. It's really hard to tell without knowing exactly how mass and distance are calculated.

At any rate, such a system still makes FTL placement matter, just makes it a bit easier in the endgame to warp to other systems I would think by reducing the crazy fuel costs.

Walt

Ohm it seems mass is hard coded?

No, parts can specify a Density, though most parts use the default of 1. (Armor is 3).

herbdog1

I have been following your idea, and I think you are on the right track. I thought the FTL efficiency could be managed differently. Here is my idea:

{ (Fixed FTL Drive Cost X Number of FTL Drives) + (Fixed Distance Cost X Distance } + ( High Penalty Cost Reduced by Percentage of Efficiency)

In my idea the fixed drive cost and distance costs would both be low, allowing in-system jumps to be low in cost. Longer jumps between systems would then cost more and be fueled by the majority of a system's fuel bountys. The efficiency of FTL drive placement would be similar to the system we have now. Mass would be treated as a HIGH fixed cost generated by the number and type of components. This massive penalty would be reduced by the efficency of the FTL drives. For example:
1. Cost of 1000 fuel added by mass reduced by 100% to 0 fuel cost due to 100% FTL drive efficiency.
2. Cost of 1000 fuel added by mass reduced by 75% to 250 fuel cost due to 75% FTL drive efficiency.

This would mean a penalty for large ships with less than 100% efficiency and fixed penalties for having more drives than needed, while leaving smaller ships free to travel larger distances with less concern for fuel. Naturally, the fuel cost would need to be balanced; I only used such large numbers for mass penalties to make my point.

Ohm

herbdog1 I don't dislike your formula, although it's mostly linear. What I don't get is that you keep talking about mass and it's nowhere to be found in your example formula. Is it supposed to be part of the High Penalty Cost ? So it's a penalty cost per mass units? But it's mitigated by efficiency? I'm not too sure how that would work is the thing. With 100% efficiency you have no penalty for mass?

Note: I edited my previous post as the forums ate some characters (namely asterisks) because they are used for formatting.

herbdog1

I did not include mass as I do not fully understand the formulas the developer uses for calculation. I assumed the mass calculations would be transferred over to this idea either unaltered or tweaked slightly. Reducing the penalty for mass entirely with FTL drive coverage efficiency might be too unbalanced, I agree. I only wanted to get the idea for the system out there, leaving the details to more experienced code users.

Ohm

lucadena Pretend that they have gimbaling? I kinda like that, although it's fun that the way engines are placed defines movement. Although, they seem to magically have thrust in multiple directions already for some reason. Thinking about it, engines may already have a percentage of their max value available in other directions. I dunno.

Anyways, if that kind of thing implies making changes to the engine, that might never happen.

Walt

lucadena Does the physics engine take into account the distance of the engine from the center of mass of the relative axis?

Yes, the physics engine is relatively accurate in that regard.

gracefool

Ohm It seems to me the thrusters have a small degree of gimbaling, although the nozzles don't animate to reflect that.

Re the rotation issue, I think limiting it is a good idea both for fun and realism. The solution is simple: Set a limit to the allowed centripetal acceleration. Ships will refuse to use more than a fraction of available thrust for rotation if to do so would break this limit, because it would put too much structural stress on the ship and cause the crew to die, blackout, or at least be unable to walk. Set the actual limit according to gameplay, not realism - but the point is that having a limit is absolutely realistic.

Mc2

Ha 😃
I pointed same issue about turning of big ship, much later :S
But at least, im not the only one who see its strange.