Range change

Cosmopyr

A nasty symptom of the fast ship movement is that we've come to the point where the set range of weapons are useless because a ship with more engines can lug shots much farther than their normal range. This makes it very hard to play rails against fast small cannon walls because the fast wall and go back and forth out of range of the rail lugging shots at it and effectively making their small cannons longer ranged than the other ship's rail.

The solution? On top of the current time based death add a death event upon traveling their range relative to the static world. This does cause some issues with shots having a very short life at high speeds but it is the best solution to the whole issue of the current set ranges being nullified.

Equalizer

Cosmopyr A major issue with a death event according to distance traveled relative to the static world:

If a ship is chasing another ship at high speed the ship being chased will be able to hit the ship chasing it but the chasing ship will not be able to hit the ship it is chasing.

Walt

Why is this a better solution that nerfing thrusters or buffing projectile speed?

Cosmopyr

Equalizer Very true, just brainstorming on ways to get rid of the issue of thrust extending range. Maybe it's about distance from the origin ship's current position?

Walt This isn't really a better solution but just one of the many changes that should be made to bring down the ultralight meta.

Northerner

Wouldn't buffing the projectile speed only compound the problem? Not only would you out range the enemy but your shots are now harder too dodge.

Nerfing thrusters might be fix it depends on how hard you nerf them.

It would be nice if we had thrusters that were really good at moving heavy ships but had a slow max speed, so it wouldn't send a light ship flying but it would move a heavy ship just fine. And vice versa with a thruster with a high top speed but it's speed was drastically reduced the heavier the ship was

We would still have ultra lights but, heavier ships wouldn't be completely out classed like they currently are.

Walt

Northerner Wouldn't buffing the projectile speed only compound the problem? Not only would you out range the enemy but your shots are now harder too dodge.

No. The range extension that projectiles receive when fired from moving ships is basically Ship Velocity x Bullet Lifetime. So if you increase projectile speed (and don't increase range), the bullet will have a lower lifetime and thus receive less range extension.

Northerner It would be nice if we had thrusters that were really good at moving heavy ships but had a slow max speed, so it wouldn't send a light ship flying but it would move a heavy ship just fine. And vice versa with a thruster with a high top speed but it's speed was drastically reduced the heavier the ship was

I'm not sure how the physics of that would work. It certainly wouldn't be realistic.

I'm trying to do something sort of like that with ramp up times. Larger, more surface are efficient thrusters (useful on larger ships) have longer ramp up times. That impacts maneuverability though, not top speed.