I was moving some samo in a moth the other day and it got me thinking about how thrust to mass works in the game. The obvious problem with having a huge cargo ship is the thrust it requires to accelerate and turn when fully loaded. If a ship is given too much thrust it will move like a vult when empty. What if you implemented a variable thrust model for large cargo vessels? In game it could be sold as a safety feature. It would work by allowing the thrust to increase based on the amount of cargo in the hold. The large cargo ship flies like a cargo ship when empty, and when fully loaded, it's engines are given a thrust increase proportional (minus something. Still want the cargo ship to fly like it has a load) to the mass of it's cargo up to a certain point. This would allow huge cargo ships to stay balanced, but also make them possible. You could implement a drain increase per cu of cargo to compensate, further balancing the ship. If a large cargo ship is too convenient, everyone will use them (as we've seen with the moth). But a huge cargo ship would become more vulnerable as it loads up, making teamwork and protection a requirement.

It will also make a really fun target!!

[stamp of rejecton]

So you want cargo ships to be more cumbersome when empty and far less cumbersome than they currently are while full? No thanks.

Read again, read the WHOLE POST, and try to resist the urge to be snotty.

Quote from my first post: "...and when fully loaded, it's engines are given a thrust increase proportional (minus something. Still want the cargo ship to fly like it has a load) to the mass of it's cargo up to a certain point.".

I want cargo ships to be more cumbersome when full, but in order to allow a cargo ship to haul large amounts of cargo (say, 5000+cus) they will have to have large amounts of thrust. If they retain that thrust when empty, they will fly like light fighters. Im suggesting a way to make massive cargo haulers possible and balanced.

Doesn't upping the thrust and mass have the same effect and is easier to implement (makes more sense)?
That's how the moth can carry much without slowing down too badly already. And it's still crap for combat when unloaded.

The other trade ships could be adjusted this way too. I never liked that centaurs, atlasses and friends are so effective combat ships anyway. <.<

Ah right, I forgot about that Spuck. Give the thing enough mass and enough thrust, and adding 5000cus of cargo doesn't really effect it. good thought.

spuck's right you know

I think in the case of the really large transports such as the Divinian Heavy Transport mentioned in the backstory that I would expect the ship to handle exactly the way it does without cargo--no benefit, no disadvantage.

Given that a ship the size of the DHT would have an arbitrarily large amount of thrust (and a mass to go with it), the actual acceleration wouldn't be affected as much as a moth might be. I'm imagining (given its 3km length) a mass of about 240000 kg and a thrust of at least 1200 kN.

Let's give it a large number of cu... say... 1200.

Now, we stock that (fully) with several cargo types and compare the acceleration to being empty:

Unloaded: 1200000N / (240000kg) = 5 m/s²
SynthWood (1cu): 1200000N / (240000kg + 1200 x 20kg) = 4.545 m/s²
Luxury Goods (1cu): 1200000N / (240000kg + 1200 x 80kg) = 3.571 m/s²
Purified Xith (1cu): 1200000N / (240000kg + 1200 x 500kg) = 1.429 m/s²
Medical Supplies: 1200000N / (240000kg + 600 x 150kg) = 3.636 m/s²
Ion/Plasma Core (3cu): 1200000N / (240000kg + 400 x 600kg) = 2.5 m/s²

I'd say that that would make sense for something the size of the DHT. Perhaps up the thrust a bit more so that the numbers even out a bit.

For most of the cargo ships (Centaur, Atlas, Behemoth), having a large thrust & mass works well. But for the Marauder, IMO that doesn't work as well, because the Marauder is a light to medium ship, not a heavy ship. It would be possible to change it to a heavy ship, but that would really change the Marauder's feel. Also, eventually the Marauder is supposed to have expandable cargo space, and once that happens there's really no way a static thrust would work well; if the thrust/mass ratio is too low, then when you add more cargo modules & load them full, you won't be able to move, but if it's too high, then when you're empty you'll be too zippy.

So, for most cargo ships I'd say making them heavy ships (high thrust & mass) works very well, but for the Marauders I do want to see some type of dynamic thrust or mass reduction. See this thread for what I'd thought about: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10737

The problem is that weapon weight comes into play, too. I.e., if you make the Marauder heavier and give it more thrust, it will become a deadly sunflare or gauss platform, because the weapons weight becomes irrelevant.

I think ships should be specialized for their use. If you want a general-purpose ship like the Maud, you'll have to understand that it's a jack-of-all-trades, and a master-of-none.

Behemoth is good for hauling cargo but sucks as a combat platform. The only difference is it's straight-line turbo thrust modification, which is kinda what andreas mentioned. Doesn't one of the mauds have this modification as well? I forget which one.

I agree that the Maud should be a jack-of-all-trades, and a master-of-none; however I'd say that in its current state, it's not, it's a lazy-jack-of-no-trade. The thing is, in order for a jack-of-all-trades to ever be worth considering compared to more specialized ships, it needs to be able to do its multiple trades at the same time - and the Maud can't do that. The Maud's OK at fighting, and it's OK at carrying cargo - but try fighting while carrying cargo in a Maud, and you're not going to succeed at either trade. Currently, the Centaurs are MUCH better multi-purpose ships than Mauds, because they can handle the added mass of any cargo much better, and therefore don't take as much of a penalty in combat when they're carrying cargo. That's what my cargo mass reduction for Mauds suggestion would address: it would allow Mauds to fight while carrying cargo without it being suicide. They still wouldn't be master of either trade, but they could do both at the same time, which would be why they would be worthwhile. Right now because they can't do both simultaneously, I really don't consider them to be worthwhile; other ships can do either combat or trade better (even simultaneously, the Centaur much outclasses the Maud), so what's the point of ever using the Maud?

Increasing the mass & thrust could also make the Maud a better multi-purpose ship, but as that would make weapon mass have less effect, as well as cargo mass, it would really change the feel of the Maud. It would be a heavy ship, instead of the light ship it is now. I don't want that, I like the Maud as a light ship, so I prefer my suggestion of cargo mass reduction, as then the Maud would be a light ship that can handle cargo. Also, if/when the Maud gets expandable cargo, cargo mass reduction is a much better solution than increasing its mass and thrust.

The Tunguska MMaud has the higher turbo thrust than regular thrust, like the Behemoth; it's possible the other Mauds (and other ships) do as well, but I only know the MMaud & Moth. In the thread I linked above I did several comparisons, including the turbo acceleration of the MMaud and Moth. I think that was before the Moth had its slight nerfing, but I think only the max turbo speed was nerfed, so the acceleration numbers should be the same (sort-of; in VO acceleration approaches 0 as the velocity approaches its mass, so the top speed nerf also nerfs the acceleration, but as the calculations I did don't take that into consideration, they would still be the same.) Anyway: the Moth's turbo acceleration is much better than the MMauds.

/me pokes his head and whispers "utility ports solve everything if you think really hard about it (think twice if you are roguelazer)".

/me poofs.

Incarnate has said that he doesn't want to add utility ports, he wants to keep everything in the small & large ports we have now, as then there's more freedom for customizing ships. The one real problem I see with that is that the current ships (possibly excepting the Rag and the Hornet) really only have enough ports for weapons: if you have to give up more than 1/3 of your firepower in order to equip non-weapon utilities, then I don't expect most of our players to be using those utilities much. But that's easily solved, just double the number of ports on all the current ships once utilities start being added.

I don't see how utility ports really apply in this discussion, but that's probably because I'm too tired to think really hard. Bedtime...