Hi,

I don't know if this idea has been suggested before, but I think it would be fairly fun to be able to boost in directions by holding boost + W/S/A/D. Yes, it would make it much harder to hit people, but it would also keep people in eachothers' faces allowing for much more intense combat.

I disagree. Hitting people with flares would become nigh-impossible unless you nearly issued on them at the same time, netting you more damage (and please keep in mind that I don't really like dumbfire, expendable ammunition-based weaponry. which is why I use almost exclusively pure energy weapons).

There was another suggestion that went in a slightly similar direction, and I could agree with that. The gist of it was, you can use your lateral acceleration (please, let's not start discussing how it works) whilst boosting, but it would be less useful, perhaps half the force it exerts at normal cruise speeds.

But then again, in real life, by that time, ships would prolly be outfitted to be as agile as possible.

Oh also as a suggestion to acceleration, when rotating it takes a moment to accel to full speed(rotating not like pitch and yaw but on the z-axis from the players perspective) but when you let go of the key it stops instantly. You could call it a bug but I would like it to either start instantly too or stop over a short time like acceling. That's how it would be realisticlly and should be, right?

Realism is not really the aim of this game...

I can only imagine the strain to the ship's frame when boosting sideways... unless you would introduce some kind of "overthrust" with a chance of breakdown, I don't see that happening.

For all sorts of reasons, I do not think ships should generally have directional boost abilities. However, it would be cool if a ship or two could do it. [Yes, I know it needs a real set of textures...]

icewyng: what strain?
There is no air resistance, so besides inertia, we have no effect that would hinder the redirecting force (since gravity can be neglected). The strain that would result on an aircraft if you suddenly applied lateral thrust is mostly due to the surrounding medium - air, which is rather inconsequential in deeper space.

Inertia is plenty :P

I think I was a bit vague on what I meant (guess I played way too many boardgames for my own good!)

I meant more along structural damage. Usually, side thrusters are built to change direction of a ship, not accelerate/decelerate. Unless you let ppl "redline" the thrusters for a short period that, over the limit, damages the thrusters, I don't think directional boosts should be allowed. 1 ships or 2 could be good though, but you need good background for it (an UIT prototype using a magnetic field of some sort, that could permit boosts in all directions. Of course, it would be a small ship).

My model simply has engines pointing in multiple directions. :)

I like LostCommander's idea of a specific ship or two that is specially designed for this purpose. Maybe a scout/spy ship/drone that is very fast and can boost in multiple directions and can fit two batteries. Maybe in addition to that an advanced version that also has one small port for a weapon.

I agree that rotation should be more realistic. Yes, I know, realism doesn't seem to have much of a place in this game, but I would like to see more of it.

Agreed. It would be nice to have a small, maneuverable (sp?) ship. it should be in the light fighters category. would be nice.

You spelled it right. There's more than one way to spell that anyway.

Yes about a faster, more maneuverable light fighter, but for something this fast I was thinking more that the ship is sacrificing its fighting/hauling abilities for pure speed and maneuverability. This would be a ship for spying, not for fighting.

For fighters, I want to see the ability to strip down the armor to practically nothing to gain a significant edge in speed and maneuverability. The idea in this thread is best suited to a scouting/reconnaisance ship.

Sacrificing mass (including armor) and cargo space for speed would make sense. of course, it would have paper thin armor and one small port.

It would be well suited for recon, go in, check the area and get out. The S port would be to house a weapon to keep ships away if needed. I like the idea of such a ship.

The ship would be -/+ 3000Kg mass ... how about 260 turbo speed?

No, you cannot sacrifice cargo space for speed! You are in space - the volume of something is totally irrelevant to its mass and acceleration.

The ship would weigh less than 3000kg and ... you are missing the point of what directional engines would do! It would KILL the turbo speed - 180 tops - because the mass of the boosting engines would be split 5 ways instead of all directed to the rear... Something that could directionally boost would have to be a light defensive fighter -- there is no point other than dodging to boost in any direction other than forward.

A scout ship has NO need for dodging thrust because it has almost NO reason to be so close to the enemy. A scout ship needs a high maximum turbo speed and low drain (to remain in monitoring distance and eventually escape).

Actually, I always wanted to have directionally-applicable boost, perhaps as a high-end option or limited to specific ships. I'd be very cautious about approaching it now though, to avoid imbalancing things too much. (note, for anyone who panics, no this is not anything I'm working towards at present.. I have a lot of other stuff going on, but it is something I always thought might be "neat".. I dunno how well it would work in practice).

Edited the post to make it less insulting.

Please note that English isn't my first language, so I'm a little fuzzy on the technical terms. Please indulge me.

Shape: Inertia could be plenty, but shouldn't. If it were [enough to tear a ship apart], the ship designer(s) would have made a grave error.

Ideally, the thrust vector contains the center of mass of the ship, or points toward/away from it. I boldly assume that any ship designer worth her or his salt would use sufficiently strong materials do disallow breaking of the ship structure (both forced rupture and rupture due to varying stress) within the given parameters.

Also, to split hares (I love mincemeat):
As soon as you introduce directional boosters, you would have a way to accelerate/decelerate the ship in any given direction the boosters could synthesize. With boosters arranged to comply with a cartesian coordinate system, you would be able to generate any given thrust vector.

Besides, I agree with LostCommander on mass/engine distribution.

I was only trying to help...

sorry commander, guess I didn't get the point. anyway, the point is such a small ship with directional boost would be great.

"the point is such a small ship with directional boost would be great" - Now that I can agree with. :)

Ah excellent. I'd like to see some form of directional boost -- ship specific or not -- added to vendetta some day. :)