Basic idea: mines, missiles, and rockets have actual mass so that as you drop/fire them, your ship looses the requisite mass. For the most part you would start out with much more mass but if you use or eject all your ordinance you end up with much less (only the weight of the actual launch mechanism).

An Eject Ordinance command would need to be added so that you can quickly dump your ordinance as needed. Granularity of control could range from individual weapons (5 flares), all weapons of a certain type (all missiles), or all ordinance (an emergency dump of all ejectable weapons). In all cases, ejecting weapons takes less time than chain firing them. These dropped weapons would be damaged by the ejection procedure and, therefore, could not be used to reload.

Don't know if this is possible but thought it would give the use of these items a little more realism and provide more tactical choices. Spam firing at the beginning of each fight is probably the worst temptation but if you are part of a long engagement or have a particular objective that will require those weapons you will have to constantly evaluate your situation and whether to drop or keep those heavy weapons.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pFic2g4R9ncfGTWtilryGCg

A quick pass at adding mass to mines/missiles/rockets. Numbers are very rough and aren't really based on anything so don't base your judgment on them - this is just to give you an idea of what I had in mind.

I think this is a great idea, but would firing a rocket then push your ship back slightly? Since cargo already weights something, wouldn't jettisoning your cargo while on turbo give you a speed boost? If your trading in a moth and a pirate hails you, if you drop your cargo you can shoot away at 300m/s and the pirate can pick the cargo up and sell it.

Ordinance of this type is typically given a small nudge out of its launcher before the weapon ignites its own engine (if it has one) away from the ship itself so there typically should be no recoil.

In no case would the use or the ejection of these weapons result in a speed boost; the performance increase would be to the acceleration and maneuverability of the ship as its thrust/mass and torque/mass ratios increase - just the same as with ejecting cargo. You won't necessarily go faster but you'll get to your top speed in less time.

This has been suggested before, in various forms. The prerequisite for that would be hat launchers weighed less, but still a substantial amount, so that a certain amount of balance could be kept. Otherwise, this could greatly encourage flare or missle spamming, afterwards enabling the offender to scram much more easily.

Still, I think it's a good idea in principle and would welcome its advent.

I thought this ideas was too obvious to not have its own thread but didn't find it after a quick look around.

I have noticed that these weapon systems are listed solely as "launchers" (except for the mines) so I'm comfortable with the concept that the actual ordinance masses little enough comparatively that they have no impact on the ships performance.

However, aside from the missile/rocket spamming mentioned, I thought it would provide pilots with some interesting tactical choices as combat becomes more cooperative and complex. Would add a nice touch of realism but I'm not really wedded to this idea.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/19523#244740 would be nice though.

I am using real physics for the speed boost in ejecting cargo, not considering game play.

If you are in a moth with 30,000kg of cargo and you have accelerated to 160m/s, you have 9,600,000 kg*m/s momentum. When you drop your cargo, it is decreasing you mass, but retaining your momentum. So now your moth is at 320m/s, but will slow down to the 160m/s gradually, effectively a speed boost.

I make the mistake in most of my posts of letting the readers think a little bit for themselves.

Check your physics - you don't gain the dropped cargo's momentum. Perhaps this will help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_momentum#Conservation_of_momentum

If VO is acting as you say than that needs to be fixed. Cheers.

Yeah, your physics are off. If you drop your cargo with that momentum, the cargo will take an amount of momentum away equal to its mass. You'd essentially have to be firing cargo out of the back of your ship for any increase in speed.

Real-life physics cannot be applied in-game. That is pretty much final... the in-game physics work the way they do, and for all intents and purposes, they work fine.

Again, I should have stated we are not shooting cargo. I need to make 37 page responses covering however you eject your cargo.

Actually in-game physics would allow for a sudden surge in acceleration in the case of a sudden release of great chunks of cargo, since the same force (from the gravitic engine) would apply to a smaller mass.

You should at least slow down when picking up cargo -- and since cargo has no velocity, dropping is effectively shooting it out the back....

Starpwn: agreed on momentum conservation. I suggest a 1/v speed decay curve

There appears to be some misunderstanding about the way cargo works when it is dropped/acquired, mostly from the very necessary physics fudge that was done on it. Namely, that cargo can't move. Realistically, all jettisoned cargo should continue to move in the exact same manner as the ship that dropped it, with whatever slight course difference the jettison caused. In actuality in VO, all cargo comes to a dead stop the moment it's dropped. This was necessary to make it possible to pick up cargo, as it would almost always be moving far too quickly to catch up to it (thanks to the fudge-o-rama "make it playable" acceleration/velocity mashup physics) if it retained momentum properly.

Thus, the momentum that should have been retained by the cargo just vanishes, in clear violation of the conservation of momentum. The only way cargo could be at a dead stop realistically would be if it gave all its momentum to the jettisoning ship. This is where Starpwn is correct- since the cargo is not moving relative to the sector, the momentum has to all be with the ship, and with the same momentum but lower mass, speed has to increase to properly conserve it. The cargo must have either imparted all its momentum to the ship (impossible, as cargo is just a box and has no thrust), or (this is where Starpwn is incorrect) the ship did fire the cargo such that the cargo is at a relative stop to the sector (thus gaining a quantity of momentum equal to that used to stop the cargo).

Of course, this is VO, not reality. Newton spins in his grave every time we drop or pick up cargo. Ditto for whenever we approach our "maximum velocity". Thus, through differences in real physics and VO physics, we've managed to completely sidetrack a discussion of what is a rather interesting idea. The discussions should be on how is would affect gameplay, which is the only thing that matters in all honesty.

So, all physics real or imaginary aside, what do you think about the idea. Jettisoned cargo that gives the jettisoning ship a temporary velocity boost- is it a good addition to the gameplay?

Well, this thread was a proposal on giving ordinance mass and how their use would affect ship performance so the physics discussion is pretty relevant. While the physics in VO has obviously been adjusted for gameplay, it still has to be internally self-consistent for it to work. In other words, pick a frame of reference and stick to it.

My original answer to Starpwn's first post was a direct answer to his question and was based on already observed behavior in VO as it related to my original idea - namely, that dropping mass from a ship did not effect the ship in any other way except as noted. I did not mean to be snarky, if that's how it came across, but I try to keep things simple so my first reaction was to *not* muck about with the current state of VO's physics system and having ships instantaneously acquire speed as it ejected objects and lost mass would have required just that.

In any case, arguing that conservation of momentum demands that a ship when it drops mass should get an instantaneous speed boost (which would violate conservation of momentum) is just confusing.

That said, IRS's post sums up things nicely and I would only add that the original post accepts VO's physics as is. Oh, and:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/19523#244740

You don't know what you are talking about. Ships obviously do shoot cargo... Maybe it would be less confusing if cargo experienced substantial space-friction but were otherwise normal tangible vendetta object thingies -- so they could be knocked around but would eventually arrest themselves. Or maybe they could have a max speed of 1 m/s. But, when opposing each other, game play always trumps immersion in my book.

The original proposal is essentially a rocket buffing which doesn't sound like that much fun to me but I'm mildly bigoted about these things.