Forums » Suggestions
Giving launches a little "kick"
Just a quick thought: would be very cool to have a little "kick" happen when launching missiles/rockets/mines - either a tiny momentum hit, random or not, or a slight motion jerk on-screen whether or not it actually impacts ship momentum. Not necessarily realistic but more visceral.
EDIT: A shorter thought: Turbothrust judder (at least for light/medium ships).
EDIT: A shorter thought: Turbothrust judder (at least for light/medium ships).
Yes.
I'd favor a hit in momentum.
Yes. Should be easy to do, right?
I assume this is a "kick" for the person doing the shooting? Obviously there's already some "kick" for the person who gets hit :).
Strictly speaking, self-propelled weapons mounted to, well, aircraft and the like, don't have much or any "kick" back to the originating craft. But, I don't have any problem with adding something in to do that.
The issue would be making it interesting and not annoying.. ie, when you fire swarms you could end up "kicked" all over the place. I don't want to hand-tune the "kick" of all the rockets and missiles, so.. we would need to find some decent "general" numbers or something.
Strictly speaking, self-propelled weapons mounted to, well, aircraft and the like, don't have much or any "kick" back to the originating craft. But, I don't have any problem with adding something in to do that.
The issue would be making it interesting and not annoying.. ie, when you fire swarms you could end up "kicked" all over the place. I don't want to hand-tune the "kick" of all the rockets and missiles, so.. we would need to find some decent "general" numbers or something.
I wasn't looking for anything major. Just something to make the act of launching a munition feel "meatier" along with their sounds - I think even a barely noticeable twitch on-screen would be effective, momentum change or not, but the exact amount would need to be tested. Agreed, you don't want to overdo it or it would be annoying.
On aircraft, most munitions are gravity dropped off rails but think of launching something out of a sub that can't use gravity - you have to actually kick the torpedoes/missiles out of their tubes with compressed air. In space, you wouldn't need much to eject a munition out/off of a launcher but the faster you do it (and I'm assuming in combat you want to do it very quickly), the more of a reaction there will be on the ship. In any case, realistically, you probably wouldn't feel anything at all assuming the use of technology that counters inertia but the "kick" you feel/see could be part of the HUD's feedback system to the user's proprioceptive sense.
Anyway, if you wanted to get fancy, you could scale the response to the mass of the ship so that you really wouldn't feel anything in a heavy ship but would notice something in a light or medium ship.
I am reminded of old Star Trek episodes (ToS) where the Enterprise would give a slight lurch when firing either phasers or photon torpedoes. You wouldn't think such a big ship would jerk like that just from firing its weapons, especially not torpedoes, but there it was. (I believe the technobabble explanation is the large power drain of firing weapons led to a slight lag in the inertial compensators. Go technobabble!) Later incarnations of Star Trek dropped this particular special effects idiosyncrasy but I still think the old episodes were more fun to watch.
On aircraft, most munitions are gravity dropped off rails but think of launching something out of a sub that can't use gravity - you have to actually kick the torpedoes/missiles out of their tubes with compressed air. In space, you wouldn't need much to eject a munition out/off of a launcher but the faster you do it (and I'm assuming in combat you want to do it very quickly), the more of a reaction there will be on the ship. In any case, realistically, you probably wouldn't feel anything at all assuming the use of technology that counters inertia but the "kick" you feel/see could be part of the HUD's feedback system to the user's proprioceptive sense.
Anyway, if you wanted to get fancy, you could scale the response to the mass of the ship so that you really wouldn't feel anything in a heavy ship but would notice something in a light or medium ship.
I am reminded of old Star Trek episodes (ToS) where the Enterprise would give a slight lurch when firing either phasers or photon torpedoes. You wouldn't think such a big ship would jerk like that just from firing its weapons, especially not torpedoes, but there it was. (I believe the technobabble explanation is the large power drain of firing weapons led to a slight lag in the inertial compensators. Go technobabble!) Later incarnations of Star Trek dropped this particular special effects idiosyncrasy but I still think the old episodes were more fun to watch.