You can determine the brake thrust by how much it changes your speed when applied. Maybe you should get out your stop watch and do some experimentation.

There's a lot of things about item desctriptions that don't match the game's actual behavior.

So I guess where this stopped is that I'm right in that brakes + reverse thrust is doing something that shouldn't be happening and doesn't reconcile with the given attributes of the ship and the accepted physics of the game. But it produces a behavior that while having no explanation, is seen as positive so nothing has been done to fix it. I'd say we could just invent a game mechanic to explain it away but there's nothing i can think of to explain why it only behaves this way when slowing down.

Since raybondo has only gone into depth over how normal thrust is dealt with to produce a force that in turn changes your acceleration, and only says that brakes apply a force in the opposite direction of your velocity. We dont explicitly know where brakes gets processed in relation to the regular thrusters

The issue would then be here
Force = damper + (ship_forward_vector * thrust const * control) - (velocity*drag*control)

Where damper is applied to reach an individual force axis' max velocity which is fine if you didn't have brakes. Brakes command is applied independently of this equation since it relies on the velocity of the ship in order to act on the ship to stop it in all directions regardless of the speed and direction the ship was moving. It's obvious from there that no "clamp to damper" is done to reconcile the breaking force and the above calculated thrust forces.

The proper way to fix this would be to go ahead and find your 3 acceleration axis and then cancel them all out to 0. The difference between that cancellation vector and the damper vector is now your new brake vector. It's the remaining acceleration available after your current thrust vectors either cancel it out partially or fully or dont interact with it at all. This is your brake vector you apply to the ship's velocity and clamp to 0 in each of the 3 axis.

That's all that's needed to get brakes right.

While we're at it, let's invent a game mechanic to explain away how the ship's "length" stat has absolutely no effect on its handling. Or explain why applying spin torque doesn't keep making youur ship spin faster past a certain magic hidden number.

What's the problem you have with the brakes again? Is it just because you don't like how it works or is it because the brake thrust is a hidden ship stat?

It isn't a hidden stat as far as raybondo explained it. I'm pretty sure I explained why I don't like it.

I'm not concerned with simplifying the physics so it doesn't eat all your CPU. Arbitrary limits on speed are also necessary for reliable physics calculations without over using cpu and this can be explained more believably through computer safety controls way better than the stupid idea we currently use, which is drag. But no matter what you come up with, the simplified system still has to have rules. This is like saying the ship has a given stat like mass, but if you thrust a certain way and brake, it becomes half as massive. It does not fit within the system they created under the rules they have so far stated and implied.

This is madness. One thing that VO most certainly has right, is the engine. It is the reason why I keep playing this game. All your suggestions are wrong regarding this topic and a few others for that matter. Braking is not broken in any sense.

VO-space is a fluid rather than a near-vacuum, so obviously our braking system is interacting with that fluid to increase our drag, thus why it can only be used to decelerate relative to the local area.

Or if you want to avoid the space-fluid approach, do what other people have done and realize that we're obviously using some kind of exotic reaction-less drives, and then assume that whatever weird system our drives use to propel us is where the drag comes from.

I nominate cellsafemode for the "nitpicker of the year" title!

Also I want to add: remember that VO is a game. A GAME. There's no requirement that it need to strictly adhere to the natural laws and rules of reality. Huffing and puffing about something like how brake thrust adds a little too much to the net deceleration? Yes... so what? How is that supposed to detract something from the game?

Just like how movies don't always strictly follow the same plot as in books that they are supposed to emulate for entertainment purposes, games don't always follow the rules of reality because that would be less..... fun.

Actually, Ray's only mention about brakes from that thread is this:
Brakes are applied the exact same way in both flight models. It applies a force in the opposite direction of your velocity.

I've got a problem with ships having hidden stats, but I don't have any problem with ships having a separate brake thruster. You weren't really clear about what bothers you about this.

You should never be able to thrust higher than the thrust limits

So you're suggesting that, two- and three- axis strafes shouldn't be able to exceed the thrust limits either then? They do though. Why all the fuss about brakes?

3 axis strafe doesn't exceed the limits in their respective dimension. The resultant velocity can be greater than the thrust max of a single given thruster, but when you have a velocity vector that is the combination of two or more thrusters, then your thrust is whatever the combination nets you. You are still clamped to the max thrust power in x,y,and z axis' and that's how it should be.

I dont think a separate brake thruster that then can be directed off any surface of the ship to counter it's velocity as it does currently, but can only be used when braking just sounds dumb. It is a computerized system that utilizes the ship's actual thrusters to do what it does. That's how it is implied in the manual, and that's what makes the most sense.

I dont think it's a hidden stat, but the devs were never clear on how brakes fit in with the eventual accelreration calculations in combination with the normal thrust calculations.

I'm not arguing that it has to match actual reality, just it's own reality that it has defined. It's not a trivial detraction from that defined reality, it's an extreme detraction albeit, short lived in that you can think of yourself as either having half the mass or double the thrust for no apparent reason and completely inconsistent with anything else in the game or any literature the devs have produced about it.

Ray was pretty clear about it if you ask me, it's just another force that gets applied in the direction opposite of your ship's movement.

Maybe it's not a reaction drive thruster but some sort of gravitational anchor based off the jump drive of the ship? Who knows. Our ships don't even use fuel, so we can get in to all kinds of bullshit sci-fi lolscience explanations for how they work. It's a game.

You don't think its a hidden stat, but it is. You were testing on the Centurion, which has almost the same brake as it has thrust. Try the Atlas instead.