And because all the force will be directly transfered to the ship, there would be 100% theoratically recoil (while with a normal missile, some gasses could around the ship and slow down itself a bit before hitting the ship.)

Magnets exert force. If you don't believe it, put two magnets on a air hockey table with the N ends of both facing. This thread needs to be locked, though, because we've proved that either recoil would be realistic but too extreme to be bearable, or unrealistic and fakey.

Ok then.. How about the idea that the rocket is propelled by light itself. which is possible. It is launched from the tube by a ray of light then the flare ignites.

GAH!

If you spring loaded the rockets, yes, it would produce recoil. BUT IT WOULD BE NEGLIBLE!

You have a several ton object moving at 200m/s and three maybe 100lb objects being ejected from it. VERY LITTLE FORCE is imparted to the Valkyrie, if any at all. Besides, you could just have an open backed rocket tube and remove the recoil problem altogether. The exhaust exits out the tube into empty space, and the rocket moves forward. All the Valk does is guide it.

First,
FM: PLEASE lock this thread.

The only simply way to eliiminate recoil would be a tube or a pylon. A pylon is hat is employed by most fighter jets today. One especial advantge to pylons is that one could theoretically light one missle attatched to each wing without releasing the pylon and actually get PULLED FOREWARD by the thrust of the rocket. (Of course, doing so would either destroy the pylons or else rip off the wings as they were never designed for that sort of stress)

AS LONG AS NO PORTION OF THE SHIP IS BEHIND THE ROCKET'S BODY, THE SHIP WILL NOT FEEL A RESULTANT FORCE FROM THE RELEASE OF SAID ROCKET.

P.S. Urza: the light particles would hit the end of the tube and produce a kickback force equal to the force of propulsion. The method of the farce does not matter, only the force itself.

Still talkin' BS. You can't eliminate recoil 100%, period. Yes, FM, please lock it.

SoundGuy66, the locking of a thread will need a legit reason:
1: Flaming
2: Spam
3: Off-Topic
4: Point of thread lost (as in person A says it would be cool to have XYZ and dev B says yah that is planned and we have an idea for it already)

"You can't eliminate recoil 100%, period."

You can make it neglible. So that it wouldn't affect your flight performance in any way. Which would be easy to do.

Recoil would not be negligible at all! And as for that calculation with 3 sunflares being 0.07% of the valk's mass. That is the worst math I've ever seen.

Assuming a 4000 lbs valk and 3 flares totaling 400 lbs, that's 10% of the mass right there.

If the missile was fired with a speed of 50 m/s (relative to the ship), that's 5 m/s of decelleration of the ship right there. Firing that multiple volleys would quickly get your ship "dead in the water", so to speak.

Real missiles, of course, would travel much faster than 50 m/s.

Secondly, yes, an open tube design would reduce recoil, because the gases would be vented backwards into space, but it wouldn't eliminate recoil by any measure. And if you want to use open-tube, then there must be a delay between triggering the missile and the missile actually firing, since there would have to be a mechanism for moving the missile into the tube.

So my suggestion is to either give the missiles recoil or give it a delay before firing.

Regarding the gauss weapons - of course it would have recoil! Like that guy said, the same attractive force moving the slug would move the ship.

Any matter being ejected would have recoil. Pure bolts of energy would not though. So then only ammo-based weapons would recoil. Gauss wouldn't. It isn't a slug (although it sounds like one), it is some sort of bolt of energy created by manipulation of a magnetic or electric field. (Assuming the name Gauss comes from Gauss's law.)

Something I just realized: If three flares weight 400lbs, then a full tri-flare load would weigh 6400 lbs. More than the valk itself in your example, though you've made it pretty light. Sorry, no. I apologize for using that example earlier. Flares are small, lightweight missles. If we want to continue on in the 'realism' vein, a little research shows an 88mm anti-aircraft round from WWII weighed in at about 33.4lbs. And the guns that fired those things were huge, so that round is probably too large to use as an example. Which would mean the actual sunflare would weigh in at less than 33.4lbs.

Say 25lbs, max. Use a simple open backed fixed rocket pod like those employed by every modern air force and you reduce the recoil to negligible levels.

Weee I love having nothing to do!

So... all this talk about physics is done under the assumption that ultra-realistic physics makes for good game-play, right?

I would make the argument that recoil would not make for good game-play, and the entire physical science justification would be moot.

However, if you want a justification, then lets just say that the ship's computer automatically compensates engine thrust to dampen any recoil effects. Yeah, it's a pseudo-science explanation, with no real science behind it.... but this is just a game. So relax.

"Any matter being ejected would have recoil. Pure bolts of energy would not though."

Can someone explain this? I thought that energy weapons also offer recoil (though *significantly* less because of E=mc^2). Isn't this how solar sails work (using the radiation pressure or something)?
I thought I learned in physics that light has momentum, and exerts a force on what it hits. If so, then emitting energy would also have recoil, since part of your momentum would be transferred to the energy blast.

They wouldn't exert enough force to actually move your ship. Negligible. Solar sails would need to be miles across to get an appreciable amount of thrust.

And EarthMkII, I would make the argument that recoil for certain rockets would very much improve gameplay. At the very least it would make rocket-ramming harder and reduce those tri-flare supervolleys I see around.

what you mean is that when someone shoots something (ex: flare- since everybody loves it so much, very popular too) the ship would slow down because of the force and power the rocket is releasing?

how would that help a larger ship? and would energy weapons be affected as well? how long would the speed reducing affect take to go away?

-io

Mmm... I'd actually love to play a game with physics as accurate as possible...

Accurate physics you say? Ever play Arkanoid Legent?

Any space game with real physics will crash very easily, go very fast and fly out until the server gets unhappy with the very big location numbers.