Well I think kickbacks made heavy ships pretty much useless. sunflare anything will knock it way off balance while sunflared valks and vults will only get a sligh direction change.
I don't know physics but heavy objects seem to move less with the same amount of impact on earth.
*wants a search feature*

Ehehhe, that because of gravity. However, if MV=MV in space as well, then the heavies should have less kickback.
Also: :)
[Moved to Suggestions]

But it isn't in suggestions!

The kickback on heavy ships is way too much. The kickback of that power on a heavy ship disorientates it for a good five seconds, enough time to lay in more sunflares and finish it off.

It's all down to mass and force. An object with a huge mass would require a huge force to move it. So heavies should have little or no kickback but it's obvious that the heavies aren't meant to be used.

I agree. I responded to this thread in the suggestions forum with my gemini kickback thread. Wheeeee...

[moved to suggestions]

The game engine does use force and mass to determin such things. Smaller ships do get sent spinning... they often get sent well over 180 turn... which ofcourse makes it easier for them to turn back to their original position.
Ofcourse even with the lighter ships getting turned much more they have very little problem turning back in a fraction of the time it takes a heavier ship to.

Unless they recently fixed something, it doesn't work like that. My centurion barely moved in the face of a frigate explosion, nearby rags were sent flying. Or maybe they fixed it. :P

well it wasn't a suggestion but it is now, lessback on heavier ships, and send those light ships flying.

just as a sidenote to Pirogoeth2:

MV are megavolts.
mv is mass multiplied with velocity.

anyway, i think kickback is too high on large ships, too.

Oops, indeed, i wrote this right after i was doing coils, so my units were a bit rusty^_^

The problem is that if the large ships are given more mass they become even more unusuable. The current engines would be useless in them, the heavies would hardly move. There needs to be different engines for different ships providing different ammounts of thrust for the different ship classes.

Roger that.

Better engines means quicker speeds, not necessarily better torque. I'm not going to repeat my previous suggestions, but I will say that I firmly support having higher speed heavy ships. But still, it's not a solution to the whole kickback on heavy ships etc.

Different engines really would be the same as reducing the mass... which would unbalance the ships. The devs could just make the prom as agile as it used to be and everyone would be flying it again and nothing could beat it. It doesn't matter how they make it that agile, wether reducing the mass or increasing the thrust either way it wouldn't create balance.

I'm not saying that things are balanced now... just that we should look for a solution that creates balance.

Well, as is often the case, the problem can be traced back to Sunflares, and the fact that there's just too damned many of them per rack. I reiterate: A Cheap rack+a cheap missile=a low capacity. The Flares should have 4 rockets per rack, maximum. That would balance the damage capacity of the small-port ships against the instability of the large ones some.

However, that's just a patch. The fact remains that the fault is with the engine and its perceived inability to handle low-mass objects effectively. Fix that bug, and many problems go away.

No no no.. what i'm saying is there should be a class of engines for each class (small, medium, large, uber.. or something like that) of ships. Those engines could only be used in that class. They would provide more turning and thrust power so the devs can up the mass of larger ships without making them even more sluggish. This way they would still move like they do now, they'd just be heavier so they wouldn't get pushed as much.

oh... so you're saying up the mass, moment of inertia, and thrust proportionally so that the ships handle the exact same... but are less effected by collisions, explosions, etc... That's a good idea... though I don't know how strongly the devs are attached to the concept of engines being interchangable.

I'm not so sure the kickback is more severe but rather the recovery is harder the larger the ship's mass is. It takes extra maneuvering thruster time to stop the ship's momentum and to correct it's heading after the unwanted momentum has been neutralized.

I think the right way to go is like Urza has stated, that the engines would not be interchangable between classes of ships.

Witness the frigate that the Devs fly...larger engine! (too large in fact). Couple that with larger maneuvering thrusters unique to that class of ship and tone it down so the top speed is where you want it and you've got it!

A shockwave from an explosion in space...interesting proposition that has been discussed in another topic...but, for the sake of argument, if such a creature existed, would move a small object and a large object the same (MV). A Vulture tumbling away at 30m/s would look like it was going much faster than a frigate tumbling away at 30m/s but, alas, they would be the same. They would require very different amounts of power and time to correct their unwanted momentum if their engines and thrusters to do so were the same (as they are now with the Vult and Prom).
Stepping the mass up on a ship that is as large as the Prom requires an engine and thrusters more powerful than the current heavy to be able to compensate for that mass and keep it in speed/maneuvering proximity to the other ships.

"if such a creature existed, would move a small object and a large object the same (MV)"

-No it wouldn't. mv is momentum. An equal force will accellerate smaller masses more. (F=m*a) The momentum on both will be the same, so the momentum of the shockwave, which has next to no mass and ridiculously high velocity, would translate elastically into the momentums of the frigate and vulture respectively. Ideally, the mv of a frigate sized mass = that of the vulture sized mass would be the same, but the vulture would have a much higher velocity since it's m term is smaller.