The current method of navigation is okay, I guess. But I was thinking of an alternative method which may put less of a strain on the player's hands, especially when playing for long periods of time. After many hours of botting, trading, traveling, etc., I have to admit that my hands get tired more than any other game I've played before with about the same amount of time. I'd like to ask the devs to please consider an alternative that would offer some relief. I've thought long and hard about one possible way and this is what I came up with.

The cruising speed as we know it could be higher. The current 55-60m/s of the medium and heavy engine is ok when traveling around stations and asteroids. However, traveling across an entire sector at that speed is by no means exciting or easy. So the player is forced to tap the boost key strenuously until they finally make it across the sector. This usually takes about two to four recharges and a lot of patience, depending on the engine/battery combination.

The revision I'd like to propose is to increase the forward and backward (not strafe) cruising speed to around 100m/s. This would make sector travel without boosting much more bearable. Combat speeds will remain about the same since strafing is heavily used for dodging, and that speed will not be changed. And as usual since it's cruising speed it will not consume any energy. This will be the regular way of traveling through the sector. So with all this you may be wondering where boosting comes into play.

Boosting will require fuel. Originally I was against the idea of fuel for fear that the player would literally be stuck in the middle of nowhere. But let me make this one thing very clear: cruising consumes NO fuel or energy. So because cruising speeds will be higher than before, you won't be as bothered by the loss of boosting ability if you run out of fuel.

Boosting will be more of an emergency tool than a combat one. As usual you would not be able to strafe with boosting, however because it's for emergency purposes only, boosting would not allow you to fire any weapons while you're traveling at about 200-250m/s, for safety reasons. So it's not like people will be easily chased down and hunted or anything. If anything it'll save traders and fighters alike if used correctly.

The way I've always thought of boosting is a tool that is supposed to be used for emergencies only. The Vendetta universe right now is composed of lead foot pilots who just pound on their boosters to get to their destination as fast as possible. Why do they do that? Because the cruising speed of every engine is way too slow. If they were made to travel at a reasonable rate, we'd have much more ease in navigation and a more proper usage of boosters. And best of all you won't be getting carpal tunnel by the end of the day.

NOTE: I understand weapon usage issues will crop up with the increase in cruising speeds, especially with the case of giving sunflares that extra push. This is more of a weapon balance issue than anything related to engines, so I feel that should be dealt with separately. The point I'm trying to make here is people shouldn't be required to boost incessantly to get from point A to point B at a reasonable time. Boosting should be a separate tool used only for emergencies.

No. It's just way too fast and affects balance in too many ways. I like the idea of a cruise control, but not like this. I'd rather have a "cruise" button I can hit that automatically runs my ship in turbo towards wherever I am pointed without having to hit turbo. It could run indefinitely at some reduced speed, but anyone who is manually using turbo should be able to catch you. It takes away the tedium without radically changing the game mechanics.

Hmm, this could actually slow down most people because they can't get the fuel, and on longer flights have to dock and refuel.

I have *2* possible solutions:

Improve the turbospeed.

But, IMHO the best solution is to have 5 types of flying:

- defaultmode
This is as it is now, with turbo consuming energy and relatively high (compared to the others) strafing and roll speeds.
- combatmode
In this mode the 'manoeuvrability level' is moved up one level and turbo acceleration is improved; but the top-speed of the turbo is halved. With Stealth craft, Stealth will be activated in this mode. Other players nearby can also see that a player is in 'combatmode'
- exploremode
In this mode the ship is moved down one 'manoeuvrability level' and the forward non-turbo speed is doubled.
- cruisemode
In this mode the ship is moved down two 'manoevrability levels' and only turbo is possible, switching in and out this mode takes 10 sec. and is like the logoff thingy: no movement allowed. The turbo speed is double the current turbo speed. When activating this mode or comming out of this, the ship gets the same field around it as with a flag cap and damage that is being done to the ship is halved (so if you are activating this and somebody is shooting at you, it will only do half damage).
- emergencymode
Only some elite trade and fighterships have this, in this mode movement is disabled and pressing turbo will move the ship 10 km away in the direction it's currently pointing at, and the ship will be released there going at 400 m/s the ships HP is also taken down 5 HP (regardless of the current ammount of damage done) and it takes 30 sec. to get out of emergency mode once it is activated. If it comes to animation; it would look somewhat similar to warping.

For some ships switching modes could be limited, for example the Valkerie could only have combat, default- and exploremode, whereas the Maud could only have default, cruise- and emergencymode.

What about semi-turbo? All produced energy (by a battery) is consumed by engine to gain certain speed (not so hight thatn in the turbo mode).. The power level would be stable then and speed should be about 120 - 130m/s (that means: if you have 200 power in your batt it wont raise no matter what battery you have, all additional energy 35/s - 55/s is used for turboing at lower speed)

Arolte: I think you are right that there are some problems, but I'm not sure I agree with you about what they are.

Let me think about this.

Some possible solutions to the problem:
As Ciuciu suggested implement a cruising speed, where the engine consumes as much energy as the battery produces. Make it based on the engine's power consumption and the battery's output, so a heavy engine and fast charge battery might have a cruising speed of 100, where as a med engines would be much better. If this were implemented the efficient batteries max speed would probably do for an increase since it wouldn't be the only engine that could turbo without any energy loss (no matter what it would have the fastest cruise speed).

Second possibility:
If a battery drains while turboing, then completely recharges without "+turbo 0" being called, the game should restart the turbo. That way you would only have to type "/+turbo" once upon entering the sector, and facing your target. This is imo the best solution because it only effects the problem and therefore doesn't cause a whole host of other issues.




Arolte, there's a pretty simple reason that your idea wouldn't work well. If someone turned while going above their 'strafing speed' what would happen? Would they suddenly have a drastically reduced speed as happens when you take of turbo? What if they only turned 1 degree, or half a degree. Or would everyone need to fly in arcade mode and their speed wouldn't change just their velocity? The games current engine wouldn't handle that very well... flying would become very jerky.

"So it's not like people will be easily chased down and hunted or anything."
This would mean that the game would become completely players vs bots. Except in rare cases where someone kills a newb who doesn't have any clue what's going on people will be able to turbo away from any assailant at speeds faster than any weapon except the rails, and even then the acceleration would probably be enough to make it extremely difficult to hit.


Sheean,
"maneuverability" is just an indicator put in for players to judge ships, it doesn't actually have any effect. Are you suggesting that the ships' in-game mass changes depending on the mode, or the engines' out put? Additionally the same comments apply that your suggestion would prevent PvP combat.

I know my idea isn't perfect. I just remembered that I made a post similar to the first one a while back. Basically when you'd run out of juice (for any battery), you'd remain energyless except you'd be constantly moving at a speed between max cruise and max boost. It would work the same way as having fired all your shots with an efficient engine and boosting with zero energy non-stop. Except it would go around 120m/s or whatever instead of 160m/s.

In other words the battery could perhaps dynamically detect how much energy is left and compensate for it with just a slight speed loss. It would detect that no more energy is left and would try to maintain as fast of a speed as possible while setting a neutral recharge rate where just enough energy is used and recharged to let you stay boosted. Does that make sense?

I'm really against the idea of making boosting more complicated. The above method is a fair compromise that gives the player the option for manual or automatic control. It could automatically maintain boost in this sort of economic mode, but the player is still free to let go of the turbo key to have manual control.

Arolte if you're against the idea of making turbo more complicated why not just use my "second possibility" which leaves turbo exactly as it is, and just doesn't make you release and re-hit the turbo key when you're done recharging?

Because you need to create aliases and bind keys for something that should already be easy. My idea is automatic, provides options, and would be integrated into the game much more smoothly. And two aren't exactly the same in the way they work.

Not really, before I learned any commands I knew how to put a roll of quarters on my turbo key... but that aside the devs could make any random key default to a turbo toggle, and you don't need to know commands you can simply hold down the turbo key. You were complaining about having to hit the turbo key too many times... this way you would only need to hold it down once, no strain, not very tiring.

I'm backing up Arolte on this one: it makes sense that your forward speed is higher than the strafe speeds. Although I don't think it makes sense that the reverse thrust would be as efficient as the forward thrust like he suggests. I once posted something similar way back (and got flamed to no end) because I felt it was weird that a ship would be able to strafe at the same rate of accelleration and with the same top speed as it could move forward. And yes, crossing sectors is long and tedious. Some sort of speed increase in the forward direction would be nice, but on the other hand, crossing a sector shouldn't be too quick either. It would totally contradict the exploration aspect of the game.

The way I see it, speeds should be increased so you can reach the wormholes faster, but then the wormholes should also be a tad more apart so that it still takes some considerable time to reach them, and the sectors should go way beyond the wormholes. Right now, everything interesting in a sector is located between the jump points; there's no reason to explore beyond the wormholes, since there's simply nothing there.

Oh, and of course, when the speed of the ships and the size of the sectors is increased, so should the radar range increase. If your speed goes up 50% or so, objects are much closer measured in time to arrival than now, so you should also be able to see stuff further away from you to compensate for the fact that you can only scan stuff on the radar less than fifteen seconds away.

Agree with Arolte.

Making your top speed dependent on what direction you're facing just won't work with vendetta's current engine. You think the "wobble" is annoying now? Image what would happen if every time you wobbled you're speed got halved. It would be reasonable to have forwards thrust be more than other directions with the way most of the ships are drawn, but that would drastically change the game in a way I doubt the devs want to do this close to release.

Eldrad, your idea of +turbo thingy won't exactly work. You'll have to release that key once you run out of energy and tap it again. It's just as annoying as before. I'm tellin' ya, having the automatic power down mode thingy would be much more easy to use. Just IMO. And you're right that my first idea would change the game dramatically, so I think a good start would be to make all engines have some type of economic mode instead. In other words I'd much rather see my second idea than the first one (first post) be implemented. It doesn't sound like it would be too hard to implement within a reasonable time frame.

1) I also agree that strafe and reverse speeds should be lower than forward speed. The rear engines are actually what propel the ship. Unless you have full engine cones mounted on the other five axis (above, below, left, right, front), all you have are at best manouevering thrusters. Little nozzles.

2) It seems silly to me that all the ships can achieve the same speeds with the same engines. The BMW Z3 has a 4 cylander engine. It ZOOMS. Try putting that engine into a Ford Crown Victoria. Slooooooooow. Conversely, put the V8 into the Z3 (okay, that can't physically be done, but follow the logic). You just doubled *at least) the weight of the once sporty car - its turning would suck, 0-60 would take a week. Now try those engines in a Ford Mustang (not sure if it's still true, but the V8 in a Crown Vic used to be basically the same engine used in the Mustang with some minor changes). The V8 mustang will be much faster, but would not accellerate or turn as well as the Z3.

So why do all our ships accellerate to the same speeds? Remember, now, we're not following the true physics of space - otherwise we could accellerate infinitely.

3) turbo suggestion: Eliminate the eff. engine/fast battery combo. Instead, all engines and batteries have dual turbo modes. Turbo1 is fullspeed, our standard turbo now. Turbo2 is efficient turbo - a slower speed but infinite turbo. The speed of turbo2 is dependant on the combination of engine/battery you have. Other factors also rely on the engine/battery combo (accelleration, strafe speed, etc).

Turbo1 - Tab Key
Turbo2 - Capslock

For example, the heavy/heavy is the traders combo - highest speed turbo2, but slow accelleration, medium (or slower) turbo1 and slowest strafing. This is for when you plan to travel, not fight.

Light/light is the fastest turbo1. Turbo2 is slow, accelleration and strafing is high.

med/med is midrange.

The way I picture it, the engines control speed, but they also add mass. So the lightest are the fastest, but have the least endurance. Batteries can increase your endurance, but that's mitigated by the mass they add to your ship, so the larger battery you use the less manoueverability you have.

Now you have these engines and batteries that add mass to ships that already have mass. The less mass a ship has the more agile it is - it's up to each player to find the combo that works for them.

A rag with a heavy engine/medium battery (versus a heavy/heavy rag) would have a faster turbo1, slower turbo2 and more agility.

Put a heavy/heavy in a Valk and it would fly like a slightly faster, more agile warthog. Put a light/light in a promy and it would take half an hour to get through a sector but could turn on a dime (or maybe a 50-cent piece) - accelleration, turbo1 and agility would skyrocket but it wouldn't even be able to accellerate to full turbo1 before the battery died.

The percentages work with this as well. Drop a heavy/heavy in a Valk and it can go farther (and perhaps turbo1/2 will be comparatively faster than light/light) but will take turns like a Honda instead of a Porche and accelleration will go through the floor - the engine and battery have doubled its weight! Putting a light/light in a Ragnarok would make it turn better, but it wouldn't be able to accellerate or turbo nearly as fast as a stock bus.

Most everyone ingame now uses the fast battery exclusively - usually with the medium engine. With this new battery and engine configuration everyone won't be so homogeneous - we'll some actual defferentiation for the first time since I can't even remember.

This would add a LOT of originality into the game I think. As a trader, do you go for the more agile ship for defense or do you go the higher escape velocity? If you're -hunting- that trader, do you go for the better fighting setup or for more speed so you can catch your target?

With every combination each ship has a different speed than the other ships. A Valk with a heavy engine/battery has Turbo1 of 180, Turbo2 of 120 and a standard of 45. A Centaur with heavy/heavy has a turbo1 of 160, a turbo2 of 125 and a standard of 40. However, their agility is now similar! This might promote the old pirate technique of rockets up the tailpipe, but now the Centaur can actually turn and ENGAGE the fighter - missiles have a better chance of hitting and the gatling gun becomes an effective weapon.

The botting combo would probably be light engine and the battery would depend on energy/missile loadout. Pirates would go for the light/heavy combo - most speed with endurance, but enough of a hit to agility to make the fights more reasonable.

The only hole I can see here is that since a large ship might always be able to outrun a smaller ship. Large ships get a Turbo2 boost and endurance while smaller ships get a turbo1 boost and less endurance. So a Promy in turbo2 could outrun a Valk in turbo2.

This could be balance by only being able to turbo2 when your battery is fully charged, and when you hit turbo2 your battery is fully drained. Example: Warp into a sector, battery is drained. Wait while battery charges. Turbo2 to next wormhole. Wiat while battery charges. Warp.

This solves the fuel issue and also further balances all the ships against each other.

I suppose over the course of writing this I've come to the conclusion that perhaps using the standard RPG model might work here. Small ships get +1 turbo1, -1 turbo2 bonus, for example. Heavy ships get a -1 turbo1, +1 turbo2 bonus. Light engines get +2 turbo1, -1 turbo2 (and +1 agility?). Heavy engine gets -1 turbo1, +2 turbo2. Heavy batteries give -1 turbo 1 and +1 turbo2 and -2 to agility, medium engines give or take nothing and light engines give +1 turbo1 and -! turbo2, +2 to agility.

Either way would work. I hope this isn't taken as a +4 Vorpal sword kind of idea. I really think for this game to be successful there are going to have to be some changes made so EVERYONE isn't using the same setup for the same ships. Changing the way speed is generated is one step. Finding alternatives to rockets is another (step one - make the missiles useful - if they hit their targets half again more than they do now they might actually be worth using) (step two - increase the accuracy of the gatling and flechette).

"The BMW Z3 has a 4 cylander engine. It ZOOMS. Try putting that engine into a Ford Crown Victoria. Slooooooooow."

I love it when people make assumptions about physics in frictionless space based on their experiences on a planet with both air-resistance and gravity to alter them.

Actually, I don't. It kinds of annoys me.

There is more to a car's speed that just its engine. A Z3 ZOOMS! because it not only has a decently powerful engine, but also because it is very light and designed to completely minimize road friction and air-resistance.
None of that matters in space. Everything depends on inertia which is proportional to mass. There is not top speed except the artificial barrier placed for the purposes of fun gameplay. Please do not demand a repeal of speed limits, we have been down that road countless times.


"The rear engines are actually what propel the ship."
-What makes you so sure they're engines? Why can't they be heat dumps for some undiscovered type of propulsion mechanism? What if instead of chemical propulsion we used some sort of gravity drive? Or an EM drive or some other type of technology that people, thousands of years from now, could reasonably develop. Yet again you're making assumptions about a futuristic technology in a Zero-G, vacuum environment based on your experiences with 20th century tech on planet earth. Analogies to real-life are not pre-requisites to fun gameplay. As long as the game is real enough to maintain a certain suspension of disbelief, that is all that matters. If you want 100% realistic physics, go outside and jump off a building to aquaint yourself with gravity. Reality is not very fun is it? Would you rather play a game that simulates falling to your death, or a game that simulates flying like Superman? Which is more real? I rest my case.
All the liberties with reality that the devs took with the game have been in the in the interests of fun. If you want to accelerate indefinately, be my guest, but I don't think you have any conception of the complexity of introducing relatavistic calculations like time-dilation and length-contraction once someone decides to see what happens when they approach the speed of light.
All your analogies about cars are flawed. Things like turn-rates and acceleration depend on engine-power (which is the only thing you took into consideration), mass (inertia), friction, air-resistance, and other issues regarding internal resistance, efficiency in all the parts under the hood, quality of gasoline, all kinds of torque, etc. None of that would matter with our theoretical propulsion mechanism since there are no wheels and all the other internal parts (we can assume) are standardized.

Arolte read my suggestion before disagreeing with it. I'll quote it here for you.

"If a battery drains while turboing, then completely recharges without "+turbo 0" being called, the game should restart the turbo. That way you would only have to type "/+turbo" once upon entering the sector, and facing your target. This is imo the best solution because it only effects the problem and therefore doesn't cause a whole host of other issues."

"+turbo 0" = letting go of the turbo key

ie you won't have to release turbo and tap it again.

Sorry, Eldrad, I misunderstood what you posted. I'm still not crazy about your control scheme though.

=)

xochiluvr, I like most of your ideas, but let me break it down...

>1) I also agree that strafe and reverse speeds should be lower than forward speed.
>The rear engines are actually what propel the ship. Unless you have full engine
>cones mounted on the other five axis (above, below, left, right, front), all you have
>are at best manouevering thrusters. Little nozzles.

I think the current strafing speeds are fine. I'd hate to see them lowered because right now it's already hard as hell to dodge rockets at certain ranges. The only purpose I'd like to see the forward and backward thrusters become more quicker than the maneuvering ones is because having people strafe at the revised (higher) cruise speeds would be insanely easy to dodge weapons.

And the reason I think backward thrusters should be as fast as forward thrusters is because we still want people to dodge rockets and stuff by going backwards. Giving forward thrusters a boost only would allow the attacker to keep gaining on you while you'd struggle to dodge rockets by moving backwards. Not fun by any means.

>2) It seems silly to me that all the ships can achieve the same speeds with the
>same engines. The BMW Z3 has a 4 cylander engine. It ZOOMS. Try putting that
>engine into a Ford Crown Victoria. Slooooooooow. Conversely, put the V8 into the
>Z3 (okay, that can't physically be done, but follow the logic). You just doubled *at
>least) the weight of the once sporty car - its turning would suck, 0-60 would take
>a week. [snip]

Well here's the good news, everybody. A while back Incarnate mentioned on IRC that the heavier (and possibly medium) ship class will have their own set of engines. I think this will eliminate some of the problems we've been having with these ships. So consider this idea already in progress. I for one am happy to hear this news. No word on whether other engines or batteries have changed in terms of how they operate.

>3) turbo suggestion: Eliminate the eff. engine/fast battery combo. Instead, all
>engines and batteries have dual turbo modes. Turbo1 is fullspeed, our standard
>turbo now. Turbo2 is efficient turbo - a slower speed but infinite turbo. The speed
>of turbo2 is dependant on the combination of engine/battery you have. Other
>factors also rely on the engine/battery combo (accelleration, strafe speed, etc).

I agree that the efficient/fast combo should be eliminated and automatically merged into each engine config. However, I disagree with your execution of it. The idea of using caps lock and boost doesn't sound very appealing to me. Enabling caps lock has the potential to screw up some of your other controls, such as taking stuff of your radar as well as not being able to use any of the other keys until it is disabled.

As I said before, I think it should automatically become "efficient" the moment your battery drains completely. Then you could leave the option to the player as to whether to let go or not for manual recharge. Otherwise I like how your engines and batteries balance out. It makes a lot of sense and it gives some of the lower level ones some usage out if it besides being just for newbies.

<quote>
As I said before, I think it should automatically become "efficient" the moment your battery drains completely. Then you could leave the option to the player as to whether to let go or not for manual recharge.
</quote>

Well it's pretty much what i have suggested, but I would add it as a alternative option (you could use it at full battery, not onlyt the empty one)

> "The BMW Z3 has a 4 cylander engine. It ZOOMS. Try putting that engine into a
> Ford Crown Victoria. Slooooooooow."
>
> I love it when people make assumptions about physics in frictionless space
> based on their experiences on a planet with both air-resistance and gravity to
> alter them.
>
> Actually, I don't. It kinds of annoys me.

Know it alls who respond to posts without bothering to address the part where I said "Remember, now, we're not following the true physics of space - otherwise we could accelerate infinitely" annoy me.

> There is more to a car's speed that just its engine. A Z3 ZOOMS! because it
> not only has a decently powerful engine, but also because it is very light and
> designed to completely minimize road friction and air-resistance.
> None of that matters in space. Everything depends on inertia which is
> proportional to mass. There is not top speed except the artificial barrier
> placed for the purposes of fun gameplay. Please do not demand a repeal of
> speed limits, we have been down that road countless times.

So why not have different arbitrary speeds based on the mass of a ship and the engine and battery combinations? And where did I ask for a repeal of the speed limit? As far as there being more to a car's speed than it's engine goes, isn't that what I wrote?

> "The rear engines are actually what propel the ship."
> -What makes you so sure they're engines? Why can't they be heat dumps for some
> undiscovered type of propulsion mechanism? What if instead of chemical
> propulsion we used some sort of gravity drive? Or an EM drive or some other
> type of technology that people, thousands of years from now, could reasonably
> develop.

They wouldn't be UNVERSALLY on the back of EVERY ship designed by each individual nation, then. Nor would they glow and leave trails like they do. To go back to the car metaphor, that's like saying all vehicles have their gas tank in the exact same place, whereas in reality some are behind the left rear tire, some behind the right rear tire, some in -front- of the left/right rear tire, some flat out in the back of the car and some are in even other places.

> Yet again you're making assumptions about a futuristic technology in
> a Zero-G, vacuum environment based on your experiences with 20th century tech
> on planet earth.

And you're grasping at straws with the sole intention of being argumentative, to the point of ignoring obvious aspects of in-game design and gameplay.

> Analogies to real-life are not pre-requisites to fun gameplay.

Hmm... Sounds to me like you want to repeal that arbitrary speed limit. :)

> As long as the game is real enough to maintain a certain suspension
> of disbelief, that is all that matters. If you want 100% realistic physics, go
> outside and jump off a building to aquaint yourself with gravity.

"Remember, now, we're not following the true physics of space - otherwise we could accelerate infinitely." Here's a quarter, buy a clue.

> I rest my case.

You're case was thrown out of court after my first sentence.

> All the liberties with reality that the devs took with the game have been in
> the in the interests of fun. If you want to accelerate indefinately, be my
> guest, but I don't think you have any conception of the complexity of
> introducing relatavistic calculations like time-dilation and
> length-contraction once someone decides to see what happens when they approach
> the speed of light.

Dude, what post are you referring to? It's NOT mine, that's for certain. Where did I once disagree with the physics the devs have employed? What I'm talking about is an extension of the arbitrary physics already employed. If you're going to set a top speed, then you're employing a set of rules. Within that set of rules I've made suggestions that would make gameplay more interesting.

> All your analogies about cars are flawed. Things like turn-rates and
> acceleration depend on engine-power (which is the only thing you took into
> consideration), mass (inertia), friction, air-resistance, and other issues
> regarding internal resistance, efficiency in all the parts under the hood,
> quality of gasoline, all kinds of torque, etc. None of that would matter with
> our theoretical propulsion mechanism since there are no wheels and all the
> other internal parts (we can assume) are standardized.

No, I took all the other aspects as being equal, to keep it simple, so I wouldn't get a post like yours.

I dealt with mass, engine power and fuel consumption. The only reason our parts are standardized NOW is that the devs haven't gotten around to it. YOU forget that these ships, engine and batteries are all being manufactured by THREE different groups - the Itani, the Serco and the N.T.s, just like different auto makers. There should be little or no standardization, and if there is that's because the devs have made or will make another arbitrary decision.

Would you prefer a Star Wars metaphor? Put the engine from an X-Wing in a Star Destroyer and see how fast it goes.

Thanks for playing.

Arolte:

As far as rocket dodging goes, I still think they're too powerful anyway. At least compared to all the other missile weapons, which are basically worthless on anything apart from unsuspecting Drone I's. About the only thing YJ's have ever hit are speed-hampered flag cappers.

> I agree that the efficient/fast combo should be eliminated and automatically
> merged into each engine config. However, I disagree with your execution of it.
> The idea of using caps lock and boost doesn't sound very appealing to me.
> Enabling caps lock has the potential to screw up some of your other controls,
> such as taking stuff of your radar as well as not being able to use any of the
> other keys until it is disabled.

Well, see, if Caps-Lock was programmed to function as boost2 it WOULDN'T interfere with the other keys, would it?

I'd be happy with your solution, at any rate.

I've been thinking though, and I wonder if you couldn't have an eff. turbo with a full battery. Then if you're attacked you could jump to full turbo. Would make fights and chases more interesting.