Forums » Suggestions

ability to land on things

Mar 13, 2005 ananzi link
how about some legs that come down off the ship and 'attach' you to other things? like asteroids. or especially rotating asteroids. maybe even stations.. ooooor maybe even other ships!

that would be an interesting way to convoy.. latch onto
another player and then you dont have to fly, they fly
for you.
Mar 14, 2005 Eldrad link
Given the way the games engine appears to work, I believe this would be some what difficult to do.
Mar 14, 2005 johnhawl218 link
That's why I has suggested grappler arms way back when. And that got shot down too. Some day perhaps Ananzi… someday…
Mar 14, 2005 harvestmouse link
*laughs again till tears come to her eyes.
keep dreamin'
~ evoli
Mar 16, 2005 Fnugget link
ananzi, try going to an all collector sector and "docking"(getting close and staying close) with an asteroid.
Mar 16, 2005 BurtNoir link
Related to this (kind of); I'd like the forum to have the ability to ignore some posts / threads. You would be able to enter a text string and toggle either ignore post or ignore thread. That way I'd never have to see the words "grappler arms" ever again :)
Mar 16, 2005 johnhawl218 link
Grappler Arms Grappler Arms Grappler Arms Grappler Arms Grappler Arms Grappler Arms Grappler Arms

=P
Mar 16, 2005 LeadFist link
ooo, kinda like Hawk's ship in that travesty of a sci-fi TV show, "Buck Rogers."
Mar 16, 2005 ananzi link
u dont need 'arms' to land. on metallic rocks u can have
magnet pads.

maybe u can have those things like salamanders or flies use. weird feet.
Mar 17, 2005 UncleDave link
Just a grapple beam which sets your trajectory and velocity the same as the targeted ship, not actual legs. Or we'd have the juddery wingbug-esque explosions popping up everywhere.
Mar 17, 2005 BurtNoir link
I understand that something like this has been implemented. It's more of a grappling hook though. In order to try it out you have to line up with the object you wish to "grapple", dangle your mouse (not your joystick, silly) by it's cable, twirl it round real fast and fling it at the grapplee. If the mouse hit's the grapplee just right then you (the grappler) have grappled. Simple but fun.

There's been some reluctance to announce the feature due to hardware failure rates being quite high.
Mar 17, 2005 tkjode link
Trust me, nobody would have the patience to land on things.

If one were to implement this "Realistically", You would literally have to move at no more than 4 or 5 meters per second to land. Who's gonna do that?

If you do that math on it: 5 meters per second is equivalent to 18 km/hr... enough to put a nice dent in a 1500kg car.... now you want to move 15000kg at the same speed... 10x the mass at the same speed = 10x more damage.... now it's more like hitting a wall at 180km/hr. Good luck with that.

Same with grappling arms/hooks... we've got ships that can accelerate from 0 to 200m/sec within 10 seconds or less..... of course, when the force is coming from the properly re-inforced engines, it's no problem for a ship at all. But if you've got a little arm holding onto my ship and you fly away like that, you've got 15000kg of ship instantly tugging at my poor little ship's quarterpanel.... GOODBYE QUARTERPANEL, I KNEW YE WELL!

People don't seem to grasp the forces at play when it comes to space travel... the same reason we don't tow people on skateboards from our cars using ropes is the same reason ships don't tow other ships in space.
Mar 18, 2005 Harrison Pitts link
Last time I checked, Vendetta wasn't a space sim. If it was, it would be boring as hell. :D

-White Fox-
Mar 18, 2005 Lord Q link
yes, why would a game that simulates spaceflight ever be confused with a space sim....

it realy anoys me when people assume that a game can't be both a FPS and a sim. Vendetta is a game that simulates space combat from a first person perspective.

tkjode,
I routienly slow to speeds around 4m/s when i dock my Bohemith. it is big enough that i usualy bounce off the docking port unless i come in slowly

Fnugget,
I do that all the time when i mine, admitedly i invariably have to abandon my position to fight off an anoying bot or two every once in a while.

anyway,
it is posable for spacecraft to tow each other, the real problem is that tethers work diferently in a vacume than the do in an atmosphere. i expect the biggest reason that grappling hasn't been implemented is that the forces involved with tethered objects moving threw space are too complecated for the devs to properly model (or at least complecated enough to make it not worth the amount of efforet it would take) i've read a few articles about how NASA is still been working the bugs out of their models for tether mechanics.

as for landing on things it would be nice to be able to cling to a rotating 'roid but other than that i don't see much diference between landing and positioning yourself carefully.