Posts by Ut

Oh, and *I* is the rotational inertia, yes.

The mass only has to do with the straight-line motion of the ship, though. Changing the mass will not change how quickly the ship rotates in space, but it greatly impacts how well the ship changes directions. The exact same equations apply for straight line motions, only with m (mass) replacing I (rotational_intertia), b (linear_drag) replacing beta (angular_drag), F (max_force) replacing tau (max_torque), v (linear velocity) replacing omega (angular velocity), and a (linear acceleration) replacing alpha (angular acceleration). So, v = F/b t = m/b a = F/m = vb/m

You can´t. It´s sort of like asking which vehicle is faster, a Pinto, or a Mack truck, and then only judging based on max speed, or only on how quickly one can get out of the gate over the other. Max speed and acceleration have to be taken into account. Now, I´m pretty sure you can gauge the maximum angular velocity by simply dividing the torque by the drag. This is the impression I get, anyway. The time it takes to get to that speed, however, is a little more complicated. Observe. τ=Iα Tau is the torque, and alpha is the angular acceleration. The angular drag can be thought of as a torque acting in the opposite direction, making sure the ship has a maximum turn rate. This rate occurs when τ=βω, where β is the angular drag, and ω is the maximum angular velocity. At this point, we can say that α=βω/I However, α is also ω/t, so t = ω/α, where t is the time it takes to accelerate to ω. This reduces to t=I/τ=Iα Tau is the torque, and alpha is the angular acceleration. The angular drag can be thought of as a torque acting in the opposite direction, making sure the ship has a maximum turn rate. This rate occurs when τ=βω, where β is the angular drag, and ω is the maximum angular velocity. At this point, we can say that α=βω/I However, α is also ω/t, so t = ω/α, where t is the time it takes to accelerate to ω. This reduces to t=I/β So, ω=τ/β, and it takes the ship t=I/β to reach ω. Which ship turns better? The ship with a really high ω and the low t? Or the one with the high t, and low ω? Basically, a low t and a high ω are best.

*blink* Whatchoo talkin´ bout, finalday? I see a number of problems with this idea, which lead me to believe that it´s simply not possible. Of course, there´s the already mentioned destruction of the ship. But what happens if you dock your battleship wihle someone´s currently docked in you? Or if you log out of the game? Jump systems while someone is trying to undock (you know, when you´re actually flying through the vortex/load screen)? I think there´s too many questions.

I haven´t come across any issues with creating larger planets yet (aside from texture issues), but I haven´t made them very large, either. Not large enough to see any real ill effects, anyway. The real problem comes with spacing everything far apart. First and formost, large, important objects, such as planets and stellar atmospheres (corona, photosphere, chromosophere, etc) all disappear at roughly the 250K mark. It´s a huge pain in the ass to see a large planet just randomly appear, or to see a star blink rapidly, and then appear to be MUCH farther away in a matter of seconds. Stellar atmospheres, I´ve noticed, cannot extend beyond a radius of 14K. I assume planetary atmospheres have similar restrictions. Worst of all, once you´ve ventured some distance away from the origin, your ship will begin to shake like a 90 year old popping caffeine pills and drinking espresso by the litre, whether you´re on the navmap or not. Doesn´t make a whole lot of sense to me.

strafe_force is just that, the force applied to the ship when strafing. If you set it too high, you will strafe left or right really, really quickly.

It´s been my experience that stars remain visible due to their "spines" or rays, which you can view for MILLIONS of kilometres away. Beyond about 250 or 260K, however, the actual bright circle with corona effect disappears. Trade lanes and stations and the like all have LOD lines in their solararch entry. Planets do not. I tried adding an LODranges = line to a star´s solar, but since it´s not the actual solar that you see, but rather the star from stararch.ini, this has proven to be pointless. As for planets, it simply did nothing. I figure this is due to there only being one mesh in the game for a planet, that being a sphere. My biggest concern is really with being able to view the star´s corona and chornosphere (the part of the star you actually see). While I have little against the star´s rays, they´re proving ineffective for the effect I wish to generate.

Eh, I still think Mars is a strange name for a god.

Sol stands for "solar", and is generally used as the proper name of our solar system (hence the capital S). This stems more from sci-fi than science itself, since we don´t currently need to define our sun as anything more than "THE Sun", or our planetary system as anything more than "THE Solar System". I keep meaning to look into a nice, empty system template. I know where there is one, but I keep forgetting to download it. FLExplorer is good for setting up systems, but fine tuning really needs to be done by hand. Size becomes less of an issue if you consider the cubic nature of space in the game. Put the system on an angle, and everything will fit. Also, system scale is defined by a coefficient, I believe. FLExplorer simply has a small list of coefficients programmed into it. The Sol Beta is larger than the maximum allowed by FLE, if memory servers me right. Oh, and Mars as two moons. They´re both the size of asteroids, and named after the pet birds (ravens?) of the god.

Oddly enough I had assumed that by "system" you meant region, and therefore this was all in one system. I suggest you try out the Sol system beta to get an idea of the possible scale.

Well, that explanation has won me over on Venus. <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Astronomy´s my life, so give me a holla if you need to know anything. If I don´t have it off the top of my head, I have the books. I haven´t started playing with systems yet (it´s next on my list), beyond tinkering with FLExplorer. It´s neat and all, but the direct approach is still better.

Just a few &quot;problems&quot; with your suggestions. &quot;1: A system with Pluto and Neptune in it...&quot; Due to special orbital dynamics, Pluto and Neptune are never near each other. If at any point in history they were, Pluto would have been flung from the solar system. Neptune orbits the sun thrice for every two revolutions of Pluto. This essentially means that they´re always VERY, VERY distant from each other. &quot;3: A system with Jupiter, along with all its moons. Notable moons would be titan...&quot; Titan is not a moon of Jupiter. It is a moon of Saturn. Jupiter has the four Galilean moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, plus some fourty smaller ones. &quot;Pirate bases or enemy bases could be located in a cloud or small astroid field nearby.&quot; This is a good idea. Jupiter has two clouds of asteroids in its LeGrange points. They lead and follow Jupiter in its orbit around the sun. &quot;4: The final system, in the Earth mod it contains a dense astroid field (like the real one located between Mars and Jupiter.&quot; The asteroid belt is actually very NOT dense. Individual asteroids are separated by millions of kilometres. This is only dense compared to the rest of the solar system. For the sake of the game, though, this is overlooked. &quot;A quick tradelane jump away is Venus. Venus could sort of be the Coalition Fleet location. There could be shipyards, huge fighter patrols, and a huge station to act as sort of the HQ for the Fleet. What would be interesting is to have a dozen or so Battleships, all sitting in space, all dockable. The idea is to put them there for eye candy, not actual engagement.&quot; I´m not sure I understand why Venus would be such a big attraction. This stuff should be around Mars, if not Earth. At least Mars can be terraformed. Venus is forever lost beneath its repressive clouds and sulphuric rain. &quot;One thing that could be here is a jump gate (maybe to the edge of the Earth system, Pluto.&quot; There are probably reasons why something like a jump gate should not be near the Sun. They´re always placed at the edge of systems in the game, so emulating that is a good way to hold on to some continuity. Aside from that, it´s all cool. So, when do you start work on it?

Man, I wish I saw this a month ago... http://www.badastronomy.com For those who haven´t heard about this &quot;theory&quot;, or those who have only heard one side of it, I highly suggest the above page. It explains everything (assuming you beleive Mr. Plait).

It can be argued that Venus rotates on an axis almost 270 degrees from its ecliptic, as it rotates anti-parallel to most other bodies. Just another Fun Fact!

Many people are irritated by the lack of reality in the game. Is it a good game? Hell yeah! I love this thing! Do I feel like they did any research whatsoever into, you know, space? Uhhh, no. Sure, it´s big, and black, and 3d, but those are really the only things similar. That thought can be bothersome to certain individuals. It´s still not a big issue, though.

It will work if the server is running the same modification as you.

That doesn´t sound possible, to the best of my knowledge. The ini´s are read at start up, and are not reread until reboot. So, even if you changed the price in the ini´s every hour, the program wouldn´t know any different. This definately would not work on a server, since all prices are client side. Therefore, not only does the server admin have no control over the prices at the bases, but I don´t believe there´s even a log of transactions generated.

Your current problem, where it crashes before loading the menu, is caused by a bad line in the ini´s. The likely culprit is an unclosed [ bracket or an uncommented comment. You´ll have to search all of the modified ini´s for that problem. The problem with launching could be a number of things, depending on the situation. More details are required. Once you get things back up and running, and you put the ship back into the game, I suggest stripping it of its addon´s in goods.ini. Leave it with a scanner, a power plant, an engine, etc, but strip all of the weapons from it, and whatever else may be there, and then keep trying all of the different custom items that were added to it, one at a time, to see what the problem is.

Well, to impliment such a system, all that must be done is make it so that file is detected for a connection to the server to be allowed. Then the server can check to see if the required, unmodified files are there, and if they are not, alert the admins.

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