Ship and Combat balance?

I am starting a new thread for ship and combat balance, so the comments do not get lost in the bug threads as new releases come out.

Cambragol:

I don’t think lateral thrusters is a bug, as their strength has been lowered as part of the combat rebalance. Part of the aim was to make the flight model more true to the original I-war, and more ‘newtonian’. I made the ration about 10:1 for main thrusters to lateral thrusters on most ships (as I recall). This reflects the size difference of the main to lateral thrusters. Actually, most ships do not even have visible lateral thrusters. Just little puffs of air.

Essentially you should not be expecting a ‘star wars’ style combat sim what so ever. Such was the case in the original I-war, EoC and even more so in this rebalance.

Shingen:

In EoC, lateral thrusters were strong enough to evade incoming ordnance in a combat situation. How does removing this option (by weakening lateral thrusters), “rebalance” combat?

If anything, lateral thrusters should be half of aft (main) thrusters. Fore, port and starboard thrusters should be the same.

Ever play Frontier, or FFE (Frontier: First Encounters)? Pretty much the first PC game to use newtonian flight.

In newtonian flight ( where you are dealing with AUs of distance between stars and planets, and anything in motion, stays in motion until acted upon by something else), lateral thrusters should be strong enough to alter your trajectory at ballistic velocities, in a combat situation, when ordnance is inbound. Otherwise, you are floating debris in a vacuum.

[edit]

Actually, as far as a newtonian flight model, Terminus would be a better benchmark, as it has the best “true” newtonian flight model for combat.

JT:

Main thrusters in FFE were rated (in fighters) at around 21 G of acceleration. Reverse thrusters were rated around 7 G. Lateral thrusters were proportional to the reverse thruster. Thus, I would say the ratio would be 1/3 at most. I figure a ratio of 1/5 would be perfect, but I do think 1/10 is a bit weak.

Shingen:

It’s been awhile, but I think the Asp had like 27g forward, and 13g reverse. The CobraMkII was about the same…as was the ViperMkII. Lateral were about 1/3 main thrusters. Still, they were strong enough to change trajectory at 12000 kps, relative to the current incoming hostile.

But I remember there was alot of tweaking within the alt-fan-elite community to get the values correct..but that was ages ago, in a time, far far away…