Huh. I actually didn't know that, although it's logical now that you've pointed it out. I was under the impression that an object would, theoretically, continue accelerating as long as thrust was being applied, at least until you started getting into relativistic speeds, but I suppose now that I think about it there is a conservation-of-energy consideration there.

This suggests that the starting thruster pack is basically a can of Raid, which, as you note, is not entirely implausible. (Although, to be fair to the Lynx Corporation, the rest of the starting equipment is perfectly serviceable, if basic. I mean, you're not going to have a random helmet blowout if you didn't hit yourself in the face with a computer console or anything like that. I really need to save up for the range upgrade on the laser cutter, though.)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Albeit one would hope with a bit of a longer continuous lifetime for thrust XD

The term you want for this is the "effective exhaust velocity" and you plug that into the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation to find out the ideal case...and then since you're in a crap job, cut those numbers by 50% or so XD

You probably didn't know it because it's not actually so, at least not in general. It's actually a restriction on the maximum velocity of a Bussard ramjet relative to the interstellar medium¹ because you have to accelerate the incoming material. You could go faster² by switching over to internal propellant reserves once you approach that maximum speed.

There _is_ a practical limit for total deltaV of about three times the exhaust velocity because that's where the increased propellant requirements to move your propellant tanks reaches the amount of propellant those tanks hold.

(You can 'cheat' this by using staging because dropping engines/tanks/etc. increases your mass ratio.)

1: If we were to assume that Bussard ramjets actually worked, which they don't. They would have so much drag that it would be impossible to get any net positive thrust from one.

2: Again, assuming they worked as anything but a brake.

Have you fallen into the airlock state trap? That has to be deliberate on the part of the designers.

(For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about: Normally, the ships you're assigned to break arrive with the hull still pressurized. What you're supposed to do is board through the airlock, then frob the atmosphere control unit(s) inside the ship to vent the internal compartment(s) before proceeding. But when you vent the compartment that the airlock goes into, the airlock automatically cycles behind you, so now the ship isn't pressurized, but, unless you manually cycle it again, the airlock you just came in through is! Which you may not notice until you cut it open.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I mean, if your airflow model does that, you can't help but agree that it's Doing It Right -- whether you intended it to make life more interesting for the player or not. :D

I would just like to take this opportunity to note that this thread got me watching Hardspace vids, and that, coupled with my recent bout of playing Satisfactory until way too late in the evenings before bed, made for some... interesting... mashup dreams.

(I mean, they both have the 'you are a cog in the vaguely-evil megacorp' vibe, for starters.)

The dream can be summed up as: look man I'm just trying to build conveyors fast enough to keep up with that jackhole upstairs who keeps sending me freakin' ship parts down the spacevator when I'm asking for turbo-motors, get out of here with your alien fireball bullshit.

--sofaspud
--also I had a shipment of square pigs that I couldn't get rid of and it was annoying as hell

What do you do with square pigs, anyhow? I mean, other than failing to fit them in a round hull?

Peter Eng
--
Yes, my first reaction is to make terrible puns. Why do you ask?

I assume they're what they make those suspiciously rectangular hams you see in the supermarket deli case out of.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

What a square pig might look like: https://i.imgur.com/B5z2L7b.jpg?x
Well, more of a rectangular pig really, but details, details.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "RIP Wildstar"

Well, in this case I can tell you *exactly* what they looked like.

That is a shot from the movie Space Truckers, though I note that the trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQOqLOErhZA) is a dirty, misleading, gloriously 80's lying sack of something that lies.

--sofaspud
--I actually love this movie to death but I'm a huge fan of bad B-movies in general, it's a curse, honest

Nothing more exciting than cutting into a ship and finding yourself flying at the furnace at decompression speeds.

DaemeonX

Yeah, you're mostly carbon, so you should really go in the processor.

--G.

-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

So I picked up the game a bit ago and have been playing it, and discovered that trying to fling something too massive to fling with the grapple gun instead propels you backwards at ridiculous speeds and ...

... well, let's just say that I discovered what, precisely, I am worth to the company.

--sofaspud
--$8.14, as it turns out

I nearly drifted into the furnace once, and always wondered if it would chide me for putting something unsuitable in there. "Please review your training."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

This statement holds true up until you force both furnaces to swallow half a Gecko-class cargo hauler at the same time. At which point the game turns into a slideshow as it desperately tries to choke down what you've just shoved in there.

Granted, it clears up quick enough. Usually.

(I've triggered at least one crash pulling that stunt. Whoops.)

--sofaspud
--every. last. bolt. MWUAH HAH HAH!

Considering that the core gameplay loop is to break ships down into bite-sized chunks for easy digestion, I have the feeling that might not get fixed anytime soon.

Tangentially related, I'm tempted to spike a whole ship onto the Barge with tethers, see what happens.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

One thing I've noted, and been vaguely disappointed by, is the... mass cutoff? I don't know what exactly to call it, but there's a point where it very obviously stops bothering with the physics model and instead just says "nope, you can't do that".

I mean, I discovered this blowing my entire stack of tethers trying to force a furnace to swallow an entire Gecko, but I imagine it works the same when trying to force the ship to move down instead of sideways.

That attempt was also when I discovered you don't want to be standing (floating?) between the ship and the wall when a tether tears a chunk loose.

--sofaspud
--clones are 'spensive, yo

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

"I owe my soul to the company stoooorrrrrrre..."

Silly question: Is there anything you can safely disassemble without venting the atmosphere first?

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Sometimes they come pre-vented. Not often, but occasionally.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Then I ran into one that wasn't and I had gotten cocky about just carving the doors off rather than waiting for the airlock to cycle.

Boom.

--sofaspud
--ow

I listen to game design videos, and some designers recommend making something that is different, so the player can't just use the same strategy all the time.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

So the typical routine for a Gecko is to strip off the exterior bits while you're making your way towards it -- antennas, sensor pods, etc -- and salvage those, then pop in through the airlock, find the nearest atmo regulator, and depressurize.

Then you go about dismantling things, in whatever order works best for you. I usually start by peeling the outer hull from the front working towards the back, and after I've done that, then I shut down the fuel pump, shut off the coolant thingy, and yank the reactor. Which is the big prize out of the entire ship and if you can only get one thing, get that reactor.

On these new salvage runners, *every* time I follow that routine, I get disaster. So this last time I instead left the atmo in place, went and found the fuel computer, and shut it off. Only then did I vent the atmo. And for some reason, even though where it was at is a different part of the ship entirely from where I was before, somehow it vented the atmo for the entire ship -- safely.

That's a helluva curve for the devs to throw at us and I'm not sure if I like it. I mean, if it was on a different class of ship, sure? Like they came out with, I dunno, the Iguana hull or soemthing, then a completely different way of going about things makes sense? But this is a Gecko, which every other variant of behaves the same way. Except this one.

Hm.

--sofaspud
--still fed it to the furnaces, though. *nomnomnom*

Yeah, that sounds like what the Infocom people called an "earless rabbit."

("When a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, you see the ears first. People should be able to see it coming when you pull a trick on them, or that isn't fair game design." - paraphrased)

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Hardbreaker Shipspace uses procedurally-generated ships, all following a basic template. During the load phase it 'fills in' all the detail bits. So a Gecko is going to have the same basic hull shape no matter the variant, and a, for example, cargo hauler is going to be kitted out as a cargo hauler, regardless, but the RNG can and does throw little custom bits in there, but nothing *structural*. The ships are basically constructed like Lego sets -- all use the same pieces, they're just snapped together slightly differently.

The thing is, though, that on the Salvage Runner, I *always* find at least one piece that isn't aligned properly. A frame spar is overlapping with its neighbor, or a little interstitial cube (I don't know what else to call them) is floating free a few inches away from the surface, though the game thinks it's still attached. Little bits like that. And it seems the physics engine treats them as though they're where they are rather than where they're supposed to be, because when you release the tension via a otherwise-innocent cut -- boom! Suddenly the panel is flying by at warp six. Or as happened last night, the ship itself began spinning like a top when I cut away a six-foot section of lightweight coolant pipe.

No other ships have had this problem, so I think it's this variant that is buggy.

--sofaspud
--nothing like slicing one cut point and watching half a dozen hull pieces go flying in all directions

--sofaspud
--the stickers are kinda cool tho, not gonna lie

praise be to the Omnissiah

oh, wrong dystopia

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yeah, that one at least sees a use for humans. This one is apparently of the opinion that humans are meant to be on Earth, and nowhere else, and is willing to enforce that with energy weapons.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

--dbrandon

I've seen other reports of 'crash on exit', including people with fairly beefy rigs, so it looks like it's a problem on the coding side.

Well, that's vaguely... reassuring? I guess?

Anyway, I played a bit more last night, and it was fine, so who knows.

Also, I am trying it out on "no oxygen drain" and "no timer" because who needs that stress right now, right?

--dbrandon

One of Spuds friends SHOULD be trying it out on that setting. He is not, and it's messy and glorious.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

--sofaspud
--it would also help if he could tell up from down, but, baby steps

*Crunch!* "Why is my oxygen plummeting?"

Alternatively, flying off into the void. Again.

Has he managed to furnace himself yet?

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

5 trips to the furnace and you get a commemorative sticker! They're like achievements but you can slap them onto your tools.

The basic "skull in spacesuit pointing at the danger" sticker is hilarious, and needs to be a piece of RL merch.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Twice in one night last night!

--sofaspud
--well, processed instead of burninated, but I figure that counts

You should get credit for that. I mean, what isn't water is mostly carbon.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.