Exhaust Flook

[Switeck]

It might happen because the ship in question has a much higher turnrate than its thrust coupled with a high top speed or just coming off injecting or torus drive.

[mandoman]

This is going to sound stupid, I know, but when you say "torus drive", are you referring to hyperspeed?

Here's another one. Just happened a couple of minutes ago. I got the screen shot from behind. Notice the Rock Hermit up ahead, just above the ship. I was within spitting distance of that thing when this began. It pushed my ship clear back away from the Rock Hermit.

[Switeck]

"when you say "torus drive", are you referring to hyperspeed?"

Yes, I guess I've heard it called hyperspeed as well.

The only time I've seen crazy speeds in the wrong direction was when I rammed the main station (thanks to bad placement by longrangescanner) using my stupid-fast cheat ship during testing. If I could do it on purpose in the vector-direction I wanted (without usually just killing my ship), I could have distant suns + realistic systems installed and still go from the planet to the sun in about a minute.

[Commander McLane]

I can't help but thinking that the symptoms look and sound very much like the result of a collision with an object much heavier than your ship. A main station, and presumably also a Rock Hermit would be such objects. A big ship might also qualify, if your current ship happens to be quite small.

[mandoman]

You know, Commander McClane, no disrespect intended, but I think I would know if I had a collision. I don't drink booze, so I'm not drunk when I play, and I don't take any illegal substances. I also am a pretty good driver, and have played a lot of shoot em' up space games. I didn't hit that Rock Hermit, or even a boulder, or a ship, or a bug, or anything else but space dust. I only got close enough to start shooting at it, trying to flush the pirates out inside. I know I'm not the sharpest stick in the yard, but I can tell when I run into something, and that was not one of those times.

Switek, I see what you mean, but I don't mess with anything in the game, either testing my ships, or playing the game. In fact, when something freaky happens, it's quite disconcerting. I have learned with this particular event to just let the ship cruise a while, and it straightens itself out. Like I said earlier, it may be nothing, I just thought the development crew might want the info, just in case.

[Switeck]

The more normal most of your ship stats are besides the ship's top speed, the more likely these results are to happen.
...So unless we know far more information about your OXPs, we can only wildly speculate in ever more ridiculous ways.

[Smivs]

I have learned with this particular event to just let the ship cruise a while, and it straightens itself out.

This again suggests that excessive speed is the issue here. A ship travelling at very high speed will display his behaviour untill it slows to 'normal' speeds, and this can take a long, long time. Certainly while developing my (un-released) Turbo Boost OXP, the ship could take a minute or more of real time to return to normal behaviour as it slowed down.
This probably explains why McLane thought you might have collided with/glanced off another object, as this is normally the only time you would experience the speeds necessary to cause this issue to occur, so it was a reasonable question.
However in this case I suspect the ship you're using is simply too fast.

[mandoman]

Hmmm, well, then I guess that most of the core ships are too fast, as the one in the picture has a max speed of 400. That is fast, but it isn't the fastest ship oxp by any means, nor is it as fast as a couple of the core ships. I will admit that a couple of my ships are ridiculously fast, by design, but really most of the ships I have made have a max speed of less than 400. I've released a couple of them already. It may be as you say, though. I guess there's a price for everything.

[Smivs]

As you say, with a max speed of 400, this is unlikely to be the reason unless other OXPs were playing a part.
The mystery remains open!

[Eric Walch]

The normal engines can not produce this effect. You can only get this behaviour when an external source pushes against the schip (e.g. collision) or a script is doing that.
In normal flight conditions the ships 'velocity' should be identical with the speed multiplied with the heading. If you subtract both, the result should always be zero.. e.g. typing:

Code: Select all

PS.velocity.subtract(PS.heading.multiply(PS.speed))

in the console should always result in(0, 0, 0)

When you have a collision this may be different. You can simulate a 'collision' by ejecting a 'station' by typing:

Code: Select all

PS.ejectItem("dodo")

Because a station is so much heavier than a player ship, your ship will be accelerated away. Actually:

Code: Select all

your speed x your mass = station ejection speed x station mass

resulting a ridiculous speed so you fly so fast away, you probably can't see the station anymore when you start looking backwards.

[mandoman]

Okay, if you say so. I only mentioned this as a possible bug, nothing more, but it seems that it's my own fault, once again. I'll just go on playing, hitting stations and rock hermits, and asteroids, and other ships, without realising it. Seems to be working for me most of the time anyway, so what do I care. I must be hitting a lot of invisible things, though, as I'm always watching my sensor grid for all of the above, and don't remember hitting any of the above without exploding into mandodust. I'll just let it go at that. Can you?

[Smivs]

<Smivs chuckles at the thought of 'Mandodust' >

[SandJ]

I will admit that a couple of my ships are ridiculously fast, by design, but really most of the ships I have made have a max speed of less than 400.

I have just spent a merry hour or so mucking about with max_flight_speed and thrust and the max_flight_pitch and injectors and turning and I cannot get the exhaust flume to do anything but behave correctly.

(Have you ever tried launching with a ship's speed of 60,000? Instant planet crater!)

I have see this myself, but only under specific circumstances, namely travelling at ultra-high speed.
There is a quirk of the game that causes this if you turn through 180 degrees at very high speeds. Doing this leaves the ship travelling in the same direction it was, but facing backwards, and the exhaust appears to come from the front of the ship as it points away from the direction of travel, not the back of the ship. Indeed if you do a 90 degree turn and use external views, you can see the exhaust pointing up or down!

I can't reproduce that even using a speed of 6,000 or a speed of 1,200 and a thrust of 20,000, plus lots of other combinations. I can't get the tail to bend by more than about 30 degrees, even with an unflyable max_flight_pitch of 3.

It wouldn't be bad if I didn't notice that the whole ship was backing up do to the phenom. I know it was backing up, and really fast, as I watched the Rock Hermit I was harassing running away from me. At first I actually thought the Rock Hermit WAS accelerating ahead of me, until I noticed the exhaust plumes covering my front view screen.

So you were actually, definitely, going backwards? The background dust was going away from you?

It might happen because the ship in question has a much higher turnrate than its thrust coupled with a high top speed or just coming off injecting or torus drive.

That's what I've been trying to reproduce but can't.

Here's another one. Just happened a couple of minutes ago. I got the screen shot from behind. Notice the Rock Hermit up ahead, just above the ship. I was within spitting distance of that thing when this began. It pushed my ship clear back away from the Rock Hermit.

Your ship hit something. It must have.

Check the ship's components. I created a ship with some turrets 2 km ahead of the nose to see what would happen. What happened was my ship bounced off things when it was 2 km away from them! If you approach the BACK of a space station, using side-on view, dead slow, at what point does your ship get stopped as it hits the station?

[Switeck]

mandoman,
Please list your OXPs.
I'm certain of at least one way (maybe more!) that you can get the results you have without running into anything.