Oolite Bulletins

Yes, all the same, one's preference will (or should) affect which ship they choose to fly.

When I bought my Caddy 'OMG' I had to go into the ship plist and turn down Gerty's pitch rate. Was just too fast for my aged response's
She was kind and soon adjusted to me as her Cmdr.
Sometimes I wonder who is really flying Gertrude, me or her.
Anyway I have the stick, so it's me.
And I have the 'Press space' info. to say so.

Been interupted by another space wanderer.

RL

Ganelon wrote:

Well, not sure what the standards are, but since we usually base most things on the default Cobra MKII, I guess that'd be medium? And since I usually leave the precision joystick mode on, it would be the slow side of medium.

If it turns any faster than that, it just doesn't feel like the ship is actually big. I mean, a Cobra MK III (for example) is supposed to be about as big as a good-sized house or so. That much metal shouldn't be able to flip around as fast as a skateboard or something. LOL I like it to feel like it's believably some tons of metal with big roaring engines on the back of it.

Umm directional thrusters in zero-g? If the mass is concentrated close to the axis of rotation then in a zero-g environment all you have to do is get some directional thrust going out at the edge of the construction and it won't matter how big it is. Now if the mass is evenly distributed then yes, maybe - but it's still a lot less of a concern than in an environment with more gravity plus aerodynamic drag.

Or maybe I'm wrong.

Changing the direction you're facing may be quite easy, but changing the direction of travel is going to be harder the more massive a ship is (ie. the more mass it has). With our nice Non-Newtonian engines, direction of travel is always forwards, so it makes sense that big ships are harder to turn.

That said I reckon the ooniverse is in a dimension whose physics are not entirely similar to those of our own universe.

Around here, we call it "handwavium physics" (I believe Leafy coined the term, but I could be wrong...)

Oathbreaker wrote:

Umm directional thrusters in zero-g? If the mass is concentrated close to the axis of rotation then in a zero-g environment all you have to do is get some directional thrust going out at the edge of the construction and it won't matter how big it is. Now if the mass is evenly distributed then yes, maybe - but it's still a lot less of a concern than in an environment with more gravity plus aerodynamic drag.

The local gravity and aerodynamic drag aren't really an issue in this case. For rotation of a body about an axis what matters is angular momentum. In cases where all the mass (i.e not just the centre of mass, but a genuinely 1-dimensional object) is on the axis of rotation then your comment applies. For any "real" body then the bigger & heavier it is, the more torque is needed to change its angular velocity. So Ganleon is right in that a heavy ship should feel that way.

Of course, there are then various gyroscopic effects possible. As the craft in Oolite are based on rockets these shouldn't play a part, although they could have been artificially introduced to cover some anomalies. Case in point being the Morrigan (just switched to today, so fresh in my mind) - a big, heavy ship that is nevertheless quick to turn. Despite its speed into a turn, it is damn slow to stop turning, so still retains the feel of being a heavy ship - I'd imagine the experience is somewhat akin to flying a Fokker Dr1

I don't care what the maneuverability is as long as it's not too sluggish and not to touchy. I play Oolite with only my keyboard.

I voted "slow", but that's because I was playing on a lameass computer (and gamepad), so with framerates of down to 15 or some such.
At that framerate any "sensitive" manoeuverability resulted in very "jumpy" behaviour, read : sniping from a distance was almost impossible - now I shoot to "low", and the smallest possible step "up" was already too much "up".

And that was with "joystick sensibility thingy" toggled.

So I think it depends (also) on the framerate you are playing at, and so votes may not really be comparable.

I've only had experience on the Cobby I & III so I can't really give a well rounded opinion. Looking at the reference sheet, I see that larger ships are more sluggish while smaller ships are more maneuverable, and this makes sense to me. Obviously, the physics of Oolite are designed to service game play and I am happy with that.

It seems like the base-ships are well balanced, I think it would come down to personal preference and, of course, the player input device(pad, stick, or keyboard). I use a Logitech game-pad similar to a PS2 controller and I find it does a decent job, considering it costs about $15-20.

I voted Medium.