Oolite Bulletins

Out of interest how difficult would it be to fit the ships with reverse gear?

We've all been there, some numpty slammed his ship face first into the station now all his cargo is floating around practically begging to be picked up. But in your greed you've gotten a little too close, now the station is slowly shaving your nose cone off and any flips twists or turns on your part would result in (bang). Or you just need 2 more seconds to launch that missile but the nutter piloting the Fer-de-Lance seems hell bent on impailing you.

a 0.1 reverse gear would be quite useful now. Because currently this "all forward" trait is one oolite shares with these little beauties;

How about a single one-off reverse impulse - blasts you backwards for, say, 0.5km, in 1 or 2s?

"Star Trekkin' accross the universe, only going forward 'cause we can't find reverse..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlTMXiqbDZU

I personally would love to have a small reverse thrust function to the Oolite ships. It would be brilliant when dealing with station docking. It's a pain to have to do a 180 and thrust away from a station's bay simply because I'm off centre by a couple of degrees.

Perhaps something like reverse is a maximum of 25% of forward thrust of a ship.
On screen would be displayed as: It would mean having to introduce a '0 thrust' or 'toggle thrust direction' key so you don't keep flying backwards when you want to just stand still.

I do seem to remember being able to use the breaking thrusters to fly backwards in Frontiers, but I could be mixing it up with another game.

KZ9999 wrote:

... It's a pain to have to do a 180 and thrust away from a station's bay simply because I'm off centre by a couple of degrees. ...

Fly better. Plan your approach better. Learn how to make corrections during approach. You don't always point the ship at the center of the docking bay, sometimes you have to point your ship in a path that will bring it into the docking bay.

CptnEcho wrote:

KZ9999 wrote:

... It's a pain to have to do a 180 and thrust away from a station's bay simply because I'm off centre by a couple of degrees. ...

Fly better. Plan your approach better. Learn how to make corrections during approach. You don't always point the ship at the center of the docking bay, sometimes you have to point your ship in a path that will bring it into the docking bay.

I suppose you think brakes are for pansies too hu? Personally I never use lasers to take some one out (commanders who use lasers wear girly girl perfume) I just aim my ship at them and head butt them to death. We compensate for incompetency with technology.

ClymAngus wrote:

a 0.1 reverse gear would be quite useful now.

It's in. If I switch the Joystick to minimum throttle, I do /VERY/ slowly move backwards, with any ship. It's an amount of pixel per second or so

However, when the game slows down due to ATI not supporting OpenGL acceleration, setting the ship to minimum throttle often results in a very high reverse speed and the speed bar in the hud turning into the opposite direction by a big amount.

Thus, if this shall be a feature and not a bug, the proper zero setting for throttle would just have to be adapted - and to remove the bug with higher reverse speeds probably already would point someone there. It's just a question if everyone wants it, and I believe that there won't ever be a spacecraft which couldn't do such things at least slowly.

Screet

In all honesty, one of the few ways we can explain using non-Newtonian physics model in Oolite is by saying that all ships have extremely powerful manoeuvring thrusters that kill their velocities in all other directions but where the nose of the ship is pointing to. Thus, reverse thrusters would definitely need to be included.

And, even if we ignore the Newton guy completely - after all, he was a silly sod - manoeuvring thrusters are something that you'd expect every ship to have in any case.

Now, if there was a way to start using the numpad to use every thruster separately...

*BEEP-BEEP-BEEP*
This starship is reversing
*BEEP-BEEP-BEEP*
This starship is reversing
*BEEP-BEEP-BEEP*

Captain Hesperus

Captain Hesperus wrote:

*BEEP-BEEP-BEEP*
This starship is reversing
*BEEP-BEEP-BEEP*
This starship is reversing
*BEEP-BEEP-BEEP*

*ROTFL* ...but what do you do with the vacuum problem? Have every spaceship equipped with an additional radio gear that's only used for this type of warning? Have you considered to train trumbles to do that job?

Screet

DaddyHoggy wrote:

How about a single one-off reverse impulse - blasts you backwards for, say, 0.5km, in 1 or 2s?

You mean, like Retro Rockets? These were a feature in 16-bit Elite. And we already had a brief exchange about them.

Only they fired you backwards a full scanner diameter (equals 51200 meters). Perhaps not so usefull for small corrections during the docking process.

Captain Hesperus wrote:

*BEEP-BEEP-BEEP*
This starship is reversing
*BEEP-BEEP-BEEP*
This starship is reversing
*BEEP-BEEP-BEEP*

Captain Hesperus

'

And you call me Mad....

LOL...

Captain Hesperus wrote:

*BEEP-BEEP-BEEP*
This starship is reversing
*BEEP-BEEP-BEEP*
This starship is reversing
*BEEP-BEEP-BEEP*

Captain Hesperus

Don't forget the reversing light and hazard flashers.

Reverse... You must be joking! I can't handle trying to shoot backwards, with all the controls in reverse. Makes me dizzy just looking out the back window. Now yous want to fly backwards, I'd loose my licence very fast that way.

Commander McLane wrote:

You mean, like Retro Rockets? These were a feature in 16-bit Elite.

yeah, i remember them. i always wondered why they're not in oolite...