Gravity and freefall

Tips, tactics, and general discussion for Evochron Legacy.
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TalSh
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Gravity and freefall

Post by TalSh »

I stopped my ship within the gravity hold of a planet and waited. As expected, I started to slowly drift toward the planet, gaining gravitational velocity. Once I hit planetary flight mode, the ship automatically started spinning, nose down and began to fall toward to the planet, slowly gaining speed, though it never felt like I was actually plummeting down. But then, as I reached the surface, and instead of exploding, the nose simply bobbed up and I was still, on the surface. Why did I not crash and burn as expected?
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Re: Gravity and freefall

Post by Vice »

Your ship's control computer and shield system did its job to prevent you from doing so (if we are talking about Legacy here). It will also attempt to keep you level, even if/when it can't. It will also attempt to hover your ship once you are over terrain. You can still override those safety mechanisms and nose dive into the ground and destroy yourself if you want to, just fly into the ground over around 2000 or so nose first.
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SolarWarden
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Re: Gravity and freefall

Post by SolarWarden »

Assuming it was something others wanted to see, would it be difficult to remove or reduce those safeguards and make planetary landing and low altitude flight a little more harrowing? I have to say I was a little disappointed when I realized how difficult it was to actually crash into planetary terrain. A little planetary tough love could really do a lot to improve piloting skills and immersion factor, in my humble opinion.
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Marvin
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Re: Gravity and freefall

Post by Marvin »

I think it was EM where, for awhile, the terrain was less forgiving ... especially on liftoff. Pull your nose up too soon and your aft end impacted the ground and ka-boom. Which, with the ship's standard shielding, didn't seem proper. Especially since you could smack into a space station at high speed without taking damage. Ergo, in order for it to make sense (low speed impact into the ground causing major damage) it would also need to work against any hard object. Like asteroids and other ships and space stations. Of course, the major damage wouldn't need to be against the hull ... it could perhaps only do damage to the shields ... which would then recover at the normal rate.
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Re: Gravity and freefall

Post by Vice »

SolarWarden wrote:Assuming it was something others wanted to see, would it be difficult to remove or reduce those safeguards and make planetary landing and low altitude flight a little more harrowing? I have to say I was a little disappointed when I realized how difficult it was to actually crash into planetary terrain. A little planetary tough love could really do a lot to improve piloting skills and immersion factor, in my humble opinion.
It probably isn't something I'd likely change at this point, unless there is strong player support in high numbers for returning back to older, less forgiving formats past games in the series used earlier (as Marvin pointed out with an example). When earlier games in the series were more 'unforgiving', I received a lot of negative feedback, complaints, and requests to change it to protect the player better (to be 'more forgiving', 'protective', 'less punishing', 'more player friendly', 'more game-like and less hardcore space shuttle landing sim-like'... lol, the list goes on and on). I also did not receive much of any positive feedback from players who may have liked it the way it was. So it was changed to a fairly protective system several years ago and it hasn't changed much since.

Currently, for players who want to smack into the ground or have a risk of exploding while flying high speed 'nap of the earth' routes, the risk is there that they will collide with terrain and explode. For players who just want to reach the ground without worrying about exploding when they get there, they are generally protected if they keep their speed low. So each can have their way depending on how they fly.
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Marvin
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Re: Gravity and freefall

Post by Marvin »

Btw, you can enter a planet's atmosphere and fly around at about 3100 ... but don't try landing at that speed. :o
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Re: Gravity and freefall

Post by SolarWarden »

Or turning too sharply.
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Krzysztof z Bagien
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Re: Gravity and freefall

Post by Krzysztof z Bagien »

I understand why it works like it does, but I think it could be shown a little better in-game - I haven't really seen anything that would suggest ship's computer is taking over, there's no warning, thrusters don't seem work and fuel isn't consumed (BTW. would computer still save me with empty tanks?); maybe you could add some warning (like "PLANET AHEAD!" or something) and, if pilot does nothing about it, a message that autopilot engages?
I guess that safety mechanism is responsible for my trouble with ballistic trajectories (meaning ship's doesn't really move like free-falling object after I shut down my engines in flight while in planetary gravity field)?
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Re: Gravity and freefall

Post by Vice »

I understand why it works like it does, but I think it could be shown a little better in-game - I haven't really seen anything that would suggest ship's computer is taking over, there's no warning, thrusters don't seem work and fuel isn't consumed (BTW. would computer still save me with empty tanks?); maybe you could add some warning (like "PLANET AHEAD!" or something) and, if pilot does nothing about it, a message that autopilot engages?
There is a new collision alert system, which does also apply to planet terrain. As far as impact protection goes, that is primarily a shield factor, not related to thrusters or fuel use. The auto-leveling and hovering is what the thruster system takes care of. You can override both by flying fast enough. It would indeed be possible to make it more visibly noticeable, some kind of autopilot or auto-safety enabling text displayed when such systems are actively performing.
I guess that safety mechanism is responsible for my trouble with ballistic trajectories (meaning ship's doesn't really move like free-falling object after I shut down my engines in flight while in planetary gravity field)?
Not sure since there's no mention of whether you are referring to in atmosphere or out of it (and both vary greatly, including thruster stabilizing and rotational offsets applying far more in an atmosphere) nor with the IDS on or off (which also has a major impact). If you want ballistic style trajectories, you'd probably want to remain in space and toy around with a planet's weak gravity field (relative to your ship's ability to compensate/offset for them) with the IDS off. But it can be more fun/interesting around the higher gravity field of stars.
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Re: Gravity and freefall

Post by matchbox2022 »

any chance of gravity maybe being increased...iunno by maybe a factor of 5-10?
so with cut engines you really fall quicker? Same with stars and blackholes?... I just personally feel like getting into orbit should take more effort and fuel, especially to escape a star or blackhole even more so...
The sim is accurate, just not enough for orbiting and gravity...the speed at which I'd need to achieve to orbit a planet just feels like it should be pretty fast, especially skimming its atmosphere.

Slowing down / burnins to a planet should occur at higher speeds "personally" too....... with longer decelerations as you re-enter an atmosphere for slowing down, so you can't just fly in at speed 12k and expect to slow down enough by the time your planetside to avoid crashing into terrain at crazy speeds...that and maybe shields take damage more often from burning into the atmosphere (even with your bottom completely facing)...especially at those speeds...making burning into the atmosphere a bigger deal above say 6k....especially if you're a heavy ship already (inertia).


I'd ask about contracts to take out or build cities too with capital ship assistance + dockable capital ships :P, but that may be asking too much...as what I just said likely is...just ideas to expand on the sim!
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Re: Gravity and freefall

Post by DaveK »

Interesting discussion ... I have memories of it occurring before in several forms in EM and EMII. The issue seems to be between the group of players who want realistic challenges (docking with stations and cities, orbiting stars and planets and moons plus realistic sized planets and suitably long launch re-entry times taking several minutes, exploding when hitting anything hard (including other ships)) and the group of players who want to spend time exploring, trading, fighting and so on and not having to spend valuable playing time in routine tasks and reloading after blowing up after several hours hard labour.

Historically neither side is ever happy. The first group, given bigger planets, want realistic sized planets and stars even though these would be many sectors in size, the ability to enter stable orbits, fully populated planets with diverse flora and fauna etc. The second group want to be able to create and manage intra- system and inter-system industrial complexes and commercial businesses etc. And then of course there's the group who want to fly and micro-manage capital ships. Finally there's those few who are happy as long as they can come up with a scientific explanation for everything that's incorporated in the game ;)

In the middle is Vice keeping his vision strong and trying to reach a balance between the different groups requests. It brings to mind the old saying ... 'you can't please all the people all the time' which in fact should be 'you can't please all of the people any of the time'.

And my own hobby horse; one pilot's realism is another pilot's purgatory if it's mandatory so please don't inflict your masochism as sadism on me! pretty please :D

It'll be interesting to see how the discussion develops ;D

:)
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Marvin
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Re: Gravity and freefall

Post by Marvin »

Two points.

One, your computer always warns you about how it is changing control modes as you enter a planet's gravitational influence. You get an audio warning and, if you check the chat box, additional information about what to do and what not to do.

Two, head to Mercury if you want to test out a stronger gravitational field. Build a landing pad and then make a few approaches. If you don't care to travel all the way to the Sol system, there's at least one other planet where gravity is greater than the norm. I forget which planet ... but it made one of the quest objectives a bit more difficult than usual. To dock with the city, you'd either come in on a really high glide slope or you'd likely smack into the side of a building.
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