Physical physics are physical and such

[Chairman_Tiel]

Taln are just gonna rock any fighter action I guess.

ANY pilot with even a few minutes experience is going to use the Newtonian physics version.

Flying like a jet isn't required, it just exists for simplicity, mate, so the Taln are = to just about everyone.

I'm not your mate, love.

And honestly if you're relying on this 'field' tech to maneuver, yes, you are at a disadvantage no matter how you look at it. Dependency and complacency are two peas in a pod.

Anyway, that's how I'm going to justify whooping everyone's butt in naval warfare if I ever find the time to RP. Handwavium will only take you so far.

[Error]

*sigh*

So your ships are affected fully by gravity, don't get the mass-reduction fuel efficiency benefit, and must always use Newtonian physics?

Versus most fighter which are mass-reduced (flight fields - think M.E.'s mass effect fields, as an analogy), are minimally affected by gravity, and can use both "atmospheric" and Newtonian physics?

Yes, you have a real advantage there

[Chairman_Tiel]

*sigh*

So your ships are affected fully by gravity, don't get the mass-reduction fuel efficiency benefit, and must always use Newtonian physics?

Versus most fighter which are mass-reduced (flight fields - think M.E.'s mass effect fields, as an analogy), are minimally affected by gravity, and can use both "atmospheric" and Newtonian physics?

Yes, you have a real advantage there

Yup, cuz if you can asspull that I've got a lot of breathing room

[Error]

Tech category: FTL technology

Description: Flight fields are a subset of classic warp FTL technology. Rather than creating a warp bubble to move at superluminal speeds, a bubble is created around the ship in order to render the ship unaffected by normal Gravity and free from the bounds of Newtonian physics, as the field can be modified to redirect the ship's vector, in line with the ship. Flight Fields eliminate the issue of gravity around planets, allowing stations and ships to remain in roughly the same spot relative to the planet, and allows ships to maneuver as if they were atmospheric craft. It is standard on almost all ships and directly tied into FTL systems.

http://162.243.51.140/viewtopic.php?f=1 ... &start=285

[Chairman_Tiel]

SMART drives pretty much negate any interference by varying thrust in accordance with any forces acting on the craft. I'd say the big difference there is that mine doesn't depend on handwavium technology and just requires more user skill by virtue of the absence of any 'atmospheric' mode.

Ergo, better pilots, better maneuverability...you get the picture. I mean, regardless space combat is my thing; this is just one of my reasons justifying that superiority.

It seems to me your only real argument is that yours could switch between my version and atmospheric at whim, but that's a lot like trying to run battlefield 3 on a mac. Chances are your pilots aren't going to be used to it, and with this whole flight field thing in play I hardly think your fighters are going to be designed to fully exploit it, either.

[Crash Override]

My fighters operate on Freespace 2 level

You keep going until you change direction,but takes a while to change your current heading because you were accelerated on that direction.


Or they could operate like Battlestar fighters.

i dont know..

[Ivan2006]

@LS that's basically how everyone else does it too, with inertia and stuff, but the main thing in question is how large-scale orbital maneuvers would be conducted.

@Tiel the idea behind flight fields is that they get turned on when gravity is hindering you and get turned off when gravity is helping you, resulting in fuel preservation. While it may seem at first like the flight fields are not a large benefit, let me give you an example for when not having them would be pretty annoying: Say your planet gets bombarded, the attacking ships with flight fields stay in a fixed position to your planet and can just fire their railguns directly at it, not having to cancel orbital velocity like with traditional orbital bombardement, allowing them to use the muzzle velocity of their railguns for added impact demage. Meanwhile, your ships have trouble keeping them form doing so, as the lack of flight fields forces your ships to constantly have the thrusters and RCS burning to stay close to ships that do have flight fields, which results in you having a choice between fighting continuously and burning a lot of fuel, resulting in the requirement for risky and dangerous mid-fight refueling if the fight takes longer, or only striking during a very short part of the orbit. As you see, the main advantage of flight fields is not that they give you more freedom, but that you can do stuff that would otherwise cause you to run short on fuel and generally make your fuel last a lot longer.
Also, flight fields don't really cause things like drag 'for convenience' that one would associate with atmospheric flight, the comparison mainly refers to not having to deal with orbital mechanics.
It is still a fact that every ship, fighter and otherwise spaceworthy vessel uses and has to deal with inertia, though, this has been clearified by Fenway. But you can't pull a Star Wars space battle. (where the big ships constantly have their engines on and still move at constant speeds)
Also, you may have missed Error's link that elaborates how flight fields are actually not arsepull in the first place, as it is a sensible application of Warp technology, which you can hardly describe as 'arsepull' and be taken seriously.

[Chairman_Tiel]

removed

[Chairman_Tiel]

@Tiel the idea behind flight fields is that they get turned on when gravity is hindering you and get turned off when gravity is helping you, resulting in fuel preservation. While it may seem at first like the flight fields are not a large benefit, let me give you an example for when not having them would be pretty annoying: Say your planet gets bombarded, the attacking ships with flight fields stay in a fixed position to your planet and can just fire their railguns directly at it, not having to cancel orbital velocity like with traditional orbital bombardement, allowing them to use the muzzle velocity of their railguns for added impact demage. Meanwhile, your ships have trouble keeping them form doing so, as the lack of flight fields forces your ships to constantly have the thrusters and RCS burning to stay close to ships that do have flight fields, which results in you having a choice between fighting continuously and burning a lot of fuel, resulting in the requirement for risky and dangerous mid-fight refueling if the fight takes longer, or only striking during a very short part of the orbit. As you see, the main advantage of flight fields is not that they give you more freedom, but that you can do stuff that would otherwise cause you to run short on fuel and generally make your fuel last a lot longer.

Not really, as again, orbits take much longer to decay than many of you have been led to believe. All it takes it a nice initial launch and the SMART drive takes care of the rest when it comes to countering gravity.

Fuel has never really been a concern around here, and if you insist that it is I'm going to be inclined to say that these Mass Effect expies are going to have to draw a lot of power themselves to be on all the time.

Also, flight fields don't really cause things like drag 'for convenience' that one would associate with atmospheric flight, the comparison mainly refers to not having to deal with orbital mechanics.

Let's be perfectly honest here, this 'flight field' stuff is just your way of attempting to justify why a starfighter handles like an F-22 or a Harrier in the middle of space with little to no effort. I've researched atmospheric flight mechanics and how they work in the past half hour, and there are a ton of things this explanation discounts. Hence why I refer to it as asspull more than anything else. I'm more than happy to not attack these flaws like a rabid dog provided I utilize my own system of doing things.

Also, you may have missed Error's link that elaborates how flight fields are actually not arsepull in the first place, as it is a sensible application of Warp technology, which you can hardly describe as 'arsepull' and be taken seriously.

Warp has no grounding in reality. To call it anything other than arsepull would be a major misnomer. Yet that doesn't mean I'm not content with it existing - I'd just like my own system to be able to coexist with certain caveats given that it would realistically work pretty well. I don't think that's too much to ask.

[Error]

What I had issue with was your seeing SMART drives as an "advantage" - if it's on par with everyone else, then at least we compare offense/defense instead of "who flies better".

So as long as you don't consider it "DURR HURR SMART DRIVES PWN ALL", we're cool.

[Shadowcatbot]

Im with Tiel, Lets not halfass this and just go with true (minorly assisted for time saving) space flight mechanics. Its not that hard to teach people the basics of flying in space. "You keep going until something stops you" The ship could be smart enough to lock you into an orbit and deal with other small nuisances. I would rather we not install drag but for server reasons just a tiny little bit of drag to keep parked ships from bouncing around and so lost in space crap stops eventually, But still a very small amount of drag.

[Chairman_Tiel]

What I had issue with was your seeing SMART drives as an "advantage" - if it's on par with everyone else, then at least we compare offense/defense instead of "who flies better".

So as long as you don't consider it "DURR HURR SMART DRIVES PWN ALL", we're cool.

I still maintain flying with Newtonian gives plenty of advantages over forcing the emulation of atmospheric physics. I really don't see much room for argument there.

If your quarrel is with the fact that I get any sort of bonus, look no further than ACH's super-shields for a contemporary that's been readily accepted in the past.

[DeadlyMiddie]

I've got to give Tiel a point on the super-shields; those things are SUPER OP.

[҉]

That doesn't make sense.

Most spaceflight doesn't even take place in gravity wells, and how would you 'reduce the effect of gravity' in the first place? Why in the world would anyone want to mimic atmospheric flight when the system I described would let you turn on a dime and just generally be more awesome than anything else on the battlefield?

But why would there ever be a battle anywhere except gravity wells? Space is big. Unbelievably big. The chance of two fleets meeting by happenstance in the middle of nowhere is so small as to be safely discounted. The only time ships will ever encounter each other is over planets.

[Ivan2006]

First of all, arsepull is something like a card that's played without anyone knowing the card existed in the first place or coming up with something without having an in-universe explanation for it in my book, so maybe there was some confusion about this.

Again, flying with Newtonian physics and stuff was never an issue, from what I could tell everyone was doing that anyway.
I also don't get why people keep comparing flight fields to 'atmospheric flight' tbh, all it does is reduce the effect of gravity.
You would be able to do stuff like stay in position over a planet without being in actual orbit around it. And yes, fuel has never been a problem, mostly for the reason that ships that are supposed to move a lot in combat are also designed to be able to do so. In my scenario, however, you have to keep fireing your engines in order to not move, since the FF-equipped ships are not in an actual orbit in the first place, so how quickly an orbit decays is not even relevant to the situation at all, due to lack of orbit. As a result, ships that would normally not accellerate as much in a battle would then have trouble, because no orbit means they get pulled towards the planet without FF, so they have to keep burning, and if they enter an orbit to avoid that, they'll only be able to shoot at the attackers during a short part of their orbit and during the remaining time, there's nothign stopping them form bombarding their planets.
that's the point of flight fields, they don't keep your orbit from decaying, they allow you to not have an orbit but still not fall down.

I will also be completely honest, I do not use flight fields as an excuse to have my fighter fly like an F-22.
I do not even know how flight fields (AGAIN, they do nothing except for lowering the effects of gravity) would be able to do that in the first place.
And I don't want it either, because that's just inefficient in space.