Freelancer Physics, 2.0

Tue Nov 09, 2004 1:36 pm by Wasabe

Yeah, that is something that has been observed for a long time, though I've never seen a really good explaination for it. Basically, when you give a ship 2 engines, FL doesn't know how to handle the engine kill properly. Normally, when you hit engine kill, the linear drag of the engine goes away (as well as the thrust), and you just float. Your ship does slowly lose velocity because of the linear drag of your ship and a setting in the constants.ini file, but it's a slow process since the linear drag of your ship is 1 by default.

However, when you add a second engine and do an engine kill, FL does eliminate the linear drag of the engine, but it doesn't take away the max_force. So, your ship suddenly has a force of like 70,000 applied to it (or whatever the force of the 2nd engine is) but only a linear drag of 1, giving it a max speed of 70,000! Of course, this is limited by the ANOM_LIMITS_MAX_VELOCITY setting in the constants.ini file.

I'm just assuming that's why 2 engines gives you that super speed when you hit engine kill. I don't know for sure, but it seems to make sense.

Tue Nov 09, 2004 1:52 pm by Argh

There are ways to set up this relationship with one engine, too... that's why I didn't want to get into this very much

Basically, the short version is that if you set up certain relationships between Linear_Drag, Mass and Max_Thrust, you can do some very funny things to a ship's behavior, even with one engine. I regard doing these things as:

1. Not something any sane modder would do to his/her mod, or to players.
2. Something that griefers would love to use to create the usual anger and confusion...

Oh yeah... and people think that ANOM_LIMITS_MAX_VELOCITY has something to do with Tradelane speed... this is wrong. It's mainly used for collision events and ship physics... iow, what Wasabe was getting into there is correct... setting it to 70,000 and then running amuck with engine-kill acceleration will allow players to get to insane speeds. Modders should set this value as low as possible, to make sure that even if griefers CAN make use of this, that they can't use it to attain higher velocities than Tradelanes, if such things are in use in a mod. Of course, the preferred route is to eliminate Trade Lanes entirely, imho, and re-arrange the Systems so that things aren't so darn far apart, unless it's absolutely necessary...

Edited by - Argh on 11/9/2004 1:58:42 PM

Edited by - Argh on 11/9/2004 2:43:02 PM

Tue Nov 09, 2004 2:34 pm by KingofFah

I wasn't saying using two engines, I was just saying I have two engine (as in engine_equip.ini). Only mount one of them onto the ship, I have seen a lot of strange thingsh happen when you have more mounts than freelancer knows what to do with them.

I hadn't know there is a specific way to force it to happen with two engines, all I know about it the ship setup for engine kill (with one engine). I haven't modded in awhile, but I always have at least one account on my server with this setup so checking my new systems becomes much faster.

About cheating, what kind of things can be done to prevent it.
I wasn't sure, but assumed FL would check the ini's and verify that they are the same as the server's (using the same mod).
I've heard of one FL anti project before, but do not remember the name.
Are you saying anyone can just mod their ship ini's and weapon ini's and connect (I would think I would have seen more cheater on servers if so)?

Tue Nov 09, 2004 2:37 pm by Wasabe

Oh yeah... and people think that ANOM_LIMITS_MAX_VELOCITY has something to do with either Cruise or Tradelane speed... this is wrong. It's mainly used for collision events and ship physics... iow, what Wasabe was getting into there is correct... setting it to 70,000 and then running amuck with engine-kill acceleration will allow players to get to insane speeds. Modders should set this value as low as possible, to make sure that even if griefers CAN make use of this, that they can't use it to attain higher velocities than Tradelanes, if such things are in use in a mod.

I'm not sure what you are talking about, but ANOM_LIMITS_MAX_VELOCITY definately effects your cruise speed. It doesn't effect tradelane speed though. Change your ANOM_LIMITS_MAX_VELOCITY to 100 and that's as fast as you will be able to cruise (no matter what your CRUISING_SPEED= is in constants.ini). It also limits how fast you can go with the 2 engines/engine kill thing.

And unfortunately, the CRUISING_SPEED and ANOM_LIMITS_MAX_VELOCITY are client side, not server side, so there is no way to stop cheaters by changing the server settings. This cheat is very well known so I'm not worried about posting it here. For experienced players or sysadmins, it's easy to catch speed modders.

Tue Nov 09, 2004 2:42 pm by Argh

Whoops, yes... you're right. I should've said, "so long as ANOM_LIMITS_MAX_VELOCITY is higher than Cruise"...

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