**Tutorial** - Speed and Handling

Sat Mar 08, 2003 9:49 pm by ThresholdRPG

It seems like speed and handling are two VERY common issues that people want to address in mods. It seems to be an almost universally held belief that this game would benefit from people being able to go faster in cruise mode, especially, and perhaps even increase normal/thrust speeds.

According to S7ATiC, you can improve handling thusly:

FILE: shiparch.ini

<pre>
steering_torque = 6000.000000, 6000.000000, 6000.000000 ;54000.000000, 54000.000000, 104000.000000
angular_drag = 4500.000000, 4500.000000, 4500.000000 ;60000.000000, 60000.000000, 60000.000000
rotation_inertia = 1200.000000, 1200.000000, 1200.000000 ;16800.000000, 16800.000000, 16800.000000
</pre>

About all we know so far to improve cruise engines is slowing down the "charge up" time (again, thanks to S7ATiC):

FILE: engine_equip.ini

<pre>
cruise_charge_time = 0.1
</pre>

For normal speed (thanks to S7ATiC):

FILE: engine_equip.ini

<pre>
max_force = 60000
;formula for velocities/forces,
;where m is distance in meters and f is the outcome force, m * 600 = f
;72,000 is 120m/s, 60,000 is 100m/s, 48,000 is 80m/s
</pre>

For thrust/afterburner speed (thanks to S7ATiC):

FILE: st_equip.ini

<pre>
max_force = 594000

;990m/s, as high as the in-game meter can show
</pre>

... and apparently this lowers the energy cost of afterburner:

FILE: st_equip.ini

<pre>
power_usage = 0

;400 or greater should be more 'appropriate'
;but I'm just using this for fast travel
</pre>

Edited by - Stinger on 2/14/2004 7:45:49 AM

Edited by - Chips on 10/31/2004 8:00:15 AM

Sun Mar 09, 2003 9:32 pm by ThresholdRPG

This idea was Pook's but it is an excellent way to give yourseld some significant speed without screwing up your afterburner.

FILE: Engine_Equip.ini

Find the engine that refers to the one in the ship you are editing.

Scroll down to:

reverse_fraction = 0.200000 ;

Change that number to something like this:

reverse_fraction = -100 ;

Now when you hit X to go "backwards", instead you go forwards at 990 speed for as long as you hold the button down.

Mon Mar 10, 2003 8:08 am by ThresholdRPG

What did you change to increase those?

I am very hesitant to change normal speed and thruster speed because I use those in combat and I don't want to screw up combat.

Also, that might affect NPCs and I definitely don't want to try shooting NPCs moving at 500-1000 m/s.

Mon Mar 10, 2003 9:52 am by Stone-D

Please, people, if you try any of these speed boosts use your judgement and don't ruin the game for yourself. I admit to using a boosted thruster - I edited the thruster stats from the beginning, since my copy finally arrived and took residence on my hard drive... but with limits. I boosted them in stages, starting at the Heavy thruster and going up, each one giving an additional 20 km/s boost to the previous.

I'm now with the advanced thruster, which, at max throttle, gives me 320 km/s - more than useful for my needs. To get places, I 'coast' along by turning off the engines.

Most importantly, the game is still challenging at level 24.

EDIT :

I've now also boosted top speeds on *ALL* ships, not just mine, to 100 km/s instead of just 80.

Be careful you don't boost too fast or the story NPCs will probably die as you leave them behind.

Poor Juni.

Edited by - Stone-D on 10-03-2003 09:53:33

Mon Mar 10, 2003 10:24 am by ThresholdRPG

Great advice Stone. It would be very easy to ruin one's game by changing the wrong thing.

I think the main thing people want to work on is speed for travel times. Nobody likes travel times. They are boring. People don't enjoy staring at the screen as they mind-numblingly plod along just getting from A to B.

In combat, I think speed is fine right now. In fact, if I were to change anything there, I would lean more heavily towards SLOWING THINGS DOWN a bit to make combat require a little more tactics.

But in order to get from A to B fasted, I added the little trick where X becomes a 990 speed boost. You really cannot fight at that speed at all- it is just good for travel.

What I would REALLY like to see, and I suspect many others feel similarly, is a way to make the CRUISE ENGINES go at top speed. Cruise Engines are inherently balanced since you cannot use your weapons with them.

Faster cruise speed + super fast "charge up" would make cruise engines very nice for travel purposes.

Mon Mar 10, 2003 10:46 am by Stone-D

> Nobody likes travel times. They are boring. People don't enjoy staring at the screen as they mind-numblingly plod along just getting from A to B.

True, but making the speeds too high will reduce the game's overall enjoyability. The game would be reduced to going from a to b ASAP, ignoring all in between. No more worries about attacks, no more enjoying the scenery, no more enjoying the feeling of 'flight' and no more real exploration.

> In combat, I think speed is fine right now. In fact, if I were to change anything there, I would lean more heavily towards SLOWING THINGS DOWN a bit to make combat require a little more tactics.

I'm actually fine in that area, I like the way it is but I see your point.

> But in order to get from A to B fasted, I added the little trick where X becomes a 990 speed boost. You really cannot fight at that speed at all- it is just good for travel.

Yeah, noticed that! I think I'll play around with that if I get bored looking for the cruise settings.

> What I would REALLY like to see, and I suspect many others feel similarly, is a way to make the CRUISE ENGINES go at top speed. Cruise Engines are inherently balanced since you cannot use your weapons with them.

But, remember, the NPCs use cruise engines as well. Make it too fast and they'll crash all over the place or effectively cease to exist as they are only in the vicinity momentarily.

At the moment I'm using a slightly suped up advanced thruster with a high drainage. Max speed overall is 360 km/s - I turn the engines off to coast along for vast distances. It's quite fun actually!

Mon Mar 10, 2003 9:50 pm by ThresholdRPG

When it comes to speed, if I could have everything how I want it (*dream*) I would want this:

BUYABLE engines that provide all sorts of faster cruise charge times, higher cruise speeds, etc. This would give people something else to spend their money on. It also lets people upgrade the "weaker" ships.

Cruise Engines: as people purchase better engines, you can get either faster cruise charge, or higher cruise speed (up to the 990 max, or as high as 1500-2000 if we ever crack that 990 max), or both for the REALLY expensive engines.

Afterburners: It would be nice to add a few more afterburners that bump thruster speed up to perhaps as high as 300 (but no higher).

Normal speed: It would be nice if some engines would let "normal" max speed go as high as maybe 100-120, but not much higher.

If we could really change everything, it would be neat to have things like the "CRUISE ENGINE" that has a max normal speed of 50, max afterburner of 100, but a cruise engine speed of 2000. Basically, this engine would be optimized for the HIGH GEARS, and would be most common in "deep exploration" ships or heavy freighters.

Then you could have the "local assault engine" with 120 normal speed, 250 afterburner, and no cruise engines at all (or make cruise engine also 120).

On another topic: is anyone deciphering the handling stuff? I have made changes to the three things we THOUGHT were handling, but I really don't notice much of a difference.

Mon Mar 10, 2003 10:14 pm by Kru Noctum

Thresh, maybe the handling is used with a multiplyer, so you would have to make a BIG change to notice any effect?

Wed Mar 12, 2003 1:56 am by ThresholdRPG

Possibly. Hopefully someone with decipher handling soon.

Any luck on cruise speed anyone?

Wed Mar 12, 2003 6:25 am by MightyMidget

Hey, i was looking through the file and it looked like there was an engine for every different kind of ship? Is that true?

Wed Mar 12, 2003 12:51 pm by ThresholdRPG

Yes, there is an engine for every ship with its own stats.

As noted in another thread, you can actually make these engines buyable, and allow people to "upgrade" their engine.

You could even make NEW engines that are more powerful than existing ones.

The problem is this doesn't affect handling, and it also doesn't affect CRUISE ENGINE speed.

Those are the two biggies as far as this thread.

Wed Mar 12, 2003 2:15 pm by Aceria

How do I tell which ship is what?
Is there a post here that has them or something?
I currently use the eagle

Edited by - Aceria on 12-03-2003 14:26:31

Wed Mar 12, 2003 6:43 pm by MightyMidget

not to my knowledge, Aceria but you can back track it in many cases, for example by looking in the shiparch file you can find the stats for the ships and if you match those stats to the stats of your ship then you've found it, then supposing you want to change that ship's speed you can track the "nickname" to the "archetype" in the loadouts.ini since they're the same value, and then from there you can find the type of engine because its listed in the loadouts.ini e.g. ge_lf_engine_01 would be the patriot light fighter's engine, and then you look for a match to that name in the engine_equip file and you can change the engine's stats. Pretty complex but that's how i do it, and i'm sure given that files need to reference to eachother, you can find out many more things using similar methods.

Thu Mar 13, 2003 3:36 am by ThresholdRPG

Here is the best way to figure out which ship is what, imho. Btw, it is easier to do this if you have the strategy guide.

In general, the first two letters refer to the source of the ship. li = liberty, br = bretonia, co = corsairs, etc.

Then you have lf for light fighter, hf for heavy fighter, and fr for freighter. Additionally, you have ef for elite fighter (the very heavy fighters).

A good way to make sure is to then compare the stats of the ship you think you found to the values in the strategy guide.

When I find this, I then add a comment to the file to make it easier for me to find it in the future.

BACK ON TOPIC:

Any luck finding cruise speed?

Thu Mar 13, 2003 4:31 am by MightyMidget

yea you got it threshold

, lol using my method i figured out the abbreviations system, so yea your way is a lot easier.

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