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[GlyphGryph]

Thing is that is based off of friction.  Each push maybe focused mostly to the side, but the overall effort is forward (left motions counter the rightness of the right motions leaving forward momentum and vise versa).  The only way to get even close to that in a frictionless environment would be to have thrusters at angles we can not do in the right angled Corneroids.  And even then if you are wiggling them for forward thrust you are wasting time and effort when you could just be firing them off at the same time to go forward.

Well... it's not, actually. I mean it is, but in the same way you can use the ship's inertia - the only friction involved in the tic tac is the bit keeping the back where it is. Everything else is about redirecting angular momentum.

[Girlinhat]

Skateboards rely on one simple thing though.  Wheels.  The wheels work to change any given force into forward force (or backwards, which is irrelevant).  When you push forward, then it pushes forward.  When you push to the side, the wheels resist and nothing happens.  When you push at a diagonal, the wheels only turn in one direction, forward.

Imagine if a skateboard had ball bearings for wheels, with large spheres instead of round wheels.  In that case you'd have full freedom of movement, and your wiggling motion would just be awkward because the wheels would no longer convert energy in one direction.

[ukulele]

Some really tiny update would make things a lot more interesting, as we have gun control consoles, we should have engine control ones, that work similar to the gun ones (but reversed kind of) enabling us to aim the engines with the mouse.

[andrea]

the good thing about losing the previous save is that new save generated asteroids much richer in thulium and titanium.
I am therefore going to build a titanium ship plated with thulium/iron alloy.
with the occasional ponium plate for sensitive places, like engines.

I only wonder if I'll find enough redium to have some plates of that too. it looks very strong.

[GlyphGryph]

Skateboards rely on one simple thing though.  Wheels.  The wheels work to change any given force into forward force (or backwards, which is irrelevant).  When you push forward, then it pushes forward.  When you push to the side, the wheels resist and nothing happens.  When you push at a diagonal, the wheels only turn in one direction, forward.

Imagine if a skateboard had ball bearings for wheels, with large spheres instead of round wheels.  In that case you'd have full freedom of movement, and your wiggling motion would just be awkward because the wheels would no longer convert energy in one direction.

Except you never "push diagonal" with tic-taccing, is the point. you can tic tac without front wheels, after all, and without the front of the board touching the ground. Yes, you need the side-ways friction of the back wheels in order to give your body a way to provide that rotational momentum, but that's it. In the case of your ball bearing example, you wouldn't be /able/ to wiggle - you'd just rotate around the center of mass instead. And this only works if you can offset the rotation point.

Obviously a ship is using thrust to get that force instead of contact with the ground. But the mechanical principles are quite similar.

[Girlinhat]

The point is that a spaceship is not a skateboard.  Skateboards rely on principles like gravity and friction while a ship relies much more simply on thrust and mass.  You can try and make comparisons, but in the end you're using two completely different sets of forces to achieve movement.

[werty892]

Personally, I suck with this stuff. Im better at shooting and piloting than making the shooting and piloting possible, as you can see by my space brick. I just hope that the first ship we build ont end up going super fast and crashing into a 'roid.

[andrea]

if our ship crashes into an asteroid, the asteroid becomes our ship.

besides, there is a fair chance of our ship being bigger than the asteroid, and armed enough to obliterate it.

[Girlinhat]

I'm betting the second mod (after making it more difficult to drill through armor) is going to raise the speed cap a bit.  So yes, I imagine that the Dwarven Testing Range will have some hilarious crashes.

The real fun will be when power can overload and our ships manage to explode.

[werty892]

I'm betting the second mod (after making it more difficult to drill through armor) is going to raise the speed cap a bit.  So yes, I imagine that the Dwarven Testing Range will have some hilarious crashes.

The real fun will be when power can overload and our ships manage to explode.

This is how we should make missles. A thruster, a reactor, and a coating of light iron so it  does not explode when something looks at it.

[GlyphGryph]

Force is force. In this case, the actual mechanics of the propulsion (regardless of the source of the forces) is the same.


    |     Straight object.
    |

    | <-    Force applied to front of object
    |

   \'     
    \ object is turned by force acting perpendicular to angle of movement, at a distance from the center, combined with the inertia of the object. This rotates object and provides a small amount of momentum to the left in the process.

 _ \
 /| \    Again, force is applied perpendicular to object.

  .-'/
    /. 

     /
    /     object is rotated in opposite direction. Since the direction of perpendicular force was angled slightly forward, applying this force will add forward momentum and cancel out the momentum that was pushing it sideways (and then some, which you'll cancel out by bringing it back again).

     / _
    / |\


Skateboard or spaceship, the mechanics are exactly identical in regards to the effect of the force. Obviously the force is generated by different means, but that is the only thing that changes here.

[ank]

There, started a new save and made my defence drone.
Behold:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The holes in the front armour has cannons in them.

It has 2 consoles, one for normal operation, and one for moving it.

Only has armour on the front, since this thing will make sure to turn and face enemies.

[GlyphGryph]

Does it work well? How quick does it turn? How does it handle?

It seems remarkably easy to build, so if we can churn them out a decent rate, they'd probably make for awesome quick-to-run outpost defense.

Want to build a roll-and-turn as well and compare? (The version with only two arms)

[Girlinhat]

That's actually a pretty solid build.  The only thing I'd do is to add some light/medium armor to flank those power lines, just in case of stray diagonal fire, and to add translation engines.  As it is, it'd do fine to face the enemy and absorb shots, but if you add some sideways thrusters onto each arm then you can get it to strafe and dodge fire as well, which would help a lot given its slender profile.

[GlyphGryph]

If you do a roll based version, you could even manage it with the same number of engines you have now.

(Paired engines are same color for turning. However, simply use those on same side for thrust)


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Front View

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