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[FPSX4]

There are so many other ways, and it just looks silly traveling backwards between gravity wells. In my opinion, either plan to make it less buggy or don't implement it at all.

As for fuel, it was full, in addition to having 3 tankers nearby. When it turned white I suspected, but rightclicking it did nothing. It was just "Attack" and "Move to".

Realistically, the only options for slowing down with a reaction drive are to have equally powerful forward-facing drives or to turn around to use the rear facing drive to slow yourself. Basic physics really. How else would you slow down? There are no 'space brakes'.

I was referring to the former. And please don't relentlessly attack my opinion, it's happened on other forums.
All I'm saying is that it doesn't look right for a fighter to be traveling such a long distance backwards. In addition, multiple smaller engines, barely visible, would also work if easing speed when approaching a gravity well.

[forsaken1111]

So rather than go 'backwards' you'd have them have equally powerful engines facing forward. I'm not 'recklessly attacking your opinion' I am informing you that you are wrong, and physics doesn't work that way as far as I am aware. A second engine, equal in efficiency and power to the main engine in back, would work thought it would be entirely redundant. Why build two engines in a ship just to avoid turning around briefly?

Now if there were reactionless drives of some sort, they could work (in theory) the way you want.

Multiple smaller engines that were able to cancel out the velocity imparted by the main drive would, together, be equal in power to the main drive or would take a much longer time to slow the ship than the main drive did to accelerate it. So either it takes longer to slow down than it did to speed up, or it flips around to use the main drive to slow itself, or it has a second drive equal in power to the main drive used only to slow down.

[forsaken1111]

I suppose another option would be to have the 'engine' whatever that is located in the middle of the ship and have exhaust ports fore and aft to apply thrust. I'd imagine such an assembly would take up a lot more space than normal and would be rather more fragile than normal. That's a lot of ducts and pipes directing hot exhaust.

[Neyvn]

All that needs to be is a short small burst in a repetitive action to slow something down in space, there Is no friction so there is no tearing apart from being pushed in the opposite direction it was going...

[inteuniso]

All that needs to be is a short small burst in a repetitive action to slow something down in space, there Is no friction so there is no tearing apart from being pushed in the opposite direction it was going...

Unfortunately, even if there is no friction, there is inertia. Anyone inside that ship traveling at those speeds (somewhere less than the speed of light, but more than anything we have right now) would be ripped apart if they stopped that quickly

[Neyvn]

Who said it was an instant stop, plus it could be like with starwars, to enter warpspeed you don't actually move but the ship leaves the realm of space to travel then when you disengage the ship reenters at the same momentum it was when it entered...

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Actually it exits sometime after you entered. Even in the prequels where it seems like going from Corrsuscant to Tatooine takes about as long as a morning commute.

[Neyvn]

Um, we were talking bout exit speed and method, not time...

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Oh, I read momentum as "moment".

[forsaken1111]

All that needs to be is a short small burst in a repetitive action to slow something down in space, there Is no friction so there is no tearing apart from being pushed in the opposite direction it was going...

Friction isn't what causes something to tear itself apart under conflicting forces, that is inertia as inteuniso pointed out. No matter how you slice it, you must put the same amount of energy into slowing the ship as you put into accelerating the ship, whether its done in a quick strong burst or a long slow burn. The difference is that a single large burst of energy, or several large bursts in sequence, would cause sudden jarring g-forces which would shake the ship and possibly damage it, as well as harming those inside.

This is all assuming that there is no magical inertia-removing technology.

Who said it was an instant stop, plus it could be like with starwars, to enter warpspeed you don't actually move but the ship leaves the realm of space to travel then when you disengage the ship reenters at the same momentum it was when it entered...

I suppose that is possible, they would have to change their movement model to use a hyperspace type system as ships would effectively vanish from the universe during travel.

[Neyvn]

Wait

All that needs to be is a short small burst in a repetitive action to slow something down in space, there Is no friction so there is no tearing apart from being pushed in the opposite direction it was going...

Friction isn't what causes something to tear itself apart under conflicting forces, that is inertia as inteuniso pointed out. No matter how you slice it, you must put the same amount of energy into slowing the ship as you put into accelerating the ship, whether its done in a quick strong burst or a long slow burn. The difference is that a single large burst of energy, or several large bursts in sequence, would cause sudden jarring g-forces which would shake the ship and possibly damage it, as well as harming those inside.

This is all assuming that there is no magical inertia-removing technology.

Isn't that the same as turning the ship around and firing all thrusters??? The thing that 'matters' is what direction the ship is pointing...

[forsaken1111]

I'm not sure what you're asking. My point was that you have to use the same amount of energy to 'slow down' as to 'speed up'. How you use this energy is what's in question, assuming a reaction drive. Turning around for a burn with the main drive is the most common scenario because it requires only one drive system. I'm not sure what you had in mind by

a short small burst in a repetitive action

but even in small bursts, all of the bursts must add up to roughly the same amount of energy as it took to reach that speed in order to come to a relative stop.

[Neyvn]

You were saying that putting ports at the front of the ship to release bursts to slow down would damage the crewmembers due to inertia, but isn't the action of slowing down, the same as turning the ship around to fire the engines to slow you down???


Anyway, don't most engines give off alot of heat aswell to their thrusting ability, this heat can turn into energy itself that could be fired through small openings in the front of the ship to slow them down. You wouldn't need a whole engine...

[Shadowlord]

Isn't that the same as turning the ship around and firing all thrusters??? The thing that 'matters' is what direction the ship is pointing...

That's applying force over a long duration, rather than what he was referring to, firing the same amount of force to achieve a complete stop over a short duration.

There are so many other ways, and it just looks silly traveling backwards between gravity wells. In my opinion, either plan to make it less buggy or don't implement it at all.

I am shocked, shocked I say, that you have called facing backwards and firing the engines to slow down while travelling between gravity wells a bug. If you think that that's a bug, I have news:  Space does not work the way you think it does.

[Dwarf]

Okay. The more sudden the deceleration, the higher the g force. Imagine slowly breaking instead of slamming the brakes. With the kind of speed you'll be traveling in space, slamming the brakes is a bad idea, for it will squish you and expose the ship to great forces.
Now, imagine you spent 100 J of energy to get up to speed. Assuming you're purely inertia-driven without air resistance, as in space, you'll need to break by actually accelerating in the opposite direction. No matter whether you 'slam the brakes' or slooowly thrust in the opposite direction, you'll have to spend 100 J to get speed = 0 m/s.
You don't need additional drives in front for this, in theory. You can turn the ship by 180° and accelerate.