nozmajner wrote:That's not that simple in most cases. Especially if it needs new UV maps.
Quite a few ships seem be textured in a way that leaves outer surface of landing gear cover texture in the spot where it is on the model, relative to the surrounding texture, so I don't think there would be need for massive reworking.
I'v originally intended the Mola as a tailsitter, and had plans for the Malabar to have that capability too. Kanara could work that way.
Well, to be honest, Mola looks just stupid when landed on its belly, it would look far better sitting on its tail. Should work great for Malabar and Vatakara as well.
Also, some ships would look good as tail sitters, some won't. The Natrix would look quite odd that way in my opinion, same for the Nerodia or the DSMiner. Or the Pumpkinseed. Or the Deneb and Venturestar.
I think a lot of stylistic concerns could be alleviated or eliminated with right placement of landing gear - telescoping out of midpoint, extending out of already present protrusions such as wing gondolas, etc. - to make it look stable and sound from engineering POV. Plane-like ships may look a bit weird, but we already have space shuttle launching in tail sitter configuration despite being plane like.
In the worst case scenario, some ships could be kept in belly lander configuration, while others (generally heavier ones) would be tail sitters (wasn't it already the case in older builds/Genesia mod?).
Ships having separate takeoff and landing thrusters could have low exhaust velocity (but high throughput) set for them. It would help justifying making those thrusters takeoff/landing exclusive (very high fuel consumption) and could be justified in fiction by unwilingness to have WMD grade plasma cannons firing point-blank at landing pads - high thrust, low exhaust velocity engines are generally much 'softer'.
I wouldn't mind exceptions, and in some cases - like DSMiner (which I hate visually, TBH, due to the silly protruding bridge in the back, I like one of (your?) concept sketches of one of its lighter relatives, though) - it could be a sensible way to make the ship not very landing capable.
OTOH the way you can land, for example, a Mola Mola, refuel, and find yourself unable to liftoff just because the main engines are pointing the wrong way is facepalm inducing.
Some of those should not be atmo capable anyway if we are strict.
Atmospheric capability becomes rather blurry concept when you have high-thrust fusion drives that enable controlled descent all the way down from the orbit, without any of that aerobraking and fiery reentry hassles.
With such drive attached even a cardboard box is atmospheric capable provided you fly slowly (and provided it doesn't catch fore from fusion engine's waste heat, but that is equally applicable to air-filled cardboard box in deep space), you just need to fly slowly. Simply put - high thrust and high delta-v together effectively eliminate the possibility of a ship being truly atmo incapable.
Besides, ships that wouldn't be atmo capable could still land on airless moons and planets. Weak thrust? Then they could land on lower mass moons and asteroids.
The only way to prevent a ship from landing anywhere would be not giving it a landing gear and making orbital station docking work without it.
If you just want to prevent landing on massive bodies you can limit main/liftoff thrust, but even then someone will hollow the ship out (to make thrust/weight ratio workable) and land there just to prove they can.
The case of tail-sitters comes up time to time, but I don't think we ever achieved anything close to consensus about them. One question is, tail-sitters or belly sitters contribute more to the space opera setting? Where we want to place our emphasis on the realism <-----> science-magic scale?
That has actually been a foregone conclusion the moment someone decided to simulate things rather thoroughly.
The way Pioneer works, it's no longer a question of aesthetics, but gameplay, and gameplay resulting from inability to fire your most powerful thrusters at the planet for no adequate reason is often frustrating.
How much adjustment is needed for the players to get used to tail-landings? How unfamiliar it would feel to them visually? Does implementing it would worth the effort on the larger scale? Would it add to the playability or take away from it?
- None. At the very least they can land on autopilot, if they can already land manually in a belly lander, landing in tail lander should make no difference to them or be easier on high gravity worlds (I actually tend to do final approach aft down on those and flip for actual touchdown, because it's much more controllable), launches will also become much easier and more intuitive as your main engine will also propel you away from hard, unforgiving ground.
- Don't care because of the above, also Pioneer is already full of unfamiliar stuff from having to brake before you see your destination to Newtonian space combat - maybe a sight of spacecraft sitting on its tail like every IRL spacecraft they've seen launching on TV won't traumatize them too much.
- Probably.
- Add - less frustration due to inability to take off because apparently :insert corp here:'s engineers were drunk on the job, easier takeoffs and landings.
How much need for more realism would creep in if we would convert all ships to be tail sitters? Like engine efficiencies and power/propellant amounts, proper heat management, and spaceport and flight regulations for example.
It would cater to the die-hard space fans for sure, but it might rob enjoyment from the other players.
First, it's a slippery slope fallacy.
Second, realism creep isn't undesirable as long as it doesn't impact the main premise of the game (private owners flying around in space trading and doing other stuff as well as pewpewing space pirates). As long as this premise and associated gameplay can be maintained, the realism creep will add to the feeling of authenticity and therefore awesomeness.
Third realism creep doesn't need to affect basic gameplay - for what beginner players cares an autopilot performs the basic task of getting from A to B, leaving only the choice of destination and screaming while they are shot to pieces by pirates to the player. Advanced players, OTOH, would probably like some actual difficulty curve that rewards their increasing abilities with increased choice of interesting gameplay goals (something original Frontier failed horribly at - it just took doing enough Barnard Star milkruns to buy yourself a Panther with SPA and 100+ shields and poke anything that haven't crashed into you with 20MW turrets - no skill necessary). From this perspective we want as much of this stuff as possible.
Beginner player might not know or care that their ship is much more fuel efficient in low thrust mode or how to manage heat or what ship has more efficient engine.
Their autopilot will fly them to their port of destination in whatever thrust mode it deems optimal, heat managment will generally be automated in normal flight, and ship descriptions/roles should tell them enough about what the ship is good at for any sort of basic missions they may undertake.
OTOH all those aspects might be vitally interesting for advanced players.
In favor of tail sitters: They are more realistic, for sure. They are also unique these days. Can't really recall any game that have them, maybe that moon colony game with it's lander thingy. The question is, would it be for the sake of uniqueness, or it would add to the game in a meaningful way?
See above, the way Pioneer works it's no longer a purely aesthetic choice, but a mechanical one.
lwho wrote:I pretty much prefer time acceleration over other concepts as it stresses the vastness of space while bridging the gap between realism and gameplay in a good way IMHO.
What I'm missing sometimes is kind of an "automatic" setting that would switch time acceleration depending on distance to visible bodies (somewhat similar to the acceleration limiting for simulation reasons). For example, when you just set it to maximum acceleration when arriving after a jump, the approach to the destination feels uncomfortably fast, i.e. it should reduce time acceleration earlier than necessary for simulation. This would probably avoid the "The permanent button clicking on the other hand is awful." mentioned by zzz.
Don't we already have that? At worst it might need some distance tweaking.
And you can override it too if you don't want to take scenic route.