Rebalance - Second go

[bszlrd]

Edit: I've put up asurvey on SSCto gather some insight on this topic. This balance is already merged, but as I said, it's intended to be a common ground we can start from.
I'll post the data regularly to see, how this plays out.
Here's the spreadsheet with the data.

The latest attempt sinked a while ago, so I decided to start over. The ship stats, performances right now are all over the place, which makes it harder to adjust new ships. So I put the stats on a bit more common ground.
I've already made a PR for it, to avoid this topic sinking again. :)

I's far from perfect, but the stats are more proportional to each other and to the look of the craft too. And we can spot niches, like there isn't really a medium craft in regards of capacity and size. There's an about 1500t gap between the VentureStar(500) and the Malabar(2000) for example.

Also worth mentioning that I haven't checked hyperspace ranges but they shouldn't change much. (At least I hope)

Delta-V's might be a bit low, around (3000-7000 km/s for fully loaded ships, but up to 46k km/s if you load up with water) but they make more sense compared to each other, and in light of the role of a given ship. (I lowered it more for shuttles and fighters. mid range for transports, and high for couriers.)
Ship classes as I imagine them:

• Shuttles: short range crafts (low deltaV) with relatively low amount of fuel relative to their mass and size. They have lower acceleration. They are simpler and cheaper too. They could be converted to interstellar travel, but they aren't really fit to it. Shuttle in the sense of come and go, not necessarily gliders like the STS. Space only crafts could have an edge on deltaV over thrust generally.
• Couriers: Relatively small and nimble crafts with little cargo capacity, but high deltaV, especially if they load up water as cargo. Long range fighters are basically couriers really, but they deliver punches. :D
• Fighters: lower range high thrust, nimble crafts with smaller capacity.
• Transports: Longer range crafts with lower thrust but larger cargo holds/more cabins. Can have quite large deltaV-s with propellant in the hold, but that's a trade-off with payload.

Thrusts are lowered too, 19G empty is about the max now, commonly 4-8G for transports, 10G+ for combat craft.
I haven't really touched angular speeds for now, but I do think some of the crafts are rotating too fast.

Capacities and masses are based on the volume of the craft. (around 0.06T/m^3 density without cargo, they say the Space Shuttle is about 0.08t/m^3 and the ISS is 0.074t/m^3)

Prices are proportional to mass and capacity and deltaV of the ship, with some adjustments for some craft. They might be a bit too expensive, but they are proportional to each other, so we can play with that more easily.

Discuss. :)

[Nyankosensei]

I agree for a ship balance but by now seems too hard do it for some point, first of all is deltaV, now deltaV is usefull for cover higher distances but with a future implementation of a more precise hyperdrive with a chance for travel planet to planet we can slow down deltaV a lot for have ships dont go over 100-500 kms (to me seems a great value) and more for big ships, other points are the prices, with your mod xylophis is 65k gold and the sinonatrix 170k gold sounds like you have to do over 100 missions with the xylophis first to have enought money for buy another ship.

At the end i like the idea to have all ships don't go over 15G for improve fighting and make really usefull missiles

P.S.
I want slower down cargo and fuel values for the xylophis but by now go down 10T cargo hang the game (I have to try with engine=0 in lua file)

[Nyankosensei]

I have recalculated values for xylophis, i think those values of cargo-fuel-hull are more realistic

Code: Select all

-- Copyright © 2008-2014 Pioneer Developers. See AUTHORS.txt for details
-- Licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 3.0. See licenses/CC-BY-SA-3.0.txt

define_ship {
	name='Xylophis',
	ship_class='light_cargo_shuttle',
	manufacturer='opli',
	model='xylophis',
	forward_thrust = 135e3,
	reverse_thrust = 48e3,
	up_thrust = 78e3,
	down_thrust = 48e3,
	left_thrust = 48e3,
	right_thrust = 48e3,
	angular_thrust = 45e5,
	
	hull_mass = 1,
	fuel_tank_mass = 2,
	capacity = 5,
	max_cargo = 3,
	max_laser = 1,
	max_missile = 0,
	max_cargoscoop = 0,
	max_fuelscoop = 0,
	max_engine = 1,
	min_crew = 1,
	max_crew = 1,
	-- Exhaust velocity Vc [m/s] is equivalent of engine efficiency and depend on used technology. Higher Vc means lower fuel consumption.
	-- Smaller ships built for speed often mount engines with higher Vc. Another way to make faster ship is to increase fuel_tank_mass.
	effective_exhaust_velocity = 340e5,
	price = 57000,
	hyperdrive_class = 0,
}

[bszlrd]

That doesn't give the player too much room for upgrades. (And 1t hull means about 0.01 density, which is quite low.) And the 340e5 ev means quite huge deltaV for a shuttle relative to the others in my opinion.
I think a 5t hull is more believable. 8-10t of cargo could be possible too.
And the up thrust is too low that way, it struggles at takeoff, even when I increased it to 90e3

Let's try this:

Code: Select all

-- Copyright © 2008-2014 Pioneer Developers. See AUTHORS.txt for details
-- Licensed under the terms of CC-BY-SA 3.0. See licenses/CC-BY-SA-3.0.txt

define_ship {
	name='Xylophis',
	ship_class='light_cargo_shuttle',
	manufacturer='opli',
	model='xylophis',
	forward_thrust = 405e3,
	reverse_thrust = 144e3,
	up_thrust = 218e3,
	down_thrust = 144e3,
	left_thrust = 144e3,
	right_thrust = 144e3,
	angular_thrust = 45e5,
	
	hull_mass = 5,
	fuel_tank_mass = 4,
	capacity = 10,
	max_cargo = 10,
	max_laser = 1,
	max_missile = 0,
	max_cargoscoop = 1,
	max_fuelscoop = 0,
	min_crew = 1,
	max_crew = 1,
	-- Exhaust velocity Vc [m/s] is equivalent of engine efficiency and depend on used technology. Higher Vc means lower fuel consumption.
	-- Smaller ships built for speed often mount engines with higher Vc. Another way to make faster ship is to increase fuel_tank_mass.
	effective_exhaust_velocity = 128e5,
	price = 57000,
	hyperdrive_class = 1,
}

About 20 days for 11AU, and more than a month of hyperspace travel to the furthest possible. But that should be reasonable for a shuttle.

[Nyankosensei]

A ship of 19T need 237m³ by yours values, but by now can be good for gameplay (with insystem hyperdrive is possible remove autopilot and others useless systems)

I think is better pull hyperdrive = 0 and max_engine = 1 for don't have problems with tradeship.lua

Edit

Here are all values

[bszlrd]

A ship of 5t needs roughtly 76m^3 if you go with 0,06t/m^3 density. Xylophis is about 76.3 m^3 based on the lowest lod.
Note that this is without any fuel or payload.
I didn't had hyperdrive related problems, but that needs some more testing.

[robn]

insystem hyperdrive

In-system hyperdrive?

I think is better pull hyperdrive = 0 and max_engine = 1 for don't have problems with tradeship.lua

That's entirely the wrong way to fix a bug. If there's a bug in TradeShips, then lets fix it there.

[FluffyFreak]

I think he's using my FastAsLight branch in his own code/fork.

[Nyankosensei]

I think pioneer need something better than time aceleration for travel... autopilot+timeaceleration = point and click gameplay, for tradeship.lua bug a ship with less than 10T cargo hang the game

[walterar]

I think we should wait for merge https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/pull/1719
Game balance is not just ships.