Do we actually *need* atmospheric shielding?

[DraQ]

...as separate piece of equipment, that is.

It might be a controversial idea, but:

• We are dealing with 3 parameters here - heat resistance, pressure resistance and drag.
• Drag is a function of ship's shape.
• Pressure resistance is a function of shape and strength of both hull and structural components inside.
• Heat resistance is basically fully determined by hull plating and, unlike primitive visuals of Frontier, Pioneer just leaves little room for stuff attached to the entirety of the outer hull, and there is no reasonable explanation how you could possibly remove shielding from a ship as obviously designed to be atmospheric capable as Wave or Venture Star, or bolt it onto a Sinonatrix.

I propose that we do away with separate atmospheric shielding and make those three parameters dependent on ship type - for example I Imagine Mola Mola as being able to withstand both much pressure and heating, as well as having moderate drag, Wave could have worse resistances but minimal drag, while OTOH pretty much all OPLI ships should have rather deplorable atmospheric characteristics and require much caution when going planetside.

Also, I propose that resistances, and to a lesser degree drag resistance should scale with hull condition. It would be an interesting addition to the currently basic damage model, for example to have a ship shot up and forced to emerge from ultra dense atmosphere of a planet to avoid destruction or a partially burned up one to have to fly even slower than it could before unfortunate reentry.

Edit:

It would also go a long way helping create distinct identities for manufacturers.

[Marcel]

I've never really like the Frontier model of atmospheric shielding. Adding something that weighs 1 ton regardless of ship size to reduce heat buildup. What is it? Invisible hull plates? A force field generator? We already have shields. Perhaps the current shields could help reduce damage, but I'd very much prefer that atmospheric capabilities be determined by the hull design as you said.

[DraQ]

A bonus: merging atmospheric capability into the hull would allow much more nuance to ships' atmospheric behaviour than "has shield/has no shield".

We should take that whole "Pioneer is not Frontier" thing more to our hearts.

[laarmen]

Please note that it would be "easy" (well, not exactly easy, but probably feasible) to adjust the mass of the atmoshielding to the size of the ship as of now.All you'd have to do is to override the Install/Uninstall methods to change the mass capability on the fly to match the ship's size.

[DraQ]

The question isn't whether it can be done.

It's whether it should be done and so far I haven't seen any argument for doing so other than "it's how it was in Frontier".
Modular atmospheric shielding simply doesn't make any sense if the entire hull was either designed around atmospheric flight or not.
Hull shape and structure also pretty much determines both the aerodynamics and pressure resistance, it makes no sense to delegate those to an optional piece of equipment either.
Then there is the ability to actually vary the various atmospheric parameters with fine granularity according to the hull type and give manufacturers a bit more of unique identity manifesting in actual gameplay - binary presence or absence of atmospheric shielding doesn't give us that opportunity.
Finally, there are gameplay considerations - currently there is no reason to actually mount an atmospheric shielding because it wastes cargo space - with powerful drives being commonplace you aren't ever obliged to perform aerobraking and there is no way to actually heat ship drastically enough to make the shielding a necessity without it getting stupid.

Making atmospheric shielding vary its mass doesn't fix any of those problems and makes some of them worse.

[testadilegno]

Dear all,
I've been silently working on studying atmospheric drag and lift models since a few months, and made some progress in understanding how to put a simplified model in the code. There are ways to do that, depending on how much realism is desired.

However, I've become convinced that gameplay reasons should be decided first.
As you have pointed out, as of now, due to the strength of the engines, aerobreaking and lift aren't strictly a necessity, and actually might be an hindrance in some cases.
Furthermore, in this universe, there is a "shield" technology available, that can absorb large quantities of energy, and can deflect mass in a very efficient way.
We should figure out what we want to do with:

- planetbound ships ( = planes) for AI only ?
- aerobraking for reentry, and general reentry physics (heat, extreme-g decelerations, etc)
- gas scooping from gas worlds/suns
- other gas/liquid scooping during flight, for propulsion or profit
- interaction with atmosphere properties (corrosion, etc)
- the interaction of shield with all that.

For example, I was thinking that, if we are able to have differently shaped shields, we could have:
- a shield following the hull, for protection from weapons and impacts during flights
- an aerodynamic shield, to allow even the less aerodynamic structures to fly without issues (eg DSMiner), for example by generating a shield shaped like the von Karman ogive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nose_cone_design
- an aerobraking shield, shaped as a sphere-cone, used for efficient reentry. This shape guarantees high drag, controllable deceleration g's, self-stabilizing trajectory, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheri ... phere-cone
- a gas-scooping shield, shaped like the aerodynamic one, but with carefully shaped "inlets" that channel part of the atmosphere, through the hull to some pressure vessel in the hold.

So why not have a shield generator that can switch between the different shapes? So one can have the best of both all worlds?

Such a system could be either: impossible, or very expensive, or have another penalty, to allow shield-less or simple-shielded configurations more interesting for the player.

What are your opinions on this?

[impaktor]

Modular atmospheric shielding simply doesn't make any sense if the entire hull was either designed around atmospheric flight or not.

You could have a pilot in any kind of ship who wants to free up space thus selling his atmospheric shield generator. I don't see what the fuzz is about. He might have a Wave or some non-aerodynamic looking craft. What's it matter if he only flies between orbital stations?

Then there is the ability to actually vary the various atmospheric parameters with fine granularity according to the hull type and give manufacturers a bit more of unique identity manifesting in actual gameplay - binary presence or absence of atmospheric shielding doesn't give us that opportunity.

There's a post on that here on the forum. Someone wanted to develop a better model for atmospheric drag. Haven't heard much on that front. You are welcome to pick that up, with suggestions on equations, drag coefficients, etc.

currently there is no reason to actually mount an atmospheric shielding because it wastes cargo space

With out a shield your ship will either have a long slow drive through the atmosphere, or take damage. If there isn't enough damage without an atmospheric shield at high velocity, then we can crank that up to make sure there is a difference.

I really don't see the problem, other than you're imagining the shield as being plates on top of your hull? Think of it as a star trek force field. The generator weighs 1t, and can give any sized fields that cools off the hull.

I see no reason to remove equipment that works from the game.

[impaktor]

However, I've become convinced that gameplay reasons should be decided first.

Yes, we need to think it through how we want it to work, and where it is reasonable/wanted to cut corners or ignore mother natures restraints.

AI ships never go into atmosphere if they lack atmospheric shield. Thus you will never see a Deep space miner on a planet.

I think we should keep things as simple as possible. Would it be naive to just have: cone shield if aerobraking, otherwise (normal flight, fights, scooping) have hull shape set drag/properties?

I imagine gas scooping should be done at low enough speed to not activate the atmospheric shield.

[testadilegno]

Would it be naive to just have: cone shield if aerobraking, otherwise (normal flight, fights, scooping) have hull shape set drag/properties?

This is what I was arguing... if we can switch between cone-shield and hull-shield, why can't a DSMiner owner have a sleek von Karman atmospheric-flight-shield?

About variable drag and lift coefficients and equations, I'm still tryng to figure out something. Got a few ideas, but little time to work on that...

[DraQ]

Sigh. The problem with atmospheric shield boils down to it rendering differences between sleek, atmosphere capable hulls like Wave and completely unaerodynamic bricks like DS miner irrelevant.
If a brick can have sleek atmospheric shield, then what point do hulls like Wave or Venture Star even have?

We already have problems differentiating ships in terms of atmospheric capability, we don't need an extra bit of equipment just to make them even worse.
We shouldn't help DSMiner fly against all laws of aerodynamics we should try to make flying it in the atmosphere and landing harder. High drag, no significant lift, low damage threshold for heating, abysmal thrust and takeoff thrust (can have admirable delta-v though).

It also makes no sense to tweak damage/heating rate globally, because whatever might work for Wave would be stupid for DSMiner and vice versa.

Finally, Atmospheric shielding effectively eliminates hull heating as gameplay factor.
It's bad, equipment shouldn't eliminate exisitng gameplay, it should open new kinds of it.