.. I'm sure many of you have seen the new Battlestar Galactica series by now. I was impressed by the fact that, every time a fighter banks or turns, you actually *see* the manuevering jets fire.

Now, I wouldn't expect our current graphics engine to be capable of those kinds of effects, but it got me thinking about ship design, and where on a hull such jets would likely be located. This, in turn, brought me to the idea of having different jets of varying sizes and strengths in different locations across the skin of fighter.

This would mean that you might have some fighters that roll quicker than they strafe, or strafe across the x-axis quicker than the y-axis.. I realize that such ships would most likely be very hard to master in PvP combat, but I'm not much of a duellist myself. I want to ask our duelling masters, do you think such ships would add an interesting element to player-vs-player combat? Would anyone use them?

Hehehehe...

We already have this, thurisaz, (nix the graphical effects) and yes it does make things interesting. Some ships roll better than they strafe, some strafe better than they roll. This is due in part to the ship engine's torque and thrust ratio, but also to the mass distribution of the ship model. The prom, for example, has a very low spin/strafe accel ratio because of its rod-like shape. If you can get in close with a fast-turning cent sometimes you can strafe circles around the prom without allowing it to bring its guns to bear.

I actually did an experiment in alpha logging all the ship's turning velocities versus their linear acceleration, and it yielded some interesting results. With all the updates since then, I'm sure they would no longer be relevant, however.

As far as strafing in the x direction faster than the y direction... I think basic thrust is equal in x y and z directions, so we don't have that particular feature. However some ships can accelerate quickly forward due to a powerful boost engine(behemoth) while having comparatively slow strafing abilities.

remember, the VO ships run a gravety drive not gas powered engines. so I dought they need manuvering jets.

But, I wish that the warthog manuvered was well as the ship in BSG, which can spin tip over engine in fractions of a second.

Actually, I seem to remember a1k0n mentioning something about the engines having different thrusts for different axes.

but its all a gravety drive, there would be no burst of exhaust, heat maybe, but even that seems strange, I've never understood the exhaust out the back of the ships if they are running gravety engines.

Gravitic pulse engines, to be specific. Some say that the exhaust is actually heat from the reactor that drives the gravitic pulse drive. We've also discussed the idea that turbo thrust might be from thrust produced by particles emitted directly from the reactor. The devs have not signed off on this explanation, however.

I'm gonna echo Johnhawl. It doesn't really make sense to have "exhaust" from a gravitic drive, particularly a battery powered one (I'm referring to the boost right now. Of course the ships need fuel to maintain flight. However, we may assume that the power source (nuclear?) is something that has been advanced greatly in the last 2000+ years of the game's universe.

This begs the question: So, why is there exhaust at all?

Because it looks cool.

I'd say that we ought to just say "Fine. I'll admit it. We've got rockets strapped to our ships. Rockets are cooler than any fancy-shmancy gravitic drives."

:P