When you pick-up a stand still cargo floating in space at zero speed, with a ship at a given velocity, there is no modification of ship velocity and no change of energy balance in the power cell.
The mass of the cargo is just magically added to the mass of the ship. Nothing provides the required kinetic energy to accelerate cargo mass.
Same thing happens when you jettison a cargo.

Two solutions are possible either get the kinetic energy from the ship kinetic energy (modify ship velocity) or get the energy from the power cell corresponding to the energy required to accelerate the mass to the speed of the ship.

i am in favor of depleting the power cell.

Would be fun and tactical to pickup loot.

1+

Sincerely the best suggestion I've seen on here for years.

hmm that's actually interesting

as a side effect it would cause some interesting behaviour in ctc pursuits

+1

+1, neat. What would the scale be? One unit of energy for every hundred kilos?

0 While it would be interesting, I don't think it would really add anything of value to game play. We don't have or need a 1:1 correlation with real world physics.

Besides which, most items are so light in comparison to ships that I seriously doubt that the change in velocity would be any more noticeable than the maneuvering that is already done to line ones ship up for pickup.

+1

Put it in the bin

i guess the same level of energy required to accelerate current ship mass.

Tentative +1…not a fan of making it too complicated, but it would make pursuit more interesting.

+1

+1

-1 I like it how it is.

"Besides which, most items are so light in comparison to ships"

Um, what? A moth only weighs 30 tons. A load of cargo can easily weigh 120 tons or more. A stack of weapons can push it up past 300 tons.


"Two solutions are possible either get the kinetic energy from the ship kinetic energy (modify ship velocity) or get the energy from the power cell corresponding to the energy required to accelerate the mass to the speed of the ship."

I say have it alter the velocity, not the powercell, and have it work for jettisoning too, not just picking up cargo. Kinetic energy is 1/2 mass times velocity squared, so that means:
vel_new = vel_old * sqrt(mass_old/mass_new)

So, doubling your mass by picking up cargo would mean you're dropped to about 71% of your speed and have to accelerate back up. After cutting your mass in half by jettisoning cargo, your velocity would increase by 41%, and then start dropping due to magic-space-drag if it ended up above your ship's max.

RP-wise, think of it like we have a little mass driver in our cargo hold, and when we jettison cargo, it actually flings the cargo backwards at just fast enough to cancel out the velocity it would have inherited from us (the reason our ships have this is exactly the same reason they were actually programmed this way -- so that the loot sits still instead of cruising off into the void at 200 m/s never to be seen again). And since actions have equal and opposite reactions, this makes us go faster. We're basically using cargo as reaction mass in a rocket. :D

So a moth would be able to jettison all Cargo to to get a speed boost, and say they were being chased by something that has a any cargo space, their pursuers would have to speed up again and by then the moth is long gone.

That, or cargo that is dropped acts like mines and begins at the player's velocity before slowing down to a static position, while the pilot carries on at the same velocity.

Eh, I don't like it slowing down. Too much magic space drag

No thank you, it is ok the way it is.