The Centurion's mass is all messed up... The one-port and two-port varieties mass the same, and they're both a lot more than Vultures, which should be heavier fighters...

Centurion : 5000kg
Itani Border Centurion : 5000kg
Vulture: 4000kg
Vulture MkIV: 3900kg

Centurion is a "Light Fighter", Vulture is a "Medium Fighter". So why is the Vulture lighter?

This is a long-standing known issue involving how the game engine deals with mass and agility. I do know that the devs have been working on it. My understanding is that the cent and vult SHOULD be as you say, but that actually doing so presents some odd flight problems.

I thought they fixed those? And besides, the vult didn't USED TO be more agile than the Centurion- they used to be equalish. Now the vult is 4/5 the Cent's mass...

This "issue" is probably due to Arolte's never-ending whine about "balance."
Since the Vulture is his favorite ship, he has been crying about "balancing" every
other ship in the game to the point where the "Vult" HAS become better.

The Vulture's bulkheads and interior structure are of a better composite material making it lighter and larger.

Well consider this. Ships with a higher agilty must be lighter to travel faster. If they have the same agility factor, then ignore me :P

-Eloi

So you agree with me Eloi? Since the Centurion is supposed to be more agile, it should be lighter. That's my thought of the day.

RattMann: That was a -1 Troll-worthy response and you know it. Arolte whines about Hornets, not Vultures. :D

He flies a serco guardian vulture though. :P

I thought his favorite ship was the hornet? Which is actually terribly unbalanced? Hmm. Oh well.

Can we drop the assinine comments and focus on the topic at hand? There's nothing worse than starting a flamewar and not knowing the facts. It was in fact about the Hornet, not the Vulture. In any case I've moved on and started liking the Warthog more, thanks to the AGT.

If there's anything you should learn about this, it's to never rely on your favorite ship being cool forever. Properties will change. Some may even be axed from the game once they're remodeled. So don't get fixated on anything for long. Remember, beta testing.

I don't think that counts for the Atlas, it's obviously intended to be the uber-ship of the final game and it only gets more powerful with each release.

Also Arolte and AlienB quit pretending your not the same person, OMG it's so obvious, your shenanagins aren't fooling me!



... =D

/me points her Warthog towards the nearest exit...

So... why don't they just switch the masses? Is it something particular about the Centurion model that makes it less agile than the Vulture?

Hoax: that's an interesting theory about Arolte and Alienb... maybe the central person has MPD...

Swapping the masses may manage the symptoms, but won't fix the disease.

Doing any type of tweaking with the current system would only be a temporary solution. In the long run I think the devs are aiming towards totally revamping the way some of these things are calculated--mass, collision detection, etc. That's part of the reason we won't be seeing a player controlled frigate for a while, among other things.

I think it's gonna be even longer because they will only have 4 people testing the "frigate feature" at the most.

Hmm, that's weird. Nobody's really been working on it, or it would be fixed already. I tracked the issue down and I know how to fix it, but I didn't feel like messing with it. I can fix it right now if we want to lighten the Centurion. Maybe I'll do it real quick before release.

Starfisher: actually, the shape of the Centurion causes it to have extremely low rotational inertia about its roll axis (it has small wings, etc) and there's some weird code for doing steering damping which freaks out (oscillates with positive feedback) when you make the total rotational inertia (which is the model's inertia matrix * mass) too small along any axis.

The solution is obviously to make it not freak out. There are many ways to do it but the problem is doing it without totally changing the response of all the ships. But I have something in mind which should work.

"Also Arolte and AlienB quit pretending your not the same person, OMG it's so obvious, your shenanagins aren't fooling me!"


Yes, And Icarus and I really are the same person.

A centurion with controlresponse at 140% is 1337.