1. It's correct you're still looking "forward" out of the front of the ship, but decelerating using the main engines - i.e: moving backwards.

2. Yeah I know, this is something we're always discussing - I'm personally in favour of both more powerful engines and an in-system hyperspace jump, but it's an ongoing discussion - feel free to give us your opinion! 🙂

3. Some time ago we switched to using Water as the propellent and Hydrogen for the hyperspace drive (Unless it's a military drive in which case it's "Military Fuel" of course) so you need to stock up on Water.

EDIT: 3b - The water as fuel thing has been discussed lately too and I think most are in favour of it being set to use Hydrogen again but no-one yet gotten around too it!

Also you'll notice that there's no automatic refueling option, you have to manually go into your cargo view and refuel by pressing the button.

Thanks for the fast reply 🙂

1. I'm not sure if I understand this. You mean I'm flying backwards everytime I use the autopilot? What I see is that when I set the autopilot, I see the squares showing the path (cant think of a better word to use for it now), then suddenly I flipped backwards and cant see where I'm heading, I only see what I'm leaving behind me. To me that just feels wrong.

2. Personally I think it shouldn't take that long. My preference would be for it to just be a few days for the in system flight to the destination (for the average 7-10 AU). I think the original used to take up to a week or something on that part of the journey. That the hyperspace takes a few days, depending on how long jump it was is ok for me. It shouldn't take several days between 2 stations orbiting the same stellar body though. Starting in Bernad's Star with just the shuttle, it takes you 4 days between the stations. That shouldn't take more than a few hours.

Well, imo anyway.

3. Cool, so water it is. Would be handy to have it written out somewhere though. Without searching for it, you wouldn't know. 

I tried to refuel it manually (by going in and pressing refuel), but without knowing it was water that was used I never had any.

Thanks for the information anyway, most helpful. 🙂

1. Yeah that's basically it, you've accelerated upto your coasting speed, then there's a loooong period of drifting along, this is done with you facing backwards... it is a bit odd but it just means that you don't have to flip over before you start decelerating.

2. Yes I think it should take a lot less time too but it's one of those things with collborative game development 🙂

3. I've just now submitted a pull request to change it back to using Hydrogen but there will be some discussion about it first probably so we'll have to see what version of the game it goes into (if it goes in).

Feel free to ask anything else, it's quite a lot of up hill to start with!

Have fun.

 

3. I've just now submitted a pull request to change it back to using Hydrogen but there will be some discussion about it first probably so we'll have to see what version of the game it goes into (if it goes in).

 

I bought ACME million converters kits hydrogen thrusters. And I distributed throughout the galaxy. I'll lose a million dollar business. You're different from Robn, you do not want to see us happy at all.

Hah! Sorry walterar 😀

Thanks for the fast reply 🙂
 
1. I'm not sure if I understand this. You mean I'm flying backwards everytime I use the autopilot? What I see is that when I set the autopilot, I see the squares showing the path (cant think of a better word to use for it now), then suddenly I flipped backwards and cant see where I'm heading, I only see what I'm leaving behind me. To me that just feels wrong.

Well, once you've accelerated, you'll need to brake and your most powerful thrusters are aimed backwards - whether it feels right or wrong, it's just physics.
If you were piloting your ship manually, you'd pretty much have to do the same thing or you'd either just woosh past at around 0.01c or end anything that lived on the planed by slamming into it much faster than any asteroid ever had.

I wouldn't mind it if autopilot only flipped the ship once it had to start decelerating, though - spending most of the way flying backwards is just meh.

2. Personally I think it shouldn't take that long. My preference would be for it to just be a few days for the in system flight to the destination (for the average 7-10 AU). I think the original used to take up to a week or something on that part of the journey. That the hyperspace takes a few days, depending on how long jump it was is ok for me. It shouldn't take several days between 2 stations orbiting the same stellar body though. Starting in Bernad's Star with just the shuttle, it takes you 4 days between the stations. That shouldn't take more than a few hours.
Well, imo anyway.

Again, physics. Pioneer seems to have reached a sound compromise between fun and realism - it no longer has to deal with Frontier's ridiculous acceleration and delta-v budget, yet it still allows for combat manoeuvring and transit times that would be practical for humans. As long as this stays true I don't think that anything should be changed in terms of actual mechanics.

What Pioneer does need pretty badly is additional time compression level as it is quite a bit slower than Frontier and Frontier's max compression just doesn't cut it anymore.

It also needs more reasons (we're talking of mission and scenario design here) to spend more time in vicinity of both natural and man-made objects, especially in combat - deep space intercepts may happen once in a while, but they're hardly the most interesting combat scenarios.

3. I've just now submitted a pull request to change it back to using Hydrogen but there will be some discussion about it first probably so we'll have to see what version of the game it goes into (if it goes in).

I fully support that. Hydrogen generally makes for better propellant.

Alternatively it might be cool to have thrust/delta-v tradeoff both in terms of ship design and propellant choice, with bigger nozzles and heavier propellants giving more kick at the expense of delta-v.

This way you could have ships specialized in lifting off heaviest planets or fast, short-range transfers (or short range intercepts) on one hand, and ships that are more of long distance runners or interceptors.

You might also have specialized gear for either of those purposes.

How about using both hydrogen and water

Actually how about a fuel bay that is seperate from cargo, antoher new screen perhaps

Or some ships could use water, some could use hydrogen as fuel ( and then theres military fuel which is harder to get)

Actually how about a fuel bay that is seperate from cargo, antoher new screen perhaps

Actually, I'd go in the opposite direction - try to get rid of separate propellant tank.

I'd see it as follows - ship uses propellant in cargo bay automatically and calculates its delta-v budget accounting for that propellant.
The simplest way to implement it would be to shrink fuel tank to 1-2t buffer (or at most have it encompass the volume unsuitable for cargo - for example wings), expand cargo bay by the amount freed and only add autorefueling routine and change delta-v calculation.

The reasons for that are simple:
-it would allow autopilot to use more delta-v than less than two full tank capacities (autopilot will only accelerate to the point where it still can decelerate and leave reserve for maneuvering and course corrections)
-it would free player from the hassle of topping off the tank manually, ton by ton, if they carry extra remass
-it would allow dumping excess remass if the situation would call for better acceleration even at the expense of delta-v, while using default cargo interface
-it would allow skimping on fuel capacity and delta-v to carry more cargo or equipment

I think it would also be nice if jetissoning stuff like hydrogen or water vented them instead of dropping a container (the simplest workaround would be having the 'container' model for those be quickly dispersing and disappearing spray of volatiles) - you don't pick up containers when scooping for hydrogen.

Extra screen would be nice, of course, to avoid clutter and confusion. It would be nice to have an option to allocate delta-v for autopilot there (or set alert for manual fuel consumption), for example for missions involving more than one brachistochrone transfer.

brachistochrone

Mean ? 

brachistochrone
 
Mean ?

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php

Although strictly speaking ships' trajectories in Pioneer usually aren't actual brachistochrones, since they lack delta-v to fire the engines all the time.

Ok , i understand now, very interesting ( this link is a mine treasure).

Thanks a lot , i've pinned this one .