I think this behaviour was more down to a bug rather than representing power to weight ratios. If that happens again when playing the original Frontier, try switching views, look at the cargo screen ect. That used to work for me. 😉

As for Pioneer, I am not sure, perhaps Potsmoke, Tomm or S20dan could provide an answer? Good question though Steve! 🙂

They already do 😉

Try it out in a big ship with lots of cargo space. It will handle a little like a fighter when its empty, but like a freighter when full.

So there is actually an advantage to flying with minimal equipment now.

It brings up cool scenarios like: Under attack have to jettison cargo to stand a chance of escape; caught in gravity well, jettison all non-essential equipment to escape 🙂

I don't know if the drag and pressures are really so inaccurate, to me it just feels like ships are treated like bricks as far as aerodynamics are concerned. As opposed to sleek aerodynamic craft, so yes they slow down too quick.

The starting Eagle is capable of approx 2,600 m/s at sea level. That is very fast where realism is concerned. You would literally be tearing the atmosphere.

Bigger ships will go much faster in the atmo, as their engines are so much more powerful.

So when flying at max speed (2,600 m/s) at sea level, the Eagle experiences 6200000 N of drag... or 632.2 Tons of thrust/drag.

Hmm... ok thats f**k loads of drag. But remember thats when your travelling 7.8 times the speed of sound at sea level. And I believe drag is exponential, at least it is when dealing with water craft.

Just for fun I added some F14 engines to the starting Eagle so it has equal thrust to that aircraft but I kept the surface are the same... especially as im not entirely sure which setting denotes surface area to the game 😉

At sea level the maximum speed was 369 m/s or mach 1.1

Hmm, unless I have messed up those tests then it looks like aerodynamics are actually more accurate than we thought.

Yeah thats a great new aspect to the game, i couldn't really tell in the eagle due to its crazy thrust/weight anyway:D

That all seems to make sense, i think in the eagle when you cut the engines, you definately seem to lose speed too quickly no matter what the altitude or speed - compared to similar speed /altitude in orbiter. if the aerodynamics are too brick like and drag is exponential, then its really going to have a big knock on effect at the higher speeds attainable by the powerful engines. and yeah any way you look at it, something like the eagle should really look like a fireball after about 2 seconds of thrust 😈

btw, probably a stupid question but how do i easily try out the other ships? 😆

Coolhand, you can press ctrl-m to get enough money to buy most of them, or you could edit the .lua file to reduce the price.

And you can also repeatedly start a new game to get the ship you want to appear in the shipyard 😉

outstanding. thanks for the tip.

A possible workaround for heavy ships could be to buy "dropable take off boosters" at the starport. They would cost more on heavy worlds obviously...

@ coolhand : AFAIK, in frontier/FFE your ship was always supposed to have it's full weight.

EDIT : (since I like to rationalise everything in games) perhaps the assumption was that when a ship wasn't full of goods there was some tare to prevent changing dynamics.