Reverse thrusters

ok, here's the idea: you have a ship that has a really slow speed, and REALLY REALLY slow turning speed. how are you going to slow down? simple. Reverse thrusters of course! now the problem. is it possible? at least, is it possible for the A.I. to use them affectively, instead of the tried and tested 180. because the likelihood of the player ever getting this ship are very slim indeed. (But you can. it's an Ark. and they are really exspensive. and you can only get them if you have a certain level of Gov't security access. also, the only thing it does very well is carry people. or, failing that, modifying it for cargo.)

how could this be accomlished?

EDIT: i forgot to mention, you can use it to TERRAFORM PLANETS!!!
thats right! if you have the right equipment, you can colonize and/or terraform uninhabited planets.

This post has been edited by Yoda Almighty : 07 January 2008 - 06:12 PM

Hmmm. Sounds like being the captain of a Colony Ship in GalCivII. A boring business indeed. Now, if you could rule the planet...

Back pre-Beta, there was a several-hundred-post-long thread about reverse thrusters and if they should be included in Nova. It's something I've been bouncing around mentally for a while, just as a little gag plug for old times' sake.

Anyways, AI would never have a clue as to how to use it. It's easy enough to make a reverse thruster (just give a weapon 0 reload, some fuel drain, high recoil, and secondary weapon), but as far as I know, AI only shoots under two conditions: it's attacking a hostile ship (or missile), or it's mining an asteroid. Either way, it won't use this weapon. The closest you could get would probably be to make the AI version of the ship inertialess and give the player version (if they ever buy it) inertia full(?) and the reverse thruster.

I know Qaanol made a reverse thruster plug. It may be on the addons page.

The Polycon TC also has a reverse-thruster outfit, don't they?

As far as I know Qaanol's plug doesn't work well for NPC ships. However, you'd get a similar effect by making the NPC ship inertialess.

<edit> How on earth did I miss Archon's answer to your question?? </edit>

This post has been edited by Bubbles : 08 January 2008 - 07:14 AM

Lo pasa.

Just make it inertialess and say that it's reverse thrusters, or add a weapon that uses no ammo and has a recoil approximately equal to the engine thrust.

@cosmic_nusiance, on Jan 8 2008, 08:54 PM, said in Reverse thrusters:

Just make it inertialess and say that it's reverse thrusters, or add a weapon that uses no ammo and has a recoil approximately equal to the engine thrust.

Mr. Nusiance, I would like to refer you to every post in this thread.

the idea is that i want the AI to be able to use it, so weapons are out of the question. making it inertialis might work, but it would look wrong.

(PS do you wanna pic of the ship?)

I wonder? Would giving a ship negative speed work? Of course, then it could only go backwards, but still...

@archon, on Jan 8 2008, 05:39 PM, said in Reverse thrusters:

Mr. Nusiance, I would like to refer you to every post in this thread.

LOL somehow missed yours. None of the others referred to a weapon, and the others were pretty vague IMO.

@joshtigerheart, on Jan 9 2008, 12:10 AM, said in Reverse thrusters:

I wonder? Would giving a ship negative speed work? Of course, then it could only go backwards, but still...

I'm not sure on this, but I think that at least in EVC or EVO, negative acceleration had some strange effect. Maybe negative speed too.

How about negative turning?

try it and report the results.