Re: [FT] Sensor Range Question

Thomas Anderson wrote:

> aah, right, i was thinking of fixing cinematic, for some reason. this
> would involve applying your acceleration twice - once to get the
speed to
> use this turn and one for next turn.

OK, I see what you mean. The distance along the real trajectory moved
is still (initial velocity + half the difference between initial and
end velocity), which is pretty easy to figure out. The "mid-move turn"
should be somewhere else than in the middle of the move though, since
the turning radius increases with speed in Cinematic <g>

OTOH, Cinematic is... very strange in many respects, so I'm not too
sure I'd want to try fixing it :-/

> looking at what you wrote, i see what you meant. yes, that would be
> better; in fact, when i tried to write my own vector rules, that's
how
> they worked. since i haven't seen FB's vector rules, i have been 
> assuming they worked like mine. evidently they don't.

They are very similar to those posted by Jon T. and Mike E. to the
UFTWWWP, though <g> A few small adjustments, that's all.

[snip]

> i don't know how it's done in FB; i assume the last step is replaced
by
> "place the ship at R, facing in the direction Q>R".

Drop the part after the last comma and you're there - you can rotate at
any point during the turn, including at the end of the move.
 
> > Of course this "half-distance move" is slightly off if the ship has
to
> > spend time turning, but with 15-minute turns the time required to
turn
> > the ship around should be small enough that the error is <<1 mu. I
> > usually can't move my ships with half-mm precision :-7
> 
> i tried to figure out how it should work if the ship turns over the
course
> of the turns, but the maths rapidly develops a bad case of
trigonometry
> which i can't cure :-).

Well.. if you burn your drives *during* the turn, things get
complicated very fast. As long as you turn them down while rotating the
ship, the half-way point should work IIRC. 'Twas some time since I did
the maths on this, though.

> the thing about instant turns is that it follows that all ships
should be
> allowed unlimited turning (at the start of the move), which isn't
terribly
> good for gameplay.

But it is the way the FB rules work... and, well - I've seen lots of
people turn their ships in the wrong way anyway <g> 

Unless you go with turn lenghts considerably shorter than 5 minutes or
accel. rates of 1 Thrust << 1g, you'll have problems getting away from
the almost-instant turns.

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry