Re: Newtonian Propulsion Mod!
 

I am imagining how hilarious the AI must look with this mod. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

PvK

Re: Newtonian Propulsion Mod!
 

They do tend to putter around in small regions while you tend to be cruising across the system at half to full throttle.

In order to fire more than once (or twice for fast-reloading weapons) at an enemy target, you've got to slow down... and that takes time...

Its pretty hard to plan your course such that you end up behind the enemy, and then you still have the problem of turning around before they paste you in the back.
Strafing runs tend to be the easiest tactic, I think... brakes during the approach to maximize firepower, then gas gas gas as you pass.

Re: Newtonian Propulsion Mod!
 

So, eh, why the larger ships are more difficult to speed up or slow down? I thought that weight in space does not matter as much.

Re: Newtonian Propulsion Mod!
 

F =ma
or in the case
a = F/m

In other words, if you want the same accleration with double the mass, you have to double the force.

EDIT: don't confuse weight and mass, BTW. Mass doesn't change. Weight DOES. Mass is how much matter an object has, weight is the acceleration produced by gravity on that object. It's just than on earth mass = weight, since we're at 1 G by definition.

[ February 09, 2004, 03:15: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

Re: Newtonian Propulsion Mod!
 

Hmm, so, why does mass matter then? There are no counter reacting forces when you try to well...make a spaceship move.

On that F=ma and a=f/m You say that it means that you need double the force for double the mass. But, why would that matter in space or in a weightless/no forces (at least strong enought) present environment? I can understand this on Earth or on any planet, but, space? At least outer space?

Re: Newtonian Propulsion Mod!
 

Talking of which, and if you think I am in a way hijacking this thread please tell me, I never ever understood the whole can't go faster than light thing. And most of the things that "go" with it. Like that if you travel from A to B in the speed of light (large distance) then you will age as long as you traveled (1 year?) while everybody else far more. Why would that happen? Why does it actualy matter how fast you are travelling to the actual time. I see time as a constant that progresses at the same frequency and direction no matter what. I can undersant if you go to deep freezing lets say that your body will stop(or very very slow) metabolizing and you will in a way live longer, but saying the same thing about speed of light sounds silly to me, are you (them?) saying that travelling at the speed of light doesn't actualy make you travel at high speed but just puts you in a bubble where time passes by in slower rate? So, how do you collerate that with the actual time that is needed to travel to that distance with that speed? If you travel at the speed of light for 1 year, (lets say star A to star B) it takes you 1 year to go there. You have lived for a year inside the ship, why would everybofdy else lived for more than that? Hmm, purplexed.

Re: Newtonian Propulsion Mod!
 

There is a counter-acting force when you try to move a ship: its own weight. Anything in motion will stay in motion unless stopped, and anything stopped will stay stopped unless something makes it move. To accelerate you've got to overcome the objects inertia, its inbuilt tendancy to stay put. And that's where f =ma comes in.

EDIT: to make it clear..

f = ma is

Force = mass time acceleration

my other equation was solving that for accleration, so
accleration = force over mass

The speed of light thing is..weird. And complicated, to say the least.

The speed of light is speed of light in a vaccum, BTW. Everything else is measured by that constant.

[ February 09, 2004, 04:20: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

Re: Newtonian Propulsion Mod!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The reason you can't go faster than the speed of light is that as you accelerate your mass increases at a rate of 1/(c-s), ie the closer to the speed of light you get the greater your mass. Since it requires energy to accelerate you need infinite energy to reach the spped of light.
The mass increase has been poven experimentally using electons - which are theoretically mass less.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Unfortunately time is not a constant. It is a relative quantity and varies according to where you measure it from.

As Phoenix also pointed out the speed of light is also not a constant. Einsteins equation is actually wrong e doesn't equal mc² but mc²+delta. I can't remember the actual proof but it was done by an Australian mathmatician about 3 years ago.

Re: Newtonian Propulsion Mod!
 

Electrons aren't massless...
Constant #03 on my calculator reports the accepted rest mass of the electron as 9.1093897 x10^-31 kg.

Very small, certainly, but still worth a half-million electron volts of energy.

-----

The e=mc² is the rest energy when you plug in the rest mass. If you fling the object, then the you have to add on the energy you just added.

Re: Newtonian Propulsion Mod!
 

But (time) while time can be relative in some cases, (black hole etc) the time for everyting else doesn't change, does it? You can slow down the pass of time somewhere, but that would mean that there is a general time constant in a way. (I am nor sure I make my self clear on this..)

About the delta part of the equation of the c. What is delta? A random type of a variable?