Time compression during Ion engine thrust

[Meetch]

Howdy do,

I can't find this, so maybe it hasn't been suggested. Could we have the ability to speed up time during low thrust burns? Say allow for anything under 1m/s^2 to have 10 times time compression, and anything under 0.1 to have 100 times... for those day long Ion thruster driven maneuvers... naturally only allowed when not too close to a gravitational influence.

Cheers,

Meetch.

[Kasuha]

You can already use x4 time compression. Use Alt + > to enter physics time warp in space.

I am afraid very different techniques would have to be employed to allow significantly higher warping. Just increasing the physics step (what's I believe what is done in x4 time warp) would make the ship explode on slightest resonance.

[Sirrobert]

To high timewarp causes havoc on the physics engine, so I don't think that's possible

[thereaverofdarkness]

A system could be implemented in which a flight path with constant acceleration could be plotted, and followed during time warp. When you drop out of time warp and adjust your rate of acceleration, or if your batteries run dry, the path would be adjusted.

[Kasuha]

A system could be implemented in which a flight path with constant acceleration could be plotted, and followed during time warp. When you drop out of time warp and adjust your rate of acceleration, or if your batteries run dry, the path would be adjusted.

But it's not constant acceleration. You lose fuel as you burn and your acceleration increases.

And even with ion engines there's always risk that as you lose fuel and the TMR ratio increases, something will break on your ship.

Edited December 10, 2013 by Kasuha

[John Nowak]

The game is built around short acceleration times relative to total flight times, so the ion drive is already insanely overpowered.

Personally, I'd add a mode where a maneuver node can be "consumed" by a vehicle in the background without needing to be an active vessel. Of course, this raises problems with what to do if the vehicle is made active during the burn, but I don't think that's insurmountable -- just "consume" the burn up to the point where the vehicle goes active.

[UberFuber]

The game is built around short acceleration times relative to total flight times, so the ion drive is already insanely overpowered.

Personally, I'd add a mode where a maneuver node can be "consumed" by a vehicle in the background without needing to be an active vessel. Of course, this raises problems with what to do if the vehicle is made active during the burn, but I don't think that's insurmountable -- just "consume" the burn up to the point where the vehicle goes active.

The issue is that the vehicle still needs to have physics calculated to determine that the acceleration due to such "burn" will not destroy the craft.

Of course, Squad may be able to "cheat" by simply saying that any acceleration less that 1 m/s^2 (around 10% of gravity) is considered low enough that space-craft integrity do not need to be checked.

[Nuke]

biggest problem with ion engines is power. you would need to handle scenarios when solar panels get blocked by an object causing your engine to spew you propellant uselessly into space. depending on the angles your solar panels can turn based on the orientation needed for the maneuver and the position of the sun, it may not be possible to get 100% performance out of you engines at all times. so throttling and power management and roll control (to better expose your panels to the sun) would have to be done automatically. i dont think doing it in the background would work because of all the extra factors involved.

[vexx32]

I seem to recall Harv saying a long time ago that the PhysX engine actually supports physical timewarp up to 100x natively, but that it's so utterly unstable that it's not worth even implementing, let alone making available for public use. Even something with as low thrust as an ion engine would cause the ship to fall apart. They'd need to rethink the entire module's code and probably come up with their own version of timewarp code that works differently to the existing physics warp and the rails system.

You can, as has been mentioned, use up to 4x physical timewarp by holding Alt while pressing the timewarp keys.

[Nuke]

4x just doesnt cut it for me. id rather build a massive nerva ship than a ion ship (with a fraction of the mass) just so the maneuvers dont take 2 hours.

its the structural simulation that really ruins things. perhaps if your craft meets certain requirements, low mass and low thrust for example, those can be just switched off. it would be very difficult to cause a structural failure with the thrust output of an ion engine (even if you were trying to). you essentially have a warp mode that welds the ship together while its running (but you are only allowed to use it in certain situations).

Edited December 11, 2013 by Nuke

[Sasuga]

How does the game determine when a part breaks? ... Can the game do a calculation that's 10 minutes ahead and then determine if a part would have broken with-in those 10 minutes? Or does it have to go step-by-step to figure it out in real time?

Because, calculating acceleration, fuel-loss (and thus acceleration), and velocity, and all that 10 minutes ahead or whatever is just math. Can the game recognize if the ship would have broken in that time though?

Can it jump to 10 minutes and see if the ship is breaking at 10 minutes, and if its not breaking at 10 minutes would it be safe to assume it wouldn't have broke at 5 minutes either, or is that an incorrect assumption?

Things like eclipses blocking sunlight is also calculable.

[Xaiier]

How does the game determine when a part breaks? ... Can the game do a calculation that's 10 minutes ahead and then determine if a part would have broken with-in those 10 minutes? Or does it have to go step-by-step to figure it out in real time?

Because, calculating acceleration, fuel-loss (and thus acceleration), and velocity, and all that 10 minutes ahead or whatever is just math. Can the game recognize if the ship would have broken in that time though?

Can it jump to 10 minutes and see if the ship is breaking at 10 minutes, and if its not breaking at 10 minutes would it be safe to assume it wouldn't have broke at 5 minutes either, or is that an incorrect assumption?

Things like eclipses blocking sunlight is also calculable.

Congrats on the 9 month necromancy!

The game has to do any physics calculations step by step. This is due to floating point issues, if two parts of your ship were moving slightly differently, and then you applied the appropriate physics formulas over a 10 minute period, the small difference could become a massive change and would break everything. This is why at 4x warp ships become very wobbly.

There are a couple options available to those who want to be able to push past this boundary. One way is THIS MOD which allows you to apply thrust while on rails, however you won't be able to control the direction of your ship or use it in the atmosphere. Another way is a mod I wrote (see my sig), which lets you force the game to do higher speed physics calculations without a loss of precision by costing you framerate. It can work in the atmosphere however, and you can control your ship or set up an autopilot to control your ship, but you won't be able to get the same kind of speed.