The LCD gives you information about the status of your ship.

To mark an LCD for use by the script, put this in its name:
As soon as the script runs with that LCD marked, it should control the LCD.
You might want to set font and font size for the LCD.

You can change the marking text in the code.

At the top is a spinner. this indicates if the script is running. this will always update if the script gets run. if it is stationary, the programmable block is not running at all, and you will crash. if it stops spinning mid flight, either the script has gone into standby (which you will see displayed on the screen) or the script has crashed. if the script crashes, please tell me.

after the spinner is the time the script took to run the last time. in normal running, its very quick (less than 1ms on my computer). when the ships (dry) mass changes, or if the script gets compiled, this triggers a recaclulation of how the ship is structured, which takes much longer. but that does not happen in the normal running of the script.

Here is what is detailed on the screen:

This is the safe method of stopping the script.
don't turn the programmable block off unless you are turning the whole ship off or otherwise resetting the thrusters and rotors.

When entering standby mode, the script will safely turn off all thrusters and rotors its controlling.

The script does not run when in standby mode, this is shown by the spinner.

If you have Control Module installed, it will still run when you press buttons or move the mouse, but this only updates the spinner and doesn't calculate anything.

This is like turning your suit jetpack on and off.

It will turn the engines on and off, but the script will still keep the engines facing the right way.

Control Module default: X

This is like inertia dampeners on a normal ship, or with your suit jetpack.

Control Module Default: Z

When you turn dampeners off you will not fall, instead you will drift around like you are in space. I think this is more useful than the default behavior.

Here is a script that will do the same thing, but without Vector Thrust.

Suggested by Raiteri
This modifies the Dampeners function.

In Cruise mode the ship will drift forwards, but apply dampeners in every other direction. If you point the nose up or down it will still drift like you are in space - it will not accelerate.

Control Module default: R

suggested by Sergej515

You can change this value in the code:
It is false by default.

When enabled this will make cruise mode act more like an airplane - if you tip the nose up or down, it will 'fall' similar to an airplane. If you keep the nose completely level, it will not fall or stall at low speeds.

The target acceleration is measured in 'g'.
The script considers 1g being whatever gravity field it is experiencing at that time. Not nesicarily earths gravity.
This is so that wherever you are, if your target acceleration is set to 1g, going 'down' will make your engines cut out but not turn up-side-down to drive you downwards.

the target acceleration is chosen by this equation:

- raiseAccel and lowerAccel will increase/decrease X by 1.
- resetAccel will set X to 0

you can set these values in the code:

You can setup your buttons


%dampeners, %jetpack, %cruise, and %standby will all toggle their respective funcitons.
%raiseAccel, %lowerAccel and %resetAccel will all affect the 'Target Acceleration' value.

%reset will force VT to update its recognised blocks again.

%applyTags and %removeTags - see tags section.

If you have a world with Control Module installed, you can use keys other than 0-9 to control it.

Pressing these buttons is like triggering the PB with their respective arguments:
You can set all of the above in the code.

You can't toggle standby with control module.

type this into your game chat:
note the s

now press the button you want to map, and it will show up the name on the screen
for example, if you hold your jetpack button, you will see this:
you could either enter "z" or "c.thrusts" and it would achive the same thing. except that if you change the key in your controls, "c.thrusts" will be on the new key, where "z" will still be on z

This feature is only available if you are using Control Module (see above)

holding these buttons will temporarily swap out your target acceleration for their respective values:

you can change these values in the code, here are the default values:
values higher in the list are prioritised before lower values.

if you want to add a new button, you would do this:
note, there is no comma after the last value

this will set your target acceleration to 20 while you are holding the roll left button.

Unfortunately there seems to be a physics bug feature in space engineers at the moment which causes thrusters on rotors to spaz out in some situations. I have reproduced it on a ship without the script whatsoever, so its not my script doing it.

Keen seems to be adamant there is no way to fix this while fixing subgrid 'drag', so I don't think they are going to try.
I am going to call this 'KFT' for 'Keen Fantom Torque' ᵏᵖᵗ ᵈᵒᵉˢⁿ'ᵗ ʳᵒˡˡ ᵒᶠᶠ ᵗʰᵉ ᵗᵒⁿᵍᵘᵉ ᵃˢ ⁿⁱᶜᵉˡʸ

You could use this rotor strength mod (other mods are available) to overpower the phantom force.

OR

So far, I have narrowed it down to the rotors being in-line with the centre of mass... That's pretty ironic because a recent update is supposed to remove that requirement.

Just try to keep the rotors in-line with the centre of mass and it should be fine.

These are all options which you can change by editing some text at the top of the code, once you change them you have to press 'check code' and 'remember and exit' again.

You don't need to know how to code to change these values, just remember a few simple rules:
* comments: these are lines with // at the start, they will be ignored by the program, so you can put whatever you want there.
* there should always be a semi-colon (;) after every line
* don't change anything before the = sign
* numbers with decimal points should always have a (f) after them

I recommend taking a copy of the whole program (ctrl+a to select all) before changing these if you already have settings that work, that way if you break something you can put your copy in with your changes and try again from there.

I try to explain these with comments in the code (lines with // before them), so look there first.
If an option doesn't make sense, or you don't know what to put there, tell me and ill explain here.

Tags are used to limit a Vector Thrust program to certain blocks.
A tag looks like this:

Pass the '%applyTags' argument.

By default, VT doesn't use tags. This is called 'greedy' mode - where it will try to control anything that looks like a nacelle. This is useful for building, or if you don't connect to other VT ships. If its in greedy mode, it will say so in the bottom right of the Programmable block screen.


Apply and remove tags do indeed apply and remove tags to the blocks which the programmable block is controlling. But they also turn the greedy mode on and off. If you just type the tags without using '%appyTags', it will still be in greedy mode and ignore the tags.

You can change the tag of your ship by changing the 'myName' value in the code. This way you can give different tags to different ships, and not have them interfere with each-other when connected.

Once you are out of greedy mode, you can change the tags to be on whatever blocks you like. But for the script to recognise it, you need to cause an update. For example, the script updates when the mass changes - thats how the building works. This isn't guaranteed to update everything though. The easiest way to cause a complete update is by passing the '%reset' argument.

Currently, The program ignores rotor limits - Although the limits will not break the program.

This means:

• it will not change any limits you put in place
  
• if you have the out-of-bounds section less than 180 degrees, the code that decides which direction to turn might still try to make it rotate past that area, if it thinks that direction is quicker.
  
• the amount of thrust output by a thruster is dependent on how close the thruster is to the correct direction - so if it can't reach the correct direction, it will have little to no thrust.

If you put the script in the mod list for your server, it will break your server.

To use this, you need to use it in a Programmable Block.

For more Info, see this.

This is a passion project, I work on it when I have time. Unfortunately I don't have time for it at the moment, so don't expect updates any time soon.

When I do get back on the horse, Here are some of the plans:
Note: this is not an exhaustive list.

the thrust of the more powerful nacelles will max out at the maximum thrust of the less powerful nacelles *in the same direction*. this is from when an uneven placement of thrust around the centre of mass would make your ship rotate. since that is no longer a feature of the game, it should be changed.

practically, it means if you have a nacelle with weak thrust output, it will limit the thrust of the more powerful nacelles, so try to avoid this.