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Helios MID-6-3 Merge Inertial Dampener

[Vanilla|Survival Ready|Subgrids]

The MID-6-3 Merge Inertial Dampener is related to all the other clang drives, but not actually a drive itself, since it is incapable of generating any forward thrust. Instead it generates thrust in the direction you're turning. You're turning left, it accelerates you to the left, etc. This allows for turning without losing speed and without drifting. Since merge blocks generate a fixed acceleration the effect will have the same strength for every ship, no matter the mass.

For how complex the principle behind it is, the actual build turned out to be super simple. It is composed of two merge blocks facing each other, one mounted on your main grid, pointing forwards, one on a rotor with a small offset. Merge blocks do not attract each other like connectors, but they do accelerate sideways in order to lign up. When both grids are rotated, the game engine seems to think the merge blocks are moving apart laterally and will accelerate the respective grids in order to align them again. The acceleration is apparently related to the cross product of the angular momentum and the vector connecting the positions of the two merge blocks. The acceleration on the subgrid merge block is negligible, since it is connected via the rotors and can therefore not move. The acceleration is also not carried over to other grids. In order to avoid any acceleration on roll (q & e), the connecting vector between the merge blocks has to be pointing forwards or backwards. Backwards however yields an acceleration to the left when turning right and vice versa, so only a forwards pointing main merge block will yield the desired result, which is an acceleration in the direction of rotation.


The Subgrid part is encased by a couple of blocks, so that you can freely place whatever you want around it and don't have to worry about Clang. The casing is not necessary, you can remove it if you really want to, just be careful.

Unlike the previous version (MID-6-2), this one is mounted with via rotors, so no need for batteries or worrying about connectors unlocking. It is also a bit smaller.

You can stack multiple drives on the same ship, but since the effect scales with mass, a single one will still be strong enough for even the largest of ships, unless you are using a speed mod. For 200m/s max speed you should then install 2 of these drives. If the effect is kinda weak, consider adding a few more gyros instead of more drives, since you get more out of this drive the faster you turn.

Theres a video detailing how to build this in survival in the description.


-Blocks: 49
-PCU: 1,951
-Mass: 22 t


-Place it anywhere on your ship, or just build it yourself according to the video
(base grid rotors must point forwards, script tells you if you did it right)

-(Optional, but recommended) Install the Clang Drive Manager Script on a prog block on your ship
-Script does the rest for you

-If you don't have the script, you can toggle it on and off by turning the merge blocks on and off (all called Merge Block_MID)


-The Clang Drive Manager Script adjusts the power of this thing relative to the speed of your ship to prevent unwanted sideways drifting when turning on the spot
-The script turns these off when inertial dampening is off (hotkey 'z')
-You can remove most of the casing and replace it, just be careful
-When you're using a speedlimit mod, you might want more of these for turning at high speeds.