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Space Engineers >  Workshop > comfyfutons's Workshop > Atmospheric Drag & Re-Entry Effects > Discussions
Atmospheric Drag & Re-Entry Effects
Description Discussions5 Comments346 Change Notes
comfyfutons  [developer] 14 Dec, 2015 @ 9:44pm
Atmospheric Drag V1.3 Discussion
Please post your V1.3 related problems and discussions here

Some Notes:
All speed numbers and drag are scaled down intentionally and these numbers have been well thought out and tested thoroughly to give what I believe is the 'best' experience in the scope of this 'game' which is not 'real life'. Some values may require some tweaking but no values will be dramatically changed. All your comments will of course be read and considered but I really feel like the numbers are well designed right now. My goal is to make this mod work best with Vanilla + this mod + 500m/s cap right now.

Here are some of my reasonings:
-Speeds faster than 500m/s begin to cause major problems with the physics engine in this game and that is the highest speed cap I can honestly recommend for decent gameplay. Burn up speed minimum needs to be much lower than the speed cap therefore 250m/s.
-The diameter of the earth is 12,742 km and the diameter of the SE earth is 120km... This is HUGE difference in size. I think burning up is more dynamic and fun at 250m/s because that combined with the scale of the earth gives a longer more 'realistic' burn up than a 'real life' speed which would make re-entry in space engineers a 1 second (very laggy) event.
-Air speeds on the surface are intentionally lowered from 'real life' as well for the same reason... to make the planets not seem small. You should not be able to reach compression heating with normal aircraft in the atmosphere unless you strap a reactor and cockpit to a large thruster.
-Gravity is completely gone at 40-50km... atmosphere ends at ~13km... on earth you wouldn't even be 20% to space at that altitude so because re-entry distance is much shorter the speed needs to be lower or it would be way too fast.
-Also remember this speed is 2.5 times the vanilla speed cap which we all played with for a long time. Remember it's a game not real life... I think these numbers are a good balance between what's fun, realistic, and what works well in SE considering the scale of everything.
Last edited by comfyfutons; 15 Dec, 2015 @ 5:49am
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Showing 1-8 of 8 comments
Zahiid 15 Dec, 2015 @ 2:18am 
250 m/s is waaaay too slow to cause heat damage. The speed of sound is around 300m/s and these ships are being burned at speeds lower than that. It needs to be higher than that.
#1
comfyfutons  [developer] 15 Dec, 2015 @ 5:35am 
@Zazamel The Misanthrope

Check first post for answer to your question I think it was relevant to everyone so I put it there.
Last edited by comfyfutons; 15 Dec, 2015 @ 5:40am
#2
Vigo the Dudepathian 16 Dec, 2015 @ 4:43am 
Honestly you balancing and the reasons for it are not too off. Well done. Is there some way that a ship can be made aerodynamic and be able to go faster by adding slopes and making the front faces pointy instead of flat? I was messing with it a bit and it did not seem to make that much of a difference.
#3
the_educater 16 Dec, 2015 @ 2:50pm 
would it be posible to add a form of heat sheilding, and instead of 250m/s threshhold, a dragforce threshold, forcing players to build streamlined re-entry craft, or to use a proper re-entry angle (like surfing on the atmosphere).
#4
comfyfutons  [developer] 16 Dec, 2015 @ 4:37pm 
@the_educator I believe the re-entry and heating needs to be changed a little big and I am definitely going to try to have some kind of shielding eventually... Next update I will try to make it more balanced though.
#5
the_educater 29 Dec, 2015 @ 9:49pm 
AH! brain wave!

pre-notes:

c=the value that make the drag cause by 1m^2 surface area travaling at 100m/s equal to 100

m=the maximum re-entry damage that can be take per game "tick"

s=speed of vehicle

d=drage of vehicle

q= the greater value of, s -or- d*c

e= the lesser value of, s -or- d*c

b=balencing factor higher values creat a larger damage "spectum" and vise versa.


equation:


damage take per "tick"= m - 1/b * ( q/e )^2
#6
the_educater 29 Dec, 2015 @ 9:59pm 
Originally posted by the_educater:
AH! brain wave!

pre-notes:

c=the value that make the drag cause by 1m^2 surface area travaling at 100m/s equal to 100

m=the maximum re-entry damage that can be take per game "tick"

s=speed of vehicle

d=drage of vehicle

q= the greater value of, s -or- d*c

e= the lesser value of, s -or- d*c

b=balencing factor higher values creat a larger damage "spectum" and vise versa.


equation:


damage take per "tick"= m - 1/b * ( q/e )^2

ah just noticed the new color change part... say color change starts at "-m" and maxes out at "0", where actual damage kicks in up untill "m", during the damage faze though could you please work in the armagedon meter shower particle efec, and as for the heat sheild, say they resist damage untill "0.75m" then they fail spectacularly!.
#7
Chairmander 2 Feb, 2016 @ 4:35pm 
A while ago I was crashing some ships out of orbit into a planet just for fun, when I noticed something rather unbalanced with this mod - The blocks got a bit red while falling, some blocks even bright red, but not one single block (exluding the 3x3 glass pane) burned up (And they cooled down rather fast because the ship was actually slowing down because of the drag). Which is not what I was expecting when letting a ship fall (note: "fall" - no inertia dampeners) out of orbit. And the next bummer was the impact. Because of the atmospheric drag the ship was slowed down to about 80 m/s and the hull suffered minimal damage (something about 2 or 3 block layers were destroyed. Please don't misunderstand me; I really love the mod, but I don't think this is perfect. The drag should be weaker (about 70-80% of what it currently is) so that (A) blocks actually burn up on re-entry, (B) The impact actually does something. Now I do understand that this also means that the regular speeds would be higher, but I think the game can handle it (and with more bug- and engine-fixes in the future it *should* only get better) and the players would be restricted by the ~250m/s heating speed anyways, so there's that. Let me know what you think about this and I hope I was writing understandable sentences xD

EDIT: I just noticed that this was for v1.3 and we currently have v1.4.? :P Anyways, at the time of me testing this it was still v1.3 (I think) and I guess that this is still present (I don't have time to play right now, so I can't test it)
Last edited by Chairmander; 2 Feb, 2016 @ 4:38pm
#8
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