Suggestion: Reverse Thrusters

[Karl]

Reverse thrusters: This is one of the top items on my wishlist for the game. Having these would make your ship more maneuverable, which would make targeting easier and also make flying more fun in general. It would also fix those annoying situations where you overshoot your docking target by a hair and have to turn your ship alllllllllllll the way around to get back to it.

I know there is already a "brake" key, but having reverse thrusters on the down arrow would be much more natural and useful and easier to use. They wouldn't be that hard to implement, either--especially relative to alot of other suggestions on here. For speed balance, reverse thruster power could be set to 70% or so of main thruster power.

I've already tried to add reverse thrusters using the mod system. My plan was to make a "RetroRocket" mod, basically a "missle launcher" type device that when fired would provide negative thrust. Unfortunately, it seems that the game treats an engine with negative thrust as if it were zero thrust, so this can't be done with the current version of the game engine.

[evilbob]

well, I made a weapon with recoil which made the ship fo faster (it fired backwards), so making a forward firing weaopn with massive recoil.

yeah, this situation annoys me. Try flyingan A-3 battleship, you'll see what I mean.

[Karl]

Hmmm, hacking it via recoil. Good idea. I didn't even realize that the game had recoil.

Ok, let's see what we can mod...

[Karl]

Update: Cool, it works!

And if you make the weapon fire sideways you can strafe, heh heh!

Too bad you have to give up your missle launcher to use it.

[evilbob]

so? just remove the "launcher = true" tag.
also, you can make one weapon with multiple functions, just have multiple "<weapon>" sections in the "<itemtype>"

[Karl]

so? just remove the "launcher = true" tag.

Then you'd be giving up your primary weapon. I'd rather lose the launcher.

also, you can make one weapon with multiple functions, just have multiple "<weapon>" sections in the "<itemtype>"

I've tried that and it doesn't work. The second weapon section just overwrites the first. Looks like you can have a device with multiple function types simultaneously (like a weapon and engine combo), but not a device with multiples functions of the same type (like a double weapon).

[evilbob]

it worked for me. I have a weapon that has both an EMP and a plasma gun in one, and it acts like 2 weapons.

[Karl]

Really? Let me see. Maybe it depends on what you have in the two weapon blocks.