Explanation of 'accelerationFactor'?

[Arisaya]

Here is an example from the NAMI static mines.
accelerationFactor="60"

Anyone know how this is supposed to work?

[Bobby]

I've done some testing with accelerating missiles before and I think accelerationfactor is the percentage of speed remaining after a certain, repeating, amount of time.

An accelerationfactor of 60 (less than 100) means the mine will slow to a stop, but if it were 105 it would gain speed by 5% each time it is accelerated until it reaches the maximum (given a non-zero starting velocity, which nulls acceleration). As for what that time period is (1 second, x ticks, etc) I have no idea.

[digdug]

bobby is right, mines have accelerationfactor less than 100 for slowing them down, while the quantumspeheres have accelerationfactor more than 100, they accelerate.

[Arisaya]

And I presume there is a way of expressing a maximum velocity that the projectile can obtain?

[Bobby]

The following bit of code came from a <Missile> element on one of my un-released accelerating missiles.

Code: Select all

						missileSpeed=	"35"
						accelerationFactor="145"
						maxMissileSpeed="80"

The missile starts off at a speed of 35 plus your ship's momentum, and accelerates to 80.

[Song]

So, where a= acceleration factor, a>100 = Missile accelerates, and if a<100, missile decelerates.

Interesting....I must try this some time.

[Song]

There appears to be a bug/annoying thing with AccelerationFactor......if your ships speed is high enough to make the missile appear with negative velocity (IE. The missile is travelling backwards, as its starting velocity isn't high enough to cancel out the ships backward speed), and the acceleration factor > 100, it will accelerate the wrong way and blow up anything that is behind you. I found this out today with my first foray into an accelerating missile.

This is probably because AccelerationFactor isn't vectored....it adds/subtracts to the velocity, rather than adding to a direction. Don't know how/if that should be fixed, but just throwing it out there.