Mass

[Ursus]

Can I get a rundown on the things that mass is supposed to effect? As I understand it so far, ship mass affects turning speed slightly but the mass of some equipment is not incorporated in this. Also maybe determines cargo amount, similar to volume? Anything else?

I also see some plugins use mass for things like restricted docking (maybe?). Is that an FLhook thing or an in-game thing?

I am looking at mass as a possible data-point in relation to dimensions and am trying to determine its significance

Thanks

[Vital]

Look through adoxa’s plugins.

[Ursus]

I loaded it and played around with some variables and I have a feeling for how ship handling is affected (mostly the rate at which forward velocity changes).

I dont know where else or how else it is used though.

Commodities appear to be limited to volume only and not mass. Seems like a logical thing that some of them would weigh more on a cubic unit basis, and a freighter that is limited to ~500 units would also be limited to ~500 weight. But this doesnt seem to be supported at all.

Also, as I understand the discovery mod uses mass to determine if a ship is allowed to dock at some bases (ex the Rogue Destroyer base in Pittsburg debris field). Maybe that’s specific to the mod though.

So far it seems like mass is mostly unusable as a relative stat due the scale being too tight (not enough difference between fighter and gunboat and battleship and cargo ship). Still looking at it though.

[Bobthemanofsteel]

Equip Mass adds both the mass of Equipment AND Cargo to the ship’s mass.

Discovery (and I imagine all mods) use the mission_property variable in the ship’s shiparch entry to define whether or not it can dock at a certain place.

As a quick example:
Blood Dragon Destroyer: mission_property = can_use_large_moors

Falcata: mission_property = can_use_berths

That GMG transport probably (gmg.cmp doesn’t give much away): mission_property = can_use_med_moors

Hope that helps.

-Bob (Or as you know me, Rita Mordio. 8-) )

[CK256]

If you up the ship mass in the shiparch significantly (X 10) it will change the handling quite a bit.
If the linear drag is left at the default of 1 a ship with mass 10000 - 12000 will side slip or drift a lot during turns.
Increasing the linear drag to about 500 will cure the side slip but it will make the ship lose speed very quickly under engine kill.

CK256

ps Hi Bob!

[Ursus]

Bobthemanofsteel wrote:
Equip Mass adds both the mass of Equipment AND Cargo to the ship’s mass.

Thanks Rita ;D

I think I was editing the wrong file for commodity mass. I saw that they all have volume= but none of them (or very few of them) have mass= declarations. I tried editing it in but didnt get any noticeable results, now I think I might have been editing the wrong file.

Anyway I dont think its important. Mass is not significant for what I’m looking at. The ranges are too tight. Thanks though