More problems in Sol/Sol

[Nukl3ar]

Thanks be to Str the problems I had w/ the Sol/Sol load were solved. Now I've encountered another problem in the Sol system. I'm unable - so far - to dock at either Earth or Luna about 50% of the time. Even at full flight speed headed down to the planet Earth when I reach ~1295 Km from the surface - the distance begins to go in the opposite direction. Even putting auto-pilot on that is as close as I can come. Hit dead stop - come to stop - hail the planet and attempt to dock. I get the indicator (steady green) and aim for the middle. Then, either full combat or flight mode and I start to get farther from the planet. The same thing happens when I try to dock at Luna. Any idea's here? Thanks.

[Str]

hm i've also had this issue, but the other way round.. docking with earth were no problem, but it took many time to get far enough away to SPEC... i thought/think its because of the... uhm.. "radial movement"? Because sol is designed by hand the speed of the planets may be somewhat too huge...

[Nukl3ar]

Actually, this last session as I launched from Luna I noticed that I had an initial velocity of > 8000 km. This was before setting any speed mode. I did an all stop and waited until velocity = 0. Then headed for Earth and successfully docked. I have no idea why I had this initial velocity.

[loki1950]

Use the match velocity key "home" before you make the approach so you are measuring that velocity relative it not the default the system primary(the Sun).

Enjoy the Choice

[Nukl3ar]

Loki, thanks for all your previous help. I'll try that. I noticed last session when I lifted from Luna that I again had initial velocity >12000km. I also noticed I had no shielding and that all but the middle colored line indicator on the HUD was gone. I think the top one (blue I believe) has to do w/ capacitor power. I'm in a stock Plowshare with nothing added - trying to figure out trade routes at this point. I'll give the "Home" key a try.

[Str]

The blue one is the state of your FTL capacitor power, you need it if you spec or if you jump.. see the ships info screen

The Home/End Keys didn't work for me as i was in sol, if i remeber correctly... (I have a german keyboard, am i right that Home is "Pos1" and End "Ende" (<- sounds clearly, but who knows if that are really the right keys ... anyway, never used this functions much)

OT:

By the way, is there any reason that your reactor didn't work after your yellow bar (fuel) is depleted? Fuel is just in use by the Overdrive, and there is no permanently drop which could be used for the reacotr, or am i wrong?

[loki1950]

Basic repair is also a refuel fuel consumption is set very low ATM but it does decrease and you can run out if you forget to repair.

Enjoy the Choice

[()Alf]

By the way, is there any reason that your reactor didn't work after your yellow bar (fuel) is depleted?

As i understand it, you need fuel for the reactor to function (the better the reactor the more fuel it's able to convert into power i think). You can watch that behavior by shooting your weapons. That increased powerusage results in higher fuelusage. You see the same driving your car with activ air-conditioning -> more fuel usage.

[edit]
Of course you also need energy for FTL, which means, no fuel - no energy for FTL and weapons

[Nukl3ar]

Thanks for the replies. I'd never used my retro (overdrive) so I can't imagine what would cause the drain there. And, as I'd just left ports (docking stations) I can't imagine what would cause the FTL drain. I usually repair any damage I come across while I'm in port. Am I the only one to experience this problem? I just got back home on the bike and I'll test the "Home" key thing now.

[Str]

As i understand it, you need fuel for the reactor to function (the better the reactor the more fuel it's able to convert into power i think).

yes, but nothing mentions that, you have no description of this behavior in neither the reactor nor the capacitor (FTL and "normal") nor the Basic Repair/Fuel entry nor your ship's screen... and because the reactor is something that is really important and "main" in a ship, so i've never thougt about a depency of the reactor/wanted a official explanation ^_^

You can watch that behavior by shooting your weapons. That increased powerusage results in higher fuelusage.

really? The reactor gives you every second the power it can deliver (reactor 1 2000 MJ/s, reactor 2 4000 MJ/s etc), why should it give me more or less (and needs more or less fuel) if i shoot weapons that need more energy? Either because this number isn't that important to the real ouput, or because it just give you the amount of energy you need, and coding this behavoir would be really pointless, wouldn't it? it wouldn't make a difference to the player or the ship or whatever, except the fuel usage... and again, nothing of this is written down somewhere...

You see the same driving your car with activ air-conditioning -> more fuel usage.

The whole comparing isn't imho very accurate, because the reactor isn't a "motor" or something, the energy delivered by the reactor >is< (in that way) your fuel, which can be converted into weapon fire etc... the air-conditioning thingy is also just something, that get's its power from something (the fuel) and convertes it into something useable, so this would be in vegastrike a weapon, which converts power into weapon fire...
And the fuel in the game is just another reactor, just one that doesn't give you more of it inflight, but one which converts fuel into extra boost, overdrive boost...

Making the reactor depending on fuel would simply be a "shifting" of the "main device" of your ship, that device that is the reason why all works...

and the word "reactor" implies this "main device", doesn't it? And this is handled this way in (almost) all SciFi Games/series/etc, because it delivers the "reason why everthing works in a ship", energy...

Of course you also need energy for FTL, which means, no fuel - no energy for FTL and weapons

just that the main capacitor deplets within seconds, and FTL takes some time, enough to reach a planet.. and your main engines works all the time...

I can't imagine what would cause the FTL drain.

sorry, i was a bit unclearly... after your yellow/fuel bar is depleted, you lose all your capacitor power (the red bar) to the shields, and all that is left is the FTL capacitor energy... but when you spec, you need energy, usually about 2000-4000 MJ/s, normally, this isn't any problem for your reactor, but after it's gone because there isn't any fuel this energy is taken by your SPEC engines... also, you need about 150000 MJ to jump to another system, because the reactor isn't able to give you this output as fast as you need it, your FTL capacitor energy is used... (so you need at least a FTL Capacitor and a jump drive to jump, take a good look at your FTL capacitor... i'd lost once my one in a battle, and because you can only get one at a military ship/station, the waiting for a andolian tesla wasn't very funny with that nasty uln fleets on my back )

you use your overdrive with the TAB Key, they are your afterburners, they give you an extra boost.. sure you never used that? maybe to get away from the planet? but, on a plowshare, it's about 96 tons or whatever... doesn't deplete too fast ^_^

EDIT: ah, and does a reactor output of x MJ/s mean x MJ/s for the main capacitor/weapons and x MJ/s for the FTL Capacitor/spec/jump or is the output parted?

[Nukl3ar]

Str - I'm sure I never used the overdrive (afterburners) - I'm very conservative w/ the fuel and usually just drop to combat flight mode and bump my speed up to about 10 or 15 for nice slow in-close movements such as docking. However, I'm still having that problem w/ inertial speeds and drifting AWAY from objects as I'm trying to dock w/ them. I accepted a patrol mission in Sol and can't get close enough to the objects to scan them. Usually when I'm ~ 22 Km from them the object begins to shake violently and I can come no closer. I tried the "Home" key to match velocities ... no avail. Nothing I can do will get me close enough to the object to scan it. And the shaking becomes worse the closer I get to the objects. At this point, I'm not even sure I can leave the system again.
Edit: I have tried several times w/ the same result. As soon as I leave any planet, moon, or base in the Sol system I have initial velocities - the last time in excess of 80,000 km. I decided to just wait for the velocity to die before I attempted to do anything. After 20 minutes w/ the velocity steadily dropping an Aeron Merchant Marine vessel headed my way. Thankfully he was unable to come any closer than 10,000 meters. My velocity was almost 5,000 km still at this point. I tried firing on him but he was doing the same violent shaking that I reported earlier. Unfortunately, while I was concentrating on him - another came from the opposite direction and didn't have the same limitations. He killed me. I would post the logs to help but mine seem unaltered from the intial state. I think this is probably a permission thing w/ Vista. Apparently the logs can't be altered by the game itself.

[loki1950]

#Nukl3ar not really sure what is happening with the shakes ATM but it may be the scale of the Sol system multiplies the effect.Re the ship list the most complete way would be to open units.csv with Open Office calc or Exel that will give you all of the ships in game and all the available upgrades.

Enjoy the Choice

[Nukl3ar]

Loki - thanks for the reply. I think somehow my game has gotten broken. I was able to leave the Sol/Sol system & jump to Proxima Centauri but I still have some type of problem w/ the Spec drive & the Autopilot. Apparently it affects all areas because my friends and opponents are having the same problems. Violent shaking and jumping from hundreds of kilometers to meters and back again. I'm going to snag the save games & try to reinstall - hopefully the save games don't contain anything that may cause the problem to be replicated. Also, finally had found one of your old posts concerning the csv files - as well as the csveditorV2 - unfortunately I'm not smart enough to figure out how to use it w/o documentation. I do however have Notepad ++ and OpenOffice. So, I'll take a look around.
Edit: I tried the clydesdale.milspec hack again and this time the graphic showed up. So apparently that problem is intermittent. I still haven't reinstalled ... takes a while on Vista and it's too nice a day ... already have taken the wife & the boy for rides on the bike ... now going myself

[Nukl3ar]

Well, instead of reinstalling I went back to an earlier save game - before I entered the solar system. The game plays fine. I used the jumps to get to the Telamon system and still no problems. I jumped several times from there but not to Sol. Still no problems. I landed & saved the game. Then jumped to Sol and proceeded towards Charon. I immediately started having problems ... the autopilot shot me waaaay past Charon. I headed back and then started having the same problems. I think what I was observing as violent shaking is actually the respawn problem I've seen in some other thread. I didn't land - even though I tried several times - so I don't know if I still have the problem of initial velocity on undocking from anything. For now, I'm just avoiding entering the solar system and the game is playing just fine.

[loki1950]

Tnx again other piece of behavior to add to the list

enjoy the Choice