Shaky Drive

Imperfections in the thrusters and mass imbalances within the ship are normally corrected by the automatic flight control software. However, at very high speeds, those corrections are no longer effective. The ship starts to "shake" and has a tendency to "steer" in a variable direction, and becomes harder to control securely. For this reason, the flight control software automatically disengage the Torus drive when it detects a significant mass nearby; a security commonly known as a "mass lock".

What Spaceship? magazine

I made this mostly to make Torus runs more "interesting". However, it makes the game slightly more difficult because it's harder to visually identify distant ships and asteroids (especially if you play with a low gamma setting). It also has the side effect of making Torus runs a little bit longer, because you don't fly a straight line any more.

Credits

• Written by Astrobe
• Inspired (and code stolen) from Wildeblood's "Bullet Drive"

Downloads

Get (OXZ package):

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7mL19JuhnZPR0tvWldoaHFyTlU

(Use the download symbol at the top and save in the ManagedAddOns folder).

Also downloadable through the in-game Expansions Manager

Version History

To expand a bit on what the OXP does: the "shaking" is actually a semi-random small rotation on the three axes of the ship.

"Semi-random" because there are two components:

- a "dynamic" component: a new one is picked for every new frame

- a "static" component, which is picked on launch only

As a result, among the random shaking the ship has a tendency to rotate in a certain way. This is somewhat similar to what happens when you damage your car or your plane in racing or flight simulators. It requires more or less constant correction depending on the draw you got at launch. If you try it and get a very strong "steer" when using the Torus, it might be that you were a bit "unlucky" at launch (or rather, those bloody dockers at Xexedi really should learn how to load a ship properly; I can't believe I paid 8Cr docking fee for this).

I ended up decreasing the effect a bit because it could become really unpleasant if one gets a very bad draw at launch time. The "dynamic" shaking was a bit hard on the eyes, especially on long trips (I play with distant suns and a modified Extra Planets OXP that sets the planets 2 or 3 times further away; so 4 minutes Torus runs are not rare for me).

I was undecided on whether or not the effect should happen when using the injectors at first; then I got chased a couple of times. The drift makes it quite hard to hit the chasers with the rear laser, and its "dodging" side effect isn't worth it in my opinion (especially when you don't have to because you have an aft-mounted military laser and the chasers don't).

• 1.0.0 2016-Oct-28 Release
• 0.0.3 2016-Aug-26 alertConditionChanged does not seem to take place on launching; replaced with willLaunchFromStation.
• 0.0.2 2016-Apr-12 No shaking at max witchdrive injector speed, reduced torus drive shaking effect a little.
• 0.0.1 2016-Apr-09 Beta version.

Links

• BB Discussion Thread
• Torus Drive
• Bullet Drive has the opposite effect, making you drive straight without any manoeuvering (as in Classic Elite)!
• Hard Way allows minimal manoeuvering, but also consumes energy. It does a number of other things too!

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