Vector Lock Velocity Decay

RealPandemonium · Post by **RealPandemonium** » Sun Jan 22, 2012 11:17 pm

I was looking at and it got me thinking about vector lock. Currently if you vector lock and then turn your ship you will lose thrust. That is normal, expected behavior. However, if you turn back to your original direction, the thrust that you lost by turning the ship is not restored. It would be nice to have the original velocity maintained as much as possible rather than decaying permanently until you release the vector lock.

TurkeyXIII · Post by **TurkeyXIII** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 11:18 am

Sounds fairly straightforward to implement. Because it changes current behaviour we'd need some sort of consensus or majority or something before it's greenlighted. I'd vote for it though.

Cadillac · Post by **Cadillac** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 6:45 pm

The decay in speed makes perfect sense to me. As you've said it's a vector lock not a velocity lock. If you change direction the weaker side and front thrusters have to compensate and have less output, hence the loss in speed.

ThePhantom032 · Post by **ThePhantom032** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 7:06 pm

Cookie Monster wrote:QUOTE (Cookie Monster @ Jan 23 2012, 07:45 PM) The decay in speed makes perfect sense to me. As you've said it's a vector lock not a velocity lock. If you change direction the weaker side and front thrusters have to compensate and have less output, hence the loss in speed.

sure, but that is not what is meant here.

Imagine going forward in a scout at full speed (160). Hit vector lock.
turn a bit. because your sidethrusters are weaker, you slow down from 160 to about 140 before you turn facing the same direction as in the beginning again.
In theorie, your forward thruster allows you to go 160 in that direction, and you were going that fast when you hit vector lock.
Yet you do not speed up again without releasing vector lock and stay at 140.

What is suggested here is that vector lock remembers the initial speed and tries to accelerate back to it (when possible)

And I'm all for it

Cadillac · Post by **Cadillac** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 7:25 pm

Now that would be cool.

DonKarnage · Post by **DonKarnage** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 7:12 am

What happens when you vector lock at something like 80mps when your maximum is 160mps?
Or lets say you vector lock while going backwards at 30mps, when you turn around will you accelerate to 400% of that? (Assuming your reverse thrust modifier is 0.25)

I guess what you're saying is that when vector lock is engaged, your current speed will be the maximum it will try to sustain? Not necessarily the ships maximum?

This would be an excellent idea if it can be pulled off, it sucks having to turn off vector lock or holding down a thruster to get your speed back up, it makes you slide off vector in the process and it's very clunky.
This would make Vector Lock way more useful.