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I thought it might be a neat idea to have pods rocket boost in a random direction for the first couple secs after there ship is destroyed, Mostly so it looks like the rocket ejectors are going off and it might have the added effect of reducing accidental pod kills

Two things:

A) Boosters only go one direction, which is forward.
AFAIK Pods inherit most things from the ship. This includes: Position, orientation, spin torque (as opposed to spin speed; more on this in a sec), and speed.

Now, in order to have a useful 'eject' booster, you would have to override the orientation and zero the spin torque. Now, spin torque is important to differentiate from spin speed - Spin speed is universal; you spin something at 2 degrees per second, it doesn't matter what it is, it spins at 2 degrees per second. Spin torque, on the other hand, is the power making the spin. Something massive, like a cap ship, spinning at 2 degrees per second might involve enough torque to have the pod spin at 2 hundred degrees per second (Ever been in a BIOS pod after ejecting from a cap ship? Your thrusters are turned off when ripcording, so no spin is canceled, and it gets, well, nauseating). Now, in order to make the eject booster work, you would have to A) equip the pod with a booster, Give the pod fuel, and C) Override the pod's initial orientation and spin.

The orientation has some issues - mainly, depending on what angle you're going at, the pod might go directly toward you or directly away from you, either of which keeps it in your guns. The most common 'facing' is either near-directly forward, which means that a forward or backward boosting pod wouldn't work. The second most common is from one of the sides, making side orientation boosts out. The best would be an up or down, but you're still going to have possiblities of shooting the pod.

As an idea, though, it's excellent. Not a perfect solution, and not high priority, but something that's more than 'ZOMG COOL!' - It also has the fact that while it doesn't solve it perfectly, it is workable

I think you're talking about angular momentum Andon, rather than torque. And I'm not convinced it works that way. I once replaced a faction's pod ID with that of a cruiser in the core file, then rammed a rock to see what would happen. Woah boy did that capship spin! By the time the ship thrusters had arrested the motion, I was almost out of oxygen.

I also believe the game already does something like what Civ's suggesting, or a simplified version of it. Next time you blow up a player's ship, have a look at where the pod(s) and debris go. They all get blown apart by the explosion - effectively throwing the ejected pilots clear of the blast.

This could still be a fun little feature, even though the spinning pod will play havoc with your trajectory.

TurkeyXIII wrote:QUOTE (TurkeyXIII @ Feb 7 2009, 08:51 AM) I also believe the game already does something like what Civ's suggesting, or a simplified version of it. Next time you blow up a player's ship, have a look at where the pod(s) and debris go. They all get blown apart by the explosion - effectively throwing the ejected pilots clear of the blast.

Exactly. It might be cool if there were some rocket special-effects going with the pod for a half-second or so, but I'm pretty sure that it's unimportant enough that if you really want it you'll have to code it yourself.

Well if we had boosting pods. The ship it got podded from should have an AoE damage too. (about 50 DMG)
The pods should boost up like regular jet eject seats.