Actually banking has it''s place in a space combat simulation, mostly due to G-forces. If you rotate your ship so that the top is always facing towards the middle of the circle you are going to turn around (assuming you don''t just want to rotate on your axis, which if you do leaves you a stationary sitting duck for your enemies) then pull up and through the turn you will have your g-forces going down, however if you just turn sideways while still accelerating your crew is going to be thrown all over the place, or if you are in a fighter it will be very disorienting, much like pulling a hard turn in your car.

Anyways, my point is, though they may not be necessary in space many of the "atmospheric methods" do have an important place in space combat due to human physiology.

What I would really love to see are more space combat simulators like those found in Homeworld, perhaps with more of the characterstics similar to those that have been discussed here. The homeworld engine was a very easy to control way of doing space combat and I am really surprised no-one else has made another decent game using something similar. I''ve been thinking about starting a MMO space sim with a similar engine using a Trade Wars 2002 type of story, but with multiple races that interact with each other, perhaps go to war with each other and trade and whatnot, while the players play as merchants/pirate/mercenaries and thus can make a big impact, but can''t dominate the entire galaxy.

Just a thought.

Dusto

Page 2 Firsties!

Anyway, as I understand zero-g physics (and Graham, I hope you weigh in on this one), the only thing you're vectoring is the moment of interia. The reason banking is usually employed is not one of inertia-delta but one of getting the most powerful thrusters faced in the direction where they are most effective.

Any human can be made sufficiently rigid within the craft with a little ingenuity. However, the pilot needs to be very near the C/G of the spacecraft. The idea of a pilot sitting in the forward space is ludicrous, because when he IS well-fixed, he's got the delta-vector of the craft and additionally whatever moment exists between him and the C/G. If I recall, moments are not additive, but multiplicative (F=.5mv2).

Regardless, even if he experiences a moment derived from and dampened by the spaceframe's tonnage, it would rapidly overwhelm him either by blacking/redding out or just vibrating into goo. We're talking TONS of energy and mass against squishy wet human cargo. All the banking you could do does not change the acceleration or the inertia.

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-WarMage
...and I could really use a hand making sure what I just said is in fact correct (intuition and all, y'know)

Edited by - WarMage on July 23, 2001 8:43:26 PM