Rubber band physics???

from Sins Forums

I played a game recently where I built a rather large fleet of scouts. I had them passing through a neutral grav well and the light frigates where able to overtake the scouts! The scouts where making a b-line for the other side yet the light frigates fell in place and kept up with them the whole way. They would follow, fall behind a bit, then burst speed back up to the scout they were firing on. Bobucles posted these stats here for scouts and light frigates.

TEC Light Frigate:

Acceleration 200
Turn Speed 3.3
Max Speed 800

TEC Scout:

Acceleration 225
Turn Speed 4.95
Max Speed 1000

If these stats are accurate then the light frigates should have fallen behind and a gap should have grown bigger until the scouts had to stop to jump. But instead the light frigates fell behind then were able to accelerate to catch back up to them.

Something is fishy about that and I'm thinking it's some sort of bubber band physics. Anyone seen this or have an explanation?

19,995 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

It's quite possible; light frigates pretty much have the sole role of chasing down support cruisers and frigates, so they may have some elastic properties to keep kiting ineffective against them.  Other than that, there's also the possibility that your units were being slowed down because of fleet behavior.  I know that in many games when you need units to move at maximum speed, you break up any groups you have and give individual orders, otherwise cohesion behavior can screw them up and get them killed.  I typically don't use fleets for this reason; I'd rather do the cohesion micromanagement than micromanage around the cohesion issues.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Not sure about it but... Maybe the player with the light frigates was having some research or/and artifact who influence the basic stats of the ship...

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

There's no research or artifact that affects movement speed.  TEC have a research for capital ship turn speed, and a special ability for heavy cruisers, but otherwise you can't improve base unit speeds.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Well if you could increase turn rate I am certain that you could increase speed of ships?

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Research does not apply to what the OP is saying.  it was a neutral gravity well.  It would be the neutral malitia defending it using TEC style ships.

Since pirates use the same style ships, what are their specs?

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

I thought maybe Darvin's idea of fleet cohesion was worth a look. I tried an early spam of 30 scouts. But I'll be danged if I can reproduce what I observed earlier. I tried experimenting with both regular Sins and Entrenchment. I've been unable to reproduce the behavior in either. The light frigates I was refering to were the neutrals in an uncolonized grav well. The only other possibilities I can think of are maybe it's changed since the upgrade to v1.16 and v1.02 or maybe there is a difference in behavior later in game when there is more for the PC to keep track of. If I reproduce it, I will post the replay.

Fleet cohesion was standard and move was set to individual in the experiments.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Are the ships slowing down when they're under fire?

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

The scouts are maintaining speed when fired on. It may have been the size of the fleet that slowed them down. I should have reproduced the issues before posting.