Strafing speed boost, space suits, upgrades and repair lasers
Posted: Fri, 18. Mar 11, 08:35
I usually get to find stuff out after everyone else, and strafing certainly was one of these. Yes, I had read references to speed increases from strafing but only connected it with when I was in spacesuit. So just how much faster can you travel while strafing? I decided to measure it for myself. I measured the speed of a Paranid TS at start of "Poisoned Paranid" on its way to the furtherest gate:
Normal speed: 74 m/s
Left/right strafe: 112 m/s
Up/Down strafe: 112 m/s
Combined up/down left/right strafe: 133 m/s
I haven't worked out how to use SETA while strafing, and so would normally only use this if there was no other way. But with this much speed difference it could make getting away from a slightly faster enemy ship possible. The faster a ship is, the less impact that strafing has on it in percentage terms. Conversely, the lowly spacesuit "ship" gets the biggest boost of all:
The spacesuit:
normal speed: 14 m/s
After full engine tuning, no strafe: 28 m/s
untuned engine, up/down strafe speed: 63 m/s
untuned engine, left/right strafe speed: 63 m/s
untuned engine, double strafe: 98 m/s
fully tuned engine, double strafe: 116.2 m/s
Another thing I didn't know about the space suit was how much it could be upgraded. You can fit almost any software upgrade, with a few exceptions - transporter device, jumpdrive and turbo being noteworthy. Unfortunately any upgrades must be picked up from ejected cargo, and as soon as you dock or enter a ship, they disappear. If you need to pickup many upgrades from space crates, pickup the special command software upgrade first, and then you can command it to pickup the rest in autopilot.
I tried valiantly to somehow transport the repair laser or even to eject it but to no avail. You can dock the spacesuit and even use the docking computer to do so. But you can't exchange freight or even software, and if you change "ships", the spacesuit disappears. Why am I pursuing this? Because I simply can't believe that Egosoft put in a place for repair lasers in so many ships without it somehow being possible to fit it. Even if they made a late decision to not allow the fitment of repair lasers, I would expect them to remove all mention of the "white" laser slot allowing these. If I see a post from an Egosoft official that specifically states that the repair laser cannot be fitted to a normal ship in vanilla TC, then I'll gladly accept that. (TIA for the link )
Normal speed: 74 m/s
Left/right strafe: 112 m/s
Up/Down strafe: 112 m/s
Combined up/down left/right strafe: 133 m/s
I haven't worked out how to use SETA while strafing, and so would normally only use this if there was no other way. But with this much speed difference it could make getting away from a slightly faster enemy ship possible. The faster a ship is, the less impact that strafing has on it in percentage terms. Conversely, the lowly spacesuit "ship" gets the biggest boost of all:
The spacesuit:
normal speed: 14 m/s
After full engine tuning, no strafe: 28 m/s
untuned engine, up/down strafe speed: 63 m/s
untuned engine, left/right strafe speed: 63 m/s
untuned engine, double strafe: 98 m/s
fully tuned engine, double strafe: 116.2 m/s
Another thing I didn't know about the space suit was how much it could be upgraded. You can fit almost any software upgrade, with a few exceptions - transporter device, jumpdrive and turbo being noteworthy. Unfortunately any upgrades must be picked up from ejected cargo, and as soon as you dock or enter a ship, they disappear. If you need to pickup many upgrades from space crates, pickup the special command software upgrade first, and then you can command it to pickup the rest in autopilot.
I tried valiantly to somehow transport the repair laser or even to eject it but to no avail. You can dock the spacesuit and even use the docking computer to do so. But you can't exchange freight or even software, and if you change "ships", the spacesuit disappears. Why am I pursuing this? Because I simply can't believe that Egosoft put in a place for repair lasers in so many ships without it somehow being possible to fit it. Even if they made a late decision to not allow the fitment of repair lasers, I would expect them to remove all mention of the "white" laser slot allowing these. If I see a post from an Egosoft official that specifically states that the repair laser cannot be fitted to a normal ship in vanilla TC, then I'll gladly accept that. (TIA for the link )