Inertial Dampeners

In science fiction, inertial dampeners or inertia dampers are a helpful movement-related game mechanic for both the player's jetpack as well as a ship's thrusters. Realistic zero-gravity flight mechanics have some unintuitive aspects that would present a hurdle for everyone but experienced astronauts; enabling Inertial Dampeners lets you learn the game first and worry about realism later.

Press the Z key to toggle Inertial Dampeners on and off.

In other sci-fi games, Inertial Dampeners are known as Flight Assist or Coupled/Decoupled Mode.

Problem

When travelling in the vacuum of zero-gravity space, there is no air or ground friction, and nothing naturally slows down a ship's or player's inertia. After the smallest acceleration, ships or players continue drifting in that direction until they hit an obstacle. A realistic implementation of space flight feels to new players like aquaplaning or sliding on ice without control.

Solution

To be able to turn, slow down, or brake in space, we must cancel our inertia by exerting a force in the exact opposite direction. This is unintuitive for human beings who are used to friction slowing us down as soon as we "take the foot off the gas pedal". It's especially unintuitive because empty space offers no landmarks for us to determine our speed or direction of movement in the first place.

In Science Fiction, Inertial Dampeners simulate the familiar braking friction from planet Earth. When Inertial Dampeners are enabled and if there is no active player input in a direction (= "foot off the gas pedal"), the thrusters in the opposite direction turn on automatically and cancel out the velocity. This intuitive damping eventually slows you down to a halt — similar how friction would slow down an unpowered car rolling on a flat street.

Activation

Press the Z key to toggle Inertial Dampeners on and off.

Inertial Dampeners are built into your jetpack and ship thrusters. They are not available for wheeled vehicles. A gyroscope alone cannot alter a spacecraft's speed. In order to make the Inertial Dampeners fully functional, remember that the ship must have at least one thruster facing in each cardinal direction (forwards, backwards, left, right, up, and down).

To toggle the Inertial Dampeners in a ship, the engineer must be seated in a cockpit.

• In a ship, the toggle stays on even after engineers exit the cockpit.
• If engineers have turned off the ship's Inertial Dampeners while seated in a cockpit, and exit the seat, the jetpack's Inertial Dampeners will be turned off as well. Meaning, players will drift with the same velocity as the ship they exited. This is helpful to avoid complications with runaway ships.

Known Issues

Even with Inertial Dampeners on, atmospheric ships with subgrids (that means, they are using mechanical blocks such as rotors, hinges, and pistons) sink in gravity, because the Inertial Dampeners do not account for the extra mass of the subgrids.

Match Speed / Relative Dampers

A ship pilot or a jetpacking engineer can engage Relative Dampers by looking at another moving ship (or player) and pressing CTRL+Z key. In the HUD, speed matching is called Auto. This setting allows you to follow something moving by automatically matching speed with the other vessel.

Relative Dampers are also helpful for catching a corpse's backpack that's drifting in space.

Keen added this feature in version 1.188.

How to enable Dampers in ships

The player's jetpack has thrusters in all directions, and therefore engineers benefit from Inertial Dampeners right from the beginning of the game.

When building a new ship, however, engineers must add at least one thruster in each of the 6 directions to enable Inertial Dampeners!

For example, if there are only ventral lifting thrusters pointing down on the bottom of the ship, damping would only work when the ship travels in the down direction. If the ship was drifting down and forward, then the thrusters would cancel out only the downward movement, but you'd keep drifting forward.

How to overcome a lack of thruster directions

It can happen due to a collision or battle damage: A lack of some directional thrusters eliminates the convenience of automatic Inertial Dampeners. But you are not "dead in the water": With some practice and skill, it is possible to cancel inertia and come to a stop even with incomplete thruster coverage.

Use Gyroscopes to tilt and turn the remaining thrusters manually to face the drift direction until you cancel the inertia. If you are in gravity, you will additionally have to use half of your available thrust to keep flying, so angle the ship at roughly 45 degrees.

Tip: This manoeuvre is also used by experienced players to fly the starter drop-pod.

When to Switch on Inertial Dampeners?

Inertial Dampeners make handling of your ships or jetpack more intuitive, as the activation of just the right retrograde thrusters will be automatic.

Generally, keep Inertial Dampeners turned on while manoeuvring near obstacles or close to the ground:

• Landing
• Docking
• Travelling down tight mining tunnels
• Weaving through asteroids

At the same time, the use of Inertial Dampeners makes braking only somewhat easier, as it still depends on the strength of your counter thrusters versus the current speed. While small fighters have little problem stopping, larger ships can often "skid" for kilometres if their front thrusters are too weak, necessitating a rapid retrograde burn with their powerful rear thrusters:

• Flip-and-burn manoeuvre:
  Instead of slowly braking with the usually rudimentary bow thrusters, flip the ship 180 degrees and then engage the Inertial Dampeners to burn the thrusters, rapidly grinding to a halt.

When to switch off Inertial Dampeners?

For experienced players who want a "realistic" space feel, turning off Inertial Dampeners provides an interesting challenge. In other games this gameplay is called "Flight Assist Off".

There is a great variety of situations that don't require Inertial Dampeners:

• Fuel-saving Coasting Manoeuvre for long range flights:
  After you've reached maximum velocity, Inertial Dampeners force you to thrust forward to maintain that speed - which is a pure waste of fuel. A far more efficient procedure is to thrust up to a comfortable velocity, switch Inertial Dampeners off, coast into range of the target, and only at that point reactivate Inertial Dampeners for the braking burn.
• Minimising thruster damage on takeoff:
  With Inertial Dampeners off, only a brief engine burn is required to gently get out of thruster damage range of the pad - instead of burning continuously, which leaves gaping holes in Light Armor Blocks.
• Carrier operations:
  A docked ship with Inertial Dampeners on keeps countering the mothership's movement--which can easily result in loss of control and damage. Always switch your Inertial Dampeners (or better, all thrusters) off after docking to a carrier!
• Relocating valuable wrecks:
  Flying a heavily damaged ship back to base, with Inertial Dampeners off and manually controlling the only remaining thruster and gyroscope, and landing it without scratching the landing pad's paint. (Bonus bragging rights if said thruster is on the top, but the pilot still manages to touch down softly with the correct orientation.)
• Escorting:
  Station-keeping and matching relative speed near other moving vessels.

Use in space battle:

• Retaining velocity in a fight:
  A ship with Inertial Dampeners switched on constantly loses velocity, which is a bad thing if one is under fire.
• Target-leading mind-screw:
  Since most players instinctively consider the target to be moving in the direction of its bow (Archimedean motion), a ship with Inertial Dampeners off can exploit Newtonian physics and drift while rotated in any position. This manoeuvre confuses many human opponents and is genuinely unpredictable.
• Engage targets with fixed weapons in any direction without changing velocity:
  A ship with Inertial Dampeners off can suddenly spin about and shred any hostile, especially one following it.