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. 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.

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

Why Inertial Dampeners?

Realistic zero-gravity flight mechanics have some unintuitive aspects that would present a hurdle for everyone but experienced astronauts, hence games simplify them.

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 at that speed in that direction until they hit an obstacle. A realistic implementation of space flight feels frustrating to new players, like aquaplaning or sliding on ice without control. You need to learn how to react.

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. Enable Inertial Dampeners and you slow down and come to a halt. 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 is similar how friction would slow down an unpowered car rolling on a flat street.

Usage

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

Inertial Dampeners are built into both your personal jetpack and can be activated in ship thrusters. Inertial Dampeners are not available for wheeled vehicles.

In order to make the Inertial Dampeners fully functional, build the ship to have at least one thruster facing in each cardinal direction: forwards, backwards, left, right, up, and down. Gyroscopes cannot alter a spacecraft's speed and are not used here. The player's jetpack always has thrust in all six directions.

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.

Example: Your atmo ship is falling downwards and forwards. Your braking thrusters are broken, but your lifting thrusters still work. You switch on Inertial Dampeners: The dampeners activate the lifting thusters to cancel out only the downward movement, you stop falling. But they fail to activate your broken braking thrusters, so you'd keep drifting forward.

How to Match Speed (Relative Dampers)?

A ship pilot or a jetpacking engineer can match speed by engaging Relative Dampers.

1. Look at another moving ship (or player)
2. Press CTRL+Z key.

In the HUD, speed matching is called Auto.

This setting let you follow a moving grid or player by automatically matching speed with the target. 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 overcome a lack of thruster directions?

It can happen due to a collision or battle damage: The damage or destruction of some directional thrusters eliminates the convenience of automatic Inertial Dampeners, you drift. But you are not "dead in the water": With 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 must additionally use half of your available thrust to keep flying, so angle the ship at roughly 45 degrees towards the gravity well.

Tip: This manoeuvre is used by experienced players to fly a single-thruster 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 often "skid" for kilometres if their front thrusters are too weak, and for them, even using Inertial Dampeners still necessitates a rapid retrograde burn.

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. This works for both jetpack and ships.
• 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.

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. This issue occurs because the Inertial Dampeners calculations do not account for the extra mass of the subgrids!