FTLD decsription ~ FTL MFD

[Jon]

The FTL drive will jump you from one place to another. The distance of the jump is determined by three factors, the "Jump Factor]", "Jump Constant"  and
the "Thrust Factor".  With all settings to their respective max values
you will jump the maximum distance in meters allowed by the DJD value set in the scenario file. If no DJD value is set the DJD is 1AU/1000.
By varying the settings you will be able to jump a distance less than the DJD distance.  The FTL drive uses up
fuel during its recharge cycle at the rate of 200 fuel units per recharge cycle.

"Flying though hyper space isn't like dusting crops"

Well in this case it kind of is. My FTL drive is much more of a gross jump
that will get you into the general area of your objective rather than precisely
to your objective. The direction of the jump is where you are pointed so target
 alignment is subject to your skills.
 Why so sloppy? Because it would be far less of a challenge or fun if you could make precise jumps.

As I stated above the jump distance is determined by three factors and the way they interact
is very simple. The "Jump Factor" range is from 0 to 100,
the "Jump Constant" range is from 0 to 100 in increments of 10  and
the "Thrust Factor" range is from 0 to 10 and is set via
the "Main Thrust" control.

The jump distance equation is:
jump_distance =  default_jump_distance * (jump_factor * (jump constant/10) * thrust_factor)
 
Simple right?
 
FTL Drive Scenario file parameter
DJD is the Default Jump Distance and if set to 0 or not used the value
 will default to 149597870, which just happens to be 1 astronomical unit divided by 1000.
 You can change this to jump right to Pluto or only a couple of kilometers.


Keyboard commands for FLT jumping:
Point your ship in the direction you wish to jump use standard RCS.
Use keys 1 thru 6 and the main thrust to adjust your jump distance.

The "Jump Factor"  use the 1&2 or 3&4 keys
The "Jump Constant" use the 5&6 keys
The "Thrust Factor" set via the main thrust setting

Use Ctrl F12 to make the jump.

[aaron955]

I must learn how to use this properly. Can you suggest any downloadable MFD's that might help

Thanks in advance

Aaron.

[Jon]

I must learn how to use this properly. Can you suggest any downloadable MFD's that might help

Thanks in advance

Aaron.

Zcochrane knows a lot more about jumping, (it was his invention, I just coded it), so we will just have to cross our fingers that he will favor us with some write-ups on using it.

On the other hand if anyone else wants to jump in, (pun intended  ), feel free. Collaboration is one of the reason I started the forum. 

Jon

[aaron955]

thanksfor the help jon and yeagh it would be great if Z would do a write up (crosses fingers). Thanks once again for doing my request jon uve done it better than i ever could of imagined (u too Shawn ) and sorry if im getting a bit repetative saying this lol.

 

later,

Aaron

[ZCochrane]

Hey, Aaron, Jon:

I'm at work, but will be happy to type behind my boss's back in a little while when it slows down for the afternoon, lol.  I've had great success with jumping HYPER-CLOSE to targets... in fact, the thing I've had to look out for is to NOT jump so close that the Battlestar sails into the ground like a moon-sized lawn-dart.

Will work on a tutorial later today, should be fun to make - and read!

Later,
ZCochrane

[aaron955]

Thanks  ZCochrane that would be greatly apreciated. im sure This will help a great many people. By the way Jon I was just wondering if you should maybe try and get this website on the related sites page of the main orbiter website ( http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/sites.html ) since this is now i would say one of the main orbiter addon websites. Im sure if you did that you would get a great many more downloads since its not to well known at the minute

later

Aaron

[Jon]

Thanks  ZCochrane that would be greatly apreciated. im sure This will help a great many people. By the way Jon I was just wondering if you should maybe try and get this website on the related sites page of the main orbiter website ( http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/sites.html ) since this is now i would say one of the main orbiter addon websites. Im sure if you did that you would get a great many more downloads since its not to well known at the minute

later

Aaron

I'm not really looking for quantity of downloads. I'd rather have a few people that care about the work and contribute thoughts, ideas and even files than 100s of people that download for the sake of downloading.

Never the less I'll keep it in mind.

Jon

[aaron955]

Ok thats fine I understand where your coming from and you have got a point By the way Z hows that manuel coming along?

Aaron

[Jon]

Speaking of a manual of sorts.

Could you put in another thread and sticky it so it stays at the top?

Thanks.
Jon

[ZCochrane]

Speaking of a manual of sorts.

Could you put in another thread and sticky it so it stays at the top?

Certainly - - as soon as I figure out what I'm saying in it, LOL.  Seriously, I DO have a sort of working cheat sheet I use often while Orbiting - which can easily be fleshed out to a decent readme-style primer.

Warmly,
ZCochrane

[aaron955]

Certainly - - as soon as I figure out what I'm saying in it, LOL.  Seriously, I DO have a sort of working cheat sheet I use often while Orbiting - which can easily be fleshed out to a decent readme-style primer.

Warmly,
ZCochrane

 Sounds good Z. Hopefully one day ill be able to jump so accurately like u as to have my main worry being not going in the planet lol...one day! 

Aaron

[computerex]

Perhaps this will help. I have just started working on "FTL MFD". It will allow any vessel to have a jump drive, but it'll show you the post jump distance from a user specified target.

Note, I have started working on it not an hour ago. It looks ugly as of now, but as soon as I get some more time, I'll add in some eye candy.

[Jon]

This will be cool and allow me to remove the built in ones from the fleet ships.

[tgep]

Not to mention taking less time to code modules too. Now any ship can be more fleet compatible right out of the gate ! Well done C 

[Jon]

Now all we need is an attach MFD that allows attaching right "here" like the flattop does.
That would mean that we could do away with all the attach code in the fleet ships and allow as many ships to land in the bays as you like.

The only problem would be launch from Vipertubes but because that is so ship centric I could just code a pop-up that moves the ships from the generic MFD attach point to the viper tube and then launches it.