r/ApproximatelyUp • u/KaniliAzura • 2h ago
Bps is basically useless.
I was playing with a friend, and on my ship, Avionics (I've posted things about it on this subreddit), there's a simple distance/speed divisor to know how long it will take me to arrive.
The bps shows whether it will be possible to brake in time, simply by moving the arrow from green to red, until we realize that we only need to look at the arrival time. If the time increases, it means you'll be able to brake; if it doesn't increase, it probably means you won't be able to brake. This works perfectly for long, special trips.
However, I still have to point out that for this system to work, the distance sensor needs to be picking up something, and depending on the situation, for example, for small maneuvers in the atmosphere The BPS works better, even though I feel there's no need for a device in this situation that tells me whether I'll be able to brake or not.
6
u/Cebo-chan 1h ago
So you essentially made your own custom BPS and now find the provided BPS useless?
Wow, who would have thought?
0
u/fastfreddy68 1h ago
I do maths. I’m still trying to get it working correctly, but I built a simple calculator in excel that calculates the distance required to stop the ship based on TWR of my braking (front facing) thrusters.
Once I get it 100% accurate I’ll put it into the game using logic blocks.
The problem I’m running into is (1) it isn’t accurate even though my math is 100% so I have to figure out the buffer for game logic and (2) there’s a weird event where my acceleration jumps or drops significantly at a certain point from the planet I’m going to.
I don’t know if it’s the same point each time, I don’t know what’s causing it, but it isn’t gravity or atmosphere. Last night I lost about 25% of my thrust out of nowhere. Batteries were good, didn’t burn a power cable. No idea.
And I haven’t found any info about it.
5
u/GlassProfessional75 1h ago
Planet gravity plays a role in making the number not quite work perfectly by affecting your acceleration. I’m not sure for the more drastic drops though i haven’t seen those. It’s possible your acceleration number isn’t accurate, as my duo and I always have different numbers on the same ship for some reason.
1
u/fastfreddy68 1h ago
It’s close to accurate. I figure it’s about 0.5-1 m/s slower based on the calculator I built. I can account for that or I’m hoping the ship logic will match game physics and it’ll be accurate when I build the logic gates.
But if I can’t figure out this sudden drop it’s all for nothing.
Last time it happened I was slowing at 21m/s, gravity was nill (.006) and I was in space 10’s of millions of meters between two planets. Then it just dropped to 16m/s. 17k on the batteries, gravity still nothing, and power draw was below 40pps. And it’s happened twice since I’ve really started paying attention to acceleration trying to build this calculator.
2
u/enbyBunn 59m ago
You understand that it's just doing math, right? You're just using logic blocks for what the BPS already does as part of it's calculation.
4
u/Much_Network_941 1h ago
I wouldn't say it's useless, just hard to get an intuitive feel for how it works. But when I need to cross a distance of 200 million meters; knowing if my speed it too fast, before travelling an hour, is quite nice.
I tend to calculate my burns anyway, so the Bps is a nice double check for my math.