Factorio Forums

is there an easy way to slow down a ship? not using circuits and logic stuff

you can pause thruster from the GUI

You can readout the speed of the ship at the hub
If you put a pump on either the fuel or oxidizer input to the thruster you can create a circuit that regulates the fuel
Flow based upon the speed

If you asking about "brake pedal" I afraid it does not exist.
At least, when I decide to stop engines by some condition, and cut fuel supply, the ship still fly for a while, and only after that slowly stops.
I was hoping to connect logic wire to and engine, then it likely will have some settings, like % of thrust, but wire can't be connected.

But if you speak about flying "slowly" just supply less fuel using a pump control. Simplest way I think, just cut fuel supply when speed is above some value.

With circuits you can speed control varying from rough and ready (speed will bounce around a desired speed by quite alot) to very precise. Very precise control needs a huge complex circuit and some industrial control systems (PID for eg) understanding would probably help.

If doing speed control, can be worth adding ammo and fuel tank monitoring to adjust speed if low on either. Also damage detection is possible, but it seems to only reset at start/end of a journey (Grrrr) and not if ship repairs itself, and so is of limited use. If the dev were to change this to be current damage level it would be vastly more useful.

Pump controls are on/off which delivers 1200 unit/sec however you can switch them on/off more rapidly to effect more precise flow control according to how long they are on vs off.

Either way - circuits are the way to do this. A very simple circuit that switch pump off when too fast and back on when too slow will tend to bounce around the desired speed by a huge margin because of the amount of fuel inside the thrusters which cannot be read so takes a long time to react to changes. Hover thius may still be usable depends on needs. This is the main reason why it needs a complex circuit to do precise speed control as you have to do precise fuel delivery and smooth out the speed error etc, clamp values to the characteristics of the ship etc. I have also tried auto speed based upon the rate of consumption vs production of the different ammo types (assuming you are using target priorities such that ammo type consumed correlates with the asteroids sizes/types encountered).

I have been working on a circuit to do very precise adaptive speed control that is mostly working. It a a huge complex circuit, but it is pretty much a full ship computer with different configured safe speeds for each route, monitoring of and adaptation to ammo levels, fuel levels, damage and can maintain speed usually within +/- 1km/s of a desired speed once reached and adapt to the mid journey gravity shifts etc.
Sadly there seems to be no way to detect the thrust paused state (I posted a feature request for this for this very reason - please support that request if you have interested in ship speed control - viewtopic.php?f=6&t=121386).

The monster rats nest ship computer named 'Squeak' after a rat