Propulsion Hardware & The Road Ahead

With the internal propulsion hardware complete, I've FINALLY ticked off the last to-do item on the first official (also, as it were, internal) version of the new Black Road Sky. I'm fucking stoked.

There's not enough game here to warrant a public release, but check out the tentative roadmap at the end of this post to get an idea of where we stand in the bigger picture.

Refueling, Coms & Utility Dock

An initial refueling implementation is in place, and I don't expect it to change much as development continues. Instead of docking internally, walking through the station to a terminal, and pushing the magic instantaneous refuel button, there is now an actual refueling procedure!

Refueling requires a connection to the new utility dock located on the nose of the ship. This will eventually be achieved either by docking externally, or by manually connecting a pump mechanism from the station if docked internally. Refueling requests are made from the cockpit via the newly (& very sparsely) implemented Coms System. This will probably be some sort computer terminal accessible from the pilot seat. Once fuel is flowing from the station to the ship, there's a refuel valve in the engine room that you'll have to open in order to actually accept the fuel, which arrives at a rate of less than infinity, unlike before.

A cool consequence of all this new complexity is that you can also open the refuel valve when undocked to vent fuel. I don't expect this to be very useful, but because the utility dock is right on the nose of the ship, this can provide weak but usable aftward propulsion in a hypothetical MacGyver-like emergency.

For now, most of this happening virtually, but it's ready to be hooked up to gamespace controls in the near future (see roadmap below).

Propellant Control

In other engine room news, the propellant manifold & pump functions are now complete.

We have manifold valves to adjust the flow of fuel to each booster as well as to individual RCS thrusters. The main purpose of these is to compensate for uneven thrust due to hardware damage. Limited booster valve control is also available via a yaw trim slider which will live in the cockpit, within easy reach of the pilot seat. On the RCS-side, there is an additional valve for dialing in the 'docking power' mode to your preference.

The pumps, which will eventually use electricity, adjust the response rates of the boosters & thrusters. Again, this can be used to compensate for uneven wear, but it can also be used to improve the response of a cheap piece of equipment at the expense of increased wear damage and, eventually, power draw.

This hardware (as well as the utility dock itself) is all implemented by the same system as the rest of the ship hardware, meaning that I can easily make it all breakable, repairable & upgradable if that ends up feeling like a good idea. For now, I'm just leaving them as stock parts baked in to the ship, for fear of making shit too complicated.

Tentative Roadmap

Of course this will change, but here's the roadmap as it stands today. We've got a long way to go, but I don't think there's anything standing in my way now except myself, and that guy basically does whatever I say.