EVE General Discussion

A gyro works by momentum applied to its rotational disk. Not gravity. Unless its turned off. But then its just a disk inside three rings.

Either way:

The ships in EVE are funky:

1. Due to them being geometrically assymetrical, their Principal Axis of rotation are not aligned to the ship's axis.
2. Due to them being probably also mass-assymetrical, The above is even worsened.

The fact that they rotate the way they do, is of course, because of the EVE's main code does not support the Inertia properties of the volume enclosed by the ship. Or more specifically, the projected area in any given view (Front, Side, Top) in relation to the Center of Mass, or the Geometrical Center of Mass, does not allow for the final Principal Axis to be aligned according to X Y Z.

This fact is ignored, and instead we receive an Inertia modifier that ammount to how hard that ship is to turn. We see it by affecting agility and whatnot.

In reality, should the EVE ships be built the way they are representend, they would more easlly turn into some directions in relation to others.

Now, to this we add the assymetrical displacement of engines.

While it might be true that this arrangement promotes certain orbits, it also promotes certain specific orbits. Or more realitiscally, it promotes that the ship should more easelly turn, around its principal axis (One of them), towards a given side.

If the ships were done assymetrical on purpose, and the engines were placed in such a way that they'd compensate for the Principal Axis's different arragement towards our normal XYZ axis, then the ship could be engineer to turn equally fast in all directions. However, such is a needless engineering undertaking, as it would have just been simpler to make the ship assymetrical than fine tune the engines to have correct mass displacement properties.

This all is unchanged if we assume that the entire ship rotates around its "warp drive". Even if we assume this to be a completly isolated-from-the-ship item, held together by riboons of make believe of fields of super duperness, when the ship would rotate around it, it would still rotate preferencial to the Principal axis, centered now upon the Warp Drive, ie, its "center of mass" so to speak.

So...

I'm not saying everything should be spherical or cylinde-like, but if you want a ship to turn equally fast to the left or right, then it should be symetrical on its vertical plane, or at least inertially-symetrical. An example would be a large engine placed next to a cylinder, with a smaller engine posted farther away, to a given ratio that a bit of research by the reader can uncouver (hint, its related to the quadritic value of the distance). If we think that the ship is then assymetrical on the middle plane, then it means it'll probably have a easier time turning upwards or downwards, depeneding on where its center of mass is.

This also affects rotational ability.

So in sum, Inertially speaking, its convient that ship are symetrical. This does not imply an actual symetry.

Also, our brain has the ability to understand this as a fundamental level, visually speaking, and thats why some things do look balanced while others don't.

Except if you look at the Rokh, you can deduce that the two designers must have passed eachother in the hall once, and maybe gave eachother a long stare.

Some interesting explanations of New Eden propulsion technology. Also interesting, the current speed of the Voyager 1 spacecraft is 17,260 m/s.

Same as any other fast rotating object in space I presume...

Dramiel can go faster:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tF1Up_xXSI

and on another note, Voyager doesn't have a warp drive, so no matter how fast it is, we will be faster... If we find something to align to.

Not at all. I think it adds a very sci-fi feel to it called "hand-wavium" all good sci-fi has that. I like that they didn't go with regular vacuum physics because it makes it unique and is plausible.

Using space propellers of course