Originally posted by Nuke
then theres the frontier method. frontier had full newtonian physics. when you got your ship up to such a high speed it took it forever to turn around. so you would point your ship in the direction you wanted to go. there was also a hud gauge that showed you the ships actual angle of momentum. so when that gauge ligned up with your crosshair, you were flyint straight.
this is similar to the situation with capships, they take a long time to turn aroun so it would be impractical to hold the shick while you wait for the ship to make a manuver that would take a long time. to set a capship course you would swithc to helm and use your joystick to set a course relative to the ship. perhaps a hud gauge would show you what direction the course was set at. when in helm mode you would have custom gauges (like the heading gauge in mechwarrior, except you would have one for roll and pitch as well). you would have a set course toggle button, you yould press it, then the gauges come up, then you would pan the whole view twards the direction wou want to go, and hit toggle again. and your course would begin to change. smaller ships would have a manual flight control option for helm.
Excuse me but that's anything BUT newtonian.
In space your linear velocity doesn't matter at all when changing diretion.
Actually acceleration is the only limit (what the crew and the ship can take) but velocity doesn't matter at all. (Except for changing and holding orbit but that's an entierly different issue).
As for a change of heading - once again no whatsoever relation to speed - one of the few things the FS engine gets right about space. Actually your actual spin would matter - if you torqued the ship along an axis it would keep spinning on that axis forever until the opposite torque was applied.
