i put in another eye torture session. this time i set the air density to 2 kg/m^3 (which is probably a little dense for a nebula, really how dense is nebular atmosphere?) and set the scan range to 10 km in fred. it was still fast paced (i could get up to 500 m/s before drag force exceed thrust) but i was able to track targets better and actually get a bead on the target. it occured to me that the lead indicator was useless because it didnt take into account that the shots would decelerate in flight, yet another thing to write lua for. its also becoming clear that i need to change the way fred sets the environment. currently you give it the name of a planet profile and the name of an object to apply them too and an ambient density. you can give it two nils and a density if you want to do a nebula mission with atmosphere but no gravity, you can also use a planet profile in a nebula, and atmospheric density will only drop till it reaches the ambient value. or if you dont call the se() function (se is short for set_env, because fred only gives you 32 chars to do the script eval with) you get newtonian physics. im also not sure how to handle lift in the nebula, technically speaking a wing will produce lift even if theres no gravity, which can really **** up your flying in the nebula. id just assume that the wings assume a neutral airfoil shape when in the gas.
