   Where to place thrusters on a space fighter
  On earth a fighter uses both gravity and air resistance to maneuver. But in space there is no such things.. The only forces that can affect a space fighter, is its own thrusters. But where would it be most efficient to place the thrusters.I've been thinking that you'll need one main thruster in the back, to allow high forward acceleration.Underneath the fighter you'll need some powerful thrusters to allow sharp curves (to simulate the force that the air resistance would create on a fighter on earth).Finally a fighter would need thrusters to tilt it left and right. A thruster to brake with, and perhaps one to accelerate it downwards if it flies to high (basically for landing situations).This sounds like a lot of thrusters, but i can't figure out how to make this in a more simple way...Therefore I am hoping to get some suggestions to where it is most suitable to place the thrusters on a space fighter.   
  Unless you're making a simulator you don't have to worry a lot about it, just make'em cool-looking and it'll probably be ok =)As an idea for how to do it though, I'd probably have main thrusters like on a jet fighter (back) and then have flexible thrusters at the sides (on the wings for example, if there are any) that can be rotated for maneuvering and breaking. This way you don't need thrusters in all six directions at least =) (">The Harrier [youtube.com] does it in a similar way for vertical take off and landing.)   ;  Actually I'm not making any game atm... I'm just interested in the theoretical aspects behind flying in empty space.   ;  The Starfurys from the TV series Babylon 5 and the Gunstar from the film the Last Starfighter are fairly representational of optimum thruster placement. Basicly place them at the farthest reaches of the craft body so they can generate torque more efficently inorder to rotate the craft.From a technical standpoint both the Starfury and Gunstar have some problems, but they both got the thruster placement about right.Starfury more or less has fixed weapons and depends on its rotateing abilities. Problem is rotateing uses fuel and it doen't have a lot of interior volume to store it.Gunstar has the volume to store fuel, and it's weapons are turrent mounted so it doesn't need to rotate for targeting. But its cockpit is hugely exposed. The Death Blossom manuver seen in the film would likely kill the crew due to the massive gravitational forces subjected to them.   ;  It depends on the craft's purpose and usage.  If a craft is launched at high speed from a rocket on earth it won't need a larger thruster, only smaller ones for course adjustment.In real life, ships are designed for a single purpose.  Beyond that, they're almost helpless.  And the speeds they travel mean it's not practical to do anything like turn around (it would probably take them days just to slow down with the thrusters it has, and it won't have fuel for that), change course significantly or do anything but position itself to be caught in orbit of whatever body it's headed to.In "empty space," it would be very different.  Assuming you had a technology that didn't take incredible amounts of fuel you could save a lot of weight by having only a single "forward" thruster and several small thrusters to orient the ship in any way.  Also assuming it's not piloted by a person (but rather by a computer, which seems much more likely), you can safely ignore directions like "up", "left" or "forward."  Since there are no reference points in space, they simply do not exist.  Such ships end up looking more like sputnik than a jet.   ;  Yeah, a big central "zoom" thruster near the center of the vessel and a bunch of high-torque "turn" thrusters held out away from the center of mass would allow for efficient and variable movement, and even a certain amount of agility.  Fuel's the main problem, but assuming you have a way to convert space dust into ion pulses or something, that's how I'd do it.  Without friction, gravity, wind, or anything else to contend with, inertia is the only concern, and that can be handled with a big jet that can point any direction and apply a force vector to the object.   ;Quote:Original post by VildNinja(to simulate the force that the air resistance would create on a fighter on earth)Why would you want to simulate the air resistance a fighter would experience when in atmosphere?  If you're in space you don't need to deal with those forces and would probably be wise to take advantage of that in order to pull off manouvres that would be difficult or impossible in an atmosphere.Putting aside for now that the concept of a starfighter isn't actually particularly practical at all, a good starfighter should be able to thrust in any direction.  You were right on the money in saying that it would have main engines for thrusting forwards at maximum speed, but rather than then placing other thrusters in order to simulate atmospheric flight you should take advantage of the lack of air-resistance and place them so that you can pull off tricks like:Flying 'sideways', facing your target so that forward facing guns are able to hit it.Flipping the orientation of the fighter so that it is facing backwards whilst momentum continues to carry it 'backwards', making it a very risky proposition to try to follow oneThere need be no concept of 'up', and as such a fighter with say... a bottom-mounted gun should be able to roll so that that gun is effectively top or side mounted as required.But... that would probably make a difficult to control and therefore potentially very frustrating game, and if you want to be really realistic you probably wouldn't have fighters at all.   ;  If you want to do fancy stuff like flying backwards or sideways as jbadams describes, then you need either attitude thrusters or vectorable thrust engines or some combination of the two. However if you're just interested in turning, you don't actually *have* to use any thrust at all.Ultimately, to turn a craft you need to be able to change it's angular momentum about some axis. You could do this using some system of counter rotating flywheels; just brake one and/or accelerate the other, and conservation of angular momentum will cause the craft to rotate. As an added bonus, the flywheels could act as a reserve power source.   ;  - If you look at the space shuttle, there are *a lot* of small thrusters, but these aren't actual rocket engines but just simple oxygen nozzles.- Having a more powerful thruster below a spacecraft (for sharp upward turns) is practicable for small space craft simply because humans can tolerate quite some G in downforce before they black out, while being more susceptible to negative Gs (red out).- The minimum number of thrusters is 4. Three pointing backwards (positioned in a triangle) and one pointing forward. That would give good acceleration and, using any thrusters in combination with the forward thruster would allow for turning on the point (with bad fuel efficiency). No rolling, of course ;)- Any additional thrusters for strafing will provide better fuel efficiency for turns while reducing fuel efficiency for distance flight (due to weight).Btw, Elite 2: Frontier hat a very nice system. Basically, you were often approaching a planet at very high velocity. If a pirate decided to attack, he would have to match your speed and a dogfight would ensue with both ships accelerating and circling relative to each other whilst still flying towards the planet at high velocity (and if you were in the deceleration phase already, you better had calculated enough safety distance for the deceleration time you lost due to the attacker ;)).-Markus-   ;  I believe thrust vectoring can add a lot more flexibility to the primary thruster. You'd still want smaller thrusters for additional turning capabilities but thrust vectoring can make a huge difference.">Thrust VectoringHell, add the ability for all the thrusters to do that and you should be in good shape as far as maneuverability goes.   