[Spaceships] Combined Ships and Delta-V

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Adelus

A thread a few years back ( http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=65783 ) had one solution, namely the (fuel tank mass) / (combined ship mass) * 20 = New # of Fuel Tanks one, but I'm not sure how this holds up. How does one account for ships with different quantities of fuel per tank and with both/all ships thrusting?

It holds up perfectly if all the thrusters used have the same delta-V per tank. (If not, it works but it's not obvious what to do with the results.)

How many ships are thrusting in that case only affects the total acceleration. Accel for a multi-ship unit is simply the sum of the thrust (acceleration * mass) for each of the ships, divided by the mass of the full collection.

If you wind up with a mix of thrusters with different delta-V per tank values...things are a bit more complicated and I'm not going to try to solve it now.