Orbiter Space Engineers Simulator

This is a continuation of TP & DT mod that adds semi-realistic single-body Newtonian gravity which accurately follows inverse square law and has no cutoff, allowing ships in SE to achieve proper elliptical orbits*.

[spoiler]* with a speed mod, of course, as even on moons orbital velocities lie beyond vanilla speed limit.[/spoiler]

IMPORTANT Do not use this mod together with original TP & DT, as all its functionaly is inlcluded herein.

IMPORTANT By default SE trash auto-removal system will stop moving grids which are far away from any player. When using this mod, it's strongly advised to disable this behaviour; to do so, open Admin Screen (Alt+F10), select "Trash Removal" in the top dropdown, then choose "Other" in the second dropdown, set "Stop Grids Period" to zero and click "Submit Changes".

IMPORTANT Currently the mod allows in-game scripts to inspect orbit of any ship in the world. If not desired, it is possible to restrict scripts to only be able to access allied or neutral grids by opening mod configuration file %APPDATA%\SpaceEngineers\Storage\2072489152.sbm_ose\ose.cfg and changing <AllowScriptsToInspectOrbitOfAnyShip> from true to false.

IMPORTANT Like in its predecessor, all thrusters by default produce torque when this mod is used. It is possible to turn torque off by setting <DisableTorque> to true in ose.cfg

Inertia damper modes In addition to vanilla and TP & DT controls this mod adds a couple of selectable modes for inertia dampers to cockpits and RC blocks:

• Full stop - a vanilla-like behaviour that will bring ship to stop when active,
• Circularise - attempts to bring the ship into circular orbit at current altitude while minimising plane change.

These buttons take effect when inertia dampers are enabled and relative damping is not used.

Manoeuvres The remaining 6 buttons, labelled "Prograde", "Retrograde", "Normal", "Anti-normal", "Outward" and "Inward" will automatically fire engines to perform appropriate orbital manoeuvre. These do not need inertia dampers to be active, nor they require the ship to be oriented in any particular way. Only 1 manoeuvre may be active at a time and it can be cancelled by applying manual thrust or by activating it again.

Companion in-game scripts At the moment, there are 3 scripts designed for this mod: Graphical Orbit Display, Graphical orbit plane alignment and Orbital autopilot.

Debug commands The mod provides a very limited way to show ship's orbital elements with the following chat commands:

• /OSE-Oi 1 - toggles local gravity (g), circular orbit speed (v1) and escape speed (v2),
• /OSE-Oi 2 - toggles periapsis (PR) and apoapsis (AR) radii, plus time till nearest apside (TtP or TtA),
• /OSE-Oi 3 - toggles semi-major axis (SMA), eccentricity (e) and orbit period (T),
• /OSE-Oi 4 - toggles inclination (i), longitude of ascending node (LAN) and ship's current longitude (TL).

The mod also includes a crude orbital alignment aid, which is activated by /OSE-OA <target-inclination> <target-LAN>, with both angles specified in degrees. Once active, it will display time till the nearest orbit intersection.

Programmable block interface Click here to see properties and actions this mod exports to Programmable Block.

Licence This mod and associated in-game scripts are distributed under terms and conditions of CC0 licence.