Starbase/EGOTech/crawler/USAGE.md

Usage

To enter the ship, there is a button on bottom of the ship that will open Hatch. Once inside you can also open and close the cockpit glass Canopy. Buttons for these are available in the pilot left side consoles.

Flying the Ship

The left lever on the center console controls backwards thrust (braking) and the right lever controls forward thrust.

Interface	Function
Speed	Current speed in metres per second.
ForwardThrust	Current forward thrust, maximum of 10,000 units
Throttle	Current throttle level, maximum of 100 percent
Cruise	Activates cruise control, forward thrust will not reset to zero unless turned down.
Turtle	Activates turtle mode which sets forward thrust to a maximum limit of TurtleRate of full thrust.
Sloth	Activates the low sensitvity mode of pitch and yaw by limiting thrust. Use the Sensitivity switch to set the maximum thrust rate of sloth mode.
Aim	Reduces the response time of key presses for pitch and yaw.
Guide, Hover Distance, FrontRight, FrontLeft, BackRight & BackLeft	Guide activates rangefinders at each corner of the base of the ship. Each repsective corner shows distance to the ground. Red warning lights flash when ground is less that Hover Distance.
Range & Distance	Activates forward rangefinders, with Distance showing distance to object detected by center rangefinder.
Mine, Advance, Advance Thrust & Advance Time	Mining controls. See Mining.
SafeZone	Whether current location is in the safe zone.
StrengthFactor	Current strength of ship. May fluctuate as ore crates are filled. Anything below 1.0 means ship is damaged.
Transponder Toggle & Ping	Transponder controls, Toggle turns on and off ship transponder while Ping will activate transponder for three seconds
Timer	See Timer.
Odometer	See Odometer.

NOTE: For safety, firing full braking thrust will deactivate Cruise.

Managing Power and Fuel

Interface	Function
Propellant	Total propellant remaining in propellant tanks, maximum of 72,000,000 units.
PropTime	Time and distance remaining of propellant based on current usage. Distance is calculated from speed.
FuelTime	Time and distance remaining of fuel based on current usage. Distance is calculated from speed.
Fuel	Fuel remaining on fuel tank, maximum of 10,000,000 units.
Generator	Current generator rate.
Min Gen & Min Generator Limit	Toggle and sets minimum generator rate. See Managing Power.
Shutdown	Will turn off all fuel chambers thus shutting down generators.
Battery	Shows current battery charge of the batteries, maximum of 10,000 units.
HeatTransferRate	Current heat transfer rate of the heat sinks, maximum of 100%.
Flow In & Flow Out	Toggle flow modes of resource bridges. See Refueling Propellant.
Lights	Turns on and off internal lights.
Canopy	Opens or closes glass canopy.
Hatch	Opens or closes ship entry hatch.

Managing Power

By default the generator will only run and ramp up when the batteries need charging so there is minimum management needed. But you can set a minimum generate rate by setting the Min Generator Limit value using the switch for the minimum rate and turning on Min Gen.

Refueling Propellant

All four resource bridges can be used for refuelling propellant. To refuel from another ship, turn off Flow Out on the pilot right side console and leave Flow In turned on. Then connect a resource bridge to the other ship. To refuel another ship, do the opposite, Flow Out turned on and Flow In turned off.

Remember to turn Flow In and Flow Out back on if you are using the Endo to collect ore via any of the ship's resource bridges.

Mining

Activate Lasers to turn on the mining lasers which will automatically sweep from side to side. Activating Advance will slowly move the ship forward based on Advance Time and Advance Thrust. Adjust Advance Time (period to wait before each advance in seconds) and Advance Thrust (amount of forward thrust when advancing) if needed.

TIP: Increase Advance Thrust if needed as the ship gains more mass from filling up.

Collect turns on the four ore collectors.

Mine will activate automated mining, which will activate Lasers, Advance and Collect.

TIP: Turn on Min Gen and allow the generators to ramp up before starting to mine. Continous use of the lasers and collectors at the same time requires a Min Generator Limit of around 85%.

NOTE: For safety, lasers will turn off if the total fuel is less that 2,000 units.

Other Stuff

Timer

On the pilot center console there is a Timer panel which acts as a timer. It will run when the ship is active and show total time in years, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds. To reset the timer, hold down the Reset Timer button on the pilot left console.

Odometer

On the pilot right console there is a Odometer panel which will keep track of the ship's estimated flight distance based on speed. To reset the trip odometer, hold down the Odometer Reset Trips button on the pilot left console.