Elite Racers – Ship Facts

Each ship enters heading north at the chosen entry speed, flying FA-off with its nose rotated to the heading you choose. When it boosts (at time zero, unless you set a delay) it switches FA back on: lateral thrusters cancel the sideways drift while the main thrusters drive it along the nose. With 2 boosts, each ship boosts again as soon as its own boost interval allows, and the run lasts 10 seconds instead of 5. With boost Off, ships turn on their non-boost thrusters alone. Rings on each path mark where a delayed or second boost fires. Slip is how far the ship's actual motion lags behind its nose. Over-rotation is how far past the chosen angle the nose has to point for the ship to actually be traveling in that direction by the end of its last boost (or the end of the run, with boost off). Use Nose heading mode to set where the nose starts and, optionally, a constant turn rate (−90 to 90°/s) that sweeps it through the whole run, or Target heading mode to pick the direction you want to be traveling. In Target mode each ship presets its nose past the target, then swings it back at its pitch rate, timed so the ship settles on the target instead of overshooting.

Model: lateral thrust holds at its boosted peak for the boost's acceleration duration, then drops to non-boost. Forward boost thrust depends on speed, not time: the ship accelerates at its peak rate when slow or moving backward, and the measured boost curve sets how acceleration tapers as total speed nears max throttle and max boost speed (straight-line taper past the end of the measured curve; the Orca borrows the Adder's shape). Total speed never exceeds max boost speed. Outside a boost (before a delayed boost, between two boosts, after the last one, or the whole run with boost off) the pilot flies FA off: lateral thrust continues at its non-boost rate (manual strafing). Forward thrust only works while the ship's total speed is below its max throttle speed, and never pushes it past that. A ship already moving faster only has its lateral thrusters, which can slow it but never speed it up. Manual entry speed is capped at 1000 m/s. A boost's start is when its acceleration starts and FA turns on; the second boost starts one boost interval (spin-up included) after the first.

Steady-state cornering with FA off. A ship can hold a circle of radius r only while its non-boost lateral acceleration covers the centripetal demand, so its top speed around the circle is v = √(lateral accel × r), capped at its max throttle speed (within 50–500 m the lateral limit always binds first). Every ship starts together, already at its own circle speed; the run ends when the fastest ship completes one full lap. The strip below shows distance travelled along the circle, so ships stacked on the ring are still easy to separate.