Flight

CHRG Phase

Time for the CHRG flight phase is independent of distance, whereas fuel is not.

The time for the CHRG phase is calculated by adding emitterChargeTime and maxOverchargeTime from the performance object of a ship’s data. These always add to the same amout for a given reactor, as seen in the following table:

Reactor Usage also affects CHRG time. To calculate it, the following is used, where $R_u$ is the Reactor Usage %, and $R_t$ is the value from the table above.

$$t=\frac{R_u}{100}*R_t$$

Damage

All the damage resulting from a STL flight relates to distance, not time. This means it matters little if you burn a lot of fuel or not; STL flight damage will be close to identical. In this post, we use a metric that is easy to read in-game : percentage of damage per million of kilometers traveled (%/Mkm).

STL damage can be split in the following categories :

• Base damage (reduced by Hull Plates [AHP] and Ship Repair Drones [RDL]) Valued at 0.0002%/Mkm, any STL flight will be subject to this constant degradation of condition.

• Planetary damage This type can be further split into two categories :

–Gravitational damage, reduced by Stability Support System [STS] This type of damage occurs for planets with a Gravity value inferior to 0.25 and superior to 2.50; high gravity causing the most gravitational damage. (Difference between landing & takeoff? Increased damage the further away you get from .25/2.5?)

–Atmospheric damage, reducted by Thermal Protection Tiles [APT] This type of damage is a function of two parameters : Pressure (read atmospheric pressure) and thickness of the atmosphere. This is a complex damage type to determine, as the thickness of the atmosphere is itself function of Pressure, and the planet’s Radius.

• Micrometeoroid damage (mitigated by whipple shielding) Increases linearily with the micrometeoroid density.

• Radiation damage (can be reduced by Anti-Rad Plates) There definite proof that Radiation (from FIO) and Radiation damage are proportional. One thing to note is that most STL flight won’t have to worry about that type of damage, as it gets negligible for flights past 1 AU. (except around A,B and O class stars)