External Inertial Dampers

The external inertial dampers prevent the ship from moving around erratically in space (maybe as a side effect of being struck by objects or weapons fire). They are linked to the thruster control. They counteract very small, but sudden movements and as such can still operate even if only the auxiliary thrusters are working. The External Inertial Dampers are normally on, but can be turned off to fool an enemy into thinking that the ship is more badly damaged than it really is, or to drift in space.

As with all ships systems they start at 100% health. Due to the large amount of redundancy in this system it will only stop working when the health falls below 25% or all of the thrusters in one direction are offline (e.g. all of the thrusters that point starboard are offline).

Power Requirements

The External Inertial Dampers only require 1MW to operate, however this drain is constant when they are switched on (i.e. usually all of the time).

Dev Notes

For example: In the rift there will be a constant gravitational pull from the black hole. Losing the external inertial dampers will cause the ship to start drifting slowly towards it. Not enough to pose a threat to the ship (unless they are very close), but the effect will be constant.

This module can be placed anywhere within the ship and it will automatically connect to the reaction control thrusters.

Multiple modules can be installed for redundancy, or a ship may quite happily operate without then - it will just be harder to make precise movements.