Does anyone actually enjoy driving on the planets?

[Bambi]

The problem is it's only playable with analogue input. If you use the keyboard or drive assist on it is impossible to drive properly. This is because making a 100% turn, at 100% throttle will make you spin out. Only by making a smaller turn at 80% throttle will you be able to drive properly. That's disgraceful for a PC game. Just Cause 2's PC version had the same problem. Only by playing with a gamepad, not pulling the trigger all the way and being careful on the stick could you drive fast motorcycles. The keyboard control was shot.

Either the keyboard control needs to support finer adjustments, or the driving model needs to be changed to be compatible with digital 0%/100% input.

 

[Artemis Zodiac]

The problem is it's only playable with analogue input. If you use the keyboard or drive assist on it is impossible to drive properly. This is because making a 100% turn, at 100% throttle will make you spin out. Only by making a smaller turn at 80% throttle will you be able to drive properly. That's disgraceful for a PC game. Just Cause 2's PC version had the same problem. Only by playing with a gamepad, not pulling the trigger all the way and being careful on the stick could you drive fast motorcycles. The keyboard control was shot.

Either the keyboard control needs to support finer adjustments, or the driving model needs to be changed to be compatible with digital 0%/100% input.

surely you would want to have pressure sensitive actions whilst driving...and you will get this from a game pad or hotas.
my word if I had to just play this game with the mouse and keyboard and no actual toys like our commander in game....well I wouldn't bother.

have not played a game with mouse and keyboard since leander on the amiga.


I can see peeps using it in these mmo rpg dota type crap that's everywhere...you have to then I suppose.


I need to be immersed......keyboards are for typing "pawn" into google lol


pilot in game uses hotas and yaw pedals......well then so will I.



you don't want to get me started on euro truck games......lol...I even have gear shift,driving force gt,telemetry dials for rev counters ect.




sim gamer.

 

[CHOPP3R]

It's like a ride-on mower.. It's great fun at first but after you've used it for the 100th time it's just a tool to get the job done. The good news is that it does that very well.

I find that boosting breaks the monotny nicely.

 

[Niamhy]

I don't mind driving on planets. Its quite fun.

However, what I don't like is driving on planets FOR FOUR HOURS and seeing nothing. Boulder. Boulder. Rock. Boulder. ooo Ice Rock. Boulder. zzzzzz

Unless I have to land on a planet for Arsenic or something, I don't. Because there is nothing on them. Aside from the odd barnacle and point-of-non-interest.

 

[Artemis Zodiac]

I don't mind driving on planets. Its quite fun.

However, what I don't like is driving on planets FOR FOUR HOURS and seeing nothing. Boulder. Boulder. Rock. Boulder. ooo Ice Rock. Boulder. zzzzzz

Unless I have to land on a planet for Arsenic or something, I don't. Because there is nothing on them. Aside from the odd barnacle and point-of-non-interest.

very true

as nice as the flight down to the surface is (apart from loading freezes) and the driving model is cool.....the vistas look stunning ect...


but it is all rocks ....



I want to discover some old alien cave built into a mountain and explore it....on foot if I wish too.

one day eh...one day.....perhaps?

 

[Niamhy]

where are the huge alien ruins? the ship graveyards from ancient battles? the old exploration bases, long since gone to ruin? the lakes of ice or fire? etc etc

IMO they released landings far too early. It is a buggy (as in SRV) mechanic without anything to support it. They should have released Guardians first, then Engineers (in stations), then released landings when their engine code was advanced enough to support not only detailed moons, but basic atmospheric landings too. I think they released it early to cover the whole "Barnacles" thing. I dunno

 

[Cynaqq]

where are the huge alien ruins? the ship graveyards from ancient battles? the old exploration bases, long since gone to ruin? the lakes of ice or fire? etc etc

IMO they released landings far too early. It is a buggy (as in SRV) mechanic without anything to support it. They should have released Guardians first, then Engineers (in stations), then released landings when their engine code was advanced enough to support not only detailed moons, but basic atmospheric landings too. I think they released it early to cover the whole "Barnacles" thing. I dunno

It wouldn't make sense to have an abundance of ship graveyards from ancient battles. There are literally hundreds of billions of planets to land on with four hundred billion star systems. What are the chances you coincidentally come up to an alien war remnant?

They may very well be there, since it wouldn't be too much work to model some but no one found them, just like in real life no one would be able to find something like that other than pure chance.

I'm not defending FD blindly here. They may have held onto the landings until they got atmospheres and life generation nailed but that would be an unnecessary and artificial delay. They already had to design and program the backend for planet surface generation and the front end for landings/moving about on planets before they do anything more. It doesn't make sense to hold onto it if it's ready for release.

 

[Muetdhiver]

where are the huge alien ruins? the ship graveyards from ancient battles? the old exploration bases, long since gone to ruin? the lakes of ice or fire? etc etc

IMO they released landings far too early. It is a buggy (as in SRV) mechanic without anything to support it. They should have released Guardians first, then Engineers (in stations), then released landings when their engine code was advanced enough to support not only detailed moons, but basic atmospheric landings too. I think they released it early to cover the whole "Barnacles" thing. I dunno

I don't know. On one hand I kind of agree with you, but on the other, the "basic" stuff they put in allowed my to crater race with friends in the horsehead nebula and NGC1999, and
it was one of my best gaming experience yet. So...

I cannot wait to do jetski on some hydrocarbon sea on an ammonia world. Or flying a glider in a venusian like upper atmosphere.

 

[Ozram]

Yes the scenary can be very nice but i find the expereince frustrating at best. Endlessly spinning around and bouncing off the smallest pebble just gets annoying after al while.

Yes it might be realistic but it sure as hell isn't fun. Maybe I'm just doing it all wrong so if anyone has any good tips etc then I'm listening!

I enjoy it. I also don't seem to have all that much trouble controlling the srv. My tip is to manage your throttle carefully, don't forget you have thrusters for pitch and roll and put as many of those on analogue as you can. I use a hotas. Don't know if that makes much difference.

 

[Bambi]

It wouldn't make sense to have an abundance of ship graveyards from ancient battles. There are literally hundreds of billions of planets to land on with four hundred billion star systems. What are the chances you coincidentally come up to an alien war remnant?

a thousand years of spaceflight should leave quite a few things in the bubble, and also it's a game, if there's nothing interesting to find then it's not fun to explore, if it's one in a million or a billion to find something then it may as well not exist

 

[verminstar]

The problem is it's only playable with analogue input. If you use the keyboard or drive assist on it is impossible to drive properly. This is because making a 100% turn, at 100% throttle will make you spin out. Only by making a smaller turn at 80% throttle will you be able to drive properly. That's disgraceful for a PC game. Just Cause 2's PC version had the same problem. Only by playing with a gamepad, not pulling the trigger all the way and being careful on the stick could you drive fast motorcycles. The keyboard control was shot.

Either the keyboard control needs to support finer adjustments, or the driving model needs to be changed to be compatible with digital 0%/100% input.

No disrespect, but I disagree with what yer saying about the keyboard control. I use keyboard and mouse and have absolutely no issues with it at all...not after remapping the entire control layout of course, and spending some time messing around with mouse sensitivity options. Granted that the standard bindings mean ye need hands that can solve two rubix cubes at the same time, so it makes all the difference to spend some time remapping.

When ye say that doing a 100% turn at 100% throttle will put ye into a spin, I agree...it does and rightly so. Doing the same thing in real life would also not be advised unless the car/whatever was specifically setup to race on a track and even then, experienced drivers will very rarely be seen doing hard corners with the foot to the floor. When ye take into consideration low gravity, loose ground, ice moons...yer not exactly driving on ideal ground. Doing hard turns at max speed just won't work, but in this case, that's perfectly normal. In fact I would be greatly surprised if the SRV didn't lose control in such cases.

 

[Alec Turner]

Can i just ask, is there any kind of yaw control for the SRV while it is off the ground?

I use a game controller to drive it so maybe I've not set it up right, but yaw correction would make my SRV driving so much more fun. Pitch and roll isn't much good when I'm flying sideways, which is quite a lot of the time. If there is SRV yaw with any other control setup (barring HOTAS because I'm poor)I'm willing to switch to it.

Nope, I'm afraid there's no yaw control, instead you have to master possibly the single most important skill for high speed SRV driving (well, flying really), at least for racing, which is the roll-pitch-roll manouevre. Basically, if you find yourself flying sideways (or even backwards), you need to roll 90 degrees into the turn, then pitch up to get your nose pointed back in the direction of travel, and then roll back level again, all before touching back down. It's tricky but once you've mastered it you'll find it far more reliable than trying to correct with steering back on the ground (which almost inevitably leads to a spin).

And on the subject of going fast, here's a couple of handy diagrams ...

 

[Cynaqq]

a thousand years of spaceflight should leave quite a few things in the bubble, and also it's a game, if there's nothing interesting to find then it's not fun to explore, if it's one in a million or a billion to find something then it may as well not exist

Yeah, this is well and good. It would certainly be more 'fun' if everyone who landed on planets and drove for half an hour could discover ancient alien ruins and historical warzones.

However, there is a balance of fun and realism, and also time constraints for development.

Not having enough eye candy yet isn't a good enough reason to not release a working feature to the game in this kind of ongoing development. I'm not disagreeing with the notion. I'm just disagreeing with 'if it isn't flashy and interesting it may very well not exist' for a very fundamental mechanic depending on backend software which would be developed anyway. Planetary landing mechanics would be written anyway right? Why hold onto the working feature until you have say a thousand things to do with it if you can release it with five things? Doesn't it make more sense to start with a working system and five things to do with it and then add on the structure gradually?

 

[roryclague]

Landing on planets and driving around adds a huge amount of immersion and sense of vastness to Elite: Dangerous. It isn't all about space battles, but the sense of inhabiting this galaxy Frontier have created. When I park my ship and camp on some far flung world for the night, and then just get out of my ship and go for a survey in the quiet abyss of these vast planets, the hum of my scanner and engines whirring while the dust beneath the wheels crunches as life contacts it for the first time really takes me away from Earth, 2016. I suspect space legs will have a similar effect, times 1000.

 

[Krait_79]

The problem is it's only playable with analogue input. If you use the keyboard or drive assist on it is impossible to drive properly. This is because making a 100% turn, at 100% throttle will make you spin out. Only by making a smaller turn at 80% throttle will you be able to drive properly. That's disgraceful for a PC game. Just Cause 2's PC version had the same problem. Only by playing with a gamepad, not pulling the trigger all the way and being careful on the stick could you drive fast motorcycles. The keyboard control was shot.

Either the keyboard control needs to support finer adjustments, or the driving model needs to be changed to be compatible with digital 0%/100% input.

Yeah I've been using the keyboard so i guess that doesn't help then. Looks like it will be worth while remapping some controls.

 

[Dimensions]

I would say drive Assist Off for doing fine driving (e.g tricky turns on low g worlds with lots of rocks in settlement data link runs), and drive Assist On for simple stuff like surface prospecting where you are mostly travelling in a straight line (saves having to keep keep your finger on the throttle).

The only difference I can see between Assist On/Off is with it Off you keep your finger on the throttle to accelerate and keep moving, which really helps when taking turns because when you let go of the throttle you start to decelerate naturally. With drive Assist On when you throttle up or down it will stay at that speed until you change it again, which can be problematic when turning sharply. So drive Assist On/Off works very differently from the ship Assist On/Off.

 

[ASC]

I mostly play with mouse and keys and drive assist on. Turning off drive assist just isn't practical.

I enjoyed driving in 2.0 and most of the time I would drive around at top speed, preventing spins with a few deft touches on the keys.

In 2.1 things changed. Now, whenever you hit a small rock or slope or do more than lightly tap on the steering controls then the damn SRV just spins around and stops. It's a lot more frustrating and less fun. One thing I did to make it bearable was to add the mouse wheel as a throttle control on 10% increments. It doesn't give fine control but it does allow you to reduce the throttle quickly enough to recover from spins without ending up backwards.

 

[KR4K40]

The Scarab is 4 tons of butt. Seriously, if you try driving backwards all of a sudden you're not spinning out anymore.

Also doesn't help when every pebble even smaller than your wheels will make you spin out and cause hull damage. Skimmer SRV when?

 

[Soon(TM)]

Nope it's boring as hell.

Driving around in a dust bowl is NOT fun.

 

[Cynaqq]

Nope it's boring as hell.

Driving around in a dust bowl is NOT fun.

Then don't drive in dust bowls. Why do you do that?