Elite 2 and 3 did not have this.
I still play both, esp. E3.. they're both direct control without any nerfing..
Full independent directional control was added in JJFFE.
JJFFE added vertical and lateral thruster control, but both 2 & 3 had independent aim and heading reticles, with full freedom of rotation and full freedom to accelerate & decelerate the ship.
Also FFE and FE2 had full rotational damping. It was in essens FA half on.
Both games had direct mouse control, so only move when you move the mouse, and proportionately to the amount of input. So i suppose you could call that "angular damping" - if attitude was controlled by thrusts then active damping would be implied, but not if gyroscopes were being used - the ship would only be impelled to rotate whilst precessional torque was being applied to a gyro, and would cease when that torque was removed, conserving net angular momentum.
More to the point, however, is that angular damping is actually sensible and useful. We have 6DoF, 3 axes and 3 planes, and logically, it's the former you want damped. In real life, it's hard to think of any circumstances where you'd
want to disable angular damping - it would just be a really annoying disadvantage having to manually counter-torque.
Angular damping would be one of the most basic control functions you'd actually want in a spaceship.
Linear damping, OTOH... defeats absolutely everything spaceflight is about. It would be the
very last thing you'd want in a spaceship, after propellers, xenomorphs & broken toilets etc.
"Set speed" - like we had in E2 & 3 - is
the only form of linear damping any flight assist or autopilot system should want. You, as "
pilot" of the ship, should be the one who chooses what speed to set. If you cannot, then you're not
really the pilot / captain / "commander" (coughsplutterLOL) are you? Just a semi-passive observer being drawn along the up-a-bit, left-a-bit slideshow conveyor..
And so in ED, we're allowed to disable angular damping, but not linear (!), eliminating at a stroke the sole premise and raison d'etre of the whole game; basic spaceflight is now physically impossible, but no worries, at least we can switch to wobble mode, like that's some kind of consolation...
The only reason disabling (some) angular damping in ED confers any advantage at all is because you're not allowed independent heading and direction in the first place! Hence it's actually a slight de-nerfing, at the expense of now having to manually cancel all rotation... It's a horrendous, dire mess and absolutely inimical to any kind of fun or rewarding flight. Like i say, i tried ED again last night, if only for a few minutes, and i'm still raw from the face-palm. There is no game there. It is not "Elite". There's no spaceflight and i'm not allowed to pilot my own ship. Move the mouse, and the ship just groans instead of moving..
In E2 & 3, you can do perfect, precise 180's or even 360's with a deft flick o' the wrist. Try that in ED and it just makes a groaning noise and yaws 1° - no matter how far or fast you move the mouse! Just makes me want to instantly punch the screen, along with anyone who thinks this idiocy belongs in
Elite. It's a total betrayal of everything
Elite stands for.. I don't want to "upgrade" this useless joy-depriving hulk o' junk, i don't want to paint go-faster stripes on it, decorate it with dash ornaments, much less try and actually move it anywhere. I don't even want to replace it with some
other ship as they're all exactly the same in this respect. Why oh why would i suffer 1 minute of that rubbish when i can just fire up E2 or 3 and actually fly the ship for real without any nerfs or interference?
I do agree that it wold be interesting to have this option in ED. It would still feel a little different, as ships in FE2 and FFE had almost unlimited yaw and pitch rates.
Heavier ships turn slower, simulating some degree of angular inertia, but there was no nerfing of yaw, roll or pitch as in ED - all axes responded equally well to the same inputs, with angular velocities completely decoupled from linear.
If angular damping
were truly disabled, of course,
then you'd be able to spin up to structural failure speeds, which would be way cool - but obviously, ED's "flight-assist" cannot actually
be disabled, in spite of what the irritating voice keeps saying - it just disables damping at low angular speeds, whilst still activating to prevent angular momentum rising above the permitted limit.
So yeah, i think it would be "interesting" to have ships that actually respond to pilot input, instead of making groaning noises. It would be interesting if the mouse directly controlled the ship's attitude, like it used to in the previous games, instead of simply groaning whilst applying 1° of rotation. It would be interesting if i didn't need a 6 ft wide mouse mat in order to turn 90 degrees (or else rapidly pumping the mouse across the pad in little arcs desperately trying to coax some kind of response from the ship). It would be interesting if we were free to accelerate or decelerate the ships relative to
any other objects, seamlessly and without interference.
In a word, it would be interesting to be able to play
Elite in ED... It would be interesting to be finally able to retire E3 and benefit from the so-called sequel i waited half a lifetime and payed top dollar for.
It would be interesting to be free to pilot my own ship and blaze my own trail in a seamless 3D galaxy. Hell,
it is interesting - which is why i still play E3 and feel nothing but loathing resentment towards ED...
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
