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Flight model is how the ship behaves in its environment. Acceleration, axis manoeuvers, lift, drag, skid. That stuff. Like in newtonian. The way you control inputs is not flight model.
I thought they changed that in Beta 2.
Edit: Yeah that was Beta 2.
making the input hard to control is not.
Add a module, Dude.No, the reason not to do it is because it's 2019 and the fundamentals of the FA Off mode simply aren't going to be rewritten now. Or in 2020.
For me the fundamental mistake was to apparently not even try to make combat engaging at a standstill. It's not just Elite: Dangerous, other space games I've played also have this notion that, movement aside, combat gameplay should just be holding down the 'fire all your guns' key and waiting to see whose HP*DPS product is larger. It's not necessary. Active, reflex-based defensive decisions (timing/positioning of shield power) and constant decision-making of what weapons/abilities to use can have just as high a skill cap.The quotes from Mike Evans are interesting.
"If we corrected rotational velocity for you the game would become a FPS in space which wouldn't be difficult to master at all"
I don't agree with this at all.
No that was a different patch, this was something only a few cmdrs knew about. Got stealth patched once people started posting about it on the forum. It was essentially a bug in fa-off. As mentioned, you had to boost, then hold the vertical thrust, as long as it was held you had unlimited boost speed.
I do think I recall some mention of that. Probably took them time to finish plugging all the holes in the speed wall they spent the late beta and gamma building.
I'm surprised gravity can still be used to exceed them.
Using FA-Off and boosting around always leaves me too far from the enemy.
It appears to me that FA off is deliberately gimped in at least 2 areas.
1. No rotational damping. The key advantage of FA off is translational inertia. I.e. once you are going in one direction you keep going in that direction until you counter it. This is what enables you to fire in a direction different to the one you are moving in. What is not as useful in FA off though is rotational inertia, i.e once you are rotating in one direction you have to apply opposite rotation just to stop spinning. There is a really obvious reason why this isn't useful, because even with FA on you can still preserve whatever rotation you like by simply holding the mouse/joystick away from center. Having to manually reverse every rotation in FA off is just more than doubling the effort to control the ship's facing for no benefit whatsoever.
It may be that there are marginal cases where someone might want no automatic rotational damping in FA off, in which case the obvious question is why isn't there a control binding to enable/disable this?
2. Yaw effect. How come roll and pitch can spin a ship 360 around its axis in 1 second flat whereas yaw rotation authority is at least an order of magnitude reduced even with FA off? This makes lateral strafing in FA off impossible as you are unable to effectively control your facing. Of course you can strafe, and then roll and pitch to adjust the facing, but then since you've rolled and pitched you can no longer strafe in the same direction, or to put it another way it's impossible to strafe and hold the nose on target. You can strafe vertically of course, but that's not remotely natural, after all our eyes are side by side not one above the other.
Is there any legitimate reason for either of these seemingly contrived restrictions?
Also FA off is a lot easier with a joystick since that naturally auto-centers, but with a mouse trying to cancel rotation in multiple axis by waving it around trying to find the right spot is torturous.
if you want to damp out rotation either flick FA on
And IMO it's completely ridiculous in a space setting. This is a major reason why I find combat in ED immersion-breaking and don't enjoy it very much. (There's also the whole issue of gatling guns in space).
No, the reason not to do it is because it's 2019 and the fundamentals of the FA Off mode simply aren't going to be rewritten now. Or in 2020.
But it is a sim. They simulated our galaxy really well.And IMO it's completely ridiculous in a space setting. This is a major reason why I find combat in ED immersion-breaking and don't enjoy it very much. (There's also the whole issue of gatling guns in space). Luckily you can do almost everything in the game without having to fight off too many NPCs if you know how to avoid them.
When I get involved in CZ or Thargoid activity I always remind myself that the game is essentially "space fantasy" rather than "space sim".
Adding optional rotational damping to FA off wouldn't affect the 'fundamentals' of FA off at all, it would behave exactly as before but be actually usable with a mouse.
Oh my gods. You have to use curves? I thought you were supposed to be good?
Adding optional rotational damping to FA off wouldn't affect the 'fundamentals' of FA off at all, it would behave exactly as before but be actually usable with a mouse.
It's a shame we can't set FA-Off as the default, and have the ability to map a button to turn it on only while pressed. We can do it the other way around, with FA-On as default, and the button briefly switching it off... Pity there's no option for this.
Adding optional rotational damping to FA off wouldn't affect the 'fundamentals' of FA off at all, it would behave exactly as before but be actually usable with a mouse.
Yes, and I think the design of the FA on/off trade-off is partly about that, too. Since the most powerful weapons are all fixed-forward, combat effectiveness depends hugely on time-on-target. FA-off maneuvering gives better TOT in most situations, so it's an essential combat skill. But mouse aiming is quicker and more precise than a joystick can ever achieve (for similar pilot skill level, of course), so what would otherwise be a clear advantage for mouse+kb piloting is partly balanced by the relatively greater difficulty of rotation nulling with a mouse.
If they manage to get out of the mailslot without clipping any ship, corner, wing or the toastrack, it's already a great performance on their side xDI thought this was about “revlative mouse on/off toggle button”. Clearly no one at FDev flies FA off.