Went in for a very quick spin on the 3.10.
First step was going out of New Babbage, to avoid the new guiding tunnels of doom above Area18 and Lorville:
- Lifts are still a pair of doors, that visibly travel across the map in a very disturbing way. Still zero feedback on whatever happens when you call one or click on a destination. This is going on now since like 2 years or so ?
- Trains are still duplicated over each other with some quantum magic, leading to non predictable behaviours form the physics engine (it may throw a fit and your character across the surface of the planet, or into orbit, or just let him down on the rails while the train departs). This has been going on for a long time and is still far from fixed, actually if anything it's getting worse.
- Lifting off with a Retaliator, i noticed the quite important difference in perceived heft of the ship, its inertia, and what's new, angular momentum ! Interesting. I'll come back to that
Then went out of atmo, on to Port Tressler (the orbital station just above the planet) to park there so i dont have to respawn on the planet and endure the bug ridden and boring commute.
- Tried to use the MFD in Comms mode to contact landing services. MFD is still totally buggered (not able to change display modes, when they dont just blank out entirely).
- So i used my personal comms device. Landing services not anywhere in global or local contacts. Turn out they are now under "friends" for some obscure idiotic reason.
- Upon landing, noticed Repair and Refuel are still not working at all. It's been going on for quite a long time and a few patches and killing a lot of the motivation for playing the alpha...
Okay time to bring out the Sabre and try space & atmo fighter flight test. (Sabre is a medium sized winged fighter, with good aerodynamics judging from its shape)
- Do NOT linger even for a fraction of a second after taking off from the station: they have become quite nervous and will get hostile rather quickly...
- Space flight has now some inertia, and also angular momentum too, interesting. I think it's a global step in the right direction. It takes a little bit of practice to get used to, which could not be said of the former "linear movement" FM, so it's indeed good news.
- Went down to the planet for some low altitude flight. The ship exhibits interesting behaviours, with mav thrusters actually fighting what seems to be gravity (!! that's new !) but wings providing zero lift (that's not new, but a bit disappointing). Yaw is behaving quite like an actual winged plane, which is surpringly good. Since the wings provide no lift, it will not pull any more G's than in space seemingly, which is also a bit of a letdown. Still, globally it feels a LOT better than what it used to be. Landing and taking off is also a bit less jarring even though landing gear still lacks shock absorption.
- Atmo flight is a far cry from what KSP+FAR could offer, but still, this ship has now some personality, and its own atmo flight model. That's quite good.
Then went back to the station, called the Retaliator (a big turreted torpedo bomber, with huge wings and fins, and VTOL) for the same test.
- It's properly heavy ! I suppose i wont be strafing around Hammerheads anymore evading their lasers, time for new tactics. It's got lots of inertia, and will definitely pull stronger now from main thrusters.
- In atmo, VTOL does make a difference, it uses about 50% of the thrust that would be needed to keep the ship afloat in non-VTOL mode. Horizontal speed seems not affected much though, which is weird considering a few of the main engines are now pointing down, and should increase drag quite a lot...
- Banking on its sides and it will fall down due to weaker lateral mav thrusters. It wont "fall towards the horizon" so i guess that was fixed from the PTU - it now falls properly towards the planet.
- Turning radius at full blast is really slow and wide, while going slower it will pivot easily. This will induce a few new tactics too.
- Overall it's a lot more challenging to pilot that ship in extreme conditions, which is quite good indeed. Even though a lot of details are missing, it's a giant step in the right direction, and what i expected from that CitizenCon presentation a few years ago.
- I noticed that mav thrusters still pull around 2.2G while main thrusters pull about 4.5G (around double then) - the ratio seems still off considering the size difference, but i guess it's a work in progress, or at least progress was accomplished here.
- Top speed is still sluggish considering the Tali has good areodynamics and huge main engines.
Then went on with a server crash as i was going back to the station. Not too thrilled about trying again as there's not much else to do, given how broken everything else is.
3.10 = not recommended unless you want to fool around a bit. It will punish you for just trying to "play the game". The new FM is interesting though and piloting heavy cargo ships might get actually fun !
