Flight assist off with rotation correction

[zikolach]

Correct me if I am wrong - I am just starting to learn to fly FA off. I just want to clarify one specific aspect related to control settings and probably suggest adding one setting which I miss a lot.

It seems that currently KB+M is preferred way to fly FA off. Joysticks do not provide the same level of aiming precision even after ajusting their curves.

What if we have another mode of flight assist - OFF with rotational correction - it would allow to use separate thruster groups as in FA off, but authomatically compensate rotation? Is this called "inertial dampeners"? There was a question on the forum in 2015 related to the topic. Using inertial dampeners would also slightly reduce the effectiveness of your ship's thrusters, so it's important to use them carefully and only when necessary.

We could have an option in ship panel to switch off inertial dampeners to make ship behave as it does now or enable it to force ship to compensate rotation when controller is in neutral state. It could be also a keybind for that setting.

What do you think?

 

[varonica]

Is this called "inertial dampeners"?

What do you think?

No it certainly isn't. A cars brakes are examples of inertia dampening, the inertia of the car is converted into heat by friction of the brake pads against the disks, so the cars forward inertia is dampened, there's nothing in inertial dampening that has anything to do with rotational correction.

 

[Ski'Thor]

Never mind...

 

[Robert Maynard]

Mike Evans was heavily involved in the flight model - and, as I remember, he wasn't in favour of making FA-OFF easier by introducing rotational dampers.

May I ask why?

I mean, flying FAOFF is not a problem but having to counter rotation with a stick is rather annoying as oversteering is a high possibility.

It's basically adding an extra set of FA options?

Design choice or bothersome to do?

Design by choice, a very old one in fact. There's plenty of stuff in the forums about it if your search fu is strong. Basically I wanted FAOff to be artificially difficult.

 

[zikolach]

Mike Evans was heavily involved in the flight model - and, as I remember, he wasn't in favour of making FA-OFF easier by introducing rotational dampers.

Interesting if it is still the case as in original reply poster last seen on Mar 13, 2019

 

[zikolach]

No it certainly isn't. A cars brakes are examples of inertia dampening, the inertia of the car is converted into heat by friction of the brake pads against the disks, so the cars forward inertia is dampened, there's nothing in inertial dampening that has anything to do with rotational correction.

I had in mind rather something like a combination of a rotary damper and a control moment gyroscope (CMG) to control the rotation of a ship. In this case, the CMG would be used to produce a force or torque that could be used to control the orientation of the object, while the rotary damper would be used to absorb the kinetic energy of the object's rotational motion. But I have no idea whether it would work or not for game design.

 

[St0rmFury]

Basically a flight assist mode which disables the main thrusters but keep the vertical & lateral thrusters up?

 

[Morbad]

The most intuitive default mode, IMO would have been one with no automatic translational counter thrust, but stabilized rotational movement.

However, the goal of the control schemes in this game are not to make sense; it's an arbitrary dichotomy for gameplay purposes and each mode gets advantages and disadvantages that are fairly ridiculous (again, IMO). They wanted to enforce a 'WWII dog fighting in space' flight model (which even FA On doesn't begin to resemble), but allow for most of those bizzare limitations to be bypassed by disabling flight assist, at the cost of a difficulty increase by requiring rotational inputs to be manually countered.

Anyway, 'rotational correction' is confusing terminology here. In this game that phrase implies the active matching of ship movement to the interior of a starport docking barrel.

Interesting if it is still the case as in original reply poster last seen on Mar 13, 2019

Doesn't matter if it is. Reworking the fundamentals of the flight model are almost certainly entirely beyond the scope of the current development team's ability to test and balance.

 

[zikolach]

Basically a flight assist mode which disables the main thrusters but keep the vertical & lateral thrusters up?

Not exactly, it supposed to stop ship rotation along any axis unless player is actively makes an impact on this axis (put a stick to non-neutral position or moves a mouse out of center). But it would not affect non-rotary movement (which FA on does affect).

Doesn't matter if it is. Reworking the fundamentals of the flight model are almost certainly entirely beyond the scope of the current development team's ability to test and balance.

I partly agree. It seems devs continue to introduce new bugs e.g. the one with large ships and docking computer and hopefully at some point they would need to fix them. And that could be a good reason to improve flight model introducing new mode. And in the end this is suggestions forum - not always about real capacity.