What exactly does it do. With it on I can control the ship perfectly. Without it I have no idea what's going on. Are there some commanders who can fly with it off? What is the benefit/payoff? Or is it just so you can feel like a big man and look down on all the other players using assists.
Flight Assist
- Thread starter Crimson1973
- Start date
That vid is *amazing*, but there are better tutorials around.
With FA on, you always point in the direction of travel, and when you return the stick to centre FA will apply countering thrust to correct rolling and pitching.
This means that to turn around 180 degrees you need to fly in a semicircle, and spend most of that time looking in a direction that you don't want to go in.
Switching FA off means that your ship is free to point in any direction relative to the direction you're travelling in, and your control inputs aren't countered when returning to centre so you have to apply your own corrections.
Try this:
Fly towards a target
Switch FA OFF and immediately drop throttle to zero
Apply a little downward thrust and pitch up hard as you fly past your target
after doing a 180, switch FA back on and throttle up.
Do it right and you'll keep facing your target.
Practice on the cans in the first single player mission.
I'm no expert, but the 'handbrake turn in space' is a handy trick.
With FA on, you always point in the direction of travel, and when you return the stick to centre FA will apply countering thrust to correct rolling and pitching.
This means that to turn around 180 degrees you need to fly in a semicircle, and spend most of that time looking in a direction that you don't want to go in.
Switching FA off means that your ship is free to point in any direction relative to the direction you're travelling in, and your control inputs aren't countered when returning to centre so you have to apply your own corrections.
Try this:
Fly towards a target
Switch FA OFF and immediately drop throttle to zero
Apply a little downward thrust and pitch up hard as you fly past your target
after doing a 180, switch FA back on and throttle up.
Do it right and you'll keep facing your target.
Practice on the cans in the first single player mission.
I'm no expert, but the 'handbrake turn in space' is a handy trick.
Some details here: http://lavewiki.com/ship-control#flight-assist
Basically the tl;dr is that flight assist automatically stops movement when you stop moving the mouse/joystick. In space there is nothing to "stop" your ship's movement (as there is no air resistance etc), so the idea is that flight assist automatically fires the thrusters in the opposite direction to stop the movement when you stop the input.
Thats a bit of a simplification. With FA on your intended direction is computed based on the force vector sum of your thruster settings relative to your orientation.
They fundamentally have the same flight envelope (as far as I can tell).
... the practical upshot of this - in terms a layman can follow - is that if you have FA on and the throttle open in the forward direction the ship always tries to travel in the direction it's pointing and when you close the throttle ship will try to stop all movement.
Very good. Any more tips for flying. I have an x52 pro. I only thought I could roll to turn.
I have found the full-reverse throttle tip to be the most effective for when you get into the annoying death-spiral/going-around-in-circles situation: i.e. when your opponent is basically on top of you and you dont seem to be able to turn fast enough, just jam on full reverse throttle until you can get them back in front of you.
That video amazed me as well, the main advantage of flying without flight assist is the ability to shoot in a different direction than you are flying. (this is a HUGE advantage)
I personally wish i could customize my flight assist to cancel out angular momentum, but not linear momentum, then id need to play with my controls to find space for a "thrust forward" button. But something tells me they wont allow customization of flight assist for puritan difficulty reasons.
I personally wish i could customize my flight assist to cancel out angular momentum, but not linear momentum, then id need to play with my controls to find space for a "thrust forward" button. But something tells me they wont allow customization of flight assist for puritan difficulty reasons.