Cant rep this enough.
Learn to use fa off and orbit your target. Get atmospheric dogfighting out of your head.
once a pilot successfully understands 6dof model all of the problems you mention go away.
Flight Model: Has FDev Lost Their Way?
- Thread starter Frenotx
- Start date
Cant rep this enough.
Learn to use fa off and orbit your target. Get atmospheric dogfighting out of your head.
once a pilot successfully understands 6dof model all of the problems you mention go away.
The only Caveat is Yaw was deliberately inhibited to create the WW1 Dogfighting experience
Hello O, maybe, possiblt, probably not!
I think the flight model handles fighter to auxullary military ships pretty well ctually.
I have to admit, watching some of the big ship PvP vidoes out there will their slow jousting, looks kinda boring. Then you play with the medium ships, and keeping on the enemy is kinda cool.
I think it has got more jousty, as we are all flying bigger ships these days.
YMMV - may be talking out of a body part that is not my mouth.
Simon
I think the flight model handles fighter to auxullary military ships pretty well ctually.
I have to admit, watching some of the big ship PvP vidoes out there will their slow jousting, looks kinda boring. Then you play with the medium ships, and keeping on the enemy is kinda cool.
I think it has got more jousty, as we are all flying bigger ships these days.
YMMV - may be talking out of a body part that is not my mouth.
Simon
Probably, yes - the blue spot mechanic is a testament to this - what place that has in a 6DOF space combat game?
But if you think this is some recent development you are very much mistaken. It became abundantly clear the game resembled no WW2 dogfight that ever existed, the moment players got their hands on it and started shooting the snot out of each other, gleefully ignoring the checks FD had put in place against 'turrets in space' or whatever it is you want to call it.
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Yes, this. This is my point. That's what FDev started out doing, and I feel "pitch speed creep" without comparable increases in acceleration and speed have undermined it. Boost beginning increasingly "cheaper" and weapon ranges getting longer has only made matters worse.
Here are a couple of vintage PVP fights from 2014 using Sidewinders.
[video=youtube;S0pXFz5SPBQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0pXFz5SPBQ[/video]
[video=youtube;pRExOaMuENs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRExOaMuENs[/video]
Does this look like WW1 dogfighting to you?
I can keep my weapons trained on the opponent practically indefinitely with complete disrespect for my movement vector and I don't even know what this "pitch speed creep" is you are referring to. I never needed to even think about the blue zone to do this. Nerfed yaw? I don't care.
The fact this game has FAOFF completely throws the idea of dogfighting into the trash bin. That has held true the moment the game went into alpha.
[video=youtube;S0pXFz5SPBQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0pXFz5SPBQ[/video]
[video=youtube;pRExOaMuENs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRExOaMuENs[/video]
Does this look like WW1 dogfighting to you?
I can keep my weapons trained on the opponent practically indefinitely with complete disrespect for my movement vector and I don't even know what this "pitch speed creep" is you are referring to. I never needed to even think about the blue zone to do this. Nerfed yaw? I don't care.
The fact this game has FAOFF completely throws the idea of dogfighting into the trash bin. That has held true the moment the game went into alpha.
The pilots in that video are making no attempt to get on the other's six. They only concerning themselves with pointing their guns at the target. If anything, that video just shows that the reverski maneuver has been problematic to some degree from the beginning.
Look closer, quite on the contrary. Both of the pilots were constantly fighting to get behind me. Sometimes enough to get just outside my field of view for a second or two. But you simply can't get into the "six" of someone who just flips FAOFF, reverse thrusts and turns toward your direction of travel.
If you are the pilot, then you are not making any attempt to get on THEIR 6, or avoid their fire. When they get out of your view, you usually just back up and point at them, hence my comment regarding reverski.
Furthermore, yes, they have no hope getting behind you... If they are flying like they are. If they employed proper thruster and speed control, they would not be as easy to keep in front of you.
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FA/Off manoeuvres can cost you ship integrity, I have noted this with larger ships, as can flying outside the "blue zone" with the throttle (esp. where super-cruise is concerned).
If you expect space combat to resemble atmospheric combat dog-fighting (c/f WW1/WW2) then IMO you do not have a clue what space combat tactics should be. If you want a cinematic example of space combat, then I suggest having a look at the Babylon 5 TV Series and Films.
IMO FD have done pretty well with the flight model and balancing their ships (even with engineers).
P.S. this thread seems to be a duplicate of the Nerf Reverski thread.
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You wouldn't get any complaints from me. It was clear we had a problem even pre-Engineers, when the Anaconda became popular as a PVP ship because it had the largest weapon loadout and best convergence at the time. Nothing wrong with that, except it also handled like a glorified fighter and not like the lumbering but tough cargo/support vessel implied by the early development videos. Ships of that size should be hitting each other with turreted broadsides, launching fighters and taking advantage of cover from smaller ships. Instead it's "point the business end at the enemy", which is of course also what the enemy is doing.
Part of the problem is the limited management controls. Pip and "blue zone" management, and tactical use of boost, make sense (within ED's slightly nonsensical world) for small ship combat but there ought to be something more strategic when it comes to the larger vessels. But we have the same controls for everything.
Any problems this caused have been amplified since Engineers. I'm not sure there's a solution. Your bullet points would be a start but it's definitely a nerf to some degree, which others have pointed out tend not to go down too well with the paying customers. A new flight/management model for larger ships would also be problematic, partly because it's taking away something a lot of players already enjoy, and also because it might not be practical to map anything too complicated onto console-style controllers. That's not a "PC master race" thing, just a practical limitation of how quickly it's possible to navigate complex option trees on such a device.
And yet I still got plenty of opportunities to fire at their flanks. Mostly thanks to their own attempts to do something other than to DPS me.
My point stands, this "problem", if you want to regard it as such, has existed since the game went live. It's not some new development.
FD has given up trying to force dogfighting into a space game long time ago, probably because they know it's not possible. The only way to stop people from turreting is to remove FAOFF, reverse and lateral thrusters, and force everyone to fly forward at all times - but the result of that would be neverending mutual tail-chasing loops where neither ship can ever break out of, unless one of them has significantly better turn rate in which case that ship will always win. Does not sound much more fun to me than what we actually have. In aerial dogfights pilots have some manoeuvres they can use to break out of that situation, but they all rely on the presence of atmosphere and gravity and the way a plane interacts with these elements.
I'm not here to debate whether or not a "dogfighty" model is appropriate for a space game. That debate played out a million times in the early stages of the game when people were constantly asking, "why is yaw so slow?" The fact of the matter is that FDev decided that's the direction they wanted to go, and they took steps to make the game that way. Blue zone, limited yaw, etc. It's not realistic, but it's not trying to be. FDev decided to set realism aside, and instead go for something more fun and cinematic. My point is that developments over time have undermined those mechanics, leaving is in this unfortunate middle ground that's neither dogfighty, nor realistic.
You have my attention.
I disagree, the blue zone is essentially the region where G-Forces and stresses are with-in design limits - you can go outside them and use FA/Off to disable flight assist limits apparently intended to prevent/minimise integrity loss. The limited yaw/roll/pitch is essentially the FA/On limits combined with ship design with regards to where attitude thrusters are and their relative power distribution.
The flight model adopted by FD is largely the same as that in most modern space flight games and IMO is not problematic. I started playing ED with 1.3 and while engineers (and Enhanced Engines) may result in ships faster and more manoeuvrable than the baseline it has not IMO changed the fundamental nature of the flight model and has not undermined anything.
The model has NEVER been dog fighter oriented nor has it ever been full Newtonian. It has always essentially been the hybrid approach that is largely common across 3D space flight computer games in general (with some variations in which control systems are optimal). IMO For ED, the optimal control system for general flight is HOTAS which is not surprising given the cockpit controls FD modelled in ED bear a striking resemblance to the X52 controllers. Mouse targeting may have some benefits in certain combat settings but that does not change the point that the flight model is optimised around HOTAS.
The only fly in the ointment where ED is concerned is FA/Off mode, but this should be balanced out by integrity loss when performing extreme manoeuvres. If the primary complaint is that mouse flight/targeting when combined with FA/Off is essentially OP then perhaps FD should introduce aiming jitter when in FA/Off mode (which arguably should have probably been in ED from the beginning).
Overall though, the flight model is fine IMO and it sounds like some just need to "git gud".
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I would have to air severe skepticism over the claim that ship hulls would be under less stress during FAON manoeuvres than they are during FAOFF.
Firstly I would like to remind you that a spacecraft has absolutely no other "stresses" or "g-forces" affecting it other than whatever thrust its own engines put out. You can measure the stress on the hull as a factor of combined thrust from the ship's thrusters. It's not like an airplane where the wings and the fuselage are under constant stress from aerodynamic forces. (Okay there's also stress from centripetal force if the ship is rotating fast enough)
In case you didn't know, FAON actually has access to an ability to use thrusters at roughly double their usual power, in a specific circumstance, namely, when it is reducing sideways motion to force you into a flight path coupled with your facing. And oh boy, is it doing this a lot. Every time you turn in FAON, the thrusters are putting double the stress on your hull than they ever could under manual control in FAOFF.
You don't believe me? Do a simple test - laterally thrust into maximum velocity, then take note of how long it takes for the FAON computer to reduce your speed to zero. Then try to replicate it in FAOFF.
This is a "hack" FD put in place to enable those swooping airplane like turns. Without it everything would drift worse than a beta Chieftain.
It doesn't really make any sort of realistic sense why thrusters should be significantly more powerful in a specific situation like that or why you shouldn't be able to override it and always thrust at these maximum rates. It's just that way because FD wanted the gameplay to be a certain way.
Firstly I would like to remind you that a spacecraft has absolutely no other "stresses" or "g-forces" affecting it other than whatever thrust its own engines put out. You can measure the stress on the hull as a factor of combined thrust from the ship's thrusters. It's not like an airplane where the wings and the fuselage are under constant stress from aerodynamic forces. (Okay there's also stress from centripetal force if the ship is rotating fast enough)
In case you didn't know, FAON actually has access to an ability to use thrusters at roughly double their usual power, in a specific circumstance, namely, when it is reducing sideways motion to force you into a flight path coupled with your facing. And oh boy, is it doing this a lot. Every time you turn in FAON, the thrusters are putting double the stress on your hull than they ever could under manual control in FAOFF.
You don't believe me? Do a simple test - laterally thrust into maximum velocity, then take note of how long it takes for the FAON computer to reduce your speed to zero. Then try to replicate it in FAOFF.
This is a "hack" FD put in place to enable those swooping airplane like turns. Without it everything would drift worse than a beta Chieftain.
It doesn't really make any sort of realistic sense why thrusters should be significantly more powerful in a specific situation like that or why you shouldn't be able to override it and always thrust at these maximum rates. It's just that way because FD wanted the gameplay to be a certain way.
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Whether it is realistic (in terms of precise details) or not is pretty moot; However, when combining all the forces (attitude thrusters and engine thrust) you are applying forces in different directions around a rigid body so with "simplified" physics will be applying stresses to the rigid body and notionally in ED ships in motion are always subject to those forces (sheering or otherwise).
The fact still remains that if you do not use FA/Off nor stray outside the blue zone where the throttle is concerned any integrity loss from general flight is minimal to non-existent.
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The biggest torsion on the hull would come from firing opposite rotational thrusters - which in a sensible ship design would be placed as far away from the centre of mass as possible. The ship would have to be designed to withstand this stress easily, because that is the normal, intended behaviour of such thrusters (and in an ED context they would work exactly the same in FAON and FAOFF, only human FAOFF pilots tend to use their rotationals gently and carefully like old ladies and have you even seen what the flight computer does with them aararrrggghhh *chewie noises*) A hull losing integrity from simply firing rotational thrusters would be a significant design flaw.
What you're basically saying is that, hypothetically, the ship manufacturer chose such a configuration, in terms of thruster position and power, because of some arbitrary reason, but later on was forced to come up with additional constraints (the blue zone), to prevent his own design from breaking apart in flight? Ok... but why not design a ship based on the way you intend to fly it in the first place? The whole thing sounds like catch 22 to me.
Look, I have no problem with technobabble being made up to explain why things are the way they are in a video game - in fact I do things like this myself quite often. But calling it realistic is taking it a bit too far imho. Besides, technobabble doesn't even have to be realistic, it just has to be consistent.
Overall though, the flight model is fine IMO and it sounds like some just need to "git gud".
I don't see why this has to be brought into the discussion, it derails it from its original purpose to some grade 5 bathroom measuring contest.
The point of the thread is that initially, the focus during flight lied primarily on struggling to control your ship and to bring it into the position you want it to be, and secondarily on operating your ship systems, and those two priorities have switched places. I used to believe the original flight model was FDEV's way of differentiating their product on the market, but if this difference is intentionally being removed by the developer himself, then tell me why I shouldn't just go play some other game with a similar approach to combat, but with other far better MMO features than E: D could ever hope to have.