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Newcomer / Intro Roll vs Yaw
- Thread starter PoohPuss
- Start date
Yaw is slower yes. Not sure if better thrusters will change that...
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
Yes, this is by design to avoid "turrets in space" gameplay - as per some early developer diaries.
Pitch&Roll is flight style in Elite. It's actually pretty cool.
The values for roll pitch and yaw vary by ship type, improving the thrusters will increase all three values as will having more pips in engines or using boost.
T9 for example has Roll and Pitch equal but yaw is less than half of them, while the Fer de Lance rolls about eight times faster than it yaws and pitches three times faster than yaw, the FdL's yaw is about as fast as the T9 rolls or pitches.
T9 for example has Roll and Pitch equal but yaw is less than half of them, while the Fer de Lance rolls about eight times faster than it yaws and pitches three times faster than yaw, the FdL's yaw is about as fast as the T9 rolls or pitches.
As mentioned, most (if not all) ships have slower yaw than pitch/roll. Each ship has a performance template that dictates how quickly the ship will turn along each axis. Some ships have great pitch, terrible yaw, others are more balanced. The ship in the training is likely an entry level one with mediocre maneuverability. More expensive ships designed by combat will likely pitch/roll/yaw faster (especially once engineered), but for the most part, yaw is always on the slower side compared to the other two.
It's worth mentioning that, in my experience, yaw isn't all that relevant in combat. I value high pitch rate infinitely more than the other two.
It's worth mentioning that, in my experience, yaw isn't all that relevant in combat. I value high pitch rate infinitely more than the other two.
As a general rule, thrust rotation rates are based on the shape of a ship. A ship that is very short and wide (like the cobra or T9) will yaw terribly; a ship that is very tall for its length (like a T7) will have comparatively good yaw.
The in-game reason for this is the placing of thethrusters on a ship. Take the Asp, or Cobra, or Sidewinder even; go into external view and watch which thrusters fire when you roll, pitch and yaw. It's got thrusters pointing in the roll and pitch directions, but for yawing, there aren't any sideways-mounted thrusters, it has to fire pairs of thrusters at angles, which is horribly inefficient. To get good yawing, you need sideways-mounted thrusters - ideally, a vertical wall to mount such thrusters on.
This leads to a logical question: why are most ED ships so horribly designed, such that they don't have any sideways-mounted thrusters?
The answer is simple: it is a deliberate game design decision. The original Elite game, back in the 1980s, only had controls for pitch and roll - there were no yaw controls (or if there were, I never found them on the Commodore 64). Everyone had to learn to fly their spaceships - and aim their non-gimballed weaponry at targets just a couple of pixels wide - using just roll and pitch. We all had to "git gud" at it.
As the spiritual descendant of that ancient game, the designers of ED have elected to continue that preeminence-of-pitch-and-roll ethos as a core design decision. As a result, all of the spaceships in ED are deliberately designed to yaw badly. The few that don't (such as the T7) are really poor at maneuvering overall; rather than having good yaw, they've simply got pitch and roll that are as poor as the yaw on other ships.
The in-game reason for this is the placing of thethrusters on a ship. Take the Asp, or Cobra, or Sidewinder even; go into external view and watch which thrusters fire when you roll, pitch and yaw. It's got thrusters pointing in the roll and pitch directions, but for yawing, there aren't any sideways-mounted thrusters, it has to fire pairs of thrusters at angles, which is horribly inefficient. To get good yawing, you need sideways-mounted thrusters - ideally, a vertical wall to mount such thrusters on.
This leads to a logical question: why are most ED ships so horribly designed, such that they don't have any sideways-mounted thrusters?
The answer is simple: it is a deliberate game design decision. The original Elite game, back in the 1980s, only had controls for pitch and roll - there were no yaw controls (or if there were, I never found them on the Commodore 64). Everyone had to learn to fly their spaceships - and aim their non-gimballed weaponry at targets just a couple of pixels wide - using just roll and pitch. We all had to "git gud" at it.
As the spiritual descendant of that ancient game, the designers of ED have elected to continue that preeminence-of-pitch-and-roll ethos as a core design decision. As a result, all of the spaceships in ED are deliberately designed to yaw badly. The few that don't (such as the T7) are really poor at maneuvering overall; rather than having good yaw, they've simply got pitch and roll that are as poor as the yaw on other ships.
Back in the day this was the Commodore 64 joystick I used to play Elite on lol. Note just the 1 fire button. In-game there were no fire groups, Military lasers being the best to hit those 2 pixels with. There was a satisfying "tssschk" sound when they hit though especially those Thargoids, no AX weapons you just had to keep blasting away at the wireframe without taking too much damage yourself. Defaults were M for missile and B for energy bomb. I think it was rare back then for any joystick to have yaw control built in. So that's probably another reason why David & Ian didn't incorporate it. Then in the 90's when I was playing Frontier Elite 2, Wing Commander, Mechwarrior (yay Mechwarrior 5 out Q4 this year!) and various combat flight sims, joysticks with yaw started becoming more abundant.
