Turning slow, what am I doing wrong?

[smartroad]

Hi all!

I have just upgraded to Beta Premium as I could no longer wait to play I am, however, struggling with the flight mechanics. Going through the combat scenarios to get used to flying, I have managed to get through the first two. However as soon as the opponent flies past and behind me, no matter how much I turn (pitch, yaw or roll/pitch) I can never seem to get them back in front of me. It is like they are orbiting me as fast as I can spin. I have tried with flight control off, all that done was send me wildly spinning when I rolled.

It is weird, I can roll at a fantastical speed, yet yaw and pitch it is like the ship is wading through treacle (no matter flight assist settings or amount of throttle).

Have I missed something? Am I just rubbish?

 

[Hamerstein]

Not rubbish, yaw is deliberately restricted - it's part of the flight design, pitch and roll is the way to fly.

On your speedometer there is a blue band, keeping your speed in that zone maximises your turning rate. Faster or slower inhibits it.

Using thrusters in addition to pitching improves turn rates, Flight Assist off takes practice - it's very difficult to use initially (by design).

 

[Antmax]

Try to keep your speed in the blue throttle band for more agility. Use your lateral thrusters to help get a better angle to turn into them. Reverse thrusters, takes a while to slow down but puts them in front pretty quick.

You can also try turning off flight assists. That's supposed to speed turning slights or let you turn independently of inertia. Haven't tried that, only been playing a couple of days myself.

The scenarios are worth doing.

I'm finding MP is really tough because other players want to take you out if you travel anywhere interesting regardless of what you want to do. When that happens my PC usually drops to about 9fps and jittery being not that great a system and slow internet.

 

[Yaffle]

You just need to practice.

Get your speed in the blue zone, that's the turning sweet spot.

Ignore yaw unless you need a little nudge to practice aiming.

Don't forget you have up/down/left/right thrusters too, you can use those in combination with the pitch and yaw.

Mess about in the toxic waste disposal scenario until you can easily turn. A neat thing is to be able to fly around the buoy and keep it in front of you at all times. Combine pitch and up/down thrust to do it. Now try the same strafing left/right.

Good luck.

 

[Mazhurg]

Hi all!

I have just upgraded to Beta Premium as I could no longer wait to play I am, however, struggling with the flight mechanics. Going through the combat scenarios to get used to flying, I have managSet yopur throttle bar in the blue area on your ed to get through the first two. However as soon as the opponent flies past and behind me, no matter how much I turn (pitch, yaw or roll/pitch) I can never seem to get them back in front of me. It is like they are orbiting me as fast as I can spin. I have tried with flight control off, all that done was send me wildly spinning when I rolled.

It is weird, I can roll at a fantastical speed, yet yaw and pitch it is like the ship is wading through treacle (no matter flight assist settings or amount of throttle).

Have I missed something? Am I just rubbish?

You get your best pitching / yawning rate at about 1/2 throttle speed (set the throttle bar in the middle of the blue area on your throttle display).

 

[Aleksej]

50% thrust is maneuverability sweet spot, i.e. gives you the best maneuverability. As mentioned above there are also blue markings on the speed indicator showing maneuverability sweet spot.

Yaw is weak in ED and this is a design decision. Pitch/roll should be used for maneuvering.

50% thrust maneuverability rules also apply to FA OFF.

You get your best pitching / yawning rate at about 1/2 throttle speed (set the throttle bar in the middle of the blue area on your throttle display).

Yaw should not be used for maneuvering as it is too slow. It is good for aiming but not maneuvering. ED is pitch and roll game.

 

[Vikinger]

And another tip. don't limit your self by just going forward.
When an enemy is out turning me, or if I came in to fast, I set my throttle to reverse and turn opposite way he did. 9 out of 10 times I get him in sight quite fast. So use forward and reverse as well to get the advantage.

 

[Frank]

I don't know if I should be giving tips seeing as how bad I fly, but bind a nice, easy to press key to 50% throttle. It'll help you hit the sweet spot quicker. But don't be scared of leaving that sweet spot. Moving at treacle speed can be perfect for lining up the perfect shot.

 

[dobbo]

I only skim read the posts todate, and I'm pretty sure that I will be repeating what others have said.

Put your flight thrust in the middle of the blue zone for best turning rate. I have also configured my flight throttle control to be Forward Only, with a button on to activate reverse thrust. When the target is close I hit reverse without moving the throttle, I find it gets me back on target quicker than anything else I can do.

I haven't mastered Pilot Assist: Off yet. I'm still flying like a aircraft in an atmosphere, but against most AIs that's enough, against humans, different story.

And the 3rd combat scenario is the hardest. That's what I've read elsewhere, and I wholeheartedly agree. I'll admit that I'm still stuck on the third from last, but that was because I got board and quit. In that one you have to take out an Anaconda. I got behind him into his blind spot and kept firing and firing for 20 minutes without any noticeable effect. My wingmen had either scarpered off or got killed. Not sure how to beat that one yet!

Hope this helps. Just keep plugging away, you'll get it. I did.

 

[Adept]

And the 3rd combat scenario is the hardest. That's what I've read elsewhere, and I wholeheartedly agree. I'll admit that I'm still stuck on the third from last, but that was because I got board and quit. In that one you have to take out an Anaconda. I got behind him into his blind spot and kept firing and firing for 20 minutes without any noticeable effect. My wingmen had either scarpered off or got killed. Not sure how to beat that one yet!
.

The reason is that the beam laser is broken in this version (it was broken in Alpha 4 already). It does tiny damage right now, so you'll need your missiles and allies to take out the Anaconda. I did it by burning out his drives*. Then I just stuck behind him and kept drilling into those engines (max out weapon cooling).

The ship ultimately blew up with over 20% hull integrity left. I must have been drilling into the reactor.

*use the subsystem targetting

 

[Cthulhuu]

apart from 50% power (that everyone mentioned) don't forget to check your options-mouse sensitivity setting (if using mouse)

 

[Asp Explorer]

What a lot of people seem to forget is that the quickest route to a destination is a straight line.

The Romans worked this out millennia ago. I see pilots every day miss this concept.

The line is always straight - but the path may not be.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Don't forget you have vertical and lateral thrusters too. If you get into a "turning war," sometimes the best way to get behind them again is to throttle down and vector into the turn.

 

[Aleksej]

I only skim read the posts todate, and I'm pretty sure that I will be repeating what others have said.

Put your flight thrust in the middle of the blue zone for best turning rate. I have also configured my flight throttle control to be Forward Only, with a button on to activate reverse thrust. When the target is close I hit reverse without moving the throttle, I find it gets me back on target quicker than anything else I can do.

I haven't mastered Pilot Assist: Off yet. I'm still flying like a aircraft in an atmosphere, but against most AIs that's enough, against humans, different story.

And the 3rd combat scenario is the hardest. That's what I've read elsewhere, and I wholeheartedly agree. I'll admit that I'm still stuck on the third from last, but that was because I got board and quit. In that one you have to take out an Anaconda. I got behind him into his blind spot and kept firing and firing for 20 minutes without any noticeable effect. My wingmen had either scarpered off or got killed. Not sure how to beat that one yet!

Hope this helps. Just keep plugging away, you'll get it. I did.

It is not the 3rd combat scenario but about the 7th (Supply strike, although it is 3rd if you count from the end). In order to make beam laser working as intended try removing all fire groups and re-assigning them again.

 

[smartroad]

Thanks guys, I'll admit that I am being worn down by my inability to turn fast enough. I mean, surely the thrusters which can cause me to roll at a quick kilp are capable of spinning the ship around just as fast (assuming flight assist is off of course!).

I'll try to play with the thrusters in the first simulation Suppose I am just used to other (older) space sims where turning is faster

-edit-

I am playing with a Saitek X45. Thankfully it has two extra analog knobs that I can relate to the two thruster directions

 

[Obsidian Ant]

Thanks guys, I'll admit that I am being worn down by my inability to turn fast enough. I mean, surely the thrusters which can cause me to roll at a quick kilp are capable of spinning the ship around just as fast (assuming flight assist is off of course!).

I'll try to play with the thrusters in the first simulation Suppose I am just used to other (older) space sims where turning is faster

-edit-

I am playing with a Saitek X45. Thankfully it has two extra analog knobs that I can relate to the two thruster directions

This video should help you a bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxz3LJLosTs

There's some combat demos and tips at around 5mins.

 

[Mazhurg]

Thanks guys, I'll admit that I am being worn down by my inability to turn fast enough. I mean, surely the thrusters which can cause me to roll at a quick kilp are capable of spinning the ship around just as fast (assuming flight assist is off of course!).

That (spin =yaw) has been deliberately nerfed to force a gameplay of roll and pitch (akin to an atmospheric model) in order to increase the challenge of combat.

It forces players to seek to outmanoeuvre their opponents instead of just spinning in place and this is not likely to change.

It's a different implementation of the FM typical in FPS games and it very much fun to play with once you get the hang of it. Just have to rewire your brainzzz if a twitch player.

 

[smartroad]

That (spin =yaw)

Sorry i meant flip/pitch

 

[dobbo]

What a lot of people seem to forget is that the quickest route to a destination is a straight line.

The Romans worked this out millennia ago. I see pilots every day miss this concept.

The line is always straight - but the path may not be.

Like Khan, from the second Star Trek movie, I find your thinking very two dimensional.

No Roman road, like any line drawn on the surface of a global, is straight. They all follow the curvature of the spheroid. Don't believe me, draw a very, very triangle (relative to the size of the spheroid) and measure the angles, they'll add up to more than 180.

Pilots don't fly straight lines on a Mercator projection map because Mercator projection does not preserve angles. (I am ignoring the fact that they need to follow the sky lanes.) So on a curved surface, like the Earth, the shortest/quickest route between two points is a curve.

It took until Einstein to show that the same was true for space (and time) too, and we have only recently be able to measure a triangle as large as the know universe.

In ED the straight line between your starting point and your destination may take you close, or even through, a gravity mass. This will slow you down and cost you more fuel to navigate around.

There is a better way. Fly a simple curved trajectory perpendicular to the plane of the elliptic. Rather than point the nose of your bird at the destination, aim for a spot perpendicular to that plane. I like to put that little notch on the bottom of my destination marker above that little triangle thingy on my forward canopy, whilst at the same thing keeping the planet orbit marker parallel to the dash. As you fly just keep the designation marker in the same spot of your canopy.

As you start off the small angle between the straight line flight path and the one you're flying will be small. And you will find it takes very little stick pressure to keep the destination maker glued to the same spot on your canopy. However, as you get close so the bearing between your flight path and the destination heading will increase. More stick input is require.

At about 10ls out when any planet or moon that your destination is orbiting become visible, it is very easy to eyeball an efficient flight path in where the gravity wells help you slow down rather than impede your progress.