Why Aiming in FA OFF with a Stick is a huge disadvantage

To to derail the converation too much, but when TEBORI compared Star Citizen's flight model to Elite Dangerous it got me thinking about the fact that every time I've flown in SC (much less often than Elite Dangerous) it's always felt far inferior to the Elite Dangerous flight model. Heck, SC even feels inferior to the flight model of X4 in my book. X4 also has an FA-Off type mode by the way.

Have it just not put in enough flying time in SC or is it quite bad?
@CMDR QUANTIS TRAP

the mode of decoupled only from star citizen is meant here. and it was only meant to explain how the new fa off mode for hotas hosas would work.

the elite flight model would not change at all but in fa off the stick players would have assistance in the rotation axes to equal the relative mouse advantage.
Yeah, wasn't faulting you for comparing SC to ED. It just made me compare in my mind. I was just stating that, to me, SC's flight model has seemed inferior to Elite Dangerous and even X4.
BUT, nothing is as bad as the flight model of No Man's Sky! ;)
 
@Morbad if you dont mind i would be interested in your opinion what would be the outcome if this would be implemented as option.
link directs to a specific post.

I would personally be fine with dampened rotationals in FA Off or an intermediate FA Off mode where this was a thing, if all control setups/input devices had such an ability, but I don't think this fits either Frontier's vision (which involves introducing arbitrary difficulty to the more newtonian model to encourage their 'planes in space' silliness), nor with the segment of the community that enjoys the extra challenge mandated by FA Off.

I'm not sure it would necessarily be more fair either.
 
why do you think it would be unbalanced?

Because as things are, joysticks are easier to fly a ship with already. Making FA off aiming even easier on a stick than on keyboard (and let's be clear: that's what you're asking for) completely removes any semblance of balance between control schemes: currently KBM and joystick both have pros and cons which make the differences between them negligible. To add to that, joystick aiming isn't even more difficult than mouse aiming for low time-on-target weapons, like cannons and PAs.

It also lends itself towards pay-to-win, which Elite has done a good job at avoiding in its current state.
 
hmm i disagree here. the mouse will always be more accurate when it comes to aiming.
also - espacially in fa off - to control the thrusters not with axes but with buttons has its advantages.

i expect a balance if such a translation only fa off mode would be introduced.
 
I would personally be fine with dampened rotationals in FA Off or an intermediate FA Off mode where this was a thing, if all control setups/input devices had such an ability, but I don't think this fits either Frontier's vision (which involves introducing arbitrary difficulty to the more newtonian model to encourage their 'planes in space' silliness), nor with the segment of the community that enjoys the extra challenge mandated by FA Off.

I'm not sure it would necessarily be more fair either.

Well as one of those fully FA-off wierdo's I would be totally happy with extra options that allow people to have rotational dampening, it won't stop me from flying full FA-off.

The more options for people to fly how they want is great as far as I'm concerned with... it will lead up to more threads like this where people complain about x being better than y though which I'm not such a fan of but in general more options is good.
 
hmm i disagree here. the mouse will always be more accurate when it comes to aiming.
also - espacially in fa off - to control the thrusters not with axes but with buttons has its advantages.

i expect a balance if such a translation only fa off mode would be introduced.

Mouse may be more accurate for you my friend but not for everyone... This is an opinion not a function of the mechanics as has been proven many times...
 
I'm not convinced a stick makes a ship in ED intrinsically easier to fly...I personally prefer a stick, but I sure didn't have any problems using the mouse in the couple thousand hours I put into Freelancer.

The issue with the mouse is that it's almost always going to be a trade-off. Do I want five to seven usable buttons, or twenty? Sure you can find niche mice that have things like analog thumbsticks on the side for extra axes, or gobs of (usually not so ergonomic) extra buttons, but the typical mouse is two axes and a small handful of buttons, and that's what the baseline has to be on a PC game cause that mouse is the only analog controler you can reasonably expect to be on every PC.

Yes, the mouse has an upside too, it's a high-precision position control device that, barring extreme ends of the stick spectrum, will always have a better combination of speed and accuracy (high end sticks can match the accuracy, and very small/light sticks can match the speed, but very few can do both at the same time)...but again, the mouse has to be the baseline.
 
i am also worried in view of balance. it wouldnt be a good outcome at all if this would produce another superier control method. no matter which device is superior after this.
the goal is balance not disbalance.
 
i am also worried in view of balance. it wouldnt be a good outcome at all if this would produce another superier control method. no matter which device is superior after this.
the goal is balance not disbalance.

TBH I don't thing a rotational dampening system would be superior at all.. some of the best togglers can get similar effects right now. It would just be another way for some to fly...

IF all it did was operate like FA-on just for rotations and not add some extra to it...
 
Madrax573 said:
TBH I don't thing a rotational dampening system would be superior at all.. some of the best togglers can get similar effects right now. It would just be another way for some to fly...

IF all it did was operate like FA-on just for rotations and not add some extra to it...
yeah i think the same. fully agreed
 
It's harder because you're wiggling a control system designed for pointing an entire fighter jet, rather than manipulating a tool designed for pointing a digital cursor at relatively tiny targets. What we are doing in the game is pointing a set of digital cursors at relatively tiny targets, except the cursors constantly slide all over the place. The joystick as a mode of control is not designed for FA-Off flight, because no fighter jet has to deal with zero-gravity vacuum.
Yet most conventional ships we have that are designed for 6 dof use sticks... often twin...
You might be aware if you're a pilot yourself, or play more realistic simulators, but both of these are right. A real pilot make a relatively big stick movement for a relatively slow pitch/yaw. If you check on YouTube for someone in a fighter doing a 6G+ turn, the movement is very slow compared to what we do in game. Also with mentioning that about 344 m/s is mach One, so most of us fly well past subsonic, some approaching or exceeding Mach 2, so we would feel higher acceleration than a typical fighter due to higher speeds.
 
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Try it yourself and you will immediately notice the difference
This has nothing to do with any fine motor skills we have trained in using the mouse, but is solely due to the software support that the relative mouse provides.

I first try to align the rail gun in the middle of the sun with a high quality joystick. As soon as I have succeeded, I deviate from this intentionally and try to align myself in the middle of the sun again as fast as possible.

In the first part of the video I do this with the joystick and in the second part of the video I do it with a mouse with relative mouse with full strength.

The difference is clearly visible here. With the mouse I can easily and quickly align myself in the middle of the sun with no great effort with fine adjustment but with the joystick I deviate much further from the sun and it takes much longer and it is much more difficult to place the rail gun in the middle of the sun again because I have to compensate the rotations initiated by the joystick myself completely exactly with counter movements of the stick.

The reason that this is much easier with the mouse is that it supports the opposite rotation movements that the relative mouse offers and acts as a kind of stabilizer in FA OFF mode.

Source: https://youtu.be/hpRLALj89QY
Increase the deadzone at the centre. It will be easier to put the joystick in neutral like relative mouse.
 
"we know but things can change - maybe."

Not too many people share that faith, when there are much more ideal things that have been asked for.
More power to you though.
 
Yes. The ideal solution to this would be preserving rotation auto-stabilization in FA OFF.
So, in FA OFF the linear speed/motion/acceleration would behave as it currently does.
But angular rotation would at the same time behave like with FA ON - automatically stopping by counter impulses when Stick is in neutral position.
But FDev made stupid decision.

The funny thing is that in Star "SCAMNOTASIM" Citizen the "FA OFF" mode (called there "Decoupled") is implemented exactly as mentioned above "ideal solution" - ship rotation auto-stabilizes, while linear motion is fully newtonian with neccessity to apply counter impulses.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxBd-9O6N58

THIS!!!!

I feel FDev should retain relative mouse for accessibility, making the game available to every input style and experience level.

I'd love to see a 'hybrid' FA-on/FA-off added: FA-OFF for translational thrust (up/down/left/right/fwd/back), but FA-ON for rotation (pitch/roll/yaw). I have no experience in PvP, but I would LOVE to try this against Thargoid Interceptors.
 
A TL;DR for this thread:

  • OP wants Joysticks to counter their own inputs for you once you let go, essentially adding flight assist for the rotational axis.
  • OP believes this is what relative mouse does already, which is incorrect. Relative mouse merely simulates the centering than a joystick does mechanically.

All of this is based on the flawed notion that keyboard and mouse is somehow drastically easier than joystick or HOTAS control, which is demonstrably false when looking at the best pilots in the game. I'll reiterate what I said during the last forum thread that was drenched in misinformation about relative mouse: you can 'git gud' with any control settup if you put your mind to it. There are more KBM pilots because there are more keyboards and more mice than joysticks, but once you look at top-tier PVP this ratio becomes much more even.

Stop trying to "buff" or "nerf" different control setups, it's ludicrous to begin with. People can choose to fly with whatever they want, but adding rotational flight assist to one and not the other is actually unbalanced - and even pay to win when you consider the extra cost of a good joystick. FDev should add curves for joysticks within Elite, but you can already achieve these with third party tools.

I'll post my video below which disproves the OP's claim that relative mouse somehow counters your inputs for you - the video shows that inputs from a joystick and from a mouse with 100% relative mouse rates require the same counter movements.

 
Try it yourself and you will immediately notice the difference
This has nothing to do with any fine motor skills we have trained in using the mouse, but is solely due to the software support that the relative mouse provides.

I first try to align the rail gun in the middle of the sun with a high quality joystick. As soon as I have succeeded, I deviate from this intentionally and try to align myself in the middle of the sun again as fast as possible.

In the first part of the video I do this with the joystick and in the second part of the video I do it with a mouse with relative mouse with full strength.

The difference is clearly visible here. With the mouse I can easily and quickly align myself in the middle of the sun with no great effort with fine adjustment but with the joystick I deviate much further from the sun and it takes much longer and it is much more difficult to place the rail gun in the middle of the sun again because I have to compensate the rotations initiated by the joystick myself completely exactly with counter movements of the stick.

The reason that this is much easier with the mouse is that it supports the opposite rotation movements that the relative mouse offers and acts as a kind of stabilizer in FA OFF mode.

Source: https://youtu.be/hpRLALj89QY
Wow Akuma, just wow 🤦‍♂️

I've clapped plenty of Spear cheeks with my HOTAS.
Go back to using your premium ammo and quit complaining.
This is just pathetic.
 
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