After playing around with the flight model of A11 for a while, while adapting my builds to A11, I decided to write down some feedback. (I'll use the sections of changes from the Hummel's post for better structure) Most of my points were probebly said before, but I figured even summarizing it to one place could be usefull. A - THRUSTERS generating TORQUE While I like this concept in theory I think the current implementation needs some changes. The obvious result of this change is the fact some hull shapes are penalised, due to the limited options for thruster placement. For example a "flat" jet-like SV will probably suffer in pitch, simply because you can't place thruster far enough above or below. The other thing is that depending on the trhuster placement, ship can have different pitch (roll, yaw) depending on the direction it rolls (tested, can provide BP if necessary). Now that wouldn't necessarily be a wrong thing, because we can use RCS to compensate for suboptimal thruster placement, but the issue is (at least to my knowladge) RCS boosts rotation against all three axis. I don't know whether it's location matters or not, however, putting RCS into a ship to compensate for a single "direction" more often then not makes the vessel to overshoot in the remaining two, leading to a janky controls. Proposed solution: My proposed solution would be to change the way RCS behaves. 1, The position of RCS in the vessel will NOT matter. (if it does now). It is not realistic, but it's QoL compromise I think would be preferred by many. 2, Each RCS would have a maximum amount of Torque it could provide and player could adjust six sliders (two for each axis, f.e. for pitch one would adjust how much force the RCS adds for raising the nose up, the second how much it adds for lowerinf the nose down). That way the player can adjust the force for all three axis to precisely compensate for the thrusters. 3, For siplicity (and newcomers)'s sake, there would be two modes, a default "simple" - where RCS functions as it does now and "advanced" which would allow you the precise calibration. That way a new guy could just slap an RCS into his build to make it more maneuverable overall, without the need to figure out all the settings, while advanced player can custom tailor his controls the way he needs. B - VIRTUAL DRAG I will split this section to two, because I think this HAS to be handled differently in orbit and on planet/moon. 1, On planet/moon playfields the Virtual drag does make sense, since it basically "simulating" the forces acting on your craft (gravity, air resistance, etc...). It does make logical sense the craft has different max speed in different directions, since there are forces resisting the movement of the craft and the it does make difference if you push your craft with two or four thrustes. There will simple be the point when the combined forces are too large for the thrusters to overcome and that will be the max speed (that's why cars have max speeds too ). The simplified mechanic aligns with our everyday experience and thus it is belieavable and not fun breaking. However, there should be some fine tuning and perhaps a technical "minimal" speed for gameplay reasons, because no matter how realisitic you want it to be, there is a line where this feature stops being fun and starts being an annoiance. Espacially the dedicated miners and thransports could potentially suffer terribly which goes against the "specialisation" you want to achieve by CPU, especially on low tiers. 2, In obital playfields however, this feature is pretty much broken. Why? It's simple, when on planet it goes along our experience, in orbit, it goes completely against even the most simplified knowladge of how space works. In space there are no significant external forces acting on the craft with the exception of gravitational forces and those are currently ignored in orbital playfields. And with gravitiy out of the way there is nothing to counter the thrusters, thus variable max speed makes no logical sense (though gravity itself shouldn't limit your max speed either, becouse if you don't have enough thrust, you're below the escape velocity and you won't be going anywhere anyway). While I understand the need for technical max speed, and as long as all ships (at least of the same type) have the same max speed, then it's not a game and imeersion braking thing for me. But the variable max speed? That is changing even for ONE vessel (and not only between vessels) that is something that immediately brakes any sence of immersion and destroys our ability to use our "suspension of disbelief". It's not only unrealistic it's also not "believable" to such degree it significantly detract from my experience with the game (and I reckon it's the same for lot of others). Proposed solution: It's simple. Kill the virtual drag in space. It makes absolutely no logical sense to have it there. It's not max speed that should be different between ships, it's acceleration. Every ship in space can theoretically go as fast as it wants, but each will achieve the desired speed after different time of acceleration. I'd suggest increasing the distances in orbits (and adding a meaningfull way of finding stuff in orbit) so it actually matters if your ship is able to go max speed in 10 seconds or two minutes.
Thrusters above and below the plane of the ship isn't the only way to generate pitch; up/down thrusters will do that too. For atmospheric craft, it would be nice if wings had virtual flaps built into them that would give appropriate amounts of torque. Note that there's actually two components to the drag on planets: aerodynamic drag and the acceleration-dependent max speed.
Yes, I understand that, but I'm not talking about the components of the system, I tried to approach it from more of does it as a whole make a logical sense? Does it reinforce my game experience, does it work with or agains my experience and knowledge? And that's what I tried to convey.
The big thing that confuses the hell out of me is, Eleon used mass to cap max speed (which shouldn't be done anyway, but whatever), but forgot to clamp those values to a minimum speed as well. We all saw the problem with that coming a mile away, ships not being able to warp and so forth, but if they're so desperate to punish weight with a speed-cap, clamp the damn values so they can at least reach 50% or so of proper speed and still perform their function.
Just adding my 2p... I love what I've been able to test, but until you re-enable the joystick config I can't really play this game any longer (in terms of flying that is). The biggest issue is still that Roll if assigned to the mouse wheel does not allow for weapons to be used, as shown in a video posted somewhere here in the forum.
I decided to plot my CV max speed data vs acceleration instead of mass, and this is the result: It looks fairly linear with acceleration, which one might expect based on the previous plot I made. Anyway, it's clear that ships have to have considerable acceleration in order to not have their max speed capped. And I still consider this situation to be entirely unacceptable.
wowsa... 3 & 1/2 gees required to reach max speed?? In Space? --- ok, now I'm following what you said in the other thread Geo plotting against mass made it look like an exponential function when it's, very likely, a simple upper & lower bounded interpolated linear function. thanks for making the graph.
There is a big problem/flaw here. This new flight model requires cpu on or is just unplayable. Make also a flight model for cpu off and all will be happy.
No, the thrusters for SVs were rebalanced for A10.6 really badly. I'm guessing that without CPU limits, you put on Jet-M, L XL or XXL thrusters onto your SV. Those big thrusters which look cool, so they're going to be used by anyone working without CPU, have between 7x and 15x their old thrust values. They were ridiculously powerful before, but now they're simply insane and as a result also apply thruster torque proportional to their thrust. Worse still, even with CPU on, you still can't use those thrusters. They're too expensive CPU-wise.
Still experimenting with designs, but liking this so far. Generally find I still like having at least one RCS on vessels though. Makes a big handling difference, especially for HV's.
I've made a small SV with only backwards thrust and I kind of like it. It's such a minimalist but functional design that I can see building it very early since its unlock level is 5 and it needs very few resources. Here's some feedback from flying it: Atmosphere... Flying around with only backwards thrust is possible and reasonably controllable, but it is not a flight simulator by any stretch. There's plenty of impossible things that are amusingly possible in game. I am not heart-broken by this, but it can be really counter-intuitive. Landing is quite awkward, but thankfully really forgiving. I can fly to near-orbit, go to zero thrust, and belly-flop onto land without any damage. I can nose-dive into my runway and suffer no damage. Any maneuver that puts my docking pads on the runway sticks the landing. In fact, I eventually discovered not having any landing gear made for a more natural landing. Oddly enough, I wish I could put a Ground Repulsor Engine or two on it so that I could taxi around a little. Space... Coming to a stop was impossible. It's a good craft for exploring so long as you're going to either return to the planet or ramming the orbital trading station's cargo bay and being content with however your ship stops.
Power the vessel off when in space and it instantly comes to a complete stop. For some reason this is intentional by the developers as well......
I suspect it's so that if you run out of fuel or your core, thrusters or generators get destroyed you can get out of your ship, which is impossible while the ship is moving due to a bad collision system. But they're planning on improving/replacing the collision system to allow walking around on moving ships and such in the future, so the days of stopping a ship by powering it off are numbered.
Except that they already had a much better solution. Before, when you powered off or ran out of fuel in space, it very slowly came to a stop. It made much more sense than insta stop. It was already in the game for years like that as well, then recently they changed it to instantly stop. It used to take kilometers for your ship to come to a complete stop when powered off in space and it made so much more sense.
Thruster torque calculation needs to be re-worked or explained better. Apparently, it's ruled by RNG now? Simple CV thruster placement test setup: One left facing thruster placed 20 blocks to front of ship yields +20 yaw. One left facing thruster placed 20 blocks to the rear of the ship yields +0 yaw. Hmmm. You would think the results would be the same, but nope. Let's switch that to one right facing thruster 20 blocks to the rear of the ship....wait, where'd that +19 yaw come from?! If you face it left you get nothing, but if you face it right you get +19. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One upward facing thrust placed 20 blocks to the front of the ship yields +17 pitch. One upward facing thruster placed 20 blocks to the rear of the ship. That should generate some pitch right?? Nah, not today. This is just one of many variations of this kind of test you can do to yield these type results. If anyone can explain this, please enlighten us. Things are feeling a little ridiculous at this point.
If you stick a single sideways-facing thruster it will only provide torque in one direction. Unless you've got Torque mode toggled, the basic statistics window can only display the torque in one direction, which isn't the direction you're using (e.g. a left-facing rear thruster will provide counter-clockwise torque but the basic window only displays clockwise torque). Hit the Torque (Details) toggle to change to Torque mode that will display every direction of torque being applied instead of just one. Prior to thruster torque, RCS provided equal torque in both directions so there was no need for a second set of torque statistics for the opposite direction.
This doesn't seem to be true. If it were, the picture I posted with one Up-facing thruster in the rear of the ship would show +Pitch but it reads 0, while showing +17 Pitch when placed at the front of the ship (counter-clockwise torque in relation to CoM). Which just further proves my reasoning for the post asking for a better explanation.
