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[Vakuza]

So currently it can get rather confusing for me when attempting to strafe, if you're upside down left strafe actually sends you to the right of the screen which makes sense but is rather hard to follow so here is my suggestion:

Lock the orientation of the ship with the camera so the ship never turns or moves on your screen, only the surroundings.

That way it feels more like piloting the ship, and there is the added bonus of not losing your ship in convoluted fights since it'll never move.

[Midnight Kitsune]

+10 to this if possible! I can't BEGIN to count how many times this has screwed me

[Gothars]

This was actually tested by Alex. Was apparently extremely disorienting.

[Auraknight]

Any chance we could get this as a mod then?
if Alex tried, and discarded it, I wouldn't imagine it'd be too terribly difficult to re-implement.

[Sundog]

The lack of this option was my single biggest gripe with starfarer when I first played it. After a while I just got used to the fixed camera angle, but I still try to avoid facing downward whenever possible.

I don't think a mod like this would've been possible in 0.6.2 without also rotating the UI, but Alex just added a bunch of camera control features to the API that might make it possible now. I'll see what I can do.

[Vakuza]

This was actually tested by Alex. Was apparently extremely disorienting.

It would have been nice if he still kept it in, some of us might find it preferable. Not including some things because of a personal preference when it could be included as an option seems rather silly in my opinion. Unless barely anyone uses the option it's probably worth including it.

[Alex]

The amount of work required to "test" something is considerably less than the work to make it a useful player-facing feature. There were some implementation issues left to overcome by the time it was clear that it was (subjectively, of course) really terrible. We're talking nausea-inducing. It'd work much better in a 3-d "top down, but with a camera tilted forward a bit" setup - otherwise, there's no horizon to focus on, things near the edge of the screen move extremely quickly when you turn, and it just doesn't work.

So, yeah, while this is of course subjective, I think the reasons why it's bad in this particular case are pretty solid and would apply to a lot of people that currently think it's a good idea. I mean, I was one of those myself, enough to try it

[Vakuza]

The amount of work required to "test" something is considerably less than the work to make it a useful player-facing feature. There were some implementation issues left to overcome by the time it was clear that it was (subjectively, of course) really terrible. We're talking nausea-inducing. It'd work much better in a 3-d "top down, but with a camera tilted forward a bit" setup - otherwise, there's no horizon to focus on, things near the edge of the screen move extremely quickly when you turn, and it just doesn't work.

So, yeah, while this is of course subjective, I think the reasons why it's bad in this particular case are pretty solid and would apply to a lot of people that currently think it's a good idea. I mean, I was one of those myself, enough to try it

So what is the alternative? Currently the ship control is just not good enough as it is, you can easily lose track of which direction you're moving or even where your ship is. There should be a better way to control the flagship, WASD and QE is just too much when you have to micro manage the camera, weapons, flux and the rest of your fleet since it requires you to hold down the buttons.

How about having a visible velocity vector, which A & D rotate it left / right respectively, W & S increase / decrease the size of the vector and Q & E rotate the ship itself or something along those lines. That way you can strafe fairly easy with little micromanagement spent on movement alone, you could also have a setting to have a vector perpendicular to the target and so on. Might want to switch a few of the controls around but what do you think?

[Gothars]

How long are you playing, if I may ask? I had trouble at first too, but after a day or so the reversed controls became quite easy to handle.

To determine your movement vector and speed, it's very helpful to look at the floating bits of dust everywhere on the battlefield. They are static and offer a good orientation point.

Uiing the pause function helps, too.

[Vakuza]

How long are you playing, if I may ask? I had trouble at first too, but after a day or so the reversed controls became quite easy to handle.

To determine your movement vector and speed, it's very helpful to look at the floating bits of dust everywhere on the battlefield. They are static and offer a good orientation point.

Uiing the pause function helps, too.

It's not the reversed controls that make it hard, it's using weapons and moving simultaneously since you have to hold down the key until you're floating in the direction you want which means you can't really fire the non auto weapons too well. I find that with small ships it's hard because you usually overshoot with the rotation, and with the larger ships it's the time it takes to spin. The thing that would make it easier to control is where you want the vectors to be, and the game tries to move to those vectors as quick as possible. With the fancy weapon overlay it would be nice to see the vectors involved too, if I recall correctly there was a video which had them
showing to display some sort of AI which avoids missiles.

I also prefer to not use the pause as it makes the game significantly less fun, it's less of the heat of the moment and more strategic at that point.

Theres also some trouble with large ships and not having enough zoom space since your weapon range starts to become rather long, and you can't snipe without panning the camera somewhat which in turn screws up your navigation ability.

I've had starfarer for around 2 years now, and been playing it on and off but I've always had trouble with this.

[Alex]

Quick question: are you aware that while you're holding down shift, the ship will rotate to face the mouse cursor, and A/D will strafe instead of turn? Your comment about small ships overshooting their turns made me wonder, and this is an essential part of piloting small ships effectively.

[Vakuza]

Quick question: are you aware that while you're holding down shift, the ship will rotate to face the mouse cursor, and A/D will strafe instead of turn? Your comment about small ships overshooting their turns made me wonder, and this is an essential part of piloting small ships effectively.

I was not aware of this, interesting, I'll have to try that but having shift toggle it might work better if you're going to use it most of the time when piloting small ships. However again the same problem arises for large ships, you have to hold down the A / D keys so that means toggling through weapons is more awkward and you should be spending more time firing off the flux expensive weapons at the right moment than trying to move your ship to a better position. I feel like with the strategic aspect to this game you shouldn't have to hold down any keys to do what you want, and setting your movement and orientation vectors makes sense from a commanders PoV rather than shouting "turn right, turn right, ..." to the helmsman.

EDIT: Just tried out the holding shift thing, and my god it works amazingly. I feel like you should be able to target something rather than have it follow your mouse especially since holding shift is a little awkward for the little finger.

[Sundog]

After a quick test it looks like this feature can't be modded in, but I might be overlooking possibilities. Even if it had worked there would be disorienting issues with a mod like that (retreat direction, tactical map), since Starsector is designed around an absolute rotational perspective.

Details about my test for anyone interested:

Spoiler

I tried calling GL11.glRotatef() in EveryFrameCombatPlugin.renderInWorldCoords() and EveryFrameCombatPlugin.advance() to no effect. Starsector probably resets the transformation matrix after these methods and before rendering, which makes sense. I didn't see anything in the API that might provide a way to rotate the view or an entry point to force rotation via glRotate.

[close]

[Vakuza]

After a quick test it looks like this feature can't be modded in, but I might be overlooking possibilities. Even if it had worked there would be disorienting issues with a mod like that (retreat direction, tactical map), since Starsector is designed around an absolute rotational perspective.

Details about my test for anyone interested:

Spoiler

I tried calling GL11.glRotatef() in EveryFrameCombatPlugin.renderInWorldCoords() and EveryFrameCombatPlugin.advance() to no effect. Starsector probably resets the transformation matrix after these methods and before rendering, which makes sense. I didn't see anything in the API that might provide a way to rotate the view or an entry point to force rotation via glRotate.

[close]

That's unfortunate, but I guess after what Alex said does make sense. Instead I think the better approach would be to create a different piloting system as the current one requires too much key holding. The shift one that was mentioned is pretty good aside from having to hold down shift, and that you can't target something to the side of your ship without turning.

The problem I'm having is to do with ease of use and frequency of use, sometimes I end up holding down a key too much and thus overshoot and since I'm holding down keys that means switching between weapons is rather difficult.

[Alex]

(FYI: you can rebind shift to be another key, if you like. There's also an option in settings to invert the behavior of shift, meaning it'd always turn to cursor, except when holding that key.)

Aside from that, I think a lot of this just comes down to learning how to use the controls - it'll just come with a bit more time. The stuff you're suggesting about a different piloting scheme is basically a different game. I also doubt it'd be any easier to use initially and would also require some time investment to get good with; pretty much any control system that allows for an element of skill does. There'd probably be other issues, too - a lot of ideas look great from a distance, until you start to actually implement them and get into the details

There's is a difference between tactical skill and skill to execute the tactics, but I don't feel like the "execution tax" is particularly high here, and it's not artificial the way it is in a game such as, say, Street Fighter. That's a whole other can of worms, though!