What control scheme are you using?
X52 Pro (HOTAS)
Works great for me.
Apart from the nerfed yaw, what annoys me is the all or nothing flight assist.
Iâd like to be able to cut my main engines and continue drifting with my current velocity vector, however Iâd like my computer to cancel out rotational inputs. Currently you canât do this.
With flight assist on, as soon as you change your heading the main drives will adjust your velocity vector to match your new heading - ie âAeroplanes in spaceâ mode.
With flight assist off your velocity is left alone but rotational inputs (pitch/yaw/roll) have to be manually cancelled out.
There is no situation or control scheme that this is useful for.
In addition, mouse input A is not cancelled out by the equal and opposite mouse input B. Always a bit more is required. (No there is not mouse acceleration and yes I personally use a joystick.)
Iâd just like to see the functionality of the space bar in the Infinity Combat Prototype (and Q in Tachyon: The Fringe) - toggle the auto-correction of non-rotational velocity only.
Having a less powerful yaw actually makes a lot of sense from a gameplay perspective. Yes, itâs not ârealisticâ, but none of the developers have claimed that.
Why better for gameplay then?
Well, if yaw/pitch and roll is EQUALLY strong then roll losses all propose. Why would you ever roll in a combat situation if that was the case? That would just take time without moving you out of the line of fire or helping to line up your shoot. You would just be spinning around your ship along a path without any tactical gain. If an enemy appeared to your lower right there would be no point in first rolling your ship right and then pitching up, instead you would just use pitch and yaw to put the enemy into your sight. Much faster and without causing disorientation, right? Trying to avoid fireâŚthe same thing.
Since roll becomes useless in the scenario above in combat you only have pitch and yaw left. In other words 1/3 of your possible combat maneuvers that changes the orientation of your ship has just been made obsolete which means less variation in combat. Combat then simply becomes a matter of keeping track of your target and lining up your sight accordingly in the same way you would do in a turret. Some of the sense of flying would be lost in this scenario IMO. This might be more ârealisticâ, that is true, but there is a reason why pitch and roll always is used in every movie ever when showing of flight of any kind no matter if it is in space, in the air or just plain supernatural for that matter. How does Superman fly. Pitch&Roll or Pitch&Yaw. There is no real reason why he is pitching and rolling while flying. It would just look plain weird if he didnât to most people. 
Now letâs see what happens when the yaw rate is slowed compared to pitch and roll.
Suddenly Pitch, Yaw AND Roll serves a purpose.
Pitch will turn the ship.
Roll will choose where to turn.
Yaw still is extremely helpful when fine tuning your sights/orientation.
Yaw is no longer a real alternative when trying to shake someone. Instead you first have to roll and then pitch up or down to try to shake the enemy. This actually adds another level of gameplay because now the enemy (or you) needs to keep track of how the other ship is rolling so that they can anticipate your move and then quickly counter that and follow you. Personally I think a lot of newcomers to ED donât think about this and that is why they suddenly find themselves outmaneuvered. That and using lateral thrusters coupled with a little bit of non assisted flight here and thereâŚthat makes all the difference.
As for the âflight assist offââŚwell it IS called âflight assist OFFâ after all. It actually does exactly what it says âon the canâ. Something that canât be said for pretty much every other game out there that actually still assists the pilot by dampening the movements.
So yes, other games have dampening, but that doesnât mean ED have to. Personally I really enjoy the fact that there are no dampening at all (actually there is a tiny bit of dampening added in the last couple of builds, but not much). I still find it useful in combat as a way to mix up your maneuvers. Itâs also pretty useful when using the stealth mechanic. Speed up, turn off flight assist, power down engines and just coast will quickly drop your temperature/signature. Is it more difficult to use than âother gamesâ? Yes, but since ED is a game centered around player skill I donât really see an issue here. There are certainly some ED players out there who have mastered it and can pull of some amazing bit of flying in that mode. 
BTWâŚsince Iâm already here.
Planetary landing concept from the latest ED newsletter:
(HmmâŚnot allowed to post imagesâŚ)
Full res image can be seen here
Planetary landings concept
Newsletter can be found here:
Newsletter 32
I donât know⌠honestly, Iâm thinking about buying E:D when itâs out depending on what I hear about the finished product, but those two would make me reconsider.
Note that I prefer playing this kind of game with mouse/keyboard.
Unequal pitch and yaw always felt like an unnecessary restriction in âno up/downâ flight sims. Sure, it adds more tactical elements to the flight, but it also feels like making flying clumsier, with the game metaphorically slapping you while whispering at your ear âNope, you canât do thatâ.
So, sure, roll isnât used much then, only to better orient oneself spatially. But itâs not needed.
More problematic is the all-or-nothing flight help. Probably ever since experiencing the ICP, Iâve always felt that the flight help is to be kept away from the fight, or it feels downright crippling. Thatâs actually the reason I couldnât finish Diaspora, because sure, you can strafe like a Newtonian bullet - but then you canât use your main engine at all (or at least, Iâve never found how).
Flight help is for thing like docking, flying close to something or anything low-threat where precision is more important than performances.
OTOH, rotation help is vital as soon as I donât use auto-tracking weapons (like the starfighterâs main guns). Here, there is only a small performance loss as you are moving the pointer to its wanted position - which takes only a fraction of second (finer adjustments may take longer, but are of little importance on the whole movementâs performance). Even more, the shipâs angular acceleration is generally higher enough than whatâs needed that it wonât make much of a difference anyway - but precision is far, far more important.
Note that having additional commands to override angular movement may be necessary - sometimes, you may just want to turn as fast as possible and send one salvo at whatever is behind you, without even slowing the angular movement down while firing.
It may also be better if the turn assist is smart enough to evaluate the movement of the pointer itself in addition to its position : if you are tracking a moving target, it would try to match the corresponding angular speed, not reach each point at an immobile state. Otherwise, it may simply be compensated by leading further from the target, but better have a more efficient system to begin with.
So if both are shut down together, I have to choose between flying like a drowned brick and firing like an imperial stormtrooper. Not very enticing.
Good luck with that waterfall and river Mr Braben!
Edit: Loving their new web site design (in terms of eye candy): http://elite.frontier.co.uk/
Maybe by the time they start working on it, processors will have had some mystical jump in processing power.
True. Instant space feeling ⌠or whatever to call that.
Waterfalls and rivers have been done in games for a long time. I donât really expect them to simulate the actual water flow, do you?
Yeah⌠just waiting for their forum to catch up: forums.frontier.co.uk
I agree. Itâs the cheap difficulty vs authentic difficulty comparison.
Artificially restricting the playersâ movement makes it harder but reduces rather than increases gameplay depth.
The arguments against fast and equal P/Y/R are that dogfights would just become jousting & turreting - Jousting & turreting are low skill maneuvers therefore a system that precludes them inherently requires more skill.
The fact that people canât see the fallacy of this argument means I donât even bother trying to debate it.
Hand crafted rivers and waterfalls.
The problem is how to create rivers and waterfalls procedurally in real time.
Several community members experienced in procedural generation technology have talked about how difficult it is to create rivers that look realistic in real time. Some managed to do it up close but as soon as it came to continental scale it broke up pretty rapidly. (As in it took to much processing time)
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I wonder how long it would take to generate a planetâs high-level water flow map if you were using a (smallish, dedicated) supercomputer for it? Ye know, just enough detail that an adaptation of those up close algorithms can do the rest.
Isnât precomputing a map incompatible with real time procedural generation?
I believe the problem is that given any point on a planet the algorithm needs to say if there is a river there or not without generating the rest of the planet to find out. But whether or not a river passes through a point depends on the terrain upstream.
Additionally, the generated river needs to be consistent for all terrain levels of detail. At a low LOD a river might flow one way, but a higher LOD may change the terrain in such a way that the river ends up taking an entirely different path.
Tricky.
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Iâm still certain that it would be possible by first generating a river flow, and then generating lands adapted to them.
But thatâs because I have only a passing comprehension of procedural techniques and fall prey from the Dunning-Kruger effectâŚ
[quote=âhrobertson, post:91, topic:227â]The fact that people canât see the fallacy of this argument means I donât even bother trying to debate it.
[/quote]
Or in fact try it.
One thing Iâve always read from experienced Newtonian pilots (from Elite/Frontier/Pioneer, the ICP or Allegiance) is that jousting is actually a beginnerâs mistake, when both pilots are throwing themselves at each-other without realizing that they must also slow down yet.
Truth to be told, while in the ICP orbiting felt natural and I donât remember jousting much, in Pioneer (the open-source Frontier remake), the not-that-bright AI and clumsy old-school UI and controls made it far more difficult.
Also, there is always the Allegiance solution : some ships (here, one of the many factions) have twice more pitch than yaw (or the opposite?) so those who prefer that can use them. But most ships donât, and Allegianceâs difficulty cliff still competes with the one of Dwarf Fortress.
Hmm, Iâm still mulling over getting Elite. Apparently Iâd have to buy it before July 29th to get the âseason passâ (I know theyâre not calling it that), but that means overall itâd cost ÂŁ85.
Is it worth the price atm?
In their 10th Newsletter from a year ago they described the tool they have for generating planets. (Worth a read.)
http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=ee59a3bb5e&e=9da7701463
One of the many maps that is created for planets is specifically rivers and lakes. This is of course probably a kind of âoverviewâ map that only really works on planetary scale, but Iâm guessing that that map then can be used as a âseedâ for more detailed surface features. The closer you get to the planet (when that later is possible) the more detail is added based on that âroughâ overview.
Some parts like waterfalls could be modular pre-fabs that then get placed according to PG rulesets where it makes sense. For example, the river going over a cliff.
This is of course just me speculating and Iâll guess weâll just have to wait and see how they choose to approach it.
Well, that entirely depends on if you have faith in their ability to deliver the expansions or not to the level you are hoping for.
I doâŚI even went for Alpha back in December last year and I havenât regretted it for a second. But then the game has pretty much ticked of every box I personally hoped for so far and there is still a lot more to come before the first release later this year.
At the moment it is very much a âtesting environmentâ more than a real game, but I still play it way more than any of the fully released games I have (damn Steam sales!!!). So I guess that is saying somethingâŚ
For me it is most definitively worth it, but Iâve waited for this game for 20 years so Iâm not really what you would call âobjectiveâ. 
Since I donât know what your preferences are I canât really answer that questionâŚnor can anyone else really. Youâll just have to make a decision.
I bought standard beta (ÂŁ50) in the Kickstarter and then just the other day got the expansion access (ÂŁ35).
Currently we only have about 10 single player scenarios but I think itâll be worth it. I consider it an investment in Braben and the studio, not just a transaction for a game.
As hrobertson says, the expansion pass only really makes sense if you view it as a type of crowd funding for future expansions of the game. Viewing it as a purchase is a gamble as there is no way of knowing how many expansions will come out or how much they will cost.
Buy the expansion pack if you want to support the development game financially and potentially be rewarded by saving money in the long term.
Do not buy the expansion pack if you want to decide upon the merits of each expansion for you on an individual basis.
And in speculating Iâm sure you can see why I wished Mr Braben some good fortune in tackling the problem.
The surface area of the Earth is 510 million square kilometers, thatâs 510 trillion square meters, imagine the resolution the ârivers and lakesâ map would need to be in order to record the river shown in the concept art that is at most five meters wide.
As you say, they will probably need have to have multiple layers of river maps with the overview levels feeding in as seeds to the lower levels. Thatâs much more easily said than done however and is going to be a very big technical challenge. Itâs something that Flavien, who is an expert on planetary procedural generation, said was probably impossible with current consumer computer hardware.