I’ve watched a few clips of gameplay as well as the kickstarter trailer, and the first thing that jumped at me was actual deceleration burns. Going full burn on a vector then having to flip 180° and full burn to decelerate is how actual space flight would have to work unless all your maneuvering thrusters were just as powerful as the main drive.
A lot of space sims seem to miss this make or break space sim experience and I’m so excited to see that it is implemented in your game. Have you played with any orbiting mechanics and gravity, like setting staging zones at Lagrangian points in your capital ship? That’s another mechanic I’ve always felt was glossed over in other space sims.
Regardless, from what I’ve seen, read, and heard so far, this game is definitely staying on my radar!
I have no doubt better techniques will evil once we get a solid player base. Scott Manley seemed to make more of an attempt to slow down before engaging than others. I think that would likely be my style as well to get on the other player’s tail…
Also. At the moment people just try to kill each other. If they want to go somewhere to execute an action, a fight would be a hindrance and they would try to not get distracted by it and try to hold the course, allowing for the attacker the chance to realize that merging would be more effective, as merging will be easier with the target not changing its course.
I haven’t had many dogfights in space, but in open space fighting generally becomes a bit of a circle strafe even if you merge because of the decoupled nature of the flight controls. You cannot get on your target’s tail because they will just turn around and shoot you. If a ship tries to joust it is usually a good idea (if you believe you have better aim than your opponent) to fly backwards whilst still laying down fire on their flight path.
These are simple mechanics that were tested in the original ICP and, in my opinion, are just as much fun as the artificially restricted circling fights of Elite Dangerous.
Near a planet’s surface I can see the fights becoming much more tactical. If a ship get’s on your tail there, you can still fly backwards but you have to be really careful about your altitude. If you’re fighting against a ship on a reverse vector then one good tactic will be to get above them and push their vector down towards the ground hoping for a collision.
I’m pretty excited about the dogfighting combat in Battlescape.
That’s what I’m predicting. So many people just keep their ships pointed at the leading reticule, so when two dogfighting ships are doing that they will naturally end up circling or jousting each other. The ones who will have the advantage are those who consider the trajectories of the enemy ships and avoid keeping their ship pointed at the target until they’re ready to fire.
Regarding the full burn deceleration, how does the Hellion handle when turning around with flight assist off? I find it awkward to handle a ship with FA off in Elite: Dangerous as every movement of the mouse results in several more movements as the thrusters start counteracting each other. In other words, I’m trying to use an analog input for a digital system. Naturally when you’re dealing with Newtonian physics, if you want to flip around, just press a button to pitch up and then press a button to pitch down again, which is difficult when your mouse is tying to move you in every direction at once.
Flight computer modes for interception and vector matching look like they do a crazy good job of making fully Newtonian combat viable already. The fact they double up as fleet formation tools is beautiful.
From what I’ve heard from a bunch of people with the prototype is that the yaw, pitch and roll correction doesn’t get turned off with the flight assistance.
Why they do in Elite: Dangerous, or why there isn’t a flight assist lite that only turns off the strafe correction, always confused the hell out of me.
Sounds like a sensible compromise, at least for those using keyboard and mouse. I imagine fully unassisted movement might be easier with a gamepad (even though the sticks are analog, the directions are distinct) or more advanced setups.
Well it’s still just a prototype, and there’s already a bunch of different modes of operation for the flight assistance already. I’d be happy to support an ‘all off’ mode so long as attitude assistance could be kept.
*I guess Elite: Dangerous has a little less of a problem with leaving you out to dry on the attitude front than Battlescape would. The turning speeds are much slower in it.
Now there’s a thought. If there was an ‘unassisted attitude’ option for the flight computer, with the need to spend time correcting it after spinning up, would turning speeds be uncapped?
It comes down to whether or not turning the assist off is actually useful. Veterens to 6dof space combat will know that turning translation assist off is extremely useful, even vital to dogfighting in space. However there is really never any reason to turn off attitude assist. Which makes the entire flight mode in ED an exercise in pointlessness, rather than anything useful.
It feels like Frontier were dead-set against ‘flight assist off’ from the beginning and didn’t want it being used in combat. Got included thanks to how much it was asked to be included, but butchered at the design stage (And later nerfed AGAIN before launch) to stop it turning the gameplay away from where the devs wanted it.
Fair enough I suppose. That’s just how they wanted their game to play.