Woah now slow down there bud, we’ve detected a major case of Feature Creaperitus, now this condition can be treated with an ointment I like to call, “Extract o’reality checkish bro” which usually improves the infected area and prevents budget drainage.
That all sounds awesome though, but not something we’d add anytime soon.
I understand. Never go full Creaperitus retard.
I’ll stick with just the Back-To-Reality complex of the various volumetric clouds idea.
Will there be a traditional key/binding option instead of new Wheel interface?
Some random feedback: I notice when in atmosphere, main thruster effects dont continue to trigger if you’re maintaining a forward velocity. this makes sense in space, not so much when there’s air resist.
This actually makes the game crash for me(when clicking play in the launcher), oddly enough.
There a way to change these bindings without making the launcher angry at me?
edit: hrobertson figured it out, don’t copy and paste direcitonal quotation marks into xml, it goes badly!
That’s odd. I’m not sure why it would upset the game launcher. Small error in syntax maybe? A space where there shouldn’t be one?
Have you tried undoing it back to the original and see if it works again?
My initial thoughts:
I know you’re in the middle of rewriting the aerodynamics code, but in this build drag seems very weird - when parallel to the ground, stationary, FA off, the ship accelerates downward very slowly. If you rotate to point straight up or down it accelerates much much faster. The terminal velocity should be lower when the large side is into the airflow, but not the initial acceleration from 0 - that should be the same.
New mouse-joystick control scheme seems like a good addition but I spent the whole time using thruster control.
As discussed in Update 67, I’d really like to have an option for a ‘desired heading’ control scheme. The desired heading input would be absolute rather than relative to the aim point. This would mean you’d move the desired heading point and the ship would rotate to point that direction, then stop rotating. (50/50 accelerate/decelerate)
Warp doesn’t feel good to me - Acceleration is slow but you can drop out of warp at any time and instantly drop back to your original velocity. This disparity between entering and exiting warp, along with the fact that you can be ‘in warp’ and still only travelling a few hundred m/s, means that warp feels a bit meh.
I think warp should feel more distinct. Maybe entering warp rapidly accelerates the ship to 10 times the original speed and while in warp, you can’t decelerate below that speed, and while in warp acceleration is more linear than it is at the moment.
More often than not, diametrically opposed thrusters fire at the same time.
Did you copy paste from @thelazyjaguar? Because those double quotation marks are directional which is invalid. You want straight ones:
<Input Event="ToggleAutoAssist" Keys="Space" />I concur that warp doesn’t feel great in this build. I really liked the peril of maintaining the speed you were warping at exit. I also acknowledge that Flavien said he wants speed outside warp to be maintained.
An alternative suggestion:
I believe the second suggestion still holds to what @INovaeFlavien wants from warp, but is a little more streamlined than what we currently have. Would require some minor UI changes though.
I second your comment on warp. I am often confused whether I am in warp or not, and I sometimes drop out of warp for apparently no reason (mostly with the corvette). The exit speed seems a bit random too, I am not sure whether it is a new issue or not.
Also, I like the new mouse control scheme (I can’t stand the direct control one), but I want controller support back ASAP.
The warp exit speed is your entry speed.
And further to hrobertson’s answer, if your warp speed drops below your entry speed, you exit warp. So, if you enter warp at a high speed, but warp is still set below that from when you last exited it, you’ll almost immediately drop back out again.
I like your suggestion and after thinking about it, I think I agree that players don’t really need control over their speed while at warp.
I would suggest a higher minimum entry speed (500m/s) and a higher minimum multiplier (10).
Yeah I did just pick those numbers pretty arbitrarily. They would need adjusting for play-value.
And yes, there’s a possibility the warp multiplier could be completely automatic. Maybe it could be boosted/restricted a little as well by the player.
This way, it places importance on your entry speed (and preserves it for exit) but still keeps a certain amount of control within warp.
More experienced players would get better at managing faster warps.
I would like to have warp behave differently. It would be cool to have to ability to start warp even when not moving and just immediately jump to a speed of about 2km/s or something like that.
For exiting warp it would be awesome to be able to decellerate to 600m/s and then exiting warp automatically and the other way to exit warp would be a hard stop, where you can exit warp immediately and stop in place. Like it was suggested in the kickstarter when the attack happened and the enemy ships appeared in front of the station.
I also would like the option back to assign a key to the warp function, the radial menus are very cool btw.
The old warp control event still exist, and you can still assign a key to it.
@INovaeFlavien It would be nice to have a list of all exisiting control events in the input mapping readme.
My two cents:
Entering/Exiting Warp:
I like that the exit speed is the same as the speed when entering because it gives me some tactical capability.
With this mechanic you can plan a fly-by attack on a station or cap-ship for example. I also think entering warp should be possible at speed zero.
Warp itself:
I agree that when entering warp it feels to slow (no real difference at first). I think I would prefer fixed warp speeds (Star Trek style).
Something like this:
Warp 1 = 1km/s
Warp 2 = 10km/s
Warp 3 = 100km/s
Warp 4 = 1,000km/s
Warp 5 = 10,000km/s
Warp 6 = 100,000km/s
(1,2,3,4,5,6 on the keyboard)
If you know how fast the warp levels are, you can precisely choose the best one for your destination.
Example 1:
Station is 300km away, I know the Warp 3 is 100km/s so I choose it to arrive in 3 seconds.
Example 2:
Target Moon is 300k kilometer away, so I choose Warp 5 to go there in 30 seconds or Warp 6 to go there in 3 seconds.
Warp level changes should be near instant.
Fixed warp speeds would also allow a team to arrive nearly at the same time.
“Warp 4 to arcadia station on my mark”
Optional hints could then be added to target markers to help beginners judge distances and travel time:
Arcadia Stn
432 km (~4s Warp3)
Rethe Prime
103k km (~10s Warp5)
That seems like a good way to cut down on travel times. What I wondered was that if travel times take too long it would probably disrupt the game experience somewhat I imagine. At least when the destination is relatively close but getting there takes longer than a minute it could make a battle quite tedious if no mobile spawn carrier is available or survives long enough to offer a spawn point.
Not exelerating longer like right now and then decelerating again for arrival could save some time.
@TARS that would be some very sudden changes in velocity. Not sure it would feel good or natural, but I agree it might be easier & faster to navigate somewhere and to coordinate. The current warp is still a heavy WIP and not correctly tuned btw, so there is room for improvements and experimentation. Need more feedback from everybody on all these ideas.
I personally feel like the minimum warp speed should be significantly higher. When warp is engaged, it shouldn’t just accelerate from your current velocity, or rather the acceleration to minimum warp speed should be very rapid. I’m sure we’d all love warp to feel like it does on TV and in movies where the ship will effectively appear and disappear almost instantly. Of course we are still dealing with sub-light speeds here, so I’m not talking about the Falcon making the jump to light speed, but some visual effect to make the transition more immersive would be nice.
I mentioned earlier about warp in atmosphere, and while I like the air speed mechanic (death by hard re-entry was very satisfying), once you get your ship down there it’s almost like cheating as you can weave in and out of canyons effortlessly without worrying about aerodynamic forces. I think when transitioning to atmospheric flight, some internal mechanism should essentially switch flight modes; disengaging warp and engaging aerodynamic flight where applicable. This could also be a manual switch, which I usually prefer, but having the choice of manual or automatic is always better.
I’ve not yet had a chance to try this in larger ships, and I’m not sure if the properties of each atmosphere modify this behaviour.
May as well pitch in my 2c 
I like the idea of a warp minimum (say 10km/s, gotta be punchy, it’s warp!)
With warp levels see TARS comment/startrek, (though maybe advanced players can manually adjust)
I also like entry=exit speed on entering/leaving warp when back in sub-light. If you enter warp at 0 you exit into 0m/s. Enter at 1km/s leave at 1km/s. (When you enter into warp mode you must be at least 10km/s or min speed instantly.)
On the topic of dynamic warp speeds around gravitational bodies: I’ve never really been a fan of them. It seems like a random restriction “just because” (if it’s an engine limitation I can understand, that is fair enough.)
You should be able to zip past a planet at warp 6 and pop out into 0m/s just above the atmosphere if you time it right (or have some nav computer upgrade perhaps) instead of spending 10 minutes watching your max speed slowly go down as you get closer to a celestial body.
I second the near instant warp speed changes too.
Gameplay wise, some rough ideas: warp should probably take longer to power up and activate to stop people just popping in and out to another planet instantly and you should have a way to detect if other plays are powering up a warp drive.
On the SFX side, anyone seen Dark Matter? The way the ships jump in and out of warp are so cool, something like that would be a treat.
I agree with you except the gravitational influence of planets on the warp drive must remain. I think without it it would be very hard to approach a planet without colliding and dying.