This is one of the successful parts of ED that I like a lot. The ability to use planets as a giant space brake helps immensely because I don’t have to constantly adjust the throttle all the time. So long as I’m travelling at a reasonable speed, the planet does the rest of the work for me. On the flip side, if I want to maintain high speed, I simply stay away from planets.
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Yep. People want to have fun playing this game, and little fun will be had by new players struggling to micro-manage their warp throttle. Of course, and I keep advocating this, but could having the choice of basic and advanced controls be a possible solution? Games like War Thunder segregate this choice into separate lobbies to be fair to players of different calibre. If warp had basic and advanced controls, would that be unfair to players if people who could master advanced could gain an advantage over basic users?
I’m not sure what controls there are aside from throttle. There could be a risk/reward scenario where you can push harder into a gravity well, at the risk of hitting the atmosphere and instadeath. Segregation of modes simply segregates the players and I don’t think that is ideal.
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Absolutely. I was implying we don’t want that to happen.
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I’ll drop in a mention of the old warp prototype system as a point of contrast.
Warp is on all the time. You have a maximum speed based on how close you are to a planet. Your throttle determines how much of that maximum speed you want.
As Selbie says of the Elite:Dangerous system, if you want to travel between planets, stay away from other planets. If you want to arrive at a planet, you just fly right at it; your speed will adjust until you’re down into a conventional range. For an airless world, an approach requires little skill. For worlds with atmosphere, you need to be thinking about your approach speed because you can still damage your ship by plowing into the atmosphere at high speeds.
In the warp prototype, the warp system was a velocity-matching system. So the planets moved and your ship velocity was matched to the planet’s velocity as you approached. The same was done if you approached a station or another ship (or a fleet of ships). So you could intercept other ships and interact with them just as you could intercept a planet and fly along its surface.
I know that I would prefer a system that doesn’t require me to fiddle with modes just to move around the game world. That said, I know that Flavien has assumed thruster/warp/jump as the drive system from day one.
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Whatever we go with, if the aim is to preserve entry speed, that speed should be clearly visible on the HUD. Players need a visual cue to prepare for what their exit speed will be.
Part of the problem with the current build is the UI for warp is a little confusing.
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Same here, I’ve been an advocate of this system since the old forums and the prototype you made certainly seems to show it would work well. It seems much more intuitive to not have to deal with two distinct travel modes.
Having said that there was always the problem of other nearby ships blocking your ability to warp and I remember we had the idea of warp frequency matching to compensate for this. I wonder if in Battlescape it would work that only ships of opposing factions would block your ability to warp? In theory that seems a viable solution.
Of course this is all moot as Flavien seems to be set on a dual mode system and has probably got a certain amount of sunk investment in it.
I really like the idea of fix speeds in warp. No influence of planets!
I want to try this.
I always thought the influence of the planets is strange. IF there should be an influence it should be like this:
as long as you fly toward a planet you should become faster. If you fly away it you should become slower.
Thats how gravity works.
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If friendlies interfering with movement was a problem, then having a mode where friendlies don’t interfere would make sense. It would want to be modal so that friendlies could still fleet up in tight formations, recover interceptors to carriers and so on. As I’m mode-averse, I’d want to be very sure that friendly interference was a real problem.
To some degree, it could be considered a desirable feature. Certainly it’s a social engineering lever, encouraging players that are uninterested in interacting to stay well clear of each other. For example, stations would only get so busy before they became traffic jams that players want to avoid. As a result, they go find another station.
I’m pretty sure he has never deviated from the thruster/warp/jump trio.
If I wanted to give players a button to mash for more speed, then I’d give them a boost button. Limited in duration, but entirely appropriate for tactical use. It would be like water injection to a piston engine. Perhaps more familiar is nitrous oxide injection. Use it outside of its limits and you break the injection system - and possibly compromise your engine.
It would be a button, but it wouldn’t be modal. I’d know that it was on or off based on whether my finger was on the boost button.
In my opinion, that’s exactly the sort of experimentation that should be going on at this stage. Let people play with various control modes and movement systems so INS can know what people like and don’t like. It’ll also educated a lot of players who can then explain to others what happens in the various experiments.
Especially when it’s something as straightforward as manual warp speed management.
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Will there be an option for a traditional keyboard instead of the new Wheel interface?
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Something that occured to me about warp is that you could make the warp speed relative to the absolute speed. Say, you enter warp at 500m/s, your warp is whatever warp you’re at plus 500m/s, that fixes any weird issues with exiting warp and then suddenly re-accelerating to a much higher entrance speed. It also makes significant intuitive physical sense.
It’s great to see what progress has been made!
There’s one thing that was bugging me while watching the livestream: the lack of third-person camera delay. Currently the camera rotates exactly as fast as the ship, which results in a sort of visual disconnect between the environment and the ship. Delay in the rotation of the camera emphasises the movement of the ship relative to its environment and gives a more dynamic visual feel.
Here’s an example of third-person delay:
I’m pretty sure some players will absolutely hate such a feature. Just like FOV or mouse-sensitivity this could be an adjustable parameter.
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The one problem I have with gravity based warping is just time. Elite feels like a grind because it takes so long to get to the planet or system you are traveling to because the game says so. It’s not like your ship has a warp max limit it’s feel arbitrary. Especially when a space station and massive star have the same warp deceleration feeling.
After the first 10 times of warping around most I feel would get over system and just want to get into the action and gameplay.
To avoid the micromanaging of warp speeds you could easily implement a autopilot system. It will drop you out where you need to go. Skilled pilots could time it right to drop out closer to the action with a manual override.
Well for long-distance travelling, there’s going to be a jump drive, eventually. The current warp drive is only supposed to be used to go faster from planet to nearby points of interests / moons. Not to planets at the other end of the solar system 
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Oh ok that works.
I hope warp doesn’t become too sluggish like elite still.
Have you considered the use of a FTL warp drive instead of a jump drive (assuming your idea of a jump drive is teleportation)? I feel that it would open up possibilities for gameplay and add to the feeling of seamlessness.
Sorry Flavien, I asked a couple of times before but no answer as yet - will there be a traditional keyboard option available?Not too keen on the wheel interface. 
Maybe that would come with the key binding system? Or at least have an option to press once for the dial, then press a key for each segment of the dial.
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Really most Funktions should be bindable with the wheel being a (really good, by the way) way to cut down on keyboard clutter. Some funktions that aren’t needed in hectic situations like lights or power down don’t need to be bound by default but still be bindable if one wishes too.
Warp should definetly be bindable.
Maybe even allow configuration of the wheel to add/remove items for faster selection (less segments, less precission needed)
I think some functions are still/allready bindable in the xml.
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Thanks selbie and Lomsor. I ask because I use dual sticks so bindable keys are a must. Sounds like it will still be possible. 
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