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Flying a capital ship (controls)

#1
EDIT: This was (in spirit) implemented in the 1.1 Prototype

Thursday, March 14, 2013
JoshParnell wrote:Interestingly, although I keep saying that the player can own and fly any kind of ship, I've never actually tried piloting a capital ship before...weird :| Today I did that, and made the necessary adjustments to bring it back into balance and make sure that piloting a battleship is hard but not painfully so. It's quite fun, being massive and all :) But it turns out I had to cheat the physics just a wee bit, because, in reality, piloting a battleship is truly painful, at least according to the equation for the moment of inertia of a block. But I've found a good compromise that makes steering one of these beasts challenging but still fun.
One thing that irks me in X3 is that capital ships use the "fighter" flight model and control scheme. Just with reduced turning rates.

I actually created this as an X3 script. It's not perfect because the engine was never meant to do such a thing but I mostly did it to explain what I meant when I suggested this for Rebirth.
The best explanation is being able to do it ingame. =)
I copied the script description with minor alterations...
... and then I dumped a lot of it because I found something better. (which was in post #3)

So I edited the first post.



What is this?

A method to control your own ship's course. A combination of the classic follow-the-cursor and mouselook.

Know the situation?
You are driving a capital ship and decide to do a 90° turn.
A simple enough action, but in X3:TC you either have to...
- manually hold the controller in one position for a looong time - during which you can do absolutely nothing else
- program an autopilot course change on the sector map in 3 dimensions.

Neither is fun nor very rewarding. It gets really nasty if you want to order "simple course changes" like that for multiple ships.
You'd need 6 arms for that.


The real problem is that in Cursor-Following, the view angle is stuck to the ship's orientation.
If the ship turns slowly, I'm stuck with it for a long time.


What to do?

Get it un-stuck.
  • Assume that you hold the RMB to enter "steering mode".
    Double-click to lock if you don't want to keep pressing the stupid button.
  • While in steering mode, you have mouselook like in [insert any FPS].
  • Your ship does not steer as fast as you can change your view.
    The ship's nose is simply lagging behind but it will align with your view... eventually.
  • You can control course and rotation with the "normal" controls without having to "program" anything.
  • Add another qualifier key and you also have Free Look without steering. Awesome for situational awareness.
    Actually, it doesn't require another key. Could be something as simple as...
    • RMB 1 click: Toggle Free Look mode on/off.
    • RMB Hold: temporary steering mode
    • RMB Double-Click: Enter permanent steering mode - no need to hold the button (which would get uncomfortable after a while)
    • RMB 1 click: Doubles as off-switch when you're in Free Look or Steering modes.
      You get your mouse pointer back and can operate menus normally.
  • You could still have "fixed guns" on a fighter.
    This particular HUD element would turn with the ship. Basically a circle in which the forward guns can be cursor-fired.
  • Now this is really personal preference but ideally the movement of the aim / view would be crisp and instantaneous (making guns with high turning speed useful!) instead of the scroll speed being determined by the distance between pointer and middle of the screen.
    Basically "free" mouselook instead of follow-the cursor steering... but with a twist so it's more of a ship-following-aim control.
Now is this an elegant solution or what? =)


PS: Vehicles in Borderlands use a similar control method.
You can mouselook / aim south without any delay. The vehicle will then try it's best to align to a southern heading. As easy as walking.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
Post

Re: Flying a capital ship (controls)

#2
I think that has potential.

Another alternative is to do a 3D version of what some nautical sims do - just set a new orientation using the standard nav display.

This could by done by having a polar coordinate style display, showing your current orientation in one colour. If needed, the two angles could be displayed (degrees or radians) much like on a mathematical diagram. A second colour is used to diplay your desired orientation. You alter this via a 2-stage mouse drag, or use 2 joystick axes. Once set, then hit a "Make it so" key.

Another way to do is is for your HUD to display your current direction with a pointer (the middle), and then you use some 2-axis control to set a desired direction pointer. Once set, just hit enact or cancel. However, the HUD would have to be capable of full spherical POV slewing, much like that 'on the nose' view.

Neither of these set any other aspect of travel, e.g. speed or destination waypoint. Speed would be a separate control (throttle?), and waypoints would be in the realm of route plotting which is different from immediate steering and uses one or more waypoints.
Post

Re: Flying a capital ship (controls)

#3
I don't doubt that course plotting on the tactical map will be possible, as well as giving your own ship orders to fly somewhere or attack something.

I'm talking about "direct" control, which is not a lot of fun with capital ships if it's truly direct.
That's assuming that they feel big and steer like crap - X3 capital ships turn very quickly for their size, somewhat ruining the effect.

It doesn't have to be a special system for capital ships. They could still do cursor-follow or whatever control method the game mainly uses. Very useful for small corrections.
Most of the time I just wouldn't want to keep doing the cursor-follow thing for a minute or three just to make a turn.
It could be available for every ship. There just wouldn't be a lot of point in using it with a fighter. =)

JabbleWok wrote:This could by done by having a polar coordinate style display, showing your current orientation in one colour. If needed, the two angles could be displayed (degrees or radians) much like on a mathematical diagram. A second colour is used to diplay your desired orientation. You alter this via a 2-stage mouse drag, or use 2 joystick axes. Once set, then hit a "Make it so" key.
That's the exact thing what I wanted to avoid. =) A "technical" approach, with compass and straight-edge on a star chart.

I want something intuitive that every schmuck can use without thinking twice about it. Go that way! =)



Ohh, hmm.
It just dawned on me that this doesn't even require a separate system!
It's just a tweak to the normal controls...

(edited into the first post because I like this a lot better than what I originally wrote)
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
Post

Re: Flying a capital ship (controls)

#4
Gazz wrote:I'm talking about "direct" control, which is not a lot of fun with capital ships if it's truly direct.
That's assuming that they feel big and steer like crap - X3 capital ships turn very quickly for their size, somewhat ruining the effect.
Yep - that means something other than direct, i.e. setting and enacting.
That's the exact thing what I wanted to avoid. =) A "technical" approach, with compass and straight-edge on a star chart.
I want something intuitive that every schmuck can use without thinking twice about it. Go that way! =)
OK, then use slewable POV =)
The real problem is that the view angle is stuck to the ship's orientation.
If the ship turns slowly, I'm stuck with it for a long time.
So why not get it un-stuck?
While in steering mode, you have mouselook like in [insert any FPS].
[*] Your ship does not steer as fast as you can change your view.
The ship's nose is simply lagging behind but it will align with your view... eventually.
Yep. You still want to set the new direction quickly rather than just wait for it to catch up, in case you're in combat or a heavy management situation. If you can just slew POV to where you want and hit enact, then you can get on with other things while the ship is changing course.

It means, though, that the slewable POV would need HUD-style orientation markers so that you don't get disoriented. Maybe also an inset mini-POV that shows your current POV as part of the total (Mercatorised) sphere. Perhaps it would be a little like a turret POV, except that it covers the entire sphere and has nav cues instead of targetting ones.
Post

Re: Flying a capital ship (controls)

#5
JabbleWok wrote:It means, though, that the slewable POV would need HUD-style orientation markers so that you don't get disoriented.
In the videos you had an outside view of your ship.
The ship's orientation is right in front of your eyes.

You see what's happening. Intuitive as hell without a single additional HUD element.. =)
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
Post

Re: Flying a capital ship (controls)

#6
Gazz wrote:In the videos you had an outside view of your ship.
The ship's orientation is right in front of your eyes.

You see what's happening. Intuitive as hell. =)
But you may want to do it in the context of other information e.g. nav and targetting, which means using cues.

I know from flight sims how easy it is to get disoriented and lose situational awareness even if you have complete external spherical POV slewing, and the cues become vitally important.

Perhaps not a big deal if you're just cruising, but in the heat of battle these can become vitally important.
Post

Re: Flying a capital ship (controls)

#9
JabbleWok wrote:But you may want to do it in the context of other information e.g. nav and targetting, which means using cues.
Can't say I disagree but first there need to be useful control mechanics. =)

I'm all for graphical cues, artificial horizon/ecliptic, or something "virtual" like in that Starshatter video.
It looks a bit overpowering in that video... but that can easily be fixed with letting the player adjust it's colour and alpha settings like for the rest of the tactical interface in LT.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
Post

Re: Flying a capital ship (controls)

#10
Gazz wrote:Can't say I disagree but first there need to be useful control mechanics. =)

I'm all for graphical cues, artificial horizon/ecliptic, or something "virtual" like in that Starshatter video.
It looks a bit overpowering in that video... but that can easily be fixed with letting the player adjust it's colour and alpha settings like for the rest of the tactical interface in LT.
If the HUD has such information already, the only difference would be to allow a free POV slew mode. Which is probably useful anyway just for situational awareness.

The video is very much about orientation setting via an external view, so I can see why the angle scales are useful. However, a POV version would be simpler and more intuitive to use, as long as the cues exist.
Post

Re: Flying a capital ship (controls)

#11
Hmmm.... <For manual controls>

How about a thruster based control scheme for caps...
(with some light nutonian physics and tons of mass)

[shift] for main forward thrusters (throtle up)
[Ctrl] for reverse thrusters (throtle down)
[w] bow up
bow down
[a] bow left
[d] bow right

[Alt] + [w] or or [a] or [d] for strafing

[q] roll left
[e] roll right

This would free up your mouse for turret or comand controls.
Last edited by N810 on Fri Mar 15, 2013 7:13 am, edited 4 times in total.
"A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke
Post

Re: Flying a capital ship (controls)

#12
N810 wrote:How about a thruster based control scheme for caps...
(with some light nutonian physics and tons of mass)
Ah, but that brings us back to the original problem that you have to keep controlling it until completed.

Gazz's idea was to set a new direction, then get on with other activities while the ship automatically reorients to that. The trick is to find the best method to set that direction.

Just think - you're in the heat of battle, and you need to instruct your various Task Forces what to do. You also need to steer your own ship. If you have to keep your finger on a thruster button for 30 seconds, that makes it much harder to issue commands to your fleet during that time, as well as control your various turrets and systems. Hence the idea of a quick set-and-forget.
Post

Re: Flying a capital ship (controls)

#13
I was thinking more like 3 seconds on the thruster, would turn you 90 Degrese in like 10 seconds (inertia).

also, you could have a simple auto pilot, for (go there) or (Follow that) type navigation.

PS. Oh like one of the other posters said... a compas type devise might work....
a sphere whith a hollograpghic ship in the middle.... just use the mouse to drag the compas to a new heading.
and it will slowly excute the order after you let go.
Last edited by N810 on Fri Mar 15, 2013 7:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
"A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke
Post

Re: Flying a capital ship (controls)

#14
N810 wrote:I was thinking more like 3 seconds on the thruster, would turn you 90 Degrese in like 10 seconds (inertia).
How would you aim with controls like that?
Adjust your heading by 4° with a 0.133 sec burn with the ship reaching the new alignment in 0.44 sec?
If you make a wrong input like a 0.2 sec burn, you won't notice until the ship starts overshooting the turn. Then you correct again... and again...
You liked Lunar Lander, did ya? =)


Unified and intuitive controls would be greatly preferable - even if that means compromising on some "hardcore" in the control scheme.
Requiring 10 different keys (you forgot rolling =) in addition to the mouse and having the ship steer completely independently of the view direction is highly confusing.
(admittedly, a few individuals can cope with that)

If the ship "follows" the view, you don't have to translate your control input around 3 axis.


PS: Downloading Starshatter Open
Pass up a free space game? I think not! =)
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.

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