[Nico]

Alright, I have a request:
I don't think I'm the only one to do this: when I attack a capship, if I want to destroy turrets, I have to stop right in front of them and keep shooting till it dies. Doing a regular strafing is just useless. You don't deal enough damage, and either you try and aim right and you end up bumping against the ship, either you miss about every shot and deal ridiculous damage.
I want to do strafing like in movies, I want to fly like mad past the enemy ship and shoot everything I can, and still deal damage.
SO! here's my request: you push a key, and your gunpoints are lowered of about 15, 20 degrees. so you can fly along the capship and still shoot at it. With the increase of size of capships, that could make for some cool strafing runs, no?
failing that, an alternative way can be done, ala wing commander: when you push that key, your ship is locked in the curret direction, but you can face the way you want, so you fly along the capship, but can rotate down/etc to aim more accurately. you can also use that in dogfight, you keep going forward, but you can face back and shoot at the guy who is behind you. That can be quite good for the tBP campaign, too, somehow simulating those cool moves they managed in the series.
well, that's all.

[Killfrenzy]

You mean like Tachyon: The Fringe had? Where you could travel in one direction, but rotate your ship around?

[Nico]

Originally posted by Killfrenzy
You mean like Tachyon: The Fringe had? Where you could travel in one direction, but rotate your ship around?

yeah ( tho I don't know for tachyon, never played it ).

[IPAndrews]

A basic physics change like that would change the whole feel of the game.

[Unknown Target]

Just imput strafe controls in the tables. That should fix your problem easily enough.


ALTHOUGH I'D REALLY LIKE TO GET THOSE CONTROL CONFIGS CHANGED!!!!!!!!:mad:

[Wildfire]

Yeah, in the tables you can make a ship have a top speed and acceleration in all directions except reverse.  Just increase these values.

Of course it would take a while to get used to using them.

[Galemp]

You know, being able to change the weapon hardpoint normals would fix this. And add bombing chutes, too!

[Bobboau]

you know all you have to do is hit the vericle slide button and point down a little, if you havn't been keeping up you can now do this, I binded the slideing controles a while ago

[Stryke 9]

Just stick some short-range, medium-arc turrets under the cockpit. No real source change needed. Alternately, change the maneuverability ratings on some bomber so that it can twist about and still be traveling in the same direction for a few seconds (I know there's a table entry for this, I messed with it a while back, but it's been a while and I still don't have access permissions to my dev stuff, so I can't point it out).

You COULD have something like I-War's gimbal system, where you basically just have to be able to see the ship to shoot it accurately, but that'd make it too easy, in my opinion.

[##UnknownPlayer##]

Actually I'm in agreement for this thing where you can shoot 15-20 degrees downward. The (nice and cool) way it'd work would be you have a second reticle circle around your primary. Hit a key and your gun sights go loose and you can adjust your aim within this circle.

[Wildfire]

This is fine for capships but readjusting it quickly to engage fighters might be a problem.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Bobboau
you know all you have to do is hit the vericle slide button and point down a little, if you havn't been keeping up you can now do this, I binded the slideing controles a while ago

I could do that from the begining ( + numpad ), but sorry, I miss a third arm to use the keyboard when I'm doing a strafing...

Originally posted by Stryke 9
Just stick some short-range, medium-arc turrets under the cockpit. No real source change needed. Alternately, change the maneuverability ratings on some bomber so that it can twist about and still be traveling in the same direction for a few seconds (I know there's a table entry for this, I messed with it a while back, but it's been a while and I still don't have access permissions to my dev stuff, so I can't point it out).

You COULD have something like I-War's gimbal system, where you basically just have to be able to see the ship to shoot it accurately, but that'd make it too easy, in my opinion.

Nah: the turret thinguy is no fun, and you couldn't control it anyway. I also don't want that to be available only on a couple ships. the damping factor in the tbls does that, more or less, yeah. but you can't control anything. try a dogfight with high damping...

drop the gunpoint angle switch, the WC like strafing is much more interesting, can be used for a lot of other things.

edit: for those like IPandrews who think it would change the FS2 feel ( which for my part I don't care, FS2 doesn't have much feeling "piloting" wise ), we could just add a strafe tag to add in the ship tbl, if the tag isn't present, the key won't work ingame, that's all. So you can't strafe with normal FS2 ships ( excepted if you give them the tag of course ).

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by venom2506


I could do that from the begining ( + numpad ), but sorry, I miss a third arm to use the keyboard when I'm doing a strafing...

So re-map it to your hat-switch.  Now that Bob has made it possible to do so, you can put them wherever you like.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
So re-map it to your hat-switch.  Now that Bob has made it possible to do so, you can put them wherever you like.

all my joystick buttons are remapped already. the hat is used for everything about targetting. Anyway, you don't get what I mean.
When I talk about strafing, I don't talk about doom-like strafing ( so sliding left/right etc), I talk strafing ala starwars, when you fly past a stardestroyer and shoot everything you can at it ( which seems super easy in movies, but is not in a game ). It's not a problem of key or anything, it's a gameplay request.
haaaaaaaaaaargh!!! ok, let's do it again:
forget about attaking capships, about straffiong about everything said before:
I just wanna know if it's possible to lock the direction of a ship w/o locking it's rotation at the same time when you push a key.

[Sesquipedalian]

Ah.  That would involve a major overhaul of the physics.  Heavy duty code work, I'm sure.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
Ah.  That would involve a major overhaul of the physics.  Heavy duty code work, I'm sure.

why? I don't see any physics change... or maybe I'm wrong?

[Unknown Target]

Originally posted by Wildfire
Yeah, in the tables you can make a ship have a top speed and acceleration in all directions except reverse.  Just increase these values.

Of course it would take a while to get used to using them.

You can do it reverse, too. Just hold down Z in-game, once you set it up in the tables

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by venom2506


why? I don't see any physics change... or maybe I'm wrong?

As it is now, engine thrust is always dependent on the direction the ship is facing.  To make the changes you want, the trust vector would have to be divorced from the model and tied to the world, which would involve writing a lot of new stuff besides, I'm sure.

[HotSnoJ]

Or just make it so that the fire points can rotate. Or an even easier solution is to make traking lasers! I have done it for FS1 in the tables.

[##UnknownPlayer##]

Ok, new idea - we add a switch to all the fighters called the 'Gravitic Field' switch or something else that's equally cool. The theory is that in order to more easily train pilots, all fighters have built in gravity fields which alter their space flight characteristics. By turning off the field, advanced pilots can engage in more complex tactical manoeuvers. Basically, you get a form of newtonian motion when you hit this switch.