[Aesaar]

It's almost as though the game is actually a really early alpha build.

[Spoon]

It's almost as though the game is actually a really early alpha build.

It's just like I'm reading the SC forums~

[Aesaar]

It's almost as though the game is actually a really early alpha build.

It's just like I'm reading the SC forums~

Nah, I'm not going to pretend it's fine as it is.  But I'm not going to judge the finished product based on it either.

I actually had a 4 hour, uhh... "discussion" a week ago about how the flight model wasn't working right and how autoaim was also a stupid idea.  It was really funny watching people passionately argue that everything was perfect even when CIG admitted there were some significant issues.  They were utterly incapable of understanding that SC isn't the first Space Sim ever made or the first one to do newtonian flight.  Hell, I had a guy tell me that lead calculation was impossible in a 6dof environment and that's why we have no lead indicators.

The RSI forums are an awful place.  It's like 80% of the people over there have convinced themselves that Chris Roberts is Space Sim Jesus and each and every one of his ideas deserves a Nobel Prize.

[Colonol Dekker]

That sounds eerily like a Derek Smart type crowd.


I do no liek.  I wuv Wing Commander however.


Also 6DoF was fun In I-War and Defiance, not really there in I-War2 afair.

[Sushi]

Still, it's not like playing anything but full newtonian flight model is impossible without translation controls.

True... but TBH I've found it hard to go back to "rails-y" flight models. There's just so much more you can do with those extra degrees of freedom...

Have to admit I'm not holding out much hope for Star Citizen. Their priority is clearly on the big flashy stuff, and I'm afraid they are neglecting the core game mechanic in the process. Time will tell, but for now I'm glad there are many other promising projects competing in the same space.

[Ace]

Well in my mind I'd have been happy with a good on rails WC1 type flight model with fixed guns (and no lead indicator for most ships!).

Going all newtonian physics but then crippling player interactions with it seems... odd... and unnecessary. Like first person mode and half of the other things they're implementing that seem to distract from the core design.

[Grizzly]

Well in my mind I'd have been happy with a good on rails WC1 type flight model with fixed guns (and no lead indicator for most ships!).

It wasn't all that onrails though, IIRC, you could shelton slide and stuff.

[The E]

Going all newtonian physics but then crippling player interactions with it seems... odd... and unnecessary. Like first person mode and half of the other things they're implementing that seem to distract from the core design.

Wait. Parts of the game that were part of the game's design from the beginning are "distracting from the core design"? I mean, full newtonian rigid-body flight model and all that was part of the original kickstarter pitch, with the first person stuff being one of the earliest funding goals.

I mean, no offense, but they said they would try to do this stuff for a very long time. Saying that it isn't really part of the game is ... inaccurate, really.

[Killer Whale]

Hell, I had a guy tell me that lead calculation was impossible in a 6dof environment and that's why we have no lead indicators.

How does FS do lead indicators btw? If you have, say, a subach and a morning star in dual fire, what does the lead indicator point at?

[AdmiralRalwood]

Hell, I had a guy tell me that lead calculation was impossible in a 6dof environment and that's why we have no lead indicators.

How does FS do lead indicators btw? If you have, say, a subach and a morning star in dual fire, what does the lead indicator point at?

FS uses whichever weapon has the longest range to calculate where to place the lead indicator. Since the Morning Star has a greater range than the Subach HL-7, you'd get the Morning Star's lead indicator if both are selected.

[Nuke]

if you know the velocity of the target and the velocity of the weapon, and the position of both objects, then its just vector math to find a lead solution. its like 20 lines of code.

i found some code in one of my old scripts if you want maths.

Code: [Select]

--calculate the lead vector in space, accepts: enemy position, enemy velocity, starting position, weapon velocity
function lead(epos, evel, wpos, wvel) --based of script from wanderer
local vlen = evel:getMagnitude()
local edis = wpos - epos
local dlen = edis:getMagnitude()
local trig = edis:getDotProduct(evel)
local a = (wvel^2) - (vlen^2)
local b = trig * 2
local c = -(dlen^2)
local d = (b^2) - 4 * a * c
if d >= 0 and a ~= 0 then
local m1 = ( -b + math.sqrt(d) ) / ( 2 * a)
local m2 = ( -b - math.sqrt(d) ) / ( 2 * a)
if (m1 >= 0 and m1 <= m2 and m2 >= 0) or (m1 >= 0 and m2 < 0) then
return epos + ( evel / (1 / m1) )
elseif m2 >=0 then
return epos + ( evel / (1 / m2) )
else
return epos
end
else
return epos
end
end


[Phantom Hoover]

A good argument against SC's "all physics, all the time" model that I've seen is that to make the ship's behaviour in fly-by-wire mode intuitive, you have to make the manoeuvring thrusters very powerful indeed — on the same order as the main engine, in fact. The problem is that when you then give the player 6DoF control over their thrusters they're ridiculously overpowered — ships can turn and slide very fast, and so the game dissolves into something even sillier than Planetside 2's dogfighting. Meanwhile Elite Dangerous fudges the flight model to encourage proper dogfighting, and as a result the combat is way more entertaining even to watch, let alone play.

[TrashMan]

Hurr...just got my new card.
Carried my huge-ass computer to get a new power supply and a Sapphire Dual-X R9 280, to update my PC to finally play Star Citizen.
Ended u f**** up my back as I lifted it really clumsily.
It's been two days and my back still hurts like hell. Way to ruin my prolonged weekend.

On the upside I did try arena commander for a few minutes. Not bad.

[Herra Tohtori]

My point of view: I do expect to get a control mode where it's possible to directly control pitch, roll, yaw (piece of cake), and translations (reverse, sideways and up/down with attitude thrusters, forwards/backwards with main engine).

If I don't get that, I'll be a bit upset, but honestly I don't see any reason to panic after just seeing one iteration of a very small demo.

A good argument against SC's "all physics, all the time" model that I've seen is that to make the ship's behaviour in fly-by-wire mode intuitive, you have to make the manoeuvring thrusters very powerful indeed — on the same order as the main engine, in fact. The problem is that when you then give the player 6DoF control over their thrusters they're ridiculously overpowered — ships can turn and slide very fast, and so the game dissolves into something even sillier than Planetside 2's dogfighting. Meanwhile Elite Dangerous fudges the flight model to encourage proper dogfighting, and as a result the combat is way more entertaining even to watch, let alone play.

This is exactly why I would prefer to see maneuvering thrusters being relatively weak for translation but sufficient for attitude control. Sure, it'll keep the craft "flying straight" so that consolepeasants warthunder mouseaim arcade pilots spacebros* can comprehend what's happening, but if you know what you're doing and how spaceships actually perform course corrections, you could have at least some advantage over those milling about with training wheels. After all, what's the point of having a big thruster if you're never using the thrust to produce good acceleration, eh? Personally I would also prefer to see much faster speeds, but at the moment I'm just waiting to see some developments that will make Star Citizen a playable game (playable in the sense that I can play it with my controllers without having to engage in config voodoo, and game in the sense that there's some point to playing it rather than just floating around in a spacecube, shooting computerships.

By the way - as it stands, the auto-aim seems like it would remove at least 75% of the skill required to actually hit a target. Hoping that it becomes a feature limited to larger ships and fewer guns.


*I am not elitist at all, spacebros will form a vital demographic to go clubbing with

[Dragon]

They could try doing it like flightsims do. The difficulty slider doesn't usually adjust AI (or there's a separate slider that does that), but how detailed flight model is. So you could have them range from very easy (Wing Commander) to insane/very hard (Orbiter, or at least B5:TGOS if you don't want to dabble in orbital mechanics). The only problem is, as a multiplayer game, PVP would be a problem. That could perhaps be solved by having servers grouped by difficulty. Each difficulty setting would introduce additional control and FM refinements, at the cost of additional switchology and complexity.

[Phantom Hoover]

My point of view: I do expect to get a control mode where it's possible to directly control pitch, roll, yaw (piece of cake), and translations (reverse, sideways and up/down with attitude thrusters, forwards/backwards with main engine).

If I don't get that, I'll be a bit upset, but honestly I don't see any reason to panic after just seeing one iteration of a very small demo.

A good argument against SC's "all physics, all the time" model that I've seen is that to make the ship's behaviour in fly-by-wire mode intuitive, you have to make the manoeuvring thrusters very powerful indeed — on the same order as the main engine, in fact. The problem is that when you then give the player 6DoF control over their thrusters they're ridiculously overpowered — ships can turn and slide very fast, and so the game dissolves into something even sillier than Planetside 2's dogfighting. Meanwhile Elite Dangerous fudges the flight model to encourage proper dogfighting, and as a result the combat is way more entertaining even to watch, let alone play.

This is exactly why I would prefer to see maneuvering thrusters being relatively weak for translation but sufficient for attitude control. Sure, it'll keep the craft "flying straight" so that consolepeasants warthunder mouseaim arcade pilots spacebros* can comprehend what's happening, but if you know what you're doing and how spaceships actually perform course corrections, you could have at least some advantage over those milling about with training wheels. After all, what's the point of having a big thruster if you're never using the thrust to produce good acceleration, eh? Personally I would also prefer to see much faster speeds, but at the moment I'm just waiting to see some developments that will make Star Citizen a playable game (playable in the sense that I can play it with my controllers without having to engage in config voodoo, and game in the sense that there's some point to playing it rather than just floating around in a spacecube, shooting computerships.

By the way - as it stands, the auto-aim seems like it would remove at least 75% of the skill required to actually hit a target. Hoping that it becomes a feature limited to larger ships and fewer guns.


*I am not elitist at all, spacebros will form a vital demographic to go clubbing with

I think you have inadvertently explained why full Newtonian modelling is a terrible, terrible fit for SC. The game you've just described has very slow and tactical gameplay, for the same reason Diaspora and DE are slower and more tactical than vanilla FS2. Star Citizen fans don't want that kind of game! They want exciting, seat-of-the-pants dogfighting, they want long and intricate engagements, they want fights decided by mastery of the flight mechanics— basically, they want to be playing Wing Commander, FreeSpace and X-Wing again. Trying to make a prototype that somehow satisfies both requirements has led CIG into the mess they're in now, and the only way out is if they do the brave thing and decide what kind of game they don't want to make, and risk the ire of those fans who had set their hearts on it.

(For instance, they can't just nerf translation: they've promised and delivered a gameplay mechanic for G-force penalties for certain manoeuvres. Because of that, your ship has to be able to pull vertical accelerations of 10G or more; and so given full control over your ship, you can use and abuse this however you please. A choice has to be made.)

[TrashMan]

I kinda agree with Phantom. You're gonna be hard pressed to make a game that both has the old-school arcade-y feel AND have a full-newtonian flight physics model.

Personally, I like me both so regardless which ends up being the final model, I won't be dissapointed.

[Mikes]

A good argument against SC's "all physics, all the time" model that I've seen is that to make the ship's behaviour in fly-by-wire mode intuitive, you have to make the manoeuvring thrusters very powerful indeed — on the same order as the main engine, in fact. The problem is that when you then give the player 6DoF control over their thrusters they're ridiculously overpowered — ships can turn and slide very fast, and so the game dissolves into something even sillier than Planetside 2's dogfighting. Meanwhile Elite Dangerous fudges the flight model to encourage proper dogfighting, and as a result the combat is way more entertaining even to watch, let alone play.

Will that hold up in Multiplayer?

I remember games with similar "airplane in space" derived flight models, like X-Wing Alliance, being an utter broken joke gameplaywise, if you went head to head in multiplayer.

I know Elite has a couple more ticks up it's sleeve, ...  but are people really consistently testing it for player vs player combat and does the combat model work there at all? Does the gameplay allow for a high skill ceiling? Or is it more or less a sad joke once you have actual people fighting and not just the AI doing "silly maneuvers for gameplays sake"?

[Herra Tohtori]

(For instance, they can't just nerf translation: they've promised and delivered a gameplay mechanic for G-force penalties for certain manoeuvres. Because of that, your ship has to be able to pull vertical accelerations of 10G or more; and so given full control over your ship, you can use and abuse this however you please. A choice has to be made.)

I disagree.

Let's look at this from practical perspective. I expect most atmospheric-capable ships to also be VTOL capable which obviously already means they must provide at least 1g of acceleration in upward direction, plus the margins necessary for climbing and arresting descent - so let's say 2g capable hover thrusters at minimum. 3g-4g capable hover thrusters are not impossible either.

The other directions have no practical requirements for such high thrust capacity. And, turns out if you really do want a "planes in space" type of flight model, this will actually be the only way to get anywhere close to such experience (with the hover thrusters substituting for lift in turns). And you definitely do not need a 10g translation system in every direction. 2-3g's would be very much sufficient in enabling "aircraft-like" turning ability for the ships without making them seem completely ludicrous.


However since there are ships that are not designed for atmospheric operations - like the Aurora - it would likely have about the same translation acceleration in up, down, left, right and backwards - but a higher acceleration forwards. Sure, the fly-by-wire system could keep the nose aligned with velocity vector if you wanted, but I don't think massively capable translation thrusters would provide a very good gameplay. If the only thing you need to do is point and shoot, the main part of gameplay will be decided by the ship and weapon stats, with little room for player skill being a meaningful component of gameplay.

Skill progression is an important component of satisfaction I get from games, and it should be possible to gain an advantage by executing maneuvers manually if you have the skill necessary to do so. Good example would be doing turns by turning your ship 90 degrees off velocity vector and using your main engine to generate the highest possible acceleration, to cause a rapid course change. Whatever the RCS translation fly-by-wire can do, it should NOT be able to provide a higher acceleration than with the main engine, that just makes no sense at all - either from gameplay perspective or within the internal rules of the game universe.


In other words: Different ships should behave differently. If the spacecraft is atmospheric VTOL capable, sure, it could use hover thrusters to mimick upward lift. Other directional translations should be much weaker - in line with what you would expect from the RCS thrusters. They must already have some given thrust level for rotational control, after all.

Spacecraft that are exclusively designed for microgravity operations should behave like spacecraft. They should of course have their own advantages - like better rotational control, or better forward acceleration.


This would force players to use different tactics with different ships. For some ships, the auto-alignment fly-by-wire could be the best compromise between performance and intuitive controls, for others you might have to practice a lot to get them to perform optimally.

[Mikes]

(For instance, they can't just nerf translation: they've promised and delivered a gameplay mechanic for G-force penalties for certain manoeuvres. Because of that, your ship has to be able to pull vertical accelerations of 10G or more; and so given full control over your ship, you can use and abuse this however you please. A choice has to be made.)

I disagree.

Let's look at this from practical perspective. I expect most atmospheric-capable ships to also be VTOL capable which obviously already means they must provide at least 1g of acceleration in upward direction, plus the margins necessary for climbing and arresting descent - so let's say 2g capable hover thrusters at minimum. 3g-4g capable hover thrusters are not impossible either.

The other directions have no practical requirements for such high thrust capacity. And, turns out if you really do want a "planes in space" type of flight model, this will actually be the only way to get anywhere close to such experience (with the hover thrusters substituting for lift in turns). And you definitely do not need a 10g translation system in every direction. 2-3g's would be very much sufficient in enabling "aircraft-like" turning ability for the ships without making them seem completely ludicrous.


However since there are ships that are not designed for atmospheric operations - like the Aurora - it would likely have about the same translation acceleration in up, down, left, right and backwards - but a higher acceleration forwards. Sure, the fly-by-wire system could keep the nose aligned with velocity vector if you wanted, but I don't think massively capable translation thrusters would provide a very good gameplay. If the only thing you need to do is point and shoot, the main part of gameplay will be decided by the ship and weapon stats, with little room for player skill being a meaningful component of gameplay.

Skill progression is an important component of satisfaction I get from games, and it should be possible to gain an advantage by executing maneuvers manually if you have the skill necessary to do so. Good example would be doing turns by turning your ship 90 degrees off velocity vector and using your main engine to generate the highest possible acceleration, to cause a rapid course change. Whatever the RCS translation fly-by-wire can do, it should NOT be able to provide a higher acceleration than with the main engine, that just makes no sense at all - either from gameplay perspective or within the internal rules of the game universe.


In other words: Different ships should behave differently. If the spacecraft is atmospheric VTOL capable, sure, it could use hover thrusters to mimick upward lift. Other directional translations should be much weaker - in line with what you would expect from the RCS thrusters. They must already have some given thrust level for rotational control, after all.

Spacecraft that are exclusively designed for microgravity operations should behave like spacecraft. They should of course have their own advantages - like better rotational control, or better forward acceleration.


This would force players to use different tactics with different ships. For some ships, the auto-alignment fly-by-wire could be the best compromise between performance and intuitive controls, for others you might have to practice a lot to get them to perform optimally.

From what I remember of one of the dev conversations on the matter, they do want G-force to be a limiting and balancing factor, not just the G-force working on the pilot (implemented to some extent), but also the G-force working on the ships body (not implemented at the moment), to the extent that you can actually rip off thrusters when executing the wrong maneuvers with all safeties turned off, when engaging along thrust axis that do not kill the pilot (quicker) or make him black/red out.