Star Citizen Megathread v. procedurally-generated deadlines - Games

[QUOTE=Squeegy Mackoy;52617585]Is there a cut down version of interesting bits? I'm not going to bother watching it until the timeline preview on the youtube video starts working.[/QUOTE] Not yet, although I'm sure some YTers have made summary videos. The trick is finding one that also has good delivery and pacing. [QUOTE=MendozaMan;52618226]This is possible [url]https://clips.twitch.tv/AffluentGenerousBisonYouDontSay[/url] Because falling at terminal velocity leaves plenty of room for FP tactics[/QUOTE] First-ever successful deorbited atmospheric catch rescue. BDSSE Also, in one attempt, the guy entered the Cutlass but went flying out the side door. :v: [video=youtube;sIEeXIBVjLY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIEeXIBVjLY[/video]

[QUOTE=Squeegy Mackoy;52617585]Is there a cut down version of interesting bits? I'm not going to bother watching it until the timeline preview on the youtube video starts working.[/QUOTE] Might not be perfect but I guess this? [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWDFCSM87JI[/media]

[video=youtube;gb702V4_m4c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb702V4_m4c[/video] :ok: [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/chris-roberts-interview/421691"]Also, a Russian backer got a short interview with CR, and a transcript has been posted to Spectrum.[/URL] [QUOTE][B]Is it possible to stealth hijack a ship so all the oxygen goes out?[/B] CR: You mean decompress the ship? Yeah, it will definitely be possible. If you blow a door open, then all the atmosphere inside will go out [B]So everybody dies?[/B] CR: Well they need a suit on, if they have a suit on they won't die. But if they don't have their helmet on, they better get one on very quickly. Depending on the scale of the ship you would probably be able to vent the ship from the pilot's seat. That won't be in 3.0, but in 3.0 you will be able to blow doors and atmosphere will go out of the ship. [B]And is player stealth going to be possible?[/B] CR: Yeah we're definitely going to be modeling stealth in terms of if you're quiet you can also keep your signature low. Certain suits, light armor, they'll be much better than medium or heavy armor which would have bigger EM signatures and also worse for trying to keep quiet. So yeah, stealth is definitely part of our plan. It's not going to be fully in 3.0, but after 3.0. [B]How does the Reclaimer processing room work? Is there a minigame to salvage ships or is it automatic?[/B] CR: No, we're gonna have actual gameplay. First of all if you see wreckage you need to go out there and separate the items. Like a gun attached to a blown up wing you'd have to detach the gun and recover it as an item you can sell. Then you can salvage the actual debris and turn that into the equivalent of iron ore and then you can go sell it. [B]How about docking? Is it still there?[/B] Yes, we are planning on doing docking. I don't know if we showed on the Idris but there's a whole docking airlock and docking collar. Like if you have an Idris and you park at a space station, it's too big to park at an actual pad. So like an airplane at an airport, you have an air-bridge, we have a version of that. [B]What about the soundtrack? Will the soundtrack be released before SQ42 or after?[/B] CR: We'll do a soundtrack for SQ42 on release of SQ42, but we're also seeing a lot of music in SC. We'll probably have several releases along the way with that. [B]Are you working to expand Star Marine?[/B] CR: [highlight]We're working on an additional Star Marine level that will involve planetary combat.[/highlight] So that will be fun. We're always working on FPS features. Our goal on the FPS side is that you can try out Star Marine in competitive matches but also so it works in the the PU is to have the FPS we're doing equivalent to even what a dedicated FPS does. But on a slower more tactical/realistic side. As in [?] all the way to ARMA or something, but it's not just straight Call of Duty. That's why we're having stamina, suit punctures, stealth. [B]Is Death of a Spaceman still accurate for today's plans?[/B] CR: Still the same plans. We're gonna do that. [B]Can we still hire NPCs to help man our ships?[/B] CR: Yes, there will be, not in 3.0, but we are planning that. -snip Chrisbabble- So yes, you will be able to hire NPCs.[/QUOTE] And then a question about Russian localization.

Ew. Why is flying spaceships so damn terrible in a game about flying spaceships? Edit: Why is it STILL so terrible?

[QUOTE=Squeegy Mackoy;52621717]Ew. Why is flying spaceships so damn terrible in a game about flying spaceships? Edit: Why is it STILL so terrible?[/QUOTE] There's a lot of hate for the way ships fly right now and to play devil's advocate I'd guess that it's mostly because of the game's netcode and isn't shitty by design. All the stuff we're seeing right now is played on a server machine (probably even a local at gamescom, idfk) and all the flight stuff needs to be synchronized across the network. Chances are there's so much crap that needs to be updated each tick that low server FPS causes the way ships move to seem really blocky. This makes a lot sense especially when CR puts such emphasis on dat [I]fidelity[/I] of ship flight. The original kickstarter campaign was all about how incredibly detailed spaceflight is supposed to be and how the ships are controlled by actual thruster forces and such. Chances are it'll either get better when the networking stuff gets more optimized but it's such a big complaint right now that I'm sure it won't get ignored. I'm curious as to when someone at CIG will publicly address why flight looks wonky and cumbersome af

[QUOTE=Squeegy Mackoy;52621717]Ew. Why is flying spaceships so damn terrible in a game about flying spaceships? Edit: Why is it STILL so terrible?[/QUOTE] It's never been terrible to begin with? If you want terrible flying, play elite.

I still do not like SC's flight model, motion should be forward-focused on any ship with massive rear-facing engines and tiny maneuvering thrusters. There's no weight to motion right now, all the ships seem to start and stop on a dime. I really hope this changes. Elite's flight model is not great (tends to lead to annoying spin fights) but I like it better for general flight, the ships feel hefty and hard maneuvers feel hard. SC's ships handle like this in the in-universe advertisements so I hope that behavior is eventually perfected for gameplay.

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;52621973]I still do not like SC's flight model, motion should be forward-focused on any ship with massive rear-facing engines and tiny maneuvering thrusters. There's no weight to motion right now, all the ships seem to start and stop on a dime. I really hope this changes. Elite's flight model is not great (tends to lead to annoying spin fights) but I like it better for general flight, the ships feel hefty and hard maneuvers feel hard.[/QUOTE] tiny maneuvering thrusters that output just as much as the gigantic main thrusters because cig cannot into ship design

I think part of it is all thrusters seem to output instant power. In Elite there's a curve, they take a few seconds to ramp up. That alone goes a long way. A gunship like the Cutlass should have a longer ramp up to full output than a nimbler fighter craft. Right now the fighters [I]are[/I] more maneuverable but only because they have an even more ridiculous acceleration and it doesn't feel right. In my Cutlass I already feel like hard translations are neck-breaking, they're even worse in the fighters I've flown. The Cutlass with its big 360 degree rotating engines should be capable of hard maneuvers (along certain axes and with a long ramp-up time for force output while they're rotating to position) that actually feel like they're putting stress on the pilot and the hull. Right now it just... goes. No sense of inertia or engine response. When I throw that thing into a full-throttle hard spin from a dead stop I want to feel the hull twist and buckle, while a lighter fighter craft pulling the same maneuver should feel sharper and daintier. CIG seems to have some understanding that this is the way that feels right since the ships are shown throwing their weight around in the advertisements, but the in-game flight model has yet to reflect this sensation. A lot of this is sound design (at which Elite is currently the indisputable king, its sound design is one of the only universally praised things about it), but the physics aren't there, either. Bringing this in line adds value to hypermaneuverable ships like the Khartu-al where rapid six-axis motion is meant to be its big selling point. It's so obvious that I'm sure CIG has a flight model rework on the agenda, they're likely just waiting until the majority of ships are implemented in their final state design wise.

[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/inertia-the-feeling-of-weight-where-is-it/418312"]Some are saying[/URL] that the ships seeming brick-like in their control is due them being too perfectly still [video=youtube;XoYybsZos70]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoYybsZos70[/video]

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;52621973]I still do not like SC's flight model, motion should be forward-focused on any ship with massive rear-facing engines and tiny maneuvering thrusters. There's no weight to motion right now, all the ships seem to start and stop on a dime. I really hope this changes. Elite's flight model is not great (tends to lead to annoying spin fights) but I like it better for general flight, the ships feel hefty and hard maneuvers feel hard. SC's ships handle like this in the in-universe advertisements so I hope that behavior is eventually perfected for gameplay.[/QUOTE] seems to be a common misconception but what you're saying doesn't work. weak manoeuvring thrusters just makes everything drift like a bitch, like playing asteroids or lunar lander elite's flight model would be replicated by having just as powerful, if not MORE powerful thrusters than sc currently has, but significantly limiting their power in strafe manoeuvres, and artificially limiting turn rates likewise. of course elite is just completely artificial anyway but you get the idea also thruster 'ramp up' also doesn't achieve what people want either, btw it's already in game, they call it jerk or something. its fine for dampening out low-speed twitchy manoeuvres, but you can't scale it too high because it's like a weird second-order acceleration which makes no intuitive sense. they certainly don't do this in elite really I think literally the only improvement SC ships need is to do a bit of fakery and let thrusters use higher power for deacceleration than they do for acceleration, so they can still go to super fake levels of power to arrest sliding motions, but they stay 'realistic' on the stick so the ships aren't quite so twitchy [editline]29th August 2017[/editline] other than that I actually like the SC flight model. it's a bit misleading compared to the very 'forward' way ships look, but it's almost more like a first person shooter with how you can strafe around in 6dof, and it's a lot more challenging and interesting than elite

[QUOTE=Khaleet;52622081][URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/inertia-the-feeling-of-weight-where-is-it/418312"]Some are saying[/URL] that the ships seeming brick-like in their control is due them being too perfectly still [video=youtube;XoYybsZos70]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoYybsZos70[/video][/QUOTE] Yeah - the second way looks a lot better, but I wouldn't want that to be some fixed animation, you know? I want the ships to need a little skill and control for fine maneuvers, particularly when you get into atmosphere. That kind of wobble should come from the pilot actively countering the ship's imprecision, it should be a natural effect of a believable flight model, something an unsharpened pilot struggles a bit to control. It's one thing to have very fine, steady movements in space (I still think it looks and feels weird) but in atmosphere you're fighting gravity, wind, and ground effect. And that's just for landing/hovering. My concerns extend to maneuvering in flight and combat. Each ship has a pretty unique layout and battles could get really interesting if the flight model has each ship with different points of balance and thruster capabilities. A Khartu-al could fly circles around a Cutlass which could fly circles around a Freelancer which could fly circles around a Caterpillar which could fly circles around an Idris which could blow a Khartu-al out of the sky with a couple good blows from a turret. Right now I can reliably defeat Hornets in my Cutlass because my ship is just as spastic and absurd as theirs and it's more a matter of who's got the most guns. Right now every battle I've been in has felt like utter insanity, the current feel doesn't reflect the look of the ships or the way they're shown in promotional material. You can retain the challenge by giving each ship a unique feel and play style, the fights can still be fast-paced and down to the bone without being as berserk and random as they are currently. Every ship seems to have a unique identity and you can get an idea at a glance how they should perform and how they would stack up in various capacities against other ships which is [I]great[/I] but that isn't reflected in gameplay. It's weird. This is my main concern with SC and I'm afraid it may not change much because people keep saying it's fine as it is.

I have to wonder if the Ursa might have been able to get up the ramp if they'd shut down the Idris' engines.

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;52621973]I still do not like SC's flight model, motion should be forward-focused on any ship with massive rear-facing engines and tiny maneuvering thrusters. There's no weight to motion right now, all the ships seem to start and stop on a dime. I really hope this changes. Elite's flight model is not great (tends to lead to annoying spin fights) but I like it better for general flight, the ships feel hefty and hard maneuvers feel hard. SC's ships handle like this in the in-universe advertisements so I hope that behavior is eventually perfected for gameplay.[/QUOTE] I don't know, I personally prefer SC's design to that of Elite's. I agree it certainly needs more tweaking to make ships feel heavier, but Elite's design (where your pivot speed depends entirely on how fast you're going) is just plain stupid considering you're flying space ships in a vacuum. Ideally, all ships in Star Citizen would pivot just as they do now, but they'd have a lot more difficulty changing their vector, accelerating or decelerating without using their main thrusters. As paindoc once pointed out, this isn't exactly realistic, but it's still more realistic than Elite, and furthermore it'd actually feel good.

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;52621988]I think part of it is all thrusters seem to output instant power. In Elite there's a curve, they take a few seconds to ramp up. That alone goes a long way. A gunship like the Cutlass should have a longer ramp up to full output than a nimbler fighter craft. Right now the fighters [I]are[/I] more maneuverable but only because they have an even more ridiculous acceleration and it doesn't feel right. In my Cutlass I already feel like hard translations are neck-breaking, they're even worse in the fighters I've flown. The Cutlass with its big 360 degree rotating engines should be capable of hard maneuvers (along certain axes and with a long ramp-up time for force output while they're rotating to position) that actually feel like they're putting stress on the pilot and the hull. Right now it just... goes. No sense of inertia or engine response. When I throw that thing into a full-throttle hard spin from a dead stop I want to feel the hull twist and buckle, while a lighter fighter craft pulling the same maneuver should feel sharper and daintier. CIG seems to have some understanding that this is the way that feels right since the ships are shown throwing their weight around in the advertisements, but the in-game flight model has yet to reflect this sensation. A lot of this is sound design (at which Elite is currently the indisputable king, its sound design is one of the only universally praised things about it), but the physics aren't there, either. Bringing this in line adds value to hypermaneuverable ships like the Khartu-al where rapid six-axis motion is meant to be its big selling point. It's so obvious that I'm sure CIG has a flight model rework on the agenda, they're likely just waiting until the majority of ships are implemented in their final state design wise.[/QUOTE] Ships in SC do not output instant power, thrusters have a ramp up called jerk. I wouldnt reccomend weak thrusters, it leads to a poor flight model that becomes jousting exclusive (this was tested in a modded version of SC by a group of players awhile back, it was stupid and awful). If you want lore justification for why main thrusters are bigger but only output the 1.5-2x the power they do now, you could say its because they also do QD, or are shunting their thrust to the MAVS. Lots of reasons, but gameplay comes before lore, and weak thrusters without ED level physics fuckery leads to really, really bad gameplay. There are a lot of improvements to general feel to be made, and the gameplay has a ton of issues but there's a really solid foundation under it all right now. The "tear it all down and replace with planes in space" idea would be a huge waste of potential and makes me sad. Here's some quick gameplay i did demonstrating the battlescape atmo flight model during a similar conversation i was having yesterday, with several related suggestions for atmospheric effects like turn limiting at high speeds in atmo, and cross sectional drag: [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fivtt5O7gA[/url]

I think most ships in SC which are built for combat/maneuverability have vectoring main thrusters, don't they? The translational thrusters just shouldn't be as powerful as the main engines, I'm not calling to make them as weak as Elite's or to move to a replica of Elite's severely flawed FM, but the flight model should still reflect the main engines doing the bulk of the work or else the current designs really make no sense. If they're aiming for 6dof combat with all ships the ships should look very different than they do currently. I would really like to have complex looping and diving dogfights! Those are reliant on primarily forward motion. [I]Some[/I] ships should be able to rapidly change direction, like the Khartu-al, but not all. I think the current foundation is fine too, don't mistake me for saying it should be completely torn down. But simply tweaking values can completely change the way the game plays. I'm of the opinion that spaceships are heavy and heavier ships being able to throw their weight around like it's nothing devalues lighter ships. Why would a wealthier player want to hang on to a smaller fighter if it's only marginally more agile than a larger slugger which is tougher and capable of carrying more cargo on top of being able to hold its own in a dogfight against a smaller fighter? This is obviously a matter of delicate balance but I think the focus should be on keeping the ships from feeling like paper airplanes skating around.

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;52621973]I still do not like SC's flight model, motion should be forward-focused on any ship with massive rear-facing engines and tiny maneuvering thrusters. There's no weight to motion right now, all the ships seem to start and stop on a dime. I really hope this changes. Elite's flight model is not great (tends to lead to annoying spin fights) but I like it better for general flight, the ships feel hefty and hard maneuvers feel hard. SC's ships handle like this in the in-universe advertisements so I hope that behavior is eventually perfected for gameplay.[/QUOTE] Light ships in SC turn and stop on a dime, and remember that quite a lot of the larger ships with huge engines have said engines turn as the ship does. If you fly a gladius properly it will drift like a bastard, so goes for many ships, but they only do so if they go really quick to begin with. Something like the starfarer takes forever both to start up and slow down. Remember, a constellation is barely bigger than elite's asp explorer, to put things into perspective. Elite's vipers are larger than the pre-rework cutlass for example, and have engines about the same size. And honestly those are worse in that aspect, from the enormous amount i used both craft when i played the game.

Elite's scale is really pretty fucked, my Clipper is the size of a cruise ship. When keeping that in mind the handling of those ships is really pretty ridiculous, but in the context of the game, without remembering how large the ships are, they feel a lot better than ships in SC do (or did last I played, which might have been pre-2.6.3 because I have a tiny hard drive). This probably feels worse in SC because you can actually walk around the ship and are constantly grounded in their size. Elite also has some visual and audio effects like shudders and creaking which help the sensation of speed and drift while under acceleration and tight maneuvers, which I imagine are coming in SC. Elix tells me things improved a bit in 2.6.3 with speed values being reigned in but the ships still look like they feel weightless in the gameplay vids, for example the 90-ton Constellation effortlessly bursting into motion on takeoff with no build up or apparent battle against gravity (and landing at 50 mph and coming to an instant dead stop) is pretty jarring. Watching ships externally in Elite gives the same impression, but when piloting them the tricks they use do improve the sensation of launch. In other words, I'm more on about the look and feel of the model than the practical workings of it. Elite uses a lot of tricks to cover up a shoddy FM but it still feels good in most situations.

[QUOTE=Khaleet;52622081][URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/inertia-the-feeling-of-weight-where-is-it/418312"]Some are saying[/URL] that the ships seeming brick-like in their control is due them being too perfectly still [video=youtube;XoYybsZos70]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoYybsZos70[/video][/QUOTE] Movement in space should be relatively smooth due to the lack of atmosphere and being in a vacuum, however being on a planet should absolutely have atmospheric density when maneuvering around. Give me a reason to say, "we're in for some chop" when dropping a squad down on a moon or planet somewhere.

Weather-dependent turbulence would be fucking awesome.

[QUOTE=archangel125;52622594]Weather-dependent turbulence would be fucking awesome.[/QUOTE] the old homestead demo had turbulence/no fly zone over that one area due to the incoming sandstorm, could probably be implementable with that system already also on the flight physics, I love SC's physics compared to ED's, barring the mustang since that thing is admittedly the most stop-on-a-dime thruster overcompensating monster for its size. Most other ships tend to feel like they have some heft at-speed and you can really start to make the most of them and their flight characteristics once you appreciate drifting/'space turret' maneuvers. In ED the fact your handling got [i]worse[/i] as you sped up made it feel like you were driving big fat boats. I'm sure a lot has changed since the earlier days but it was sloggish and really suffered at times when I felt like I needed maneuverability the most. Thankfully I found you could disengage flight assist, slap the thrusters real quick, and it'd spin you 180 while you were doing high speeds, but that felt like a janky workaround instead of any cool advanced maneuver I'd say it'd be a decent lore+science friendly explanation for the massive engines only being slightly more helpful than vectoring thrusters, to say they're generating the thrust for all the thrusters and routing that around, and that they DO serve much higher outputs when you're using them for afterburner or atmospheric forward-only flight

[QUOTE=dai;52622723]the old homestead demo had turbulence/no fly zone over that one area due to the incoming sandstorm, could probably be implementable with that system already also on the flight physics, I love SC's physics compared to ED's, barring the mustang since that thing is admittedly the most stop-on-a-dime thruster overcompensating monster for its size. Most other ships tend to feel like they have some heft at-speed and you can really start to make the most of them and their flight characteristics once you appreciate drifting/'space turret' maneuvers. In ED the fact your handling got [i]worse[/i] as you sped up made it feel like you were driving big fat boats. I'm sure a lot has changed since the earlier days but it was sloggish and really suffered at times when I felt like I needed maneuverability the most. Thankfully I found you could disengage flight assist, slap the thrusters real quick, and it'd spin you 180 while you were doing high speeds, but that felt like a janky workaround instead of any cool advanced maneuver I'd say it'd be a decent lore+science friendly explanation for the massive engines only being slightly more helpful than vectoring thrusters, to say they're generating the thrust for all the thrusters and routing that around, and that they DO serve much higher outputs when you're using them for afterburner or atmospheric forward-only flight[/QUOTE] its not inconceivable, iirc they're using some kind of fusion reactor and one of the more advanced reaction types outputs charged particles. you can then route these charged particles somewhere as thrust, so the various thruster ports all have access to the same sum power of the main reactor. they're just slightly restricted by the bore of the actual thruster nozzle. or something like that. Its the explanation I've been using in my head, at least.

I just want to remind everyone of a few things regarding the flight model: First, nothing is final right now. They are reserving the fine adjustments and balancing for beta, once the underlying code has stopped evolving. It's way easier to push numbers around on a spreadsheet after the heavy lifting's done. That being said I'm not trying to tell anyone they can't discuss what they don't like or wanna see in the flight model. :v: Second, to the best of my knowledge, gimbaled thrusters instantly pivot to their desired vector and CIG will eventually be fixing that. There's no travel time or off-axis thruster firing, so that probably has a lot to do with how unnatural the controls feel. There's no imperfection in the directional controls, you're basically a debug camera with a cushioned acceleration curve. Now that [I]third-order motion[/I], which is the technical term for the feature more commonly known as jerk, is in, thrusters no longer instantly output power at 100%, as people stated above. Third and last, I think at this point most of the tuning CIG has made for flight and space combat has been basically around the Arena Commander mindset, even in the PU. In comparison to how big star systems will be, the current PU is basically just an overgrown Arena Commander map with random encounters and drop-in-drop-out multiplayer instead of round-based rules and scoring. However, with 3.0 and beyond, non-combat gameplay is beginning to enter the game, and this is going to create the need to rebalance things away from being an oversized arcade mode. [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/cig-please-pass-on-hope-and-prayers-for-all-cig-pe/424872"]Zyloh reports that CIG Austin and everyone working there is safe during Hurricane Harvey.[/URL]

There is way too much to dissect in these recent posts. Krail did a good job of explaining what's physically happening with Star Citizen ships and why they fly like they do. The netcode isn't why ship flight looks and and subjectively feels so bad, because in singleplayer they fly exactly the same. If you were to turn down thruster power and speeds across the board, it wouldn't be any more network intensive. It'd be less, if anything. I think the root of the problem with Star Citizen's flight is twofold. Both are related to each other. One, they don't know what they want, and so instead you get a wishy washy kitchen sink of a flight model that does nothing well other than being very technically impressive. Two, Star Citizen is trying to have its cake and eat it too by creating an ultra realistic set of physics under which the ships have to fly, but design and [I]expect[/I] those ships to fly in completely unrealistic ways. What you get with those two is an impressively deep flight model that is so completely overtuned and then abstracted away with an (admittedly amazingly engineered) flight control system that you've basically bypassed everything interesting that could come out of such a realistic system to begin with, all so you can make things fly like they would in a video game. [editline]28th August 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52623064]First, nothing is final right now. They are reserving the fine adjustments and balancing for beta, once the underlying code has stopped evolving. It's way easier to push numbers around on a spreadsheet after the heavy lifting's done. That being said I'm not trying to tell anyone they can't discuss what they don't like or wanna see in the flight model. :v:[/quote] This is an excuse I'm growing tired of, because Squadron 42 will never be released (and [I]should not[/I] be released) until they finalize something as fundamental and core to the game as the flight model. This is the [I]very first[/I] thing they should have figured out and perfected before moving on. This is so critical to the game that I feel it's one of the greatest examples of Star Citizen's backwards "invent cool tech first, and then try to build a game around it second" mentality to game design. The story of how Mario 64 was for the longest time nothing but a few rooms to run and jump around in comes to mind. You want the "running around" to be good in your game because it's the thing everybody is going to always be doing. If your most fundamental mechanics don't feel good, you're gonna have a bad time. These are not fine adjustments and balancing. Decisions need to be made. The problems with the flight model are deeply rooted in the core design of the game, it's ships, and the FLCS. I don't envy CIG, because they've put themselves between a rock and a very hard place by coding first and asking questions later. [QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52623064]Second, to the best of my knowledge, gimbaled thrusters instantly pivot to their desired vector [B]and CIG will eventually be fixing that[/B]. There's no travel time or off-axis thruster firing, so that probably has a lot to do with how unnatural the controls feel. There's no imperfection in the directional controls, you're basically a debug camera with a cushioned acceleration curve. Now that [I]third-order motion[/I], which is the technical term for the feature more commonly known as jerk, is in, thrusters no longer instantly output power at 100%, as people stated above.[/quote] Trust me, you do not want that. Gimballed maneuvering thrusters are an objectively bad idea if you want to fly a ship that's as remotely responsive and predictable as you would expect for a space game like Star Citizen. The controls feel stiff and unnatural because all the thrusters are both amazingly powerful (by necessity, because rotational and translational thrusters are the same) and completely artificially driven by the FCS to feel the way they do right now. It feels artificial because [I]it is[/I]. That's just the nature of a fly by wire system, especially one that has to deal with the physical reality that is a Star Citizen ship.

I think the ships with gimballed maneuvering thrusters like the Cutlass (are there even any others? I know a few ships have gimballed main engines but not to the degree of the Cutlass) should feel sluggish and heavy, though, like that would be the point. The thrusters are slow to respond to extreme maneuvers, but once they're responding, they can push pretty hard. Drake's design philosophy for the Cutlass seems like the Hind approach - it's slow but what it lacks in maneuverability and responsiveness it makes up for in raw armor plating and armament. The gimbal response wouldn't affect any other combat craft I can think of.

[QUOTE=Why485;52623650]I think the root of the problem with Star Citizen's flight is twofold. Both are related to each other. One, they don't know what they want, and so instead you get a wishy washy kitchen sink of a flight model that does nothing well other than being very technically impressive. Two, Star Citizen is trying to have its cake and eat it too by creating an ultra realistic set of physics under which the ships have to fly, but design and [I]expect[/I] those ships to fly in completely unrealistic ways.[/QUOTE] this is a great summary, sometimes I think they should just ditch the amazing physicalised flight model all together since it's not really what they or the community seems to want from a space game [QUOTE=Why485;52623650]This is an excuse I'm growing tired of, because Squadron 42 will never be released (and [I]should not[/I] be released) until they finalize something as fundamental and core to the game as the flight model. This is the [I]very first[/I] thing they should have figured out and perfected before moving on. This is so critical to the game that I feel it's one of the greatest examples of Star Citizen's backwards "invent cool tech first, and then try to build a game around it second" mentality to game design.[/QUOTE] to be fair it's not like they haven't been working on the flight model. I worry the challenge is almost a sort of catch-22, that some ideal flight model people picture in their heads isn't actually possible?? I'd like to see it as an open challenge to hobby devs out there to actually *make* what they imagine the flight model should be, because I'd be interested to see if anyone can actually reconcile good gameplay with the 'idea' of what space flight should be like

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;52623966]I think the ships with gimballed maneuvering thrusters like the Cutlass (are there even any others? I know a few ships have gimballed main engines but not to the degree of the Cutlass) should feel sluggish and heavy, though, like that would be the point. The thrusters are slow to respond to extreme maneuvers, but once they're responding, they can push pretty hard. Drake's design philosophy for the Cutlass seems like the Hind approach - it's slow but what it lacks in maneuverability and responsiveness it makes up for in raw armor plating and armament. The gimbal response wouldn't affect any other combat craft I can think of.[/QUOTE] I'm not talking about the main engines. I'm talking about the maneuvering thrusters. Almost all ships in Star Citizen have articulated maneuvering thrusters which means that unless you are making a very simple movement such as a rotation in one axis, or a translation in one axis, you aren't going to be getting the optimal (i.e., powerful, responsive, and predictable) thrust in any one axis from that thruster. [img]https://thumbs.gfycat.com/FreeRectangularAmericanbobtail-max-1mb.gif[/img] I mean, it does look cool, but the problem is that once you do that, any kind of blended movement (e.g., rolling while pitching) becomes a compromise of a motion. Without a thruster dedicated to each axis, gimballed thrusters can't perform their function without having to pull double duty to perform a maneuver in another axis by redirecting and possibly modulating their thrust. With a bunch of fixed and aligned thrusters, the worst that happens is sometimes forces cancel each other out so that the thruster reduces its thrust. This isn't the same as the thruster physically not being able to make ends meet because it has to rotate out of the way of what would be optimal for any specific axis to help make another simultaneous command happen. [t]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Apollo_RCS_quad.jpg[/t] Star Citizen compounds the problem by using the same very limited set of thrusters for rotation [I]and[/I] translation. You now have one thruster potentially being asked to do 3-5 different motions when all it can do is just pick a rotation that's the best compromise and go with that. Star Citizen then compounds the problem [I]even further[/I] by creating big deadzones with how some of its thrusters can articulate. The Hornet is an easy target to pick on for this because it's bottom thrusters can only direct thrust forwards and back. They cannot direct it laterally at all. It creates an odd situation if you want to strafe sideways. You can only use your top thrusters to push you to the side, but then you need to use your bottom thrusters to cancel out the torque that's generated because the only lateral thrust is coming from above your center of mass. [img]http://68.media.tumblr.com/9687ead02672f93cc20433c6270bda8f/tumblr_ncxsfhcf0N1r9waklo1_1280.png[/img] So on top of thrusters having to compromise on thrust in commanded axes because there's only one big articulated thruster, they then have to make up for the fact that most ships require complex and wasteful thrust patterns using multiple thrusters to accomplish what should be the simplest command. The Hornet is hardly unique in this, it's just the simplest example due to how straightforward its thruster arrangement is. Way back in the earlier days, thrusters used to be a lot weaker, and so all of these things combined used to hit ships a lot harder. The Hornet always produced a roll while strafing due to the above, and the Aurora had [I]significant[/I] handling issues all around because it has too few thrusters, and they're both articulated and placed in a very silly way. Even the best flying of the ships back in those days didn't quite respond the way you'd want them to and it'd feel almost like you get these bumps in your motion or sudden losses in rotation as your thrusters wiggle around trying to do what's being asked of them. These days, all the thrusters are so powerful that the limit for most movement is coming from the IFCS. Thrusters don't really max out anymore except for in specific situations. This is why even if they went through with the common suggestion of "just lower the thrust for everything" it'd create a whole new set of problems. Problems that go [I]far[/I] deeper than just the way the IFCS flies your ship or the strength of thrusters. It would expose serious issues with ship design in a way that hasn't been all that relevant in a while. Changing code in the IFCS is one thing, but having to remodel, rig, animate, import, and implement parts of a ship just to give it a more optimal thrust arrangement is a whole other story. All of this ended up being a rant about why gimballed/articulated thrusters are a [B]terrible[/B] idea, so to bring this back to what I meant to say, imagine if you combined all of the above problems with a delay in your thrusters moving into position. It'd be [I]so[/I] much worse, because then you have to predict the very specific ways that your ship is broken when you make blended movements, stuff you don't want to think about when you're trying to line up a gun shot. On some level, I do think having ships be horrendously quirky and awful to fly to the point where you have to really know your ship is kind of interesting, but usually it'll end up feeling frustrating. You'll then have to explain to a new player, who will probably be immediately turned off by it, that the ships fly like shit because "they're designed to!" or "you just have to learn your ship!" or something like that. It also gives the impression that none of the companies in Star Citizen know the first thing about designing space ships. [editline]28th August 2017[/editline] By the way, this is also why I have mad respect for the IFCS guys (guy?) at Star Citizen. There are an [B]absurd[/B] amount of variables and built in design mistakes that it has to deal with in order to get the motion it wants. I'm amazed anything flies at all, let alone as predictably as they do now.

I thought the only one with gimballed maneuvering thrusters was the Cutlass! I never realized they were all articulated. That's so bizarre.

I've wanted the Apollo / Space Shuttle fixed RCS thruster blocks since day 1 of flying my 300i. Gimbaled maneuvering thrusters are so janky. I have GMOD thruster flying contraptions that are more responsive.

[QUOTE=Why485;52624577]By the way, this is also why I have mad respect for the IFCS guys (guy?) at Star Citizen. There are an [B]absurd[/B] amount of variables and built in design mistakes that it has to deal with in order to get the motion it wants. I'm amazed anything flies at all, let alone as predictably as they do now.[/QUOTE]It's not easy. I can say that from experience. [img]http://i.imgur.com/gBnMruH.gif[/img]