Read by Council Ship Weapon Aim Rework

[Valiant70]

My main concern with keeping a small cone of fire is trying to turn and fire at the same time, as it would probably be even harder than it is now (and frankly it's pretty bad now). Plus, eliminating the fine aim at the center would make the game more joystick-friendly and adding a tiny autotracking area would make the it less frustrating.

The best solution I can think of is to use the primary and secondary buttons to switch between normal mode (cursor flies, weapons fire dead center with autotracking) and manual mode (cursor aims, and weapons fire within a limited cone without autotracking). Left click would fire in both modes. Holding right click would switch from normal to manual mode and releasing it would return to normal mode. This is still more or less joystick friendly because a joystick's FULL range of motion could be used for the small cone of aim when in manual mode, allowing mouse-like precision. I doubt I'd use manual mode much.

Entering a weapon computer would automatically put you in manual mode, allowing the pilot to use a teammate's skill in place of a wider autotracking ability. In a weapon computer, it might be reasonable to allow autotracking to follow a movable cursor as this would be balanced by the requirement that you use another person as a gunner instead of using that person to pilot another ship.

 

[lilFishy]

I fully support the reduced cone of fire, it is just plain silly to see a 400+ ship fireing a beam at almost 90 degrees in order to hit something that is not in front of it....
Tho, this should be adressed at the same time as directional thrust, or what other mechanic is chosen to upgrade or replace the current omnidirectional derp-drive system.

 

[Valiant70]

Tho, this should be adressed at the same time as directional thrust, or what other mechanic is chosen to upgrade or replace the current omnidirectional derp-drive system.

I beg to differ. This could even be added before that.

 

[lilFishy]

I beg to differ. This could even be added before that.

Noting the current changes in thrusts in the dev build i will have to argue with that.
But i do not think that it should not take long time to tweak the aiming.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

The ability to fly ships while in a turret would be a great addition to this as well. I've done it with tab+f8 before and it is really nice... I have to try it again with the new turret system... I'm going to go do that now

 

[Snk]

The ability to fly ships while in a turret would be a great addition to this as well. I've done it with tab+f8 before and it is really nice... I have to try it again with the new turret system... I'm going to go do that now

Space tank!

 

[Valiant70]

I made some tiny edits and bumped this thread as this issue hasn't been addressed at all.

I recently thought of another option: Targeting lag. (No, it doesn't make you lag.) This means that it takes a moment for a very large gun to adjust its aim to where your cursor is. This would work with limited firing arcs. It would would happen too fast to be noticed on small ships, and wouldn't hinder large ships shooting big or slow targets, but would make it difficult for a larger ship to line up its guns on a small, fast target. This would force large ships to rely more heavily on turrets to deal with smaller ships. The Death Star should not be able to target a fighter accurately. That just doesn't make sense.

Another thing to consider is the upcoming NPC crew update. We could take weapon aim control away from the pilot and restrict it to a gunner at the weapon computer or similar control station. This offers multiple advantages:

• Encourage players to use NPC or player crew. A BOBBY Artificial Idiot Module could fill in (rather stupidly) in a pinch.
• Make the game's control scheme less strange. Aiming with the same control axes you're trying to turn the ship with is just weird. I've never enjoyed flying that way.
• Make it easier to fly small fighters. If you're that fast, the off-center aim just gets in the way of trying to maneuver. You can't even turn it off, which is annoying.

In the end it might just be better to get rid of the firing arcs altogether. It would certainly be simpler. On the other hand I doubt the community would receive that very well because it's been this way so long.

 

[sayerulz]

Yes, we defintely need this. In fact, as it is now, if you use freecam, you can shoot in ANY direction. It is ugly and unbalanced to have a titan waving a deathstar-like weapon around all over the screen.

 

[Zero_Sen]

There is some reasoning and logic behind reducing the cone at which weapons can actually fire and hit a target, however at the same time, I see this as a POST ALPHA Issue or something that should be made controllable via configs. The wide angle of the Cone for weapons fire is what it is, most likely because StarMade is still very much an Alpha with Alpha problems. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen an AI ship start spazing out because its either equipped with a primary beam weapon or its target just hopped sector boundaries.

Everything I read in this thread points to the fact that you all view the game as a finished product and should be tailored to your needs as such. For over two of StarMade's 3+ year Alpha run, they have promised us a plethora of things that they have taken back, one of which is a function known as Remote Turret Control, or Turret Mode. In short, a Free-Camera mode where you can look around your ship and all turrets on your ship would track your crosshair, firing on your command. Obviously because of how starmade is, this is currently impossible and the closest thing that exists is "Selected Target Mode" for Turrets.

For the love of god, AI still acts more retarded than a short bus full of short buses thanks to the Fleet System Update.

Let them try and fix what they add and break every time a feature or function is added before w start demanding a trivial things like a smaller cone of fire because you feel you're not exploiting what you feel should be a big ships blind spot, enough.

 

[Valiant70]

There is some reasoning and logic behind reducing the cone at which weapons can actually fire and hit a target, however at the same time, I see this as a POST ALPHA Issue or something that should be made controllable via configs. The wide angle of the Cone for weapons fire is what it is, most likely because StarMade is still very much an Alpha with Alpha problems. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen an AI ship start spazing out because its either equipped with a primary beam weapon or its target just hopped sector boundaries.

Everything I read in this thread points to the fact that you all view the game as a finished product and should be tailored to your needs as such. For over two of StarMade's 3+ year Alpha run, they have promised us a plethora of things that they have taken back, one of which is a function known as Remote Turret Control, or Turret Mode. In short, a Free-Camera mode where you can look around your ship and all turrets on your ship would track your crosshair, firing on your command. Obviously because of how starmade is, this is currently impossible and the closest thing that exists is "Selected Target Mode" for Turrets.

For the love of god, AI still acts more retarded than a short bus full of short buses thanks to the Fleet System Update.

Let them try and fix what they add and break every time a feature or function is added before w start demanding a trivial things like a smaller cone of fire because you feel you're not exploiting what you feel should be a big ships blind spot, enough.

This is irrelevant. The issues presented in this thread will need to be addressed at some point or another. Let's discuss the features and let the developers decide when to implement them. It stands that these tweaks could be implemented immediately. There might be a better time for them, but it's not our job to decide that.
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Yes, we defintely need this. In fact, as it is now, if you use freecam, you can shoot in ANY direction. It is ugly and unbalanced to have a titan waving a deathstar-like weapon around all over the screen.

This was fixed. When in free cam mode, weapons remain aimed where they were before you enter free cam mode. However, balance and control scheme issues remain.