Why does flying still suck so bad?

DoomCarrot · Oct 26, 2018

Honestly, this seems like a pretty bizarre thing, that flying/maneuvering still hasn't changed.

I understand that Starmade is aiming for a realism approach, and I understand physics well enough to know that the current flying system is fairly accurate scientifically speaking (in terms of mass, force, direction of acceleration, etc).

However, for a video game, good lord is in counter-intuitive. I can't think of a single game that has a flying system as clunky (and yes, realistic), as starmade, but I would gladly sacrifice realism if it meant greater playability.

PROBLEMS with the current system:

Slowing down/avoiding obstacles is not just difficult, it is utterly impossible sometimes. This leads to lots of weird, clunky collisions, especially when trying to land.
Due the the weirdness of the flying system, most fights turn into two people zipping sideways through space at full speed while staring at each other the entire time. At the end of a fight with npcs, I usually end up in a different system (lol). This not only makes fights incredibly boring and repetitive, but also makes it almost impossible to have an interesting battle.
Flying takes no skill. Make some zippy fighter, and fly it through some kind of obstacle course. You will hit something, guaranteed. Doesn't matter how agile your ship is, or how "good" you are at flying it, the mechanics of the game simply don't let you maneuver effectively at all.

How to fix this:

First, don't let something go full speed backwards and then turn around and start shooting you lol. I understand it is realistic in terms of physics, but cmon, imagine how stupid star wars would be if star destroyers just started zipping backwards through space while firing at slower rebel ships from a distance lol. If you don't got turrets, and you are zipping away from your enemy, then imo you shouldn't be able to turn around and shoot them, as realistic as it may be. It is straight up cancerous.

Make acceleration ENORMOUS (when it comes to direction of acceleration). What I mean by that is that acceleration should become exponentially greater the farther your mouse pointer is from the center of the screen. You know, like just about every single fun flying game in existence? When I point my mouse up to avoid an obstacle, I expect my ship to instantly change course, like a fighter plane. Instead, I slowly accelerate up while my ship continues to careen into an another ship at 100 m/s lol.

I understand some ships should be very hard to maneuver. But for a 100 block fighter? C'mon. It feels more like I am flying an unstoppable haywire train then an agile starfighter.

I am just very surprised that the tedious flying system hasn't changed an ounce despite all the work put into other systems that were still perfectly fun to play with.

Lone_Puppy · Oct 26, 2018

I mentioned this recently. https://starmadedock.net/threads/thruster-update-or-revamp.31023/
Could this help?

DoomCarrot · Oct 27, 2018

No offense, but I am not a huge fan of the system you outlined, if I understand it correctly.

I don’t think thrusters should take a serious amount of thought to design or use. After all, they are the only mandatory thing besides power for a new player, so both systems should be insanely simple. I am fine with how basic thrusters are right now.

However, I just wish they weren’t so non-intuitive in use. A starfighter should handle like a fighter jet, not a 5mil ton block of lead. Make flying in starmade as “normal” feeling as a flight simulator, or battlefront 2, you get the idea.

I don’t think overcomplicating things is the cure to anything, especially thrusters. However, they definitely need to perform differently if combat in this game is ever going to be anything more than two titans flying max speed through the galaxy throwing missiles at each other

NTIMESc · Oct 27, 2018

DoomCarrot said:
I can't think of a single game that has a flying system as clunky (and yes, realistic), as starmade, but I would gladly sacrifice realism if it meant greater playability.

What about Asteroids?

If the space flight model was selectable by the player (say, between, atmospheric and Newtonian), I think most players would choose initially choose Star Wars style atmospheric. Then, after their first few encounters, they would either rage-quit, or switch to Newtonian flight. Schine has mentioned (somewhere) the possibility of adding more than one flight model, but honestly, I would rather see more improvements to shipboard AI that help calculate trajectories of your ship and other targets, along with configurable HUD overlays, that visualize this information for the pilot.

DoomCarrot said:
PROBLEMS with the current system:

Slowing down/avoiding obstacles is not just difficult, it is utterly impossible sometimes. This leads to lots of weird, clunky collisions, especially when trying to land.

Due the the weirdness of the flying system, most fights turn into two people zipping sideways through space at full speed while staring at each other the entire time. At the end of a fight with npcs, I usually end up in a different system (lol). This not only makes fights incredibly boring and repetitive, but also makes it almost impossible to have an interesting battle.

Flying takes no skill. Make some zippy fighter, and fly it through some kind of obstacle course. You will hit something, guaranteed. Doesn't matter how agile your ship is, or how "good" you are at flying it, the mechanics of the game simply don't let you maneuver effectively at all.

These problems are really two-fold. First, it's purely subjective whether a player finds the 20th century aerial dogfight model "more exciting". Even though I love Star Wars, I can't help but think how stupid Luke was to not just point his X-Wing backward and blast the Tie-Fighters chasing him. But, I suppose everyone's threshold for realism in entertainment is different.
Second, difficultly slowing down, avoiding obstacles, and battles turning into circles strafe dances are symptoms of missing features, such as sensible combat AI (that would have more complex decision-making than just "point and shoot"), and better computer aided navigation to warn you of objects on an intercept course, and possibly even some autopilot functions for simple tasks, like not flying into a star.
The last point, of flying taking no skill seems to contradict the first point of flying that is "utterly impossible sometimes". I think it's really just down to familiarity and practice.

OfficialCoding · Oct 27, 2018

DoomCarrot said:
Honestly, this seems like a pretty bizarre thing, that flying/maneuvering still hasn't changed.

I understand that Starmade is aiming for a realism approach, and I understand physics well enough to know that the current flying system is fairly accurate scientifically speaking (in terms of mass, force, direction of acceleration, etc).

However, for a video game, good lord is in counter-intuitive. I can't think of a single game that has a flying system as clunky (and yes, realistic), as starmade, but I would gladly sacrifice realism if it meant greater playability.

PROBLEMS with the current system:

Slowing down/avoiding obstacles is not just difficult, it is utterly impossible sometimes. This leads to lots of weird, clunky collisions, especially when trying to land.

Due the the weirdness of the flying system, most fights turn into two people zipping sideways through space at full speed while staring at each other the entire time. At the end of a fight with npcs, I usually end up in a different system (lol). This not only makes fights incredibly boring and repetitive, but also makes it almost impossible to have an interesting battle.

Flying takes no skill. Make some zippy fighter, and fly it through some kind of obstacle course. You will hit something, guaranteed. Doesn't matter how agile your ship is, or how "good" you are at flying it, the mechanics of the game simply don't let you maneuver effectively at all.

How to fix this:

First, don't let something go full speed backwards and then turn around and start shooting you lol. I understand it is realistic in terms of physics, but cmon, imagine how stupid star wars would be if star destroyers just started zipping backwards through space while firing at slower rebel ships from a distance lol. If you don't got turrets, and you are zipping away from your enemy, then imo you shouldn't be able to turn around and shoot them, as realistic as it may be. It is straight up cancerous.

Make acceleration ENORMOUS (when it comes to direction of acceleration). What I mean by that is that acceleration should become exponentially greater the farther your mouse pointer is from the center of the screen. You know, like just about every single fun flying game in existence? When I point my mouse up to avoid an obstacle, I expect my ship to instantly change course, like a fighter plane. Instead, I slowly accelerate up while my ship continues to careen into an another ship at 100 m/s lol.

I understand some ships should be very hard to maneuver. But for a 100 block fighter? C'mon. It feels more like I am flying an unstoppable haywire train then an agile starfighter.

I am just very surprised that the tedious flying system hasn't changed an ounce despite all the work put into other systems that were still perfectly fun to play with.

Great.

Even though I love Star Wars, I can't help but think how stupid Luke was to not just point his X-Wing backward and blast the Tie-Fighters chasing him.

While I can see this happening in a film with physics like Interstellar Physics, Star Wars physics just don't work that way

DoomCarrot · Oct 27, 2018

NTIMESc said:
What about Asteroids?

If the space flight model was selectable by the player (say, between, atmospheric and Newtonian), I think most players would choose initially choose Star Wars style atmospheric. Then, after their first few encounters, they would either rage-quit, or switch to Newtonian flight. Schine has mentioned (somewhere) the possibility of adding more than one flight model, but honestly, I would rather see more improvements to shipboard AI that help calculate trajectories of your ship and other targets, along with configurable HUD overlays, that visualize this information for the pilot.

These problems are really two-fold. First, it's purely subjective whether a player finds the 20th century aerial dogfight model "more exciting". Even though I love Star Wars, I can't help but think how stupid Luke was to not just point his X-Wing backward and blast the Tie-Fighters chasing him. But, I suppose everyone's threshold for realism in entertainment is different.
Second, difficultly slowing down, avoiding obstacles, and battles turning into circles strafe dances are symptoms of missing features, such as sensible combat AI (that would have more complex decision-making than just "point and shoot"), and better computer aided navigation to warn you of objects on an intercept course, and possibly even some autopilot functions for simple tasks, like not flying into a star.
The last point, of flying taking no skill seems to contradict the first point of flying that is "utterly impossible sometimes". I think it's really just down to familiarity and practice.

I understand what you are saying, and I agree there should always be options for servers. At the same time though, I strongly disagree with:

NTIMESc said:
If the space flight model was selectable by the player (say, between, atmospheric and Newtonian), I think most players would choose initially choose Star Wars style atmospheric. Then, after their first few encounters, they would either rage-quit, or switch to Newtonian flight.

I think that would be a very small majority of players. Most players start with a small fighter. Currently, the ONLY advantage a fighter has in starmade is that they are faster.... Which really doesn't matter when you can barely maneuver in any direction but a straight line.

I think most players would start with a fighter, run into a much larger vessel, and realize that they can fly circles around it as it struggles to lock its weapons onto their signature. After taking a couple pot shots they realize its shields are far too strong for one small fighter and warp out of there with minimal damage. Then they build some bigger ships to crush their opponent.

Currently, there is no point to flying a fighter. Sure, they look cool, and you can make a fleet of them, but with the current status of flight mechanics you are pretty much guaranteed to get instantly one-shotted by a 20k damage heat seeking missile.

If starmade had atmospheric flight (I like that term you gave), fighters would be a much more viable option. Not only would you be able to escape most engagements with larger vessels (unless they had anti-fighter turrets), but you would also be able to play a role in a large battle between cruisers, even if your arsenal is limited to a few fighters.

Better fleet AI could also be made with atmospheric flight conditions, so that you would order other fighters to follow you, or break formation, or split into groups, etc. This would allow a large squadron of fighters to actually be a significant threat on a battlefield, capable of distracting turrets and performing strafing runs without getting instantly demolished by a titan doing the roflstomp back-pedal maneuver.

Az14el · Oct 27, 2018

There's a lot of "unrealistic" and a LOT of arcade physics with starmades current flight mechanics, it's already trading off realism for accessibility and fun basically. It definitely doesn't need to be any more arcadey than it already is. Gotta disagree 100% with OP there, i don't think that's very well thought out or coming from a lot of experience.

Dire Venom · Oct 27, 2018

Personally I would like to see flying become a lot more user friendly (which could be achieved via the ui and other features).
I would love to see:
-Auto-align with target ship
-Lead/Acceleration indicators for selected targets (so you can tell what on earth they're doing!)
-Improved flight cameras and control (e.g a camera on a fixed plane behind the ship so you can turn/barrel roll etc while the camera stays still)
-Actual 'pulse/Boost' thrust e.g similar to old push/pull effects, allowing a ship to quickly change acceleration for an energy cost with cool-down). That way fighters can actually dodge rather than just strafe.
-UI indicators (e.g incoming high damage missile, cannon fire/beam/Doom beam/Status effects)
-Lock ship to target (ship will auto maneuver to stay with it's current facing towards the ship), with presets you can make and use (e.g turn ship to fire broadside at current target)

And a stretch goal would being able to do basic programming for your ship, e.g when Shield >z Change to (x) reactor config, or

power list, Detach entity (c) when entity (x) takes damage etc.
Might also be cool to be able to program maneuvers into our ships imo.

It's also very difficult to fly and aim broadside based ships, better controls or views would be welcome to make this less frustrating.

NTIMESc · Oct 27, 2018

DoomCarrot said:
I think most players would start with a fighter, run into a much larger vessel, and realize that they can fly circles around it as it struggles to lock its weapons onto their signature

This scenario applies regardless of flight model.
The scenario I was alluding to is one in which two similar ships encounter each other. The player using a Newtonian flight model can strafe in any direction, and aim independent of movement, easily tracking the "jet fighter" pilot as they do all sorts of acrobatics trying to line up a shot.

Az14el · Oct 27, 2018

all for more automation and improved/directional impulse mechanics :D
though I see that as faithfulness to realism rather than "sim" or "arcadey", always a nice thing

NeonSturm · Oct 27, 2018

Good things:

3 types of thrust

Thrust pulse: One time, high burst thrust pulse with cooldown to evade things (each direction can have a different cooldown).
- First right and then left would be independent.
- double-tab light-thrust key to use.
Light thrust: For accurate maneuvers at small speeds.
- May/maynot block thrust pulse cooldown while in use (due to heat production).
Charged thrust: It takes 3-5 seconds to react, but then works rather efficiently.
- Call it afterburners, microwarp, cruise-drive, whatever.
- It may reduce weapon recharge by 50% or disable all/ high-alpha weapons.
- In many games I usually use W to toggle high sublight speeds on/off (with RDFG S SPACE primaries).

If it requires only small changes of about 10°, the ship should automatically bring flight vector and your ships nose together - one way or the the other way.
All other issues should be resolved by what I mentioned above.

Ithirahad · Oct 29, 2018

Personally, I've never really had any issue with flying in this game. The strafe-fighting is a point, I guess, but when we move past fighting just for the hell of it, just drifting off in some direction forever while shooting at an enemy will achieve basically nothing - whatever you're fighting over, it would be trivial, at that point, for the enemy to either break off the engagement and jump right back to the sector with the objective, or call up their faction and send another ship to go grab the objective while you are busy dancing through the cosmos with the first one.

klawxx · Oct 29, 2018

DoomCarrot said:
Honestly, this seems like a pretty bizarre thing, that flying/maneuvering still hasn't changed.

I understand that Starmade is aiming for a realism....

I don't know for how long you played StarMade, but like 2 months after I started playing the game behaved like any "Microsoft's Freelancer space sim"... It was not realistic but was way easier to pilot, yes, exactly like you're asking. THEN they released a "Newtonian physics" patch that made the game the ballet you are referring to. To tell the truth, took me some while to get around the new mechanics and it indeed annoyed me, but I thought like "It's progress, I guess...". It was a lot more playable before.

NTIMESc · Oct 29, 2018

klawxx said:
I don't know for how long you played StarMade, but like 2 months after I started playing the game behaved like any "Microsoft's Freelancer space sim"... It was not realistic but was way easier to pilot, yes, exactly like you're asking. THEN they released a "Newtonian physics" patch that made the game the ballet you are referring to.

I think StarMade has always used a mostly Newtonian model, but prior to that update(V0.19538), an artificial drag was applied to the ships causing them to slow down when you weren't thrusting. After the update, this "slowdown" was removed, unless you specifically activated dampening in the thruster menu.

What many other space games use is a pseudo-aerodynamic model to make players feel more comfortable, because, even without understanding control surfaces and drag, most people are familiar with how an airplane looks when it's maneuvering. In reality*, no spaceship would ever try to simulate atmospheric flight in space, as trying to recreate the forces involved would be obscenely wasteful.

*Yes, I know it is a game. It is about "fun". Some people think it is fun to swoop and arc and do "loop de loops" in space. Others do not.

Muffin_man17 · Oct 29, 2018

What if they incorporated both flight models? As in if you want to fly Newtonian model then you would need to put omnidirectional thrusters. If you only put thrusters on the rear then it would fly unidirectional. Just a thought but I know a few other space building games follow this rule. It did take me awhile to get used to the current flight model but I think it works. However, would like a way to remain in the current system that fight started. Haha

klawxx · Oct 29, 2018

Multidimensional thrusters is a hell of a idea and add another layer of complexity. But some people may hate it...

DrTarDIS · Oct 30, 2018

DoomCarrot said:
Honestly, this seems like a pretty bizarre thing, that flying/maneuvering still hasn't changed....I am just very surprised that the tedious flying system hasn't changed an ounce despite all the work put into other systems that were still perfectly fun to play with.

Yadda yaada. It just seems to me you're bad at flight. No other way to say it than "practice and git gud", sorry. Starmade perfrorms very similarly to de-coupled flight in star cittizen, If you havn't checked and compared you prob should. Sae with several other newtonian games.

Effectively your issues are that you are mentally stuck in an atmospheric flight model. I agree with most of what you say for flight Inside An Atmosphere assuming starmade ever implements atmospheric flight and atmospheres in general. when in space though...No, everything you want; No.

Edit: BTW, currently since some missiles bypass shields completely, your views on fighter vs cruiser combat are outdated and IMHO wrong.

jayman38 · Oct 30, 2018

Soooooo.... At its core, this suggestion is to double the rate of deceleration vs. acceleration and reduce rearward max speed by half or so? I could get behind that.

I have always thought that the acceleration curve goes up way too quick in relation to mass in Starmade's thrust formulas. Medium-sized ships are too sluggish.

I'm not sure how you could remove the "strafing" effect of fighting in a space game. People like their lateral thrusters. Halve the lateral speed limit as well as the rear-ward? (This would make forward thrust accelerate all the way up to max speed, while other directions are limited to half-max.) With special formulas for angular speeds, this could be fun. And with a server variable, anybody could change the max speed limit rules at will. It would be interesting to see if people change their thrust ratios to compensate, or if they'd just roll with it.

kikaha · Oct 30, 2018

Dire Venom said:
Personally I would like to see flying become a lot more user friendly (which could be achieved via the ui and other features).
I would love to see:
-Auto-align with target ship
-Lead/Acceleration indicators for selected targets (so you can tell what on earth they're doing!)
-Improved flight cameras and control (e.g a camera on a fixed plane behind the ship so you can turn/barrel roll etc while the camera stays still)
-Actual 'pulse/Boost' thrust e.g similar to old push/pull effects, allowing a ship to quickly change acceleration for an energy cost with cool-down). That way fighters can actually dodge rather than just strafe.
-UI indicators (e.g incoming high damage missile, cannon fire/beam/Doom beam/Status effects)
-Lock ship to target (ship will auto maneuver to stay with it's current facing towards the ship), with presets you can make and use (e.g turn ship to fire broadside at current target)

And a stretch goal would being able to do basic programming for your ship, e.g when Shield >z Change to (x) reactor config, or power list, Detach entity (c) when entity (x) takes damage etc.
Might also be cool to be able to program maneuvers into our ships imo.

It's also very difficult to fly and aim broadside based ships, better controls or views would be welcome to make this less frustrating.

I like that and think its close to what i believe is missing for an enjoyable flight.

What is missing imo is the "feel"of where you are. I mean its space ok but i'd like to know where i'm going. Up, down etc. So maybe just a sort of compass with an "horizon" line would help showing me what my climb, roll or other manouvre look like. The radar map is not usefull in that sense.

OfficialCoding · Oct 30, 2018

kikaha said:
I like that and think its close to what i believe is missing for an enjoyable flight.

What is missing imo is the "feel"of where you are. I mean its space ok but i'd like to know where i'm going. Up, down etc. So maybe just a sort of compass with an "horizon" line would help showing me what my climb, roll or other manouvre look like. The radar map is not usefull in that sense.

The Space Dust Particles sort of worked for that but they are broken now

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Why does flying still suck so bad?

DoomCarrot

Lone_Puppy

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OfficialCoding

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Az14el

Definitely not a skywanderers dev

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NeonSturm

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OfficialCoding

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