Fix Navigating to coordinates to be a STRAIGHT LINE!

[John Sheridan]

This is how Starmade directs you to a set of coordinates you enter:



------|
|
-------|
|

WHEN IT SHOULD BE:

\
\
\
\



No turn right, go up, turn left, turn down, turn right, turn backwards... its annoying constantly having to move mouse for long trips (also slows ship down turning)

Thanks

 

[Arlin.Del'Adre]

YES PLEASE

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

+1



I am so tired of flying sector-to-sector on the nav when in space you would only fly in a straight line (broadly speaking - technically you always fly in an orbit unless you escape the gravity in a galaxy which may take a while).



To compensate for this, I tend to fly in between sectors when they keep switching left-right-left-right. but Direct Waypoints would help a lot.

 

[Chosen Mimes]

i absolutely agree with this, from the very bottom of my heart.

it\'s so annoying to zigzag trough space.

i want to be able to fly in a straight line. xD

 

[lupoCani]

Agreed! Schema, give us straight lines!

 

[vernes]

This would make me stupidly happy.

 

[Nootau]

I think the way to do this would force every sector you need to pass through to load properly as sectors move and drift currently. I can\'t support such a resource hog

 

[John Sheridan]

I don\'t grasp what you are saying here, the sectors you pass through going left and right have to load, so whats the problem cutting through? THe server will load sectors more quickly if flying in a straight line (because you arent wasting time going left, then right, then up, which slows down your ship, and adds more distance to cover unnecessarily etc) but abit more server load seems like a tough luck deal with it situation to be honest?

There are far worse server problems than this - like deathstars ramming planets.



We just want to get from point A to point B in a sane way.

 

[Nootau]

It may not make a difference for a short trip of 5-20 sectors, what about trips that are several hundred sectors away? You will be loading many times more sectors than normal. Also I don\'t understand your straight line comment, loading things along the X Y or Z ahead of you trying to predict what path you will take will not help when moving in a non straight line such as a slant that may only clip edges of several sectors.



What I do I only make two or three turns for even very long trips. I remember where I want to go, then I fly to the first point, and keep following to the second point until that sector of (X Y Z) is correct, then I follow the new path it says until two of the three are right, then I follow the new path to the final cord. I thought most people did this for long distances.

 

[Trollerbobman]

agree with nootau.

 

[Travesty]

With how everything moves around, it would be really awkward to try and calculate the coordinates of a place very far away through several sectors. I rather like how it works now, it\'s just a little annoying to constantly re-aim. If there were simply a button to turn towards your current target (like auto-turning when resetting orrientation), I\'d be fine with it. Just press that button every time you change sectors or something.

The current system of leap-frogging from one sector to another feels more like I would expect from sci-fi space travel. For super long-distance travel, I\'d rather some of the other suggestions like warp gates and such.

 

[John Sheridan]

What kind of poor defence against implementing this is this really? Having to remember where abouts on the screen some coordinates are and manually flying there? wtf lol.

So basically what you are saying is, continue spending double the time/effort going around in a zig zag fashion in order to slow down the amount of sectors loading up for server load reasons.

I have a better idea, if your server is bad/game unoptimized, set the MAX THROTTLE to lower for your server. I\'d rather put like a turtle and get straight to where I want to rather than zig zag and injure my wrist constantly moving my mouse.

But still sector loading has never seemed like a problem on my server, its always the juggernaught ships going near other jubbernaught ships/objects.

PLease implement straight line navigation!

 

[KuramaFox]

Build a ship. Pretend it is a bunch of sectors, with the core as your start and your destination off elsewhere. Try the line method. Make a line of 20 blocks in one direction, 20 in another, then 20 in the third. Add one block to every side of the \"path\" to represent the sectors that have loaded around you as you fly.



Next, do this again, except make it diagonal. That is to say, one forward, one side, one up, one forward, one side, one up, until it has gone 20 in each of the three directions. Now repeat the \"padding\" again to similate the sectors you have loaded around them as you fly through.



Compare the mass of the two ships you have made. Guess what? There is very little difference! You put MUCH more load on a server by having speed limits at 100 then you ever would having speed limits at 50 and being able to navigate in a straight line in a diagonal (which when drawn through cubic sectors results in the same ones being loaded as you would get if you turn every sector).



Besides, if you are in a small enough ship you may ALREADY fly (sector-wise) in the \"straight line\" because you turn fast enough that you can just follow the indicator.





The only problem that needs to be dealt with is making sure the game can display an indicator for someplace 50 kilometers away (which means that the indicator cannot be just highlighting the sector like it currently does, as said target sector may not be loaded yet, but has to be indicating a non-existent \"beacon\"). Whatever system is put in for this may actually be useful for other things too. For instance, perhaps it could also be used for a \"map mode\" in which object hud indicators are temporarily hidden, and instead beacon indicators like this are shown for every object you have deemed to be of interest. Not great, but it would beat the current cluttered excuse for a map-prototype.



And Schema has already indicated that he is getting rid of solar system sector rotation mechanics when he gets some time, and will be replacing them with planet-specific ones instead for the day/night cycles.

 

[Solar]

Considering the physics engine where solar systems rotate it would be rather difficult to calculate a straight line to where you\'re planning to go (it will constantly change, requiring additional calculations). Each solar system is also completely separate so it would be virtually impossible to determine where the sector you are going to will be. Using adjacency to determine the \"next step\" is probably the most viable means other than using intermediate points between coords. Just because the navi says go to \"X\" sector doesn\'t mean you can\'t do a diagonal.

 

[John Sheridan]

I am too scared to ask why there is \"rotation\" of sectors...

Just a growing three-dimensional cube system forsectors would of been fine surely...?

I don\'t ever see planets orbiting stars or things like that so whats with the rotation thing seems like it needs to scraped for something simple as above.... but again I dont know any facts about this area... I just know I dont want to zig zag and break my wrist to have this rotation of sectors (however it works).

 

[Terramort]

I would like to see straight line in the navigation as well. Very often it leads you around blocky paths to get to somewhere fairly close - especially when you are in a big ship.

 

[Zardox]

I think that the navigation we have now should stay...

...

Okay - now that everyone is upset....

BUT - only for the basic navigation.

You should be able to update to more advanced \"Navigation Computers\" (A type of block you can build) in game.

Level 1 Navigation Block - upgrades the current navigation map - allows you to see the sector highlighted and make notes on the map

Level 2 Navigation Block - also allows you to identify and target Navigation Beacons (something else you can build) several sectors away. How far depends on the power of the Beacon. Since you can target it you can fly in a straight line towards it.

Level 3 Navigation Block - also Calculates known planet positions (sectors) in orbit

Level 4 Navigation Block - also for any object in space allows you to calculate path projections (where it will be at some future time)

Level 5 Navigation Block - also allows you to map planet surfaces by providing navigation references on the planet surface (North Point, equator, ecliptic plane etc)

 

[lupoCani]

Not that I disapprove of those ideas, but straight-line navigation should be part of the basic functionality, anything else would be ridiculous.

 

[Zaflis]

I fully support idea of straight lines.

That said, i don\'t use navigation computer to fly strictly where it tells me to. I try to average the \"path\" between last 2-3 nodes, and reduce turns that way. Sometimes i can see the planet (if it\'s known faction home) it\'s going towards already 5 sectors away so i\'ll just fly there on my own that point.

After reading the comments, i can also tell that \"smoothened zigzag\" is much faster than big L-shape.

 

[Agent Zirdik]

I don\'t see why \"calculating\" a straight line would be that difficult for the game. It\'s simple algebra, anything a computer program after the 50s could perform. Furthermore, if we had pitch and heading indicators, we could MANUALLY calculate a straight line knowing our starting coords and destination coords. Loading sectors on the way is irrelevant because regardless of what direction we travel, the distance around the ship that must be loaded is pretty much the same. Star system rotation is a complication for manual calculations, but if you lack the patience to travel a few sectors into a stable void-system, where calculations would be easier, then you may want to forgoe star travel all together. Finally, although I think straigh-line navigation is a necessary change, I wouldn\'t really care about the zigzags so much if the game just gave me an autopilot and did the zig-zagging for me while I got a sandwich.