Turn Speeds

[Ethoir]

I've tested a few ships out to see how this turn rate mechanics update affected them and I've seen these results:



Tiny ships (mass 70 to 80) have varied turn speeds in the 2.0 to 4.0 range. Their small size makes them fighter craft in effect with that agility. One test case saw a ship with a mass of 78 end up with turn rates of the following: X2.3 Y4.0 Z2.4. The second test case had a mass of 80 and its results were X2.2 Y3.2 Z2.1. This is in line with dimension-based calculaitons mentioned in the patch notes so these seem to have been buffed up as a result.



Small-ish ships (L167xH34xW83 for example) have a turn rate of 1.1 or 1.2 on the Y axis and 1.0 on the other two. They turn okay-ish though could be faster. In the trial run the mass oc the ships used were about 3k for the first case (1.2 Y axis turn rate) and 5.6k for the second (1.1 y-axis turn rate). The problem is that their "look speed" needs to be faster. Its hard getting beads on ships of similar or smaller mass unless you are flying in reverse and are faster in acceleration than they are (afeat that gets harder and harder). Core placement may have to do with it



Large ships (what most everyone uses) took a major hit. I hate to generalize, but just about any average "cruiser" or Capital Ship regardless of mass has these turn rates: X1.0 Y1.0 Z1.0. In other words, they turn like beached whales (walruses?). The only thing they can feasibly do is fly in straight lines forward, backward, or side-to-side. Forget about mouse turning, it won't happen with any speed faster than a glacier. You'd just not use them. Or if you do you'd be forced to slap turrets on them to deal with the fact you can't turn for beans in the middle of a firefight. Not all ship designs look good with turrets on it and some won't want to use turrets at all because it "breaks the feel of the ship".



So what I've seen is this: the new mechanic favors fighters and small frigates over anything else. They get the full benefit of the system while cruisers and capitals suffer horrendously without the use of turrets. if your server is built around the idea of using small ships then this doesn't bother you much. If you design large ships to use then you will see an entirely different and painfully slow experience. And shields? Forget it, shields are worthless in cap versus cap fights due to the "waffle shotgun" AMC block designs and turrets. No amount of shields will protect you, but that's a different topic.



We can go back to the old turn rate mechanics OR alter the current one to let larger ships turn better and less like beached whales. Flying in straight lines is not my idea of fun in a fight and while small ships are nice, I like medium-sized ships more and some large designs (Vorcha) as well. This change should speed up their "mouselook" turn rate a bit so they at least feel like ships instead of trains on a rail.



This boils down to the following set of ideas for "mouselook" turn rates.

5.0 for small ships.

3.5 for Frigates.

3.0 for Light Cruisers

2.5 (3.0?) for Cruisers

2.0 for Capitals/Heavy Cruisers

1.5 for Titans (Brigadier)

1.0 for Calibiris (Damocles).



Its not perfect but its a baseline. Small ships get the advantage, server-lagging mosnters like Damocles get the worst turn rates. Cruisers are in the middle of the road with an okay turn rate. Capitals start struggling and should carry a few turrets. Titans can turn a little bit but must rely on turrets. Calibiri type ships can't really turn at all and must rely on turrets and fighters for support (like a carrier) to take on enemy small craft whilst attacking the other group's Calibiris/Titans.



Anyone have anything constructive to chime in on this? I liked flying my Defiant before (Carl's hallow version I beleive) but now it handles kind of like a fat pig. And my new Vorcha can't turn for beans (orienting in a sector takes 20 years it feels like).

 

[Gameguru]

What about adding turning jets, make then like cloakers and radio jammers, (same kind of insanity with building, well maybe not as bad) and let them help you turn faster.

 

[Jolly Roger]

I agree. The speed is way too slow. If you want to make it hard for a capital ship to turn and face a fighter with all its weapons it\'s one thing, but this slowness is unecessary! It goes above and beyond making it no fun to be in a large ship.



I like the side thruster idea. If this is not fixed, it makes large ships pointless. I have turrets on my ship, but I can make a smaller ship with the same turrets and actually use the forward facing weapons on it instead of them being oversize paperweights unable to turn and face anything for a hit unless it is far away and stationary.

The physics don\'t quite make sense either. Although something is long, why would it necessarily mean that it\'s going to turn slower?



Instead of making my ship look nice, now it\'s rewarding me to make it into a boring and ugly cube without any artistic features so that I can have the same weaponry in a smaller footprint with the same amount of mass, but have faster turn rates.

It\'s not just weird and annoying, It\'s no fun. I play this game almost on a daily basis...Please fix this Schema!

 

[lman94]

it might not let you face a fighter, but at least it will help with navigation and anti capital battles.

 

[MrFURB]

I\'m completely in favor of these new changes, but mostly because if someone doesn\'t like them they can change them easily in the server configuration files.

I\'m willing to bet that servers with vanilla economies and lots of large ships being spawned will change the options to make those large ships be easier to fly by single people or smaller groups.

Meanwhile, those servers with a so called \'hardcore\' economy and more medium/smaller ships due to the reduced income will leave the option as-is. On a hardcore server, any group that has enough people/resources to build something huge will have the people/resources to be able to use it despite vanilla mobility rules hampering it\'s forward firepower.

 

[McDili]

Just want to point out, that before the turn rate change the game already rewarded you more for making big ugly cubes as opposed to nice ships. So nothing has really changed in that department.



As far as turn rates, there\'s a server option to adjust how it scales, and Schema even said himself that the current scale is just an interim integer for now. So he may change the default setting, but you and/or your server has full control over how they want to scale turning speed.

 

[Ethoir]

And then you end up leaving your favorite ships behind if the server you visit adjusts too high or too low. Alternatively you end up rebuilding your favorite ship to get the turn rate you want for \"Server X\" and inflating your blueprints with many copies of the same ship in different sizes for different turn rates.



And if you are in a hardcore server that forbids uploading blueprints, then you\'r hand is forced and you need to stay small.



I\'d like to see the values changed soon. So larger ships become fun to fly again as opposed to \"straight lines only\" gameplay with turrets/fighters almost mandatory. Further, inertial dampners would be good to have (makes stopping and accelerating easier for large mass ships) as well as RCS thrusters to help turn the ship. But the RCS needs to use power in a manner that the engine thrusters do I think.



Any of that (particularly the second paragrah) sound fair to you?

 

[MrFURB]

If large vessels gain tools that let them easily maneuver as fast as something much smaller and become easy to use for single people, then we\'ll have to throw a whole design philosophy out the window.

Big ships are much better, stat-wise... But there\'s a drawback to having too much power in a single player\'s control, and that power becomes harder to utilize. This means that putting more and more resources into a ship affects it\'s possible power much more than it\'s average power; A titan can field absolutely massive DPS, strong shields, and every type of beam/missile/utility but requires a growing list of requirements in order to fully utilize that power. (Imagine having other requirements besides turning! Imagine if part of your hull wasn\'t supported enough and would break off if you acelerated too fast. Imagine that larger weapons arrays would have some sort of projectile spread. That would plague large ships like no other by adding new mechanical limitations to excessive force)

Now smaller ships, namely mid-sized ships that might have been only minorly affected by this update, tend to have decent stats because they haven\'t been hit by any hard curves yet and retain a decent turn rate. This allows them to easily apply all their firepower in nearly any scenario. I\'d like to think that a good, efficient, medium-sized vessel is where the soft cap is for how much power a single player can have without limiting him/herself to only be able to function in specific ways... And I\'m saying medium-sized in my terms, which may differ from someone else\'s medium size or even Schema\'s medium size.

So what was mildly supported by game mechanics before the turn update, and is much more supported now, is the use of manpower as a resource/force multiplier. Because having so much power in the hands of a single person is inefficient, you can have two people splitting the same resources but using them more efficiently. The same is absolutely true going for bigger ships as well.

Having turrets on your ship is alright, I guess. The AI isn\'t the best marksman and doesn\'t use a lot of tools or know how to get through radar jammers/cloakers.

Having a couple of giant turrets with their own power generators, massive AMC arrays and enough other weapons to nuke/drain/push a planet... Is a little better.

Having those huge turrets actually manned by your trusty and gunhappy friends and clanmates is where the force multiplication really begins

I think it all boils down to how much power does one think an individual player should be able to use in Starmade... And of course everyone will have their differing opinions on that. That\'s why server options for almost everything exist.

 

[Ethoir]

The fun of a large ship (but not Brigadier large) is lost on me the moment I become incapable of flying it. Flying in more or less straight lines is not what I call fun. Its boring. Standing face to face against another similarly-sized ship, same thing: boring. Broadsiding it with a guy manning the side-facing guns is just as boring. Three tactics, three \"boring\" votes. Not even fun. You might as well sit there for lack of a better thing to do and see whose checkerboard AMC array of server-lagging doom will get a kill first.



This is why I can\'t stand the really low turn rate right now. You\'ve seen me try to turn a ship that\'s supposed to be an attack cruiser and how it turned like a glacier just because I tapped C. At a standstill. Yes our idea of ship sizes differ. A Vorcha is an Attack Cruiser/Battleship in my game, as is Enfo\'s Enterprise-A (on some classification tables), but they\'re not super-sized like a Brigadier or a Damocles. They\'re on the low side of large. Do they deserve to fly \"on rails\" from which they can\'t deviate much from and be forced to use turrets? No. Do they deserve a little mobility of their own? Yes. But wait.



These ships shouldn\'t be penalized this harshly. Instead of a crawl, I\'m hoping to see their turn rate move from 1 or 1.2 to about 1.5 or even 2.0. And I\'ll get behind the idea of an RCS thruster block (not to be confused with an engine thruster block) to give it that oomph. But does it need to have the turn rate of a smaller ship? No. The smaller ships have better acceleration than anything bigger and innate agility to outfly them, always did even before today\'s change. What I\'m imagining is a tweak that makes it fun to pilot these things again. Where you can fly it, maybe get to shoot a salvage beam or an AMC, navigate the game without having to spend 5 minutes turning to go in a new direction (in \"vanilla\" a ship with a turn rate of 1.0 takes 40 seconds to turn 90 degrees). And currently you could have a small or medium sized ship such as Gaesson\'s Nova get penalized in turn rates because of its dimensions rather than its mass.



Getting crew I understand. But that requires coordination, probably a teamspeak channel, and extra setup on a server with a high enough population to make such a thing worth the effort. If your server has maybe 10 people on it at any time of the day, you could fly ONE large ship unless everyone is in a different faction (in which case you put down permission blocks). This perception varies from person to person, naturally. There\'s nothing wrong with wanting to have support crew, the wrong is in organizing it. I\'ve personally been unable to get people to help man a ship of mine so I\'ve had to go without and park my big ships to collect dust, using smaller ships in their place like a Defiant (which isn\'t so awesome now because its dimensions resulted in it getting a turn rate nerf down to 1.2).



How much should a single player be able to do? Not much. They should be able to steer their ships, shoot a main array (guns, missile, or otherwise), and well...pilot. If they can\'t pilot because the ship can\'t maneuver then the logical answer is to use a smaller ship or use turrets and fighters to support it. If you don\'t have the player population for that then you are left with \"use a smaller ship\". And if you don\'t want to, you\'re up a creek without a paddle since your ship can\'t turn to save its life and can get ripped apart by someone (or a wing of people in small ships) flanking it. And this again points to turrets or crew or both. But the base of it is I\'d like to be able to PILOT my ships. It feels less like piloting ships like my Vorcha, Defiant or Constitution and more like flying in a straight line with no ability to \"orbit\" around that asteroid in the way (speaking of: collision damage anyone?). ... Okay that might not be true, you could feasibly orbit but you\'d still be facing one direction and just \"flying in lop-sided squares\" around it while your nose remains mostly fixed in one direction.



It just feels too restrictive. Way too restrictive. Takes the fun out of the game and I\'m not too much of a fan for using smaller ships except as transport to ferry myself or a friend around. If I want to take on a pirate base I\'d want my Vorcha or Defiant. If I\'m going out for a mining run, same deal minus the warship and plus a mining ship of similar size and lots of plex storage.



But hey man, you\'re for the change and I can respect that. I\'m against it (in its current form) and I showed you in person why I think that is and how silly it makes small ships turn (my Arwing was turning too fast, whipping from left to right and spinning like a top in barrel rolls). Its funny to watch at least.



We\'ll see what happens next week. This is probably going to end up changed some in the next couple of weeks. Just no way to tell what kind of change it will be.

 

[2ft7Ninja]

Maybe if we turn engines sideways they give us a turning boost.

 

[2ft7Ninja]

Maybe if we turn engines sideways they give us a turning boost.

 

[Ethoir]

This I can get behind. RCS thrusters. But why not make them use fuel or power? If fuel, a secondary bar overtop the energy/power meter that depletes as you try to rotate the ship with the mouse and recharges when you stand still or stick to a straight course.



How\'s that sound?

 

[z1967]

Yeah, that would be a nice feature to have. Sacrifice forward thrust for turning in the direction they face. I like it.

 

[Jolly Roger]

Before you talk about how you are totally in favorof the changes, please drive a large ship. You will see how ridiculous this change is. It\'s not just slow, It\'s almost that you can\'t turn.

 

[MrFURB]

I\'d be a fool if I spoke without knowledge on the subject. I\'d also be a fool if I said my opinion was right or wrong, or if yours was right or wrong. I\'d also be a fool if I tried to personally argue something that is completely based upon opinion. That\'s the reason all of my posts on this thread refer to a server host\'s ability to change the turn rates as he/she chooses.

 

[Lordprinceps]

Jus so you know ALL ships turned like beached wales before, as long as they were above 100 mass. Capships have always been shitty at turning, hell, most ships have been shitty at turning. The turning update is awesome, as it effectively removes the 100 mass barrier, while still keeping capitals and larger ships the same theyve been.

 

[Jolly Roger]

Then after MrFurb posts an understandable comment, Lordprinceps, who is completely ignorant has no clue and says something completely stupid against all evidence presented in this thread. I bet you didn\'t even read it.

 

[Lordprinceps]

I was responding to the OP, who\'s entire\'suggestion\' is 100% EASYMODE PLS drivel. what OP seems to think is that large ships turn slower than they used to, they dont, they turn at exactly the same rate. This update is 100% beneficial to everyone, as it allows more ships to have good tunrning speed, while keeping large ships slow.



It doesnt matter what OP thinks, because the point of this update was not to make capships fun to fly around like hyper-powered fighters, the point of the update was to remove the 100 mass hardcap, and to reward ship designs my changing turning rate based on that design.



And of course I read the damn thread, and all I saw was circle jerking about RCS thrusters which is a downright idiotic idea. Everything has trade offs, and flying in a massive 100,000 mass capital ship with the capability to destroy an entire planet has the trade off of turning incredbaly slow.

 

[Ethoir]

And you are entitled to that opinion. However part of my own rationale was that I can\'t have fun in any of my \"pretty\" ships anymore, they turn like beached whales and not even flying sideways helps. Small ships yes, I get that, they can maneuver better and are supposed to. But if it takes me 20 years to face a PLANET that\'s not right in front of me then what\'s the point? This is the pain in the neck that is turning me off to the update (that and my usual server has hit a bug with ships refusing to build larger than 16x16x16 but that\'s a different story for a different sub-forum).



If I want to fly in a fragile small ship I\'ll use my beginner ship (UES SpaceLegos). I just happen to like flying Defiant/Vorcha/Enterprise-A more because they are visually appealing. However they do not in fact turn like they used to. They turn slower than they had in the past because apparently 301x100x80 is supposed to equate to the turn mobility of a glacier. Now if you used turrets out the wazoo, fine. But otherwise you are in a cuhnk of blocks that will make it feel like watching paint dry as you try to turn 90 degrees to the left or right. This is where RCS would help since it doesn\'t look like the Turn Speed thing will revert any time soon.



In the end it just makes me mothball my cruisers. I also miss the ability to \"power slide\" in my cruisers. Just not the same right now.

 

[Jolly Roger]

Hey Lord Princeps. Cap ships do not fly the same at all as before the update. Before it was based on mass, now it is based on width, height, and length. So if I building anything other than a cube, then it is now inefficient, wherein before, I could build something any shape with the same number of blocks and it would work the same.

My turrets have no problem taking out small ships, but I don\'t really like that. They are 100% accurate and do 600 damage pershot x2 or x3 on some of them. This means no skill, I just need to wait for the ship to turn in whatever direction I want to go in, and it will kill everything anyway. The main weapons on it become totally useless.

I use admin commands and spawn 10 ships with 200k shields. The turrets kill all of them before my shields are through, no problem.

I prefer it if I actually had to use my main weapons on other ships and my turrets are hit or miss. Does this make any sense?



Check out this ship I made: http://star-made.org/sites/default/files/apiupload/BattleCarrier_102387.sment



It\'s wide but it\'s not that massive because most of it is empty space on either side top and bottom. Just because there is stuff sticking out of it it will now barely turn? really?