Oolite Bulletins

dunno if this has come up before. i mentioned ages ago that i find the ships twitchy. in combat, when enemies are closing in, i tap the S/X and the nose ALWAYS seems to blip past the target, up and down, trying to draw a bead until they're right on top and blatting my shields. it's fkn annoying like >:-/ if i turn my Vampire's Pitch right down she then becomes too cumbersome for dogfighting.

is there anyway of damping the movements a lot more, so the "dying off" period when you remove your finger is faster? or have i just become a shte pilot in my old age?
do y'all even still used the keys, or are y'all joystickers now??

Only keys. And I'd say: It's just a question of training.

Just wanted to resurrect this in case it's now doable in v1.7x.
i think it would add to the game to be able to adjust the rate the pitch/roll damps to zero, so that we could simulate big lumbering freighters or agile fighters better.
possible or not?

I recall in original BBC Elite that there was a damping toggle, the caps-lock key, which could be used to toggle the roll & pitch damping on or off when the game was frozen. It made 'rolling' to match a space station for docking easier. I like the idea of the flight controls being fine-tunable when game frozen, maybe we will see it under game options one day ?

Oh, I also have the same issue as you as 'hopping' the target up and down and never being able to line up to it using the keyboard when FPS slows down/too many ships' AIs running. Guess I need a faster computer.

I'm not sure, of course, since I play Oolite with a joystick, but maybe it could be done via an OXP to change the pitch and roll? It'd probably depend on whether those stay fixed after the ship loads or can be altered on the fly.

If they can be altered on the fly, there'd also be a good potential for a solid hit (one that hits when shields and etc are all the way down) to cause some damage that could partially cripple a ship, whether a player ship or an NPC. Not sure how possible it is at present, but it could add some drama to gameplay, whether fighting, fleeing or pursuing.

Killer Wolf wrote:

Just wanted to resurrect this in case it's now doable in v1.7x.
i think it would add to the game to be able to adjust the rate the pitch/roll damps to zero, so that we could simulate big lumbering freighters or agile fighters better.
possible or not?

well you can already do that, and you have been able to since classical Oolite, and it seems Aegidian kept that in the game, more than that I think it has something todo with what kind of keyboard system you got, what keys cancel each other out, and what keys take precedence over other keys...

at least on my machine...

you simply hold both pitch down & up buttons down at the same time when you want to come to a sudden stop, after having pitched either up or down.

same deal goes for roll left/right,

it works for W/S up down on my machine
it works for up down left right keys on the numpad on my machine

while holding both pitch up/down keys down, it moves down very very little, I think this happens because of some internal math in Oolite about first adding pitch then subtracting it.. i.e.. quaternions & rotation calculations, and going into that to fix this little thing, is likely not going to happen...

yaw keys however,, which are , & . on my machine, however I nearly never use yaw during combat.


my config is pretty of the shelf..

arrow keys for roll/pitch
W / S for speed
Space for fire laser

i don't want sudden stops, that's not realistic either, i want variable damping rates that could, say, be defined as a value in shipdata.

Killer Wolf wrote:

i don't want sudden stops, that's not realistic either, i want variable damping rates that could, say, be defined as a value in shipdata.

Well nothing in Oolite is realistic.. so don't get me started on that

and looking into the code, no such changes has been made, not even in current trunk..

Frame

Killer Wolf wrote:

i don't want sudden stops, that's not realistic either, i want variable damping rates that could, say, be defined as a value in shipdata.

Not possible for pitch and roll. Only thrust is scriptable between 0 and maxThrust. (But not for the player ship)

shame. it woulda been nice to simulate different handling ships. was thinking it could possibly have had implications for combat damage too, make your ship got sloppier etc when you get shot up, as if the control mechanisms were damaged.