You're confusing two things "controls" i.e. the mouse/keyboard/joystick etc, and "physics".

Pioneer uses Newtonian physics and that's not going to change.

The "controls"; i.e. what keys we use - they can change.

They can change in a number of ways, I'll try to quickly think of some example ideas:

• We could introduce an additional control mode lower than "autopilot" but better than "set speed",
  • This mode might help the player to fly more like in I-War by helping the spaceship behave a little like a plane,
  • "Newtonian compensation mode" - probably similar to what Braben/Frontier Developments are doing,

• A "support-pilot" mode, the autopilot is on and suggests what to do but you are still flying?
• There's a lot of extra information we could display to the player:
  • simulated "space dust",
  • spaceship trails,
  • better direction indicators and range,
  • enemy shield/health status
  • earlier intercept warnings:
    • "ship detected in intercept course, contact police? yes/no"

  • and so on...

• Better AI so that fights aren't always fatal for someone as discussed above,
• An in-system hyperspace drive to give you a chance to escape or reach your destination, but with high fuel cost or other potential problems,
• ...and many more...

So to recap, Newtonian physics aren't going away, but there are things we could do to the controls and the flight system to make it, if anything, more realistic -> you don't really think everyone in 3200AD will still be flying these things with a joystick directly controlling thrusters do you? If there's anything EVE Online has got right it's that everything will fly itself... of course we're not going down that route, it's boring 😉

Also I'm no longer a member of the Core Team, I quit a while ago due to lack of time and a few other things, so I can't decide for the Core Team I'm just here trying to explain things to you since I've been involved for a few years 🙂

@NeuralKernel,

I'm not sure the method of turning matters so much, you could explain ships turning without thrusters using those.

However all that matters to the player is that they pitch/roll/yaw. The thrusters are almost a graphical nicety until you get into more involved stealth mechanics.

A thruster venting, or a main engine firing will be more visible than a gyroscope spinning internally for example.

Aside non-Pioneer: I have a whole game designed around the stealth of various propulsion and control methods that I've been wanting to implement for years.

Become too visible, let out too much light or heat and things come to eat you... until you realise you're toast and fire up the main engine for a high speed burn to safety 😀

Maybe we should consider that there are a range of ship sizes, and that some are designed for space only, others for atmospheric flight.

For smaller ships it makes sense to have the same close combat, high maneuverability, control scheme. That probably doesn't make sense for the equivalent of a supertanker though.

@Biomechanoid,

No problem, it just took me a while to understand that you were confusing the two different things 🙂

Yeah, I honestly just figured there was some kind of misunderstanding, too... I think most people here generally assume misunderstanding before malice.

Hmm... in game faction language barriers, maybe? "Empty your ship" could be taken to mean "surrender your cargo" or "open fire"... 😛

@robn,
I had a go at merging that turrets branch but it's a very messy merge with a lot to resolve.
It's pretty involved and I've got too much on my plate already to look into it further 🙁

Yeah, that's cool. I'm keeping it in the back of my head for now too.

From memory I wasn't happy with the way target selection worked - it needs to be controllable from Lua. There is some good restructuring work in the branch too that could be picked up, but yeah, its work. No hurry.

Or maybe we can convince the player using  joystick to drive a ship on Pioneer spacesim!? I do not think it will be dificult to convince the player that this game needs Joystick.

Maybe not. But good luck convincing the new player that playing Pioneer is worth buying a joystick.

I'll add my opinion about joystick and controls. Sorry for keeping the OT.

I tried to use a joystick, but I found it awkward (with Oolite however, it's fine). It's too sensible and there's no way to reduce that. I can, however, set the dead zone in the config file, and that's good!

So, I'm much more comfortable using the keyboard (and somtetimes the mouse, when I need to point my nose in a precise direction, or keeping it in that direction) with the default settings. If you keep the shift key pressed, it's even possible to turn smoothly.

One thing that I'll try to do, is switching the thruster keys and the rotation keys, so I don't have to move my left hand from the rotation keys to the thruster keys when using the mouse.

About turrets and mouse pointing, I think that a compromise could be having the standard guns that have limited movements. 30, 45, 60 degrees (maybe they could be upgradable). So they wouldn't be turrets. If you have only the front gun and you want to shoot a something behind you, you still have to turn the ship. Proper turrets that turns in every direction, could be installed on very big ships for better defense (since they cant turn fast as a light ship) and they could be manual, automatic, of crew operated, while that kind of guns, on light ships and fighters. The guns will always shoot where the pointer is... pointing, and you could always turn the ship by clicking the right mouse button. 🙂

IMHO, this will allow different styles of combat, and would not riun the dogfight style (it will, only, make it a little simpler).

Yeah, that's cool. I'm keeping it in the back of my head for now too.

From memory I wasn't happy with the way target selection worked - it needs to be controllable from Lua. There is some good restructuring work in the branch too that could be picked up, but yeah, its work. No hurry.

I think it might be quicker to reimplement rather than update. Would certainly be worth it... aww, I'm sorely tempted to just put other stuff to one side for a couple of days but it might be that JJ would be the better guy to do it. Why wasn't it submitted as a PR 6 months ago do you know?

I think it might be quicker to reimplement rather than update. Would certainly be worth it... aww, I'm sorely tempted to just put other stuff to one side for a couple of days but it might be that JJ would be the better guy to do it. Why wasn't it submitted as a PR 6 months ago do you know?

JJ doesn't really do PRs, but that's ok - when he's working on stuff we end up talking about it a lot in IRC, so it usually gets plenty of coverage. As I said, it didn't go forward because I wasn't happy with the target selection (and it never had a full review, because there wasn't much point when it wasn't finished).

Have a go if you like,. I think the best way is to do it in stages. First decouple guns from ships, then introduce manually-controlled turrets (separate mountpoints, cameras and controllers), and finally work on the AI. I'm really keen to avoid any more spaghetti, and this is going to touch a lot of stuff. A big drop isn't the right way for this, I think.

@Tichy,

Using the turrets always required a dual skill, flying the ship and aiming the turrets at the same time. it doesn't do away with the dog fighting style you just had to be able to do both. Also they're not omnidirectional, you can only ever cover a hemisphere with one turret at best assuming none of the ship gets in the way and that the hemispheres of a turret on top and one on bottom don't overlap leaving a blindspot.

Still plenty of tactics and skill required for manual turrets I think 🙂

Auto-turrets could be subject to damage, disruption by EM, once you take them out there might be no manual backup on the cheap models?

That way you'd have a choice in increasing cost and weight:

• Basic turret (default) - manual control only,
• Basic Auto-turret - cheap, auto-only, subject to light damage and EM interference, slightly heavier, few tonnes of additional mass.
• Medium quality turret - more expensive, leads target, subject to medium damage and EM interference, can be used manually if damaged or disabled by EM,
• High / Military quality - much more expensive, hard to damage, EM shielded, heavier due extra shielding another 4 tonnes per-turret (for example) all the best points from above.

So in my mind I might have room for 2 turrets, one up, one down, I might pay for both to be equipped with a weapon but only one with an auto-turret because I can't afford both and if it gets EM'd then I'd be locked out of it so I need the other to be manual until I can afford a medium quality turret with the manual backup.

    Because I tested enough controls in Pioneer, and i hope to be "in same-frame of reference" I think I can contribute something with the little experience I have playing Pioneer.

    Maybe you're right and players no longer play with joystick space sims, but I believe many like me still have a joystick (if not, I think they are cheap, and do not need an "ultra" joystick). and now I know why is that for example in my topic people do not try the chalenge, (to travel without autopilot), because I think it's very difficult to do without joystick.

But "travel in space" without autopilot (for me) it has a large role in gameplay and pleasure I have when I play Pioneer.

It's less that they could have a joystick, than it is that when they first download Pioneer they might not, or if they do it might not be plugged in.

I have a couple of gamepads that I could use, but they're never plugged in and I actually like using the keyboard and mouse.

So when the player first downloads the game they want to be able to play with the things there hands are already using.

Plus we can make the controls better, I'm sure of it.

With better instructions shown during loading, or on a quick popup screen or something anyway.

Decoupling turrets from the ship would also work for drones, from a simulation perspective they might have quite a bit in common, maybe handled by the same code? A drone is just a turret you can detach and move around a bit...

 

It´s possible to do something like this in Pioneer!? maybe in the future!?

There's a lot of things we'll get around too eventually. It just takes a long time because this is all part-time for us, my day job is 40+ hours a week programming and quite high pressure. I get home some days and I can barely think let alone work on code 🙂 it's a same for everyone. So a simple feature like the atmospheric hull heating glow is something I've implemented in a test engine I use, it's very simple, but it might take a month, maybe 2 months to do in Pioneer.

We'll get there eventually.

I'm actually more interested in combat at velocities around 5 to 50 kps and near a gravity well. It's a bit of a leap for most people to think about movement in 3 dimensions... orbital mechanics are sometimes even less intuitive. Frankly I think the ships in Pioneer are WAY overpowered to truly appreciate this aspect of spaceflight, frankly I fly at 5 or 10 percent thrust almost all the time...

Which reminds me of a specific control I'd like to see implemented sometime... could we use page up and page down (or whatever...) to set engine output? Instead of hitting F8 and then selecting what the thrust will be when you hold shift, you would tap page up to increase the "throttle" and page down to reduce it. No more full thrust unless you hold down shift, just fire the thrusters at the current setting. That way you could use shift for something else, an afterburner or coolant system maybe? It would also make matching thrust to the local gravity easier, instead of getting it "close enough" and tapping the thruster keys, letting off the shift key quickly, guessing what the thrust percentage to hover with a full ship vs and empty one...

hi,

from what I understand you say something like if it were different.

I think I could say the same speed. (5 to 50 kps) and take in acount the Newton Laws how the ship/missiles/drones/ wingman behaves in space combat.

To combat in pioneer at a speed 50000.00Km / s or 50kps the ship/missiles/drones/ wingman behave in the same way! Or not!?

tnx

You should know the right question: "Speed... but relative to what?" 

I think that, when fighting outside atmosphere and orbits, the speed you sould take in account first, is relative to your opponent. You know that better than me 😛

It's the acceleration he's referring too. In Pioneer our engines are so powerful that you can go from a standing start to 50kps very very quickly. That means combat happens at very high accelerations.

If it happened slower then the relative speeds between ships would stay within the range 5 to 50 kps, and usually nearer the 5kps end of the range, instead of being a multiple of 50kps.

It's like the difference between World War 1 bi-planes with a machine gunner, and modern fighter jets with missiles.

The relative speeds would actually be at the higher end after a bit of combat as the orbits changed, especially around a planet like Hercules, that's the point 😉

It isn't just accelleration, it's the deltaV of the ships as well. The Escape Velocity of The Sun is about 617 kps, on Earth it's about 11 kps, Mars is about 5 kps and Jupiter is almost 60 kps. To keep fights orbital the DeltaV of a ship should probably be within at least the Solar Escape Velocity if not much lower.

@NeuralKernel: I was thinking about that too. The ships seem to bee obscenely overpowered. I've posted a mod  specifically to nerf them, so it can be cheched if gameplay is even fun with weaker ships. (I was able to do an interplanetary delivery with the nerfed Wave, but, barely in time. I had like one day left, and took extra propellant too.)

I already had started some work on a drone  http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/topic/3456-light-weapons-platform/ Just needs a wee bit of work to finish it off (and of course some coding to make it actually work)

JJ doesn't really do PRs, but that's ok - when he's working on stuff we end up talking about it a lot in IRC, so it usually gets plenty of coverage. As I said, it didn't go forward because I wasn't happy with the target selection (and it never had a full review, because there wasn't much point when it wasn't finished).

Have a go if you like,. I think the best way is to do it in stages. First decouple guns from ships, then introduce manually-controlled turrets (separate mountpoints, cameras and controllers), and finally work on the AI. I'm really keen to avoid any more spaghetti, and this is going to touch a lot of stuff. A big drop isn't the right way for this, I think.

I've actually gotten JJ's "turrets" branch merged in by going through his changes line by line.

Only took an evening interspersed with a wander to the shops and a beer 😉

I'll probably use it as a base to expand on.

Ha! Just blasted the ctrl-F12 Kanara out of the sky! Flying a Pumpkinseed with a Shield Generator and Dual 1MW Cannon, no hyperdrive. I took a couple hits to the shields that regenerated but even without them I probably would have (barely) won.

The Shot speed is changed in this version (Linux32 2013.07-12), and it's more like back when I could reliably fight. I didn't have any, but I still think missiles right now are pretty much useless.

Me too! But with an older version (i didn't wanted to risk loosing my savefile)

After all that talking about fighting and what to change, we are learning to fight without modifications! 😀

The first time I did it, was with your exact ship and equipment. The second, with the wave and a 2MW dual. This is the one I recorded and linked on the promo video thread.

I think I understood some tactics to avoid hits and aim, so, the next time, I'll try with a weaker equipment.

Some days ago I changed the default keys swapping the positions of thrust keys and rotation keys. Much better when using a mouse, since you don't have to move both of your hand on the keyboard when reaching the mouse, but only the right one (while the left remains on the thrusters).

However, speaking about modifications...

I thought about the impressions I had while fighing. The most evident is the feeling that I'm still and the opponent buzzes around me like an angry wasp. The feeling is that I'm not in control of the situation, while he have, instead, total control. However, I know that this is an illusion, since you would have the same impression from the opponent's point of view.

So, the "problem" isn't in the mechanics of combat, but, I think, in the appearance. Maybe we need more visual clues of what's going on, more feedback. When I'm pushing the thrusters and changing my direction, I need to see more clearly the results of what I'm doing.

I also need more feedback of my shooting. I't hard to tell when I'm missing the target, how much I'm missing it and what I need to do to correct my aim.

I think that ship design is one of the issues, nobody seems to be designing effective Space Combat craft. I made a start at one last night, a ship covered in lateral, vertical and retro engines so it can dance around and reposition more effectively while keeping it's nose at the enemy.

Unfortunately, just after I took some screenshots from a few different angles I closed Blender and immediately remembered I hadn't saved the model file! 😀

What I'd like to see is a ship that can move sideways faster than it can move forward, these aren't atmospheric fighters, after all 😉