A discussion that used to be about capacitors

SpaceCat

Dalas120 without a position

you mean without an actual enemy target?

Dalas120

SpaceCat With an enemy target, but it wouldn't care where your ship is as long as it's facing the correct enemy-relative angle. Right now it'll always try to hold a position, not just an angle. When you're frequently changing attack targets it gets in the way a lot

nop

Dalas120 Put forward/reverse thrusters on a control group, power them off.

SpaceCat

Dalas120

Ok like a "stand ground but rotate" attack order ?

I suggested that already some time ago.

Dalas120

nop Wouldn't that slow down your turn rate by a lot?

Lafiel

Walt plus there are some design questions that'd need to get
resolved (i.e., under what circumstances does the rotation target get
kept or canceled when issuing a new command to your ship?)

Only keep it if rotation is fast enough to keep up with the target otherwise do anything else (doesn't matter what).

This is turning out into a design and tactics cheating discussion.

Dalas120

SpaceCat Yeah pretty much, but if the ship moved it wouldn't try and regain it's old position

nop

Dalas120 depends on where your thrusters are. You might omit the thrusters with the most leverage from the control group to limit forward/reverse speed. If you're designing a ship to work as a turret, design accordingly.

SpaceCat

Dalas120 i actually like that ships try to regain their position ...

Dalas120

nop Reverse only thrusters is a really clever idea, I'll give that a try. I definitely need to practice more turning thrusters off. But if possible, when turning I would still want to avoid disabling thrusters because that will hurt turn speed a lot. I'm not really worried about dedicated turret ships (is there ever a time they're practical?), but I noticed this problem a lot with my spinal weapon ships when fighting swarms.

Walt Yeah, you're right. I was thinking of it as a watered down version of the ability to have enemy-relative facing with grid-relative movement (which would definitely be very, very useful). But aside from making a turret (if for some reason you wanted to), having enemy-relative facing and ignoring all movement would probably be useless most of the time. The only time I would use it is if I was fighting swarms and wanted to turn as fast as possible.

(nice discussion name change btw)

nop

Another trick: leave only the reverse thrusters on and set ramming distance. Ship will rotate to face, using the appropriate reverse thrusters, but since your forward thrusters are powered off, it will only back off slightly. Build forward thrusters in the center and reverse thrusters with turning leverage.

Walt

Dalas120 Could it be possible to issue an attack order without a position, like a "turret mode." Aside from being cool for space stations, it would help a lot with the spinal weapon problems, make attacking a little more smooth, and (presumably) wouldn't take a lot of extra programming

It's certainly technically feasible, though I don't really see how it'd be useful except in very niche cases.

Equalizer

Walt Any possibility of having the option to order a ship to set its rotation such that a selected fixed mount weapon (ion beam / railgun) is lined up with its target?

Walt

Dalas120 I was thinking of it as a watered down version of the ability to have enemy-relative facing with grid-relative movement (which would definitely be very, very useful).

Perhaps a way to change the location of an attack command just by clicking on a point in space, and it'll auto-calculate the new attack angle & radius? That's not quite what you're talking about because it'd still be enemy-relative, but it'd be a lot more convenient than having to drag the command handle.

nop

Walt a lot more convenient than having to drag the command handle

I'd like it if the size of the handle scaled with the radius of the ship or the zoom level or something to make it easier to grab. Now that railguns exist I'm often zoomed out more and it's trickier to grab them.

While we're on UI, it bugs me that when I'm trying to target a part, sometimes the "eyeball" icon is on top of it and that prevents right-clicking on the part. I don't even know what the eyeball represents.

Dalas120

Walt It would definitely be convenient (moreso for people who use attack angles a lot), but it wouldn't really let you do any of the things you could do with enemy-relative facing and grid-relative movement.

Examples would be something like disengaging from an enemy before you hit the zone, but keeping your spinal weapons focused on them so you don't get disadvantaged by retreating. Or breaking out of surrounds from a swarm while keeping spinal weapons focused.

Ideally you would be able to do all that while focusing weapons on a specific part of an enemy ships, instead of only center +/- a degree offset. But if that's not feasible I understand

It's only really needed for spinal weapons though. Turreted weapons can hit their target if you only use move commands and just approximate the correct facing.

Walt

nop I'd like it if the size of the handle scaled with the radius of the ship or the zoom level or something to make it easier to grab. Now that railguns exist I'm often zoomed out more and it's trickier to grab them.

Yeah they're really tiny when zoomed out. I can probably make them scale until they'd start overlapping.

nop I don't even know what the eyeball represents.

If you click it the camera will focus on the position between the two ships.

I could add an option to turn it off if it gets in the way.

nop

Walt If you click it the camera will focus on the position between the two ships.

That would be useful, I might use it if it were a hotkey like I use "F" and "Ctrl+F" all the time.

nop

Walt I could add an option to turn it off if it gets in the way.

It would be good enough for the eye widget to not capture right clicks.

FireShredder24

Walt Hey Walt, wouldn't it be fun to randomly generate asteroids in normal BH maps even if they have no resource use? It would be interesting to have like a railgun frigate hide behind an asteroid, undetected by a larger ship, until SKADOOSH the larger ship gets its bow blown off.

Tho, this would require a rework of the detection thing into a line-of-sight system.

SpaceCat

nop Walt If you click it the camera will focus on the position between the two ships.

That would be useful, I might use it if it were a hotkey like I use "F" and "Ctrl+F" all the time.

True the "eye" symbol is unclickable when game is in action - needs a hotkey or button.

nop

Dalas120 you're talking about movement relative to either world or a ship and heading relative to either world or a ship independent of each other, right?

Those examples are already possible with the controls we have. Disengaging "through" an enemy while facing them is practically ramming (or closing), circling relative position when in contact, then shifting relative position again to get an inside position, all while keeping the same relative bearing to target. Breaking out of swarm is kiting one of the ships and adjusting relative position to mix in strafing thrust, which can be done in one right click and drag.

One case where I find the controls wanting is disengaging back into the ring even when in a good position. The only good solution is reversing flight direction and using a world-relative move unless you're in a perfect relative position where you are lined up with center. Being able to set flight direction quickly is still a want.

Dalas120

nop Circling relative position isn't very practical when the enemy is much faster than you though. Most of my ships are slower than their opponents, which makes it very clumsy to try and do what you suggest (if I understand you properly). But I guess it would still be clumsy if my ship was slow even with different controls

But I still think that improved controls would be good. Collision avoidance, for example, can be avoided with the current controls - but I'm still glad there's going to be option to disable it

I agree with you about the ring.