Cosmoteer Release Candidate 0.14.11_rc1 - Manual "Arcade-Style" Ship Controls

Walt

Cosmoteer "unstable" release candidate 0.14.11_rc1 is now available for testing! This update adds a "Direct Control Mode" which allows you to fly ships using the keyboard (WASDQE) and aim and fire weapons using the mouse. It also makes a handful of requested improvements to the regular ship commands, such as the ability to disable collision avoidance for all commands and the ability to rotate your ship to face a specific target.

Download 0.14.11_rc1

Changes:

New Feature: Direct Control Mode
- "Direct Control Mode" is a new mode that the player can turn on to assume direct control over a ship's flight and weapons.
- Click the Direct Control Mode button to toggle it on an off, or press its default hotkey Ctrl+D.
- While in Direct Control Mode, the camera will be locked onto the ship and cannot be controlled other than zooming in and out. (Although there are some options that can be turned on to make the camera "follow" the mouse cursor; see below.)
- While in Direct Control Mode, use the WASDQE or arrow keys to fly your ship. By default the W/Up keys go forward, the S/Down keys go in reverse, the A/Left keys rotate counter-clockwise, the D/Right keys rotate clockwise, the Q key strafes left, and the E key strafes right, but these keys can be customized in the control settings.
- While in Direct Control Mode, your weapons will aim at the location of your mouse cursor.
- To fire weapons, click the mouse button to which the desired weapons are bound. By default, turreted weapons are bound to the left mouse button and fixed weapons are bound to the right mouse button. Weapon bindings can be customized by selecting the weapon and opening its extras menu.
- Weapons can also be set to have no binding, in which case they will be controlled by the regular weapon A.I. even in Direct Control Mode.
- While in Direct Control Mode, you can hold the Ctrl key to select weapons and target enemy parts. Targeting enemy parts is useful for missiles (so that they know what target to seek toward) and will also enable friendly-fire damage. You can also use the 0-9 keys to select part control groups.
- If any parts are selected, only the selected parts will be fired. Unselected parts will not fire even if you are pressing their binding.
- By default, ships will automatically "brake" and fire retro thrusters when you're not pressing any flight keys. This can be disabled by turning off the "Automatically Brake" gameplay setting. You can also hold Shift to temporarily invert this setting, either braking or not braking while Shift is held.
- Turning on the "Face Ship Toward Cursor" gameplay setting will make your ship automatically turn to face toward your mouse cursor.
- By default, the game camera will always stay perfectly centered on your ship. However, turning on the "View Follows Mouse Cursor" camera setting will make it so that the camera is always centered between your ship and the mouse cursor, effectively allowing you to see further in the direct the mouse cursor is pointing.
- Turning on the "Zoom Follows Mouse Cursor" camera setting will make the camera automatically zoom out as the mouse cursor is moved farther from the ship.
- Turning on the "Match Ship Rotation" camera setting will make the camera automatically rotate to match your ship's rotation.
Balance
- Ion beams will now damage enemy Ion Beam Prisms when hitting them, although until they are destroyed the beam's power will still contribute to and be utilized by the enemy prism.
User Interface
- Removed the "Force Move" command. To disable collision avoidance when moving, following, strafing, or attacking, simply hold the X key while issuing the command. Alternatively, you can turn off the "Enable Collision Avoidance" gameplay setting, in which case holding the X key turns collision avoidance back on. To move onto another ship's position without attacking or following it, use the "Move" command with collision avoidance disabled.
- The "Rotate" command can now be targeted on other ships or ship parts to continuously keep facing that target. To face a ship, simply invoke the Rotate command and click on a ship. To face a ship part, invoke the Rotate command and click on a part while holding the Ctrl key. Clicking on a target, holding, and dragging the mouse allows a specific rotation to be set that will be kept facing the target.
- Adjusting an attack command by holding shift and dragging its movement widget will now change both the radius and angle of attack simultaneously.
- When using the "Attack" button or T key to adjust an existing attack command, it is now possible to click and hold the mouse button while dragging to adjust your ship's rotation.
- The minimap will now rotate to match the main view's rotation. This can be disabled in the camera settings.
- Reorganized the Settings so that most tabs are further divided into collapsible sub-categories. Some tabs have been combined. Some important settings such as Language and Trap Mouse Cursor have been moved to more prominent tabs.
- Added a tutorial for Direct Control Mode and updated other tutorials to indicate when features aren't available in Direct Control Mode.
- The "Require Ctrl To Select Parts" setting is now disabled by default for new players.
Ship A.I.
- Ships now fire retro thrusters more aggressively and thus come to a stop a bit more quickly.
- The lead ship in a formation will no longer wait for the other ships in the formation to get into position before moving.
- Ships will now avoid collisions with other ships even when their destination is on top of the other ship. (Unless collision avoidance has been deliberately disabled.)
Graphics
- The thickness of an ion beam now better reflects its actual strength. (Stronger beams now appear somewhat wider than they used to.)
Bug Fixes
- Railguns wouldn't shoot sometimes even if they were in range.
- A ship passing through a waypoint would remove that waypoint even if it wasn't the next waypoint in the queue.
- Ion Beam Prisms that were force-firing on a friendly ship wouldn't do any damage if set to hold rotation.
- Attacking a ship in the fog of war with the "Prefer Ship-Relative Attack Angles" setting turned on would reveal the orientation of the target. It will now revert to use grid-relative angles when attacking a ship in the fog of war.
- In Arena games, you wouldn't lose points when abandoned ships took self-damage or damage from the ring of death.
- Ships with internal weapons (especially internal unlinked Ion Beam Prisms) could cause the default attack distance to overlap the enemy ship.
- Fresh installs of stable updates were defaulting to checking for unstable updates. (This actually has no effect on RCs, but I'm leaving this note here so I remember to add it to the stable changelog.)
- Double-clicking on an Ion Beam Prism wouldn't select both straight and 45-degree variants.
- Certain visual effects such as weapon shots could be shown in the incorrect location on fast-moving ships.
- Ship status icons would be shown with the incorrect orientation in the picture-in-picture if the "Lock Ship Rotation" setting was enabled.
Modding
- TurretWeapon and FixedWeapon now have an optional 'AllowDirectControl' parameter (default true) that if set to false will prevent the player from being able to manually aim and fire the weapon using direct control mode.
- TurretWeapon and FixedWeapon now have an optional 'DefaultDirectControlBinding' parameter that if set will indicate the default direct control binding slot that should be used to fire the weapon until it is changed by the player. If omitted, the default binding for TurretWeapon is slot 0 (left-click) and for FixedWeapon it is slot 1 (right-click).
- TurretWeapon and FixedWeapon now support a 'SuppressDirectControlWhenTargetingPartCategories' parameter which will prevent the weapon from being direct-controlled by the player if it is targeting any of the specified part categories.
- TurretWeapon AutoTargets now has an optional 'EnableInDirectControlMode' parameter that is required if the weapon should continue auto-targeting even in direct control mode. (This is useful for missile-like weapons that aren't aimed but still need a target in order to home.)
- Using a negative AnimationInterval together with ClampAnimation now works properly. (That is, it plays the animation in reverse once and holds on the "first" frame.)

ComradeShiba

Walt

THIS IS WHERE THE FUN BEGINS >: )

RedAndCosmoteer

Walt Does this break the mods again?

Equalizer

Walt Looks like there might be something not quite right with the ion beam graphic between prisms.

Here the final prism is just a relay yet the beam graphic between the two prisms is far wider (> 100 tiles) than the final output beam graphic.

RedAndCosmoteer

Walt Are you going to add yobeefjerky's suggestion of adding multiple decal atlases to the game in this update?

Kroom

Walt Could be an option to "lock on" a target (maybe by clicking on the enemy ship) so missiles target that ship.

Sombreroman

Walt

NOW ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.

SpaceCat

Walt Adjusting an attack command by holding shift and dragging its movement widget will now change both the radius and angle of attack simultaneously.

I liked the previous behaviour and think it should still be available via setting and or hotkey.

Similar to collision avoidance there could be setting for the behaviour of the "attack command adjustment" and a hotkey that switches to the opposite of what you have set.

Is it quite hard or am i actually rather bad at controlling ships in direct mode?
I especially suck at aiming the weapons - wondering how it would work out when you aim like in normal RTS control mode but pilot with wasdqe?

8nathan

YES

CGDW

Can you also look at weapon range balance now there's no momentum boosting? Or bring it back, but only up to like 150% or 200% of non boosted max range. This way nuke spinners still won't be viable, but cannons will be useful again.

Also, I tried manual control mode and it works great!

Walt

CGDW Can you also look at weapon range balance now there's no momentum boosting? Or bring it back, but only up to like 150% or 200% of non boosted max range. This way nuke spinners still won't be viable, but cannons will be useful again.

I'm open to that, I've just gotten very little feedback about the current balance.

Walt

RedAndCosmoteer Does this break the mods again?

I don't think so.

vini_babinski

YES NOW WE CAN AIM USEFUL THINGS

RedAndCosmoteer

Walt Thank god, an update that probably won't break mods outright!

CGDW

Walt
Well, since the tournament is tomorrow, I'm sure balance feedback won't be an issue. Hoping to see some ion prism ships!

Nordwolf

Walt I'm open to that, I've just gotten very little feedback about the current balance.

I like the current Cannon vs Laser balance, with cannons being the close armour shredding tanky weapon and lasers being damaging focus fire but lighter armoured weapons. (I think both have use right now)

Also bug report:
Crash when pressing W after/while switching to manual mode, I have some of the thrusters on W (W is one of the control group buttons). Happened once so far. EDIT: Just crashed again in the same way, pressed W after switching to manual mode, both happened in multiplayer, hasn't happened in singleplayer but I haven't tried to reproduce there.
Crash log:

ComradeShiba

@Walt

I wonder if you could make rockets (HE rockets) target where your mouse is pointed, because they currently don't.

(For when attacking junk)

KrankysFirebrand48

How did everyone notice this so fast?

nobody

KrankysFirebrand48 because who doesn't like driving?
^{^{^{^{^{ingamesthatis}}}}}

Catelyn

Woooooh!

Walt

Nordwolf Also bug report:

Will investigate, thanks!

Nordwolf Feature requrest: Com stabilization mode toggle, in other words, have an option that stops AI from correcting ship rotation and stopping momentum momentum and leave it to player to do manually (allow ships to slide and drift basically).

Already exists, just turn off the "Automatically Brake" setting.

8nathan when using huge lasers, the damage area seems tiny and insignificant. is there a way to lowerdamage while increasing damage width (aoe?)

That's certainly possible, I'm just not sure that's appropriate for the heavy laser.

Nordwolf

Feature requrest: In game Com stab mode toggle (I know it's there in options), in other words, have an option that stops AI from correcting ship rotation and stopping momentum momentum and leave it to player to do manually (allow ships to slide and drift basically).

8nathan

@Walt
when using huge lasers, the damage area seems tiny and insignificant. is there a way to lowerdamage while increasing damage width (aoe?)

Nordwolf

Walt I already edited the request, was meant to ask for an in game one, perhaps when you right click on the manual mode (I'd also add the follow mouse option there too).

I feel like those modes are fairly interchangeable for different ships and situations so shouldn't be buried in options.

8nathan

Walt its just this seems rather absurd:

the area of damage is SOO small for the size of beam.
also at high sizes the beam looks strange with no corners, just popping into existence

Walt

Nordwolf Hold shift.

Nordwolf

Walt Hoooly! Thank you, with shift it's now fantastic (have no brake as default and shift to stabilize), still would like the follow mouse options to be somewhere in game there

EDIT: Also apparently I missed it in your description somehow >.>
Also I swapped the A/D and Q/E buttons immediately, I feel like this is more intuitive since camera rotates with Q/E, perhaps it should be default?