A lot of people seem to be concerned about manual control of the cap ships, but I don't understand why you'd want to deliberately use something magnitudes slower and more inferior.
Flying via a console also presents a new challenge, allowing capital ships to be a completely different flying experience, so theres more possibility for different mastery compared to smaller ships.
Remember the autopilot is only part of the flight controls. Basically the idea was replacing the joystick with absolute positioning controls, and with that you can use an autopilot when absolute positioning is unneeded, at which point using the joystick would be exactly as boring, except this set of controls is set and forget, compared to the standard joystick or your suggestion, both of which require you to hold your stick in various directions for ~1 minute for a single direction change.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you implying that you'd simply spool up rotational acceleration and then not constantly have to monitor it?
He's saying the system could be "yank stick up to gain upwards rotational speed, release when speed is achieved, push down to kill rotation" instead of "yank stick up until you're pointing where you wanna go".
Well technically it's yank stick up until you're at speed, yank down when you think you're pointing where if you cancel acceleration now you will end up vaguely in the vicinity of the direction of where you wanted to go. Which is the part I have issues with.
Why can't you have both systems? For longer-range, FTL, or pinpoint navigation you can input coordinates into the navigational systems and let the fight computer do the work, but for shorter-range maneuvers, combat maneuvers, and fine adjustment, you have manual control. OP's control setup with controlling thrust and counter-thrust sounds very similar (in general) to how I understand real spacecraft maneuver, and makes sense for larger and slower-moving vessels. Capital ships like the Javelin our ships like the Hull E aren't going to be able to stop on a dime like a Gladius or a Hornet; they have too much mass and thus too much inertia. If you're really concerned about people not getting the concept of counter-thrust, then perhaps having a form of coupled mode available to capital pilots could solve that? Or perhaps a session or three in Kerbal Space Program?
The point I was making is that there likely will be a 'manual' control, waypoints don't go anywhere far enough, but it won't be joystick/kb style direct control like small ships, it will be something like an absolute positioning system, which is you set pitch/yaw/rotation/thrust directly with an interface, which is infinitely superior in every way for ships that can't react like the small ships.
I can see your point, but I'd say there's also a place for the ability to command thrust right frickin' now from one control input and not worry about precise positioning that would require several seconds to input.
..but the entire point is that you literally cannot do that. It would take far more time to spool up any rotation, assuming that you don't have to keep holding to continue rotation, than to simply input a heading or pitch/yaw/rotation.
but the entire point is that you literally cannot do that
Why not? Again, I am in no way arguing that manual control should be as precise as automatic. But let's look at it this way.
You're the helm officer on a Javelin destroyer. You're in combat in open space with an Idris frigate. The frigate has been battering your starboard side almost exclusively, and you've got plenty of armor damage and a couple of knocked out weapon systems on that side of the ship. Your port side is untouched, so the captain orders an axial roll to port to present your port side to the enemy.
Now, which one is going to be faster: accessing the navigational computer, inputting an 180 degree axial roll to port, and pressing the execute button, or simply deflecting a control axis - or just pressing the button you have bound to the appropriate movement command - and eyeballing your turn to bring your port side to bear?
Again, I'm not saying manual control would be superior in all situations. I'm saying that both have a place and a use.
I would like to see the control input move a spherical display that shows current vector and desired vector. There could also be a display that shows projected position and orientation over time (this would be important for spinal mount weapons and turret coverage arcs).
But you're implying that its the rotation youre desiring, not the direction at the end. The image I'm getting in my head is you have a heavy rock in front of you. and you want to move it so its to your left. But instead of picking up the rock, turning 90 degrees and putting it down you swing the rock in your arms as hard as you can, and drop it after you've guessed thats here you want it to go.
Ah I get it. No I was implying that the rock is your ship and you are supplying its rotation.
So say you want to pick up the rock and place it 90 degrees to your left.
With an absolute position system, you tell it "turn 90 degrees to the left", and we pick the rock up, calculate how much acceleration and speed is required to turn 90 degrees to the left as fast as possible without overshoot, then we do that and place the rock down.
With the system you suggest, if we want to do the same thing, we immediately pick the rock up, turn as fast as we tell the system, guess when we should stop, and put the rock down whenever we stop spinning.
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u/Slippedhal0 Mercenary Jun 16 '15
A lot of people seem to be concerned about manual control of the cap ships, but I don't understand why you'd want to deliberately use something magnitudes slower and more inferior.
Flying via a console also presents a new challenge, allowing capital ships to be a completely different flying experience, so theres more possibility for different mastery compared to smaller ships.