Pathfinding Annoyance

Hey VarekRaith,

It would be fairly easy to change this, the problem is that there are many situations where you don't want the ship to turn then move.  If he is being attacked, for instance, it might be worse for your ship if he just sits and takes fire from enemies while turning around.  The decision of whether a big arcing turn or a small turn-on-a-dime maneuver would be better is a complicated one that can't realistically be done for each ship.

An additional problem is that many people complain about how static the ships and combat in Sins is; they might not be pleased with a solution where ships just sit in a single place and spin when they want to bring guns to bear.

yeah that is true. I good solution (I think anyway), is to ramp up the turn rates about 1000% on each and every unit.

So be it then.  I don't suppose this could be modded?  I'd rather not change the turning rates as per whiskey's suggestion.  If not, no problem.  I can tolerate it.

I don't think pathfinding can be modded.

The pathfinding itself can't be modded, but the turning speed is more physics than pathfinding.  If you change the turning rate (maxAccelerationAngular) in the entity files, you'll see it turn a lot faster.  You can check that out and see if it's to your liking.

You're trying to say that it is better for my LRM to ram into the enemy's heavy cruisers when I want them to get the f out? That's silly.
As for the 'staticness' - lol. This is not Starcraft or sup com. This is Sins. If they want fast flashy stuff, tell them to purchase need for speed. If you listen to such kids, they'll have you implement cap ship dogfights.

No, seriously, the way ships move now is screwed.

• Ships deliberately ram into anything that's in front of them when you order them to go backwards.
• Ships get locked up between enemy ships instead of escaping - I would rather they ran away, not get stuck between enemy caps and lrfs
• Ships crash into asteroids and planets - IT LOOKS RETARDED and often blocks their movement.
• Fleets spread out all over the gravity well when you order them around. HC no longer go up front, the whole formation is messed up by this behavior.
• Marauder triggering Distort Gravity causes your fleet to do circles around the edge of the gravwell to reallign for a phase jump. This does not help, it in fact WASTES time and SLOWS the jump.
• Long Range Frigates gladly receive a friendly hug from the enemy Starbase's short range weapons AND MINES when you ordered them to get outta there.
• MB lays waste on any fleet without an interrupting ability because the ships, when ordered to get out of the range of MB, decide to give the marza a kiss instead
• support cruisers which use a short ranged ability and then try to move back to their place in the BACK of their fleet take a sightseeing tour through the enemy HC lines
• I've seen so many dumb situations caused by this behaviour, I could drag this list forever.

SOLUTION:
Reduce the arc between the ship's heading and its destination at which the said ship begins to accelerate.
In other words - when a ship is supposed to turn 180 degrees, it
- should NOT accelerate first and then start turning
but instead
- the ship should turn until it's facing 90 degrees from its destination and THEN accelerate.

Pictures:

^^ this is the current "pathfinding" algorythm. This is stupid ^^
I can quote a hundred posts of various users admitting this behaviour is plain nonsense.

And this is how it should be:

And bam, problem solved.
Spaceships move like spaceships, not like some silly motorboats. Ships don't ram into the enemy, don't do stupid circles.
By the way, I've NEVER seen a situation where doing the "big arcing turn" makes sense. If ships accelerated VERY long, then MAYBE it would make sense, but even Orkulus takes 3 seconds to reach full speed, so that's not the case. It just always delays your ships and puts them in the enemy's loving embrace as a bonus.

I'm onboard with this. The single most common source of cursing when playing Sins is the pathfinding. The post above is very correct. If I want my ships to arc, flank, or take a field trip while I'm fighting for my life I'll f-ing tell them to do it myself.

Yes. Playing advent, I have to tell a disciple to flee as soon as it gets the first hit from a single LRM frigate (defenders of neutral planet) as otherwise the ship will take so long to turn around and jump away that it will be destructed before being able to jump.

With larger fleets and "real" battle it's even worse.

Shouldn't be too complicated to adjust the ships behaviour as suggested in #6?!?

Screet

I agree, this desperately NEEDS to be corrected. Annoying arcing turns issue completely negates any attempt of tactical maneuvring or strategy, and was actually the reason why I stopped playing Sins first time when I got it, and started again only after I learned how to mod and increased turn rates / decreased ship speeds to patch it a little. 

No matter how I look at it, this movement behaviour is absolutely unreasonable.

The best solution would be making the ships wait with acceleration until their destination is in the forward hemisphere, or just 2-3 seconds of wait before accelerating.

Here is more detailed recent thread about it: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/374505 

Please DEVs, fix it soon..  

Sure pathfinding should be changed however, this tatical movement is change is rather small, I perfer a more broader change to the pathfinding when it comes to ships moving in space, rather colliding just to adjust their path, even after it they colide, it takes forever for the ship to find the correct path. This also applies to moving ships that is across the planet, right now, the ships ram themselves into the planet and then make small movements just to go around, I would rather this to be changed first before the tatical movement is changed