Annoying trajectories
Sins Forums
I wanted to ask if anything is going to be done in this upcoming patch to "fix" the way ships move in the game.
The issue at hand is already discussed in these threads,
You asked, and Yarlen answered:
And to soundly defeat your follow-up question before you ask it:
which had no response.
If its really not a bug, but a feature, whats the reasoning behind this kind of ship movement? Its really annoying and sometimes even game-breaking, and I cant think of any positives it brings to the gameplay.
As I said, I asked nicely and got no answer. It must be an artistic decision as to how they feel the ships should move. I'd like to at least be able to micro around this issue with a 'face this way' command.
They'd need to fundamentally change the way that units move. (At least, last I remember, they couldn't turn in place, ie., without some forward thrust.)
I doubt that is the case. If your fleet is attacking something and you order all of your fleet to focus fire on another ship directly behind your fleet, some will move, but most will turn in place. However, if you place a move order directly behind you, they all move via the 'drunken navigator' route.
A 'Face this direction' command could be useful for other things than getting around this issue. Instead of focus firing, you could orient your ships in the direction of a number of ships to direct fire without restricting it to 1 target and better achieving the results you want (assuming the dumb ships dont just turn right back).
Fleet mechanics + movement mechanics = suck.
The problem lies in an equation, how do I get there the fastest. Your ship looks at it's position and says, hmm, it takes me this long to accelerate to full speed, and this long to turn around. If I start booking it, I can be clipping along nicely by the time my wide ass gets turned around. Of course, I'll also be over there...
The question then is does over there pose a problem. When turning to face an opponent right by you, the idea is to stay where you are, it entails at most a 180 degree turn. To circle around and face your attacker would be nearly twice the angular change depending on the relative positions. When your target is out of range, you have to move into range as well. Your angular requirements will be roughly the same as your arc wont change the radial requirements that much, but you'll be at full speed when you reach the proper direction.
In other words, it's faster to behave stupidly and run through the mine field. Fleets of course make this a horrible mess by throwing in screwball allignments and move paths that further destroy any hope of reasonable movements. To solve it, one has to have the angular momentum strong enough to minimalize turn arounds, or write a movement AI that's either insanely brilliant, or insanely ineffective. Probably ineffective.
The ship would obviously get to the destination faster if it started moving forward only after the destination gets into its 180 degrees FOV angle, as suggested in the linked threads. Not immidiatelly when it starts turning.
Its not that fundamental change, and I cant think of any way it would break current gameplay, only improve it. Now effective tactical maneuvers are almost impossible, which is a pity.
well, it seems to me that there really isnt any movement AI, and that is the real issue. When a movement order is issued, it simply guns the engines and begins rotating. You see ships run into one another alot, you see them get stuck on asteroids and other things, because they dont plan the route out.
But above all, the developers feel this is not an issue.
That's quite true, and it would be a huge improvement to add that logic into the mix. It is true that the ship gets places faster by accelerating initially than it does by changing facing first though, so it's not a random decision, just a logically flawed decision.
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