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Stick and Rudder space flying
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Morganta
The Greater Goon
#121 - 2011-11-23 17:13:09 UTC
yeah stick and rudder is weak for spaceflight

the one guy sort of got it, but missed that all the pre shuttle craft had stick control, not just LEMs, and the bulk of space-faring nations still use capsule configurations with a stick for fine adjustments of the RCS.

these are manual controls, rarely used in flight. I believe the Apollo series of flights needed a manual control input prior to the escape burn, but now a days most spacecraft functions are controlled expressly by computer using pre-programed sequences managed by the DAP.

stick is still used in docking maneuvers and unscheduled maneuvers.

however that said, a space stick is nothing like a flight stick.
A flight stick controls the plane by modifying the amount of lift generated across the flight control surfaces (wing, tail and rudder)
move the stick left and you create a drag condition on the air that moves under the left wing, reducing lift and dropping the wing

in space if you point the stick left your right RCS thrusters fire propelling you left, to stop you need to apply the same amount of thrust to counter the velocity you created by firing the left RCS thrusters

and the typical single stick controls several axis groups with a switch needed to change the groups the stick actuates

this is far too complex for eve, clicking on a direction in space is a good method for us.

stick is useful for dogfighting in aircraft, there is no dogfighting like that in eve because our weapons have a 360 degree field of fire so there is absolutely no benefit to maneuvering as though you have fixed guns with a 5 degree field, the only things of meaning in eve combat are distance and traversal, and a stick will actually make your life worse as you will be derping around flying in tiny little circles like a dog chasing its tail while a gang sits at 15km chopping you to bits.
Astrid Stjerna
Sebiestor Tribe
#122 - 2011-11-23 20:14:05 UTC
Barakkus wrote:
All the people going on and on about performance, it's probably not a hardware issue on the cluster, but a complete re-coding of the movement portion of the client and positional synchronization code on the server. You all have to realize that not every single node in the cluster runs all solar systems all the time too. I don't see a problem with the hardware honestly after following a lot of the blogs on what TQ actually runs on, especially since there are a number of games where you can get 1000+ players running around killing each other in the same place and TQ has the same level of hardware if not better than a lot of other MMOs on the market.

It's something which is not really going to be budgeted for, like ever. There's a lot better things to be spending money on at the moment, and I think something like that is at the bottom of the priority list, if it was ever considered to begin with.


Actually, I recall reading a long-ago devpost on this very topic. The rationale for not allowing joysticks or keypresses was two-fold:

If I recall the post correctly, CCP tested the game with joysticks, but found that due to the way joysticks handle control data, the number of input events from so many joysticks making calls simultaneously reached a 'critical mass' and caused interface lag while the system tried to clear out the backlog and process the next batch of input requests.

The second line of reasoning was that joysticks would add an undesirable level of 'twitch' gameplay, where victory ultimately depended on hardware instead of game mechanics.

I can't get rid of my darn signature!  Oh, wait....
Gogela
Epic Ganking Time
CODE.
#123 - 2011-11-24 04:03:10 UTC
I don't think "orbiting" is any more realistic than atmospheric flight in space... it would be cool if you could fly a fighter off a carrier... maybe it could be an entirely different class of combat, say fighter on fighter, when not engaging larger ships.

I can definitely see the technical problem with additional inputs though... can you imagine trying twitch based game-play w/ fleet fight lag? It would drive me crazy and probably **** everyone off...

Signatures should be used responsibly...