Is there really no strafing and is Yaw forever dumb slow, or are the tutorial and starter ships just bad?

[The Old Song]

My roommate has the game and one on those HOTAS controllers on his PS4, so I was trying the game out earlier to see if I'd like the "be a spaceship" genre.

At first it honestly felt like the yaw and roll controls were backwards, but I guess that's just my brain trying to translate my experience with using a mouse to the flightstick.

Then it was just boggling my mind how ludicrously slow turning (yaw) is. Yes I obviously realized that instead of turning left I could roll left and pitch up, but there were a lot of times where doing that instead of just turning wouldn't really make any sense, except that turning is dumb slow.

When the tutorial and basic flight simulation accessible after the tutorial never mentioned anything about strafing (that's strafing *sideways* not the up/down) my first thought was that they must have forgotten to include it in the training, not that it just wasn't a thing you could do. It just seems so counter-intuitive that you wouldn't be able to.

Is yaw really always going to be so slow, and is strafing really not a thing, or do those starter ships just suck?

If it's just how the game is..... WHY? Why would ships turn so slow and be unable to strafe?
Don't give me some nonsense about comparing to real world planes or boats or something.
These aren't planes in air or boats in water, these are spaceships. Distant Sci Fi future spaceships. In space, where movement has total freedom. At such a level of technology any decent spaceship would certainly be able to strafe and yaw just as fast as it can pitch.

[Jambax]

Ships can move in any direction. Check the bindings for the lateral thrusters.

Yaw is slow. Roll then pitch to turn quicker.

[Laurreth]

The flight model is supposed to be sort of "spitfires in space", so that's how it works. You do have thrusters for translation along the major axes that allow you a lot of freedom though.

[CEPHY]

You could just... look at the controls settings for 2 seconds and notice the key bindings for strafing, Q and E by default.

[Elitewrecker PT]

There is strafing.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Ships have a slow yaw, so the fight wouldn't turn into controlling a turret: left-right, up-down.

[Elitch]

You can disable flight assist, and have full 3DOF.

Not sure what you're on about.

[Agony_Aunt]

I have the horizontal and veritcal strafe thrusters set to the little joystick on my throttle. But its really only for fine adjustment, i don't use it much in combat, although it depends on ship.

I've found adding vertical strafe to pitch can open or close a turn, which can be useful when dealing with an opponent who can turn faster than you.

The reason for the poor yaw was a design decision taken from the start by FD. They didn't want turrets in space.

Its like how in a lot of sci fi films spaceships don't move much like spaceships. Because airplanes in space look cool and it makes for good combat. So we have a flight model that is reminiscient of Star Wars.

You can achieve a more realistic flight model by turning Flight Assist off, but yaw is still weak compared to roll+pitch.

Not that realistic space flight can't be good for film or game. In film (or TV) we have The Expanse, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica (sometimes, when they remembered, otherwise they did airplanes in space), as well as others.

I'm struggling to think of a game with good combat equal rotation flight model, because all i can think of with such models is "turret in space". A feeling that all you are doing is pointing in a direction and pressing fire.

[Planewalker]

If you want to strafe and do the awesome moves in ED, fly slower.
(pitch-perfection is about the subtle movements)

[Julius Seizure]

Elite has THE best space flight and fighting in any space ship game on the market (although it certainly lacks in other areas). The starter ships aren't bad, the very first one (Sidewinder) can take out an Anaconda if flown expertly.

Like all skill based games, the age old saying of 'git gud' still applies here.

[The Old Song]

Originally posted by ILIAD:

You could just... look at the controls settings for 2 seconds and notice the key bindings for strafing, Q and E by default.

As I said, was playing on PS4 with Hotas. Pressed every button on the thing, none caused strafing. I guess there were just no buttons left for strafing, what with not having a keyboard. Maybe it's a low end hotas, idk.

[The Old Song]

Originally posted by Agony_Aunt:

The reason for the poor yaw was a design decision taken from the start by FD. They didn't want turrets in space.

Its like how in a lot of sci fi films spaceships don't move much like spaceships. Because airplanes in space look cool and it makes for good combat. So we have a flight model that is reminiscient of Star Wars.

You can achieve a more realistic flight model by turning Flight Assist off, but yaw is still weak compared to roll+pitch.

Not that realistic space flight can't be good for film or game. In film (or TV) we have The Expanse, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica (sometimes, when they remembered, otherwise they did airplanes in space), as well as others.

I'm struggling to think of a game with good combat equal rotation flight model, because all i can think of with such models is "turret in space". A feeling that all you are doing is pointing in a direction and pressing fire.

I mean, you've basically described exactly what I expected space combat to be, except the turret would also be able to move in all directions at equal speed. Or rather space flight, since I've done no combat and was talking about ship control in general. If I sat down and thought to myself "I want to play a game with airplane like controls" I'd look up airplane games, not space games.

Even if you wouldn't call them good, it sounds like you know of some games with that more realistic space flight model?

[Laurreth]

Originally posted by The Song:

Even if you wouldn't call them good, it sounds like you know of some games with that more realistic space flight model?

In terms of realism vs. playability, Independence War 2 (i-War 2) is probably the peak of that genre, and that dialled back the physics a lot compared to part one; you can get both on GOG, iW2 is IMO one of the best space shootygames ever. If you want a demonstration why full-on "realistic" physics kinda don't work too well in games, try to get your hands on a copy of Elite 2 or First Encounter (FE2/FFE).

[LoboFH]

Originally posted by The Song:

Originally posted by ILIAD:

You could just... look at the controls settings for 2 seconds and notice the key bindings for strafing, Q and E by default.

As I said, was playing on PS4 with Hotas. Pressed every button on the thing, none caused strafing. I guess there were just no buttons left for strafing, what with not having a keyboard. Maybe it's a low end hotas, idk.

In a good HOTAS there are two small joysticks to control directional thrusters, yeah.

[Agony_Aunt]

Originally posted by The Song:

Originally posted by Agony_Aunt:

The reason for the poor yaw was a design decision taken from the start by FD. They didn't want turrets in space.

Its like how in a lot of sci fi films spaceships don't move much like spaceships. Because airplanes in space look cool and it makes for good combat. So we have a flight model that is reminiscient of Star Wars.

You can achieve a more realistic flight model by turning Flight Assist off, but yaw is still weak compared to roll+pitch.

Not that realistic space flight can't be good for film or game. In film (or TV) we have The Expanse, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica (sometimes, when they remembered, otherwise they did airplanes in space), as well as others.

I'm struggling to think of a game with good combat equal rotation flight model, because all i can think of with such models is "turret in space". A feeling that all you are doing is pointing in a direction and pressing fire.

I mean, you've basically described exactly what I expected space combat to be, except the turret would also be able to move in all directions at equal speed. Or rather space flight, since I've done no combat and was talking about ship control in general. If I sat down and thought to myself "I want to play a game with airplane like controls" I'd look up airplane games, not space games.

Even if you wouldn't call them good, it sounds like you know of some games with that more realistic space flight model?

Well, the most realistic (but still had weak yaw) was Frontier, where you could have having fights at millions of km/s, each of you moving at relatively high speeds, although you were matched in vector and speed overall. However, it did often lead to you spending a lot of time pointing your laser at a distant dot.

Kerbal has a kind of realistic space flight model, but its not a game with combat.

Maybe the X games give you good yaw... its been sooo long since i played them i honestly don't remember.