Facing the mouse cursor on manual control?

[vassandor]

I was wondering if there is a button I can hold to make the ship face the mouse cursor like how holding shift works in starsector. It would make manual conrolling actually viable.

[Mechaballe]

Yes you can. Theres quite a few settings for manual control, just browse the menu and you will find them. :)

[Plaus42]

There is a hotkey to toggle it

[CrucibleOfHate]

Manual control is pretty viable without that, but yeah it exists.
Well, I don't play pvp, maybe it's necessary there...

[Mechaballe]

Originally posted by CrucibleOfHate:

Manual control is pretty viable without that, but yeah it exists.
Well, I don't play pvp, maybe it's necessary there...

I actually prefer manual control with auto rotate towards cursor for career gameplay. I find it gives me very nice control over what parts of my ship to present towards enemies to spread out damage over my armored/shielded parts of my ship, and I sometimes like ramming enemies. Either to push ships so their weapons point the wrong way for a moment or sometimes to use a less dangerous foe as a shield against a more dangerous foe when Im outnumbered.

[vassandor]

Okay, one more question. How do I make the other weapon groups fire at will while using the main gun like this?

[Mechaballe]

Originally posted by vassandor:

Okay, one more question. How do I make the other weapon groups fire at will while using the main gun like this?

Im not entierly sure what youre asking? I usually set my weapons tomeither fire at will or fire at target. Then I let the crew worry about operating weapons while I focus on manouvering the ship.

[vassandor]

Originally posted by Mechaballe:

Im not entierly sure what youre asking? I usually set my weapons tomeither fire at will or fire at target. Then I let the crew worry about operating weapons while I focus on manouvering the ship.

So basically, I want to precisely target fire with the central laser or line up a rail gun shot at the enemy, after the shields go down, while my point defense+cannons fire at will (taking down the shields). Also, I want to time my nuke shots while having direct control while strafing and stuff. In my experience, the regular control sucks at keeping the ship facing the enemy when you try to circle around them.
I don't know if you ever played starsector, but that has peak ship control with dozens of weapons per ship, that all auto fire until you switch to a control group. If it could be taken from that game, it would be awesome.

[Mechaballe]

Ah thats easy, just set the guns you want to precisely contril to fire at target, and the rest to fire at will. All fire at target guns will hold their fire untill you mark a specific component on the enemy ship.
Are you using a single or multiple barrel railgun? If multi, do you know how rail faning works?

[lalelunatic]

as mechabelle said, with a bit more explanation and shortcuts below:

you should be able to set it to "mouse aim, keyboard move" settings, this way it kinda plays like starsector.

you move with strafing, and keep the mouse pointer at target. then set weapon grps for each group you want to use yourself, and as mechabelle said, put the rest on autofire.

railguns, set to "only shoot at target", as said, enable you to fan them if you got multiple, by slightly overturn to one direction, then mark a module as target, then turn back into a slightly overtun in the other direction. once their nozzle pass a targeting vector, they will shoot in succession. then rince and repeat that "wobble around" manouver, that is called fanning.

you could technically also do that with all other weapons, to set them at target, as its, e.g. with deckcannons, pretty hard to achieve significant damage, as the AI auto aiming, is total useless honestly... its set to randomly at intervals force a target switch. which means they can and will ignore a enemy reactor that only has 2-3 armor blocks defence left, for e.g. a PD battery that is still behind a dozen armor rows, just because the switch is forced and its closer to your ship.

to negate the possibility your ship, even with mouse aim, has problems holding a flanking strafe position, add more "turn thrust", by adding engines in a 90 degree (left and right side" angle at the outermost possible positions for the most leverage in manouverablitiy. also add more at an area with "heavier" stuff on your ship, e.g. armor. (or easier put the turn engines closer to your armor row and also more than elsewhere).


PS:
settings -> gameplay -> scroll down to "direct control" -> mark all checkboxes you want to have (hover over the options for explanation).

with ctrl+d you can take manual control and with Q and E you strafe. steers like in starsector. so you can do "manual orbiting while keep your nose at target" with Ctrl+D+F, guns can even be set to autofire at modules below the cursor.

for wpngrps to only shoot at certain times, mark them as grp, then turn them to hold fire with "O" (like in ooooh not a zero, also DONT turn them off with "P", as it will remove the crew from them until its turned back on and means a delay in beeing operational, at least thats the key in my game, cant remember if i changed that, but you can see the shortcut when hovering over the specific area in the options), while set to either autofire or fire at target, whichever your prefer.

e.g. your nukes will only fire once turned back fire at will or target. while stop fireing, but still working, on "hold fire". (you can even set all fire modes to the same hotkey, so you just have to press 1 button several times to rotate through them without needing 20keys to set it up how you want it).

if you prefer you can also lock the camera at you ship only when in direct control mode in... settings -> camera -> scroll down to direct control mode -> check box

[CrucibleOfHate]

Uh

Not sure why this wasn't mentioned by anyone yet since it's the answer to the question you literally asked but
When you select a weapon, you can edit the direct control binding. The last option is "AI Controlled"
The weapons will fire at will if set to fire at will, regardless of your direct control inputs, if set to AI control
The opposite to the solution proposed above, and worse for railgun fans, but also what you asked about lol

[lalelunatic]

well thats another way to do it, albeit (using the hamburger menu for changes) it beeing changable only by mouse clicking. so its technically slower in executing a switch in the setup. which is contrary to the OP mentioning starsector as a example, where it can be beneficial to stop autofire AI controlled guns for flux reasons to not overheat.

given that theres no flux in cosmoteer and supply is pretty constant if you have a proper setup, that might not be needed.

so i guess a mix of both might be the best solution if i think about it, at least if the OP really just wants to use the main guns only on manual and the other guns purely on auto fire AI mode for them to never stop shooting whereever and not beeing aimable at all (with nukes set to right mouse butten then or something).