Ship has poor strafing ability, but only in specific situations

[Scoob]

Hey all,

I've build a ship that has GREAT all-round thrust, meaning it can spin on the spot quickly - able to 180 in under a second - and can strafe just as quickly as it goes in any other direction. I've testing this having the ship strafe around.

However, when given an attack order that involves it needing to strafe while engaging a target, it moves at no more than I'd estimate 5% of its potential speed. Consider these two scenarios:

Ship simply asked to strafe using the Strafe Button (X key) while out of combat. Ship moves quickly as it should. Going sideways just as fast as it goes forward / backwards.

Ship asked to attack a STATIONARY target, utilising Strafe to get the best angle. Ship moves to the appropriate distance and starts to strafe very very slowly to get into position. That 5% of possible speed used is likely best case!

I've designed several ships now to be able to move equally well in all directions so they can:

- Close on a target quickly (forward thrust)
- Move back / hold distance from a target (reverse thrust)
- Position themselves quickly for best Line Of Fine (Strafe thrust)

The first two work great, the third one works, but only out of combat. I do wonder if this is a bug with the Positioning commands? I.e. the ship is confused regarding how to Strafe in these situations.

This has probably been the biggest issue in most combat encounters with my small fleet. They simple lose their ability to Strafe when given an attack order - when it's MOST critical they do as they are told.

To be clear, ship isn't running out of Power or anything like that. It's 100% functional with all guns firing.

Note: While this happens with all my nimble ships, I'm currently testing a diagonal build which works GREAT when just flying around. It has a Standard and a Large Thruster in each of the four directions. However, when Strafing, I notice that only the Standard Thrusters fire, despite all being fully fuelled.

This is not just an issue with diagonal ships though. My "Light Fighters" have Standard Thrusters fitted. Four to the rear providing Forward Thrust (they're basically an interceptor), two forward-facing providing braking, and just a single one left and right. When testing in regular flight, these cheap Light fighters strafe pretty well but, like the other ship, fail when needing to strafe in combat. These Light Fighters are of course relatively weaker strafing, as their designed for a quick intercept / diversion role.

TL DR: Order ship to Strafe outside of combat and it's great. Order it to Strafe in combat and it's rubbish. Same ship, plenty of power to all systems.

[⇧⇨⇩⇩⇩]

Well its hard to strafe around a target thats countering your movement with their thrusters. I find flanking tactics work way better with more than one ship available.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Scoob:

...
TL DR: Order ship to Strafe outside of combat and it's great. Order it to Strafe in combat and it's rubbish. Same ship, plenty of power to all systems.

The parallax display here can make things sometimes a bit difficult to see. (Parallax = Those layered background graphics that appear to move at different rates and give the illusion of depth, like the background starfield, debris layer, ship layer, planet layer and whatever other layers there are. :))

I, too, get frustrated with a ship "staying on target" yet moving in a strafe-like manner - "Orbiting"

I confess - I don't know how to achieve that as the parallax graphics make it sometimes difficult to see even if I've achieved doing it. :)

You can turn on the Display Handles Option and it provides some extra visualizations of controls, but I don't know if that will help solve the issue.

Some experimentation is in order, I think - I've been able to not worry about it too much, but that may soon change.

(Watching thread for solutions!)

[Scoob]

Originally posted by morrganstain:

Well its hard to strafe around a target thats countering your movement with their thrusters. I find flanking tactics work way better with more than one ship available.

I did cover that in my post. The stationary Station that isn't moving at all - no thrusters - likely struggles to counter my ship's movement :)

The issue certainly seems to be worse with my diagonally-built ship. I've done some more testing and *sometimes* it's bugging out when not in combat also. So, the issue may be more random that I thought, and it was coincidence that the ship's "test flight" went really well, but it's initial combat encounters saw it slow-strafe.

Regardless, on the diagonal build at least, not all the Thrusters are firing - only Standard ones are, not the Large. I might swap out the large for two Standards and compare. It's a quirky quirk.

Edit: Ok, now my Light Fighters are working just fine in combat, whereas they were not previously. Still using that same stationary Station - no Thrusters - to test against. I suspect my initial conclusion - it only happens in combat - was wrong. It's just that it'd only happened in combat up until this point lol. Oh, changing the thrusters on the diagonally-built ship made no difference. It seems to be stuck strafing sluggishly now, whereas it was pretty good. All other flight is great, just strafe sucks - yet it has the exact same thrust potential in all directions, due to four-plane symmetry with the thrusters.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Scoob:

... Oh, changing the thrusters on the diagonally-built ship made no difference. It seems to be stuck strafing sluggishly now, whereas it was pretty good. All other flight is great, just strafe sucks - yet it has the exact same thrust potential in all directions, due to four-plane symmetry with the thrusters.

I don't know for sure, but I remember reading that diagonal ships have lower thrust efficiency because of "reasons." Likely due to their thrusters not being able to be fully applied to their axis/direction. (They will be forced to work against each other at some point in that config.)

Dunno if that applies specifically to your builds, though.

[⇧⇨⇩⇩⇩]

Originally posted by Scoob:

yet it has the exact same thrust potential in all directions, due to four-plane symmetry with the thrusters.

In this game no ship ever has perfect thrust symetry in all directions for the very simple reason that there are only for directions you can point thrusters in but more potential directions of movement.

[Scoob]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

I don't know for sure, but I remember reading that diagonal ships have lower thrust efficiency because of "reasons." Likely due to their thrusters not being able to be fully applied to their axis/direction. (They will be forced to work against each other at some point in that config.)

Dunno if that applies specifically to your builds, though.

You could be right, though the ship did appear to perform fine during it's test flight when I first brought it into the game. I think it's some sort of bug though, as here's what I see currently - not just in combat any more:

- Move FORWARDS and ALL South-West and South-East Thrusters fire.
- Move BACKWARDS and ALL North-West and North-East Thrusters fire.
- Move Left / Right and only two Thrusters fire NE and SE (Strafe Left) and NW and SW (Strafe Right) - just the Standard thruster in each direction firing, not the large. Still, two standards on their own should be far faster than that.

Note: for clarity in each direction, so NW, NE, SE and SW there are TWO Thrusters, a Standard and a Large. My thinking was the Standard would respond more quickly (it's at full thrust sooner) then the Large comes in to give a good top speed.

As mentioned, I did test with all Standard thrusters - three at each diagonal compass point - yet still only one in each direction fires during a left / right strafe.

This ship's drive systems are symmetrical over four (diagonal) planes, so if it can go forward / backwards just fine, left / right should also be fine. I suspect you're right though and there's indeed some specific quirk with diagonal builds. I'd consider this a bug.

[Scoob]

Originally posted by morrganstain:

Originally posted by Scoob:

yet it has the exact same thrust potential in all directions, due to four-plane symmetry with the thrusters.

In this game no ship ever has perfect thrust symetry in all directions for the very simple reason that there are only for directions you can point thrusters in but more potential directions of movement.

Ok, but perfect symmetry over the available directions in which thrusters can be placed. I've just testing simple Forward / Backwards and Left / Right here. The first pairing works great, the second does not, yet the same number and class of thrusters should be applied in each case.

[Quiximo]

The nature of a diagonal thruster setup prevents a ship from strafing and maintaining distance at the same time. The thrusters needed to do so are at odds with one another. a well balanced linear build can most definitely strafe and maintain distance at once. I'd have to see the ship in question to answer more.

[Scoob]

I agree that forward / backwards movement *combined* with an attempt to strafe left / right too would absolutely be the weakness of the diagonal build. However, when each is done in isolation it should work.

This build can turn on a penny though, so I need to utilise that strength to get it into position.

[⇧⇨⇩⇩⇩]

Originally posted by Scoob:

Originally posted by morrganstain:

In this game no ship ever has perfect thrust symetry in all directions for the very simple reason that there are only for directions you can point thrusters in but more potential directions of movement.

Ok, but perfect symmetry over the available directions in which thrusters can be placed. I've just testing simple Forward / Backwards and Left / Right here. The first pairing works great, the second does not, yet the same number and class of thrusters should be applied in each case.

Whats the point of such a test when combat is mostly a combination of directions?

[thorm81]

Originally posted by morrganstain:

Originally posted by Scoob:

Ok, but perfect symmetry over the available directions in which thrusters can be placed. I've just testing simple Forward / Backwards and Left / Right here. The first pairing works great, the second does not, yet the same number and class of thrusters should be applied in each case.

Whats the point of such a test when combat is mostly a combination of directions?

When designing a ship it is best to test it as much as you can, you aren't spending 100% of the game in combat, so why would you only test it in combat situations? Don't you also want to know if it can maneuver through an asteroid field, or visit a station without running into everything?

[Sokaku]

A fairly common design flaw I see in a few ships that I have looked at is a lack of balance for lateral thrusters. The game's engine does a decent job of applying Newtonian forces and vectors to get an object with a mass accelerating and following orbital routes. Many designs just seem to think that slapping a certain number of thrusters on the side will equate to better turning and strafing. However, if you don't design your lateral thrusters to be balanced (out to the edges as much as possible) then the ability of your craft to strafe and orbit.

For example, an imbalanced design:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2889297484

Here I have selected a target and told the ship to orbit to a flanking position. You can see from the thruster flares on both sides that it is struggling to keep position moving in orbit. The half-orbit took 1 minute and 15 seconds to complete. There are 2 thrusters on each side. Adding one or two more thrusters would make little difference; Because the thrust is not distributed across the mass, counter-thrust is constantly applied from other thrusters to cancel undesired spinning, wasting power and significantly limiting speed.

Now an example with balanced thrusters:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2889297800

Here I have just moved 2 of the thrusters to the other end of the ship. Still only 2 lateral thrusters per side, however here you can see from the thrust plumes that it is applying more thrust in the direction it is needed and there are far fewer correcting burns from other thrusters. Rotation is purely managed by scaling back the inner-most thruster a tad to maintain correct rotation through the manoeuvre. The 180 degree half orbit in this case took just 20 seconds in this configuration.

Doubling the thrusters to 4 per side, in the imbalanced setup improved the time to 56 seconds, but caused the ship to drift wildly in/out as forward and reverse thrusters kicked in to adjust. In the balanced configuration doubling up the thrusters reduced the time to 12 seconds with a very tight arc inside the designated orbit while maintaining nose on target the entire time.

Having lateral thrusters in the corners gives you the best control, but comes at a cost of protection as well as distance to power sources. It is certainly worth considering in designs though as a bit of extra walking distance with power can be justified if the thrusters are not working as hard wasting energy due to counter-burning. If strafing/orbiting is a problem then it's probably worth looking at rather than just adding thrust.

[⇧⇨⇩⇩⇩]

Originally posted by thorm81:

Originally posted by morrganstain:

Whats the point of such a test when combat is mostly a combination of directions?

When designing a ship it is best to test it as much as you can, you aren't spending 100% of the game in combat, so why would you only test it in combat situations? Don't you also want to know if it can maneuver through an asteroid field, or visit a station without running into everything?

Yes testing a ship is importantr, but testing for movement in a straight line isnt a very usefull combat since your manouvering in any slightly challenging combat wont be a straight line.

[Scoob]

Regardless of everything else, something isn't quite right with the game's physics in this situation. The exact same thrust is available whether the vessel is travelling Forward / Backwards and Left / Right, however, for whatever reason, the game does not apply force when going left / right. Indeed, it doesn't even engage all the appropriate thrusters for that manoeuvre - like the game doesn't recognise some thrusters on that plane being valid for movement in a given direction.

Something is evidently a bit confused with the physics model. The ship did test perfectly fine initially, being fast in ALL directions and able to turn very quickly. I was very pleased with its performance.

Now, I did change a couple of blocks once I added it to my fleet proper - but nothing to do with the thrust, that's unchanged. So I can only assume that one of those other tweaks - just Armour blocks, placing extra / shuffling around Crew Quarters and the like - somehow upset the Physics model.

Regardless, the thrust available in all direction thrust can be applied (until we get diagonal thrusters, if that's ever a thing) is the same, yet the game physics doesn't appear to recognise this.

I'm sure it's a quirk of the Diagonal ship design highlighting some quirk with the physics. The original issue - ships not appearing to use their full strafe ability in combat - is present in several regular ships too. It's only with this diagonal ship though that the issue is (now) consistent even out of combat.

While ship design is of course going to impact how it performs, this appears to be a separate issue outside the control of design. The ship design has everything it needs in order to strafe well, but it doesn't.

Bottom line: Thrust is even is all available directions. Game physics doesn't see this.

[⇧⇨⇩⇩⇩]

This sounds like really good and important feedback, did you type this in the games feedback function? I think it would help if you did. (I know walt browses the forum, but I doubt he sees 100% of every conversation.