Ships ought to be able to maneuver during turbo, if not strafe than at least change heading. Really, would ship designers make a system that that precludes navigation for no reason? Currently, today’s aircraft can maneuver under afterburner, why would it be any different in the future. If the argument is that all power, both from the battery and what would normally be going to the maneuvering jets is being redirected to the engines, then make maneuvering lower the top speed of the craft. Pitch, roll, and yaw – rotational acceleration – are ‘low’ energy movements (compared to linear acceleration), thus such a speed decrease would be minimal. Furthermore, roll is supported in turbo, and while this generally takes less energy than yaw and pitch, it would use the same maneuvering thrusters. Thus, there is some measure of energy available to the maneuvering thrusters, which should allow all types of rotational movements, if at perhaps a lower rate than when not using turbo.

All those arguements are based on things which have nothing to do with this being a game. Approach the subject of 'should you be able to manuever during turbo' in terms of 'will it make a more interesting game'.

I think almost definately it will make a more intresting game, high speed maunevers, combat at those high speeds, I can see only benefit, it wouldn't detract at all.

I envision people turboing backwards, sliding sideways at turbo speeds and so forth and I get a totally different impression. I envision that the perfect freedom to move in any direction at your maximum speed would lead to a bunch of near random erratic juking about without much regards to tactics. I envision it would be the equivalent of barrel rolling continiously written large. Combine that with the need for a new control interface and I that I see only downside.

Besides which, its probably something (along with no upper limit on speed and so forth) that the devs have already tried and discarded as being uninteresting.

look at it like this*: turbo could very well be a crazy electro-magnetic spectrum- type thingy which excites your ship in such a way that it goes forward, really fast. It only works forward though. There.

*making stuff up here...


Edit: also want to say that being able to only go straight while turboing makes for a funner game than if you were able to turbo, and avoid crazy killer people on your time without having to slow down.

I used to think that I wanted to be able to maneuver during turbo, too.

That was when I was very new to the game... and eventually I realized that the reason I wanted this was because I was just too damn slow. Not my ship, but me. If everyone is turbo'ing and maneuvering at the same time, it will only accomplish two things:

1) Everyone will bind a key to lock turbo on all the time, and all that will be accomplished is that the top speeds will be effectively increased.

2) The game will lean more and more to a first-person-shooter game... IMHO it will lean too far; leaving those with lightening reflexes to fight amongst their own small clique of elite players and leaving everyone else to suffer.

... now that I've been playing for a while (since 2.something) I've learned to realize that I'm not the best fighter, but also that there are many other ways to enjoy the game. Give it some time and maybe you'll learn to prefer the current turbo system as well.

Remember that manuevering in turbo would be like arcade mode, always thrusting forward, so you couldnt shoot behind you while you turboed, and any manuever you went thru in turbo coulb be matched by your persuer if he weas a good pilot: just like real world dogfights. Also, like i said, you could make turbo manueverability reduced, or slow the turbo slightly for manuevers. Highspeed dogfighting will not ruin the game.

If I had a penny for every thread that had this topic, I'd have... etc. etc. etc.

/me yawns.

Basically, look at the engine on the back of the ship, that is your main engine. Do you think the little tiny orientation thrusters could match the same power? no.

Manuevering thrusters would not be working against the main thruster, it is not some sort of battle of wills. This is not even an issue, the issue is gameplay, not physics.

In the beginning of the thread you seemed to be taking a physics-oriented approach.

alright, this is straight from the manual:


" Turbo (TAB key by default) is a high speed overdrive which can be used to fly more quickly between points. When Turbo is engaged, all power is going to the rearward thrusters, and no power is available for maneuvering."

no need for me to invent crazy EM spectrums....

on the gameplay issue: the turbo-manuvering would be easier(for some). Easy, surprisingly enough, is not good. In minesweeper for example, do you play on 3X3 with one mine or 20X20 with 200 mines? (I don't know how minesweeper works, so the numbers are off. Bite me.)

explanation minesweeper:

3x3 means the playingfield is 9 fields big, so you have a chance of 1/9 the to hit a mine

20x20 means the field is 400 fields big, so you have a chance of hitting the mine with 1/2.

Naturally these chances are only for the 1st move.

So yes, you are right, 3x3 with 1 mine is muuuuuuuuuch easier then 20x20 with 200 mines. But I surely don't wanna play neither off them, just not fun if your chance is 1/2 to hit a mine or not. cheers

"Remember that maneuvering in turbo would be like arcade mode, always thrusting forward, so you couldn't shoot behind you while you turbo'ed, and any maneuver you went through in turbo could be matched by your pursuer if he was a good pilot" [spelling errors corrected courtesy of sk]

Exactly my point: It would be the same as eliminating turbo altogether and increasing the top cruising speed of engines by 2 or 3 times. It is better to have reasonable speed limits* during normal flight, and leave the turbo as a specialized option for traveling fast in a straight line. Also: it's really a moot point because even I can tap-boost during a fight with some skill, and as you should all be aware of by now, I suck at dog fights.

* I do think that there should be some options to have faster "base" speeds, such as two-engine ships. But these need to be carefully balanced so as not to create uber-fighters. See any one of about 1,000,000 other threads for more info.

Simple: Learn to boost and menuver at the same time you whores. It's not that hard to micromanage boosting.

Yeah, whats all this manouver using turbo c**p? Boost-tapping is a skill you have to learn! The whole idea behind turbo is its a way of cruising between two points at speed, there are downsides of using it and thats that you cant manouver..

Learning how to boost tap properly is a skill that gives you an edge over other players, i think thats how it should be left.

asphy

The conservative inside of me might even go so far as to say that allowing boost-taping is even too lenient... it's saying "those of you who can tap a button with one finger while playing the game have an advantage." If there were a delay between boosts that limited boost-tapping it may actually **improve** game play.

But then, I use it to... and I could (definitely) be wrong...

~ Sk bangs two flints together, to spark controversy ~

OKAY-

I think it would make the game more interesting if they could manuever during turbo, BUT not manuever alot. Reduce the turn rate to a miniscule little number so you can turn and manuever VERY slowly while turboing. That way you can make slight course changes over long periods of time, but the basic FUN COMBAT that is all ready there will be kept.

I'm not 100% convinced its a good idea, but this might actually work... so if you spin quickly to face a wormhole that is 5000m away, and turbo before your ship's facing catches up, it would slowly correct itself, so that your overall flight path was a wide (and fast) arc towards the wormhole.

In other words: maneuvers during turbo would be slow to the point that they would be useless in a fight and only good for long-range navigational corrections. However, you can accomplish this already by tap-boosting.

Devs...? Have you experimented with this? I suspect that it's been tried and abandoned, as the current system has obviously been well thought out. But I'd love to hear specifics, if the devs don't mind sharing.

If it hasn't been tried, I'd be willing to give it a shot... because I personally hate tap-boosting (I have a very small keyboard and prolonged tap-boosting bothers my wrist). But I'd still rather see work go into re-balancing first.

being able to alter directions while turboing is a bad idea. It's a bad idea EVERY time it's mentioned and it'll be a bad idea forever. (Bad as in how it will affect game play.) Imagine a valk doing 200 mps and strafing. Damn thing is so agile as it is now... No thanks...