Forums » Suggestions
Thrust Assist mode
As of right now, the newbs of vendetta have two flight mode options: flight assist and physics modes. I am proposing a third option, which I believe to be more versatile and useful than FA without requiring the extra hand physics mode demands.
The mode would allow a player to select how much engine power is pushing him forwards or backwards, in some nice and convenient number of intervals (9). Because strafing would remain a binary affair, the player gains the ability to easily choose an acceleration vector without too much furious key-tapping. (Turbo-tapping is nice and all, but really, who wants to strafe-tap?)
This is rather confusing without a demonstration, so I threw together a flash demo to help illustrate what I am suggesting. In this simple VO analogue "a" and "s" strafe left and right while "w" and "s" step the thrust up and down. The left bar with the tick marks shows your current thrust setting and the right bar your current speed. The space key brakes in a most unrealistic fashion, so don't judge it too harshly.
I have spent about two years playing VO with a set of binds that provided me with the desired functionality, and can say that this is my most favoritest way to fly. These binds, or thrust assist as a concept, are quite similar to FA mode, in that no actual functionality is added. Everything you get from this mode can be done with physics mode (and a joystick). Unfortunately, this didn't stop the binds from getting caught in the anti-combat-assist action that disabled the ability to bind or alias accelerate values that aren't full-on of off.
Obviously, allowing the binding of partial accelerate values would once again make the creation of plugins similar to combat assist hilariously easy, which is why I am proposing that this flight mode be added as a third option. Of course, adding a whole new flight mode to confuse newbs is a rather drastic step to make one asshole happy, so here are some reasons everyone should want this:
Thrust assist makes sense as a flight model. Boats have more power settings than full-tilt-forward and full-tilt-back, so why shouldn't space boats?
Thrust assist makes the game more fair. Joystick users have the ability to select how much forward or backward thrust they get, why should us poor folk with small desks be left behind?
Thrust assist makes the game more accessible to laptop and netbook users. Some people's fingers are like mine, and sweat profusely enough to make using a mousepad almost impossible. Meanwhile, using the keyboard alone puts you in a tight spot if you want to strafe, accelerate and shoot all at the same time. Even if you can contort your fingers in the right way, holding down sdfc will, on most keyboards, drop at least one key from the combination.
If you're not convinced yet, try this with the flash thingy: leave your mouse on one side of the screen and pretend it's an evil enemy. Now imagine it's a damn dirty prom spamming AGT at you. You want to keep your distance, so tap s a few times and start strafing back and forth. Congratulations! Because more engine power was applied to backing up you've stayed far enough away to kill your evil mouse enemy with some well-placed neutron shots.
Now imagine your evil mouse-enemy is a rail hog. Distance in this case plays only to his advantage, so tap w to get no acceleration of any sort and start deftly evading his rails. with a and d. This time, because you didn't bother going forwards or backwards, more of your engine power goes to flinging you left and right, so he can't quite line up the rails and you take him down easily. Convenient, no?
Overall, I think thrust assist is a nice thing to have, and could become a leading flight mode for both new and old players. Plus it doesn't seem that hard to implement from within the magic circle where +Accelerate can still take values between -1000 and 1000.
The mode would allow a player to select how much engine power is pushing him forwards or backwards, in some nice and convenient number of intervals (9). Because strafing would remain a binary affair, the player gains the ability to easily choose an acceleration vector without too much furious key-tapping. (Turbo-tapping is nice and all, but really, who wants to strafe-tap?)
This is rather confusing without a demonstration, so I threw together a flash demo to help illustrate what I am suggesting. In this simple VO analogue "a" and "s" strafe left and right while "w" and "s" step the thrust up and down. The left bar with the tick marks shows your current thrust setting and the right bar your current speed. The space key brakes in a most unrealistic fashion, so don't judge it too harshly.
I have spent about two years playing VO with a set of binds that provided me with the desired functionality, and can say that this is my most favoritest way to fly. These binds, or thrust assist as a concept, are quite similar to FA mode, in that no actual functionality is added. Everything you get from this mode can be done with physics mode (and a joystick). Unfortunately, this didn't stop the binds from getting caught in the anti-combat-assist action that disabled the ability to bind or alias accelerate values that aren't full-on of off.
Obviously, allowing the binding of partial accelerate values would once again make the creation of plugins similar to combat assist hilariously easy, which is why I am proposing that this flight mode be added as a third option. Of course, adding a whole new flight mode to confuse newbs is a rather drastic step to make one asshole happy, so here are some reasons everyone should want this:
Thrust assist makes sense as a flight model. Boats have more power settings than full-tilt-forward and full-tilt-back, so why shouldn't space boats?
Thrust assist makes the game more fair. Joystick users have the ability to select how much forward or backward thrust they get, why should us poor folk with small desks be left behind?
Thrust assist makes the game more accessible to laptop and netbook users. Some people's fingers are like mine, and sweat profusely enough to make using a mousepad almost impossible. Meanwhile, using the keyboard alone puts you in a tight spot if you want to strafe, accelerate and shoot all at the same time. Even if you can contort your fingers in the right way, holding down sdfc will, on most keyboards, drop at least one key from the combination.
If you're not convinced yet, try this with the flash thingy: leave your mouse on one side of the screen and pretend it's an evil enemy. Now imagine it's a damn dirty prom spamming AGT at you. You want to keep your distance, so tap s a few times and start strafing back and forth. Congratulations! Because more engine power was applied to backing up you've stayed far enough away to kill your evil mouse enemy with some well-placed neutron shots.
Now imagine your evil mouse-enemy is a rail hog. Distance in this case plays only to his advantage, so tap w to get no acceleration of any sort and start deftly evading his rails. with a and d. This time, because you didn't bother going forwards or backwards, more of your engine power goes to flinging you left and right, so he can't quite line up the rails and you take him down easily. Convenient, no?
Overall, I think thrust assist is a nice thing to have, and could become a leading flight mode for both new and old players. Plus it doesn't seem that hard to implement from within the magic circle where +Accelerate can still take values between -1000 and 1000.
If the devs hadn't taken away the ability to control ship movement from plugins to defeat combat assist, it would be possible to implement this as a plugin.
Interesting.