Source
r/starcitizen•
Extectic

Coupled mode is too... coupled.

DISCUSSION

Coupled mode makes flight in this game look stupid. When you have gigantic ships that can stop on a dime, hang perfectly still in mid-air in any orientation, and go from stop-start instantly, it just looks silly and feels unrealistic.

I'm not opposed to a coupled mode that self corrects movement to a standstill if you let go of controls, but it shouldn't be instant and jerky. There should still be some inertia to overcome and some movement after you let go of the thrust switch.

Yes, I'm aware of decoupled mode, and do use it. I'm not opposed to having coupled mode at all, as stated. I definitely think it needs some tweaks though. Having a space fighter stop on the proverbial dime makes more sense, but I still want to hear thrusters going and keeping the ship stationary, and if I point it nose down I'm not at all sure the front thrusters should be enough to keep it from ramming into the ground in a 1G field.

Even more so for giant freighters that are twice the size of a jumbo jet, just hanging in mid-air should be a violent experience with thrusters blaring trying to counteract gravity.

Of course, lots of game physics in the game is stupid now. You can drop a vehicle from orbit... and when it comes down it bounces instead of turning into a pile of wreckage. So lots left to do.

Posted Aug 29, 2022, 8:51 AM UTC

020
st_Pauluscolonel•

When you have gigantic ships that can stop on a dime

You do?

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hang perfectly still in mid-air in any orientation

I'm with you here. But IIRC CIG is working on it too. That's not the intended state.

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and go from stop-start instantly

Let's take MSR for instance - one of the fastest/most maneuverable midsize ships. It takes more than five km to decelerate from the max speed (assuming nose is pointing forward).

Which is fairly large acceleration IRL to be honest. But. Do you expect real life boat inertia from SC ships?

Of course, lots of game physics in the game is stupid now. You can drop a vehicle from orbit... and when it comes down it bounces instead of turning into a pile of wreckage. So lots left to do.

I was under impression it's like that only for low-gravity moons. Is it not?

11
ExtecticOP•

For low speed maneuvers, I guess I should have specified, about the stop on a dime thing. Obviously if you're burning in towards a mining station at 800 m/s, you had better allow for a deceleration phase.

But once you're stationary, you can blip your thrusters in any direction and have basically too much precision in my book. You can go up 10 meters, stop, and do a complete loop while not moving otherwise and other movement that even with computers controlling the thrusters isn't that realistic.

-6
st_Pauluscolonel•

I guess at least 50% here have some avia sim background. We feel you (:

But this horse been dead for years. Current state exist for a reason. They already attempted to fix it. It will change when CIG will be ready to roll out the "VTOL 2.0"

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But once you're stationary, you can blip your thrusters in any direction and have basically too much precision in my book.

What ship you're piloting ATM?

3
ledwilliums•

My understanding is that with the updated flight model they keep talking about they will make vtol mode more important for hovering

In the future if you dont have foward momentum and try to hover in a heavy ship without vtol mode its going to be a quick trip to the hospital and a long claim time

4
Slippedhal0Mercenary•

They know, and something will be done.

To be clear, its not really an issue with the physics (although they are making some significant changes). Everything is modelled fairly accurately, and the ships have the power to do what theyre doing, even stopping on a dime, its just the lack of feedback makes it feel wrong to us. Theres no shaking or shuddering, theres no micro adjustments to make it feel like thrusters are counteracting gravity and weather and not floating via magic. Even the dust plumes you sometimes create while landing are a bit anaemic.

While lots of us likely dont have a lot of experience with anything other than maybe planes, we've all been fed a heavy diet of sci-fi movies where thruster based vehicles almost always are heavy, powerful, loud vehicles in the air, and thats likely where the dissonance stems from.

3
VidiVenturaPolaris | BMM | Endeavor | M2 | MSR | AresIn | Gladius | Warlock•

While lots of us likely dont have a lot of experience with anything other than maybe planes, we've all been fed a heavy diet of sci-fi movies where thruster based vehicles almost always are heavy, powerful, loud vehicles in the air, and thats likely where the dissonance stems from.

Very much this, anyone who has spent time around VTOL jets wouldn't even question it.

2
ExtecticOP•

Maybe so, but I guess my real beef is the stop-go precision of it all. Sure, if you have a brutal thruster and point it in some way and dial it up, I would expect that to kick you in the other direction, but it's the millimetric precision of it that sticks in my craw. When you have a gigantic ship and you thrust sideways it just scoots sideways immediately and stops immediately. There's just nowhere near enough inertia in all the aspects of the flight.

Though this varies from ship to ship, of course. The Constellations are far slower to stop at any kind of side thrust than an M2 Herc for instance, the M2 is far too forgiving for something the side of a building. I enjoy flying it a lot to be honest, but even so.

But yes, I realize this is an alpha and all that jazz.

-4
VidiVenturaPolaris | BMM | Endeavor | M2 | MSR | AresIn | Gladius | Warlock•

I would expect that to kick you in the other direction, but it's the millimetric precision of it that sticks in my craw. When you have a gigantic ship and you thrust sideways it just scoots sideways immediately and stops immediately. There's just nowhere near enough inertia in all the aspects of the flight.

The problem is if you add inertia, you also make the dogfighting performance laggy and sluggish. If you cheat the physics to try and get both, the physics become inconsistent and gamey.

The current solution is the lesser of three evils, the physics are actually correct but player perception is wrong - but after long enough players will become accustomed.

2
WhatTheHeckIsAUsernanew user/low karma•

Are you flying medium fighters and lighter? Because anything bigger than medium (and some mediums) have significant inertia rolls and the whole "stop on a dime" thing doesn't happen.

1
Sattorinyoutube.com/c/Sattorin•

and if I point it nose down I'm not at all sure the front thrusters should be enough to keep it from ramming into the ground in a 1G field.

It's important to consider the implications of this. Let's say you're flying toward a planet at a reasonable rate like 300m/s... if your nose thrusters are too weak to even counteract the planet's 1G acceleration, they DEFINITELY aren't going to help you to slow down. And that would mean you'll have to turn around and use your reverse thrusters to land like a Space-X rocket.

Plus, in combat, low reverse thrust means it's a lot easier to accidentally overshoot your target and have to swing around to re-engage... making the current jousty high-speed combat even worse.

3
xxHIDA01xx•

I agree that thrusters still need a certain amount of work and yes CGI is aiming for some degree of realism. However, it will never be fully „realistic“ obviously. First of all, because it will never be a simulation game but more a casual game for everyone to enjoy and not aiming for extreme skill levels to be able to fly a ship. On the other hand, and i think this might be even more important to consider, it is still a Science Fiction game! In Science Fiction many things can work even though they seem unrealistic today. This for example can include small engines that can produce much more force than you would expect or big ships being able to hover above or land on a planet. Scifi example, Star Trek USS Voyager is about 300meters long and about 700.000 metric tonns and therefore bigger than an Idris and heavier than any Star Citizens ship known so far, but still able to hover above the ground of a earth gravity planet and even land. I agree that there can be some improvements, specially with VTOL but keep in mind its a SciFi Game and not a realistic Space Simulation.

1
Do_What_Thou_Wilt•

look - the ONE time they attempted *anything* different (hey, remember hover mode!?), -it was in a minor point-release update of the PTU, .... and the community collectively cried so hard it was removed under 24hrs later, scrapped, and never seen again. No iterations, no feedback, no rework.

I'm sure they'll try something like it again.... but ooooo boy, get your popcorn ready.

1
starcitizenplayer001•

Hover mode was in much longer the 24 hours, And it was the most fun flying I ever had in star citizen. There were some major bugs like the hangers having wind that pushed you into the walls and such. Some people thought it was a bug how when you tried to land uneven it got really strange but It took less then a hour to figure out how all that worked and land just fine most of the time.

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The big difference was it felt like you were flying a ship that you had to respond to not you moving around a free fly camera. Ships felt like they had weight to them. It was by leaps and bounds the best flight model I have seen for them to date.

2
Do_What_Thou_Wilt•

as I recall, it was only in for a day or two of PTU, tops? (A brief, single-letter iteration of the PTU.)
But yes, I liked it too. It was fun to fly with, and it feels like it - or something like it - will inevitably make a return.

1
starcitizenplayer001•

Were you here for hover mode? It was great but there were a few bugs with it. But overall it got raged on by many in the community because it actually took skill to fly and it was not like driving a free fly camera.

1
ferthurcarrack•

All my big ships can't hover at all, and practically fall into hangars/crash into the ground.

Especially the Starfarer.

1
Logic-DLMy Ethnicity Is The Standard Sci Fi Villain•

Counter-point.

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It's a video game, not a simulator

-1
Ok_Painter9542•

Use decoupled mode if you don't like it

-3
ExtecticOP•

Well, sure, and I do, but that wasn't the point. The point is that coupled mode doesn't feel like realistic coupled mode, it's just too good or something. But yeah this is an alpha and a work in progress.

1
logicalChimpDevils Advocate•

Bear in mind that 'Coupled mode' doesn't change the physics, flight model, or thruster capabilities... Coupled mode just tells the thrusters to slow-to-zero if you stop providing input, and to automatically fire you manouvering thrusters if your vector of movement does not align with your heading.

That's it.

You should be able to pull exactly the same manouvering in Decoupled mode as you can in Coupled mode. The primary reason why it's trickier is because the flight controls are different.

In coupled your inputs set the target speed, and the IFCS controls the thrusters to achieve it - hence the precision (the IFCS is capable of measuring / timing things with far more precision than humans are).

In Decoupled, you're setting acceleration targets, and the onus is on you as a pilot to time things in order to achieve the precision... as such, any lack of precision in Decoupled mode has nothing to do with the capabilities of the ship, and is solely due to the lack of capability in the pilot :p

As for the thrusters - CIG have tried changing Jerk to make the thrusters ramp up slower... but that just led to a mushy and frustrating experience. They'd tried playing with inertia - and it just led to most people either jousting or turreting.

The problem in, the vast majority of people aren't skilled pilots, and the game has to be fun for them - which generally means that it can't be overly realistic (not to mention that arguing realism ultimately reaches the point where we'd have automated ships firing at sensor contacts on the other side of the system, with zero human intervention - because we're the weak point that limits ship manouverability, as well as precision etc.

Lastly, I'd argue that your concept of what makes a 'realistic' coupled mode may themselves be unrealistic.... not least because we don't have a 'real' example to compare arguments against. But, when you have a ship that generates all its own forces (without relying on any external environment interaction), then that ship should be capable of extreme precision... at least whilst in space.

Indeed, the only area that feels slightly 'unrealistic' to me is the speed of the feedback loop - the time it takes to 'measure' something (e.g. an external force operating on the ship), calculate the correct counter-thrust, and have the thrusters ramp up to deliver that thrust... specifically, the speed at which it can 'measure' the external force.

It is that loop that keeps ships hovering without moving in atmosphere, because it's firing the thrusters to counter the effects of the wind... but it can measure the force the wind is exherting a bit too well for my tastes, leading to ultra-effecient cancellation.

If anything should be tweaked, it should be that 'measurement of external forces'.... well, that and FIXING THE DMN THRUSTER VFX... sigh. This is something people have been ranting about since we had flyable ships - but the thruster effects are so damn small an weak that you often can't even see the thrusters are firing... and thus don't realise how hard the ship is actually working to try and remain in place.

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