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Helm rope - Tool or keybind suggestion

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Richard LeMoon:
As it is, you can set your throttle to whatever, and it stays there after leaving the helm. This is useful at times. However, the wheel auto-centers. This is ok most of the time, but there are times when you would want to lock both the throttle and wheel in place for sustained turns.

What I suggest is actually a common sight on real ships, a loop of rope that holds the wheel wherever you set it. This could be done in two ways. A keybind (such as hitting space), or a pilot tool (such as rope, or auto-gadget). Given that this frees the captain to man a gun or fix things, while the ship is still able to circle a target a simple keybind may be too advantageous. A tool, on the other hand, would handicap the captain in other areas in favor of auto-circle.

Another possible feature of a rope/auto-tool could be the ability to set the balloon to rise or fall as well as helm rotation. This would help in those annoying situations where you are bouncing on the ground and the AI engineer thinks the flamethrower is the most important thing in the world to fix at that moment.

dasfoxx:
That's an interesting proposal. It would be a bit helpful on some ships; probably kill you on others. I can see it being possibly helpful for some decent players but harmful to a low level player that gets bored of steering and wants to man a gun, though probably not much more harmful than that currently is. A lot of pilots make sure to point their ship where they want it before getting off the wheel in the rare case they are in need to do so. Most just never get off the wheel which is normal as you want to be in control of a ship.

Something to take note of is that an AI rework is coming soon. so that silly AI will be a bit more helpful to ya :D

Cheeseycom:
I would tend to agree that it could be harmful in the wrong (e.g. inexperienced) hands, but potentially quite useful for advanced players - especially in matches where you're stuck without a full crew.
However this could be easily avoided by making it an unlockable item gained upon reaching a certain pilot level.. say.. anything from level 3 onwards.

It makes sense to me that it would be a pilot item, as the benefit of gaining another (temporary) Engineer or Gunner would be balanced to some degree by the loss of an additional pilot item.
You would have to be careful with it though - if it works simply by selecting it, in the heat of battle a player might scroll through their items only to end up accidentally locking the wheel at a bad time.
Perhaps a combination of the two, such as pressing a key once the item slot is selected (perhaps there could even be different keys for selecting steering lock, altitude lock, or both).

I think it would also be prudent for the lock to deactivate should another player take the helm, just in case the pilot gets distracted and doesn't notice the heading is about to plough them into a bit of terrain.

I think it could be a very useful item that would enable some advanced tactics on certain ships (I can see the Galleon benefiting from this far more than the Mobula, for example). As Dasfoxx says, on some ships it would more than likely get you killed.

Richard LeMoon:
Just an extra thought, but as a counter to this, collisions should reset all helm controls (aside from maybe balloon rise) to neutral if no one is at the helm.

As per locking the helm accidentally, the wheel would only lock if you set your 'ropes' tool to active, then left the helm. As soon as anyone got back on the helm, it would reset. So, I suppose it would already be a 'tool + key (E by default)' combo.

evodoc:
Lock the wheel and jump off the ship! ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5i-GQQu-Ss&t=59m50s

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