Seperate engine control

[Unarmed Civilian]

An alternate control scheme that gives individual control to each of the engines rather than the turning override system currently in place.

Currently, if you want to turn, the steering wheel overrides whatever speed setting there is on the turning engines and puts one at full forward, the other at full reverse. On ships that have a main engine to provide most of its thrust, this still allows you to move forward/backwards and turn at the same time. However, on ships like the Squid that have no main thrust engine, you cannot thrust forward/backwards while turning at the same time.

To see for yourself, take a Squid, put it at full throttle, and turn hard while watching your map. It spins but goes nowhere.

This affects others ships as well when maintaining speed is of great importance. Having one engine in full reverse for a turn is going to reduce your speed. A better way to turn while maintaining speed would be to reduce thrust on one side rather than completely reversing it.

Arguably, these problems are addressed by turning the steering wheel for only a fraction of a second, but I have no idea if what is seen by the behavior of the engines matches their actual output.

Being able to have more control of the turning engines would allow more fine control over high speed turns, and make it easier to maintain top speed.


As a side note, there should be a speedometer for practice, too.

[BlackenedPies]

Neat idea, but it adds a layer of skill and big advantage over pilots who don't use it

[HamsterIV]

I suggested this once under stupid ideas that would break the game:

Hardcore pilot mode: control the thrust of each engine individually. No wheel, just three throttle meters (four on a squid). Keys Q, W, and E increase the speed of the left,center, and right engines respectively. Keys A, S, and D do the same for decreasing.

Super Hardcore pilot mode, same as above only with three more levers to adjust the angle of attack on the propeller blades, and the possibility of the engine overheating or stalling if you do it wrong.

It would be a nice way of balancing engines if one is damaged, but considering how hard it is for new players to grasp adding an up down vector, I don't see much chance of this becoming a thing.

[Richard LeMoon]

Wait a tic. This may be a bug. I recall a dev telling me that the way ships turn while moving is to turn off the engine on the side the ship was turning. I tested this on a Goldfish at the time, and turning with throttle to 0 did make you turn faster.

[Richard LeMoon]

I found the thread, and it does seem to be that things are not working as intended.

https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4732.msg78908.html#msg78908

[Unarmed Civilian]

Wait a tic. This may be a bug. I recall a dev telling me that the way ships turn while moving is to turn off the engine on the side the ship was turning. I tested this on a Goldfish at the time, and turning with throttle to 0 did make you turn faster.

You've got be kidding me. I had a feeling I was losing more speed than I used to when turning.




As for more skillful use of engines over ones that don't use it, perhaps, but the current steering mechanism isn't great to begin with and is misleading on many levels. The ship's wheel is pretty, but the ships don't move laterally like ships, as cool as that would be, but more like tanks or hovercrafts with two sources of thrust/movement on either side rather than a rudder. They would be more accurately portrayed by steering levers similar to old tanks and rideable lawnmowers.

M4 Sherman driver's seat


Modern tanks do use steering wheels and more complex steering mechanisms to accomodate, but a steering wheel is still inherently analog while our controls for steering are digital. It could be argued that tapping the steering could make up for it similar to steering in Super Mario Kart, which appears to be what the devs are after with the slowly rotating wheel, but there seems to be conflict in design. The pattern in the center wheel could be used to help gauge how far the wheel is turned, but they decided to put it at 45 degrees rather than perfectly vertical and horizontal, meaning you're better off never looking at it and just knowing how much you're steering.

Even then, I have no idea if the turn only starts going full tilt of the wheel is turned past a certain point or if its effects are immediate.


These are gripes I've had since I learned how steering worked in the game.


EDIT: Since there's the possibility of a bug, I sent feedback with a link to this thread and a brief explanation of the bug.