Ridiculous Sideways Acceleration

Raptoricus · Post by **Raptoricus** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 11:02 pm

First of all - I think this game is absolutely great, I've been looking for a game like this for so many years, closest I got was the remake of Elite called Oolite, which is really cool - but this is exactly what I've been looking for.

Onto what I've noticed:

If you're in Inertia mode, and you accelerate to the sides, you can reach far greater speeds than if you where to accelerate forwards, I've reached 4k using this method! (you can check by facing the direction you've accelerated after you've finished).

This is a little immersion breaking for me, and a fair bug, any chance of a fix sometime soon?

Post by **Vice** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 11:04 pm

Just to be sure, which Evochron game are you referring to? With the latest Mercenaries, it should be pretty consistent in every direction (aside from moving forward or backward with the afterburner active).

Raptoricus · Post by **Raptoricus** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 11:16 pm

Yeah I'm referring to Mercenaries, it's definitely a reproducible issue.

How to do it:

Go into inertia mode
Accelerate to the side (A / S keys)
Make sure to keep yourself at 0 speed (facing at a right angle to your acceleration)
Then flip to face the direction you where accelerating, you'll see that you're going as fast as you can go with the afterburner.

Post by **Vice** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 11:26 pm

That would be expected, but the question then becomes, how long did it take you to get to that speed versus flying in that direction directly with the afterburner? For me, I just tested it and I can get to 5K in an Evoch-E sideways with the lateral thruster in about 28 seconds. I can do the same with the afterburner going forward 5 seconds faster. That is at the intended/expected performance differential and freely drifting allows that momentum to transfer to any direction when rotating the ship. What was it you were expecting or is it behaving differently for you?

49rTbird · Post by **49rTbird** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 11:27 pm

I know it should be a fast sideways movement or you could not dodge the enemies shots at you otherwise but how fast that should be I leave to

others to figure out.

Raptoricus · Post by **Raptoricus** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 11:51 pm

Ah yes - using the thruster does indeed accelerate faster, I've been using the default ship and I got to 4k in 30 seconds horizontally, compared to 20 seconds with the afterburner.

I suppose I'm just finding it odd that being in inertia mode would allow you to accelerate to such a higher speed, it makes sense to me that you can accelerate using the afterburner to a higher speed than normal and then hold that speed with inertia mode, but you'd expect to be able to reach the same speed in the IDS mode (it seems to cap you at a speed of 558) - although I notice that the ship is not accelerating at this point, is this cap there to introduce controllabillity in that mode? Or am I missing something? I've only had the game for a few hours and it just struck me as odd.

Post by **Vice** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:03 am

is this cap there to introduce controllabillity in that mode? Or am I missing something? I've only had the game for a few hours and it just struck me as odd.

You got it, the IDS is designed to provide a drift limiter on the ship to help keep it more manageable for dogfighting, racing, etc when rapid course changes are needed. So the IDS (which stands for Inertial Dampening System) caps the output limits to stay within the confines of the maximum level you select. There are 5 levels of IDS, displayed as X1 through X5 next to the IDS indicator on the ship status display. You can increase that limit to allow more drift, but it will take longer to adjust your course to compensate for the higher velocities.

The lateral and vertical thrusters are very powerful, designed to help provide sufficient maneuverability relative to the overal performance profile (particularly raw acceleration/deceleration) of each ship type.

Edit: forgot to mention, your ship also has forward and reverse thruster controls for when the IDS is off and they work just like the lateral thruster controls. The default keys for those are the comma and period keys.

[Edited on 2-1-2012 by Vice]

Raptoricus · Post by **Raptoricus** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:15 am

Ahh I see, that makes much more sense, looks like that will be one of the first things on my upgrade list. One more quick question - I can't accelerate forwards in inertia mode using the W key, I can only do it with the afterburner, again is there something I'm missing here? I can see the use of inertia mode for folllowing your current vector and rotating on it (can do some slick babylon 5 style stuff), but you'd expect to be able to alter the direction of that vector using the regular forward thruster as well as the afterburner and other thrusters .

Thanks for the clarifications so far

.

*edited for clarity

[Edited on 1-2-2012 by Raptoricus]

Post by **Vice** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:23 am

I can't accelerate forwards in inertia mode using the W key, I can only do it with the afterburner, again is there something I'm missing here?

The W key will control throttle set velocity up, and throttle is disabled when the IDS is turned off for unrestricted drift. Simply use the forward/reverse thruster controls (default , and . keys), much like the lateral thruster controls, when the IDS is off.

TJJ · Post by **TJJ** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:25 am

From post: 128026, Topic: tid=8730, author=Raptoricus wrote:Ahh I see, that makes much more sense, looks like that will be one of the first things on my upgrade list. One more quick question - I can't accelerate forwards in inertia mode using the W key, I can only do it with the afterburner, again is there something I'm missing here? I can see the use of inertia mode for folllowing your current vector and rotating on it (can do some slick babylon 5 style stuff), but you'd expect to be able to alter the direction of that vector using the regular forward thruster as well as the afterburner and other thrusters .

Thanks for the clarifications so far .

*edited for clarity

[Edited on 1-2-2012 by Raptoricus]

By default W & S are bound to IDS throttle control.

Rebinding them to thrust forward/backwards for non-IDS flight was one of the first things I did; much more logical that way.

For IDS throttle control I just use numbers 1 through 0. (and mouse wheel for fine-grain changes)

Though that does touch on one question I've been meaning to ask; how do you rebind zero throttle (default: backspace) to the tilde key(to the left of the '1' key)?

[Edited on 2-1-2012 by TJJ]

Raptoricus · Post by **Raptoricus** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:25 am

Oh your edit answered my question, thanks! Hope to stay around here for a long time to come.

countjimula · Post by **countjimula** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:35 am

Don't forget that you can also reverse thrust using the / key. This changes the forward speed with IDS on into the reverse speed, and also makes the afterburner go in reverse when used with the tab key.

The tilde ` key is used as the status key in multilayer and that could be fixed, I am not sure. Of all the keys you want to have easy, and fast access to the stop key is not one of them

Raptoricus · Post by **Raptoricus** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:38 am

From post: 128029, Topic: tid=8730, author=TJJ wrote: By default W & S are bound to IDS throttle control.

Rebinding them to thrust forward/backwards for non-IDS flight was one of the first things I did; much more logical that way.
[Edited on 2-1-2012 by TJJ]

Actually yes this is a good point, I just did the same as you and remapped the inertia thrust to W / S.

I would like to do the same with using the mouse wheel for fine grain changes but I prefer using the keyboard on it's own.

Any chance of multiple key definitions for key mapping being available at some point? ( ie W/S mapped for both Inertial forward / reverse and throttle for IDS? )

Post by **Vice** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:41 am

Any chance of multiple key definitions for key mapping being available at some point? ( ie W/S mapped for both Inertial forward / reverse and throttle for IDS? )

Yes, this is a planned addition for the expansion. The game will eventually allow you to map multiple functions to the same key and will just display the duplications by highlighting those lines in red in the configure key and button controls menu.

Raptoricus · Post by **Raptoricus** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:53 am

From post: 128036, Topic: tid=8730, author=Vice wrote: Yes, this is a planned addition for the expansion. The game will eventually allow you to map multiple functions to the same key and will just display the duplications by highlighting those lines in red in the configure key and button controls menu.

That's great to hear, I look forward to it!

Thanks again for the help.