Shouldn't the ships be able to move laterally?

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Zanotirn
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Joined: Wed Dec 21, 2022 2:02 am

Shouldn't the ships be able to move laterally?

Post by Zanotirn »

If a ship needs to turn left, its forward right and back left maneuvering thrusters fire. If it needs to turn right, it's forward left and back right thrusters. However if your ship has forward right and back right thrusters it should be able to use them together to accelerate the whole ship to the left without changing its main axis. Granted, the acceleration likely won't be much compared to its main drive (and fuel may be more limited), but if the ship only needs to move a dozen meters sideways to dodge a projectile weapon launched at it from the front, thrusters that can turn its nose a hundred meters in reasonable time, actually give the ship a decent chance to dodge the projectile launched from a long distance without the problems associated with turning the ship's nose away from the enemy (increasing profile, making the projectile more likely to hit the weaker side armor, possibly interfering with own nose weapons).

Maybe more precise controls like this would require a project to implement, but it's actually hard to imagine that late-game earth ships (and likely alien ships) would not have this capability (also this would give an advantage to smaller ships that is currently lacking).
PAwleus
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Re: Shouldn't the ships be able to move laterally?

Post by PAwleus »

You are probably forgetting that to rotate force is multiplied by radius so you need much more force to move laterally than to rotate. Thus, using the same force would make moving laterally much harder so you would need much stronger maneuvering thrusters to move meaningfully.
Zanotirn
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Re: Shouldn't the ships be able to move laterally?

Post by Zanotirn »

Due to the elongated shape of the ships you don't need to move anywhere near the turn radius to be able to dodge a projectile, as long as the projectile is launched from the front, the worst you may need to move is the diameter of the ship at the widest point.

As far as I remember Terra Invicta ships have thrusters force of 3.5 MN regardless of their size and you still get the same amount of thrust for lateral movement as you would for turning, just with different active thrusters distribution.
Meaning e.g. a 20K ton titan will have a lateral acceleration of 0.175 m/s^2 and will be able to move the 18 meters of its radius in just over 15 seconds (if the projectile is coming at a slight angle it still shouldn't raise the time by more than a couple seconds). Alien spinal mag cannon shot takes 86 seconds to hit a stationary target when fired from max range, so even a titan will have reasonable dodge ability well below aliens' maximum range (hell, even a plasma shot takes 28.5 seconds to travel from max range)
PAwleus
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Re: Shouldn't the ships be able to move laterally?

Post by PAwleus »

Are you sure the maneuvering thrusters are so strong that they could give 20 kT Titan 17 milligees acceleration during 15s? If they are that powerful then you are right and dodging some incoming projectiles should be possible even for Titans. Some, because shots would be fired in a framing pattern and from just one mag-launcher we have a salvo of 3-4 projectiles coming every 5-12s. Of course it all depends on the assumption that projectiles don't have some rudimentary sensors and simple miniature thrusters with enough propellant for final maneuvers - unrealistic assumption I would risk to say. I don't know why it's simplified in-game (balance issues?) - IIRC in the Human Reach projectiles are capable of final maneuvers.
Zanotirn
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Re: Shouldn't the ships be able to move laterally?

Post by Zanotirn »

Honestly, I saw that number in description of this mod
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2895452775

If I try to use the formulas I can find in internet to see what angular acceleration 3.5 MN thrust would produce for a 20K ton 300m long cylinder with thrust applied to the ends I get angular acceleration of 0.2 deg/s^2 while the game's value for 20500 ton titan is 0.39 deg/s^2. It's possible that the game uses more detailed calculations than basic formulas I used, or perhaps it's actually 3.5 MN applied separately to both ends. In any case the 3.5 MN value seems to be in the right ballpark.

High thrust is an area rockets do not have issues with, and it does make sense that they'd use rockets for turning even at the cost of abysmal fuel efficiency since turning (reasonably) fast can be a matter of life or death and these should only see heavy use in combat (and fusion torch or orion engines can be poorly suited for use as maneuvering thrusters due issues with mass and detonating nukes near sides of the ship)
PAwleus
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Re: Shouldn't the ships be able to move laterally?

Post by PAwleus »

Yes, it's consistent and in your example Titan would be capable of even 2x larger lateral acceleration so I think that lateral dodging and maneuvering projectiles were not implemented because they would mostly cancel each other while adding some performance issues.
Zanotirn
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Re: Shouldn't the ships be able to move laterally?

Post by Zanotirn »

Well, right now looking at the ships trying to be evasive by using their thrusters to turn, then briefly use their main drive, then using their thrusters to turn again, meanwhile being shot at their exposed sides just looks wrong, when you realize that they already have everything they need for a simpler and more efficient evasive maneuver (early human ships may struggle with threat detection and reaction times adding a lot of delay, but late-game largely AI-controlled ships should not have that problem).

Obviously allowing ships to use their thrusters for lateral movement would require some rebalancing of thrusters power and projectile speeds. Though to be fair the game could use some rebalancing of thrusters to scale with ship size as it is, and faster projectiles combined with more natural dodging may make for a more interesting game. Would probably need some extra technology as well, for thruster upgrades (you do get more better rockets during campaign) and allowing ships to detect dangerous projectiles and react faster. EDIT: for that matter a high-end research might actually allow to use torches for maneuvering by having one maneuvering engine at the front and one at the back and having multiple nozzles going in radial directions.
PAwleus
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Re: Shouldn't the ships be able to move laterally?

Post by PAwleus »

Question is how interesting such gameplay could be? I am open to the idea of trying it but you would even have less incentive in showing your sides than now. Even now most players probably don't bother with substantial maneuver despite it leads to more interesting gameplay, eg. I had to persuade long some experienced players (in many posts and threads) that maneuver is crucial in using missiles (both fighting with and against them) and they were still unconvinced until I resorted to numbers and pics in this Steam post.
Zanotirn
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Re: Shouldn't the ships be able to move laterally?

Post by Zanotirn »

One thing to note is that lateral movement gives an evasive advantage only if the attackers are at the front (or behind). If it were in the game it would just make it more important to flank enemies and attack them from at least two (ideally perpendicular) directions, which nicely helps with breaking the dominance of "lump all PD together". Currently with the way evasive ships are spinning around there's much less point in flanking for projectile ships.
Also since smaller ships could approach enemies closer before starting taking a lot of projectile hits (while still presenting the front to the enemy and not getting two-shotted by lasers) , it could make particle cannons more viable.
PAwleus
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Re: Shouldn't the ships be able to move laterally?

Post by PAwleus »

You've helped me to visualize it better and I agree that it could be done in a way that would help in making smaller ships more important (although I already like them) and flanking more viable. Flanking would then give very substantial advantage at closer range at the cost of temporarily showing sides at long range (currently, flankers are forced by coming projectiles to show sides also at closer range).

Perhaps even particle weapons would find their place as they would be a strong counter to flanking at close range (assuming paddle can constantly keep front to the chosen enemy because otherwise lasers or even projectiles are more than enough). Missiles I would then see as a strong counter at medium range (at this range flanker would be inclined to evasive maneuvers by thrusters laterally and by main drives toward enemy while having dispersed PD coverage so more vulnerable to missiles). Plasma weapons would of course make a strong counter at long range (perhaps they are even too good at that as I already fear to maneuver without having front to enemy when facing opponents that fire them). Thus, you would be much more inclined to combined arms as to counter flanking or try to outflank a flanker - I would like it.

Now that I am with you we "only" need to persuade Devs that it's worth some additional work and performance hit :) How would you envision necessary changes to combat UI to make it work? Personally, I would prefer something simple, eg. if evasive maneuvers by thrusters were automatic (but calculated depending on coming projectiles) and all a player could do was turning them on and off (you would turn them off if you feel you have enough PD coverage, eg. to save propellant if thrusters were using it).
Zanotirn
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Joined: Wed Dec 21, 2022 2:02 am

Re: Shouldn't the ships be able to move laterally?

Post by Zanotirn »

Pretty much, yes. The AI can analyze enemy weapon composition and decide if sufficient part of it comes from weapons it can dodge, which would make ships engage in dodging or not. (Actually I'd say AI could use it as it is, as aliens will still be trying to evade even against purely laser fleets). Depending on impact it ends up having on performance it can be implemented in several ways.

- A global check at the start of the battle based on total enemy fleet composition, possibly with rechecks if an enemy ship or a sufficient percentage of them are destroyed.
- Each ship evaluating the enemies within their respective weapon ranges to decide whether to be dodging or not.
- Each ship evaluating actual projectiles fired at them and maneuvering only in case of incoming fire (might warrant in-game research to even become an option)

In that case the main UI change needed is controls disabling dodging per-ship and on fleet level, perhaps also a hotkey toggling this for all selected ships.

It's also true that with flanking being more viable ships may find themselves more often moving while presenting sides to the enemy, so spinning-evasion might still have its place and might need a separate toggle.

Also while it's definitely is not a trivial amount of development work (in fact in addition to mechanics and UI it would probably need some VFX work on more prominent (at least on higher graphics settings) thruster effects to "sell" the idea of lateral thrust), with the current state of the game, there's still quite a bit of work needed to make fleet combat more engaging and balanced. And if the game still needs non-trivial amount of work on its combat, implementing lateral thrust could be one option for helping it get to where it needs to be.
PAwleus
Posts: 107
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Re: Shouldn't the ships be able to move laterally?

Post by PAwleus »

All I can add is to stress that in order for it to work better, especially at close range, padlocking would have to be able to constantly keep front to the enemy as currently it's not possible (padlocking rotates a ship in the beginning of the combat phase and the ship stays oriented in the same direction for the rest of the phase - it should rotate the ship not just in the beginning of the phase but when needed) and it's one of main reasons tactics with small ships at close range are so bad.

BTW, other rotations that in description suggest constant maneuvers have the same issue as padlocking.
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