Flight Modes
If you are reading this page, it is assumed you are familiar with the original page how to fly your ship, and are looking for a little more help on more advanced control systems in your ship. If you are a brand new player, please see the page linked ^above for a starting point.
With that out of the way, let's get to the real meat of Advanced Flight Controls. You will remember from the original page that all motion in dV is relative to the player ship, as it would be viewed from the bridge. Additional information related to this is how to 'vectorize' your flight methodologies. Every course correction and attitude vector can be described by circles and triangles. Those familiar with geometry / trigonometry will find this quite simple, along with those familiar with Newtonian mechanics. For the remaining 94% of people, this page is for you.
Course correction is not like driving a car, mind you. Gravity bound transport operates in 1.5 dimensions (left, right, forward), and has advantage of friction with a surface, to affect course corrections. This is NOT true in the vacuum of space. dV gameplay and Newtonian mechanics operate, here, in 2 full dimensions (left, right, up, down). To make a course change from one direction to another, ALL energy in the original direction must be cancelled (sort of).
Using this guide
Each relevant section of this Advanced Flight Control guide will begin with a 'previously on' synopsis of the original simplified page, followed by more advanced usage techniques for each. The flight control systems in dV are quite robust, and all motion obeys Newtonian mechanics. As such, players can move in ways that *may* not necessarily be intuitive at first.
Full Manual
As previously mentioned, this is the most difficult flight mode to operate in, as it requires the player to pay full attention to the local region very closely. The first thing to note here is that many ships / loadouts are asymmetrical in mass. This means that if one draws lines bisecting the ship, there is a high probability that one quadrant will contain more mass than its' twin across the line of symmetry. This means that more energy will be required to move that quadrant, in relation to the other, which then means that applying thrust will cause attitude changes typically undesired by the operator.
Manual attitude adjustments
Let's say you are travelling 50m/s at a bearing of 090 degrees (right). If you then wish to travel at 50m/s at bearing 180 degrees (down), you *might* think the best way to do this would be to orient your ship to 180 degrees, and hold the main engine until you course correct to the desired heading. This is NOT the case. The most effective use of propellant would be to rotate to 225 degrees and burn the main engine until you are travelling 50m/s at 180 degrees. Think 'geometry', as thrust vectoring is literally the calculation of triangles, for the most part.
Fun times
When flying a ship in full manual mode, there is the possibility for some interesting manuevers, that autopilots may or may not allow to occur. Some of these include rotating so quickly as to jam the fuel rods in the reactor, pulling off high speed acrobatics, and flying at speeds *Not Recommended* by ship manufacturers and officials on Enceladus Prime. The best course here would be to experiment for yourself, and find out what works best for you, as a captain.
Fully Automatic (Autopilot)
As the heading states, another option for flying your ship is to run it in 'full auto' mode. In this mode, the captain does not utilize the WASD keys for ship operation, but instead relies totally on the AP system to handle all maneuvers. This can be performed in two ways:
- From a dead stop, click (and drag) anywhere on the screen (being at a dead stop FIRST is not required, simply used for illustrative purposes for this guide). This enables autopilot (if you have one installed) and tells it the desired vector and velocity (relative). If desiring to make a change to heading, the arrow keys Left and Right will facilitate this, aligning the ships' 'front' with the desired heading (up to the 'turn around' velocity). The Up and Down keys will increase and decrease velocity (relative), repsectively. You have now flown in Full Auto.
- When mining or travelling, Full Auto method 2 allows your autopilot system to enable you to collect objects from around the rings. Whether moving or stationary, the captain may Left click on any object. This causes the autopilot system to 'lock on' to the target, and attempt to match its' motion (relative zero). Clicking and dragging different directions will change the relative motion of the player ship in regards to the target. This is useful for gobbling up roid chunklets, keeping time with an enemy, or matching that pesky moving base for docking initiation.
Semi-Automatic (Various methods)
Manual course correct with autopilot bearing hold
Another method of flying in the rings is to fly holding Right mouse, while making vector/ velocity adjustments with WASD controls. This is a very powerful method of flight useful for combat situations. Being able to constantly point the ship where the mouse is, while flying around the target, is quite useful. This method of flight allows captains to avoid hitting 'roids while making matching velocities and vectors simple to achieve.
Manual flight with autopilot stability assist
Consider this a slight 'extension' on the previous method. Some autopilots posses a feature called 'fly-by-wire'. This routes ALL manual controls through the autopilot system, applying some maths to the outputs before commanding RCS or Main Engines. When flying with fly-by-wire, mass offsets are either totally negated or severely reduced when applying thrust.