Flight of Fancy

Our fat fingertips are privy to a plethora of ships available for literally any purpose. The range of abilities is vast, so too the scale and size of many of these vessels. But for all their unique abilities and sizes, they all have one thing in common; they all fly in exactly the same manor regardless of type, mass or use.

Over the years I’ve enjoyed piloting every sub-capital Amarrian vessel to date, excluding Tech III. In every instance the ships behaved in a very similar fashion. The only differences were the rates of turn and acceleration. A ship such as the Malediction should feel completely different to an Armageddon. This consistency is not desirable and is unrealistic in the approach to different vessels and their capabilities.

Controlling an interceptor at full tilt with the mind is very tricky, involving mass disorganisation as the ship bounces off every perceivable obstacle in the heavens. If a direct control method was used, the capabilities of the ship would, in my opinion, be much enhanced and possibly breed a type of pilot that, at present is lacking in New Eden. Not every pilot these days is happy to navigate with a mind meld. With direct control flight the pilot would have a much greater scope to fly a ship with precision. There may even be some individuals present whom never would’ve considered joining the fray before.

I’m aware that this has been considered a few times and that issues were raised against the ability of the cluster to cope with infinite input from the pilot. This point doesn’t concern me, I’m interested in design, not the restrictions on current technology. We should trust direct control flight to deliver a much more virtual experience, particularly with smaller vessels such as Interceptors. Their very nature is to be flown with flair and skill. Besides, I have an awesome control stick I want to try...

Neeear-rat-at-at-tat!

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1 comments:

Jaggins said...

I agree that they will hopefully add in twitch fighters in the future! With servers constantly getting faster, it is a matter of time until the technical capability will be trivial.