Need some assistance with ship design and implementation...

How does orientation of modules affect flight/fire paths?

from StarControl Forums

First time poster, long time fan of Star Control. I am immensely excited about this game - especially the ship designer capability. I've been tinkering a bit in the beta, and I have some questions about setup of components. Let me show what I have been attempting to design and then see if I can explain the trouble I am having with it.

I'm an 80's kid, and I'm a big fan of the Rylan Gunstar from the movie The Last Starfighter. I figured I'd see what I could do with the design tools to attempt to create something close to it.

Front view

Quarter view

Profile view

Rear view

Things went OK with the aesthetics of the design - I got about as close to the source as I think I am going to be able to get. (The proportions are still a little off with the shape of the "bowtie" which extends off of the fuselage.) The problem occurred when I outfitted the ship and attempted to use it in a test battle. For right now, I have equipped it with the Charbroiled laser primary and the point defense laser secondary. The orientation of the engine mount, thrust mount, and primary weapons seem to be working in a way which doesn't seem to be as I would expect. The center of the fuselage of the Gunstar is a large cylinder, and you can see that I have put the engine mount on the rear of the cylinder. While in flight, the orientation of the thrust doesn't quite look correct, as it doesn't seem to match up with the "nose" of the ship on the opposite end of the cylinder. I can live with that. The real problem is that the primary weapon isn't "zeroed" on the nose of the flight path of the ship at all, and it doesn't seem to matter where on the hull of the ship I have the primary weapon module placed. I have attempted to get some screenshots of this, but it's proven very challenging... I have marked up two of these images to try to show what I mean.

Fire path 1

Fire path 2

It's difficult to see this without it being in motion, but the momentum of the ship, the thrust of the engine, and the orientation of the fuselage (and nose) are pointing one way, but the actual fire emitted is traveling in a direction which is several degrees off center. The red line shows where I would expect the fire to go, and the circle shows where the actual "bolt" is. I get the same result with every laser-type weapon which I have attempted. Even something with basic homing capabilities such as the nuclear missile still starts out with a significant arc off of the expected center of the flight path.

Does anyone have any advice for how I could attempt to correct this? I have moved the primary weapon module all over the ship to no avail, and I have also moved the engine mount and thrust mount all over the ship without any change. I've tried to be very meticulous about using accurate coordinates for the placement of all components on the ship, but I did have to fudge in a few places due to some shape irregularities. Thanks for any advice which you can provide.

19,160 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from StarControl Forums Top

OK, I think I have the answer why this is happening, but I don't know how to correct it. I copied and started tinkering with some of the existing ships in an effort to see if I was missing something having to do with the placement of the modules. It looks like the problem is much simpler than that. I observed that, while in the ship selection menu, the orientation of the ship appears to be critical to its in-game thrust direction.

Ship menu

In this example, I copied a Lexite Interceptor and simply changed its outfitting. (The original is one space down and one space over. You can see how the original and the copy appear just slightly different in the ship selection menu.) Without changing any part of the orientation or design of the ship in the editor, the ship's orientation in the selection box faces the bottom-left corner. However, if I go into the editor and change anything about the design of the ship, I have found that its orientation in the ship selection menu also changes. I don't understand why this is. How can I go about making created ships face the bottom left corner of the ship selection box? I currently have the Gunstar's fuselage (central and first building component) set to 0 degrees rotation for all three axes, but you can see in the screenshot that it's facing the wrong direction in the ship selection menu.

 

Reply #2 from StarControl Forums Top

Or I can just solve my own problem. The cardinal rule of correct flight orientation with custom ships is that whatever you want to be the front of the ship MUST face the southwest corner of the Design Ship window before saving. The preview window in the top left corner will show you if you have this correct, but it doesn't update unless you save your design, back out of Ship Designer to the main menu, and then go back into Crafting > Ship Designer. That's what was throwing me for the biggest loop.

Correct orientation

Now the Gunstar flies and shoots in the anticipated flight path.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from StarControl Forums Top

80s kid, you say. The Last Starfighter, you say.

 

Anyway, I never would have chosen Charbroiled for the GunStar...Dual Shot seems more appropriate.

Mind you, if we were going for total accuracy with regard to the movie, Point Defense and Nuclear Missiles would be best; PD is the only weapon that can fire omni-directionally like a GunStar can (and is closest to how Death Blossom fires, too), and the ship definitely had missiles.

Reply #4 from StarControl Forums Top

Greetings, Starfighter! Glad to see someone else who still appreciates this. The Gunstar is still to this day one of my very favorite ship designs in all of sci-fi. I'm glad I finally figured out how to get it to fly and shoot straight in the game. If you have any suggestions on the design, let me know. I uploaded the most recent incarnation into the Steam Workshop.

I definitely agree about Dual Shot being the best match for a Gunstar - I have been playing with many different loadouts to see what I like best. Charbroiled only just edges out Dual Shot for me because it travels a bit faster and I can make better lead shots with it. I almost always go with either Nuclear Missiles or Point Defense Laser as the secondary. I just wish that Point Defense Laser wasn't quite so weak offensively.