"Rick [Kitty5]" <ric### [at] kitty5com> wrote:
> It looks good, however I think you need to make your ship motions more
> fluid, perhaps if you included some pilots that in turn imposed G-force
> limitations on the motion changes of the ships

The maximum acceleration that the ships in these animations can produce is
about 9g, and only then with all main engines firing. The problem is more
that ships have a tiny attention span. They always engage the ship nearest
to them and try to turn towards it, which leads to jerky movement. If you
set up a duel between only two craft, the motion is very smooth indeed. I
think I need to give the controlling macros some frame-to-frame memory.

> (and give the pilots a tendency to keep their foot on the gas)

The problem with that is that the ship will be uncontrollable - it will
overshoot the target by increasing distances on each pass. You can see a
less severe version of this problem in the animations - a ship burns
towards a target, passes it at high speed and then has to swing around and
burn for up to twice as long to set up for another pass on the target. If
the engines are burned continuously the only flightpath that will keep the
ship in the battle is a circular motion about the target. As it is, the
amplitude of the overshoot actually decreases on each pass, and since these
animations were made I've improved the AI substantially, to the point where
it will execute some very tight turns by making fuller use of thrusters.

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