Car Cardinal Direction Bias

[Hyena Grin]

When trying to drive the car, it can be extremely tricky to orient the direction of the vehicle. Often you are just a pixel or two off, and you end up driving off the path. It is very hard to orient true east, or true north, or whichever cardinal direction you are trying to follow. The directional button controls don't make it easy to make very fine course corrections.

I often find myself following alongside train tracks to get between places, and often this means avoiding running into trees and power lines. Since tracks can only be laid along the cardinal planes, it's fairly common that you may want to drive along the cardinal planes as well.

My suggestion is to impose a slight bias for the cardinal directions. When orienting your car, as long as you are within a certain range of a cardinal direction, the vehicle will simply travel in that direction. Making it easier to travel in straight lines, horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.

The bias doesn't need to be particularly strong, just enough to catch those finnicky moments when you're constantly readjusting your direction, trying to travel in a straight line and ending up just slightly off the mark, over and over.

[Chthon]

Personally I'd rather they give the player to build roads which the car will attempt to stick to when given no other orders. The car is very difficult to control I agree. Most of the problem is that to make it relevant you have to make it react far more quickly than the player can.

[Sedado77]

Personally I'd rather they give the player to build roads which the car will attempt to stick to when given no other orders.

Me too.
Anyways, after a while, you end up getting used to the car's tricky handling.

Watch some of Malkasphia's LPs in youtube. I don't personally like his way of building the factory, but he's VERY good with the car.

[DrShame]

I would even welcome an addition of a slower car besides the one we have now. Hell, we could even have several different cars to build with different handling like a Jeep, sand buggy, steam tank, then something spikey from Mad Max ... all requiring different amount of parts of course.

[Sedado77]

I would even welcome an addition of a slower car besides the one we have now. Hell, we could even have several different cars to build with different handling like a Jeep, sand buggy, steam tank, then something spikey from Mad Max ... all requiring different amount of parts of course.

Talking about that... you gave me an idea!
What they SHOULD implement in this car, and anyone that comes later for that matter, is a "speed limit". You can switch it to 1/2 or 1/4 of top speed, so you know the car drives slower, and you can drive around your base without hitting so many things

[Hyena Grin]

Personally I'd rather they give the player to build roads which the car will attempt to stick to when given no other orders.

Me too.
Anyways, after a while, you end up getting used to the car's tricky handling.

Watch some of Malkasphia's LPs in youtube. I don't personally like his way of building the factory, but he's VERY good with the car.

Personally, I don't really have an issue driving the car. I think it controls pretty well. It is just nearly impossible to line up with horizontal/vertical/diagonal lines. Handling has nothing to do with it, it's that when you press the directional key it gives you a seemingly random adjustment. There's no way to make fine course adjustments.

Roads would definitely be fun to have, but I don't think that's mutually exclusive to using some form of bias.

Also speed settings on the car would be excellent to have.

[Hometruck]

I would even welcome an addition of a slower car besides the one we have now. Hell, we could even have several different cars to build with different handling like a Jeep, sand buggy, steam tank, then something spikey from Mad Max ... all requiring different amount of parts of course.

Talking about that... you gave me an idea!
What they SHOULD implement in this car, and anyone that comes later for that matter, is a "speed limit". You can switch it to 1/2 or 1/4 of top speed, so you know the car drives slower, and you can drive around your base without hitting so many things

drshame, i had a similar idea for different types of vehicles, and thus i agree with you.
sedado77, a speed setting might be quite convenient at times.
cthon, as you know because you have read my thread, i also support this road idea, additionally, there could be like an autotaxi terminal that works like a subway, only aboveground.
Meaning, you could set up refueling stations and preset routes, so you can just go up to a terminal and select a destination.

[Iphrid]

What if the controls would be changed so that the WASD keys would actually be up, left, down and right instead of forward, left, brake/backwards and right. The car would then turn itself to the direction you want it to go. It would be far easier to have it go straight or diagonal. The current system is perfect for the trains though..

edit: On second thought, it would be terrible to free the car when it's stuck on something..