Improving Car Driving Experience (Steering)

[Syrchalis]

I never like using the car in Factorio. It is decently fast, but the steering is just so hard to handle and the whole driving experience is pretty bad. Sure, Factorio is no racing game and it doesn't need to be, but I think one small tweak might improve it a ton.

When I was still a beginner game designer we made a 2D top-down game and had character controls like in Factorio. However, unlike Factorio it was rather important to be able to precisely control your character in certain moments and that was very difficult. What fixed our issue was adding a tiny bit of acceleration to the characters movement. It was really only 0.25 seconds that it took you to go from standing still to full speed if you pressed WASD, but the difference was night and day.

And the same could be done for the car steering. So it doesn't turn at maximum speed the moment you press A or D. A real car doesn't do this either, because the wheels need to steer. What I mean is - when you press A or D the wheels turn instantly to one side, but it should take a fraction of a second in which they make you turn more and more until you are at maximum turn rate. Same could be done to the tank, but it probably would need to be much less noticeable since it doesn't need this feature badly.

P.S.: I noticed how I have no english words in my vocabulary to describe turns >_>

[Zappes]

I think it would be quite enough to use the same control system for the car as for the normal character sprite. My brain seems to be unable to switch from screen based to character based coordinate systems in any way that's close to reliable. I dodged the cars and tanks completely now and use power armor mk2 with exoskeleton modules exclusively now, because it's literally impossible for me to control the vehicles.

[DaveMcW]

unlike Factorio it was rather important to be able to precisely control your character in certain moments and that was very difficult. What fixed our issue was adding a tiny bit of acceleration to the characters movement. It was really only 0.25 seconds that it took you to go from standing still to full speed if you pressed WASD, but the difference was night and day.

Precise character movement is also difficult in Factorio when you have 6 exoskeletons.

[Syrchalis]

Precise character movement is also difficult in Factorio when you have 6 exoskeletons.

Well, there is not really any instance where you need precise character movement, at least I had no problems with it. The car turning however... let's just say it would be nicer to not constantly ram a tree or power poles.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Well, there is not really any instance where you need precise character movement, at least I had no problems with it.

Navigating any sort of fluid processing, especially if you're just learning how to plan it out, is pretty difficult. Sure in vanilla oil processing becomes second nature but then you install Bob's Mods and get tangled in spaghetti all over again.

[Jonathan88]

That steering idea might be quite useful - it would be interesting to give it a try and see how it goes!

[Syrchalis]

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/binbinhf ... iveRunning

I want to link this mod because it is part of what I suggested (the running part). While I still think it's not super necessary for walking, it would definitely not hurt. I use this mod and I find it feels better than without it.

[Slayn25]

Try the vehicle snap mod. It's a big qol improvement imo

[Nich]

after about 40 hours of actual driving I am getting pretty good at the car :/

Not sure if I would like the sluggishness aka acceleration if it was implemented.

I will hole hardheadedly agree it would make the game much more new user friendly. Especially if cars/tanks are viable endgame with modules in .15

[redlabel]

Yes.

I agree it does not make much sense that the car is so difficult to drive.

An option could be to have gears where you have a slow but easily controllable gear and a fast but hard to turn one..

An other idea I had the other day is to have some sort of smaller version of a car like a "personal mobility device" with low durability but that is much easier to handle. Something like wearing a few exoskeletons but which is not easy to combine with doing other stuff like the exo is.

[ssilk]

Note: In most versions the steering has been improved a bit. Today car steering cannot be compared to steering of 2015. And it can be awaited that 2016 steering is improved in 2017.

[contax]

I agree with the sentiment that the steering needs improving.
I'd like the turn lag mimic real world driving, as if we were driving the car with a steering wheel (only with wasd keys. because when you're going at high speeds and you change lanes, it's only a small adjustment of the wheel and because of how it's designed, the wheels realign and you keep going in the same direction. Maybe instead of wheel lag, a form of mouse driving, however I feel that would be a whole different kind of learning curve.

The whole thing is, I want to be able to drive down a road I made alongside my main bus, to get to one end of the factory to the other.