ship rotation

[Astaedus]

I would like to be able to bind a button to a function that rotates the ship to face the currently selected target like ASAP does, but without taking control of movement and SPEC. This shouldn't be a toggle button. It should rotate the ship to face the target until the button is released (like the arrow keys).
AND/OR alternatively, allow us to toggle between 2 maximum rotation speeds to target more accurately. (like the Y key does for the movement speed)

I find it hard to point my ship at incoming enemies in very maneuverable ships. That's why I end up using only seeking missiles in my llama.

[El Bobbo]

Eventually when you get enough money you can buy autotrackers for your weapon mounts on places like trantor class planets. Unfortunately these are about 70K per mount...

Also, if you have your llama loaded up with lots of cargo, its maneuverability goes down by a huge amount. I'd suggest not carrying any cargo if you are trying to do bounty missions, etc. Just because you can lug around 10,000 tons of recycled metal doesn't mean its a good idea (You can look at the ship info screen in the weapon dealer after you load up on cargo to see how much your acceleration and turn rate go down. It obeys newton's law - F=ma, so your acceleration is inversely proportional to the mass of your ship+cargo.)

Finally, I find it much easier to hit maneuverable ships with beams than bolts. With a pair of light ion beams I can make short work of those pesky pirate fighters...then, if you can afford autotracking mounts for your beams, its almost too easy.

[Astaedus]

I know I can buy auto-tracking upgrades.
This would not replace auto-tracking because it would target the ship itself, not where ITTS thinks the ship is heading. It would only be useful for ships that are stationary or moving straight at/away from you.
If your ships computer is intelligent enough to plot a course to a target, using SPEC and avoiding obstacles (ASAP), why wouldn't it be able to point your ship at your target?

And how about the alternative I offered? The ships computer can limit movement speed in combat. Why wouldn't it be able to limit rotation speed?

[El Bobbo]

I don't have any power over what the Devs do - I was just offering suggestions. I also misunderstood part of your post - I thought you meant is was hard to target enemies when THEY are in maneuverable ships, and I guess you meant when YOU are in a maneuverable ship. I agree with you there - its pretty hard. An adjustment to the turn rate governor in combat mode does sounds like a good idea. If its really bugging you, you could try lowering the turn rates yourself by adjusting columns BD BE and BF of units.csv, but this would change the governors all the time, not just in combat.

As far as ASAP targeting enemies, you can try pleading your case to Hellcatv, but he seems to have the opposite opinion - he's actually working on making it harder to use the current ASAP to target enemies in combat. I think his take is that this is a game, and if the computer does all the work for you its not any fun. I could go either way - I see his point, but I've certainly exploited ASAP in combat a few times when I just couldn't hit that redeemer...

Oh, and also what makes ASAP pointing you at a ship in combat really not fair is beam weapons. Then you just always hit them all the time, not that I would ever have done such a thing

[Astaedus]

I can understand Hellcatvs reasoning. Letting the computer aim for you could ruin the fun.

How about my second suggestion then? (allowing the user to limit turning speed)
You'd still have to manually aim for the enemy ship and if the limited rotation speed is low enough, you won't be able to stay focused on a ship that moves fast enough. No advantage to beam weapons this way...