to be honest, i never had such problems with this. i mean its annoying, but gets predictible in its own sake, and aiming for it can be exercised; problem is only, while you do this, you are more vulnerable than your target.
I used those keys since forever, but only marginally, since in the past, when we had a larger population of dogfighters, and more emphasis on that in games, a lot of players were able to deal with the rotation key.
this was long time ago, things changed, weapons changed, gameplay changed.
i feel like there should be modules which inhibit rotation, and the problem is rather, that auto-aim weapons are built as alpha sniping weapons instead of dealing with escape wiggle.
which is just as bs and also requires little skill. instead they should have been more helpful for close range, or chaotic movement, maybe.
Also, I would have chosen different mechanics for rotation; I set up the same camera and keyboard movement in a demo, and added the elite recipee of max turning effectiveness on speeds around 60-80% engine power, but decreasing at full.
It works quite neat, as it gives you a choice between fast turn and fast move, if you played elite, u know what i mean (but i think in that game its just a detail, the overall experience is boring).
but with SC’s mechanic of adaptive, this won’t work well for the game.
I suggest as compromise to slightly move the camera for the rotation keys as suggested, but still keep it manageable to use the known mechanic, by doing it in a good delay,
or make the button “reduce” the effectiveness (“tire out”), so pressing the rotate key very very often or for a long time starts to decay your orbit. admittedly that needs additional variables.
in the end, since the buttons are directly moving the ship, and the camera only moves the ship by how you rotate it with the mouse, they are different controls.
so any change to this behaviour would need some work and clear perspective what you want to get out. Might even be hard without f*n up the whole feel.
still feel like the tackler could have needed abilities to stop people turning too fast wiht some kind of web. make strafing more important in escaping tackle.
even a secondary effect on web itself would be awesome for covert ops, so basicly reduce turning rate for a few secs.
another mechanic nerf could be to decrease speed on heavy rotations passively, reducing the effectiveness of circling with one key in adaptive over long time.
weapons which can partially deal with the movement are gauss, plasma and posi
weapons which can deal with it, but usually dont get them down are coil guns, eclipse
weapons which were always the choice for dogfight in this matter were pulse for the aimer, and rf for the terrorist.
the most effective weapon is the phaser, but again only if you have enough time.
i think the weapons give reduced damage on shooting sideways, maybe turning keys could also just reduce the guns effectiveness to 60% in directions it would have more in this mode. might also be a fix.
