well i have noticed that there are also many other factors that go into turn speed. that was just one of them.

seems like it's angle+speed+friction.

don't qoute me on that one though because i have not looked into it further yet as i am building a system atm..

bank angle.. you know what banking is?

well.. it works like this..
you move your mouse off of the center of the screen while steering, and the ship slightly 'banks', or rolls, as you move while tilted.. 15 degrees is the max you can bank by doing this..

it's kinda noticable when making opposing tight corners - like in the ring race, one wing up, one wing down, then turn another corner, and they're opposite, you had just banked to each side

I could be wrong, but this seems correct.. modded the value and tried ingame

Ok, these look like the stuff that deals with handling:

steering_torque = 55000.000000, 55000.000000, 48000.000000
angular_drag = 41000.000000, 41000.000000, 35000.000000
rotation_inertia = 8400.000000, 8400.000000, 1000.000000

Those values are taken from Sabre. As you can see there are 3 values for each attribute. Any idea on what they mean?

probably normal, thruster, cruise. though that's just a wild guess

I made another post in the ship mod thread, or whatever it is..
that is what deals with manuverability.. heh.. turn them down for tighter handling.

Since we're talking about angular values, I'd bet those three values correspond to each axis x, y, and z the numbers apply to.

max_bank_angle seems to just be a cosmetic thing, not related to the manueverability.

it's not purely cosmetic - it deals with the y-axis (not turning or changing pitch, rolling, banking, the yaw) rotation of the ship

the 'x, y, z' coords there I think deal with longitude(forward backward), latitude(left right), and altitude (up down).

For anyone thinking about modding(please ), I thought I'd explain these:

Torque is the rotational version of force. The same way a force STARTS you moving in a straight line, a torque STARTS you spinning.

Rotational Inertia is a measure of how hard it is to get you spinning, and once you start spinning, how hard it is to get you to stop. If a ship had high rotational inertia it would take more torque to start it spinning, and more torque the other way to get it to stop.

Angular drag - if you really applied a torque to an object in space it would spin around forever, but that would be hard to control, so we have this one. Angular drag is just a constant slowing down of whatever rotation you have. If someone wanted to make a realistic space sim they would just zero this one out, but I don't think this games interface would work well for it.

A freighter should have a high rotational inertia, indeed, rotational inertia is just a measure of how far out most of the mass in an object is from it's center of mass. That's why you can fishtail around a corner in a caddy. If you wanted unbelievable maneuverability I would say to go torque = huge, R inertia = 0, drag = pretty huge.

The equation for all this is: Angular acceleration = Torque/Rotational inertia.
Drag is probably just subtracted out of your angular velocity once per second per so, slowing down rotation over time.

Oh yeah, and there's 3 values each because there's one for each x,y,z axis. A freighter woiuld have high inertia on it's Y (up axis) because it's so long.

Z is the altitude/vertical axis, methinks..
and I seem to find better results with lower torque

Bump. I want to add that it's a pretty good idea to leave angular_drag alone, because otherwise the NN doesn't know what to do and just goes all crazy. (It was funny until I got dizzy and nauseous, heh)
It seems that steering_torque and rotation_inertia are the only things you really need to change to edit maneuverability. Heh, you can make the AI do some funny things by setting these values to insanely low numbers

Don't forget, mass will also affect your maneuverbility. A high mass ship will make more elastic turns compared to lighter ones. Cap ship's when making high speed turns almost always end up power sliding without going where they want.

been messing around with this and here are my conclusions...

torq....large = better (how much turning power the ship has)
drag...small = better (how much force your torq has to fight against)
inertia....small = better (how much force is left over)..larger the number the slower my reflexes seemed....takes longer to change direction of bank...

bank....how far the craft can bank over...the further it can the more the 3rd number will affect the ship...bank and pull up type effect...the first two numbers are affecting how fast it reaches max bank...

recommended settings

max_bank_angle = 35
steering_torque = 29000.000000, 29000.000000, 87000.000000
angular_drag = 9000.000000, 9000.000000, 21000.000000
rotation_inertia = 2800.000000, 2800.000000, 1000.000000


equals fast turning and fast (but not too fast) unturning/changing direction

you turn fast but have decent control of where you are aiming...dont have to unbank too much to fire accuratly on a target

if you want the speed at which you circle an object to increase then increase the bank angle or the thrid torq number or decrease the third drag number...if you want to achieve max bank angle faster increase the first two torq numbers....or decrease the first two drag numbers....if you want to handle better decrease the inertia

ofcoarse...extreme numbers will result in extreme results...the smaller the inertia the number the more likly your going to be able to center your crosshairs on the lead...and the large the less liky...