Come back old ASAS - all is forgiven!

[ComradeGoat]

OK, this is an initial impression, so it may improve when I get used to it, but I hate it, almost to the point where I don't want to play the game any more.

Haven't tried it with rockets yet, but it's making my spaceplanes much harder to fly. Firstly, the claim that it allows you to adjust one axis while keeping the other 2 stable seems to be false. I'm getting phantom rolls when I yaw and pitch, phantom pitches when I do the other two, and so-on.

Secondly, the "lock to heading" functionality is completely gone. The thing will drift, regardless. The old ASAS could be used to pick an angle of attack and hold it, so you could build up speed while in straight and level flight, just below your flameout altitude. That ability is gone now. They drift up and down, wandering about by themselves, so while trying to pick up speed I'm getting random flameouts which I could avoid before. I'd say this is taking 100-200 m/s off my top speed on jets, which when you're trying to save rocket fuel is a *lot*.

Thirdly, even in space it seems it will only hold a heading if your plane is perfectly balanced. It turns out mine has a very slight off centre thrust on its rockets. The old ASAS simply used the pod torque and gimbals to counter this. The new SAS doesn't hold a heading, so the moment I throttle up the direction starts to change and I have to make constant manual corrections. Burning for a manoeuvre node seems to be more or less impossible.

I do appreciate the removal of the random oscillations, but please can we have some sort of heading lock functionality back?

ETA: Some more flying in space. I'm getting phantom rolls. I can understand a slight unbalance causing phantom pitch, but the only thing that's possibly off centre in the roll axis is the fact that I have a ladder on one side. As far as I can tell, SAS is making no effort to counter this at all.

Edited July 24, 2013 by ComradeGoat

[cesarcurado]

I think you might have activated trimming accidentally...

Press alt + x and see if it works now.

[ComradeGoat]

No difference. Still resolutely refuses to hold a heading, still won't lock the other two axes.

[ComradeGoat]

Also, it's obviously not trim: the refusal to hod a heading in space only occurs when the vessel is under thrust.

[rryy]

I also agree. From what I have experienced, the new ASAS system seems "weaker" and less responsive. Before, the ASAS will immediately lock into place when I turn it on, but now, when I let go of the controls, it doesn't lock immediately into place like before.

[ComradeGoat]

Landed my test flight. It nearly crashed because SAS wouldn't hold the flare, so I came *this* close to killing Jeb on what should have been a perfectly trivial landing. It's much harder to fly now. I feel like I'm fighting the controls all the time.

[toril]

you guys realize torque is much weaker now in the built in stuff right? you need to add reaction wheels if you want it glued in place like before. also you may actually need a part with sas built in as i have noticed alot of things don't have it anymore just the wheels etc you have to check the description

[skyace65]

I'm not sure if this is the new logic or if it's just a glitch, all the preview videos I have seen show it working fine, right now it just sucks. I mean I'm glad the wobble is gone but that doesn't mean jack squat if my mini space station is going to take a nose dive.

[purpletarget]

I also agree. From what I have experienced, the new ASAS system seems "weaker" and less responsive. Before, the ASAS will immediately lock into place when I turn it on, but now, when I let go of the controls, it doesn't lock immediately into place like before.

This is one key difference with the new SAS behavior. The old system would shake a ship apart trying to fight it's way back to a particular heading.

The new system allows us to use the controls to fly and change heading while the SAS is engaged. But it's not a mind reader, so it can't know if you let go of the controls what your intention is... So one of the key differences is that when you've introduced a turn or swing on the controls and let go, SAS won't try to get back to the point that you let go of the controls. What it will do, is try to kill the turn or swing and steady up...and that steady up point is the heading it will attempt to hold.

What this requires from the pilot, is a little bit of work to anticipate your desired course, and let go in advance of reaching your desired heading. If it's going to take SAS 10 degrees before it steady's up, then you want to stop turning when you're 10 degrees from your desired heading. Small ships this anticipation should be fairly trivial. Larger ships, you might want to plan ahead.

[ComradeGoat]

you guys realize torque is much weaker now in the built in stuff right? you need to add reaction wheels if you want it glued in place like before.

This is a plane. It's got control surfaces and is a very stable aircraft. It also has reaction wheels because I pulled it over from 0.20 and its ASAS unit magically became reaction wheels.

It's doing something when I turn it on, but that something isn't doing the job of holding a heading.

[Mulbin]

Wobble is much worse than before for me... what the hell?

[ComradeGoat]

The new system allows us to use the controls to fly and change heading while the SAS is engaged. But it's not a mind reader, so it can't know if you let go of the controls what your intention is... So one of the key differences is that when you've introduced a turn or swing on the controls and let go, SAS won't try to get back to the point that you let go of the controls. What it will do, is try to kill the turn or swing and steady up...and that steady up point is the heading it will attempt to hold.

What this requires from the pilot, is a little bit of work to anticipate your desired course, and let go in advance of reaching your desired heading. If it's going to take SAS 10 degrees before it steady's up, then you want to stop turning when you're 10 degrees from your desired heading. Small ships this anticipation should be fairly trivial. Larger ships, you might want to plan ahead.

I get that, and I've compensated for it. It still won't hold a course. There are two scenarios here: in atmosphere, where it almost does nothing useful at all, and in space where a slightly off centre thrust (which will happen with planes because of e.g. vertical stabilisers) will cause the heading to wander when the rockets power up, even though the pod torque and gimbals are perfectly capable of correcting for that, and did so just fine in 0.20. It seems SAS is simply not bothering to try and hold the heading in this situation.

[RepoRogue]

Wobble is much worse than before for me... what the hell?

Yep, me too. I've only tried flying an aircraft around so far, but as long as I remain below 60 m/s (approximately), the new ASAS behavior works exactly as it should. However, when accelerate past that velocity, it begins to wobble violently and hold course in the exact same way as the old ASAS. I'm really confused, and also kind of annoyed.

[Mulbin]

Even when it doesn't wobble like crazy the game is now about fighting to steer your rocket rather than flying a space mission.

Horrible, horrible "upgrade"... Squad please kill it! For now it looks like I'll have to cave and use mechjeb just to make the game playable again :/

[Red Jester]

Yeah I've gotta say, either we need a tutorial on how these things work, or I'm going to continue having nightmares due to all the Kerbals I've killed in the past 30 mins

[Coneshot]

Works fantastic for me, a HUGE improvement.. I did add an additional reaction wheel and have had nothing but love for the new system.. I'm not even missing the fact my Mechjeb isn't working lol

[AfailingHORSE]

This is probably the sole reason why I don't patch right away, for the love of god I hope they fix this.

[ComradeGoat]

Horrible, horrible "upgrade"... Squad please kill it! For now it looks like I'll have to cave and use mechjeb just to make the game playable again :/

I'm gonna go back to 0.20. The game was a joy to play. Now it's just constant key tapping to try and make the things go where you want them. I never considered using MechJeb before, but if they don't do something about this, I'm trying to be diplomatic, "unfinished" ASAS, then ISTM that MechJeb will be essential for playing the game in future, and that would be a horrible shame.

I don't want to be hasty here, but this is just awful.

[ComradeGoat]

Works fantastic for me, a HUGE improvement.. I did add an additional reaction wheel and have had nothing but love for the new system.. I'm not even missing the fact my Mechjeb isn't working lol

Planes or rockets? Rockets seem to fly OK. It's planes that are rendered near useless for me.

[Mulbin]

It seems the wobble problem is that while they have definitely improved RCS (very impressive by the way) they don't seem to have done anything with gimballing... those mainsails are still thrashing about like crazy. I've also noticed that probe cores seem to be much weaker (or have no asas) and just one reaction wheel isn't doing the job... do they stack like the old SAS modules?

[Torham234]

It works for me, mostly as intended. So far tested only on planes (my favourite). I absolutely love the wobbless flight, and it does hold the heading if the craft is properly balanced and has got sufficient control surfaces. The only thing that is a bit awkward is the thing that everybody with a joystick was saying might be a problem with the new sas: If you set a heading and then let go of the controls, the next time you move your stick, the ASAS releases the affected axis to 0 = if you want to pitch up, you pitch down, because the trim set by ASAS resets itself.

Lastly, I do not understand the high emotions in this thread. As a Alpha testers, this is our job - to find out the bugs and report them, help make SQUAD a better game. If the new ASAS performs absolutely abysmaly for the majority of the players, the old one will come back(I do not think so).

[Motokid600]

Could be a bug. I've yet to try it for myself, but i dout Squad would release this if it was broken. All that testing had to bring up all these scenarios. So there's no way they'd let that go.

[Tygroux]

Strange. I just tested the ravenspeer MK4 (stock plane), and it fly perfectly straight. I held myself at 2m of the ground, head down for 3 minutes, before a traitorous hill get me. Also worked on the side.

I must add that i never flew a plane before, so it might have something with you old (bad) habits, or you plane designs.

[ComradeGoat]

It works for me, mostly as intended. So far tested only on planes (my favourite). I absolutely love the wobbless flight, and it does hold the heading if the craft is properly balanced and has got sufficient control surfaces.

I'm flying craft that held a heading perfectly, with barely any control surface deflection in 0.20, and they Will. Not. Hold. A. Heading.

Furthermore, they won't even hold a heading in space.

[-RanZ-]

Make sure you have a dead zone set on your joystick, C7 mentioned this in one of the live feeds