About mico-movement "M" key

[Fireball14]

When i saw this in video, first thing that came to my mind was - just click and hold LMB and drag cursor to point where you want your ship to look at. You know like in these RTS games(Total War).

[knucracker]

A few people have been mentioning an alternate method on the blog comments as well.

Every control mechanism I've tried has some issues.  I've not found a totally perfect control mechanism that is immediately obvious and totally intuitive.  All require some (small in some cases) instruction and learning.

The main problem with the "mouse down, drag to point, release" model is initial placement.  Say you select a ship then want to park it in a tight spot.  You click the ship and move the mouse to where you think it needs to be, press the mouse down, then aim to rotate the ship.  But you realize the ship isn't placed in the correct spot and need to move over a bit. That situation comes up a lot (in this game anyway).  The reason being you need to often tightly place ships around each other and land and exact placement can something be a big deal.

The other model mentioned in the blog comments is similar, but to use a keyboard key as the indicator to rotate.  So you select a ship, move the mouse to where you want it, then press and hold a key.   While that key is held the ship's green ghost stays in one spot but turns to point to your mouse.  If you release the key then the mode reverts to the green ghost being under the mouse so you can position it.  You can press the key again to refine the rotation.

The good about that model is you can rotate and place and refine each as necessary.  The bad is that you have to move the mouse away from where you are trying to place the ship in order to rotate it.  Having the green ship ghost jump to the mouse each time you release the key is 'annoying'.  If you don't have the mode revert to placement when the key is released, though, then you are back to the original problem of how to exit that mode and go back to placing the ship.

The current model says to click a ship, move the green ghost.  Mouse wheel will rotate the green ghost.  Click to finish movement.  If you don't use the mouse wheel then the green ghost will point in the direction of movement (from where the ship is to where it is moving).  That only happens after the ship green ghost has moved so far away from the starting position.  If the movement is small, the ship maintains it's current direction (unless you use the mouse wheel of course).  The problem with this model is the granularity of the rotation.  You want to be able to rotate the ship quickly and accurately.  These are conflicting goals.  So the default is quickly but at a scale that is still fine grained enough for most ship placement.  If finer grain control is necessary, then you can press and hold a key that changes the granularity of rotation.  Note that you also use keys to rotate the ship if you wish (F/R or [/] by default).

Other considerations have to do with movement of multiple ships, and the initial building of ships... but these 'mostly' reduce to the same problems as general ship movement.

[Fireball14]

That's what i was thinking.

You can start placing your ship in "red" ghost but when you release LMB your ship has to be in green zone.
But hey! If while playing M key is better, go for it.   

PS Would be nice to have a toggle in options for this.
Edit:  Or just bouth ;)

[knucracker]

I've added a drag/rotate capability.  I can put it in and turn it on and still allow mouse wheel  rotation (the way I've done it).  I'll have to play with it a bunch to see how it feels, but it works.... so no reason not to include it and allow player choice.  At the very least it gives another option for precise rotation of grabber ships...

[Fireball14]

Yay! I'm  happy  ;D 
Thx for listening to us virgilw!

[SuperTerminator]

Thanks bunches virgil! Thanks so much for actually listening to us, its not very often that developers listen closely to the players. And remember, we will absolutely wait however long it takes, you can't rush perfection :)