I was in my Golem with a MJD ready to activate. I selected ‘Approach’ on my stationary target (gate) that was about 130km away, gave the ship plenty of time to get well-aligned, and then CTRL-'ed to stop, to check on something. A few seconds later, I noticed my ship’s orientation slowly start drifting away from the target, in a continuous, slow motion. The ship itself was at 0 m/sec according to the speed, but the direction it was facing just started… wandering. It wasn’t the camera angle, because when I activated the MJD just to see if I was imagining things, sure enough, my ship jumped in a direction way off from the intended direction of the gate.
I don’t remember this being a thing, or a configurable option - did something change in the last couple of years? Space around me was wide open - I didn’t bump into anything.
Sometimes ships erratically and for no reason rotate. I experience that mostly when I have been sitting motionless for a while. However, what you describe I have not seen yet.
It was almost like you describe, except that the time I had been sitting motionless I truly believe was under 3-4 seconds, and most certainly less than 10.
Well, the game characteristics resemble a submarine simulation, right? Maybe CCP is making sure the ships emulate being in a submerged environment, sorta like how Whales act in water when they stop to sing…
I know that ships upwards or downwards will gently drift to be parallel to the horizontal plane of the tactical overlay, but I’ve never seen one yaw to the left or right when left unattended.
Your ship has no orientation at 0ms. The game engine only sees spheres with velocity vectors. Your ship model tries to align with your vector but the game itself doesn’t care what way it’s facing.
The graphics when your ship is stationary, have periodically rotated the ship for years.
As Lugh wrote, a stationary ship has no alignment, so the graphics can orient in any direction and it doesn’t actually change anything about your ship. It’s purely a client side thing (and someone sitting next to you looking at your ship, might see it in a completely different orientation from a graphics perspective).
However, if I remember correctly, as far as MJDs go, the previous alignment is still remembered and if you jump from a stationary position after previously being aligned, you’ll still jump as though you were aligned as intended.
I think it’s totally random if you were never moving (eg. jump gate and then let gate cloak expire and then hit the MJD).
On those though. my memory might be totally ■■■■■■ and I could be totally wrong. It’s kind of an edge case, so not something that comes up often.
stationary ships have always settled to horizontal . ccp was asked to change this as stealth bombers have same problem when aligned for a bomb run and cut speed to zero …
btw , the game rounds your speed and a heavy ship like an orca coasts for a while , showing zero velocity , while it may still be moving very slowly …
Default direction is towards the sun, as I have seen many black ops MJD in that same direction when they spool the MJD while loading grid after jumping to a cyno.
Personally I always doubleclick in the direction I want my ship to MJD to to avoid these situations. Don’t rely on the game to ‘remember’ your alignment, someone might have slightly bumped you.
Do you happen to know if your ship jumped in the direction of the sun perhaps?
I think the solution is simple: give your ship a direction (= nonzero velocity) before you do anything where direction matters a lot like MJD or bombing.
If you don’t want to actually move, set your maximum velocity to something small like 1m/s while giving your ship the right direction.
I remmeber that. Something about ‘spheres have no direction!’ if I recall correctly. I still don’t know why.
Anyway, when you’re at 0 velocity your direction could be anywhere - so to be safe, give your ship a (minimal) velocity in a direction of your choice so you can be sure your MJD or bomb goes where you want it to go.
