[NX] A few things I'd like to see

Post ideas and suggestions on new features or improvements here.
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posted on October 22nd, 2014, 8:04 pm
@hellodean: Brilliant use of emos.

I know this is a little weird, but how about co-op? Two players, one fleet. Heck, why not more? Additional players could be put into fleets and given ships.
posted on October 22nd, 2014, 9:07 pm
Jinseta Yensei wrote:I know this is a little weird, but how about co-op? Two players, one fleet. Heck, why not more? Additional players could be put into fleets and given ships.

I believe that's what the Armada option does. Two players on the same Armada will be controlling the same units. it's how new players can get experience.

I've never done it with more than 2 players, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.
posted on October 22nd, 2014, 11:37 pm
Jinseta Yensei wrote:@hellodean: Brilliant use of emos.

I know this is a little weird, but how about co-op? Two players, one fleet. Heck, why not more? Additional players could be put into fleets and given ships.


thanks i liked to think so

and yeah co-op sounds great. something like 16 people controlling small fleets, 8 players a side. running raids or teaming up to make task fleets. perhaps if a player loses ships you could pass on some of the others from the other team members so between them they could be better micro managed rather than loose the player all together.

by that i mean the smaller amount of ships you have on a team the better your team should be able to micro them and keep everyone still in play.


or you have normal 1v1 but other players can call in warp ins (they can request what they get)
posted on November 16th, 2014, 6:08 pm
I'd like to see automatic special replaceweapons that obey the techtree. They could still behave like they do now by just setting their requirements to 0 and replacing automatically when something is researched would help a lot of mods.
posted on November 18th, 2014, 4:21 am
I had an idea on boarding. As I understand it, a few simple math figures govern how one ship's crew replaces crew on another ship. It lacks a sort of realistic feel for me. After some thought, I came up with this.

Boarding Crew Value: Instead of being calculated against the target's crew, a BCV is given to the ship. It's purpose is obvious. It can increase as more crew are transported in, but generally decays. Once the old crew is gone, the BCV becomes the new crew value. Additionally, a 'Control' or 'Captured' value could be assigned, it's purpose also obvious. Boarding crews from capture specialist ships could have their own attributes, and there are a host of new rules here that offer a new level of diversity among the races.

For example, the Borg alone could gain control of the ship with a minority and would be harder to get rid of. Their ships would be next to impossible to take over with the same idea in mind (as it should be). When the Borg BCV becomes the majority, the ship is doomed (maybe with hull components appearing) unless it receives help.

Boarding Improved by Proximity: Think of it as the effectiveness of a skilled boarding party. The closer a ships is to it's target, the more effective the boarding party. This is also affected by the presence of another friendly or enemy ship. If the boarded ship is near a friendly manned base, boarding might be very difficult while being near an enemy base would make it much easier for capture to happen.

Transport Instructions Pane: Few people want complexity more than I. If I can learn something, my next response is to ask 'why isn't there more?!'... Anyways, I can see why this might be too much. Set instructions for boarders instead of 'Capture'. With the party not intent on capture, the BCV would decline much more slowly, but there would be a chance of disabling a ship's systems, damaging it further, or by small chance destroying it. This may be limited to specialists, but it could be applicable to all. It would be a cool option if the attacker's weapons were down as well or even as a last ditch effort.

Using an example of the same tune; The Borg would probably be more prone of system disables than to capture attempts.

I figured coding the proximity bit would be taxing on computer not to mention the programer, but I do like the advanced boarding party and BCV. Still exited, can't wait :woot:
posted on November 22nd, 2014, 2:04 am
Great ideas. I just hope they take into consideration the fact that there would be two or more crews aboard the vessel/station at once. Example: What if three different factions attempted to board a vessel from a fourth faction simultaneously (all four are enemies with each other)?
posted on November 23rd, 2014, 6:51 pm
Hmm... that's a good thought. Here's an idea

A database could track the boarding crews in secret. It'd be the quickest way to sort crews without limit. The BCV could represent the largest boarding crew. All would degrade accordingly. When the largest was defeated, the next largest would take their place. If the boarding crew succeeds, then they replace the crew value and the next largest boarders become the BCV.

If they're all targeting internal systems, then there's no competition. The defending crew simply has more boarders to repel.
posted on November 25th, 2014, 12:47 am
Perhaps the sum of all of the boarding crew values should be displayed, but the displayed value would be different for each faction aboard the vessel because their own value is not being considered (perhaps because their own boarding crew value is displayed separately).
posted on February 14th, 2015, 6:39 am
I was considering a response to the idea of warp drive when this came to me. I wanted to get in here before I lost it... The reintro of warp has been discussed at length, but what I'm suggesting is more an arena in which I think it would work.

In the current version, I have a hard time using and/or applying special and passive abilities. As suggested, I've specialized in a race and avatar and it works for me. Ask me to be a Romulan though, and I'm in trouble. Who knows. I may simply not have green blood. Maybe they can be simplified a little or more intuitive.

In this light, FTL travel wouldn't simply make ships go faster. It would change the way a ship operates. Abilities for being, staying, and disabling warp would make it easier to define each race from another. All FTL ships could have multiple warp levels (I'm thinking a slider-button).

Maps must be much larger with large gaps of nothingness, and ships must be able to stop anywhere unlike Sins. The feature alone is the only thing that would make warp worthwhile imo.

Warp would allow the exploitation of a diversity that already exists in the fleets. Most Fedi ships could be faster than their counterparts. Romulans could just have one or two fast scouts. The potential goes on and on.

Additionally, I've got another idea separate from all this FTL stuff. Include a deployment package option in the shipyard. If two players picked the same race, they'd have one chance to gain specific perks for that game. Using this feature, that chance occurs with each new ship. It would give any ship a small extra buff, but would slow construction time. Built ships could have their packages switched say under the command menu. The switch would happen when they passed through they yard.

Looking at this vision of FTL, I can understand why no one would want to have it. It would require a massive investment of programmer resources not to mention the strain on today's machines. I'm not sure if the payoff would be worth it...
posted on September 27th, 2016, 7:00 pm
Technically a necro, but I think it's a relevant thread still, and better to add to it than start something new.

As well as things I'd like to see, there are a few things I don't want repeated. Some of them are A2 engine behaviours that are ... less than optimal. Others are edge case bugs that I'd hope the team can avoid.

Lunging
Where ships on high movement autonomy will go from full stop to top speed without acceleration lag, to move to the next target after the destruction of the current. Splits mixed ship groups horribly, makes for many "herding cats" moments.

Lingering
Where ships ordered to move away from enemy units accelerate more slowly than they can.

Ships not firing when on the move
I often see ships simply not firing when given move orders, because their AI-selected target is out of range. Yes, firing on the move probably should be less effective than standing and fighting, but that's suicide against certain ships.

In Range Yet Not In Range
Edge case where ships at the edge of weapon / special range won't fire / use the special, but also won't move to get properly in range.

Imma gonna loop around
Give a group of ships a second movement order a few moments after a first, some of the lead ships will just loop around. I know this is related to the "flocking" AI that the devs have detailed elsewhere.

I forgot my repair order
During the entire painful period that a ship on "force repair" is turning to enter a repair yard, a ship can be pulled from that by a movement order. Awful when dealing with multi-ship groups.

Replaceweapon shenanigans
I think the devs were planning on phasing out Replaceweapon except where absolutely necessary for the abandoned 4.0 release, for good reason. Galaxy trying to retreat from a Tavara at low health? Activate the Type 3 Torpedoes special and see shots in flight against it miss, and the pursuer possibly turning off! Bonus: see ships pop out of the yard mid-repair because their timed replaceweapon-based special expired! These kinds of exploits are about the only reason some specials are worth using.

I'm confused, so I'll do nothing
For Feds, this is most often seen when Newtons and Avalons are on the field, where Newtons will just sit around doing nothing, despite multiple damaged units in range. Probably related to attempting to use abilities on units that can't be targeted directly.

Where's my cursor?
The default FleetOps mouse cursor is easily lost in the visual noise of battle. The alternate ones that came with the experimental DX9 renderer are better, but still not great.

I selected THAT ONE, not this one!
Selecting units can be hit and miss. Try and click on a damaged Intrepid in the middle of a group of ships, it's 50/50 whether I get it or not.

Worse, when trying to select a unit from the group panel and there's more than 16 units in a group, there are areas where you get the tooltip for one ship, but select another.

Now serving...
There needs to be better intelligence when it comes to selecting repair queues in locations where several shipyards are in close proximity. At the moment seeing ships meander from one to another is deeply frustrating.
posted on September 27th, 2016, 11:46 pm
MadHatter wrote:In Range Yet Not In Range
Edge case where ships at the edge of weapon / special range won't fire / use the special, but also won't move to get properly in range.

This one is caused by the way the range calculations work. Specifically, it's from the nearest weapon hardpoint of the firing unit to the target unit's root (or maybe their nearest target hardpoint, I'm not sure). As a result, weapons fired from further back on the ship may not technically be in range. This could be improved by simply having all ranges be calculated from the firing unit's root to the target's nearest target hardpoint.

Something related that I would like to see is the option to choose what range a unit with multiple weapon ranges should engage the enemy at. For instance, if the ship has one long range weapon and several short range weapons, you should be able to tell it to either fight at maximum distance as long range fire support or try to close the gap to bring all weapons to bear.
posted on September 28th, 2016, 12:01 am
cabal wrote:
MadHatter wrote:In Range Yet Not In Range
Edge case where ships at the edge of weapon / special range won't fire / use the special, but also won't move to get properly in range.

This one is caused by the way the range calculations work. Specifically, it's from the nearest weapon hardpoint of the firing unit to the target unit's root (or maybe their nearest target hardpoint, I'm not sure). As a result, weapons fired from further back on the ship may not technically be in range. This could be improved by simply having all ranges be calculated from the firing unit's root to the target's nearest target hardpoint.


Yeah, I figured it was because there were two separate metrics for "in range" going on, hence why I termed it an edge case. No idea how Dom & co are planning to handle stuff like that, but definitely something that should be considered when designing and testing these systems.
posted on September 28th, 2016, 4:22 am
Ah... tempting me with talk of mechanics I see! :lol:

We've all been deeply dissatisfied with the way Armada handled such edge cases and including many other prominent ones (which often become major gameplay issues in competitive interactions) - one of the several major reasons why we felt we could not deliver a suitable platform using just A2.

We're aiming for the most intuitive system possible, though of course the possibility for mods to add their own systems will be available.

In the case of ranges, I believe my notes say in NX we calculate those from the center of the craft, rather than from the weapon emplacement. A2 actually does it with an even more complicated system than Cabal describes. Namely (and it's been a long time since I looked at A2 code, so bear with me), it calculates the distance by multiplying it by the length of the craft. It's not just the simple straight line distance from the weapon emplacement to the target...
posted on September 28th, 2016, 5:52 am
Thanks for the response, Dominus!

Mmm, tasty tasty mechanics. It's always fun to discuss them, plus I'm the type who thinks that they should be well-documented for players.

Centre to centre is the easiest way to calculate range. I've no idea what game result differences can be realised by getting fancy with calculating ranges to hardpoints, except maybe on very large units with very short ranged weapons ... but quite what would have that arrangement I have no idea.

The partial description of how A2 measures distances sounds bizarre beyond anything. Maybe related to how the map is broken up into areas or something?
posted on September 28th, 2016, 12:03 pm
Not sure if this has all been mentioned already, but here we go:

* colonize planets (yes! bring it back please!)
* resource "Crew"
* exhaustable and inexhaustable moons (and maybe planets)
* bring back Cardassians
* bring back Species 8472, they are fundamentally different and it makes them interesting
* something with Vulcans would be nice, even if only as 1 or 2 ships in the Federation
* better AI than in FO, meaning better in intelligence, cleverness, not just plain cheating in order to make it more difficult, maybe involving some long term strategies like "rush" "bunker" "economy"
* better AI balancing, with some species the AI works fine, while with others it is bad (Borg in FO)
* make it more clear how to decloak ships. In FO I can build things to ping cloaked ships, wow ... but I still do not see them.
* increase either ship movement speed in general or introduce something like warp drive, but make it not as fast as in A2, that was a bit too fast
* let the game make use of multiple cpu cores and more RAM or make it more efficient. I have 4x2.4GHz and the RAM is never filled by FO. One core is on full usage the entire game and when I scroll over the map the game seems to need to load something from disk or to calculate a lot to finally show me the area. I noticed that this takes more time when there is a lot of stuff going on in that area.
* make it possible to zoom further out
* remove any click delays for ship building. When I click something with the mouse, there is a short pause before it is added to the yards build queue. When I press the shortcut key, there is none.
* some sounds seem unaffected by any of the available volume regulators in the settings, except the master volume. I think it was stations clicked sounds. When you select some station, it makes a sound and sometimes that is an unpleasant sharp noise.
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