Attack patterns

posted on June 8th, 2009, 6:10 pm

One thing that I miss from Armada II that I wish were here was attack patterns.

Case in point- Defiants and BoPs.
It looks really odd when they don't face the enemy and shoot 90 degrees to the left.  The movement patterns back in Armada II helped in that case.  It allowed the Defiants and BoPs to make passes.  This is something I would like to see.

Suggestions-
Have the circle attack pattern, which was good against fixed points, such as Starbases.
A figure eight attack pattern, good for small vessels to dodge around slower ships.
A back and forth attack, like strafing a base.

posted on June 8th, 2009, 6:19 pm

How about these?

[Hit and Run]
Does short attacks and quickly goes out of target weapons range and flies back in with another volley.

[The Knockout Maneuver]
The vessel quickly tries to buckle the enemies shields. Then it disables the Weapons and engines systems. Ater those systems are disabled it will either destroy or capture the vessel.

(This works in SFC3, the only change is to diable the Warp core and impulse engines. )

posted on June 8th, 2009, 6:28 pm

That's a little too complex.  The maneuvers I was referring to were in Armada II, that were simply movement things.  The original 3 were:
Circle around the target
Cloverleaf around the target
Back and forth past the target

posted on June 8th, 2009, 7:33 pm

it gets talked about every once and a while, but the mod team is working on it.

posted on June 8th, 2009, 7:38 pm

Yeah I believe that this should be implemented in some way for destroyers like the defiant so they can make strafing runs to take advantage of their increased speed and agility instead of just trading hits with a battleship.

posted on June 8th, 2009, 7:56 pm

Agreed for ships like the defiant and Bops (not Kvorts just B'rels)

but I would prefer more control. Most of the patters mentioned here may tend to conflict with standard controls. Especially in MP the opponent can surprise u from the flank or from the rear. How will these patterns be implemented for those specific scenarios.

In A2 we saw more fleet formations in certain patterns. But movement was a mess.

If the defiant and brel movements were to be made more crisp and allow for sharper quicker turns, the user can pretty much manage these hit and run operations themselves.

Also, I would recommend not stopping ship movements as the ships decloak to fire. Whenever i target sth with a BOP it stops and then decloaks and then resumes movement and firing.

If the movement under cloak and decloak could be smoother, with the more agile turns for the Brels and defiant, it would suffice for us to carry out our own hit and runs and our own strafes dynamically.'

posted on June 8th, 2009, 10:17 pm

One issue I see is that some of the Formations won't work right in Fleet Ops, and if they are tied to the attack patterns, that could give the devs more problems.

The best example is 'Assault Wall'.  The ships would stack 4 high to maximize firepower against a base.  With the depth reduced, I don't think they could achieve 4 high unless they were BoPs or Bugs or other such tiny ships.

posted on June 8th, 2009, 10:35 pm

One issue I see is that some of the Formations won't work right in Fleet Ops, and if they are tied to the attack patterns, that could give the devs more problems.

The best example is 'Assault Wall'.  The ships would stack 4 high to maximize firepower against a base.  With the depth reduced, I don't think they could achieve 4 high unless they were BoPs or Bugs or other such tiny ships.

We aren't talking about formations here, we are talking about the movement patterns.

posted on June 9th, 2009, 12:48 am

And as I said, there's a chance they could be linked.  Assault Wall is gone from the Formations list, after all.

posted on June 9th, 2009, 12:53 am

Perhaps new formations?  Something tailored for small groups of ships?  Say a delta formation?

posted on June 9th, 2009, 8:06 pm

Perhaps new formations?  Something tailored for small groups of ships?  Say a delta formation?

There already is one, although just to be incredibly annoying you can't create three-ship wolf-packs - the first three ships line up as the base of a triangle!