Battleships - Are they really worth it?

posted on October 25th, 2007, 4:56 am

Optec: At what point in the development do you plain to add"multi targeting"?

posted on October 25th, 2007, 10:21 am

regular weapons wont have multi targeting in fleet operations. only some special weapons (like the mutli-targeting disruptor for example) will feature area damage.
larger borg units however might have the ability to strike at more then one target, too, but that's it

posted on October 25th, 2007, 11:00 am

ok i have equipted certian federation ships and stations with the ability to hit more than one targert.. only a few ships... for instance the sovie and the starbases and a couple of heavy cruisers... trying to keep it balanced...

the main problem being you can't really control the phasers.. well you can control one but not the other and i had to implement this in a special way but it does work...

same goes for torpedo's you can hit two targets at once with a torp each... though i gave this ability to only two ships... one being the sovie

posted on October 25th, 2007, 3:28 pm

a good mutli targeting mode is no technical problem, but a game-mechanic and balancing question. thats not the kind of game we want to create

posted on October 25th, 2007, 3:37 pm

im not saying that it is any problem for you, hell we all know it isn't and i understand your point rom the balancing point of view... but it doesnt mean that with out good balancing you can't make it work... the way i have it set up right now for the feds seems to work. the sovie isn't over powered at all, it cna only fire on one extra ship and fire a torpedo at one extra ship...

stations are the longest to balance as i dont want a starbase too pwerful or too weak...

the akira also has multi targeting on the phaser... and just multi torp on the excel...

obviously the galaxy and has multi on both to... the weapons themselves are just replicates of yours with additional code added...

actually i left your original weapon in tact as the main weapon so you can control it and the extra weapon is an areacannon that cna only hit a max of one target...

posted on October 25th, 2007, 5:59 pm

What I don't like it how ships all seem to pick on one ship at a time. I wish their was a way to make the ships pick different targets unless ordered to target a signal ship.

posted on October 25th, 2007, 9:06 pm

Yup, I completely agree. It's not only irritating 'artistically", but the system does not reward the micromanager as much as it could.

posted on October 25th, 2007, 11:31 pm

Or, if you're going into an enemy base, and all your ships decide to attack the scouts, or the science stations....when there's still starbases, turrets, and command flagships left...doesn't quite help.

posted on October 25th, 2007, 11:36 pm

True... however you can remedy this part by watching over the ships (although it is irritating that they only attack one type of ship/station at a time). This is micromanaging, and as much as it does stink to not just let your ships attack what you want them to attack (without telling them), it makes the game better (in my humble opinion). Wow, that sentence was confusing

[Shril]

posted on October 26th, 2007, 3:53 am

Last edited by Shril on October 26th, 2007, 3:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Is it possible to get each ship class attack its preferred ship or station when no direct order is given? Say if you don't directly order a Steamrunner class to attack a ship can you get it to attack the next station around for example?

You could include that in the "easy" and "normal2 play mode and let "hard" be without it so you have to micromanage your fleet. I like that idea....

posted on October 26th, 2007, 4:44 am

Actually, that idea sounds fantastic! You'll have to excuse the pun, I'm sure/afraid.

posted on November 8th, 2007, 10:38 am

First Beta Test today. Good work so far there's a significant change for big ships. Several bugs have no chance against one Sovie which is very good. Just want to let you know things are in the works.

posted on November 8th, 2007, 7:31 pm

well i played the AI fed agaisnt normal roms, well my normal shrike spam failed,lol

posted on November 11th, 2007, 11:49 am

problems with multi-targetting:
1) you only control the weapon to hit 1 of the intended targets, the others are completely out of your control.

2) this can lead to big problems (especially if your borg) eg: you have a borg cube who has holding beamed an enemy ship more targets arrive,before they are even in weapons range the multi target weapons are already going through their firing cycle, and the only target they are hitting is the ship currently being holding beamed.

3)the weapon will hit neutral ships as well (ie. ferengi scavengers & cargo)

4) when presented with a targettable enemy the firing cycle starts and ANY enemy ships in range will be hit, even cloaked ships who you didn't know were there. (seriously unballanced as there will be less need for cloak detecting units)



@jan do you mean official beta testing or just private testing of this little idea.

posted on November 11th, 2007, 2:52 pm

Hi Cpt Ryan, his beta testing my changes, im happt to have more beta testers because at the moment i only have one and im really looking for someone to play a game agaisnt to test my changes as the ai is just too basic to...

as for your points...

1) yes it tru you can only control one, but ships dont have more than an additonal phaser or torp and 9 times out of ten it will either fire on the same target you want it to or on another big enemy ship (which is the idea) and to be honest when you got a fleet of 16 odd shrikes firing at your groups of sovies you usually want them trying to kill as many as quicka s you cna so it qorks quite well...

2)personally its restricted by the same principles of a normal phaser so if the cube has a ship in a holding beam it should attack that ship like a normal phaser wouldnt but with no borg i can't test obviously so its not an issue at moment but will keep an eye on...

3) need to go in and test this because usually i tell my ships to kill ferengi for the hell of it so i will see if it does it on its own...

4)i haven't had the cloak issue once? i have left cloaked ships in the fed base ready to attack the starbase and the AI has been none the wiser.... nor has it tried to fire at them???

p.s. the AI in armada by default can actually see all cloaked vessel without cloak research anyway, you can test this with normal flops, build a few shrikes put them near the outsid eof the enemy base and watch ships gather around it but not attack it till it decloaks... and thats a crappy armada engine thing that i think doca with his amazing programming ability can fix...