Combat Movement

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 5:45 pm

Idea:

Script that has vessels in combat do something besides "Sit and get shot at" or at least have the option.

Why:

who is going to sit still and get shot at? I wouldn't, even if i have the bigger guns!

Rundown:

What I am thinking, as a part of an A.I. package, it would be really cool for ships to Joust, flyby, Bank & roll, escape & pursue, evade, etc. you know... fluid combat... Dogfights. Just seems to be reasonable for me, and would ad a LOT of feeling to the game

BTW "hold position" is a perfectly legitimate tactic, but by is self, it is very bland.

I'd be happy to help actually make a script, or A.I. package for this, but I can't program at the level that was done for this... which brings me to.

BLOODY AWESOME TC!!!! I'll never play vanilla STA-II ever again.

-Kelethaar

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 6:40 pm

As fun as it sounds...make the battles far less static and as such, more interesting if possible...IF.
Might be slightly less pleasant when you're trying to fish out your casualties before they're done for, though. But getting around that is probably rather simple anyway.

And all the maneuvering could also allow certain ships to bring more weapons to bear (alternatively, it'd allow for more weapons on a ship).

Problem is, I'm not sure you see much maneuvering in fleet battles. At least from what I remember of DS9, fleets just seemed to move into each other in some uncomfortably tight formations.

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 9:12 pm

There were a number of formations in A1/A2., but if i recall correct they were incompatible with FO in their current state.

Maybe a future version of FO will bring some formations/maneuvers back.

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 10:55 pm

Remind me, please:
Was the increased AI cheat in A1 ('Kobayashi Maru' or summin?) actual dogfighting or just an autonomy boost as far as engagement and special use was concerned?

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 11:27 pm

Kobayashimaru, kobayashimaru_lost, showmethemoney were the only stock A2 commands that I'm aware of - the rest that were listed on popular sites I think were fake/deactivated on release.

posted on August 3rd, 2012, 11:52 pm

Remind me, please:
Was the increased AI cheat in A1 ('Kobayashi Maru' or summin?) actual dogfighting or just an autonomy boost as far as engagement and special use was concerned?

You are talking about the A1 directors cut thing. I never had a1(not really anyway ) so I don't know much about it, but I"m pretty sure that is what you are refering to.

posted on August 4th, 2012, 2:02 pm

Ignoring the fact that I actually wrote the wrong cheat (it was canofwhoopass), I think it only really made them use their specials.
Crap, now I feel like I should try dig out the box so I could check.

posted on August 6th, 2012, 6:28 pm

There's actually a hidden potential consequence to this. Most ships take time to accelerate and change direction, and that time can make the difference between escaping on low health and being destroyed.

As for the large space battle scenes on DS9, meh. They were produced to look exciting, not reflect actual ship capabilities or tactics.

posted on August 6th, 2012, 7:36 pm

UR all great.

DS9. totally for Stage appeal. not actually tactical.

in any case what I was thinking would be the option FOR said maneuvers, Hotkey thing maybe. A2 Van had the "orbit" and "Cloverleaf" formations which seem to have been replaced by positional formations in FOps... which is cool, but I always enjoyed the movements.

Addendum to this Idea:

Target Strongest, Target Weakest, Target Nearest, Target Farthest. these in combination with Movements could make for some really Kikazz dogfights.

and you could hotkey the whole thing, like the NUMKEY hotkeys for Special weapons autonomy, RYG Alert levels and Movement autonomy.

could do Shift + Numkey for movement options, and Ctrl + Numkey to select Targetingo options.

I would TOTALLY be willing to script and present to the Dev crew, if I A: knew what language the AI scripts are in (Looks like C to me but...) and B: had a way to implement (knowledge base???)

posted on August 6th, 2012, 7:41 pm

There's actually a hidden potential consequence to this. Most ships take time to accelerate and change direction, and that time can make the difference between escaping on low health and being destroyed.

Probably in the wrong way so they'll be blown apart when they decide to turn around.
Though, I might be basing my comments on bad experiences from SoTS.

posted on August 6th, 2012, 7:46 pm

OH, and

Retreat @ X% damage.

I.E.
If Shields = 0 then move to nearest repair dock
if shield = 0 and Hull < 80% then move to nearest repair dock
If shields = 0 and Hull <50% then move to nearest repair dock
if shields = 0 and Hull < 25% then move to nearest repair dock...

Just a thought

posted on August 6th, 2012, 7:47 pm

Fleet Operations is coded in Delphi, Armada II in C++ - if you think you have the requisite skills (see Team information), feel free to contact Doca .

At the moment we have no desire to reintroduce the Cloverleaf, Arrow, or Circle attack patterns of Armada II (these were modified A1 routines): a better formation system is on long term todo, but what form that ultimately takes I am not sure.

For gameplay purposes, the positional formations are the only formations that are acceptable at the moment. The A2 attack patterns destroy a lot of tactics (as well as make it difficult to control your ships in many situations) that we think are important to gameplay - such as having the player decide when to pick a target and when to fire on the move.

posted on August 6th, 2012, 8:34 pm

I totally agree with you on the Arrow, Circle and Cloverleaf attack patterns, those were pretty lame to begin with. but a couple of tweaks could make them very useful for a Player...

I'll be checking out the prerequisites too, even if nothing else than to see how badly I'll fare with they rest of your assembly level team

Thanks,
-Kelethaar

posted on August 6th, 2012, 8:55 pm

The basic gameplay problem with those attack patterns is that once activated, you can choose targets without stopping ever. So essentially, stand-still fighting never occurs again, which really hurts limited arc ships and means that if there are two equal sides, a chasing opponent always will win against a retreater. We recently extensively tested these patterns again in our test builds, and it resulted in some pretty bad strategic situations arising.

posted on August 6th, 2012, 9:27 pm

it makes sense that it would hurt limited arc ships... I also understand the retreating issue.

Might be a way to give a small bonus to speed for retreating ships. AI would still pursue (at least to the end of LOS) and redirect targeting to next priority... that might actually work, as I seem to recall there is a line in the RTS.H file (er... something close) that deals with this specifically... 'course I'm nuts and could be thinking of another game I've modded.

there would have to be an update to the A.I. players to refresh target priorities too... else they'll chase to the end of the map... maybe right into a trap of turrets or a fleet (False retreat tactics)...

its just a thought, but i'm going to try a couple of ideas and see if I come up with something that is fun for me. (actually... speaking of fun, it'll actually be fun to try to get something to work )