Type of ship information included in tooltips?

posted on August 5th, 2009, 1:34 am

Im wondering if there is any plans to include helpful information on a ship type and its effectiveness against other types of ships. Just an example would be you highlight the defiant and the tooltip comes up. At the side of the name in the top right corner of the tooltip you could add "Battleship" or "Destroyer" (I dont know which type it is sorry).

Then at the very bottom of the tooltips, below the abilities list you could add the lines:

"Strong against Destroyers and Cruisers"
"Weak against battleships"

I know that example may not be accurate but you get the picture. Adding this feature would help me lots in deciding what ships I should send against a particular fleet etc. Also adding it to the tooltip in the shipyards build menu would help too.

posted on August 5th, 2009, 1:38 am

If you wish, you can read the guide posted in the Strategy subforum... I know it doesn't really answer the question of whether this will be in the game, but at least you can start thinking about strategies without having the game up and running in front of you  .

I think your suggestion would be quite difficult to implement however... as certain ships have variable weapon types etc... and really can be made to be good for different situations. As in an artillery ship is good against battleships and stations... if you consider offense... if you consider defense, then no, it stinks! 

posted on August 5th, 2009, 1:50 am

I mean offensively so that you know that, that particular ships weapons will be effective against this type of ship.

posted on August 5th, 2009, 2:16 am

Hmmm, I'd say that would still be quite tricky. For instance, the Negh'var has a disruptor, but does most of it's damage in the torp. Special weapons though already have this type of information... so who knows.  I mean, special weapons are definitive, but if you can catch a group of unmoving destroyers with a Serkas' torpedo... they're dead meat. However, the torpedo is mainly used to dispatch structures and slower moving ships--so what is it really good against? I just don't think it would be that helpful.

posted on August 5th, 2009, 7:36 am

More helpful tooltips are of course always welcome. I will think about that

posted on August 5th, 2009, 7:47 am

This whole "a" is good vs "b" part would be quite disturbing imo.
I know that from Star Wars: EAW. Though there are only two factions and the tooltips were like "x-wing is good vs tie-fighter", something that wouldn't work in FO because of more playable races, I think of those kind of "help" as kind of dumb. (Oh, my enemy builds "A", so let's see what the tooltip says. "B"? So, let's build lots of "B"s to counter the "A"s.)
I doubt if it would even be possible in FO to second Dominus' post.
Not that I would get sponsored by Dominus, but imo a good guide should do it. I don't want a rts-game to tell me which ship is good against another ship.
That decision is part of my personal strategy and thanks to the dev team the ships in FO are far more than simple counter-parts to another faction's ships.
I recommend reading the guide and some trial and error games
Believe me, FO can do and actually is better than the usual "type-a is good vs. type-b"-rts-game 

posted on August 5th, 2009, 9:17 am

saying wot sortta ship it is eg destroyer, cruiser, baatleship etc would be good but yh it wouldnt be very accurate stating what its good against due to the diversitys of each faction.

i would however like to see a little background info for each type like in stock a2

[Dominus_Noctis]

posted on August 5th, 2009, 1:05 pm

Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on August 5th, 2009, 1:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i would however like to see a little background info for each type like in stock a2

I have background information on each ship if you are interested Blade--it's available on the archived old Fleet Operations site.

Fleet Operations is not a rock, paper, scissors RTS, so I don't think we can ever show exact counters. It all depends on how you use your fleet etc. For instance, just because Phalanxes are good against destroyers doesn't mean you can just build those to fight of destroyers.

posted on August 5th, 2009, 1:07 pm

Don't the tooltips already show what type of ships weapons are designed to fight?

posted on August 5th, 2009, 1:32 pm

The new weapon-tooltips will now also include some general information in addition to the flavor texts, like the hit chances for torpedoes for example.
I'm still thinking about a display for vessel sizes and/or types, we will take a look to that

posted on August 5th, 2009, 1:35 pm

Oo, very nice Optec 

I'm still thinking about a display for vessel sizes and/or types, we will take a look to that

Interesting....

posted on August 5th, 2009, 1:50 pm

Something looks odd about that screenshot...why is there a gap on the right side of the ship display?

posted on August 5th, 2009, 2:14 pm

it's a widescreen screenshot. the gui is now aligned to the left side of the screen

posted on August 5th, 2009, 11:36 pm

In a 2D RTS game i played called AI war it had about 20 ship types and each ship would say something like:
Strong versus: Bombers +48% Fighters +99%  Anti-Armor +82%
Weak versus: Tanks -67% Autocannon -32% Cruisers -99%

So maybe we could see something like:

Weapon Type: Artillery
Strong versus:
* Battleships: 5
* Stations: 8
Weak versus:
* Destroyers: 4
(for say the Steamrunner)
You could have that on a per-ship or per-weapon basis i guess...

posted on August 6th, 2009, 12:20 am

I think something like that would be quite misleading in Fleet Operations though... I mean, just look at the examples I used before. Can you really say that a Hyperspace Artillery is ultra effective against Destroyers? However, what happens if you combine it with the IS bomb from a Dominion troop transport...no movement = dead destroyers