The Next Generation

posted on December 13th, 2011, 8:17 pm

Not very polite to get a massive news update and then ask for more! More info will be released when it's released, as will the patch.

I'm assuming this applies to my question about the screenshot as well. No disrespect intended from my part, simply interested how they solved the problem of the potential information overload.

posted on December 13th, 2011, 9:09 pm

Am I the only guy who thinks, that these "features" are stupid. I'll explain why:

OFFENSE:

You just killed an interesting mechanic here, which was that each of the ships behaves a bit differently even if two are the same sized ships of the same class. Also lightly armored but heavy ships like defiant will be useless now, cause defiant when attacked only takes as much damage as a medium cruiser. Till now the side and speed were hiss allies, it was hard to target and  shot will often miss him. But if what you say is true, every torpedo and pulse will now hit him, cause he is labeled a battleship and size no longer counts.

DEFENSE:

The first thing they teach you in army. Hit them where it hurts the most. This does not mean attack the sovereign cause it will take 5 minutes of concentrated fleet fire  to break thought it's shield, while the rest of his fleet can steadily reduce your firepower by targeting small, weaker hips. This feature us stupid if you ask me. Also another thing will happen now. Till now  fleet battles were dynamic, moving, cause the ships usually knew what to target and you were always trying make you opponents micro harder and get out of his firing arc. Now ships will stop, cause we all know, that if you click on an enemy ship your fleet stops and then starts moving again and with this new mechanic you are basically forcing us to do this.

Support:

I like the passive effect, but splitting you fleet's fire to attack note than one target.. well why go for that one sovereign when we can attack all at one, adding another 60 minute to the time it takes to actually kill a ship.

I am looking forward to  faction remakes, but above feels more like a step back then forward...

posted on December 13th, 2011, 9:35 pm

i think you might have misread some things.

eg i don't think they are removing ship sizes and weapon dodge chances from the game.

posted on December 13th, 2011, 9:36 pm

Oman I looking forwatd on it
this sound awesome

posted on December 13th, 2011, 9:44 pm

Now ships will stop, cause we all know, that if you click on an enemy ship your fleet stops and then starts moving again and with this new mechanic you are basically forcing us to do this.

This is called Micro-management

The stop-problem will be fixed someday, it's not the desired way of ordering ships to attack but was there since Stock A2.

posted on December 13th, 2011, 10:40 pm

Indeed, we are not removing miss rates - we are just changing the system to be much less memorizing-intensive. Battleship, cruiser, destroyer etc designations are quite opaque and not very conducive to quick comparisons.

The stop-start behavior is even there in A1  . In any case, it's not quite sure how you'd want that fundamental behavior to change - it's not actually that you give an attack order and the fleet stops out of the blue, what happens is that if you give an attack order, the fleet decides to wait until its component ships reach their maximum range. Ship AI is such that the vessels want to engage at their maximum range when given an attack order. If the ships are out of range, they will not stop moving - but because they are beyond maximum range. That's the same in most RTS - units engage at maximum range and when given a direct order to attack, will stop and engage at that range.

The trick therefore is to create a move+attack order (where it keeps its movement bearing and allows you to attack targets of your choosing)

posted on December 13th, 2011, 10:44 pm

The trick therefore is to create a move+attack order (where it keeps its movement bearing and allows you to attack targets of your choosing)

hmmm, is this a subtle hint that you've accomplished this? cos that would be awesome.

posted on December 14th, 2011, 12:02 am

Nope, I didn't mean it to come off like that  . Craft movement in Fleet Ops is relatively untouched, though there are subtle improvements - this is a very difficult part of the engine to change, as it is rather complex.

posted on December 14th, 2011, 12:06 am

I still want attack patterns!!!! I sooo wish they could make this happen..even though it probably won't...but this is a good step forward for this..

posted on December 14th, 2011, 12:26 am

I hope this will erase some problems with ships being countered by ships they are designed to counter(like the B'rel against... most things).
Am I getting it right that we'll be left with only 3values that matter for a ship? Class(off/def/supp), size and range?
Thats cool, I guess it'll bring some more interesting passives as well. What about hidden values of weapons, like Disruptors?

posted on December 14th, 2011, 1:10 am

Will there be extra miss chance for pulses and torpedoes on moving ships vs static ships?  I'd like for more movement to equal longer survival times, especially for the smaller ships, but maybe not as much for larger ships.

posted on December 14th, 2011, 1:15 am

Honestly when I first saw the title of this post, I thought galaxy class, and you know where my mind went from there.....

However that actually does bring me to a relevant question.  We know that the "race redos" are happening and now we see that some of the "classifications" of ships and how they interact are being modified.  my question is, can you tell us on a broader scale what does this next patch (or patches) change.  What I mean by that is the scope, so is this going to be game-play mechanics, lots of new ship models, ship reclassification, etc.  What part of the races are being redone?  What is the goal?

posted on December 14th, 2011, 2:27 am

About the targeting discussion, I totally agree.  One good example was the MechCommander games, where a unit's attack and move orders were separate and it would continue to attack its target as you microed it around.  If it came to a halt, there was a Hold Position command that determined whether it would start moving on its own or not.  I found that I used that command a LOT, but with it hotkeyed it was never annoying.

The rules I would like to see are relatively simple: when you give a ship a target it will continue to fire upon that target as you move it around.  The difference comes when the target is about to leave its range: depending on its AI settings it will either ignore the lost target and select a new one, or it will pursue the target as soon as it has no movement orders, or it will cancel its movement orders and pursue (only if the target was player-chosen, not for automatic targets).  In any case a ship will drop its target anytime it leaves your vision or if you use the Stop command.

As for fleet formations, I'm really not fond of them.  Formation ships can wander into nebulas or spread out so far they waste some of their damage.  You can keep the part where fleet move orders land in different patterns, but I don't think we need them to follow any pattern while moving, it just slows them down.

posted on December 14th, 2011, 4:56 am

I support awesome announcements after eons of ominous silence.

posted on December 14th, 2011, 6:00 am

Indeed, we are not removing miss rates - we are just changing the system to be much less memorizing-intensive. Battleship, cruiser, destroyer etc designations are quite opaque and not very conducive to quick comparisons.

Then what are you removing... what other invisible passives were there.