The Next Generation

posted on December 14th, 2011, 4:12 pm

I have concerns about auto targeting the strongest ships first, what about slow moving feds or any slow moving fleets they auto target the largest ship oh no time to retreat the largest ship that they still have auto targeted is now out of range but they wont just switch fire to the next ship they will just run but NOT FIRE and little ships will tear them apart. Seen it a million times in the current patch.

Its happened so many times in this patch where a sphere is flee'ing a fleet of b5s, the b5s are well out of range but the sphere still has them on auto target and is being annihilated by the dam fighters that it wont target. If this isn't addressed in this patch the game will become more dead than in the current patch because its horrible to sit there helplessly, bare in mind you click attack on the ship and you have just STOPPED MOVING and the ships your trying to run from can now hit you again.

Now with those changes you'll get that dam b5 fighter effect with briels this time, a vorcha (tanking) will be just out of range but your ships will still have it in memory to target it and even tho its out of range they wont switch untill it gets to a certain distance maybe artillery range i think it finally changes, so instead of weak fighters you got a fleet of briels chewing the crap out of a fleeing fleet without even being fired on. Remember again you click fire on those briels oh no you just stoped-turned and are now about to get raped again.

Something like a double click needs to be brought in to address that if it cant then i don't see how this can work, hopefully iv made sense here but im really tired right now.

posted on December 14th, 2011, 5:11 pm

High movement-autonomy and the ships will go into it. Also, its a part of you micro-management to set you ships "over" the enemy ships. Still, if would be better if you ships will fly near to the enemy if they are shourt ranged, fly "near" ti it if they are medium ranged and will try to stay at the borderline of fire-range, if they are long-ranged. Remember that you dont want your long-range ship be near a short range ship, because you want to use your tactical advantage. If the enemy then just steps out of the range, you are barely in, then you have to follow. Its a little more behind it than just "ram it"!

posted on December 14th, 2011, 5:14 pm

i don't think it's gonna be target the strongest ship, only ships that have the defensive profile, there could be currently large ships without that profile.

the monsoon is currently small but will be a defensive ship so will get shot first.

i wonder how passives will work with this.

posted on December 14th, 2011, 6:37 pm

i don't think it's gonna be target the strongest ship, only ships that have the defensive profile, there could be currently large ships without that profile.

the monsoon is currently small but will be a defensive ship so will get shot first.

i wonder how passives will work with this.

By strongest ship i was speaking of higher def ships, vorcha as my example has higher def than briels.

High movement-autonomy and the ships will go into it. Also, its a part of you micro-management to set you ships "over" the enemy ships. Still, if would be better if you ships will fly near to the enemy if they are shourt ranged, fly "near" ti it if they are medium ranged and will try to stay at the borderline of fire-range, if they are long-ranged. Remember that you dont want your long-range ship be near a short range ship, because you want to use your tactical advantage. If the enemy then just steps out of the range, you are barely in, then you have to follow. Its a little more behind it than just "ram it"!

Any movement autonomy and your ships will turn and attack iv been playing alot longer than you so know exactly how the ships will react to such orders and i know exactly how to micro manage multiple fleets.

You didn't address my point of view at all i wonder if that was even directed as a response to my post because it didn't seem relevant. Slow fed and dom ships will become cannon fodder when its time for their fleets to fall back , simply slow higher def ships that have been targetted and follow just out of range and kill the fleeing enemy fleet with small ships and not get fired on even once this seems balanced to you? they wont switch targets from the ship that has been autotargetted unless it goes WAY out of the battlezone so any smaller ships that should be easy to fight off will eat up those expensive larger ships because if you want to target them you have to manually click them and when you do that your ships stop and turn which is bad because your running for a reason.

Roms and klingons can cloak and flee fed and dom and even borg have to run away....useless if they cant fire a shot without stopping.

posted on December 14th, 2011, 7:15 pm

While it's true that ships sometimes refuse to switch to new targets, that's more of an engine issue and I don't think it'll get much worse with this.

Keep in mind, the ships themselves will still be balanced by race: I wouldn't be surprised if the cloaking races get very few defensive ships.  Also, since the offense of attack ships is increasing and the defense of defense ships is increasing, effectively that means the defense of attack ships will be lower.  I'm really curious to see if the Vorcha becomes a defensive vessel: if it does, it'll probably see a big reduction in stats because like you said, it could be ridiculously powerful when combined with small attack ships.

Even now, you can tap s and re-order your ship to refresh its targeting, if you do it fast enough your ship won't even slow down.  Yes it's annoying but I don't think it's as big an issue as you're saying.

...by the way, Myles has been around for many years, longer than I have.  If nothing else his post count should have tipped you off.  So... the seniority argument doesn't really apply.

posted on December 14th, 2011, 7:24 pm

Ships no longer fail to auto-acquire close targets once a target moves out of weapon range nor will they auto-acquire ships with more base hitpoints - All Defensive Profile units are weighted equally, and all other military units are weighted equally (though they won't be auto-acquired before a Defensive Profile unit).

posted on December 14th, 2011, 7:46 pm

Ships no longer fail to auto-acquire close targets once a target moves out of weapon range nor will they auto-acquire ships with more base hitpoints - All Defensive Profile units are weighted equally, and all other military units are weighted equally (though they won't be auto-acquired before a Defensive Profile unit).

Okay THAT is awesome.  I can't wait!

posted on December 14th, 2011, 8:12 pm

Ships no longer fail to auto-acquire close targets once a target moves out of weapon range nor will they auto-acquire ships with more base hitpoints - All Defensive Profile units are weighted equally, and all other military units are weighted equally (though they won't be auto-acquired before a Defensive Profile unit).

I look forward to seeing exactly how this works but the idea of making big ships a first target seems silly to me what kind of loony captain says right fire some ineffective shots at a big ship instead of shooting and destroying a small one. :guns:

For Romulans especially i see this as a problem, big d gets hit a few times since for some reason it gets auto targeted as having the biggest def stats 2 second cloak.... your fleet achieved nothing and is still getting shot up by small ships... yes micro comes into play but this game is about managing alot of different things at 1 time now the devs are adding something that's going to force you not to take your eyes off your fleet for a second.

Even to line up replacement miners is going to be a problem right now you can do that since you know that your fleet is still going to be effective in the 5 seconds it take to click your starbase and click a few miners, with the potential new patch they will target a small ship on your order and upon destruction waste time shooting at a bigger ship. Chasing a cube will be hell as well if it has any cannon fodder ships escorting it like s2 and if you click to target an S2 your ships will stop moving forward, oh and then the cube outruns you and regens well gg.

posted on December 14th, 2011, 8:23 pm

I look forward to seeing exactly how this works but the idea of making big ships a first target seems silly to me what kind of loony captain says right fire some ineffective shots at a big ship instead of shooting and destroying a small one. :guns:

Making big ships a first target? Not all the defensive-profile-ships that come into mind are big. The K'beajQ for example is rather small...
I assume the feature of def-profilers being auto-targeted is meant to show that these vessels actively attempt to draw fire, which is avoided by proper micro-management.

posted on December 14th, 2011, 8:29 pm

Somewhere in the line particular line understood
that the enemy will try to circumvent your strategy
Is this correct?

posted on December 14th, 2011, 10:07 pm

well if we will have new ships , rearranged tech tree , ships with new stats, and a new combat system ,perhaps more changes then i dont think we can make much of any protest about our concerns because we have no way to validate them , as we have not played the new patch yet ........along with the fact that optec has only made 1 news post. so its silly to say  big ships will take to long to kill , or now my slow ships will never make it back to my base , and to top it off ,to say such things is also a circular argument as if there is any problems that may come up in the new combat system your opponent will also have the same problem. if all players have the problem then its not a problem its just a new factor a player must take into account when they play the game.

[kainalu]

posted on December 14th, 2011, 11:28 pm

Last edited by kainalu on December 14th, 2011, 11:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

With all due respect to the community, and the players that have seniority here...

You guys haven't even played yet. We haven't tested the mechanics, or the new def/off profiles. We haven't even seen a video of the game play yet ( at least in my case )

Why are we all bitching about how awful this is going to be? We don't know any more than Optec, Doca, and Dom have told us. We can interpret what has been said many different ways, but we know in the past that balance and fun have been major points for the developers. Why can't we just assume that it will continue to be? 

I for one can't wait to see the new evolution of FO gameplay. It looks like it will remove some of the fog that covers the mechanics of the game. As it is, I refuse to look up ships in counters tables to see how to best splode it. Maybe with the new mechanics the game will be more self-explanatory in that aspect.

Speaking of video :

MAY WE SEE A PREVIEW CLIP?? 

posted on December 14th, 2011, 11:35 pm

well said kainalu

posted on December 15th, 2011, 12:01 am

As requested, here are some early dev tooltips. If you hover a unit, its profile is displayed along with the attributes for quick reference. We will probably also add markings for the important profiles on the construction buttons, so you can easily see what ships you have available for construction.


If you hover the ship in the subsystem display, you will get a detailed analysis, including the native properties a profile provides


Please bear in mind that these are early development screenshots and the actual layout may change Yet a strong aim of all these redos is to make the game more accessible, by summarizing important game mechanics for quick reference.

That's nice indeed.

I have one question though: Will the Sovereign now be a defensive-profile vessel or an allround-profile vessel?
The latter one would actually suit the Sovereign better in my view, because even with strong hull and shields at least the torpedoes used to be quite powerful, too... to me it's neither offensive or defensive in a specialization-kinda way...

posted on December 15th, 2011, 12:06 am

I agree with kainalu, a reason I haven't be active in this thread just reading and watching. I don't play FO anymore due to how hard it is for me (in terms mainly to remembering what is best against what) and what what Dom and Optec has said looks like it's going to be a lot easier now. I think this is a step in the right direction while the majority of players don't have a problem with the things I do, isn't one of the main issues with FO online is the lack of new players many come and play a few times then don't come back due to how difficult it can be to start with.

Well said kainalu I think everyone should just wait and see what it's like when it's released. In either case this is what happening and everyone including me will just have to get used to it. The Dev's aren't going to throw away months of work just because some don't like it. People always have the option not to play the latest version, run two installs or make a mod for the new one, using the 3.2.6 content instead.

I'll probably get my head blown off here, as I've come to expect on this site, but it's my opinion and feelings on the situation.