from my days playing wing commander 2... i think one of the ships had a rear defensive cannon which could be manually controlled or computer controlled. if this cannon was implemented in vendetta, it should have 1 / 10 damage of weakest laser, but the ability to fire somewhat rapidly (not as quickly as ion cannons). just enough to encourage somebody to get off of your tail.

Hmmm.... I suppose it would be ok to have a weak defensive turret mountable on a heavy (or 'future 3.2+ ship with heavy-like characteristics') in preference to say the lightning mine slot, but I really think that turrets ought to be limited to the really large ships that really need them. There isn't alot of reason that a ship larger, slower, and less manueverable than a heavy shouldn't have a rear firing blue laser/ion. It is going to need it to survive.

I would agree. I don't see the combat heavies being to able to avoid too many heeters and homing missles and rockets. They will need to be able to compensate with serious firepower/strategically placed firepower like rear cannons and turrets etc.... maybe even a low powered tracking turret. Well at least the capital ships will need stuff like this certainly. But thats a whole nother story!

Someone give me a turret to man!

How about a charging anti-projectile laser? It uses half of your energy reserves, but auto-aims and destroys an incoming rocket or laser.

Just give us targetable and laser-destroyable warheads. I would be 100%25 better if I could use my X-Wing tactics and blast incoming rockets out of the sky! Plus, that way we could target the warhead and have one of these "turrets" destroy it.

that kind of reminds me of another thing they had in mtrek. you could set the phasers on narrow (for more damage) or wide (less damage, less accuracy needed to hit target). if you want to shoot down missiles, then you could use a "wide setting" on your lasers/ ion cannon and shoot down missiles. hitting another ship with this setting would only damage it very lightly.

I really liked mtrek, but certain things just aren't going to translate well between text and 3D visual.

Mtrek was itself heavily influenced by SFB. SFB is a pen and paper game in which hitting _can't_ be resolved by reflex and has to be resolved by a dice roll. With mtrek, you could practically hear the dice rolling in the underlying engine.

I was heavily involved in beta testing SFC, which was kinda like mtrek with sprites, and was more or less a direct conversion of SFB to a video game. There are enormous ammounts of things that change just with converting a turn based system - even one that very closely emmulates real time - into a real time system. I was personally disappointed with the direction the developers decided to take with SFC, but I understand the hard compremises that they had to make.

You simply can't expect the developers to recreate mtrek. You can't even expect them to translate mtrek into a video game with graphics. For one thing, that's been done. For another, SFC was maybe the most successful Star Trek title ever, but that isn't saying alot. It still wasn't a stunning success. And finally, there is a game coming out on the market soon which is a MMORPG in which you can hear the dice rolling in the game engine as you play. Those sort of games have never been the most popular style of space shoot 'em up. Vendetta is I think on much safer ground if it can successfully bill itself as having the gameplay of X-Wing/Wing Commander/Descent.

my intention is to suggest things from other games that i think that might work here. yes, ultimately many of these ideas will never make it into vendetta, but i'd rather suggest something that gets rejected than not suggest it at all. i'd also like to see what other developers and players think of these ideas. i think other people have taken my ideas and refined them into things that do have the possibility of working with vendetta. i'm just throwing ideas out for the developers in the possibilty that they might not have thought of these yet.

Idea, a turret that holds 100 missles, very very small and weak missles, it automatically targets other missles and strikes them down along with rockets, the rocket/missle and mini missle automatically explode, it fires pretty quickly and can be taken over to shoot at fighters.

A good idea would be to have rear View at least.

WM.

I want a combination of a rear-facing Yamato cannon (Wave motion gun) and a super-turbo thruster.

Blow up planets AND flee at 6x the speed off light all at the same time! w00t!

slappyknappy: thats why they need to have capital ships! haha

This would be cool, and so would a rear-facing view.

I remember playing the standup console arcade game "Tailgunner". That rocked.

Whoops, dated myself again...

Tailgunner is not THAT old...

This thread on the other hand...

I think we may have a new record: This thread died 2 years and 11 months ago... Bandon just deprived it of it's three-year anniversary.


'tis a cool idea though still... a rear-facing version of the GC or something (with significantly less power and less energy requirement) would fill the role nicely.

and a rear-view toggle would be cool... in fact, so would side-views and the like - I want to play VO on 4 screens!

Remeber the rapier figher in EV:Classic? That ship is comparable to the Hornet; they are both used commonly as bombers, and they are clumsy beyond belief. The main difference, however, is that the Rapier compensates for this disadvantage by emplying a weak, rear-firing laser turret to protect its flank.

I certainly wouldn't mind having a GovGun(tm) or TPG Sparrow turret affixed to my Hornet's rear, however weak it may be. While not very useful against players, it would prove invaluable when botting--fending off those pesky collectors who insist on attacking from behind. If having a gunner is ever implemented, this would be even better.

just one little nit, the "flanks" of a vessel are its sides. A rear turret would protect the back.

Give the Hornet, Centaur, and Rag a single rear turret that runs on a separate, but low capacity battery. This turret is customizable like forward weapons, and can take any small gun (no missiles or rockets), but only has an energy capacity of 100 and recharges at 40/s.

So to sustain long bursts of fire from the rear turret, low-level guns would be best because of their low energy requirements. For more powerful guns like the neutron, it can't sustain maximum rate of fire for nearly as long, and for the gauss, it can only shoot, what, twice before running out of power?

EV:Classic, wtf. It's EV, period!

As for the Rapier's rear-arc turret, it covered a 90 degree angle, the bisector collinear with the ship's longitudinal axis. So a rear-firing agt wouldn't be too far off, auto-targeting-wise. The Rapier was the first rocket-rammer, by the way.

Other than that, CP's projected setup sounds about right. Maybe you get a better battery with 50 rear gun kills, that recharges at a slightly faster rate, say, 45, and has 125 or 150 energy instead of 100.

If you ever want to make homing missles that try to intercept acutal missles then you can make give these missle stats so probablity is base on how the ships are moving and the missles stats
ex.

des missle
launch angle: 45 degrees
angle variation: 30 degrees
thruster: 40N
reload:.2s
mass: 400kg
ammo: 25
missle mass:15kg
missle length: 1m
velocity:0-180
reaction distance: 100m
life: 8s

angle variation is how far the thrusters can turn from the center but at any direction. (l is the rocket, l is the thrusters.) Reaction distance is the distance at which the enemy missle is detectable and the des missle will then launch
The computer also take into account the best initial velocity.

Then you take into account how the enemy missle is moving and the initial momentum of the des missle. The computer will determine the best path to hit the enemy missle.

If you shoot a missle at someone straight at their des missle launcher then there is almost no chance of you missle hitting. What you will try to do is fire so that the des missle has no chance of hitting because of the angle from the counter missle launcher and both missles initial momentum.

The actual numbers of the missles need to be determined.

CP, I stand correctted about the flank bit--but I don't think many people really care. Otherwise you pretty much hit the nail on the head with a hammer.

tosh, I said EV:Classic so nobody would get confused with the EVO or EVN. Yes, there are people so dim as to not realize that there are 3 EV's, I just want to clarify. Oh, and your 'rear kill badge' sounds cool too.