Forums » Suggestions
1. I'm all for making turrets larger, but making them as large as a moth, or larger, would be ridiculously big.
2. I don't really see the point in having station turrets, apart from being able to man them from inside the station like in a capship. Placing regular turrets in close proximity to the station would be dumb, since the turrets would end up shooting the station if a target is on the opposite side of the station as the turret. Rather, the turrets should be mounted directly on the station (like capship turrets), but even then, you'd need more of them to cover the same area as freestanding turrets.
3. Flares are a horrible choice of weapon as their speed is dependent on the speed of the ship they are fired from. Why not create a new projectile entirely, with stats chosen to fit its intended purpose? I would understand reusing art assets as a means to save time.
2. I don't really see the point in having station turrets, apart from being able to man them from inside the station like in a capship. Placing regular turrets in close proximity to the station would be dumb, since the turrets would end up shooting the station if a target is on the opposite side of the station as the turret. Rather, the turrets should be mounted directly on the station (like capship turrets), but even then, you'd need more of them to cover the same area as freestanding turrets.
3. Flares are a horrible choice of weapon as their speed is dependent on the speed of the ship they are fired from. Why not create a new projectile entirely, with stats chosen to fit its intended purpose? I would understand reusing art assets as a means to save time.
Wouldn't a "flak"- style weapon create a lot of network overhead as well?
No, it keeps the number of object adds pretty close to the present, and localizes much of it to the client.
For Flak weapon, we already have the perfect gun: Flares. Just add sunflares or jackhammers to a turret mount and make all them explode at max reach (~1200m). Dumb fire, prox fuse, blast radius... all check, just "also add a 15sec timer fuse".
No, I'm not setting a specified range where they will explode. That would be too trivial to avoid. The whole point is triggering on proximity to the target.
Multi-threaded AI. Smart enough to distribute fire against more than one enemy at once.
None of this has anything to do with threading, or multi-threading, or anything related. But, yes, we can tweak some of the blackboard numbers, or even just the hard limit of how many turrets are allocated per target.
I don't really see the point in having station turrets, apart from being able to man them from inside the station like in a capship.
If we stick them on the station, that requires a great many turrets to cover even a majority of the defensive positions, and will make the turrets much less effective. Then you get back to a firing-rate discussion, which is the core problem. This also adds a lot of work, in terms of placing the turrets and changing their re-spawn behaviour. Work is time.
Flares are a horrible choice of weapon as their speed is dependent on the speed of the ship they are fired from.
Yes, they won't be flares. In fact, they'll be closer to the current turret-gauss, most likely, with a prox range and area effect on detonation.
No, it keeps the number of object adds pretty close to the present, and localizes much of it to the client.
For Flak weapon, we already have the perfect gun: Flares. Just add sunflares or jackhammers to a turret mount and make all them explode at max reach (~1200m). Dumb fire, prox fuse, blast radius... all check, just "also add a 15sec timer fuse".
No, I'm not setting a specified range where they will explode. That would be too trivial to avoid. The whole point is triggering on proximity to the target.
Multi-threaded AI. Smart enough to distribute fire against more than one enemy at once.
None of this has anything to do with threading, or multi-threading, or anything related. But, yes, we can tweak some of the blackboard numbers, or even just the hard limit of how many turrets are allocated per target.
I don't really see the point in having station turrets, apart from being able to man them from inside the station like in a capship.
If we stick them on the station, that requires a great many turrets to cover even a majority of the defensive positions, and will make the turrets much less effective. Then you get back to a firing-rate discussion, which is the core problem. This also adds a lot of work, in terms of placing the turrets and changing their re-spawn behaviour. Work is time.
Flares are a horrible choice of weapon as their speed is dependent on the speed of the ship they are fired from.
Yes, they won't be flares. In fact, they'll be closer to the current turret-gauss, most likely, with a prox range and area effect on detonation.
Inc I hope you know that wasn't meant as a personal jab, I realize that only so much is possible. It is a shame it's not feasable to do the teredon like defenses, because that is really cool, and plenty scary the first time you see it.
As for flak, that sounds pretty cool.
I assume everybody is familiar with how untargeted swarms fly, kinda a scatter shot pattern, Is there anyway that could be used on turrets, just having them all fly at once on a random 0-30 minute of angle off set from center? That would help give them a longer effective range, and a detestation punch up close.
As for flak, that sounds pretty cool.
I assume everybody is familiar with how untargeted swarms fly, kinda a scatter shot pattern, Is there anyway that could be used on turrets, just having them all fly at once on a random 0-30 minute of angle off set from center? That would help give them a longer effective range, and a detestation punch up close.
I assume everybody is familiar with how untargeted swarms fly, kinda a scatter shot pattern, Is there anyway that could be used on turrets, just having them all fly at once on a random 0-30 minute of angle off set from center? That would help give them a longer effective range, and a detestation punch up close.
That would be a non-trivial amount of custom functionality to do that, because each bot (turret) is authoritative for its own aiming, and it would only be useful against a single target. I would rather spend the time on something that's more broadly applicable.
That would be a non-trivial amount of custom functionality to do that, because each bot (turret) is authoritative for its own aiming, and it would only be useful against a single target. I would rather spend the time on something that's more broadly applicable.
Sounds like what the Concussion Railgun should be. Any chance we could see an upgrade/buff on that once this flak-style gun gets put in? :)
2. I'm ok with no turrets in stations, I know this is an entirely new feature, and a complex one. But deserved one for future station redux. Really, stations are too small now for housing turrets. But every dock should have a pair of turrets guarding it... some day, soon(TM).
3. Inc, it is not a timer fuse instead of a prox fuse. Flaks must have both proximity and timer fuses, for area suppression and efficiency... Flares already have prox fuse, but they simply vanishes in its end-of-life. Instead, make them explode to form a "defensive wall". The remaining stats works fine as flaks, maybe just make them faster, to compensate being launched from stationary plataform.
4. maybe I chose a bad word. You got the concept, engage more targets at once., split fire.
3. Inc, it is not a timer fuse instead of a prox fuse. Flaks must have both proximity and timer fuses, for area suppression and efficiency... Flares already have prox fuse, but they simply vanishes in its end-of-life. Instead, make them explode to form a "defensive wall". The remaining stats works fine as flaks, maybe just make them faster, to compensate being launched from stationary plataform.
4. maybe I chose a bad word. You got the concept, engage more targets at once., split fire.
what ^this guy said, all of it. +1
Alloh, I don't think he's planning on giving them enough rate of fire to form a defensive wall. So it doesn't really matter whether they explode at the end of their life.
Not that I'm opposed to having ordinance explode rather than fizzle out. Better to go out with a bang, I say.
Not that I'm opposed to having ordinance explode rather than fizzle out. Better to go out with a bang, I say.
some kind of stealthy stationary aerna seeker would be cool, just flys out picks a spot and parks being invisible to sensors, maybe half as powerful though.
some kind of stealthy stationary aerna seeker would be cool, just flys out picks a spot and parks being invisible to sensors, maybe half as powerful though.
+1, good idea.
But to be honest, all suggestions mentioned in this thread are useless until stations will become at least destroyable and/or even lootable.
+1, good idea.
But to be honest, all suggestions mentioned in this thread are useless until stations will become at least destroyable and/or even lootable.
Why does any of this hinge on station destruction? I would think the quality of automatic defenses would have a pretty big impact just on people conquering them.
You really have no idea what goes on in your own game, do you Inc?
Most people who would want access to a station for its productive capabilities/limitless free repairs already have unfettered access because anyone who's a non-pirate gets a key like candy. Thus, no motivation to conquer or give a shit whether you finally get the turrets right.
Those of us who might actually want to take down a station, because we're in the relatively small group of non-carebears, have no interest in access for manufacturing missions. We either want to loot goodies from it, or destroy the work of others who didn't want to pay to avoid that happening.
Most people who would want access to a station for its productive capabilities/limitless free repairs already have unfettered access because anyone who's a non-pirate gets a key like candy. Thus, no motivation to conquer or give a shit whether you finally get the turrets right.
Those of us who might actually want to take down a station, because we're in the relatively small group of non-carebears, have no interest in access for manufacturing missions. We either want to loot goodies from it, or destroy the work of others who didn't want to pay to avoid that happening.
No, I'm well aware that most people choose to avoid conquest at the present time, and simply share keys, and that conquest itself is sporadic. Better defenses will probably only make that more common. If that's the uselessness pirren is referring to, and his comment about "destruction" only bears on that situation, then forget I asked. I thought there might be some fundamental design point relating a need for "destruction" to the defenses discussed above, some aspect I hadn't considered.
I'm not interested in very specific cases to improve a little 3-station testbed. If I come up with a good general-case defense solution for turrets, it'll be used everywhere. Conquering stations in Deneb warfare, user-created stations, nation borders, dynamically spawned group-PvE targets ("attack this pirate den"), whatever. So, no, I don't limit the applications of this discussion exclusively to some specific current situaion, and I don't make the assumption that all other ideas and posts come from that point of view either.
I'm not interested in very specific cases to improve a little 3-station testbed. If I come up with a good general-case defense solution for turrets, it'll be used everywhere. Conquering stations in Deneb warfare, user-created stations, nation borders, dynamically spawned group-PvE targets ("attack this pirate den"), whatever. So, no, I don't limit the applications of this discussion exclusively to some specific current situaion, and I don't make the assumption that all other ideas and posts come from that point of view either.
Yeah, the fact that nobody's interested in conquering your conquerable stations is definitely not a fundamental design point worthy of your valuable time. Forget we mentioned it (along with the economy, faction system, lack of content, lack of functioning content, and about a dozen other things)--you can get back to focusing on mining on phones now.
P.S. Nobody's asking for "better" defenses in the sense that they need to be more effective; what they need to be is more skill based and less mass numbers based. Not that you care, as evidenced by your post. Back to those phones, Inc!
P.S. Nobody's asking for "better" defenses in the sense that they need to be more effective; what they need to be is more skill based and less mass numbers based. Not that you care, as evidenced by your post. Back to those phones, Inc!
(back on topic a bit here..)
Any chances that future revisions of NPC guards and turrets will respect fog/ion storm visibility and asteroids? At the moment, they can target you with missile locks long before you ever come within visibility range to fire yours.
Any chances that future revisions of NPC guards and turrets will respect fog/ion storm visibility and asteroids? At the moment, they can target you with missile locks long before you ever come within visibility range to fire yours.
P.S. Nobody's asking for "better" defenses in the sense that they need to be more effective; what they need to be is more skill based and less mass numbers based. Not that you care, as evidenced by your post. Back to those phones, Inc!
Uh huh. You're more interested in being bitter than reading my participation in the thread for what it is: an avid interest in making station defenses something more interesting and skill driven with less of a dependency on semi-cheating homing missiles. Finding a technically feasible balance of "challenging" without being "lame" or only being playable by 2% of the game population on ultra low ping connections.. that's a pretty pivotally useful grail for this game, and if I can get it right somewhere, it will be broadly applicable to a great many gameplay cases. PvE, PvP, pirates, anti-pirates, conquest of territory, whatever.
The point of the three stations is to provide feedback on what works and doesn't work for when conquerable locations become more common. Yes, of course I'll utilize what we've learned from that experiment, when we expand that; I'm very aware of the lack of conflict, and clearly there needs to be more and better mechanics, and it may merit tweaking it in the meantime.. but that's getting pretty far afield from the design of defensive turrets. I also don't need to be told that changing the turrets on borders will have an impact on crossings, or changing turrets in capitols could impact newbies, or if I equip the Leviathan with similar weapons, that'll change hive interactions. There are lots of secondary effects (or lacks-of-effect) that are not the topic at hand. Just because I don't see a lot of point in meandering down the garden path, within this discussion, doesn't make me as ignorant of what's going on in the game as you might like to believe.
If you want to discuss some other subject, like other mechanics to improve the value of conquest to different player archetypes, then start a different thread. Within the context of this thread, no I don't particularly care about tangential station mechanics, and yes I am interested in getting the most "bang" for my development buck (broadest applicability of a given implemented feature), and I can probably get a lot of mileage out of a more-fun defense implementation. I'd also like to improve station conquest situations, but that is not what we're here to discuss right now.
Any chances that future revisions of NPC guards and turrets will respect fog/ion storm visibility and asteroids? At the moment, they can target you with missile locks long before you ever come within visibility range to fire yours.
Yes. There is no question that most normal non-turret NPCs should be affected by fog and radar limitations (there are some technical caveats to making them identical to user limitations, but that's another discussion). Turrets and NPCs around a station, on the other hand, one could make the assumption that they have shared radar and benefit from a very powerful station-based sensor array. Maybe we could set their "vision" limits to be similar to those of a fully storm-extended Trident or some such (which would still be much shorter than their current vision). There might be some kind of sensor-extension / sensor-stealth solution in there too.
Also, it is my hope (although no guarantees) that if we're able to produce an effective "flak" type weapon that's interesting and challenging without being insane, we may be able to reduce or eliminate the use of missiles. That might help somewhat in fog, but I imagine having flak weapons suddenly start exploding around you won't be a lot more comfortable.
Anyway, the fog-case is kind of specific, and merits further work, but is still a bit afield from the original discussion of fundamental defense effectiveness. Basically, so much could change from the implementation of a new weapon type, that it makes it difficult to predict what we might/might-not do in secondary situations like fog. Upshot from a philosophical perspective: I would prefer to have challenging and interesting defenses, without being cheat-y, whether in fog or not.
Uh huh. You're more interested in being bitter than reading my participation in the thread for what it is: an avid interest in making station defenses something more interesting and skill driven with less of a dependency on semi-cheating homing missiles. Finding a technically feasible balance of "challenging" without being "lame" or only being playable by 2% of the game population on ultra low ping connections.. that's a pretty pivotally useful grail for this game, and if I can get it right somewhere, it will be broadly applicable to a great many gameplay cases. PvE, PvP, pirates, anti-pirates, conquest of territory, whatever.
The point of the three stations is to provide feedback on what works and doesn't work for when conquerable locations become more common. Yes, of course I'll utilize what we've learned from that experiment, when we expand that; I'm very aware of the lack of conflict, and clearly there needs to be more and better mechanics, and it may merit tweaking it in the meantime.. but that's getting pretty far afield from the design of defensive turrets. I also don't need to be told that changing the turrets on borders will have an impact on crossings, or changing turrets in capitols could impact newbies, or if I equip the Leviathan with similar weapons, that'll change hive interactions. There are lots of secondary effects (or lacks-of-effect) that are not the topic at hand. Just because I don't see a lot of point in meandering down the garden path, within this discussion, doesn't make me as ignorant of what's going on in the game as you might like to believe.
If you want to discuss some other subject, like other mechanics to improve the value of conquest to different player archetypes, then start a different thread. Within the context of this thread, no I don't particularly care about tangential station mechanics, and yes I am interested in getting the most "bang" for my development buck (broadest applicability of a given implemented feature), and I can probably get a lot of mileage out of a more-fun defense implementation. I'd also like to improve station conquest situations, but that is not what we're here to discuss right now.
Any chances that future revisions of NPC guards and turrets will respect fog/ion storm visibility and asteroids? At the moment, they can target you with missile locks long before you ever come within visibility range to fire yours.
Yes. There is no question that most normal non-turret NPCs should be affected by fog and radar limitations (there are some technical caveats to making them identical to user limitations, but that's another discussion). Turrets and NPCs around a station, on the other hand, one could make the assumption that they have shared radar and benefit from a very powerful station-based sensor array. Maybe we could set their "vision" limits to be similar to those of a fully storm-extended Trident or some such (which would still be much shorter than their current vision). There might be some kind of sensor-extension / sensor-stealth solution in there too.
Also, it is my hope (although no guarantees) that if we're able to produce an effective "flak" type weapon that's interesting and challenging without being insane, we may be able to reduce or eliminate the use of missiles. That might help somewhat in fog, but I imagine having flak weapons suddenly start exploding around you won't be a lot more comfortable.
Anyway, the fog-case is kind of specific, and merits further work, but is still a bit afield from the original discussion of fundamental defense effectiveness. Basically, so much could change from the implementation of a new weapon type, that it makes it difficult to predict what we might/might-not do in secondary situations like fog. Upshot from a philosophical perspective: I would prefer to have challenging and interesting defenses, without being cheat-y, whether in fog or not.
Incarnate, I love the idea of putting a proximity fuse and explosion onto the current cap guess for a flak effect. It is (was?) fairly easy to simply not get hit by them, even with(maybe because of) a ping from halfway around the world.
In addition, having the turrets switch targets to their nearest threat, the nearest threat to the station, or a mixture of both modes (nearest to station within x km, nearest threat within y meters) would help beef up the current defense system enormously.
Beyond encouragement though, I don't have much else to add. The idea is pretty solid I think, even if it does require some tweaking. I think a current pretty fatal problem with the current defense set up is that it becomes almost trivial once you reach a large number of players in sector, especially if it's a surprise one-sided fight. That is definitely an issue with the capture mechanics as-is as well as the station turrets, but at least a more vicious flak-type defense would increase the number of attackers it would take to trivialize the station defense system.
In addition, having the turrets switch targets to their nearest threat, the nearest threat to the station, or a mixture of both modes (nearest to station within x km, nearest threat within y meters) would help beef up the current defense system enormously.
Beyond encouragement though, I don't have much else to add. The idea is pretty solid I think, even if it does require some tweaking. I think a current pretty fatal problem with the current defense set up is that it becomes almost trivial once you reach a large number of players in sector, especially if it's a surprise one-sided fight. That is definitely an issue with the capture mechanics as-is as well as the station turrets, but at least a more vicious flak-type defense would increase the number of attackers it would take to trivialize the station defense system.